The Folding Knife (13 page)

"Yes, Dad."

"Sorry, I'm a bit deafer than usual today. Say again?"

"Yes, Dad."

"Splendid. Now then, what about Bloodvane versus the White Death of the Sclerians in the first round? Bloodvane's got the form, but they reckon White Death always performs much better on sand."

Basso won seven hundred nomismata betting on the cockfights, all of which he donated to the war widows' fund. That winter's issue of gold coinage bore the usual portrait of the First Citizen on the obverse and the winning cock, Rat-biter, on the reverse, crowned with laurel and with its claw raised, poised to deliver the winning blow.

War, he'd often said, was an admission of failure. It therefore came as something of a surprise when, on the first anniversary of his election as First Citizen, Bassianus Severus declared war on the Kingdom of Auxentia.

In his speech to the House, he set out his reasons. First, in spite of repeated requests, the Auxentines had done little or nothing to curb the activities of the pirates operating out of the coves and inlets around Enyalis. Second, a number of citizens of the Republic, innocent merchants, had been arrested by the Auxentine authorities on spurious or trivial charges, and were being held, in appalling conditions, in the King's jail. Third, the King had closed the vital commercial entrepot of Phrourion to Vesani commercial traffic, thereby interrupting the well-established trade route to the East. Finally, the King had unlawfully confiscated the property of three of the Republic's major trading companies, expelled their representatives and usurped their business interests. Although he was naturally reluctant to take military action unless absolutely necessary (ironic cheers from the Opposition benches), he felt that in the face of such a catalogue of provocation and abuse, he had no alternative. The Vesani Republic, he believed, had to prove to the world that its love of peace should never be mistaken for weakness or cowardice. Although (he continued) declaration of war was the prerogative of the First Citizen and therefore no vote of approval was necessary, he nevertheless called for a division on the issue, waiving his prerogative rights and undertaking to be bound by the outcome. A vote was taken, and the measure approved, ninety-eight wards to forty-one.

"Because I felt like it," Basso snapped, turning away. "Look, do I have to have a reason?"

They felt uncomfortable. It wasn't like Basso to refuse to answer a direct question; not to them. "All right, fine," Sentio muttered. "Sorry I asked. It's just, it's so unexpected. You could at least have told us, before announcing it in the House."

Basso turned back and looked at him. "Why?"

Sentio stiffened as if he'd been punched in the face. Cinio said, "Because we're on your side. We're here to help you."

"I didn't need your help," Basso replied. "Standing up and talking for five minutes is something I can manage on my own, thanks all the same. When I need your help, I'll ask."

Cinio stared at him for a moment, then nodded. "Right," he said. "Well, if that's everything, I've got work to get on with. Thank you so much for your time."

He walked away. Basso didn't seem to have noticed. In fact, they might as well not have been there.

"Basso," Tazio said quietly, "is anything the matter?"

"No." He didn't look up. He was signing letters. "Should there be?"

"Fine. In that case, we'll leave you to it."

"That's right," Basso said to his desktop. "Oh, and see if you can find General Aelius. I suppose I'd better talk to him."

They found Aelius in his garden, pruning the grapevine that grew against the back wall of the portico. He hadn't heard.

"Why?" he asked.

They looked at each other. Then Tazio said, "We don't know."

Aelius frowned, and carefully closed up the blade of his pruning knife and put it in his pocket. "Don't give me that," he said. "You're the Cabinet."

"We used to think so," Sentio replied sadly. "Now we're not quite sure what we are. Somewhere between a messenger service and the enemy." Then he frowned, and added, "I'm amazed he didn't talk to you about it."

"Me too," Aelius said. "I'm not a politician, but I'd have thought that if you're thinking of starting a war, it'd be common sense to ask your Commander-in-Chief if he thinks it'd be a good idea." He swept a pile of prunings off the paving slabs with his foot, then said, "Have you asked him?"

"Yes. He didn't want to talk to us."

"Oh." Slowly and carefully, like a surgeon preparing for an operation, Aelius took off his gardening shoes and pulled on his boots. "That's interesting. Did he say when he wanted to see me?"

"Straight away," Tazio said. "Look, you've known him longer than any of us. Any ideas?"

Aelius shook his head. "I scarcely know him at all," he said. "And he'll have his reasons."

Although it was some way from the barracks to the Severus house, and he had a perfectly good chaise and a coachman with nothing else to do, and senior officers of state were discouraged from going about the City on foot, for reasons of security and the dignity of office, Aelius decided to walk. He'd never quite managed to get used to the idea that walking was somehow a shameful thing (like war; an admission of failure), an activity confined to the lower orders who couldn't afford transport. Where he came from--But he'd left home a long time ago, and he sincerely hoped he'd never ever go back. Even so, he walked.

One reason was so that he could look about him. It always surprised him how inept the citizens of the Republic were at reading the mood of their own city, just by looking at it. He never had any trouble, but the politicians and bureaucrats he mixed with these days didn't seem to have a clue; probably, he reasoned, because they never walked anywhere.

First, people were talking to each other--not to strangers, of course; it'd take more than a mere outbreak of hostilities for that to happen--but the pace of human movement in the streets and squares had changed quite significantly. People stopped when they met an acquaintance, instead of just nodding, smiling and walking on. They seemed to be listening to each other rather more than usual; a sign that they were worried, or at least bewildered. Although Aelius didn't pause to eavesdrop, he could tell a lot from the volume and pitch of voices. He'd witnessed the start of quite a few wars during his time in the City, and it was easy to gauge how people felt about them. Louder, deeper voices and laughter suggested a popular war, where the expectation was of quick, easy victories, enemy losses high, home casualties low, and no distressingly steep rise in the rate of taxation. Louder, higher voices, with scowls and shaken heads, implied an unpopular war--shortages, taxes, interruption of normal business, inconvenience and nuisance. Low voices meant people were afraid the war might come here, like an unwelcome relative inviting himself to stay. This time, the main topic of discussion was why: why had Basso suddenly taken it into his head to pick a fight with a bunch of foreigners who nobody liked much but who'd never done them any significant harm, and who might as well not exist for the effect they had on daily life? A good question, Aelius thought; and one which the group mind of the Republic hadn't yet found an answer to.

Just past the Arch of Lucanus, with Zeno's Arch dead ahead, he stopped. I know nothing at all about the Auxentines, he thought, and in a day or so's time, I'll be setting out to do them as much damage as I possibly can.

He took a slight detour, down Coppergate, through the Linen Market into the Foregate, where the booksellers' stalls were. He went to his favourite stall.

"I want a history of Auxentia," he said.

The stallholder, a huge barrel-chested man with a vast, mossy beard who really should've been a blacksmith instead of a book-dealer, grinned at him. "I bet you do," he said. "Lucky for you I've got one left." He extended an unnaturally long arm and pulled a bronze tube out of the rack. "There you go," he said. "Bryzes of the Studium, in six books, complete and unabridged. With pictures," he added.

Aelius frowned. "How old is it?"

"Oh, really old," the bookseller said. "Three hundred years, maybe even more. None of your rubbish."

"I thought it would be," Aelius sighed. "Haven't you got anything a bit more up to date?"

He'd said the wrong thing. "Sorry, I don't stock
modern
books," said the bookseller, as though he'd just been asked for the
Bedchamber Dialogues
. "One nomisma twenty."

"How much?" Aelius raised his eyebrows.

"They've been flying off the rack," the bookseller said. "Sixth one I've sold today."

"At that price?"

Grin. "War's good for business. Amazing the rubbish you can shift in a war. Soon as I heard the announcement, I went straight home and dug about in the cellar. And there was me thinking my grandsons'd be lumbered with them."

Aelius sighed and produced a coin. "One nomisma."

"One twenty."

"No," Aelius said. "Put it another way. Do you really want to haggle over twenty nummi with the commander of thirty divisions?"

The bookseller's enormous hand closed around the bronze tube. "That'll be another twenty nummi," he said. "Please."

Aelius paid the twenty nummi, stuck the tube in his coat pocket and carried on up the Ropewalk to Whitestairs. Another thing about this place: more people here who could read and write than anywhere else on earth, but all they ever did was copy out books written centuries ago. The specialist medical library in Longacre was the biggest in the world, but every book you looked at started with a catalogue of different types of malignant demon. If you wanted to learn about medicine, you had to find a friendly doctor and ask him.

There were three entrances to the Severus house. There were the great iron gates, ten feet high and topped with spikes, that opened only for weddings, funerals and the visits of extremely important foreigners; the small side gate set into an otherwise blank wall (four ply of interleaved oak and ash board, to withstand battering rams), which led directly into the cloister; and the back gate, reached by an L-shaped alley with its own iron gates, where the tradesmen delivered. Aelius decided he wasn't a tradesman and went in at the side. A porter in a stab-proof quilted habergeon (nice and snug in winter, unbearably hot in summer) opened up for him and handed him over to a footman, plainly dressed in brown, who took him through the cloister, up six flights of the back stairs, and left him in a small, bare room with a chair and a tiny window, like an arrow slit. The last time he'd been here, he'd gone to the main gate and rattled it until a porter came, who'd refused to open up until threatened with being arrested for obstruction. He'd left, however, by the back door, through the kitchens.

It was Basso himself who eventually came to retrieve him. "Sorry," he said, "they must've forgotten to tell me you were here. Follow me."

He hadn't been in Basso's office before. It was square, about the size of the chapter house in the Studium, with an extraordinarily high roof, tapering pyramid-fashion to a point. All four walls were decorated with gilded mosaics. Aelius didn't know much about art, but he'd been to enough functions in temple to recognise the style and the subject matter: the ascent of the Invincible Sun, with full allegorical accomplishment, done in the Mannerist style of three centuries ago. There was something rather like it above the altar in the cathedral, but smaller and not quite so well executed.

Basso must've noticed him staring. "Used to be the family chapel," he said, "but about ninety years ago my great-grandfather fell out with the priests and got excommunicated, and they're still making up their minds whether to let him back into communion. Apparently it's got to go before a committee, and there's a backlog. My father used it as a lumber room. The paintings are by Badonicus."

Aelius nodded. "Very nice," he said. "What can I do for you?"

Basso pointed to a chair, on the far side of the desk. It was a massive thing, its legs made out of the leg bones of some large, exotic animal. The carving on the back was exceptionally fine and rather horrible. He sat down, and Basso perched on a plain, straight-backed chair on the near side of the desk. "Well, you can invade Auxentia, for a start," he said. "I take it you've heard the news."

"Senator Massentius told me just now," he replied. "It came as something of a surprise."

Basso smiled. "You want to know why."

"Yes."

"A number of reasons." Basso leaned back, tilting his chair a little. "There's the reasons I gave the House--aid and comfort to the pirates, the Phrourion blockade, being nasty to our traders. Will that do?"

Aelius shook his head. "Old stuff," he said. "We've put up with it for a long time."

"True." Basso uncovered a large silver-gilt box, which turned out to contain biscuits. Aelius took one and nibbled at it. "The real reason is timber."

"Timber," Aelius repeated.

"Correct." Basso put the lid back on the box. "To be precise, about ten square miles of the tallest, straightest pine anywhere in the world, on the Opoion promontory. We need it, they won't sell. Or at least, they're trying to make me pay a price that'd mess up the naval budget for years. I'm sick of being held to ransom by a king who milks his own goats."

Aelius raised an eyebrow. "Is that really a good reason for going to war?"