The Two of Swords: Part 7 (4 page)

Glauca shook his head. Too much. For one thing, he’d believed the boy, and he wasn’t wrong about that sort of thing. For another – a leading expert on the silver packs, a top-ranking astronomer; practically the whole senior faculty of a major university would have had to be in on the scheme. And the risks; it was sheer chance that he’d thrown the other thief off the battlements, not the boy Musen; sheer chance that either of them had survived to be interrogated; sheer chance that Glauca himself had been sufficiently intrigued by the presence of a pack in a thief’s pocket to take a closer look. Weigh the investment required against the remoteness of the possibility of a return, and it simply wasn’t a business proposition. Besides which, anyone in the forgery business would know the histories of the previous attempts to sell to the emperor; no matter how gloriously unimpeachable the provenance might be, the pack itself would still have to pass inspection by the greatest expert in the world, the man who owned nineteen of the things— No, it simply wasn’t credible. By the time you’d been to all that work and expense, you’d need to get fifty thousand just to break even. There were easier ways of making money, and without the exceptional degree of risk.

The other alternative, then: that up in the wild north, where people were so primitive they barely counted as human, a tiny college of priests or craftsmen had preserved a silver pack, intact and unknown. Well, such things happened. Take the Cossudis Bowl, for example, or the Red Victory Icons, found in a hayloft; or the Three Noble Chalices, used by an ignorant country squire to feed his dogs. Silver is a precious metal, but not so precious or rare that it’d be broken up and melted down on sight. A particularly rich or unusually discerning savage might take a fancy to a pack of silver cards, just because he liked the look of them, and decide to keep them as a treasure; or there were genuine documented cases of wandering scholars and vagrant colleges and mendicant orders of monks and friars; the craft had lodges everywhere, even among the barbarians, and it was just possible that a great scholar, say the abbot of a monastery who’d played at politics and lost, might be exiled there, or need to go where nobody would ever think to look for him— He laughed because it sounded so very like the false provenances he’d come to know so very well. But they faked them like that because
such things had happened
, really and truly, and surprisingly often over the years.

The world is full of lies, his father used to say, but sometimes, just occasionally, people tell the truth.

“Of course I don’t trust him.”

Pleda didn’t say anything, just sat there methodically chewing. Porridge again. Pleda hated porridge.

“But I’ve got no choice,” Glauca went on. “Yes, obviously, nine chances out of ten the boy’s no good. Either he’s a liar or he’s been lied to. Likelihood of the Sleeping Dog still existing, and suddenly turning up after all this time in the frozen north, practically nil. It’s almost certainly just another damn masquerade. But—” He shrugged. Pleda understood. “Well?” he went on. “You dead yet?”

Pleda, who’d been asked that question at least three times a day for twenty years, shook his head. “Not yet,” he mumbled, with his mouth full.

“Probably all right, then.”

Pleda nodded. “Unless it’s aconite.”

“I’d taste that, surely.”

“Be too late then.”

Pleda was one of those slow eaters. Some people bolt their food; there’s a blur, and then there’s an empty plate. Pleda ate slowly, steadily, like a cow. Not a problem most of the time, but right now Glauca was
hungry
. “I’ll risk it.”

“Your funeral.”

The finest, most discriminating palate in the empire; there had been a grand competition, with cooks from the great noble houses preparing special dishes crammed with the rarest and most abstruse ingredients, prepared in such a way as to mask or subtly alter the flavours. Pleda had identified ninety-seven out of ninety-nine; his nearest rival had only managed seventy-six. In a somewhat grimmer trial, he’d also identified forty-two of the forty-seven known poisons, from samples served to him on the tip of a pin. The job paid exceptionally well, but Pleda maintained (and Glauca believed him) that he wasn’t interested in money. So why do you do it? Glauca had asked a thousand times, and Pleda just shrugged.

“Give it here,” Glauca said, and snatched the bowl from his hands. Then he hesitated. “Aconite?”

“Can take up to twenty minutes,” Pleda said, through a gag of porridge. “Quite a strong taste, fairly distinctive. But you will insist on salt on your porridge, and that might just mask it. Probably not, but—” The trademark shrug.

“I like salt on my porridge.”

Pleda didn’t need words to express what he thought about that. Glauca put the bowl down on the table. “I’ll get them to warm it up for me,” he said.

“Ah.” Pleda grinned at him. “Morsupeto.”

“You what?”

“Morsupeto,” Pleda repeated. “It’s a fourth-degree distillate of your basic Archer’s Root. Clever old stuff. Completely inert and harmless raw, lethal when cooked. So, you bung the stuff raw in a thick soup, say, or a stew. I taste it, nothing happens, but we wait twenty minutes anyway. Then they heat it up again, that cooks the morsupeto, it turns to poison, you eat it, two minutes later you’re rolling on the floor screaming. Bloody clever.”

Glauca stared at him. “Morsupeto, you say.”

“That’s right. Blemyan for Sudden Death.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Ah,” Pleda said. “That’s because it’s new; it’s not in your old books. Only been two cases so far. That we know about, I mean.”

“Dear God.” Glauca looked at the bowl. “I can’t be doing with cold porridge,” he said.

“What you want,” Pleda said, “is a nice fried egg.”

Translated: what
Pleda
wanted was a nice fried egg. Also, eggs are notoriously hard to poison while the shell remains unbroken – it can be done, but the shell is distinctively stained – so if the egg is prepared in your presence, while you watch the cook’s every move like a hawk, you’re probably all right. “A boiled egg would be all right,” Glauca said, but without much hope – a certain white crystal, dissolved in the boiling water, penetrates the shell without staining and kills in thirty seconds. As anticipated, Pleda shrugged. Glauca sighed and rang the bell.

“Three fried eggs,” he told the footman.

There was a little spirit stove in the corner, next to the window. Glauca hated fried eggs.

“You do it on purpose,” he told Pleda, as he cringed at the feel of runny yolk on his lips. “Everything I like, there’s some damned new poison. You take pleasure in torturing me.”

Shrug.

“I know what it is,” Glauca went on. “It’s the power. You enjoy bullying your emperor.”

“It’s for your own good,” Pleda replied placidly, and Glauca noted the absence of denial or contradiction. “Anyway,” he went on, “you were saying. About this Rhus lad.”

“Oh, him.” Glauca had to make an effort to redirect his mind. “I don’t trust him.”

“So you said.”

“But I believe him.”

“There’s a difference?”

Glauca nodded. Yes, there was a difference. Talking to Pleda often cleared his mind, though rarely because of any astounding flash of insight on Pleda’s part. Amiable enough fellow, and he quite enjoyed his rudeness. There has to be someone who’s allowed to be rude to you, or what would become of you? An intellectual, though, Pleda definitely wasn’t. “Well,” he said, “what’s the worst that can happen? Fellow goes off and we never see him again. On the other hand, he might just come back with the goods.”

“Which are probably fakes.”

“Oh, almost certain to be. In which case, this lad Musen doesn’t get any money.”

“And the army gets paid, quite. And if it’s not a fake? If it’s real?”

Glauca closed his eyes for a moment. “Let’s not tempt providence,” he said.

Pleda did the shrug. “The eggs are fine,” he said. “You have my word.”

Glauca stared down at the plate the footman had put in front of him. He didn’t feel nearly as hungry as he had a while ago. “Splendid,” he said, without enthusiasm. He picked up his spoon. “Meant to ask you, by the way. That young fellow Raxivas.”

“Raxival,” Pleda amended.

“Yes, anyway, him. How’s he coming along?”

“Very well indeed,” Pleda said. He was picking his teeth with a little ivory and silver toothpick. Tooth-picking in the presence of the emperor was quite definitely treason, but Pleda had never quite grasped that. “I’d go so far as to say he’s got the makings. In five or so years, if anything happens to me, you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

“Five or so years.”

Pleda frowned. “Are you thinking of getting rid of me or something?”

“My dear fellow, no, of course not. My fault, didn’t think what I was saying. No, absolutely no question of that. No, what I was wondering was, do you think he’s up to covering for you? Just for a month or so. No longer than that.”

“Why would anyone need to cover for me?”

Glauca turned himself round in his chair so he could look Pleda in the eye. “I want you to do something for me,” he said.

“Of course.” No hesitation whatsoever. “Such as what?”

Glauca took a deep breath. But it’ll be fine, he told himself. After all, old Pleda’s from those parts originally, he won’t mind. Might actually be pleased at the chance. “I want you to keep an eye on this boy Musen,” he said.

Pleda frowned. “What, you mean taste his food?”

“Not that specifically,” Glauca said. “I meant, when he goes home to get the silver pack for me, go with him. Find out what’s going on, that sort of thing. Because something
is
going on,” Glauca continued, unable to stop his voice getting louder and higher. “Damned sight more to this than meets the eye, I’m sure of it.”

“You think so.”

“There has to be,” Glauca said. “I mean to say, even if it’s all just the usual thing, trying to cheat me out of money. That means there’s a scholar out there, someone I’ve never heard of, who knows as much about the silver packs as I do. That’s not possible.”

“I see what you mean,” Pleda said quietly. “Yes, that’s a thought.”

“You see what I’m getting at? It’d be like saying there’s a top-flight university out there somewhere that nobody knows anything about. And that’s mad. Makes no sense. But if there’s this mysterious scholar, he must have books, rare books, special books; so there’s got to be a library, and who’d have a library like that that I’m not aware of? I don’t mind telling you, it’s bothering me to death. Makes no sense at all. A secret university. Completely insane.”

“Who has universities?” Pleda said.

“Exactly, my dear fellow, exactly. Have you any idea what the Academy costs to run? An absolute fortune, bleeds me white. Who’s got that sort of money? And if you’ve got your own private university – well, the question arises, what else would you be likely to have? You answer me that.”

Pleda was nodding slowly. He looked like a clown. “So you want me—”

“Yes,” Glauca said. He made an effort, and added: “You’re the only one I really trust.”

Silence. Pleda was embarrassed. Well, he would be.

“Well?”

“Of course,” Pleda said. “If that’s what you want.”

When he’d gone, Glauca unstoppered his ink bottle and started to write out warrants.
To any into whose hands this warrant might come
, and so forth. Yes, but it was true; nobody else in the world he trusted half as much. He had to. It was all in Exinas; eleven of the forty-seven poisons – if you took a tiny dose of them every day for a long time, you became immune; so that, if you then swallowed a full, lethal dose, it wouldn’t hurt you at all. A food taster held the power of life and death over his master. Three times a day he had means and opportunity. After all, why had all the emperors since Azalo worn beards? Because nobody could be trusted to hold a sharp edge to the emperor’s throat.

…
afford to the said Pleda any and all goods, monies, service, assistance and facilitation whatsoever that he may require of you notwithstanding any contrary orders and provisions, express, statutory or customary …

His hand ached from writing – clerk’s job, but he couldn’t trust those damned fools to get it right, the wording had to be exact; if a thing’s worth doing, do it yourself. Everyone had always agreed, even his enemies, even his father, that he had exceptionally good, clear handwriting. Should’ve been a clerk, they sneered, more use in the scriveners’ office than on the throne. Well; they had a point.

Pleda dropped in to say goodbye. He was a sad sight. He’d wrapped himself up in coats and scarves and mittens until only his eyes and nose were visible (it was an unusually warm day, as it happened). He looked like a child’s toy.

“Look after yourself,” Glauca said. “I need you back here in one piece, understood?”

“Same to you,” came a voice from deep inside the insulation. “I told Raxival, you take bloody good care, and don’t listen to him if he says it’s all right, he’ll chance it. Let him know who’s the boss, I told him.”

Glauca laughed. “That I believe,” he said. He dug in the pocket of his gown and pulled out a purse. Fifty angels. “Buy yourself a few decent meals,” he said. “Keep out the cold.”

Pleda took the purse, glanced at it and shoved it away in a pocket. “I don’t like foreign food,” he said. “Doesn’t agree with me.”

K. J. Parker
is the pseudonym of Tom Holt, a full-time writer living in the south-west of England. When not writing, Holt is a barely competent stockman, carpenter and metalworker, a two-left-footed fencer, an accomplished textile worker and a crack shot. He is married to a professional cake decorator and has one daughter.
Find out more about K. J. Parker and other Orbit authors by registering for the free newsletter at
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.

Read on in
The Two of Swords: Part 8.