The Folding Knife (7 page)

"He's a free man now," Basso replied; "he may well prefer to resign."

"I hope so," Father said.

But he didn't. When the coup was complete and Vipsanius Vitellius had signed the transfer of undertakings (never before had Basso seen such concentrated hatred in a man's eyes; he studied it carefully and with great interest), he summoned Antigonus to his office in the Exchange.

"I like what you've done with it," the old man said. "You have taste, which is rare in people of your class."

Basso smiled and pointed to a chair. "I had someone choose for me," he said. "My wife, actually."

"Ah." Antigonus sat down. "Just as I said. The Licinii are parvenus, new money, and therefore not nobility. Accordingly, it's perfectly possible that your wife has good taste."

"I'll tell her you said that." Basso leaned forward a little and folded his hands. It was one of Antigonus' mannerisms, which he'd adopted and made his own, so that he no longer realised he was doing it. "Well?" he said.

"I suppose congratulations are in order."

Basso smiled, opened a box on the floor next to his chair and took out a simnel cake. "I found it's an acquired taste," he said. "I've acquired it."

Antigonus didn't move. "Is that all it was?" he said. "Getting your own back."

"Certainly not." Basso cut the cake with his special gold-handled penknife, which nobody else was allowed to use. "It's a very sound investment. The Friends and the Charity combined will be the fourth-biggest bank in the Republic. When we win the war and the Treasury pays back its loans, I'll pay off the debt I took on, and I'll have got your bank for nothing." He paused and frowned. "We are going to win the war, aren't we?"

Antigonus laughed. "Of course we are," he said. "We have the best mercenary army money can buy, and the Ogive are savages. We'd have won comfortably six months ago, if we hadn't had that difficulty with supplies."

Basso grinned, a childish grin of pure joy. "I knew I was right," he said. "It was you, wasn't it?"

"That would be treason," Antigonus said. "If it could be proved that I'd deliberately bought up stocks of oats and bacon with a view to preventing the War Office from supplying the army, with the result that the spring offensive had to be put back..."

"Of course," Basso said. "You did nothing of the sort. You were just speculating in commodities, which is perfectly legitimate, and when the time came to sell, the War Office couldn't meet your price. Later you dropped the price, out of sheer patriotic fervour, and sold them the supplies at seven per cent over cost; practically gave them the stuff." He shook his head. "Come and work for me again," he said. "It'd be fun."

"Work for you again," Antigonus repeated. "It's a way of looking at it, I suppose."

"For as in on behalf of." Basso took a bite out of his cake. "Well?"

Antigonus reached across the desk, picked up Basso's penknife, cut the tip off his wedge of cake and popped it into his mouth. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

Basso shook his head. "I bought up the loan you took out to buy your freedom from my father," he said. "There's a foreclosure clause."

"In that case, I accept."

"Of course you do." Basso retrieved his knife and cut two more slices of cake. "To the successful conclusion of an apprenticeship," he said.

"Indeed." Antigonus nodded. "But I'd ask you to consider that in order to pass the exam, you don't necessarily have to kill the examiner."

Basso thought about that. "No," he said. "Not necessarily."

His sister had married a Carausius, the junior branch of the family. In theory he ran the glass factory, but his commitments to it didn't seem to cut unduly into his free time. Mostly, as far as Basso could gather, he bred and raced horses--a harmless enough occupation, and there was always the chance he'd fall off and break his neck.

In due course, there was a son. He was born at the Carausius family house on the Horn, and it was a month before Basso could find the time to go and see him.

"He's got your eyes," he said.

She smiled and shook her head. "He takes after his father," she replied.

"You think so?" Basso said mildly. "I don't see it myself."

"You're a man," she reminded him. "When men look at babies, all they see is an ugly pink lump. Anyway," she went on, "he hasn't got the Severus jaw."

"Small mercies," Basso said.

She laughed. "Six pounds, eight ounces and he'll have to do, to be going on with. I'm not going through all that again in a hurry."

Basso peered down at his nephew, but all he could see was an ugly pink lump with a creased face and fingers like tiny crawling worms. "Where's Palo?" he said.

"He's got two horses in a big meeting at Simisca," she replied, making some delicate technical adjustment to the baby's wrappings. "He'll be back tomorrow afternoon, probably. Can you stay till then? I know he'd like to see you."

That was a big, heavy lie. He decided to go round it. "Chosen the godparents yet?"

She sighed. "Don't get me started on that," she said. "It's all turned horribly political between Paso's mother and his uncles. Apparently, whoever we choose, we're going to cause mortal offence to everybody." She lowered her voice, even though they were alone. "Honestly, our family's bad enough but compared to his lot, they're angels. Every little thing gets picked up and turned into a major issue."

"Choose me," Basso said.

She looked at him as though he'd made a bad joke. Then she looked thoughtful. "I can't," she said. "You're my brother."

"And?"

She started to say something, but didn't.

"It's quite all right," he said, "having an uncle for your godfather. It used to happen all the time about a hundred years ago. It'd get you out of all the politicking."

"Palo wouldn't..."

"Even better." He grinned. "I didn't say that. No, seriously. If it'd keep your in-laws from each other's throats, I'd be delighted."

She frowned. It made her eyebrows meet in the middle. She'd always hated her eyebrows, so of course he'd teased her about them incessantly. "I'll have to think about it," she said.

"You do that." He yawned. "Wish I'd had a godfather who owned a bank," he said. "But no, I got a priest. Other kids got nice stuff for their birthdays, or even legal tender. What did I get? Prayers for my immortal soul."

She smiled. "Palo's mother's preferred choice is an archdeacon," she said. "The Most August Opelius Macrinus, DM. Terribly high-powered; runs the collegiate temple at Ennea."

"I didn't know your lot were hooked into the Opelii."

"Well, they are." The baby stirred and started to yowl. "They're related to practically everybody, if you go back far enough."

"Sounds like family bashes are a bit of an ordeal."

"You'd know, if you ever came."

He smiled sweetly. "Pressure of work," he said. "You have no idea, the sacrifices I have to make."

She looked at him. "Go away," she said, "you're corrupting my son."

"Good," he said, and got up to leave. "Chosen a name yet?"

"Actually, yes," she said. "I'm going to call him Basso."

Basso stood quite still for a moment. Then he said, "There's a coincidence," and left the room.

Bassianus Arcadius Carausius was received into the mercy of the Invincible Sun in the archepiscopal temple in the City. Afterwards, there was a reception at the Severus town house, hosted (and paid for) by the proud godfather. Later, people said it was a strangely muted affair. A great deal of money had clearly been spent on food, decorations and musicians--there was even a mock sea battle in the main courtyard, where a lead-lined tank had been specially installed for a dozen gilded miniature ships, manned by children and dwarfs, to row about on and ram each other--but the guests felt uncomfortable and the party broke up immediately after the banquet. The general consensus was that Bassianus Severus was a pretty poor host. In some respects, he'd tried too hard, while in others he'd made no effort at all. Even the going-home presents were all wrong; expensive, yes, but tasteless and (not to put too fine a point on it) boring. Aelius Scaurus, for example, received an exotic Melvian parrot in a silver-gilt cage, while Manlia Scantilla was given the same pair of heavy antique earrings that she'd passed on to her niece the previous year. She wasn't pleased to have them back again--she'd always hated them, which was why she'd given them away--and she was bitterly offended to think that her niece had thought so little of her generous gift that she'd sold it, or pawned it, or given it to one of her lovers.

"Young Basso probably had no idea," her husband said during the coach ride home.

"Probably not," his wife replied. "And that's no excuse. If he spent less time money-grubbing and more time in decent society, he'd have seen me wearing the wretched things and wouldn't have bought them. Besides, it was unforgivably ostentatious. He must've paid every penny of a hundred nomismata for them."

Basso (who'd taken the earrings as security for a seventy-nomismata loan on which Scantilla's niece had defaulted) intercepted his sister and brother-in-law on their way out. The baby had gone on ahead, whisked away by his nurse and four footmen.

"Palo," he said, in a louder than usual voice, "I don't know if you've met my wife. Cilia, this is my brother-in-law."

They nodded to each other, warily, like two strange dogs meeting in the street. Basso could see his sister was impatient to leave, but Palo didn't seem to be in any hurry. "Actually," Palo said, "I have an idea we've met before. Weren't you at Furio Relio's reception the other day?"

Cilia smiled sweetly. "No," she said. "I never go anywhere. Lina," she went on, looking past him at Basso's sister, "how are your parents? Keeping well?"

"Fine, thanks. How about the twins? They're not here, I see."

"They're at their tutor's," Basso said. "They get fractious at social events."

"Like their father," Cilia said. "Lina, you've got no idea what I had to go through to get him to behave. You'd think he was brought up on a farm."

Lina smiled. "He was," she replied. "Sorry, didn't he tell you?"

"Of course I did," Basso interrupted.

"Till he was six," Lina went on. "His great-uncle Naio's farm on the Horn. That's where he picked up most of his bad habits."

"It was only for the summers," Basso said, "and the winter of the plague, of course, when I was four."

Cilia nodded gravely. "That would explain a lot," she said. She was looking at Palo, whose attention was fixed on the great three-handed gold cup Basso had given his nephew as an Acceptance present. Basso had an uncomfortable feeling that Palo was trying to figure out how much it would fetch. He made a mental note to send a message round to the fashionable pawnbrokers.

Later, his father asked him: "How much did you spend?"

Basso told him. "It's all right," he added. "We can afford it. In fact, I paid for it out of the household budget."

Father was dead quiet for a moment. Shocked, but not necessarily in a bad way. "We can really afford to spend five thousand nomismata on a reception?"

"No big deal," Basso replied.

"Good heavens." Father was looking thoughtful. "Well, that's good news. I must be considerably better off than I thought I was."

Father didn't know the half of it, which was, of course, just as well. It was a pity he'd had to find out, especially with the start of the election campaign only a few months away, but it had been inevitable if he was to give his godson a proper Acceptance. He resolved to fake a substantial loss after a tactful interval.

"So how much did you pay for that goblet thing?"

"A hundred and sixty," Basso said. "I got it trade, naturally. The Seleucus brothers owe us a lot of money."

Father shrugged. "Best goldsmiths in town," he said. "I just hope that bastard doesn't hock it before young Bassano comes of age."

Basso sat down on the stone balustrade of the cloister. "I was wondering about that," he said. "Is he short of money?"

"Those bloody horses," Father replied. "Also, he bets heavily on them, and they have a tiresome habit of finishing last, if they finish at all. It's just as well he only gets the income from his settlement trust."

Ah, Basso thought. So that's all right. "When does he get the capital?"

"Thirty," Father replied. "And with any luck he'll have killed himself chariot-racing before then, whereupon the capital devolves on Lina's trustees till Bassano comes of age."

"Trustees?"

Father smiled. "You and me," he said. "I suppose I should be worried sick about my son-in-law's dangerous hobbies, but there you go, nobody's perfect. No, if Palo gets himself smashed up and dies, we come into a very tidy sum." He shrugged. "Here's hoping," he said, and went into the house.

When the twins were seven years old, a few weeks after Bassano's fifth birthday, the Bank of National Unity, owned by the Coritani brothers, collapsed. The failure of the only major foreign-owned bank in the City came as a devastating surprise to everyone (almost everyone). Even Antigonus Poliorcetes, chief clerk to the Severi, hadn't seen it coming.