Inversions (26 page)

‘One does not spy on one’s own people,’ ZeSpiole informed him. ‘One has, rather, conduits of communication which lead to the common man. My guards mix with all sorts. They share their houses, their streets, their taverns, and their views.’

‘And they hear no grumblings?’ YetAmidous asked sceptically, pushing his goblet towards Yalde to be refilled.

‘Oh, they hear constant grumblings. The day they stop hearing grumblings I shall be sure that revolt is imminent. But people grumble about this tax or that, or that the Protector keeps such a large harem when many an honest working fellow can hardly find a wife, or they grumble about the luxurious life led by some of the Grand Aedile’s generals,’ ZeSpiole said, accepting a piece of fruit from Terim with a broad smile.

RuLeuin smiled too.

YetAmidous drank greedily. ‘We are to be reassured, then, that we are in no immediate danger from the general populace,’ he said. ‘But what of our other frontiers? They are reduced to the minimum or less. Where are the reinforcements if some other place makes war on us?’

‘The problem in Ladenscion will not last for ever,’ RuLeuin said, though he looked troubled. ‘The troops will come home. With the new men and machines now in Niarje, Simalg and Ralboute should be able to bring it to a swift conclusion.’

‘We were told that at the start,’ YetAmidous reminded the other man. ‘We should all have gone then, all of us. We should have crushed the barons with every force at our command.’ The general made a fist and brought it down on the surface of the water with a splash. Yalde wiped soapy water from her eyes. YetAmidous drank, then spat the wine out. ‘There’s water in here!’ he told Yalde, and tipped the wine over her head. He laughed, followed by the other men. The wine stung her eyes a little, but she bowed her head. YetAmidous pushed her head under the water, then let her bob up once more. ‘Here.’ He pushed the goblet into her hands again. She wiped it with a napkin and refilled it from the decanter.

‘That might be obvious to all of us now,’ ZeSpiole said. ‘But it was not then, to any of us. We all agreed that Simalg and Ralboute’s men would be more than ample for the job.’

‘Well, they haven’t been,’ YetAmidous said, then tested the wine by sloshing it round his mouth. ‘The Protector should not have entrusted so important a mission to those fops. Noble men, indeed! They are no better than us. He is too impressed by their high birth. They make war like children, like women. They spend too much time talking with these barons when they should be fighting them. Even when they do fight, they fight as though they’re frightened of getting their swords bloody. Too much finesse, not enough muscle. All is ruse and subtlety. I have no time for such nonsense. These barons are best met head on.’

‘Your directness has always been your most engaging feature, YetAmidous,’ RuLeuin told him. ‘I think my brother, if he ever had a concern over the style of your generalship, only worried that your assaults tended to be rather expensive in men.’

‘Oh, what expense is that?’ YetAmidous said, waving his free hand. ‘Too many of them are idle wretches from the gutter who’d have met an early death anyway. They expect to return with treasure. Usually all they bring back is the diseases they picked up from the whores. Death in battle, a place in history, remembering in a victory song . . . better than most of the scum deserve. They’re a crude tool and they’re best used crudely, with none of this effeminate feinting and playing around. Better to attack straight and get it over with. These so-noble dandies dishonour the whole business of war.’ YetAmidous looked at the two girls sitting at the pool side, then briefly at Yalde. ‘I wonder sometimes,’ he said quietly to the two men, ‘whether there is not some other motive in the Dukes’ inability to finish this war.’

‘What?’ RuLeuin said, frowning.

‘I had assumed, with the Protector, that they were trying as hard as they could,’ ZeSpiole said. ‘What do you mean, General?’

‘I mean that perhaps we are all being treated like fools, sir. That Duke Ralboute and Duke Simalg are closer to the Barons of Ladenscion than they are to us.’

‘Apart from physically, obviously,’ RuLeuin said, smiling but looking awkward.

‘Eh? Aye. Too damn close. Don’t you see?’ he asked, levering his bulk away from the side of the bath. ‘They go off to this war, they pull in more and more troops, they delay and delay and stumble and lose men and machines and come whining to us to help them out, taking troops from the capital and our other frontiers, leaving the way open to any bastard who might want to march in from outside. Who knows what mischief they might have got up to if the Protector had put himself in their midst? The boy about to die might save his father’s life, if he really is his father.’

‘General,’ RuLeuin said, ‘have a care. The boy may not be about to die. I have no doubt that in any event I am truly his uncle through my brother, and the Generals Ralboute and Simalg have always shown themselves to be good and true officers of the Protectorate. They joined our cause long before it was sure to succeed and could be said to have risked more than any of us in supporting it, for they started out with much power and prestige which they entirely risked by throwing their lot in with us.’ RuLeuin looked to ZeSpiole for support.

ZeSpiole had busied himself with a segment of fruit, burying most of his lower face in it. He looked up at the other two men and expressed surprise with his brows.

YetAmidous waved his hand in dismissal. ‘All very fine, but the fact remains they have not done as well as they were supposed to in Ladenscion. They said they would triumph there in a few moons. UrLeyn thought they would too. Even I thought that the job ought not to be beyond them, if they applied themselves and threw their troops to the front. But they have done badly. They have failed so far. Cities have not been taken, siege engines and cannon have been lost. Their progress has been halted by every stream, every hill, every damn hedge and flower. I am simply asking why? Why are they doing so badly? What can be the explanation, if it is not deliberate? Might it not be some conspiracy? Might there not be some collusion between the two sides of the war, to drag us and our men in deeper and tempt the Protector himself forward to take part, and then kill him?’

RuLeuin glanced at ZeSpiole again. ‘No,’ he told YetAmidous. ‘I think that is not the case, and nothing is accomplished by talking like that. Give me some wine,’ he said to Herae.

ZeSpiole grinned at YetAmidous. ‘I must say, Yet,’ he said. ‘Your talent for suspicion is almost on a par with DeWar’s.’

‘DeWar!’ YetAmidous snorted. ‘I’ve never trusted him, either.’

‘Oh, this is getting preposterous!’ RuLeuin said. He drained his goblet and sank under the water, resurfacing to shake his head and blow out his cheeks.

‘What can DeWar be up to, do you think, Yet?’ ZeSpiole asked, with a smile. ‘He certainly cannot wish our Protector dead, for he has saved him from almost certain death on several occasions, the last time being when each of us came closer to sending the Protector into the arms of Providence than any assassin ever has. You yourself came within a knuckle of sticking a quarrel straight through UrLeyn’s head.’

‘I was aiming for that ort,’ YetAmidous said, scowling. ‘And I almost got the thing, too.’ He thrust his goblet out to Yalde again.

‘I’m sure you were,’ ZeSpiole said. ‘My own shot was more off target. But you have not said what you suspect DeWar of.’

‘I just don’t trust him, that’s all,’ YetAmidous said, sounding surly now.

‘I would be more concerned that he does not trust you, Yet, old friend,’ ZeSpiole said, staring into YetAmidous’ eyes.

‘What?’ YetAmidous spluttered.

‘Well, he may have the feeling that you were trying to kill the Protector that day, on the hunt, by the stream,’ ZeSpiole said in a quiet, concerned voice. ‘He might be watching you, you know. I would worry about that if I were in your position. He is a sly, cunning hound, that one. His approach is silent and his teeth are sharp as razors. I should not care to be the subject of his suspicions, I’ll tell you that. Why, I’d be sorely frightened that I might wake up dead one morning.’

‘What?’ YetAmidous roared. He threw down the goblet. It splashed into the milky water. He stood up, shaking with fury.

ZeSpiole looked over at RuLeuin, whose expression was anxious. ZeSpiole put his head back and burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Yet! You are so easy to rile! I’m jesting with you, man. You could have killed UrLeyn a hundred times by now. I know DeWar. He doesn’t think you’re an assassin, you big oaf! Here. Have a fruit.’ ZeSpiole lifted a buncher and threw it across the bath at the other man, who caught it and then, after a moment’s confusion, laughed too, sinking back into the swirling water and laughing uproariously.

‘Ha! Of course! Ah, you tease me like a hussy, ZeSpiole. Yalde!’ he said. ‘This water’s freezing. Get the servants to bring some more hot. And bring more wine! Where’s my goblet? What have you done with it?’

The goblet, sunk in the bath in front of YetAmidous, had left a red stain in the milky water, like blood.

The summer passed. It was a relatively mild season throughout the land, but especially so in the Yvenir hills, where the breezes were either pleasantly cool or tolerably warm. Much of the time passed with Seigen joining Xamis below the horizon each night, trailing after it at first, while we performed the first part of the Circuition, dancing almost in step with its senior during those eventful and perplexing early moons at Yvenir, then preceding it by gradually greater and greater increments for the rest of our stay, which, happily, was devoid of significant incident.

When time came to pack up what needed to be packed up and store what required storing, Seigen was anticipating the rise of the greater sun by a good bell or so, providing the hills with a long leading-dawn full of sharp, extended shadows when the day seemed only half begun and birds chorused and some birds did not and the tiny points that were the wandering stars could sometimes still be seen in the violet sky if the moons were absent or low.

Our return to Haspide was accomplished with all the usual pomp and ceremony. There were feasts and ceremonies and investitures and triumphal parades through newly built gates and dignified processions under specially commissioned arches and long speeches by self-important officials and elaborate gift-givings and formal conferments of old and new awards and titles and decorations and any manner of other business, all of it wearying but all of it, I was assured by the Doctor (somewhat to my surprise), necessary in the sense that this sort of participatory ritual and use of shared symbols helped to cement our society together. If anything, the Doctor said, Drezen could have done with more of this sort of thing.

En route back to Haspide, in the midst of all this ceremonial much of it, I’d still insist, mere flummery the King set up numerous city councils, instituted more craft and professional guilds and granted various counties and towns the privileged status of burgh. This did not meet with the universal approval of the Dukes and other nobles of the provinces concerned, but the King seemed more energetic in finding ways to sweeten the medicine for those who might lose out in this reshuffling of responsibilities and control than he had on the way to Yvenir, and no less cheerfully determined to have his way, not just because he was the King but because he knew he was right and before too long people would come to see things his way anyway.

‘But there is no need for this, sir!’

‘Ah, but there will be.’

‘Sir, can we be so sure of that?’

‘We can be as sure of it as we can that the suns will rise after they have set, Ulresile.’

‘Indeed, sir. Yet we wait until the suns do appear before we rise. What you propose is to prepare for the day while it is still the middle of the night.’

‘Some things must be anticipated further in advance than others,’ the King told the younger man with a look of jovial resignation:.

Young Duke Ulresile had opted to accompany the court back to Haspide. He had developed his powers of speech and opinion considerably over the summer since we had first encountered him in the hidden garden behind Yvenir palace. Perhaps he was simply growing up particularly quickly, but I think it was more likely that his new-found garrulousness was largely the effect of living in the same place as the royal court for a season.

We were camped on the Toforbian Plain, about halfway between Yvenir and Haspide. Ormin, Ulresile and the new Duke Walen together with chamberlain Wiester and a fuss of servants stood with the King in a fabric-walled courtyard open to the sky outside the royal pavilion while the Doctor bandaged the King’s hands. Tall flagpoles bent in a warm, harvest-scented breeze and the royal standards flapped at each corner of the six-sided space, their shadows moving sinuously over the carpets and rugs which had been spread over the carefully levelled ground.

Our monarch was due to indulge in a formal stave-fight with the old city-god of Toforbis, which would be represented as an extravagantly hued multipede and played by a hundred men under a long, hooped canopy. The spectacle was that of watching a man fight with the awning of a tent, even if the awning was animated, elongated, painted with scales and sported a giant head in the shape of a giant toothed bird, but it was one of the rituals that had to be endured for the sake of local custom and to keep the regional dignitaries happy.

Duke Ulresile watched the Doctor’s hands as she wound the bandages round and round the King’s fingers and palms. ‘But sir,’ he said, ‘why anticipate this quite so far in advance? Might it not be seen as folly to ?’

‘Because to wait would be the greater folly,’ the King said patiently. ‘If one plans an attack at dawn one does not wait until dawn itself before rousing one’s troops. One starts to get them organised in the middle of the night.’

‘Duke Walen, you feel as I do, don’t you?’ Ulresile said, sounding exasperated.

‘I feel there is no point disputing with a King, even when he makes what seems like an error to us lesser mortals,’ the new Duke Walen said.

The new Duke was, by all accounts, a worthy successor to his late brother, who had died without issue and so ensured that his title went to a sibling the strength of whose resentment at being born, by his reckoning, a year too late had only ever been matched by his estimation of his own worth. He seemed to be a sullen sort of fellow, and gave the impression of being, if anything, rather older than the old Duke.

‘What about you, Ormin?’ the King asked. ‘Do you think I anticipate matters too much?’

‘Perhaps a little, sir,’ Ormin said with a pained expression. ‘But it is difficult to gauge these matters with any accuracy. I suspect one only finds out if one has done the right thing after some considerable time has passed. Sometimes it is only one’s children who discover what the rights and wrongs of it all were. Bit like planting trees, really.’ He uttered this last sentence with a look of mild surprise at his own words.

Ulresile frowned at him. ‘Trees grow, Duke. We are having the forest cut down around us.’

‘Yes, but with the wood you can build houses, bridges, ships,’ the King said, smiling. ‘And trees do grow back again. Unlike heads, say.’

Ulresile’s lips went tight.

‘I think that perhaps what the Duke means,’ Ormin said, ‘is that we may be proceeding a little too quickly with these . . . alterations. We run the risk of removing or at least curtailing too much of the power of the existing noble structure before there is another framework properly in place to carry the load. I confess that I for one am worried that the burghers in some of the towns in my own province have not entirely grasped the idea of taking responsibility for the transfer of land ownership, for example.’

‘And yet they must have been trading grains and animals, or the produce of their own trade or craft for generations,’ the King said, holding up his left hand, which the Doctor had just completed bandaging. He inspected it closely, as though looking for a flaw. ‘It would seem strange that just because their seigneur has decided who farmed what or who lived where in the past they cannot grasp the idea of being able to make their own decisions in the matter. Indeed you might even find that they have been doing so already, but in what you might call an informal way, without your knowledge.’

‘No, they are simple people, sir,’ Ulresile said. ‘One day they may be ready for such responsibility, but not yet.’

‘Do you know,’ the King said earnestly, ‘I don’t think I was ready for the responsibility that I had to shoulder when my father died?’

‘Oh, now, sir,’ Ormin said. ‘You are too modest. Of course you were ready, and have been entirely proved to be so by all manner of subsequent events. Indeed you proved so with great expedition.’

‘No, I don’t think I was,’ the King said. ‘Certainly I didn’t feel I was, and I’d bet that if you had taken a poll of all the dukes and other nobles in the court at the time and they had been allowed to say what they really thought, not what I or my father wished to hear they would have said to a man that I wasn’t ready for that responsibility. What’s more, I would have agreed with them. Yet my father died, I was forced to the throne, and although I knew I was not ready, I coped. I learned. I became a King by having to behave as one, not simply because I was my father’s son and had been told long in advance that I would become so.’

Ormin nodded at this.

‘I’m sure we take your majesty’s point,’ Ulresile said as Wiester and a couple of servants helped the King on with heavy ceremonial robes. The Doctor stood back to let them slide the King’s arms through the sleeves before completing the tying of the bandages on his right hand.

‘I think we must be brave, my friends,’ Duke Ormin said to Walen and Ulresile. ‘The King is right. We live in a new age and we must have the courage to behave in new ways. The laws of Providence may be eternal, but their application in the world must change as the times do. The King is right to commend the common sense of the farmers and the craftsmen. They have great practical experience in many things. We ought not to under-estimate their abilities simply because they are not high-born.’

‘Quite,’ the King said, drawing himself up and putting his head back to have his hair combed before it was gathered into a knot.

Ulresile looked at Ormin as though he was going to spit. ‘Practical experience is all very well when a man makes tables or has to control a haul pulling a plough,’ he said. ‘But we are concerning ourselves with the governance of our provinces, and in that it is ourselves who have the whole part of the experience.’

The Doctor admired her handiwork on the King’s bandaged hands, then stood back. The breeze brought a distinct smell of flowers and grain-dust billowing in across the bowed fabric walls of our temporary courtyard.

The King let Wiester slide his thick stave-gloves on to his hands and then lace them up. Another servant placed stout-looking but richly decorated boots in front of the King and carefully guided his feet into them. ‘Then, my dear Ulresile,’ he said, ‘you must teach the burghers of the towns what you know, or they will make mistakes and we shall all be the poorer, for I hope we can all expect a better crop of taxes from such improvements.’ The King sniffed a couple of times.

‘I’m sure the ducal estates’ share of any increase will not be unappreciated, should it materialise,’ Duke Ormin said, with the look of one experiencing an attack of wind. ‘As indeed I am sure it will. Yes, I am.’

The King looked at him quickly, with the heavy-lidded gaze of one about to sneeze. ‘Then you would be prepared to put the reforms into effect first in your province, Ormin?

Ormin blinked, then smiled. He bowed. ‘It would be an honour, sir.’

The King took a deep breath, then shook his head and clapped his hands together as best he could. He cast a victorious look at Ulresile, who was staring at Ormin with a look of horror and disgust.

The Doctor knelt at her bag. I thought she was going to help me put the various bits and pieces away, but instead she took out a clean square of cloth and rose to stand before the King just as he sneezed mightily, jerking his hair out of the grip of the flunky combing it and sending the comb catapulting forward on to a brightly coloured rug.

‘Sir, if I may,’ the Doctor said. The King nodded. Wiester looked discomfited. He was only now getting out his kerchief.

The Doctor gently held the cloth up to the King’s nose, letting him sniff into it. She folded the cloth and then with another corner dabbed softly at his eyes, which had moistened. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘And what do you think of our reforms?’

‘I, sir?’ the Doctor said, looking surprised. ‘It is no business of mine.’

‘Now, Vosill,’ the King said. ‘You have an opinion about everything else. I assumed you would be more in favour than anybody here. Come, you must be happy with this. It’s something like what you have in your precious Drezen, isn’t it? You’ve talked about such things at inordinate length before now.’ He frowned. Duke Ulresile did not look happy. I saw him glance at Walen, who too appeared troubled. Duke Ormin appeared not to be listening, though his face bore a surprised expression.

The Doctor folded the cloth away slowly. ‘I have talked about many things to contrast the place I chose to leave with the place I chose to come to,’ she said, with a deliberateness equal to that she gave the folding away of that cloth.

‘I’m sure nothing we could do would be good enough for the lady’s high standards,’ Duke Ulresile said, with what sounded like bitterness, perhaps even contempt. ‘She has made that clear enough.’

The Doctor gave a brief, small smile like a wince, and said to the King, ‘Sir, may I be excused now?’

‘Of course, Vosill,’ the King said, with a look of surprise and concern. She turned to leave, and he held up his gloved hands as a servant brought forward the silver and gold inlaid staff he would fight the false monster with. In the distance, horns sounded and a cheer went up. ‘Thank you,’ he said to her. She turned back briefly to him, bowed quickly and then walked away. I followed.

My Master knows already what took place when the surprise that the old Duke Walen had spent most of a year preparing was finally visited upon the Doctor, but I shall say something of the event, in the hope of completing the picture he will already have.

The court had been back at Haspide for only two days. I had not yet finished unpacking all the Doctor’s belongings. There was to be a diplomatic reception in the main hall, and the Doctor’s presence had been requested. Neither she nor I knew who had made this request. She went out early that morning, saying that she was going to visit one of the hospitals she had paid regular visits to before we had left on the outer part of the Circuition earlier that year. I was instructed to stay behind and continue with the process of getting her apartments in order again. I understand that my Master had one of his people follow the Doctor, and discovered that she did indeed go to the Women’s Hospital and attend some of the sick and confined there. I spent the time removing racks of glassware and vials from straw-packed cases and making a list of the fresh ingredients we would need over the next half-year for the Doctor’s potions and remedies.