Colours in the Steel (14 page)

His colleague furrowed his brow. ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ he conceded. ‘For myself, I’m morally certain I could detect something else there apart from our defences. And before you lecture me about gratuitous mysticism and the doctrine of economy of effect, I’m basing this purely on observation. I think our defences were working on him alone, and as a result he was able to keep hopping about warding off good strokes with bad ones. Alvise’s sword breaking was something quite other.’

Alexius nodded. ‘Well, of course. It affected Alvise, presumably quite drastically.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Somebody else’s curse on Alvise, perhaps?’ he suggested.

‘It’s possible. But maybe curse is putting it too strongly. My sense of it was that it was just a little touch; not because it was a little power, more that it was a trivial application of it. A gentle nudge rather than a sharp blow, if you follow me.’

Alexius leant back against the wall and stared at the mosaics on the ceiling. Without realising, he began to count the stars. ‘That would be a highly unusual phenomenon,’ he said. ‘If this power was as great as you’re suggesting, the reaction must be terrible. Who would risk that for the sake of a gentle nudge, as you put it? If I was letting myself in for a high-level reaction, I think I’d want to slam down on the victim like a sledgehammer.’

‘That occurred to me too. But what if it’s a natural?’

Alexius’ eyes narrowed. ‘An unconscious action,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, though the phenomenon is mercifully rare. My ex-student, perhaps.’

Gannadius shook his head. ‘You’d have noticed it in her, surely. You’d never have overlooked a power like that.’

‘It could be very deeply rooted,’ Alexius ventured, rubbing his shin to clear the pins and needles. The bed in his cell was uncomfortable enough when used for its ordained purpose. Using it as a chair was a foolhardy act. ‘But no, I think I’d have noticed. And besides,’ he added as a thought struck him, ‘if she’d had any real power of her own, she’d have stopped me before I got the curse wrong. And there’d have been little telltale traces of her malice already present when I got there. I think we can rule her out. But the idea of a natural at the court today is a sound one. I can just imagine someone in the crowd rooting for the underdog, visualising the sword breaking, the underdog saved and exalted; it would be purely instinctive—’

‘Quite.’ Gannadius stood up, walked a few paces in a circle, and sat down again. ‘In which case,’ he went on, ‘doesn’t it complicate things even more? If we have to go back into your visualisation again, who knows what we’ll find when we get there?’

Alexius lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind.
Above all, keep a sense of proportion
. ‘The consequences,’ he said. ‘Let’s think it through, shall we, before we lose our sense of proportion. The worst that can happen—’

‘Is that the curse will come back directly on you,’ Gannadius interrupted peevishly, ‘with dire consequences for you and, by implication, your colleagues. The Patriarch of Perimadeia, killed by one of his own curses—’

‘How would anyone know that?’ Alexius objected.

‘My dear fellow, perfectly healthy, well-fed men don’t just curl up and die for no reason.’

‘Tell them I’d been ill for some time. Natural causes. A merciful release, in fact.’ He opened his eyes. ‘You really think it might come to that?’

‘My dear fellow—’

Alexius sat up and swung his legs to the floor. ‘I think it’s time I was perfectly frank with you, Gannadius. I don’t understand this.’

‘Alexius, you’re the Patriarch of—’

‘Yes, I am. By definition I know more about the operation of the Principle than any man living. And I don’t understand how the wretched thing
works
. And neither do you,’ he added, before Gannadius could speak. ‘The sum of our knowledge - our combined knowledge, mind you - is that it does work. It’s taken us our joint lifetimes studying the work of thousands of philosophers and scholars over hundreds of years, but we know that it works. That’s it, the extent of our knowledge. Controlling it’s another matter entirely.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘And now,’ Alexius went on, ‘there seems to be evidence that there’s a natural in the city who
can
control it. Probably,’ he added bitterly, ‘quite instinctively and possibly without even realising what he’s doing. In addition, just to add a little human interest, there’s a curse of my making charging around the city out of control and apparently hell-bent on attaching itself to
me
.’ He bit his knuckles savagely. ‘Do you know, if only we’d confined our studies to mathematics and ethical speculation, which is after all what we’re
supposed
to be doing—’

‘Yes, but we didn’t. Or at least,
you
didn’t.’

‘You were only too pleased to get involved.’

‘All right.’ Gannadius rubbed his face with his hands. ‘This isn’t helping. If we can’t control this problem, do we know anybody who can?’

Alexius sighed. ‘As you yourself pointed out just now, I’m the Patriarch of Perimadeia. And you’re the Archimandrite of the City Academy. Asking for help’s a luxury we gave up when we accepted the promotion.’

‘The natural,’ Gannadius said suddenly. ‘Maybe
he
could put it right.’

‘But didn’t we just agree he probably doesn’t even know he’s doing it? Even if we could convince him that he’s got the power, there’s no reason to believe he can do it on demand.’

‘We don’t appear to have any other options.’

‘True.’ Alexius slumped, his chin on his chest. ‘But how do we find this natural of yours? We can’t very well wander through the city until we find a miracle.’

Gannadius thought for a long time. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I don’t see what else we
can
do.’

‘But that could take years. And I haven’t got...’

‘I know,’ Gannadius said. ‘And there’s more, if you think about it. You’re assuming the natural’s a citizen; what if he isn’t? What if he’s a foreigner, here on business and due to leave in a day or so? Or perhaps he’s already left.’

‘There’s no reason to think that.’

‘Isn’t there? Ask yourself: if he’s a citizen, someone who lives here permanently, why haven’t we come across his work before? The odds must be against this being the first manifestation of his power.’

‘It could be.’

‘Yes, but the odds are against that. A power so strong that it gives effect to a hardly conscious wish—’

‘That was only theorising.’

‘And my observation too, remember. I was there, in the court.’

‘That’s true.’ Alexius groaned. ‘Go on, then, you suggest something.’

Gannadius shrugged his shoulders. ‘Apart from combing the streets, I can’t think of anything. And of course there’s no guarantee whatsoever—’

‘A trap,’ Alexius said suddenly. ‘No, not a trap as such. A lure. Something likely to provoke him into using the power, or make the power happen without him doing anything consciously. Flush it out into the open.’

‘Splendid idea. How do you propose going about it?’

Alexius sniffed, then blew his nose. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed.

Gannadius leant forwards, his chin cupped in his hands. ‘There must be someone we can ask,’ he said.

‘How many times have I got to tell you—?’

‘It’s a speciality,’ Gannadius replied. ‘We need a specialist. How many students of the Principle are there in this city? Thousands. There must be one of them who’s made a study of this little corner of the subject. Everyone has to study
something
.’

‘So we hold a conclave, tell all our people we’re in desperate trouble, and ask if anyone happens to know the answer. Please, Gannadius.’

‘Obviously we’d have to be circumspect about it. We could issue a paper full of mistakes and wait to see who takes issue with it.’

‘Fine. Have you any idea how long that’d take? And suppose the natural’s a foreigner, as you suggested, and all set to leave the city. We simply don’t have time to do this properly.’

‘Guess, you mean?’

‘Educated guess. A trap to catch a natural.’ Alexius gazed over his steepled hands at the chandelier moorings in the middle of the floor. ‘Anything’s better than sitting here bickering with each other.’ He smiled painfully. ‘Remarkable, isn’t it? We’re supposed to be
good
at this.’

‘We are,’ Gannadius replied gloomily. ‘That’s what worries me.’

 

 

Loredan woke up with blood on his shirt. He examined the cut, bound it up with fresh wool and damp moss, and put on another shirt.

No bread in the apartment; so he struggled painfully into his coat (his side was stiff, and putting his arm in the sleeve wasn’t pleasant), trudged down the stairs and through the maze of narrow streets to the south of the ‘island’ and a bakery he knew well. They were used to him there, and were no longer offended when he came in asking for mouldy bread.

‘Saved some for you,’ the baker’s son replied. ‘It’s the blue kind you like, isn’t it?’

He’d given up trying to explain long ago, and smiled instead as he handed over a copper quarter. The boy waved the money away. ‘On the house,’ he said magnificently. ‘We don’t get many famous people in here.’

‘In that case I’ll have a fresh loaf as well. What d’you mean, famous?’

The boy chuckled. ‘The great Bardas Loredan, they’re calling you. Made a lot of friends round here yesterday.’

‘Did I? How did I manage that?’

‘Bet on you, didn’t we?’

Loredan raised an eyebrow. ‘Neighbourly loyalty?’

‘Bloody good odds, more like. Hell, if I’d known you were going to win, I’d have laid more’n a copper half. Still, at two hundred to one—’

Loredan picked up his bread. ‘Sounds like you made more out of the case than I did,’ he said irritably. ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me they were offering two hundred to one? I could have done with some of that.’

Back home, up the interminable stairs. Other fencers kept in shape by running or fooling about in the gymnasium at the Schools; all he had to do was get from the street to his front door. The loaf the baker had kept for him was admirably suited for his purpose; covered in horrible-looking blue and white spots all over one side. Carefully he scraped the best of the blue bits into the palm of his left hand with the point of his dagger, and poured them onto a fresh sheet of parchment. Then he unwound the bandage, patted the mould gingerly onto the raw cut, and tied the harness back up again. He had no idea whether this particular ritual did any good or not; he hadn’t had a badly infected wound since he’d started doing it, but law-swords were usually kept clean and rust-free anyway, so perhaps it was simply coincidence. He cut a slice of the new loaf and tipped out the last half-cupful of yesterday’s wine.

The business with the bread mould was something he’d learnt on the plains, a long time ago. When he’d first heard about it, he’d assumed it was just another leg-pull for the benefit of a raw recruit, a joke in the same category as mules’ eggs and the legendary left-handed arrows every kid soldier gets sent to fetch from the quartermaster. In time he realised it wasn’t a joke, though he shrank from using the treatment himself. The old story was that a group of wounded men who had nothing to stop their wounds with except the stale bread in a saddlebag had all healed up in record time. A likely story, Loredan felt. His own theory was that it had something to do with the similar-looking mould the plainsmen deliberately put into their evil-tasting goats’ milk cheese. After all, they did have a way with unlikely sounding cures and medicines. There was one highly suspect recipe involving willow bark boiled in water that really did work against headaches, to his certain knowledge.

The plainsmen; it was the second time he’d thought about them since the fight. It was the snapping of yet another good sword that brought them to mind, and the explanation he’d given the tiresome girl at the tavern. Because they brazed the edges of their swords to the cores with some sort of solder that melted at a much lower heat, they were far less likely to muck up the temper of their blades and in consequence their swords tended not to snap. True, the plains sword was a curved single-edged affair, totally unsuitable for legal work; but the technique was presumably valid for any design. He wondered if anyone in the city knew how to use the plains method, and if so how he could find out who it was without letting anyone else know what he had in mind.

Then he remembered. Through with all that now; quitting the profession, going to do something else. He scowled, and cut another slice of bread.

He’d considered it many times before; after practically every fight these last six years. Thinking about it and actually doing it were different matters entirely. Always his excuse had been that there was nothing else he could do, no other way of making a living, too late to learn a new skill and so forth. Until yesterday, he’d managed to force himself to believe it, although he’d known for a long time it wasn’t true.

The truth was that for the last ten years or so he’d been walking around with a terrible sense of being left over from the war, needing to be used up like scraps of meat or offcuts of leather. It was a stupid attitude, not to mention a dangerous one, and he despised himself for it. But he had never quite managed to face up to it, with the result that he’d carried on, a fight at a time, collecting scars on his body and cutting a thick swathe through a whole generation of advocates.

It was time to admit that it didn’t work. If it was going to work, it should have done so yesterday.

Even so. Starting a school or running a tavern. All the wonders of the world are at your fingertips; all you have to do is stay alive long enough.

He put his coat back on (even more painful this time) and toiled up the hill to the Schools. It was the last place he felt like going the day after a big case. There would be other advocates, clerks, the unsavoury hangers-on, the profession in all its glory, and he’d rather not have to make conversation and put up with a succession of left-handed congratulations. He pulled his collar up round his neck and crept in through the side door.