Colours in the Steel (17 page)

They were in sight of the gate when a man came out of a tavern, not looking where he was going, and walked directly in front of Temrai’s horse. He yanked the reins hard back and to the right, slewing the horse round; it was enough to save the fool drunkard from serious injury, but the toecap of Temrai’s boot (iron-capped, necessary precaution for workers in a place where there were all manner of heavy things waiting to fall and crush unshielded toes) slammed into the side of the man’s head, knocking him to the ground. Temrai cried out in alarm and slipped off the horse, throwing the reins to Jurrai.

‘Are you all right?’

The man rubbed his head. ‘No thanks to you,’ he grunted. ‘Why don’t you look where you’re damned well going?’

His voice was slurred, the edges rounded by a few too many drinks; just the condition, Temrai knew, that led to most of the fights in this city. He apologised, therefore, and helped the man to his feet, brushing mud and street muck off his coat and picking up the flat bundle the man had been holding. Unfortunately, the horse had trodden on it.

‘You clown,’ the man exclaimed, ‘look what you’ve done to my sign! Go on, just look at it!’

The light streaming from the tavern doorway revealed a smart new portrait, very impressive except for the horseshoe-sized hole where the man’s face should have been. Temrai noticed the man’s hand drop to his belt, where a sword would hang. Fortunately, there wasn’t one.

‘That’s terrible,’ Tamrai muttered. ‘I’m so sorry. Please, you must let me pay for the damage.’

‘Too bloody right I will,’ the man snarled back. ‘Not to mention loss of earnings, pain and suffering and careless handling of a horse on a public thoroughfare.’

That, Temrai felt, was a little excessive coming from a drunk who’d tried to walk under his horse; but the significance of the sign, the legal terminology, the instinctive hand to the belt, weren’t lost on him. Drunk or sober, right or wrong, he didn’t particularly want to find himself trading knife thrusts with a professional advocate. ‘Of course,’ he said hurriedly. ‘How much does that come to?’

The drunk was looking at him curiously, his sodden brain doing its best to interpret the promptings of some half-forgotten memory.

‘You,’ he said. ‘You’re the plains boy from the arsenal.’

‘That’s right,’ Temrai replied; and then his own memory found the right place. ‘I saw you there this afternoon. You came in and went out again.’

The man nodded, and with relief Temrai sensed that the moment of danger was over. A drunk might stab an offensive stranger in an outburst of drunken fury, but not an acquaintance. The man’s face relaxed into a sort of grin.

‘You’ve ruined my sign,’ he said. ‘Took me all day to get that bloody thing done. If you only knew how
boring
it is having yourself painted...’

‘I can imagine.’

The man shrugged. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll forget about the sign and all that stuff, if you’ll do me a favour. Agreed?’

Temrai hesitated. He was in no position to promise favours now that he was leaving the city; on the other hand, to refuse would undoubtedly infuriate the drunk and land Temrai in a worse mess than he’d been in before. ‘Um,’ he said.

‘Swordsmith, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Thought so.’ The man nodded slowly. ‘Swordsmith from the plains. You’ll know all about brazing edges to cores so they won’t snap, then.’

‘Yes,’ Temrai said. ‘How do—?’

‘Friend,’ the drunk said solemnly, ‘you could just be the man to save my life. See, I’m an advocate. Fencer-at-law. Or was, till today; giving it all up, going to be a trainer. Good life, training, ’cept for the getting up in the mornings. Anyway, still going to need a good sword that won’t bust on me in the middle of a fight. Two perfectly good swords I’ve had bust on me lately,’ he added bitterly, ‘and seen another go the same way, close to my face as you are.’ It was true that he was leaning up close; even with his limited experience, Temrai could identify two of the cheaper popular vintages on his breath. ‘And then I thought, those buggers out on the plains, they know how to make swords that don’t bust, or they did a dozen years back. So that’s what I want you to do for me, and we’ll say no more ’bout the busted sign. Deal?’

Temrai’s face was completely void of any expression, as was his voice when he replied, ‘Deal.’ The drunk didn’t seem to have noticed.

‘Good stuff,’ the drunk said, smiling, and he slapped Temrai mightily on the back. ‘Loredan’s my name, Bardas Loredan. Find me at the Schools any time. You ever want to learn fencing, do you a special deal.’

‘Thank you,’ said Temrai quietly. ‘Crossing swords with you would be a pleasure.’

The drunk was now full of good humour; he held Temrai’s stirrup for him as he mounted, and waved him cheerfully on his way before dumping the ruined sign in the gutter, turning round a couple of times as if uncertain of where he was going, and finally heading back into the tavern. Temrai rode on in stony silence until they were past the gatekeeper and on the bridge.

‘What was all that about?’ Jurrai asked.

‘That man,’ Temrai answered, ‘wanted me to make him a sword.’

Jurrai shrugged. ‘More fool him.’

Temrai turned round in his saddle, and Jurrai saw by the torchlight reflected on the water that there were tears running down Temrai’s face. ‘Jurrai, do you realise who he was?’

‘A drunk. Oh, yes, an advocate, whatever that means. I got the impression he’s some sort of hired fighter.’

‘That’s what he is now. Think, Jurrai; a man who knows about silver soldering, says he learnt about it twelve years ago. Work it out, Jurrai.’

A moment’s thought; then Jurrai swore under his breath. ‘Maxen’s raiders,’ he muttered. ‘You think he was one of them?’

‘Twelve years, Jurrai. Someone who learnt about silver soldering on the plains. And he was no merchant, believe me.’

‘Dear gods. If I’d been you I’d have killed him where he stood.’

Temrai shook his head and smiled. ‘He’ll keep. Actually, he did me a good turn. Do you know, I’ve been here so long I’d nearly forgotten what I came for.’

Jurrai clicked his tongue. ‘I doubt that’s possible,’ he said.

‘I did say nearly,’ Temrai replied. (Forget Maxen? No, he was a stain that couldn’t be shifted, no matter how often you washed or how hard you rubbed with the pumice. Twelve years and he was still there, sunk into the fibres, along with the smell of burning bone and hair, like the lingering scent of cedar in a clothes-press.) ‘Everyone else in the arsenal takes their shirt off to work, because of the heat. Not me.’ He half-wriggled out of his coat and pulled his shirt down over one shoulder, to reveal the edge of a shiny white scar. ‘I didn’t fancy explaining where that came from, not when we were all getting along so well.’ He slipped his shirt and coat back on - Jurrai noticed his slight clumsiness; been out of the saddle too long - and pulled his collar tight around his neck, then turned round to look at the lamps burning on either side of the gateway. ‘I’m going to bar those gates from the outside when I burn the city, Jurrai, it’s the least I can do. It’s a pity,’ he added, in the tone of voice of someone throwing out a still-wearable pair of trousers, ‘I quite like them, really. But it’s got to be done, and on balance I’d rather it was me that did it than some stranger.’

Jurrai looked at him, a little apprehensively. ‘It’s what your father would have wanted,’ he said awkwardly.

‘I dare say,’ Temrai replied wearily. ‘He was bloodthirsty when he was young, weak when he first became the chief, and pretty well bunged up with frustration and hate the rest of his life.
He
could never have burnt Perimadeia. But I will.’

His companion regarded him steadily. ‘You reckon?’ he said.

‘Oh, yes. Now they’ve been kind enough to show me how.’

 

 

Trawl the streets of the city, Gannadius had said. Walk down every thoroughfare and through every square till you feel that tug on the reins that means you’ve found the natural. It’s the only way.

Quite possibly true, Alexius muttered to himself, sitting on the steps of a fountain with his left boot in his hand, but my feet hurt. And what they’ll say if ever they find out I’ve spent the last three days walking the streets . . .

Was it possible, he wondered, that he’d got the whole thing completely out of proportion? True, he was still getting the sudden attacks - blinding headaches, sweating fevers, sharp pains in his chest and legs, vomiting and diarrhoea - but they were becoming less severe and less frequent, and he was at last beginning to sleep again, now that the dreams were fading. Triple-reinforced wards and protective fields were probably helping, though the strain of keeping them up was possibly worse for him than the attacks themselves, and even then he had the feeling they wouldn’t have done any significant good without Gannadius working virtually full-time on them as well. It was more likely, he felt, that the curse itself was slowly starting to decay, helped no doubt by Loredan’s miraculous survival of the fight with Alvise and the fact that he’d apparently quit the profession. As he became steadily less vulnerable to the curse, so it declined for lack of something to feed on. Indeed, Alexius was toying with the idea of trying to break it up altogether; feasible, he felt certain, although of course it had never been done before.

No, he reflected, pulling the boot slowly over his heat-swollen foot, that’s not the way. The only real hope lay in finding this dratted natural, and that was proving harder even than he’d expected. Maybe he had left the city, as Gannadius was sure he had. Alexius devoutly hoped he hadn’t; having to put up with all this for the rest of his life wasn’t an especially cheerful thought.

Wouldn’t it be nice, he said to himself, if I could really do magic? I’d have a locomotion spell to carry me about, for one thing, and the hell with all this walking. Or, better still, I’d scry the pest out from the comfort of my cell and drop a thunderbolt on him. Of course, if I could do magic, I wouldn’t need to be doing any of this; I’d just take the curse to bits and get rid of it, and everyone’d be happy then. Except that loathsome and elusive girl who got me into this in the first place; and her happiness no longer concerns me all that much. Should’ve listened to what my mother told me about talking to strange women.

In the workshop across the street, two men were building a mechanical saw, to be installed in the sawmills down by the flood stream. The blade was held vertically, linked to a waterwheel at the bottom by a crankshaft and suspended at the top from a thick stave of yew, cut like a bowstave so as to have sapwood on top and heartwood underneath; this acted as a spring, drawing the blade up to make its cut through a log fed horizontally against it along a platform of rollers. Each turn of the waterwheel drew the sawblade down again, and then assisted the cut as the crank drove it upwards on the return stroke, giving the cut the same measured force that two men would achieve on either end of a long handsaw. The two carpenters were finishing off the final stage, fitting two slanting struts to hold up the gallows on which the yew spring was mounted.

No engineer himself, Alexius could still appreciate the design, the like of which he hadn’t come across before. Another new machine, then, marking an improvement, most likely leading to increased productivity and cheaper, better-sawn planks. For a brief moment he felt incredibly jealous; why couldn’t he spend his life in a craft where things could be improved, made better by a little intelligent thought and practical application? All over the city, men were working on projects like this; you could see them in every square, marking out designs in the dirt with a stick or scratching them on the back of a board with a nail, forever seeking a better way, more economical, more graceful, more pleasing to the eye. But the Patriarch of Perimadeia spent his life explaining that magic didn’t work, the Principle was largely incomprehensible, and even the effects that could reliably be made to perform had no real practical use. And here he was in silk and linen, while the busy carpenters wore coarse wool and went barefoot.

Call themselves wizards? Frauds. Yah! Run the lot of ’em out of town on a handcart.

The two craftsmen finished driving in the last few dowels, and the older man sent his assistant to hand-crank the wheel for a test run. Hard work, it looked like, turning the handle; so much more sensible to make falling water do the job. Now here, if you liked, was an example of the Principle truly being put to good, productive use. The young man grunted, the wood groaned under the stress, and the wheel turned.

With an alarming crack, the yew spring snapped neatly in two. The saw-blade, no longer supported at the top, slowly toppled and fell sideways, ripping the crankshaft away from the wheel and sending the younger man diving frantically out of the way. He just made it; an inch or so more, and it’d have landed across his shoulders. At once the older man started swearing, and the young man swore back, shook his fist at his master, and gave the wooden frame a savage kick, which hurt his foot rather more than it did the machine. They were still yelling and cursing as Alexius, feeling rather more at peace with himself than he had been a minute or so ago, stood up and set off on his quest.

He was passing a locksmith’s shop in the next square over when he felt the tug. It was nothing like what he’d expected, but it was unmistakable; an urgent pressure on his mind, like the feeling in the air when a thunderstorm is long overdue, except that it was massively concentrated in the proportion of say, cider to applejack. The sides of his head began to ache.

He stopped at once, certain that the source of the feeling was inside the shop. A glance through the doorway revealed the locksmith, an elderly man Alexius had once bought a padlock from (not him, then) and a man and a woman who were obviously foreigners. Interesting; so Gannadius’ theory seemed to be correct after all.