Blue and Gold (8 page)

He thought about
it just long enough. I really hate punching out scuttlehats. Miss by an eighth
of an inch, and either they don’t go down or you skin your knuckles on the
sharp edge of the steel ear-flaps. Luckily, I was on target this time. He sank
to his knees with that faint sigh you get sometimes. I stepped over him and ran
for it.

*

Really, though, I
was just killing
time.
I
made it as far as the
porters’ lodge, just inside the main gate. There’s a little sort of alcove in
there, where they dump the mail sacks. I scrambled in and pulled a full sack on
top of me, making sure there wasn’t a telltale foot or elbow sticking out. Time
to think.

Time, as I think I
may have told you already, melts. In its liquid form (aqua temporis?), it seeps
and penetrates, like a thin mineral oil, and pools, and floods, under the
influence of heat (the agency of fire; see above, passim). Withdraw that
influence and it congeals, like hot fat in a pan, and in its solid state
undergoes a kind of slow transmutation into a gooey mess, in which you get
stuck. Time pooled and congealed under that mail sack, whose coarse hemp fibres
chafed my cheek as I huddled, denying myself the agency of movement. I hate
waiting. I can feel time passing, I sometimes kid myself—time passing is a
transmutation of decay, communication by an exchange through loss; components
dwindle and are lost, though what remains is by definition the enduring,
therefore the refined, the desirable. In theory, you can refine gold by just
leaving it lying around, letting the rain and the damp air corrode out the
impurities, until only the gold remains. Wouldn’t try it though. Someone like
me might come along and steal it.

I thought; do I
really have to go through with this?

They found me, in
the end.

*

Picture the scene
. Phocas and me, at
the university, two fresh-faced young intellectual drunks bumping along a
narrow alley, having been thrown out of the
Divine Forbearance,
on our
way to create the circumstances that led to us being thrown out of the
Charity and Social Justice
(breathing with intent gets you slung out of the
Forbearance,
or it did in my day, but in order to get bounced from the
Charity,
you really have to try).

Talking, the way
students do; too loud, too fast, from the bottom of our hearts, about things we
understood in theory and principle, though we hadn’t got a clue about the proof
and the practice.

“Hell of a good
way to make money, though,” I think I said.

“Alchemy.” He
snorted. It’s thing people only do when they’re drunk.

“Not that it’s
possible,” I pointed out. “Can’t be done.”

“Don’t be so
sure,” he replied darkly. “Amazing, what people can do. Look at
cattle-breeding. Or glass-making, I mean, there’s a case in point. I mean,
who’d have thought you could take a load of sand, like just ordinary sand, off
a beach, any God’s amount of the stuff, and you stick it in a crucible and heat
it up really, really, really hot, and next thing you know, you got glass. I
mean,” he added with intense feeling,
“glass.
Impossible.”

“No it’s not,” I
felt obliged to point out. “Glass is actually no big deal. People make the
stuff every day.”

“Yes, but it
shouldn’t be possible, is what I’m saying,” he said. “Stuff that’s solid, so
you can touch it, so it’s really there, but you can’t see it, you can just see
through
it. That’s not possible.” He paused to regain his balance, which
had temporarily escaped him. “It’s more like bloody magic than anything
sensible. Well, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. I’d
forgotten what point he was trying to make.

“So,” he went on,
his face screwed up in concentration, “maybe the same thing goes for alchemy.
Base stuff into gold. Just because we can’t do it now doesn’t mean to say it
can’t be done. Well?”

“But it can’t be
done,” I said patiently. “Because of basic alchemical theory.”

He spat; so much,
then, for basic alchemical theory. “And bloody good job too,” he said. “You
know what? If ever I get to be prince—”

He paused, stopped
dead and swallowed hard half a dozen times. I took a long step back,
recognising the symptoms. But he was all right this time. “If ever I get to be
prince,” he went on, “first thing I’m going to do. Want to guess?”

I shook my head.
“What?”

“Hunt down all the
alchemists,” he said, “string the buggers up. No mercy, no exceptions. You know
why?”

“Enlighten me.”

“Because,” he
said, “alchemists are the greatest potential danger to the state. Really.
Because,” he went on, rubbing his eyes with thumb and forefinger, “what’s the
basis of government revenue? The gold standard. Why? Because gold is scarce.
You get some bastard comes along, figures out how to turn base metal into gold,
what d’you get? Total fiscal chaos, that’s what. Market flooded, gold
worthless, billions of angels wiped out of the economy in a matter of hours.”

I wasn’t really
interested in the subject, but I felt obliged to argue, because when you’re
that age, and a student, and drunk, you argue the toss about everything. “Oh, I
don’t know,” I said. “Surely the trick would be, to keep it to yourself. Not
let everybody know about it.

Then you could
have your tame alchemists down in the cellar cooking up millions of angels, and
only you’d know it wasn’t the good stuff. You’d be rich, everybody’d be fine,
no problem, surely.”

He gave me a
filthy look. “Wouldn’t work,” he said. “Can’t keep something like that a secret
for long. Bound to get out, and then you’re screwed. Only thing you can do,
lure all the really good alchemists to you with bribes and stuff, keep a
really, really close eye on them; then, soon as they look like they’re on to
something—” He did that finger-across-the-throat thing, and hiccoughed.

“Bit harsh,” I
said.

“Harsh,” he
replied, “but right. The right thing to do. Always do the right thing, if
you’re the prince. Hold on there a second, gotta take a leak.”

He paused in the
doorway of the Convent of the Sisters of Divine Grace, and there was a
trickling noise. Then he scampered to catch me up.

“So that’s what
you’ll do, then, is it?” I asked. “When you’re the prince.”

He laughed. “Not
going to be the prince.”

“Really?”

“Impossible,” he
said. “Can’t happen.”

*

When
I
got
back to my laboratory, the gold ingot was almost, but not quite,
where I’d left it. Ah, I thought.

“Four guards,” the
guard said.

“Excuse me?”

“Four guards,” he
repeated. “Outside your door, at all times, from now on.”

“I’m flattered,” I
said.

He gave me a look.
“And private Syriscus is in the hospital. You cracked his skull.”

From time to time,
I really hate myself. It doesn’t last long and then it goes away, and then it
comes back. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Sure,” he said,
and left the room. I heard the lock. So what? I thought. He was a scuttlehat.
They get paid to stand in harm’s way. He was there to keep me from getting out,
and I’m a free man, a citizen of the universe, not a chicken in a coop. I never
set out to hurt anybody, not ever. Well, not often. And when I do, it’s never
the primary purpose, just an unfortunate inevitable consequence. Mostly.

I sat down and
read a book; Arcadius on functions, which is fundamentally flawed but still
makes a kind of sense. They brought me something to eat; fresh bread, strong
white cheese, five slices of farm sausage, an apple. “How’s Syriscus getting
on?” I asked. They just looked at me. I ate the food, then put my feet up on
the bench and closed my eyes, but all I could see was her face just below the
surface of the honey. Not guilt; more like the first stirring of an idea. I got
up, found some paper and a pen and some ink, and started to write. (And if you
happen to be a student in your second year at any decent Vesani university,
you’d recognise what I wrote. Hell, you can probably recite the opening
paragraph by heart, which is more than I can. There’s a really basic flaw on
page three, by the way. A small prize if you can spot it.)

I must’ve fallen
asleep, because when they woke me, I was face down on the paper, with the ink
forming a small lake on the bench-top. I looked up. Scuttlehats.

“Come with us,”
they said.

“Do I have to?” I
said, with a yawn. “It’s been a really long day.”

“On your feet,”
they explained. I got up, and they shunted me out of the door. I wasn’t happy
about being manhandled, but then I thought about the man whose skull I’d broken
and decided not to make an issue of it. Memo to self, I thought; must make
special effort not to hurt people.

Phocas was waiting
for me in the South Library. Disconcerting. I’d been in there twice before,
once as a friend and honoured guest, once when I was burgling the palace (long
story) and took a wrong turning. It’s a hell of a room; on the small side, by
palace standards—you could just about squeeze a cavalry squadron in there, but
they’d have to leave their horses outside in the corridor— half-panelled in
rich golden oak with late Idealist carvings of harvest and pastoral subjects,
with a moulded-plaster roof gilded and painted in trompe l’oeil to represent a
canopy of vines and mulberries (traditionally there’s a two-angel prize for new
visitors if they can spot the life-size moulded wren hidden among the
vine-tendrils; I didn’t find it until my second visit); five free-standing
bookcases, unchained, one of which houses the current prince’s own personal collection
of books. I was touched to note that three shelves of this bookcase were taken
up with the collected works of Saloninus.

“You’re
impossible,” he said.

“Strictly
speaking, no. Highly improbable, yes, but—”

“You put a guard
in the hospital.” Phocas not in mood for jokes. “The other one lost two jaw
teeth.” He paused, and looked at me. “Where did you learn to punch like that?”
he said. “Not at the university.”

“I sort of picked
it up as I went along,” I said truthfully. “Look, I’m really sorry about the
guards. It wasn’t—”

“Deliberate?” He
shook his head. “Well, they’re the least of our problems.” He picked up a sheet
of paper and waved it at me. “You know what this is?”

“Enlighten me.”

“It’s a warrant of
friendly rendition,” he said, and I saw that his face was milk-white. “Sworn
and sealed by the Mezentine charge d’affaires, relating to charges of forgery,
sedition and false coining. You know what that means?”

In other words,
extradition. I just about managed to keep a straight face. “You won’t let them
take me,” I said.

He closed his eyes
for a moment. “I really don’t see that I have a choice,” he said. “It’s a
properly-drawn warrant, there’s a valid treaty, they know you’re here, and they
went to the Senate instead of me personally. If I try and bury this, the
Tendency’ll have my head on a pike.”

I didn’t dare look
him in the eye, so I concentrated on the tiny plaster wren, directly above his
head. It seemed as though it was singing to me. Extradition; I get formally
handed over at the Northgate into the custody of three or four armed couriers.
I go quietly. Sooner or later we stop at an inn or a post-house or a road
station. A walnut-sized gob of pulveus fulminans goes in the fire, I go out
through the window; free and clear. Of course, most of the major governments
know me quite well by now, there’d be searches, including body cavities. But if
it came down to a choice between my dignity and comfort and my life, no
contest. You can easily hide enough pulveus fulminans to take out a wall where
the sun doesn’t shine.

“Please,” I said.
“Don’t let them do this. It’s the gibbet for coining in Mezentia.”

“Should’ve thought
of that before you did it.” He paused. “You did do it.”

I nodded. I make
it a rule to tell the truth when there’s nothing much riding on it. “I was
starving,” I said. “I met some men in a bar. They said it was for jewellery,
not counterfeiting.”

“Nino, you idiot.”
There was something in his voice, something so close to genuine feeling, that
for a moment I felt physically ill. “What can I do? Come on, you’re the genius.
Suggest something.”

“I’m not a
lawyer,” I said. “Ask the professionals, it’s what you pay them for.”

“I already did,”
he snapped, turning his head a little so he wasn’t meeting my eye. “They
couldn’t think of a damned thing. Best they could come up with was a plea of
benefit of clergy. But that won’t wash unless it’s made when you’re on
Mezentine soil.”

Benefit of clergy,
I thought, now that’s smart. I liked it. Never been a priest before. “Will it
work?”

He scowled, a sure
sign of deep concentration. “They believe so,” he said. “The treaty’s four
hundred years old, it was meant to protect our missionaries when they made
trouble for themselves preaching the overthrow of the Guilds, but it’s still in
force and it specifically covers sedition and related offences. So, yes,
probably.”

“So you can get me
out.”

“Only if we let
them take you in first.” He rubbed his eyes, as though he’d been awake for
three days. “It’s those bastards in the Tendency,” he said, “using you to get
at me. Bet you anything you like they put the Mezentines up to it.”

“Let’s think about
this,” I said, in my best serious voice. “If you try and bury it, like you
said, you’ll play into their hands and you’ll have a constitutional crisis. If
we go along with it, due procedure, all straight and above board, you can get
me out and stick it to the Tendency at the same time.” I shrugged. “Looks
pretty straightforward to me,” I said. “I’ll go.”

He sat still and
quiet for a while, during which time I had to make an effort to remember to
breathe. Then he seemed to come to a decision, then pull back from it. “Talk
about timing,” he said. “When you’re so close—”