Colours in the Steel (39 page)

The first priority was to head Athli off before she could return to the subject of sweet dumplings. Accordingly, Venart launched a pre-emptive strike and asked how things were in the legal profession.

‘Oh, about the same as always,’ Athli replied. ‘Actually, we’re not in the law now. What I mean to say is, Loredan’s retired and opened a training school, teaching young advocates how to fence, and I’m his clerk.’ She frowned. ‘Well, that’s a bit out of date too. He’s working for the Security Council now,’ she added, a bit doubtfully. ‘You see, we mounted an attack on their camp, where they’re building the siege engines. It all went wrong, unfortunately, and a lot of our people were killed. It was mostly thanks to Loredan that we didn’t lose more than we did.’

Vetriz looked up sharply. ‘How wonderful,’ she said. ‘Oh, gods, listen to me, I’m sorry. What I meant was, how wonderful that he should be the hero of the hour and so forth. We’ll be able to tell everybody when we get home that...’

‘Please excuse my sister,’ Venart interrupted. ‘I only bring her on these trips in the hope of starting a war.’ He scowled across the table, and went on, ‘How serious is the situation, do you think? Everywhere I’ve been people are talking as if it’s the end of the world, but they’re acting as if nothing’s happened. Except for prices, of course; and even there it’s as if the whole thing’s just a way of stimulating trade.’

Athli shrugged her shoulders. ‘I simply don’t know,’ she said. ‘We’ve never been in this situation before. It’s hard to imagine anybody being able to storm the walls, let alone a bunch of people who are, let’s face it, little better than savages. That said, we’d be crazy not to take it seriously.’ She turned her head and looked away. ‘After all, they did make our expeditionary force look pretty silly. They’re saying now that that was because our generals made a complete mess of things and strolled into an ambush, so it can’t be taken as proof either way of whether they’re capable of giving us a hard time when we’re
not
making silly mistakes, if you see what I mean.’

Venart nodded. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose only time will tell. Do you know very much about these plainspeople? I assume you must do, if you’ve had trouble with them before.’

‘Not a great deal, no,’ Athli admitted. ‘The truth is, we aren’t ever anything more than mildly curious about anyone except ourselves. Up till recently, we’d never have dreamed anything like this could happen. We were quite friendly with them, in fact. There were some of them living and working here - after all, people from all over the world come here, and we don’t think anything of it.’

Venart nodded. ‘The legendary Perimadeian tolerance,’ he said sententiously. ‘Looks like it hasn’t done you any favours in this instance. After all, if they’re basically savages and now they’re building siege engines, it must have been someone from here who taught them how to do it.’

He got a cold look in return for that. ‘What are we supposed to do?’ she retorted. ‘Keep all our knowledge and skills deadly secret in case they get used against us? We’re a nation of traders and manufacturers; if we did that we’d starve. The same goes for if we took against foreigners. You, of all people, should appreciate that.’

Fair point, Venart admitted to himself; at least she’d had the good manners not to point out that the Islanders were at best the third-generation descendants of pirates who’d several times tried to attack the city. He decided to change the subject.

‘Talking of trade,’ he said, ‘you wouldn’t happen to know anything about rope?’

Athli looked at him and giggled. ‘Oddly enough, I do,’ she replied. ‘We had a regular client in the rope business. What do you want to know?’

Vetriz had felt her attention wavering while the conversation had been about politics; as soon as they started talking about rope (horsehair for elasticity; pure flax is cheaper and almost as good, but don’t let them fob you off with anything made from what they call sailmaker’s twine, it isn’t really pure flax) she let her mind wander. Fairly soon, what with the warmth of the room and the comfortable weight of the food, she was starting to doze . . .

And was suddenly somewhere else - rather disconcerting, until she subconsciously registered that it was a dream. The confusing part of it was that she was also still in the dining room of the inn, sitting at a table covered in crumbs and little morsels of escaped food; and there were Ven and her new friend Athli, still busily chatting about rope and oblivious to anything else. But there were other people sitting round the table as well, and she recognised them easily, as if they were people she knew well. The tall, worried-looking man was Bardas Loredan; well, she did know him, and also, regrettably, his brother Gorgas. Now that she could see them both together the family resemblance was obvious; she hadn’t seen it in Gorgas before, but they both had the same nose and the same heavy muscle in the jaw, and, most noticeable of all, the same alert, observant eyes. Nothing romantic or even particularly attractive about the Loredan eyes. They were hard but not cold, a rather dark brown (Athli had green eyes, curse her; some girls have all the luck) and neither of the two brothers seemed to blink as often as most people did. Another curious thing: Gorgas had told her he wasn’t on speaking terms with his younger brother, and yet here they were talking quite easily, just the way you’d expect two brothers to talk to each other. It was a pity that she couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whatever it was, it was bound to be more interesting than rope.

And there was a woman sitting on Gorgas’ left, between him and Ven; she was a Loredan too, the same nose and jaw (it doesn’t suit her) and unmistakably the same eyes. She was older than both of them but too young to be their mother, so Vetriz deduced she was either an older sister or a youngish aunt. Probably a sister; the resemblance was too marked for it to be anything but a direct blood line. She wasn’t saying anything, and when Vetriz decided to talk to her, she suddenly wasn’t there any more. Instead she saw a young man she didn’t recognize at all. He was no more than eighteen, shorter, fairer and slighter than the rest of them, and his features were small and a little pudgy, making him look younger still. For some reason she knew he was one of the plainspeople, and she decided he was here in the dream because they’d been talking about them and she’d fallen asleep after a heavy meal.

She studied him with interest, never having come across a genuine barbarian before. He wasn’t much to look at, certainly not very barbarous; his hair was a little greasy but neatly combed - maybe the grease was some kind of dressing; not being able to smell anything in this dream she couldn’t tell if it was some variety of scented oil or pomade - and he was wearing a rather plain-looking shirt with full sleeves, which closer inspection revealed to be made of very fine buckskin. She couldn’t see what he was wearing on his legs because the table was in the way. At any rate, his manners seemed acceptable enough; he was sitting quite still, hadn’t even got his elbows on the table, and appeared to be listening to the great rope debate with every sign of polite interest. He looks like somebody’s apprentice, Vetriz decided, who’s been allowed to come to dinner as a special treat.

Since she had nobody else to talk to, she decided to strike up a conversation with the young barbarian. She smiled and caught his eye. He smiled back, rather pleasantly.

‘Don’t say you’re a rope fancier too,’ she heard herself saying.

‘Most of it’s going over my head,’ he admitted. ‘But it’s always worth listening when people are discussing something they know about. You can learn things that way, and knowledge is never wasted.’

Vetriz grinned. ‘You sound just like my brother,’ she said. ‘That’s a favourite saying of his. In fact, that’s probably why I just dreamed you saying it.’

‘You may well be right,’ the barbarian replied. ‘As it happens, rope’s something I need to learn about. You see, we’re building a whole lot of torsion engines - catapults, that sort of thing - and it’s the rope that powers the arm and makes them go. None of us have the faintest idea what sort of rope’s best for the purpose. I imagine we want something tough and springy.’

‘Ah.’ Vetriz nodded. ‘I might be able to help you there, because just before I lost interest in what they were saying, that girl there told my brother that horsehair’s best for elasticity - does that make any sense to you?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Oh, good, because it’s wasted on me. Anyway, horsehair’s the stuff, and if you can’t get that, pure flax is meant to be almost as good, though apparently you should avoid sailmaker’s twine like the plague.’

‘Oh.’ The barbarian’s brow creased a little. ‘That’s odd, because a man I talked to at the arsenal said sailmaker’s twine was what he used himself. That didn’t mean an awful lot to me, because I wouldn’t recognise sailmaker’s twine if you wove it into a noose and strung me up with it.’

Vetriz giggled. ‘Perish the thought,’ she said. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, let’s put the subject of rope firmly on one side and talk about something else, shall we? In fact, I’d like to ask you a question, if it won’t offend you.’

The barbarian shrugged. ‘Be my guest,’ he said.

‘All right. I was just wondering: what is it about this city that you don’t like? I mean, you must hate it an awful lot if you’re going to all this trouble to destroy it. Or is that what you people do, sort of a fundamental part of your cultural identity?’

‘Not really,’ the barbarian replied. ‘I mean, we do fight among ourselves sometimes, but on the whole we’re quite peaceful. Certainly we aren’t ones for plunder and loot, like your ancestors were; all that gold and silver and furniture and stuff’d be just so much dead weight to lug around with us. No, the thing with the city’s personal. It’s something that’s got to be done, that’s all.’

‘Really?’ Vetriz raised an eyebrow. ‘And why’s that?’

The barbarian pulled a face. ‘I’d rather not say,’ he replied. ‘If you really must know, why don’t you ask those two?’

And before Vetriz could ask him which two he meant, he wasn’t there either, and Venart was prodding her shoulder with his forefinger (exactly the way he did when they were children, and she’d hated it then) and telling her to wake up because it was late.

‘Don’t want to wake up,’ she mumbled sleepily, aware that the Loredan brothers had gone too. ‘Sleep when it’s late. Wake up when it’s early.’

Venart sighed. ‘Like I said before,’ he said to Athli, who was grinning, ‘you really must excuse my sister. I can’t take her anywhere.’

 

Temrai, who’d been dozing by the fire, suddenly woke up. ‘Horsehair,’ he said.

Uncle Anakai looked at him over his cup. ‘What did you just say?’ he asked.

‘For the catapults,’ Temrai explained. He shook his head, felt dizzy; too much to drink, he decided. ‘I’ve just remembered, I think. Anyway, that’s what we should be using.’

Anakai shrugged his shoulders. ‘You’re the boss,’ he replied. ‘And it’s something we’ve got plenty of, though people are going to take some persuading before they’ll let you take a pair of shears to their prize bloodstock.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘We’ll have to start a fashion for bobbed manes and tails. They’ll agree to anything if it’s fashionable.’

‘Good idea,’ Temrai said. He was dimly aware that he’d been dreaming; but he never remembered his dreams for more than a split second after he’d woken up. ‘We’ll get onto it first thing in the morning,’ he yawned. ‘Right now, I think I’ll go to bed. I seem to have woken up with something of a headache.’

Uncle Anakai smiled. ‘You sleep it off, then,’ he replied. ‘You’ve earned a good night’s rest. Oh, by the way, who’s Loriden?’

‘I don’t know,’ Temrai replied with a frown. ‘Should I?’

‘You kept muttering the name while you were asleep. Some girl, obviously,’ Uncle Anakai added with a grin. ‘It’s a girl’s name, after all.’

Temrai thought for a moment, then shook his head.

‘Never heard of her,’ he said.

 

 

Next morning, his head buzzing and his belt heavy with money, Venart set off for the ropewalks.

It was one of the sights of Perimadeia; a spacious district with wide streets, one of the few places in the city where you could see the buildings without an endless procession of carts and wagons getting in the way. Because there was so little traffic, it had a peaceful, almost park-like atmosphere, spoilt only by the disgusting smell of tar. Although the streets were broad you couldn’t walk down the middle; you had to creep along the sides, trying not to get in the way of the ropemakers as they twisted their skeins of cord, stretched on short wooden pillars from one side of the street to the other, winding ten, twelve, often as many as thirty strands of fine line together to make one strong, pliable rope. At first sight it looked like the web of a huge and slovenly spider.

In the light of his new-found expertise, Venart had decided to place his order with one Vital Ortenan, who he remembered as having boasted of his skill in making long rope from horsehair. He found Ortenan sitting outside his shop, his feet up on one of the wooden pillars and a mug of cider in his hand.

‘Good morning,’ Venart said briskly. ‘I expect you remember me. I’d like to buy some rope.’

Ortenan looked at him. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ he said.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, you’ll be lucky,’ Ortenan repeated, scratching his ear. ‘No rope today, sorry.’

Venart frowned. He knew most of the standard bargaining gambits, but this one was new to him. ‘How do you mean, no rope?’ he asked. ‘You had tons of the stuff in there yesterday.’

‘I did,’ Ortenan said. ‘Yesterday. Then, round about an hour before closing up, a bunch of government men came by and took the lot. Every last bloody inch.’ He scowled at the thought. ‘Gave me a bit of paper saying I’d be paid according to the official tariff in due course. In other words, I’ve been requisitioned. Marvellous, isn’t it?’