Sharps Read online

  The report of the day’s proceedings in Conclave was one of the documents included in the weekly diplomatic bag sent by the Republic’s accredited representatives in Permia to the House. Before he left the City, the messenger stopped, as usual, at the Praetor’s office, where the dispatches were carefully unsealed, read and sealed up again. He then took the Old West Road through the mountains, crossed the border at the Triangle Pass, and followed the road across the Demilitarised Zone to the Republic’s way station C15, where he handed the bag on to the second-link courier, who rode through the night, bypassing C14 and reaching C13 just before dawn. The third-link courier carried straight on to C10 (C11 and C12 hadn’t been rebuilt yet), and the fourth-link rode without stopping, reaching the House just before the start of the morning session.

  All that effort; somehow, the opposition had got hold of the investigator’s report two full days before the official courier arrived, and were able to ambush the foreign secretary with the Mezentine dagger story before he’d had a chance to read his brief.

  “Which means,” the Abbot of Monsacer explained to a select committee of the Bank directors, “they must have a direct line of communication that’s at least two days faster than ours, presumably crossing the mountains somewhere south of the Blackwater and not going through the Demilitarised Zone at all.”

  “That’s not possible,” one of the directors objected. “All the mountain passes are guarded. You can’t just slip across the border, not unless you happen to be a bird.”

  “Maybe they’ve found a new way over,” someone suggested.

  “I doubt it,” the director replied. “Every place you can possibly get through was found during the War. Mostly,” he added with feeling, “by the enemy.”

  “Then they must have an understanding with the guards somewhere,” said someone else. “Like General Promachus used to say, no fortification built by men is strong enough to keep out a donkey loaded down with gold coins.”

  “The likeliest explanation would be that money is changing hands at some point,” the abbot said gently. “In which case, our chances of finding out how they’re doing it are fairly remote. I think we must just accept it as a fact of life and move on.”

  “But it’s maddening,” someone said, “having to learn the news from the enemy, when we’re spending a fortune on couriers and way stations. Also, I don’t like not being in control of the news supply. If people find out things we don’t want them to, any form of coherent government becomes impossible.”

  The abbot smiled sadly. “All we can do is try and cope, and discredit wherever possible,” he said. “A few patently untrue stories, planted in such a way as to suggest they originated with the opposition’s news service, might redress the balance a little, but that’s your field of expertise, not mine. I’m more concerned with the message, rather than the manner of its delivery.” He paused, and looked slowly at the men sitting around him. “I don’t suppose any of you gentlemen had anything to do with the assassination.”

  There was a moment of perfect silence. The abbot nodded. “I was fairly sure you hadn’t, but it’s as well to be open about this sort of thing, among ourselves.”

  “As far as I can see,” an elderly director said, “it’s little short of a disaster for us. Anything that destabilises the Permian government—”

  “Kalojan wasn’t that important,” a younger man interrupted.

  “No, but he was a moderate, and you can bet your life he’ll be replaced by someone more extreme,” someone replied. “Could be a hawk or a dove, it depends who can capitalise best on the fuss they’re making over it. Looking at this report, chances are it’ll be the military. Everyone seems to think it was a crude attempt to discredit them.”

  “That’s what concerns me,” the abbot said. “Personally, I’m inclined to believe that the Beautiful and Good were behind it. Their response has been so swift and well-orchestrated, it seems to me that it must have been prepared in advance; and they could only have known the Director would be killed if they themselves arranged it. In cases like this, I’m simple-minded enough to suspect the party that benefits most. The question is, what can we do about it?”

  That led to another silence. Then someone said, “There isn’t anything. Is there?”

  “Oh, there’s always something,” the abbot replied mildly. “For example, we could arrest someone, tell the Permians that we’ve caught the murderer and he’s confessed, and then arrange for him to die escaping or hang himself in his cell. We would then apologise fulsomely to the Permian government, confessing that the murderer was a rogue intelligence officer who exceeded his orders, and that we’re taking all possible measures to make sure nothing of the sort ever happens again. There’d be an almighty row, for a week or two, but in due course the Permians will be left with the impression that we’re serious about peace and honest enough to own up to our mistakes. People respect you when you admit you’ve done something wrong, even if you haven’t.”

  Another dead silence. Then someone said, “Could we do that?”

  The abbot laughed. “Of course,” he said. “But I don’t think the situation quite warrants it. Better to keep that trick up our sleeves for when we actually need it.”

  “It’s a thought, though,” someone said. “What if we could frame someone like General Andrapodiza? Or the Irrigator, even. Two birds with one stone.”

  The abbot frowned slightly, and the speaker remembered, a little too late, that the Irrigator was family. “I’d counsel against trying to be too clever,” the abbot said quietly. “The repercussions at home might be unfortunate. Also, there’s a difference between bearing false witness against a nonentity and a man of power and influence. One should always bear in mind the consequences should one be found out. Personally,” he went on, “I would be inclined to let this affair blow over. It may well be that the Permians will catch the guilty party, in which case matters will doubtless sort themselves out. What we should do is increase our efforts in other, safer directions.”

  “Ah,” someone said. “You mean the fencing tour.”

  “More than ever before, it’s vital that the tour is a success,” the abbot said. “What we have here is a chance to get in touch directly with the Permian people, rather than their divided and absurdly conflicted representatives. We have the tremendous advantage, from our perspective, that even after seventy years of war, there’s remarkably little hostility towards us at grass-roots level.”

  They stared at him. “Are you sure about that?” someone said.

  “Moderately sure,” the abbot said quietly. “And I’ve taken the trouble to research the point. I’ve made discreet enquiries of village brothers and City chaplains, men who are so much more in touch with popular feeling than we could ever hope to be. I’m particularly interested in the views of war veterans; they’re the real formers of opinion on this issue, and we’re extremely fortunate, in that regard, that the Permians chose to fight with mercenaries rather than their own people. If you ask an old soldier, he’ll tell you that he hates the Aram Chantat, and if he had his way the Blueskins would be rounded up and wiped off the face of the earth. Most likely, though, the Permians he’ll have encountered would have been refugees, women, old men, children. You’d be surprised how many of the veterans we’ve heard from talk about how they shared their food with starving villagers – I don’t suppose they actually did, but it shows that they’d have liked to, which is what’s important. Of the rest, a fair proportion feel guilty about raping and robbing defenceless women. The consensus would seem to be that the War was the fault of the mine owners and the Beautiful and Good, and the ordinary people were as much victims as we were.”

  “I don’t suppose they feel the same way in Permia,” someone said.

  “To a certain extent, I think they might,” the abbot said. “At least, as far as attributing the blame for the War is concerned. In a class-ridden society like Permia, the common people tend to hate their social superiors rather more than the foreign
enemy; which, I firmly believe, is how we come to have peace. On that level, we share a primary objective: destroying the power of the military aristocracy in our respective countries and ensuring that power stays in the hands of the leading commercial interests. I’m convinced that an East Country shepherd and a Permian miner have quite a lot in common; they blame the bosses, not the foreigners. Also,” he went on, “they’re both obsessive about organised sports. It’s more or less the only bright note in their otherwise fairly miserable lives.”

  The silence that followed was submissive, if not entirely convinced. The abbot waited for a moment, then said, “Talking of which, I’m pleased to be able to tell you that Jilem Phrantzes, my choice for coach, has kindly agreed to join the team, which means the touring party is now complete. All that remains—”

  “Phrantzes,” someone interrupted. “That name rings a bell.”

  “My congratulations on the excellence of your memory,” the abbot said. “I envy you. These days I find it’s all I can do to remember where I left the book I was reading last evening. As I was saying, all that remains is to finalise the details of the tour dates, which I’m happy to leave to Phrantzes and his staff. As soon as that’s done, we can begin.”

  Leaving the Republic and heading into the Demilitarised Zone, the Great West Road is, of course, the Great East Road. Once clear of the wide, messy skirt of willow shacks and semi-permanent tents on the east side of the City, where most of the refugees still live, the road climbs slowly but steadily through orchards and grass-keep meadows on to the eastern plateau, once moorland but now painstakingly improved into thin, wet pasture. The only trees are wiry thorns, bent into ridiculous shapes by the wind, and the lines of copper beeches, planted into the enclosure-dividing earth and stone banks a century ago by a generation of optimistic improving landlords hoping to form windbreaks. Halfway through the War, the roots began to break through the sides of the banks, gradually ripping them apart; there was nobody to do anything about it, since everybody was away. The rain got into the splits and fissures, washing out the earth, and the wind slowly prised out the trees, like bad teeth, and pushed them over. Most of them are lying on their sides now, still with a taproot in the soil to keep them alive, but growing sideways, like old men who have fallen and can’t get up.

  Beyond the plateau the hills rise and fall, and it’s easy to see where the improvers’ optimism ran out. The bald tops grow only a little woody-stemmed heather, while the steep-sided valleys and combes are too wet to graze safely except at the height of a dry summer. Sensibly, the road follows the central ridge, which runs fairly straight through the middle of the moors. A hundred years ago there were cottages, wrapped round on all four sides with tall beech hedges. But the low eaves of their turf roofs have long since reached the ground and melted away into it, leaving long, strangely regular grass mounds that eventually collapse as the roof timbers rot away, briefly revealing a blackened table or two legs of an overturned stool. These days, the shepherds cart up wheeled huts for the summer grazing, stopping where it’s easiest to cut into the peat seam, to keep the stove going. The only continuously inhabited structure on the moorland stretch of the road is way station C9, where they keep three changes of horses for the couriers, and the stationmaster sells stale bread and flat beer to travellers as a sideline. During the war, C9 was a fortified inn, the Hope & Endurance, headquarters of the 17th Dragoons, a defence-in-depth cavalry unit whose job was to shadow Aram Chantat and Blueskin raiding parties and, if possible, ambush them on their way home, when they would be careless with success and encumbered with loot. But the Blueskins never got that far – too cold, they said, and nothing worth taking – and the Aram Chantat were never that careless; mostly, the hundred or so dragoons stayed in the Hope and tried to keep warm. These days, apart from the shepherds, the only visitors tend to be romantic poets and well-bred young ladies of the mercantile class, who come in splendidly equipped coaches to record in charcoal and watercolour the savage beauty of the wilderness.

  “I managed to get us warrants to put up at the way station,” Phrantzes said, raising his voice so as to be heard over the rumble of the wheels, “so with any luck we won’t have to camp out overnight.”

  Nobody said anything. Phrantzes, apparently satisfied that he’d done his duty, ostentatiously closed his eyes and leaned as far back into his seat as he could get – not particularly far, since the headrest was too low and narrow for a man of his size. Hardly surprising; the carriage had been designed for four young ladies and their paints, easels and hampers. Somehow they’d managed to cram five men and a tall girl into it, with all their gear strapped to the roof. It had been the only wheeled vehicle available, apart from farm and carriers’ carts, and according to Phrantzes they’d been lucky to get it.

  The sixth passenger was reading a book. Giraut was filled with awe and admiration; he’d tried to read at the start of the journey, but the movement of the carriage, lurching and wallowing on four catapult-steel springs over the rocks and potholes, had made him feel disastrously sick, so he’d spent the last nine hours looking out of the window instead. But the sixth man – Phrantzes had described him as a political officer, with no further explanation offered – was snuggled in his seat, a warm scarf round his neck, apparently engrossed in his book (Iseutz had made several barely disguised attempts to read the title off the spine, but the lettering was too small), a picture of deep content. It helped that he was short and slight, with little short-fingered hands, and so the seat and the headrest were just the right height for him. At one point, three hours out and in the middle of a ferocious hailstorm, he’d offered round a small enamelled tin of pale brown honey cakes, and hadn’t seemed in the least offended when nobody except Phrantzes took one. He’d taken one himself and stowed the tin under his seat, and the offer hadn’t been repeated; a pity, Giraut thought, since by the looks of it, the tin contained the only food on the coach.

  It was raining again, and Giraut couldn’t help thinking about all their spare clothes, fencing gear, footwear and other possessions, up on the roof in six large canvas sacks. He told himself that there’d be a nice roaring fire at the way station, where they’d be able to dry out their stuff and buy or borrow a tarpaulin. It was, he suspected, one of those promises he made himself from time to time that somehow didn’t get kept, but he put it out of his mind. Phrantzes was pretending to sleep, the political officer was reading, Suidas was staring down at his fingertips as if trying to read something written very small indeed on his nails, Addo was sitting up straight with his hands folded in his lap – he seemed capable of holding this pose almost indefinitely, and it made him practically invisible, like one of the magic cloaks in fairy tales – and Iseutz was picking at a scab on the back of her left hand. According to Phrantzes, the tour was going to last for three months. Although Giraut felt properly grateful to the Invincible Sun for the amazing second chance he’d been given, after apparently screwing up his life beyond all hope of redemption, he couldn’t help wondering if a short stay in a condemned cell and a brisk walk to the gallows might not have suited him better after all.

  A sudden lurch, a dull thumping noise, and Giraut found himself kneeling on the carriage floor, with his head in Phrantzes’ lap. The carriage had stopped moving. “What the hell …?” Iseutz demanded. The political officer, who was next to the door, leaned his head out of the window and sighed. “It looks like we’ve just lost a wheel,” he said.

  Phrantzes made a soft moaning noise. Suidas, who’d somehow managed not to get thrown across the carriage when they stopped so suddenly, was already on his feet, climbing daintily behind Giraut’s back on his way to the door. It wouldn’t open when he tried the handle, so he scrambled and swung himself through the window, a performance so swift and graceful as to defy analysis.

  “He’s right,” Giraut heard him call out. “Nearside front wheel’s off, and it looks like the axle’s busted. We’re screwed.”

  The political officer frowned, put down his book
(having first marked his place with a handkerchief), and placed his hand on the door handle. For him, it opened easily. He stepped down and closed the door behind him.

  “Now what?” Iseutz said.

  Giraut hadn’t taken to Phrantzes, but he couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. He looked like a hunter who’s discovered that the rabbit he’s just shot was actually his best friend kneeling behind a bush. “I have no idea,” he said. “The nearest place is the way station, but I don’t suppose they’ve got anyone there who can mend axles.”