The Folding Knife (37 page)

"Don't even think about it," Basso said. "Assured loyalty: who to? What you're describing is what in other countries they call the palace guard. Bad idea. Next thing you know, they're running the Republic. We've always steered well clear of that sort of thing, thank you very much."

"Which is why the bandits were able to stroll right up Portgate and rob the Treasury."

"Maybe." Basso spread his hands. "And we got the money back. If we're dumb enough to station a standing army in the City, we stand to lose a hell of a lot more than twenty million nomismata. No, I can see why the idea appeals to you--it's plain common sense from a military perspective--but politically it'd be plain lunacy. Simple rule. Vesani aren't soldiers. Vesani
hire
soldiers. They row in the fleet, sure, but that's quite another matter. We're the only civilised country in the world that doesn't have an aristocracy that doubles as the military elite. Which is why you don't see so many kings and dictators around the place as you do abroad."

Aelius grinned. "I'm so glad I don't do politics. So, I can't have a City garrison, but I can have an apprentice. Is that about the strength of it?"

He had to wait a full second for an answer. For that second, he got the impression that Basso was miles away. "That's it," Basso said. "A bright young man looking for a good career with prospects. That's exactly what you need."

He went straight from the meeting with Aelius to the House, where the Opposition had tabled a motion calling for punitive action against the Mavortine Confederacy. On the way there, he read through his briefing notes, which told him nothing he didn't already know. There was, of course, no case to answer. In reality there was no such thing as the Mavortine Confederacy. The peace treaty between the nineteen tribes had lasted less than ten years, and that had been ninety years ago. Since then, there had been nothing any civilised man could recognise as a government. The tribal elders had a vague customary authority over their own clans, but clan leadership was decided by a challenge to mortal combat, and leaders tended not to last very long. From time to time a strong man tried to unite his tribe for an attack on a neighbour, but before long he was killed in the ring or poisoned.

As far as the interrogators had managed to find out, the raid on the Treasury had been a purely private-enterprise affair, the raiders being outlaws and exiles drawn from half a dozen different tribes. The organiser (killed on the beach) had been a bricklayer in the City for five years, during which time he'd painstakingly planned every stage of the operation, walking the route to be taken over and over again, memorising distances and times (he couldn't write them down because he was illiterate). When he returned to Mavortis, he spent another two years recruiting, taking infinite care over security so that nobody outside the conspiracy should have the faintest idea what he had in mind; the raiders weren't told which city they'd be attacking until they were on board ship, though a few of them, who'd been in the City themselves, had a shrewd idea. The village wasn't even the ringleader's home; it was just a village close to the sea whose headman had agreed to stash the loot in return for a generous payment. Wiping the Mavortines off the face of the earth would, therefore, solve nothing. More to the point, it would be a difficult and expensive job; the Mavortine economy was nearly all subsistence farming, which meant there were no stocks of food larger than a single household's winter store. An invasion army would therefore have to take its provisions with it, and there would have to be a long and difficult supply chain. It was a very large country, sparsely populated. Catching the Mavortines would be a protracted, tedious busines: they had an endless supply of remote mountains and impenetrable forests to hide in. Starving them out wasn't a practical option, since twelve of the tribes were practically nomadic--they could hide themselves and their flocks and herds in the rough country and survive there for years, with no chance of bringing them to battle against their will. Victory, in other words, would be slow, costly and difficult to achieve, or even define; and there was always the risk of defeat, which would do untold damage to the Republic's prestige. The game wasn't worth the candle, and that was all there was to it.

He stopped his chair at the House door, but didn't get out straight away. Instead, he sat reading the brief one more time. It was a splendidly thorough document, put together by a young clerk by the name of Tzimisces, a recent discovery by Antigonus. All the facts, clearly arranged in a logical sequence; sections on geography, society, economy, history, all the statistics neatly tabulated in an appendix; when he'd finished reading, he found himself staring at the page as if the words were one of those children's games, a picture cut up into hundreds of irregularly shaped pieces, which you put back together again. There was a pattern, a shape hidden in among all those facts, dates, numbers, but he wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be.

Lazio Rufrio opened the debate for the Optimates. He was his usual melodramatic self. An insult to the Vesani people that could only be avenged by blood; the eyes of the world were watching for a hint of weakness; only a show of immediate and overwhelming force would be adequate; the First Citizen's duty to his people to eradicate this nest of thieves, pirates and murderers. Basso could have told him what he was going to say before he opened his mouth, except that Basso would've put it considerably better.

The idea was that Sentio would reply to the opening speech, saving Basso for the closing round. Before he could stand up, however, Basso frowned at him. Puzzled, he settled back in his seat and waited to see what Basso had in mind.

Basso stood up and looked round. He had their attention.

"I support the motion," he said, and sat down.

Later, it was asserted that the silence that followed his intervention was the longest in the history of the House. How anybody could know that wasn't clear, but it was accepted as true and eventually passed into Vesani political folklore. Nobody on either side knew what to do next. Obviously there was no point in anybody else saying anything. Eventually, the Speaker stood up, looking mildly concussed, and called for a division. The motion was passed unanimously, with no abstentions.

Bassano had taken up fencing. That was quite all right; it was a perfectly acceptable accomplishment for a gentleman, though rather out of fashion these days--somewhere between hawking for captive pigeons and playing the rebec. Basso had insisted that he enrol in the Three Circles Fight, the oldest and most austere fencing school in the City. They taught the authentic, unadulterated Three Circles practice, which Basso himself had reluctantly learned when he was fifteen. There was a tediously high proportion of theory, a lot of which was arcane to the point of semi-religious obscurity, and you didn't learn nearly as many flashy set-piece plays as they taught in the more fashionable schools; but as part of the final exam you had to defend yourself against, among others, a six-foot-tall dock worker armed with an axe and using a three-legged stool as a shield, a Cazar soldier in full armour and a Sclerian with a pitchfork and a long knife, you yourself armed only with your gentleman's walking sword, and no armour. A significant proportion of students failed the final exam, or didn't even attempt it.

Bassano studied hard. In fact, the head of the school wrote to Basso (who'd insisted on weekly reports), he showed a degree of dedication and enthusiasm unusual for someone of his class and background. Basso wasn't surprised; he could guess the reason, though naturally he confirmed his guess by asking his nephew a direct question.

"Simple," Bassano had replied. "When the raiders came, I was terrified. I knew that when I was standing in the doorway, if one of them had decided to come after me, I wouldn't even have been able to run, I'd have frozen and he'd have killed me where I stood. That really shocked me."

Basso said he took the point. "But there's a hell of a difference between learning fencing in a school and actually being in a fight. I've known people who were fencing champions, but in a punch-up in a bar, they were completely useless."

"Maybe," Bassano had replied. "But at any rate, it'll make me feel better. Besides, I never take any exercise. I get out of breath walking up Maltgate."

Little chance of that, after four weeks at the Three Circles. "Also," Bassano said, "some of the theoretical stuff is actually quite interesting. When you were there, did you do the thing where you break down the stages in the flight of an arrow?"

"And you end up proving the arrow never actually gets there?" Basso grinned. "Yes, of course. I thought it was ridiculous. Gratuitous neo-Mannerist mysticism. The arrow does get there, so it's fatuous."

"I can believe you thought that," Bassano said with a grin. "I bet you told the Master so, too."

"Good God, no." Basso raised his eyebrows. "He'd have made a point of explaining it all over again. I just tried to look respectful and stay awake."

At Basso's request, the Master introduced a number of extra items into the curriculum, though he neglected to tell the students that they weren't part of the traditional course. These were mostly standard drills from the military book of forms (Aelius' recommendations): basic form for infantry against charging cavalry, two forms for infantry with shield against archery bombardment, close-order sword and shield in the event of a melee following the collapse of the shield wall (for which the Master had to bring in a drill sergeant from the Guard, since none of his adepts knew it).

"Which is odd," Bassano commented at dinner, "because I was talking to some of the men in the class above, and they didn't do any of this military stuff. They all did advanced defensive geometry in fifth week."

"I think they like to vary the syllabus a bit," Basso replied. "Certainly, we did a few bits and pieces of military drill when I was there. Good for general fitness and agility training, they told us."

Bassano shrugged. "Well, I don't mind," he said. "I'd rather do that than endless repetitions of the salute. That bit where you move your back foot across to the right while keeping the left leg perfectly straight..."

Basso groaned. "Tell me about it," he said. "I gave up trying to get that right. Cost me two marks in the exam, but I got them back in bonus points by breaking the Cazar's arm."

At Basso's suggestion, Bassano undertook the accelerated course, which meant doing both parts back to back, without the usual three-week recess. Basso made sure he was there for the exam, which was held in the school's main drill hall, a converted monastery chapel.

The news that the First Citizen was sitting in the middle of the front row caused a certain degree of panic in the waiting room, where the candidates sat on plain wooden benches, fidgeting with their sandal straps or desperately trying to memorise forms from the textbook.

"My uncle," Bassano explained.

"Shit," commented a tall young man from the wrong side of the Trinculani family. "You never said anything about that."

Bassano shrugged. "Didn't seem relevant."

"And he's come to see you fight, has he?" asked a massively constructed junior Velleius.

"I guess so. He sent me a note to say he would drop by if he had time."

The Trinculanus boy pulled a sour face. "Well then," he said, "you'll have no worries. Bound to pass, aren't you?"

"I hope so," Bassano said. "Though I'm a bit concerned about my footwork in double time."

A provincial Lupercus made a sort of snorting--grunting noise. "You'll pass," he said. "The fix'll be in. They wouldn't dare fail the First bloody Citizen's nephew."

Bassano frowned. "Actually," he said, "knowing my uncle, if he had reason to believe there'd been anything like that, he'd probably buy the school just to close it down. He's old-fashioned about that sort of thing."

The Velleius boy shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "All right for you. We could do without the pressure."

"Oh," Bassano said. "Well, if you want, I could send him a note asking him to wait outside till it's my turn. But he'd be disappointed. He said he was looking forward to watching the fencing."

At this point, a Saturninus-by-marriage implored them all to shut up, because some people were trying to study, and they all sat glowering at Bassano until the first candidate was called. They weren't allowed to watch, but they could hear the audience.

"Sounds bad," Bassano commented, after a loud communal gasp filtered through the wall.

"Shut up, you," said the Trinculanus boy.

Bassano made a show of pursing his lips. About a minute later, there was a thump that made the floor shake, followed by silence. Then the herald came in for the next candidate. "Manlio Velleio," he called out. The Velleius boy went white, picked up his sword, dropped it and picked it up again.

"Good luck," Bassano said.

"Go fuck yourself," the Velleius boy hissed at him through his teeth.

Bassano shrugged, took a copy of Diophanes'
On Being and Reality
out of his kitbag, found his place and began to read.

When it was his turn, Bassano stood up quite easily, and found he wasn't nervous at all. A chapter of Diophanes had taken his mind off the various glaring holes in his technique that had cost him last night's sleep; when he picked up his sword and buckled it to his belt, his fingers weren't stiff and didn't shake. "Well, hope it goes well for you fellows," he said blithely to the room in general, and walked through the door into the hall.