The Folding Knife (31 page)

He shrugged. "We can play it out if you like."

She moved her rook; empty gesture of aggression. He defended his pawn. "I agree," she said, "it's a draw. That means we play again."

The next game was possibly the best he'd ever played. He lost it without letting her see he was trying to lose, which took so much more skill than just winning. She was delighted; not, he was fairly sure, by the reprieve of her virtue, but because she'd beaten him at chess. It was a lie, of course, and properly speaking there's no place for lies in a good marriage. He understood why she got so angry when he cheated to let her win.

"Best of three?" he said.

She grinned at him. "Certainly not," she said. "I don't believe in pushing my luck."

"That wasn't luck, it was skill."

"If you say so." She started putting the pieces back where they belonged. "My people would say that Skyfather guided my hand, to keep me from sin."

"I hope not," he replied. "That'd be cheating."

She frowned. "I don't know," she said. "As I understand it, if Skyfather helps you with something, you're still entitled to take all the credit. It's certainly that way with battles, so presumably it holds true with chess as well."

He put back the last two black pieces. "You don't believe in your gods, but you believe in sin," he said. "That's a contradiction."

"Yes." She smiled at him. "You seem very interested in my people," she said. "I'm surprised at that. I'd have thought you'd consider us to be mere savages."

"I like savages," he said. "In moderation, of course. Enough to marry one, at any rate."

"Ah." She pulled a stern face. "But I'm not a savage any more. I'm civilised."

He nodded. "Just as well one of us is, I suppose."

"All Vesani are civilised," she said. "The definition of civilisation is being like the Vesani. It would never occur to you to take seriously the idea of a universe adapted from the ribcage of a bear."

"True," Basso said. "We'd ask where the bear came from in the first place."

"Indeed. Where do you think the universe came from?"

"I neither know nor care." He stood up. "I'm feeling much better now. I think I'll go and do some work."

She nodded. "It would help," she said. "Shall I tell them to send you up some tea?"

"Yes, thanks." He paused to look at her. "My sister's a hell of a chess player," he said.

"As good as you?"

"No," he replied. "But she really hates to lose. Her idea of a deeply satisfying game is a bitterly contested draw. Bassano, on the other hand, either wins in the first twelve moves or loses interest and makes stupid mistakes."

"I've been thinking," she said.

He walked back to his chair and sat down. "Well?"

"A job for him. Not a career," she added. "Start him off with a job, and see how he takes to it. That will help you decide what he's best suited to."

Basso raised an eyebrow. "I think I follow," he said. "What did you have in mind?"

She folded her hands in her lap. "You told Sentio you had reason to believe that the governor of the Mint is dishonest."

"Yes. And?"

"Dismiss him," she said. "Appoint Bassano in his place."

Basso frowned. "I'm not so sure about that," he said. "It's a serious job."

"Give him someone to advise him," she replied. "It has to be a serious job in order to engage his interest. You should tell him you need him to do it, since there's nobody else you can trust. In the present circumstances, trustworthiness matters far more than experience or even ability. You can also point out that the job will be temporary, while you choose a suitable permanent replacement."

"I'm still not sure," Basso said. "It'd all depend who I put in with him. I can't spare Antigonus. I suppose we could do without Tragazes for a couple of months, but I don't know that Bassano would work well with him. Also, he's looking after the twins."

She moved her shoulders very slightly; not really a shrug. "I'm sure you can find someone," she said. "You asked me for a suggestion. I wouldn't presume to advise you about the details."

Basso clicked his tongue. "Why is it," he said sadly, "that when people duck out of the difficult, boring stuff and leave it all for me to do, they call it not presuming?" She laughed. He knew she had no sense of humour, just a very good sense of timing. "That's all right," he said, "I'll think of someone. And yes, it's a good idea. Thank you."

She accepted his thanks with a slight nod, like an emperor acknowledging the loyalty of his troops.

"It's the most extraordinary place," Bassano said. "The people are all lunatics, and the noise is unbelievable. They've put extra-thick curtains on the back of my door so I can hear myself think when I'm actually sitting in my office, but once you go outside into the main shop..."

"But you like it there."

"God, yes. It's..." Bassano grinned. "It's different."

Overhead, a single beam of light sliced down through the red, blue and purple of the round window, directly above the altar. The idea was that the first light of dawn should fall directly on the huge (to Basso's way of thinking, rather vulgar) golden statue of the Invincible Sun, striking the mirror in His outstretched left hand and reflecting onto the central panel of the jewelled triptych on the centre of the altar; at which point, so the theory ran, He was considered to be present in Temple, and the service could begin. It was unfortunate that Basso should have chosen to get married on a cloudy day. The light kept darting around (all over the place, his father would have said, like the mad woman's shit) but so far it had managed to avoid the mirror. That meant Basso and Bassano were trapped over on one side of the chapel, Melsuntha and her lot were hunkered down out of sight on the other side, and nothing could happen.

"I'm glad you've settled in so well," Basso said.

"Me too. And astonished," Bassano added. "After all, it's the first actual job of work I've ever done. I fully expected I'd be useless at it. Mind you, your man Bringas is keeping a very close eye on me, which is just as well. I like him. He's got a very dry sense of humour."

News to me, Basso thought. Maybe he's one of those tiresome people who think you can only show proper respect by being boring. "It hadn't occurred to me that the noise would be a problem," he said.

"In the Mint? Are you kidding? Close on a thousand men with hammers bashing steel dies all day long." Bassano shifted a little; cramp, presumably, from standing still in one place for so long. "There's one particular note," he went on. "Actually, there's about five; but four of them mean a slight misstrike. The fifth one's what you get when a coin's been struck perfectly. It's like a thousand-part orchestra all playing the triangle, very slightly out of time."

The light flashed off the silver shield of Victory, on the other side of the nave. Way off target. "I'm amazed anybody can work there," he said.

"Oh, they're all deaf," Bassano said. "Which means they shout all the time, even when it's quiet. I imagine you'd know all about that."

"Bringas says you're doing a good job," Basso said.

"Well, he would."

"Not to me." Basso smiled. "We went through that when I gave him the assignment. If he says you're doing well, I believe him."

Bassano shrugged. "I was about to say it's no big deal, it's not exactly difficult, but that's not true. It's not difficult like advanced calculus, or differentiating between primary and secondary premises in applied logic. It's just there's so much of it."

"So much of what?"

"Everything." Bassano grinned. "The moment you've dealt with one thing, there's something else needing to be done immediately. You haven't got time to think, you just do stuff, all day. That's what I mean by different."

"Welcome to the real world," Basso said.

"I like it. Maybe not for the rest of my life, but--"

"We're on, I think." The mirror was flashing, and the priest had come scurrying forward. "You've got the ring?"

A private service, in the chapel of the House. Father Chrysophilus, late of the Studium, now chaplain-in-ordinary to the First Citizen (a three-hundred-year-old sinecure Basso had revived specially for him), conducted a brief, slightly nervous ceremony in front of fifteen people, four of them armed guards, who kept looking round for hidden assassins even while they were joining in the hymns. Cinio and Sentio were there for the government, with Senator Olybrias (at Basso's particular request) representing the loyal Opposition. Antigonus hadn't been able to make it, so Tragazes represented the Bank. He had a loud singing voice, like a drunk in an alley. The whole thing reminded Basso of a pauper's funeral, the only difference that he could see being that it wasn't being conducted at the public expense.

When it was over, he went with Cinio and Sentio straight to a highways oversight committee meeting. Bassano and Melsuntha rode home together in a hired chaise.

"It went well," she said.

Bassano didn't comment on that. Instead, he said, "I'm very fond of my uncle."

"I know." She gave him a look that wasn't a smile, but which conveyed approval. "So am I."

"Good," Bassano said. "You know all about what happened, with him and my mother."

"Of course."

He thought: it won't change anything. "I'm a bit concerned he's off his guard where my mother's concerned. He beat her fair and square over Olybrias, but..."

She shook her head. "He's well aware of the threat she continues to pose," she said. "But he loves his sister very much, which rules out any sort of pre-emptive strike on his part. He will wait for her to attack again, and react as best he can when the time comes."

"Ah." It would be some time, Bassano decided, before he got used to her way of talking. "That's all right, then."

"How are you getting on at the Mint?" she asked, and he was able to turn on the charm and the wit, which saved him the trouble of thinking. She listened to him for a while, and then they were back at the Severus house. Job done.

"I'd better get back to work," Bassano said. "You know, every time I say that it sounds strange. Just the thought of me and work together in the same sentence."

"I have work to do as well," she said (and of course, she was still his social secretary, or director of protocol, or whatever the title was). "Are you dining with us tonight?"

Bassano nodded. "These days, I'm too tired in the evenings for riotous living."

"The twins will be here."

"Splendid," Bassano said, maybe with a little too much enthusiasm. "Haven't seen them for ages."

It wasn't a particularly enjoyable meal. Clearly the twins had done something wrong and were in disgrace, but whatever it was, nobody was inclined to mention it. They were polite, mostly silent but very quick to answer when asked a direct question. Otherwise, they ventured no opinions. Apart from a polite, rather formal greeting, neither of them spoke to Bassano all evening.

Melsuntha went to bed early. Basso had work to do, and stayed up late.

On the third day after the Kalends of Histamenon of the plague year,
AUC
997, six caravels sailed into the bay. Nobody remembered seeing them, which direction they came from, whether they came singly and held station off the Point until they'd all arrived, or whether they came in convoy. Citizens of the Republic tended not to see caravels in the bay, in the same way they didn't see pigeons roosting on the guttering.

One of the few definite facts about their arrival is that they tied up on Pier 7 at twelve minutes to noon. This was vouched for by the captain of an Auxentine brigantine, who happened to notice the time on the harbour arch clock as he pulled out, vacating a post on Pier 7 where one of the caravels subsequently moored. That they put in relatively late in the day supports the theory that they came separately, not in convoy, and rendezvoused at the Point; the delay, it is argued, suggests that one or more of the caravels was held up and arrived late.

In accordance with standard procedure, two customs officers were waiting on Pier 7 to receive them, inspect their bills of lading, calculate any dues, make the usual cursory search for contraband or items bearing special duty. The furthest caravel on the right put out a gangplank, in the usual way, but before the customs men could board, a number of men from the ship (estimates vary between three and nine) came on shore, produced hand-axes from inside their coats, and killed the customs men without hesitation or saying a word. Remarkably, there were only two eye-witnesses to the actual killing; one of them was sure he'd misinterpreted what he'd seen, and went about his business. The other took a moment to recover from the shock, then ran to the harbour master's office.

Exactly how many men disembarked from the caravels will probably never be known. The general assumption was that they were loaded to capacity and had come straight from their home port, in which case, each ship could theoretically carry something in the order of ninety men, putting the total number at five hundred and forty. The weight of the evidence--the speed with which they disembarked, the sheer inconvenience of landing so many men on the cramped space of Pier 7--suggests that there were rather fewer, and best estimates put the total at somewhere between three and four hundred. Accounts also differ wildly concerning how the men were armed. Some witnesses claimed to have seen mail shirts, helmets, shields and spears. Most, however, make no mention of armour, and limit their armament to bows, cutlasses, hangers, axes and knives. A few did carry small shields, since two were recovered later.