The Two of Swords: Part 11 (2 page)

“How about you?” Axeo realised the government man was talking to him. “You heard anything?”

Axeo shook his head. “We’ve been up in Rhus, the boy and me,” he said. “Last I knew about it, the siege was still on and nothing much was happening.”

“You mean you haven’t heard about the battle?”

Axeo caught his breath but covered it. “What battle?”

The
battle. Apparently, four of the remaining Western field armies, comprising at least a hundred thousand men, had converged on Rasch. Senza Belot, with thirty thousand cavalry, had met them in a wheatfield to the north of the city. Casualties – well, the rumours flying around were obviously nonsense, there was no way they could be that high, but apparently a big man with the Gasca brothers, who were joint-venturing with Ocnisant on a strictly one-off basis for this job, reckoned they’d buried forty thousand, at least, and precious few of them had been cavalrymen. Where what was left of the Western army had got to and what sort of state it was in, nobody knew. What was certain was that Senza was back standing guard outside Rasch, with the plunder from the Western supply trains to keep his men happy; and it was simple arithmetic, say ninety-five thousand civilians in Rasch plus the garrison, eating a pint and a half of flour a day.

“Rasch can’t
fall
,” said one of the couriers. “It’s the capital city of half the world. They’ll just have to raise more armies, that’s all.”

“It’s time the Blemyans did something,” the government man said. “Everybody knows they’re on our side. They’re civilised people, they’re not just going to stand by and see the West go to hell. If it wasn’t for the bloody diplomats—”

“What about Forza Belot?” Axeo asked.

All three of them looked at him. Hadn’t you heard, one of the couriers said. Forza’s dead. Been dead for months.

Iden Astea was originally built by refugees from the Third Political War. They chose the site well, or were extremely lucky to stumble across it. The old town occupies a substantial island in the middle of the lake formed by the run-off from the mountains that surround it on three sides. The suburbs crowd the eastern and southern shores of the lake; you can get to the island by an artificial causeway (which can be breached in the middle in half an hour, if needs be) or by boat; the regional myth that the Identines are born web-footed is untrue, but they are beyond question the best freshwater boatmen in both empires. There are submerged rocks and shoals in Lake Iden that you can’t begin to understand unless you were born there, they say, and navigating the narrow lanes between the rows of buoys is a mystery not lightly revealed to outsiders.

Iden was, therefore, a natural choice for the Western emperor, as soon as the threat to Rasch was fully appreciated. He arrived in a two-wheeled chaise in the middle of the night, escorted by five captains of the Household Guard; the rest of the Inner Court arrived over the course of the next few days, accompanying a long train of sturdy wagons carrying the Imperial treasury. Two days after that, two battalions of the Ninth Army arrived to form a garrison. The extent to which the Identines appreciated the honour of entertaining the Brother of the Sun and his entourage for an unspecified length of time is not recorded. They were probably quite philosophical about it. Iden has a massive granary, cut from solid rock in the side of the mountain that dominates the island, and the alluvial plain is enormously fertile; the arrival of a thousand noblemen and their accumulated movable wealth was probably seen as an opportunity, or at the very least a challenge, rather than an unmitigated imposition.

The arrival of the Court had the effect of rekindling the dormant Relocation Debate, which had been quietly seething under the surface of Imperial politics ever since the schism. Rasch, the relocators were now saying, has been proven to be hopelessly vulnerable; at the first sign of trouble, what does our eminently sensible emperor do? He jumps in a chaise and heads for Iden. Is there any good reason why he should ever go back? Iden is not only far more defensible, it’s also closer to the geographical centre of the Western empire, it backs on to an unlimited food supply, it’s healthier and the view is better. To which the conservatives replied: Rasch is a city, everywhere else is just villages, and it’s blasphemy to ask the Co-Regent of the Firmament to make his official residence in the provinces. To which the relocators replied: if Rasch falls, does that have to mean that the war is over, and we’ve lost?

Axeo and Musen arrived in Iden to find the road closed. They were stopping all traffic at Barys; there were barricades manned by guardsmen in gilded armour. Axeo put on his best parade-ground face, marched up to the checkpoint and asked the sergeant what was going on.

Riots, apparently. Late the previous evening, a snaking column of wagons, carriages and carts had arrived at the head of the causeway, carrying the Imperial kennels, which had evacuated from Rasch shortly after the Court, and had only just got here; two hundred dogs and four hundred men, together with ancillary equipment – each dog its own special bed and favourite cushions, its dedicated cook, the cook’s specialist pots, pans, trivets and spits, five wagons filled with Blemyan corn, from which was baked the only sort of bread the dogs would eat, seventy cages of pedigree chickens and other necessary items too numerous to particularise. The City prefect arrived and told the convoy commander that there was no room on the island, which was exclusively reserved for people. The commander appealed over his head to the Chamberlain, who decreed that the dogs would have to rough it in Prosc Docian, the largest of the suburbs on the southern shore of the lake. The guard commander was given the job of evacuating the residents of Prosc to the nameless shanty town on the edge of the western marshes. The residents had objected, the guards had driven them out at spear point, and now they were occupying both ends of the causeway, tearing up paving stones and throwing them at the Watch. The guards couldn’t simply wade in and slaughter them, since the people of Prosc Docian did most of the actual work in the City – ground the flour, chopped the vegetables, made the beds, waited at tables, none of which they’d be available to do if they were dead. The emperor, for his part, was still white with anger at being told he couldn’t have his dogs with him on the island, and refused point-blank to allow the kennels to be relocated yet again. A committee had been formed to consider possible resolutions; rumour had it that the favourite was currently the construction of a temporary floating barracks for the providers of essential services, to be moored off the City dock during the day and cast adrift to float on the lake by night. Meanwhile, nothing was going in or out until the situation had been dealt with.

Axeo thanked the sergeant politely, the sergeant saluted and Axeo walked slowly back to the mail coach in the middle of the glacier of halted traffic. “Get the bags,” he told Musen. “Can you swim?”

“No.”

Axeo shrugged. “Guess I’ll have to be resourceful, then,” he said. “I hate being resourceful, it gives me a headache.”

A few enquiries along the waterfront revealed that all boats had been requisitioned by the Prefect for the duration of the emergency. Since the Prefect paid half as much again as the usual tariff, the watermen were grimly resigned to doing their patriotic duty, which meant the cost of an unofficial ride across the lake was now more than Axeo was prepared to spend out of the limited war chest at his disposal.

“We steal a boat,” Musen said.

“
You
steal a boat. I’m a brigand, not a thief. Tell me when you’ve got one, I’ll be under that tree, sleeping.”

In fact, although his hat was pulled down over his eyes and his feet were propped up on the luggage, Axeo was wide awake. He’d learned quite a lot from his conversation with the sergeant, much of it reassuring. The City was clearly a shambles, with the military and the civil authority getting under each other’s feet, mostly on purpose. Reasonable to assume, therefore, that nobody knew who anybody was, and the usual security protocols surrounding the emperor’s person were probably coming apart at the seams. Between those parted seams a clever man could insert a sharp instrument and press down hard. What they could really do with, of course, was a dog.

“Yes,” Axeo explained, when Musen came back, “but not just any old dog. It’s got to look plausible. Some tripehound you find hanging round the back door of the butcher’s shop won’t fool anybody.”

“Fine,” Musen said. “What sort do you want?”

Axeo looked blank. “I don’t know, do I? There were always hundreds of the wretched things around the place when I was a boy, my father was mad keen on them, but I could never be bothered to take an interest. I know there’s one called an alaunt, and there’s lymers and brachets and grazehounds. They’re all hunting dogs, of course, and I don’t think that’s the sort His Majesty goes for. Little tubby things like overgrown rats are more in his line, so I gather. Just use your common sense, all right? So long as it’s neat and tidy and you can’t see its ribs. I don’t suppose the Watch know any more about it than I do.”

A surprisingly short time later, Musen came back leading a small, skinny fawn and white object on a bit of string. It had a face like a very small mule and ears that folded down like the corner of a page in a favourite book; if memory served, it was a kennet, the go-to dog for persecuting hares. Ideal. “Is that the best you could do?”

Musen shrugged. “You want me to find something else?”

Axeo shook his head. “Life’s too short. Where’s this boat of yours? And did you remember the cheese?”

Musen had hidden the boat under the sprays of a trailing willow. It must’ve been a smart piece of work taking it, and not in Musen’s usual line; you can’t just tuck a twelve-foot tender under your coat and stroll away looking gormless. They waited till dark. Fortunately the dog curled up and went to sleep, while Musen went back to steal it a collar.

“I don’t suppose you know how to row a boat.”

Musen shrugged.

Axeo climbed in carefully, then held out his arms for the dog. “It’s been a while,” he said, “and I was never very good at it. Still, we weren’t expecting to win any prizes.”

Musen didn’t like getting in the boat; he staggered badly when it shifted, and sat down heavily on the oars. “Shift,” Axeo said, “I need them to make it go. You sit at that end and steer.”

“I don’t know how to.”

“Fine. Grab hold of the dog and keep it quiet.”

There were lanterns burning all along the quay; but Axeo had made out other mooring places on the east side of the island, used by sawmills, tanneries and the like, where he reckoned they could put in without attracting undue attention. The one he chose was the landing stage of a foundry, working a night shift. Inside the sheds was a blaze of white light, which would dazzle anyone looking out, and the noise of the drop-hammers would mask any sound they made, even if the dog decided to bark.

“Have you been here before?” Musen asked, once they were safely on dry land.

“Once,” Axeo replied. He gave the boat a shove and it drifted out of the light. “Nice place if you’ve got money, a bit grim if you haven’t. Like most places, really.”

Musen nodded towards where the boat had been. “Won’t we be needing that?”

“It would’ve been nice,” Axeo replied. “But we can’t rely on it staying there. Chances are some evil bugger would’ve stolen it before we got back. There’s a lot of thieving goes on in this town, I don’t know if you’ve noticed.” He wrapped the dog’s lead twice around his hand. “I plan to walk back, across the causeway. Unless we can hitch a lift, of course. I don’t believe in walking if you can ride.”

Finding a soldier was easy. They walked towards the noise; at first a gentle hum, almost soothing, like distant bees on a hot afternoon; then jagged with unintelligible shouting, banging and breaking sounds. There was a cordon of the Household Guard around the head of the causeway, their gilded armour flashing in the disturbingly bright light of burning shops.

It had been a while since Axeo had actually commanded regular official troops. Some things, though, you don’t forget.

“You,” he snapped, as soon as he was in earshot. “Yes, you, soldier. Get the duty officer, quick as you like.”

Some people can do it with horses and dogs; it’s all to do with confidence, knowing you’re a superior form of life. “Sir,” barked the nearest guardsman, and turned and ran.

The duty officer – praise be! – was tall, thin, painfully young, transparent down on his upper lip like the hair on a girl’s forearm. He came striding up, struggling with the straps of his helmet (they can be a bitch, Axeo sympathised, until you get used to them). Before he could open his mouth, Axeo snapped, “Let’s see your commission.”

The young officer stopped as if he’d put his foot in a rabbit hole. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t carry it with—”

Axeo allowed himself a tiny but eloquent gesture. Crammed into it was the certainty that he’d have seen to it that the officer was broken to the ranks and sent to guard convicts, if only the business in hand wasn’t so urgent. “All right, what’s your name?”

“Ethizo, sir. Second lieutenant—”

“See this?” Axeo gave the bit of string a fierce jerk, and the dog stumbled forward into the light. “Well?”

Lieutenant Ethizo looked at the dog, desperately trying to understand what was wrong and why it was his fault. “Sir?”

“I found it roaming the streets out on the dark side,” Axeo said, his voice heavy with quiet, suppressed rage. “And I want to know who’s responsible.”

A look of utter helplessness on the lieutenant’s face; then a tiny ray of illumination, to spotlight his peril. “Is that one of the emperor’s—?”

“For God’s sake, man, pull yourself together,” Axeo snapped. “This is a seal-point sand kennet, these buggers were gods in Blemya when your ancestors were still running around in goatskins. Don’t you know anything?”

Maybe he’d overdone it slightly there. The lieutenant frowned. “I don’t think I’ve heard of—”

“Your ignorance isn’t at issue here, lieutenant.” (There, that was better.) “The point is, what do you think will happen if His Majesty finds out one of his precious dogs has got out and was found roaming the streets? Well? Answer: he’ll overrule the Prefect and send us in to clear out the protesters, there’ll be a massacre and then a proper riot, not this peely-wally stone-throwing, and come morning we won’t need Senza Belot, we’ll have done it all ourselves. Well?”