Sharps (42 page)

“Being in Permia’s done wonders for your sense of moral perspective,” Iseutz said. “But I agree. If they were going to lock up all the kitchen staff, they might at least have made alternative arrangements.”

Suidas laughed. “I don’t know,” he said, “we’re starting to sound like we’re back in the army. I remember one time, we were ambushed, just outside Conort. My lot got clear, but the entire baggage train was slaughtered to a man. Didn’t we ever curse them for getting themselves killed and losing all our stuff. The general consensus was, they were lucky the Aram Chantat got to them before we did.” He turned and looked at Phrantzes. “You’ve told me and I’ve forgotten, were you in the War? I guess you must’ve been.”

“Staff officer,” Phrantzes said. “Well away from the front lines.”

“Good for you,” Suidas replied. “That was my idea. When I knew I was going to get called up anyway, I volunteered for the transport corps. I was actually six weeks under age, but the recruiting sergeant winked and let me through. I figured, if I wait till they come for me, God only knows where I’ll end up. Didn’t quite work out like that, but at least I tried.”

“If there’s another war …” Addo hadn’t spoken for quite some time. “Would you join up again?”

Suidas shook his head. “Absolutely no way in hell,” he said. “I’d drop everything and get myself over the Western border as fast as I possibly could. How about you? I guess you’d have no choice.”

“I don’t want to be a soldier,” Addo said. “But I’m sure my father would keep me out of harm’s way.”

Iseutz looked at him. “Would he do that?”

“Oh yes.” Addo smiled. “He knows I’d be a rotten soldier, and there’s the family reputation to consider. I’d just let the side down. Giraut? What about you?”

Giraut thought for a moment. “Yes, probably,” he said. “But for your reasons, Suidas. I’d join up early in the hope of getting put somewhere reasonable. Actually, I thought of applying for the engineers. I believe they make engineer officers do a lot of technical training. With any luck, by the time I passed all the aptitude tests, the war would be over.” He stopped and looked away. “Why do you ask? Do you think it’s likely? Another war, I mean.”

“It’s the sort of ridiculous thing that tends to happen,” Addo replied quietly. “I mean, apart from a few people like my father, nobody wants it. It’ll do a great deal of harm, almost certainly the end of Permia and quite possibly Scheria as well. A great many people will die, and a lot more will be left crippled for life; oh, and we can’t afford it, so we’ll all be dirt poor for generations to come. So yes, on balance, I think it’s practically inevitable.”

“They’ve cleared the streets you’ll be driving along,” Cuniva had assured them, “there won’t be any trouble, I promise.”

They drove out of the Guild house gates in a beautiful white and gold carriage, the ceremonial vehicle of the Master of the Guild; the carriage they’d arrived in was a heap of ashes, but the Master assured them that they were welcome, and he wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry, so they could keep it for as long as they needed it. The two coachmen wore Guild livery. On the box beside them, where the Master’s pageboys usually sat, two Imperials in full armour perched unsteadily, clinging to the rails and swaying on corners. Cuniva was inside the coach, in Tzimisces’ place. Their escort was a troop of fifteen Aram Chantat.

Giraut took a good long look at them before he got in the coach. They were young – he’d have guessed the eldest was no more than nineteen – beardless, with wavy fair hair down to their shoulders; short men even for Aram Chantat, wearing white full-sleeved linen shirts gathered at the wrist instead of armour and holding no weapons, though their bow cases and scabbards hung from their saddles. They were talking very fast, occasionally bursting into peals of laughter. Giraut guessed they were playing a favourite word game. As he climbed aboard the coach, he noticed a clump of dirty red-brown matting tucked between the point man’s horse and saddle, just behind the crupper. Something dark and sticky caught the light as it trickled down the short hairs of the horse’s coat. Scalps.

“It’s all right,” Cuniva said. He wasn’t looking his usual elegant self. Instead of the gilded parade cuirass he’d worn for the reception, he had his business armour on. It looked old and comfortable, and the small steel plates were painted black, to keep his sweat from rusting them. “They’re Rosinholet, they’re fairly reasonable people once you get to know them. And they don’t have any ongoing feuds with any of the other sects serving in Permia, so we’ll be fine.”

They took the main east–west thoroughfare, the Ropewalk, heading due east out of the city. It was a wide road, which was just as well; it was littered with smashed carts and carriages, trashed market stalls and traders’ booths, apparently random objects dragged out of houses and shops and hacked or pounded into bits, and bodies, ever so many bodies: men, women, children, horses, even dogs. It looked bizarrely familiar, which made no sense, until Giraut remembered the last act of his recurring dream, the point at which the floodwaters receded and drained away, leaving the flotsam behind.

“They’ll fail, of course,” Cuniva was saying. He’d been talking for some time, but Giraut hadn’t been paying attention. “They’ve got no leaders or resources, no weapons, no training, no plan of campaign. They’re just a bunch of angry people who didn’t realise what they were letting themselves in for. This sort of thing never succeeds so long as the army stays loyal to the government. Which, of course, we fully intend to do.”

“As long as they keep up the payments,” Iseutz muttered.

“Exactly.” Cuniva had apparently found nothing to object to in that. “And they pay in advance, so our loyalty’s guaranteed for at least the next three weeks, by which time all this nonsense will have burnt itself out. And besides, when the army’s loyalty wavers, it nearly always comes from the junior officers – me and my peers, as it were – because they can’t stomach killing their fellow citizens. No such difficulty here, obviously. This is actually quite an opportunity for the junior field grades. You can get yourself noticed in actions like this. So you see,” he concluded with a warm smile, “you’ve got no cause for concern whatsoever.”

“Over there,” Cuniva said, pointing vaguely through the left-hand window, “are the Verjan mountains. You can just see them, look.”

Addo obediently craned his neck. Nobody else moved.

“And over there,” Cuniva went on, pointing in what appeared to be exactly the same direction, “behind the big ridge, is Lake Prescile. Of course, you can’t see it from here. But that’s where it is.”

“Good heavens,” Addo said mildly. He picked up his book (Pescennius’
Art of War
, lent to him by Baudila; still, better than nothing) and made a show of reading it.

“It’s such a shame,” Cuniva went on, “that we’re behind schedule. Otherwise we could’ve taken a detour and had a look. I’ve been there myself, of course, many times. It’s a really rather beautiful place now, in a way; completely deserted, of course, even the main turnpikes are starting to grass over. The only thing you can see is the spire of the Orphans’ Hospital, sticking up out of the water bang in the middle like a great big pillar. Otherwise it’s just a big smooth lake, with the mountains reflected in it.”

He was quiet for a while after that, and Giraut was just starting to nod off when they passed a column of soldiers, Imperials, marching the other way. “The Seventeenth,” Cuniva informed them. “Headed for Beaute, presumably. They were due to go home later this month, but I guess they must’ve been rehired for the duration. Like they say, it’s an ill wind.”

Giraut could see Suidas clenching his fists, though his face was perfectly calm. Iseutz yawned. Addo turned a page. Phrantzes was looking out of the window on the other side, towards a distant range of hills.

“Actually,” Cuniva said, fixing Giraut with a piercing stare, “if it’s all right, there’s something I’d like to ask you fellows. It’s – well, a bit embarrassing, but I think we know each other well enough by now.”

He had Iseutz’s full attention, and Addo had lowered his book. “Oh yes?” Suidas said.

“The thing is.” Cuniva hesitated, then took a rush at it. “I’ve always wondered why you people call my lot Blueskins.” Everyone froze. “Not that it bothers me, you understand, it’s quite all right, but you see, our skins aren’t blue, they’re dark brown. It’s as if we went around calling you lot Redskins, when you’re a sort of apricot colour. It doesn’t actually make any sense.”

There was a brief silence. Then Addo cleared his throat. “Oddly enough,” he said, in a high voice, “I wondered the same thing, so I asked my father. He said that when our people encountered your people for the first time, they reported back that you had skins the colour of blueberries, just before they ripen. But Blueberryskin’s a bit of a mouthful, so it got shortened. That’s what he told me, anyway. I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

Cuniva looked blank for a moment, then smiled. “How perfectly delightful,” he said. “It so happens that I’m very partial to blueberries. Thank you. I wouldn’t have asked, except that it seemed so odd. Not insulting or anything, just inaccurate.”

That cut off any further conversation like the executioner’s axe. Giraut studied his shoes for a while. Addo went back to
Art of War
(where he read about direct frontal assaults on the enemy’s weakest point, and managed not to smile). Suidas closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep, but his breathing was all wrong for that. Iseutz sat quite still, frowning. Phrantzes went back to gazing out of the window.

In the late afternoon the road began to climb, as they approached the foot of a massive escarpment. Cuniva told them (nobody had asked) that this was the Chauzida plateau. The main road went round it, but they’d be going over the top. “It’ll save us the best part of a day,” he promised them, “and that’ll put us back on schedule.”

Giraut stuck his head out of the window. As far as he could tell, they were driving straight at a sheer wall of vertical rock. “Are you sure?” he said.

“There’s a pass,” Cuniva said. “You can’t see it from here, it’s narrow and pretty well hidden. But it’s there all right. I’ve been this way loads of times.”

Addo closed his book. “Would that be a path through a steep-sided defile with a sharp turn in it about half a mile along?”

“Yes. You know this place?”

Addo shook his head. “Not personally. But my father got caught in this pass when he was a young lieutenant. The enemy – actually, I think it was your people, Captain – they let our lot get in about halfway, then cut the road at both ends with big boulders and shot us to pieces with bows and light artillery from the tops of the defile. My father was one of about a dozen who made it out alive, out of around three hundred.”

Cuniva looked shocked. “I don’t remember that in any of the campaign histories.”

“You wouldn’t have. My father wrote them.” Addo grinned. “Not one of his most glorious moments. He was in command at the time. He told me that if there was any justice he’d have been court-martialled and strung up for making such a stupid mistake. He said, one look at the place and he should’ve known. It’s as though the Invincible Sun had designed it specifically for ambushing idiots.”

Cuniva’s eyebrows were practically touching his hair. “You do surprise me,” he said. “But this was early in his career, presumably, one of his first commands …”

“No, actually. He was thirty years old and should’ve known better, was what he told me. But his uncle was the area commander, so they covered it up.”

Cuniva shook his head, as if he’d just seen God throwing up in a shop doorway. “Ah well,” he said. “Just as well this is peacetime.”

The chieftain looked confused. “You’re a priest,” he said.

Brother Perceptuus decided it would be too complicated to explain the difference between a monk and a priest. “That’s right,” he said.

“A holy man.”

“Yes.”

Perceptuus was trying hard not to stare. The chieftain was a short man, five foot nothing; tiny little hands, like a girl. His face was round and deeply lined, almost completely bald on top, his long, thin back hair woven into a snow-white ponytail; somewhere between sixty and ninety; pale blue eyes and skin the colour of milk. His upper middle front tooth was missing. He wore a white shirt, spotlessly clean, with a lace collar, and velvet knee breeches, a style that had been fashionable in the Western Empire about seventy years ago. His feet were bare. He was sitting in a heavy folding chair made out of horses’ leg bones.

“Excuse me,” the chieftain said (he spoke perfect Imperial with an upper-class Eastern accent), “but I find that surprising. This is hardly a spiritual matter.”

Perceptuus smiled. “There are times when the line between spiritual and temporal gets a little blurred, don’t you find?”

The chieftain frowned. “No,” he said. “Where I come from, priests are concerned with moral and ethical issues. They don’t do politics. Or money. That’s strictly the province of the laity.” He shrugged. “Ah well,” he said, “it wouldn’t do if we were all the same. I’m terribly sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. Would you care for something to drink? I’m afraid we’re a bit rough and ready at the moment, but I can offer you a passable dry Vesani white.”

It had been many years since Perceptuus had had an opportunity to drink imported wine. “Thank you,” he said. “That would be most kind.”

The chieftain nodded, and someone in the far corner moved to the tent flap and crawled out.

“It was very good of you to see me,” Perceptuus said. “At such short notice.”

“My pleasure,” the chieftain said. “Now, how may I help you?”

He had a ring on his left middle finger, a huge red stone. Perceptuus was only an amateur, but he was sure it was genuine. If so, it was worth about twenty thousand nomismata. Don’t stare, he told himself. “It’s rather a delicate matter.”

“I thought it might be. Is that why your government sent a priest?”

“I’m not actually here on behalf of my government,” Perceptuus said, “not as such. I represent the College of the Ascension; basically, the Scherian arm of the Studium. Nothing I say should be construed as coming from the Scherian authorities, or the Bank.”