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Authors: K.J. Parker

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BOOK: Blue and Gold
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I’m not proud of
one of my greatest achievements. I’ve learned to lift certain things out of my
mind, at least for a while. Let’s not think about that, I told myself. Instead—

My brilliant idea,
which came to me in a dream (which sounds better than
came to me in my
sleep).
I got up off the ground, didn’t stand up straight, kept hunched and
low so I could peek over the top of the barrels. The yard was empty, but
someone had been to the trouble and expense of lighting three lanterns and
hanging them on hooks on the wall. There’s a common misconception that bright lights
scare away thieves. Really, it just gives us, I mean them, light to see by. I
straightened up and walked slowly and wearily (not acting; stiff neck) round
the barrels, out of the yard, down an alley and into Coppergate.

I may have
committed a lot of crimes, but I’m not a criminal, as such. Wish I was.
Criminals, at least the ones I’ve known over the years, have a wonderfully
instinctive way of doing difficult things, like walking unobtrusively down a
street. A good thief is practically invisible. A basically honest man like me
trying to walk innocently is the most suspicious sight you’ll ever see. Just as
well there was nobody about—well, there wouldn’t be; day shift had just gone
home, night shift not yet started. The ideal time to be out and about in
Coppergate, and I wish I could claim credit for astute tactical thinking.

Walked up
Coppergate, left into Old Street, right into The Mile; fifth left, second
right. No reason whatsoever to assume he’d be at home. I stood under his window
and looked up. A light burning behind the screens. I tried the door; open.
Sometimes, you get bursts of good luck, for no perceptible reason.

I went up the
stairs, which were dark and smelt of burnt tallow and urine. His door actually
has his name on it. I knocked and pushed it open in one smooth movement.

Astyages, my old
college chum, is a writer. He writes stuff. He’ll write you a bill of lading, a
chancery pleading, a letter home enclosing two angels, a letter to a rich uncle
begging for money, a deed of partnership, a will, a pretty good sonnet (five
bits extra if he has to make one up from scratch). The joke is, he has lousy
handwriting. But he does really pretty initial capital letters, with loops and
scrolls and even gold leaf, if you’ve got the money. He says he only does
scrivening to keep himself fed and clothed while he’s finishing off his great
thesis,
Some Aspects of the Caesura in Late Mannerist Minor Lyric Poetry.
Really, he’s a spy for the government. At least, that’s what he tells
everybody.

“You,” he said,
twisting round in his chair and glowering at me over his spectacles (his
dearest and only valuable possession; inherited from his father, a senior
lecturer at Elpis before the War. Astyages actually has perfect eyesight, in
spite of his trade, but he wears the things because they make him feel
scholarly). “Actually, I’m not surprised. You lunatic.”

I smiled. “Mind if
I sit down?”

He shrugged. “What
do you want?”

“Message to
Phocas,” I said, and he sighed.

“Tell him
yourself,” he said wearily. “I had the scuttlehats here, earlier.”

“Of course you
did,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s all
right,” he said. “There’s beer in the jug, probably some cheese in the
cupboard.” Astyages practically lives on cheese; he gets it cheap from the
dairy on Ropewalk, but you’ve got to scrape the green bits off. “And I suppose
you’ll be wanting money as well.”

I felt guilty. “I
still owe you from last time,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I
can let you have two angels, but that’s it.”

“Thanks,” I said.
“Will you—?”

He shook his head.
“Go and see him, no,” he said. “Write him a note, yes. What do you want me to
say?”

I thought for a
moment. “Well, sorry’d be a good place to start,” I said. “And then, please
don’t come after me. And it doesn’t work.”

Astyages frowned
and adjusted the position of the glasses on his nose. They’ve worn a sort of
slot half-way down. “Is that true?” he asked.

“Of course it is,”
I said. “Come on, nobody can turn base metal into gold. It’s not possible.”

“That’s not what—”

“It can’t be
done,” I said. “All my assurances to the contrary notwithstanding. So tell him,
really sorry about the lies and the false hopes, and I’m going abroad,
indefinitely. Usual best wishes, Saloninus.”

Astyages laid down
his pen and looked at me. “You’ve cracked it, haven’t you?”

“I just said, it
can’t be—”

“Don’t bullshit
me, please. You’ve cracked it, and now you’re running away with the secret,
before Phocas has you locked up in a tower somewhere for the rest of your life
making gold. I know you,” he went on, overriding my attempts at protest. “You
know, I always had this tiny sneaking suspicion at the back of my mind that one
day you’d do it.”

“Really, I—”

He shook his head
irritably. “So,” he said, “what was it? Sal draconis? Virtus aurei in a
suspension of quicksilver?”

“Not sal
draconis,” I said, with feeling.

“All right, then.
It’s in the method, isn’t it? Something really obvious in the way you distil
the—”

“It can’t be done,
Astyages. Everybody knows that.”

“Fine,” he
snapped, “don’t tell me. But when you’re obscenely rich and living in your
palace in the Blue Hills, for once in your life do the decent thing and send me
money. All right?”

“If it ever comes
to that,” I said, “I promise. On my word of honour.”

He gave me a
cracked grin, scrabbled for a fresh sheet of paper, and started writing.

I sat down. He
wrote about a dozen words—he’s left-handed, and it always amazes me, the way he
writes— then paused and chewed the end of his pen. “How’s the thesis coming
along?” I asked.

“Oh, fine,” he
said. “Another month and it’ll be finished.”

I believe him. I
always have. Which month he’s referring to is another matter. He wrote another
dozen words, then turned round slowly and looked at me. “The scuttlehats said
Eudoxia’s dead,” he said.

“That’s right.”

“They told me—”

“That’s right
too.”

He stared at me;
forgot to look over the top of his glasses. “God, Saloninus,” he said.
“That’s—”

“It was an
accident,” I said.

“Well of course it
was a bloody accident,” he snapped at me, “even you wouldn’t deliberately
poison your wife.” He paused. He’d run into that terrible impassable barrier we
all come up against when trying to express sincere sympathy to a friend. “I’m
sorry,” was the best he could do. Actually, it’s not bad.

“Me too,” I said.

“I always liked
her.”

I grinned. “You
were nuts about her,” I said. “When I think of the exhibition you always made
of yourself whenever she came to visit, back at Elpis—”

“Yes, all right.”
He was actually blushing. “I knew I didn’t have a hope in hell.”

“No,” I said, “you
didn’t.”

“She never liked
you much either,” he said, and then realised what had just slipped past the
gate of his teeth, and looked wretched. I smiled, to show it was all right. It
wasn’t, but he was doing me a favour.

“She liked you,
though,” I lied. “Not that way, but she liked you. Told me so, several times.”

A light came on in
his eyes. “Really?”

I nodded. “Thought
you looked sensitive,” I said. “Misunderstood.”

“Is that right?”
he said, in a sort of stupid voice, and I nodded again. Actually, the only time
I ever mentioned him to her, she said, “Who?”

*

I
spent most
of the night drifting
around Coppergate, too scared to go in a bar out of the cold or crawl in a
doorway. I walked up and down, trying to look like I was on my way somewhere.
Fortunately, the people in that part of town can practically smell trouble and
keep well out of the way of anybody who looks like he’s in it. I think I ended
up on the steps of the Nika Fountain, along with a couple of crying drunks and
an elderly streetwalker who’d given up trying for the night. At one point, I
tried to remember all thirty-six of Zeuxis’ propositions of paradigmatic
symmetry, but I only got twenty-eight of them, and knowing I couldn’t simply
drop in to the library in the morning and look up the other eight made me burst
into tears. One of the drunks offered me his bottle, which I’m ashamed to say I
accepted. It was empty, of course.

Round about dawn,
I knew from experience, the watch makes a tour of Nika Square and arrests
anyone who can’t get out of the way, so I got up and headed back to Astyages’
place, taking my time. No sign of any scuttlehats but plenty of watch. I was
sure they were going to pull me in, but they walked right past me, which made
me wonder if Phocas had spoken to the City Prefect. One less thing to worry
about if he had, but I couldn’t know that for sure. I made myself slow down,
dawdle, the way I’d seen drunks and beggars to every day of my life, but
suddenly I couldn’t quite call to mind the fine nuances of how they walk, how
they stand, how their heads droop from their shoulders.

Astyages was
already up and working when I got there. He likes to do his fancy penmanship in
the early morning, when the light comes in through his window just so. He was
hard at work on a W when I got there. Amazing what you can do with a simple
everyday consonant if you’ve got the skill and imagination. He’d turned it into
an amazing double-crested wave, with a little ship bobbing desperately on the
middle peak. If you wanted to, you could see that as transmuting base material
into gold, though if you ask me, it’s pushing it.

“Green,” I said.
“Since when is the sea green?”

He gave me a
filthy look. “For three bits,” he said, “the sea’s green.”

I grinned at him.
Blue is, after all, impossible. Can’t be done. To get blue, you have to go all
the way to Ges Eschatoi, buy a thumb-sized slab of lapis lazuli for the price
of a good farm, trudge all the way back here, over the mountains and across the
desert, grind it up in a pestle and mortar and add spirits of earth and gum.
People I know in the painting trade reckon blue is proof positive of Nature’s
nasty sense of humour. Blue sky, blue sea, and who the hell can afford to pay
for realism? And even if you’ve got a ridiculously wealthy customer who’s
prepared to fork out for the best, it’s still only background.

“Letter for you,”
he said.

I was stunned.
“Already?”

“Royal courier,”
Astyages replied, pretending to concentrate on his W. “About an hour ago. It’s
on the table, there, next to the glue-pot.”

*

Phocas to
Saloninus, greetings.

It’s all right.
It was an accident. Well of course it was. I’ve known you for what, ten years?
I know you wouldn’t murder my sister.

And you know
me. It’s all right. Really.

We can sort it
all out, I promise; but not if the Watch catches you. You know how things are with
me and the Prefect’s office. Pescennius would just love to put you on trial, to
get at me. Don’t overestimate what I can do. There will eventually come a point
where I can’t protect you any more.

The best thing
would be if you stay put at Sty’s place and have him write me you’re there.
I’ll send scuttlehats to bring you out nice and quiet.

What the hell
were you thinking about, running away like that? For crying out loud, Nino.

*

“Plain paper,” I
said. “His own hand.” Astyages was doing his letter, really concentrating on
gold-leafing a loopy-scrolly bit. I folded the letter and put it inside my
jacket, safe. Used just right, that letter could be a neat weapon. I picked up
a sheet of blank paper from the table. “Do you mind?” I said.

He looked up.
“What?”

“Better get rid of
this,” I said, holding up the sheet.

“What? Oh, yes,
good idea.” He bent his head over the page in front of him. One smudge or
ink-blob and he could screw up two days’ work. I went over to the fireplace,
made a show of screwing up the paper into a ball and throwing it into the fire.
Phocas had always had a genius for details; he’d make sure his men asked;
what did he do with the letter once he’d read it?

“What did it say?”
Astyages asked.

“Come home, all is
forgiven.” I sat down on the edge of the table. He scowled at me, and I stood
up again. “What do you think?” I asked.

He took time off
to consider his reply. “I honestly couldn’t say,” he said. “Give him his due,
he’s a fair-minded man. If he believes it was an accident, he’s capable of
forgiving you. Also, I don’t think they ever got on, not even as kids.
Especially as kids. And there’s always politics, which I know absolutely
nothing about. Could be you’ve done him a favour, for all I know.”

“Or he could be
trying to lure me back so he can have me slowly tortured to death.”

“That’s possible,
yes.” Helpful as ever. “So,” he said, pausing to tweak the hairs of his brush
into a sharp point, “what’re you going to do?”

*

It’d depend on
whom you asked. Ask,
say, the Dean of Philosophy at Elpis, and he’d say my crowning achievement was
the
Dialogues,
in which I expound the theory of correlative forms. Ask
the master of the Temple, he’d say the
Essay on Ethical Theory.
Ask the
president of the Mystery, he’d tell you it was vis mercuriae, or possibly
combining mel fortis with strong acids on a block of ice to make ichor tonans.
The chairman of the Literary Association would go for
Aspis,
though I’d
be inclined to doubt he’s ever managed to read all forty-seven cantos;
privately he’d tell you he much prefers the sonnets, or
Fulvia and Luso.
Down at the patents registry, they wouldn’t have to think about it; the Vesani
wheel, for forming curves in sheet metal, and if only I’d held on to the
patent, instead of selling it for the price of a good pair of boots, I’d have
been a rich man at twenty and none of this would ever have happened. If it was
the chief of the watch, he’d have no hesitation in going for the Lystra Bank
job; I believe it’s still required reading for fast-trackers in the Criminal Investigations
division. Ask me what the best thing I’ve ever done is, I’d have to reply; I
don’t know, I haven’t done it yet.

BOOK: Blue and Gold
4.61Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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