The Folding Knife (63 page)

"Two years," Basso repeated. "Are you mad? The Opposition..."

"I am simply stating the law," the lawyer said, so politely it was clear he was deeply upset; "the law which you oversee, and which you could have amended at any time during your term of office. In fact, the specific provisions relating to estates of Vesani citizens of foreign birth are drawn from your own Enfranchisement Acts. I fear," he went on, "that you have no option but to accept the legacy with a good grace. In two years' time, you will of course be at liberty to make whatever dispositions you may wish."

Basso sat perfectly still for a while; then he said, "You're a lawyer. How
do
we get round this?"

Nothing changed in the lawyer's short, thin face. "Given your rather exceptional circumstances, I suppose it would be feasible for you to refuse to accept the residuary estate, thereby causing the entire estate to pass to the Treasury; whereupon the Treasury might be induced to make ex gratia grants to the funds named in the will of sums equivalent to such sums as they would have received had your original intentions been legally feasible."

"Give the whole lot to the Treasury, and then they give it back."

"Essentially, yes. However, such a course of action would require the exercise of political influence, which is of course outside my field of knowledge."

"Thanks, I see." Basso blinked and rubbed his eyes, like someone waking up from a strange dream. "I suppose we'll do that, then. I imagine there's a certain amount of paperwork involved." The lawyer nodded. "No surprise there, then. Go away, do it and fetch it here for me to sign." He frowned. "You're sure that's all there was," he said. "Six thousand nomismata."

"Quite sure."

Later, for a while, he made sense of it by assuming Aelius must've sent all his money home, to support his family and his clan and probably most of his tribe as well. But that turned out not to have been the case. He'd sent home three hundred nomismata a year--considerable wealth over there, but not enough to make much of a hole in Basso's vague, unsatisfactory sense of guilt. When the mines are running, he promised himself, and everything's back to normal again, I'll have to see about raising army pay, at least for the senior officers. But he knew that was a promise he wouldn't keep; not for malice or treachery, but because in six months' time he'd have forgotten the way he felt now, remembering only that he'd felt ashamed about something when Aelius died, and he'd made a rash promise about army pay that fortunately nobody else had witnessed.

In conclusion, he told the House, he urged them to consider two brave men; one dead and one alive, one a dedicated, experienced soldier who gave his life for the city that had adopted him, the other a young man from a privileged background who had risen to a challenge that few would have dared to face, who by his resourcefulness, courage and sheer determination had saved the army and the honour of the Republic. Two very different men; but they had one thing in common: they were Vesani citizens, equal participants along with every man, woman and child in the City in the greatest and most fascinating project the world had ever known, shareholders in the greatest enterprise in history: the Vesani Republic. He had no desire to detract in any way from the extraordinary things accomplished by his friend and his nephew; but it hadn't been Aelius' victory or Bassianus Licinius' victory. It had been the triumph of the Republic itself, in which every citizen had a right to share.

All that remained, he concluded, was for him to propose the motion than Bassianus Arcadius Licinius be confirmed as the new Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the Republic, with the rank of field marshal and the honour-name of Mavortinus.

Passed unanimously.

Basso to Bassano:

...
You can, of course, be sure that nobody will ever call you that, not to your face and most certainly not behind your back. But they'll call you something, though a consensus has yet to emerge, as far as I can tell. Round-in-Circles is one I've heard in a few places; I'd be perfectly happy with that if I were you. I've also heard Golden Boy, the Fighting Toff and Camel's Balls (which I take to be a reference to your courage and fortitude). Any of them would do me. As you know, my only vanity is the wish to have a name like that for my very own: the Magnificent, the Great, the Wise, the Fortunate. Now it looks like my last, best chance is Bassano's Uncle. With which, I hasten to add, I shall be hugely content.

My first order to you in your new job is to come home as soon as you possibly can, for urgent high-level debriefing, making your formal report, intensive discussions concerning short-, medium- and long-term policy issues, and any other damn thing it takes to get you back here. And if you ever scare me like that again, I'll skin you alive.

If anything had happened to you out there, I'd never have forgiven myself. But, now it's over, I have to say how enormously, incredibly proud I am--of myself, of course, for having spotted long before anybody else just what a clever little sod you are. I venture to suggest that I saw it rather earlier than you did; I guess I've always known. You know what I'm like with reasons. I think you're the reason that explains and justifies me. I've done what I've done so you can follow on after me; and when people look back on me, in a hundred years' time, they'll say that Bassianus Severus was the necessary evil that made Bassianus Licinius possible; and that, just for once, the end absolved the means.

I've been thinking a great deal about what you wrote about sides. I'm inclined to go along with most of it, though I wouldn't go so far as to say I agree. I do firmly believe that the wrong fails and the right prevails, like they taught me to say in Temple. Experience has shown me that nine times out of ten, you can't hope to make your mind up what's wrong and what's right until the fighting's over and the winner has won; the judges' decision, in other words, is final. Ever since I read that Aelius was going into the forest, I held my breath; if we'd lost, quite apart from everything else, I'd have had to accept the decision that I'd been wrong, everything I've done's been wrong, everything I am is wrong. You know how everybody always goes on about my marvellous luck; how everything, even disasters, turns out right for me. Well, that last phrase is the key: turns out right. I don't believe in luck, never have. I believe that things happen, and the good come out of them well and the bad badly. All my life I've been waiting for the time when I come out bad; at which point I'll know, and I'll abide by the referee's decision. Till then, I know I'm right. I was right about you.

The biggest thing I ever did (we're not using good and bad, remember) was killing your father and my wife. I couldn't possibly see how any good could come out of that. I tried to make sense of it by looking out for you. To begin with, it was more guilt than anything: I may have killed his father, but I'll see to it the kid gets the best possible start in life, that sort of thing. But you grew up and I came to know you, and I realised that you were someone completely out of the ordinary; someone recognisably connected with me--we share some key qualities--but sufficiently different to make all the difference, if you follow me. By killing your father, I gave myself an opportunity to help and guide you that I wouldn't otherwise have had. And look how you've turned out, and think what you're going to do. And then I look back to what I did, all those years ago, and I can make sense of it now. Didn't turn out so bad after all.

To a certain extent, my life ended that day, when I killed them both. I lost my sister, who I loved best of all. I lost my own sons; I could never be a proper father to them, not after they'd seen me with their mother's blood on my arms and face. I lost my wife, everything human about me. Since then, apart from you, all I've had is the Bank and politics--which are both things I enjoy very much, but they're not a life; they're not people, they're not love.

Everything I've done has been for you; because of you, I might just turn out right in the end. I guess that, like you, I had to come round in a big loop to get back to the place where I was ambushed and defeated, and turn that defeat into victory.

Or something of the sort. Reading this, you will immediately conclude that I've been drinking steadily for the last three days and it's high time someone loaded me in a wheelbarrow and took me home. Actually, I suspect I'm one of the very few sober adults in the city right now. Come home, and we'll have a drink together, to celebrate.

Your loving uncle,

Basso

The messenger entrusted with this letter was the fastest and the best. He rode straight from the Severus house to the docks, where a fast sloop lay at anchor; Basso had bought four of them for the Bank's messenger corps, so they wouldn't have to rely on ordinary commercial or naval shipping. On Basso's orders, at least one of the sloops had to be ready and waiting at the Bank's private mooring at all times. Ten minutes after the messenger came on board, the sloop cast off. It was lucky enough to be able to ride out on the last gasp of a brisk south-easterly wind that had been blowing all day, and which took the sloop far enough out to catch the eastern Trade, which also happened to be blowing strong. Twenty-seven hours later, the sloop came in sight of Voroe--a record.

Experience had shown that it was quicker for the messenger to land, ride across Voroe and take a light galleass than for the sloop to pick its way through the reefs at the southern end of the island. The messenger's approach was signalled by beacons, and when he reached the northern bay, he found a twelve-oar cutter waiting to carry him across the strait to Mavortis. Once again the winds were exactly right, and an experienced captain steered the ship quickly and neatly through the complex shoals on the Mavortine side. The lookout had seen the cutter coming and recognised the Bank-messenger pennant it was flying; there was a horse ready saddled for the messenger when he disembarked. By noon he was on the main road, and two hours later he changed horses at the last fort before the forest.

Forty hours later, he was back at the City docks. Instead of coming in, the sloop held off, until a coastguard cutter came out to it. By then, the messenger was dead; but he'd had just enough time to write out a message, which the sloop's captain shouted to the coastguard officer, who wrote it down. The sloop then raised anchor and sailed out into the bay.

The coastguard couldn't leave his post, so he sent one of his subordinates to the post house on the south quay, where a Bank courier could always be found. The courier took the message to the Severus house.

Basso's letter could not be delivered. Four days after the victory, plague had broken out in the army. Apparently it was the variety that caused black swellings in the armpit. When Basso's messenger arrived at the camp, three-quarters of the army was already dead, including the commanding officer, Bassianus Licinius.

The indictment was read out in his absence by the special prosecutor, Gracilis Scaevola, the new leader of the Optimates. The charges were:

that he had knowingly deceived the House as to the state of the public finances;

that he had spent public money knowing the Treasury to be insolvent;

that he had abused his position for private profit;

that he had appropriated public funds for his own use;

that he had, in his capacity as First Citizen, arranged loans to the Treasury from the Bank of Charity & Social Justice at excessive rates of interest;

that he had irresponsibly and recklessly mortgaged public assets;

that he had irresponsibly and recklessly occupied the island of Voroe, knowing that such occupation was likely to provoke war with the Empire;

that he had repeatedly lied to the House about the conduct and progress of the war;

that he had misled the House concerning the threat posed by the Mavortines in order to procure the war;

that he had culpably mismanaged the affairs of the Republic, by negligence or recklessness involving the Republic in war, knowing the risks such war posed to the well-being of the Republic and its citizens.

Since he was not present, in spite of a formal summons to attend, the clerk entered a guilty plea on his behalf.

Scaevola addressed the House. It was impossible, he said, to quantify the damage Bassianus Severus had done to the Vesani people. Quite probably, the full extent of the disaster would not become apparent for some time. What they already knew was, however, quite bad enough. The field army in Mavortis had been devastated. The savages, inspired by this development to new and unparalleled heights of barbarous energy, were picking off the forts one by one, and very soon would be in a position to claim that they had driven the Vesani out of their country. The fleet--what was left of it--was pinned down in Voroe by the huge Imperial armada that had appeared off the island a matter of days after the news of the plague broke. The Empire's declared intention was to retake Voroe and then launch a punitive expedition against the City itself. Thanks to Bassianus Severus, there were no ships, no crews and no money with which to repel them, and the Republic would therefore have no option but to sue for terms. Again thanks to Bassianus Severus, there was no possibility of recruiting soldiers for the defence of the City; horrified by the fate of their countrymen, the Cazars were refusing to enlist, and the other nations from whom the Vesani had traditionally hired mercenaries were refusing to receive ambassadors, for fear of displeasing the Empire. Even if recruits could be found, there was no money to pay them with, and the whole world knew it. Quite possibly, the future of the Republic as they knew it had only a few weeks left to run. Surrender, and reincorporation into the Empire, was a distinct possibility for which the House would be advised to prepare itself. For all these miseries, one man and one man only was responsible; the man who had gambled the nation's wealth, its security, its very survival on a dream of self-aggrandisement and personal gain. The testimony of the chief cashier of the Bank of Charity & Social Justice, Tragazes, who had cooperated fully with the special investigators, was irrefutably damning. By pinning all his hopes on the Mavortine mines, Bassianus Severus had acted with a degree of blind stupidity that bewildered the mind; by concealing the extent of his insane speculations, he had converted a monstrous error of judgement into a criminal offence for which there could surely be only one penalty. Before justice could take its course, however, it was necessary that he be impeached in due form. Whether his failure to attend the House was a tacit admission of his appalling burden of guilt or simply further evidence of the contempt with which he regarded the Republic and its people was of no consequence. No defence having been entered, the House had no option but to declare Bassianus Severus impeached and to discharge him from the office of First Citizen; further, Scaevola recommended, his passport should be impounded and he himself should be arrested without further delay, to await criminal proceedings.