The Proof House (47 page)

Niessa closed her eyes and tried to block out the noise. It was all wasted on her, of course; she’d been in the banking business long enough to recognise a spy when she saw one. The duty spy, presumably; doomed to bounce up and down this hateful road day after day, year after year, as a matter of standard operating procedure. She really wasn’t very good at it; somebody’s aunt, at a guess, for whom a job had to be found. For want of anything better to do, Niessa spent a few minutes assessing the feasibility of pushing her off the coach under the wheels - she ought to have enough physical strength to manage it, but making it look like an accident was problematical, at best. Telling her to shut up would be more straightforward, but she’d learned enough recently about the Sons of Heaven to know that offending any of them was a bad idea.
When I was afraid they’d torture me, I had no idea they could be so insidious. Or so damned thorough.

‘I need a piss,’ she growled. ‘Do you know how to make them stop the coach? Otherwise I’m just going to have to pee all over the floor.’

That shut her up, the miserable bitch. Niessa felt better already. If only they could have discussed things openly at the start, she could have pointed out that the homely woman-to-woman-chat approach was going to be counterproductive in her case; they could have chosen something far less tiresome from the woman’s repertoire of personas, and it might even have been mildly entertaining.

‘I’m afraid not,’ the spy replied in a little muted voice that barely rose above a shriek. ‘It’s dreadful, the way they just don’t think about such things. I mean, it wouldn’t kill them to have a jerry or even just an old jar or something. I think I’ll get my son to do something about it.’

In spite of herself, Niessa couldn’t help admiring the fluency of her recovery. Maybe they did have something in common, professional to professional. Now if only they could talk on that level, one woman of the world to another, it might be quite interesting.

‘So tell me,’ Niessa said. ‘How long have you been a spy?’

The woman stared at her, then shook her head. ‘What an extraordinary thing to say—’ she began, but Niessa was gazing straight into her eyes. ‘You must be Niessa Loredan,’ she said. ‘I was told you’d be coming through at some stage.’

‘You know about me, then.’

The woman laughed. ‘The notorious witch of the outlands? I should say so. Not that I believe in all that stuff myself, but there are plenty who do. Outlanders, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘You’re much older than I’d expected; I suppose that’s what put me off.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Niessa replied. ‘And for the record, I’m not a witch, I’m a banker. There’s no such thing as witchcraft, as you well know.’

The coach went over a particularly deep pothole, and Niessa felt her teeth crash together. ‘You must have offended somebody, to be given this job,’ she said. ‘Getting shaken to bits like this has got to be some kind of punishment.’

The woman shrugged. ‘You’re not that far off the mark, actually,’ she said. ‘Promoted sideways, at any rate. And to answer your question, five years. Before that I was an office manager in the prefecture at Ap’ Escatoy. That was a good job, I didn’t mind it at all, but I’d been in it too long; wouldn’t do for a Daughter of Heaven with my seniority to be in a job where I might have an outlander for a superior. So here I am.’

‘My sympathy,’ Niessa replied. ‘Now then, since you’ve been straight with me, was there anything specific you wanted to know? I don’t suppose there was, since you say you didn’t know who I was until just now. Or were you given a set of mission objectives for as and when you came across Niessa Loredan?’

‘Only very vague ones,’ the spy answered. ‘And they’re mostly to do with your daughter’s escape - was it prearranged, did she have any help from any of our people, that sort of thing. If you’d care to tell me anything about that, I’d be grateful.’

Niessa wriggled her back into a crack between two barrels. ‘By all means,’ she said, ‘but there isn’t anything much I can tell you, or at least there’s nothing you can corroborate, which is much the same thing. No, it wasn’t prearranged - at least, not that I’m aware. You see, my daughter and I aren’t exactly friends. In fact, we hate each other. Really and truly. Do you have any children?’

The spy shook her head.

‘You’re better off,’ Niessa said. ‘Anyway, it’s just possible that Iseutz knew what was going on and cooked up some scheme behind my back, but I doubt it. Have you caught her yet?’

‘I don’t believe we have. The last I heard was that she was with her uncle in the Mesoge; but you’ll appreciate that I haven’t got any special clearances for restricted information; that’s just the rumour that’s going around.’

‘I understand,’ Niessa said. ‘How’s the war going, do you know? Where I’ve been they haven’t told me anything. ’

The woman narrowed her eyes. ‘Presumably you know about your brother Bardas being in command of the field army.’

Niessa shook her head. ‘Joint command,’ she said. ‘Meaning he’s only there for show.’

‘Not any more. Colonel Estar was killed; your brother’s really in charge now. It’s a strange thought, an outlander in command of four battalions. No offence, but I’m not sure I like the idea.’

‘Given his track record, neither would I,’ Niessa grunted. ‘They’ve beaten him once; twice, really, since all he managed to do when he took over from Uncle Maxen was get the army out of there and back home again. He’s a competent enough subordinate, our Bardas, but I wouldn’t say he had what it takes to be a leader. The same’s true of my brother Gorgas, to a lesser extent; he’s a good soldier, but he has problems dealing with the larger issues. Basically that’s what went wrong on Scona; he couldn’t see that the game had stopped being worth the candle. Mind you, Gorgas has never known when to quit; it’s his biggest problem, really.’

The coach lurched again, even more fiercely this time, and came to a sudden halt. A barrel of fancy biscuits was dislodged from the top of the stack and fell down, nearly hitting Niessa on the head. ‘If I were you, I’d get this driver replaced,’ she said; and then noticed that the spy was dead. There was an arrow right through the exact middle of her throat, pinning her to the barrel she’d been sitting against. As Niessa watched, the spy’s head toppled sideways and flopped down on her right shoulder, eyes still open.

Now what?
Niessa thought angrily, and she looked round to see where the arrow had come from.
And what’s the point of having an Empire if you can’t keep the roads safe?
Nothing seemed to be happening; but wherever they were, it was depressingly open and exposed. Trying to run would be suicide, if the bandits were inclined to kill witnesses, whereas staying put wasn’t any better. No point trying to hide if they were going to steal the cargo; they’d find her sooner or later while they were unloading.
So that’s it, then
, she thought.
All this way for nothing. What a waste of time and energy.

A helmet appeared above the side-rail. Here at least was something she could vent her anger on; she picked up the barrel of biscuits and slammed it down on the apex of the helmet, where the straps that held the plates together met. The result was satisfying, if not downright comic; there was a sigh, and the helmet vanished in a shower of broken slats and biscuits.
That’s what you get for tangling with one of the Fighting Loredans
, Niessa said to herself, grinning.
Just because I’m a girl doesn’t mean I can’t play rough games too.

‘Niessa Loredan?’ The voice was behind her, and as she spun round she caught her ankle in a niche between two boxes. It hurt.

‘Ouch,’ she said. ‘Yes, who wants to know?’

‘We’re here to rescue you.’ Another damned helmet, with some sort of visor contraption that covered the man’s face completely. Was it too much to ask to be allowed to talk to a human being, instead of all this ironmongery?

‘What are you talking about?’ Niessa said.

‘Your brother’s orders,’ the helmet said. ‘We’ve come to rescue you and take you home.’

Niessa scowled. ‘Which brother?’ she said.

The helmet looked bewildered; a difficult trick for a piece of iron. ‘Gorgas Loredan,’ it replied.

‘Oh.’ Niessa sighed. ‘Well, you can jolly well go back and tell Gorgas that I don’t need to be rescued, I don’t want to be rescued and, if I did, the last person I’d want rescuing me is him. Have you got that, or shall I write it down for you?’

Now the helmet was looking utterly wretched. ‘You don’t understand,’ it said. ‘We’re taking you back to the Mesoge. There’s a ship waiting for us. But we’ve got to hurry, because there’ll be a cavalry column along here in an hour, and—’

‘It’s all right,’ Niessa said, ‘I won’t tell them which way you went, provided you leave now. Just do me a favour and steal some of this junk; try to make it look like an ordinary hold-up.’

Poor helmet, she thought as she said this. She could hear other voices of other helmets - they all had a booming, resonant quality, like a man down a well, or the way her late husband Gallas had sounded once when he got his head stuck in the whey bucket. The other helmets sounded agitated, which was reasonable enough. ‘I’m sorry,’ the helmet said, ‘but I’ve got my orders. You’re coming with me. Anything between you and your brother is no concern—’

‘Hang on,’ Niessa said. ‘You’re a Scona man, aren’t you? Well, of course you are. Are you really going to use force to kidnap me? You do know who I am, don’t you? Apart from being Gorgas’ sister, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ said the helmet, rather panic-stricken, ‘but it’s not up to me. I’ve got to do what I’m told. Now stand up and I’ll help you down off the cart.’

‘Go to hell,’ Niessa replied. ‘In fact, you go back to Gorgas and you tell him I said to stop being such a bloody fool, because I’ve had enough of him and his ridiculous heroics. Go on, he won’t bite you. Not if you tell him I said—’

At which point, the man who’d climbed up silently behind her dropped a sack over her head, flipped her carefully off her feet and knelt down beside her to do up the rope. ‘About time,’ the helmet said. ‘Get all this junk off the cart, we’ll use it to lay a false trail.’ Inside the sack, Niessa was making the most extraordinary noises. Between them, they hoisted her off the cart without banging her about too much, while another man looked after the soldier Niessa had brained with the biscuit-barrel, and another finished off the driver, who’d been trying to crawl away in spite of two arrows in almost the same hole through his chest. They cut the guy-ropes and pulled off the barrels and boxes, letting them smash and roll; spices and perfumes and herbs and fine wine and scented oils for dressing salad - all mixed together, the smell was extraordinary, abstruse and exotic enough that even a Son of Heaven would have been hard put to it to identify all the ingredients.

‘That’ll do,’ said the helmet, pulling up his visor to wipe his forehead. Under the metal he was a round-faced man with a little bobble for a nose. ‘You two, take the coach, we’ll meet you back at the ship.’

An hour or so after they’d gone, the cavalry column came through, just as the helmet had said. They found two bodies, one male and one female, stripped naked, and a large heap of smashed biscuits. No barrels or boxes - a bunch of opportunists had appeared out of the sand-dunes and dismantled them in a matter of minutes, prising out the nails to be straightened later, carefully lifting off the steel bands from the barrels and collecting the staves (unbroken ones in one bundle, to be used again; broken ones separate, for firewood) - and all the cargo had been looted, apart from the cinnamon and wild rose honey biscuits so highly prized by the prefect of Ap’ Escatoy. Apparently the looters had tried a few of them, spat them out and jumped up and down on the rest, just in case any foolhardy souls might be tempted to eat them.

 

‘That’s the lot,’ sighed Habsurai, gang-boss of the logging contingent, as the last lumber wagon rolled to a halt. ‘I hereby certify that there’s nothing bigger than a dandelion left standing between here and the Pigeon River. And if you want us to go further out than that,’ he added, before Temrai could say anything, ‘you’re going to have to give us an armed escort, because from where we were felling yesterday we could see Loredan’s scouts fooling about on the other side of North Reach ford. If you want any more timber, you’re going to have to fight for it.’

Another hot day; there was a constant relay of weary-looking children struggling up and down the steep path with buckets, and the stonemasons had all but given up. Not that they were proper stonemasons; the clans didn’t have any, never having had a use for large blocks of stone before now. Anybody who didn’t have a hat was improvising furiously - a sack draped over the head and shoulders, secured with a piece of twine around the temples; the broad, flat wicker baskets the bakers carried their bread in; the gonfalon standard of the late City Prefect of Perimadeia, looted on general principles at the Fall and now at last coming in handy for something, wrapped round its new owner’s head like a turban. Temrai was wearing his arming cap, the detachable liner that had come with the fine and completely unwearable barbute helmet he’d bought from an Island merchant before the civil war. The cap was made of thick, matted grey felt and was the only part of the ensemble that even remotely fitted. He wiped sweat out of his eyes and shook his head. ‘Which would defeat the object of the exercise,’ he said. ‘Well, if that’s it, that’s it; we’ll just have to make do with what we’ve got. Thanks; you’ve done a good job.’

Habsurai’s men had brought in a lot of timber - the stacks of trimmed logs looked like a small city in their own right - but it probably wasn’t going to be enough. The lower and middle palisades were finished, the head of each stake dramatically sharpened to a point, and the swing-bridge, causeways and catwalks were nearly done, but the upper stockade wasn’t a practical proposition any more, not if they wanted any lumber for all the other works that still had to be done. Temrai sat down on an upturned bucket and tried to think of an alternative. A simple ditch and mound - well, it’d be better than nothing, but not good enough, not if Bardas Loredan had taken to heart the valuable lessons he’d been given in the sustained use of trebuchets against a fortified position. Without timber, they had a choice between turf and stone; both labour-intensive, time-consuming, inefficient. It would take a lot of people a long time to cut enough turves to build a wall high enough and thick enough to be of any defensive value, but at least there was enough turf for the job. Stone - well, there were a few outcrops of weatherbeaten granite dotted about, enough at a pinch for a few towers and gateways, but if they wanted more than that they were going to have to dig for it and quarry it out.