The Proof House (2 page)

‘Gods know.’ (Voices coming, coriander; two men in a hurry, knees and palms bumping over the floorboards.) ‘Maybe we’re so close to their gallery that our wall’s subsiding into the hole. In which case we’ll get the whole bloody lot round our ears if we don’t get it shored quick.’

Bardas Loredan felt himself nodding in agreement; here was a man who knew his mines all right, the sort of man you’d want on your shift, except that he was the enemy. Two of them, and still coming on; hadn’t they got noses, he wondered, and then remembered that his shift hadn’t eaten for two days, what with one thing and all. No bread, no garlic, no smell to give you away. Stop eating and live for ever.

‘It’s a bugger, whatever it is,’ said the voice that went with the other pair of knees. Bardas felt in the top of his boot for the hilt of his knife; if the first one really was scent-blind, he’d have him, definitely. It’d be the second who’d have Bardas. Sacrifice your knight to take his rook; no fun at all if you’re the knight. But: the hell with it. It’s every soldier’s duty to seek out and destroy the enemy. So, let’s do that, then.

He let the first voice go by, and when the second voice was almost past him, he reached out carefully with his left hand, hoping for a chin or a jaw. Of course, this was the bit he was good at. His fingertips brushed against a man’s beard, long enough for him to wind his fingers into and get a good grip. Before the man had a chance to make a sound, Bardas had stabbed up into the triangular cavity at the junction of neck and collar-bone, where death can come in quicker and quieter than anywhere else. The fashion in the mines was for short knives (short knives, short men, short spades, short lives; you got nothing for tall down the mines). He was in and out so smoothly that there was a fair chance the other man hadn’t even noticed.

Nevertheless; ‘Thank you,’ Bardas muttered as he twisted the knife to free the blade. It was an unbreakable rule of the mines that you thanked the man who died in your place, when one or the other of you had to go. By speaking aloud he’d announced his presence in unmistakable terms, but he still had the advantage. The man, coriander, in front of him hadn’t a hope of turning round in the cramped shaft of the gallery, which meant that his options were to hold still and try to kick backwards with his heels like a mule, or to rapid-crawl on his hands and knees like a little child scurrying under a table, in the hope of finding a spur to crawl down before his enemy realised he’d gone. Then it’d be the other way round, of course; no fun, so let’s not allow that to happen.

With a soft grunt of revulsion Bardas Loredan crawled over the body of the man, coriander, he’d just killed, feeling the palms of his hands and the caps of his knees digging into the soft flesh of the dead man’s belly and cheeks. He sniffed like a polecat to get a fix on his quarry, heard the scrape of a wooden clog-sole on a stone - almost close enough but not quite - so he hopped along, hands outstretched, shoving himself forward with his legs like a rabbit until he knew his face was within a few inches of the other man’s heels. The spring, when he made it, was more froglike than feline; he landed heavily, jarring his elbows on the man’s shoulder-blades. Afterwards, he thanked him.

Now what?
Of course, he hadn’t a clue where he was. In his own tunnels he could find his way easily enough; in his mind’s eye he had a picture of a whole honeycomb of galleries, shafts and spurs he’d never actually seen but knew intimately nonetheless. He didn’t even have to count the movements of his knees as he crawled forward to know where the spur gates were, or where the spur ended and the gallery began. He simply knew where they were, like a juggler with his eyes shut. But in these mines, coriander, he had no idea. The darkness here was genuinely dark to him, and he felt the lowness of the roof and the narrowness of the space between the walls as if it was his first day out of the light.

Common sense, common sense. If this is a gallery (too wide and high to be a spur), chances are it runs to the face from the lift-shaft - which begged the questions: which way is which, and which way did he actually want to go? Avoiding the enemy was definitely a priority, but not if it meant heading deeper and further into exclusively hostile ground. To the best of his knowledge, the only interface between his tunnels, garlic, and the enemy’s was the hole he’d just wriggled through, so no way back. Forward - either direction - would sooner or later bring him up against an enemy camp or working shift, and even he couldn’t kill them all.

It’s customary to die first
. . . If only he could smell fresh air, he’d know which end was the lift-shaft; but he couldn’t, only a stale, lingering flavour of coriander and the heavy scent of the dead men’s blood on his clothes and hands. If he didn’t do something soon, fear would catch up with him and he’d be paralysed - he’d come across men, coriander, in that state before now, crouched against a wall with their hands over their ears, unable to move. Left, then; he’d go left, because if he was still in his own tunnels he’d go right to get to the lift-shaft. Totally flawed logic, but he couldn’t hear anybody objecting. Exactly why he should want to make for the lift he didn’t know. Just supposing he was able to creep into one of the spoil-baskets and get lifted up out of the mines without anybody noticing, once he reached the surface he’d be inside the enemy city, a dirty, bloody man marinaded in the wrong herbs and spices. But if he went the other way, to the face - where would the face be, now? Presumably, at the end of the spur where they’d laid their camouflet. Effectively, he’d have gone round in a circle, but there might be a chance of breaking through, if (say) the spur, coriander, ran closely parallel with the gallery, garlic, to any extent. Even if that worked out, of course, there was the intriguing risk that he’d come though into his native gallery at some point after the cave-in, where he’d be just as trapped as he’d been in the spur. Only one way to find out. He’d go right, and see what happened.

‘It’s one of those moments, isn’t it?’ said a voice beside him.

He knew perfectly well that the voice wasn’t really there. It hadn’t been there for years.

‘You tell me,’ he replied, keeping his own voice down to a soft whisper. ‘You’re supposed to be the expert.’

‘So people keep telling me,’ the voice replied ruefully. ‘I’ve always maintained that I’m like a man who’s just bought an expensive new machine; I know how to use it but I haven’t a clue how it works.’

‘Well,’ Loredan replied distractedly, ‘you know more about it than I do, anyway.’

The voice sighed. It wasn’t a real voice; it was make-believe, like the imaginary friends of children. ‘I think it’s one of those moments,’ it repeated. ‘A fateful choice, a cusp - is that the right word? I’ve been talking about cusps for thirty years and I don’t actually know what a cusp is - a cusp in the flow, a crossroads. Apparently the Principle simply can’t function without them.’

‘All right,’ Loredan muttered, squeezing himself through a tight spot where a side-panel had come adrift, ‘it’s a cusp. Do whatever it is you do. And if it’s all the same to you, I’ll just carry on with what I’m doing.’

‘You always were sceptical,’ said the voice. ‘I can’t say I blame you. There’s a lot of it I have trouble believing in myself, and I wrote the book.’

Loredan sighed. ‘You were rather less irritating when you were real,’ he said.

‘Sorry.’

Everbody heard imaginary voices after a while. Some people heard them as dwarves and gnomes, kindly creatures that warned about vapour-pockets and cave-ins. Others heard them as dead family or friends, while bad men heard them as the people they’d murdered or raped or mutilated. Some people put out bowls of bread and milk for them, as children do for hedgehogs. Others sang to drown the voices out, or yelled at them till they went away; others talked to them for hours, finding that it helped pass the time. Everybody knew they weren’t really there; but in the mines, where it’s always dark and everybody, real or not, is nothing but a disembodied voice, people learn not to be quite so dogmatic about what’s actually there and what isn’t. For better or worse, Bardas Loredan heard his voice as Alexius, the former Patriarch of Perimadeia, who he’d known for a short while years ago and who was now quite probably dead. Except here, of course, where the living are buried and the dead live on bread and milk, like invalids.

‘If I were you,’ Alexius said, ‘I’d go left.’

‘I was just about to,’ Bardas replied.

‘Oh. That’s all right, then.’

He went left. The gallery was narrower here, the floorboards rougher, not yet polished by the passage of gloved hands and copped knees. It was hot, which suggested there might be vapour.

‘Not that I’m aware of,’ Alexius said.

‘Good. I’ve got enough to contend with as it is.’

‘But unless I’m very much mistaken,’ the Patriarch went on, ‘there’s someone up ahead of you, about seventy-five yards - sorry I can’t be more exact, but of course I can’t see a damned thing. I believe he’s stopped and he’s fixing something; a board that’s come loose, probably.’

‘All right, thanks. Which way’s he facing?’

‘No idea, I’m afraid.’

‘Not to worry. Is he a cusp too?’

‘That I can’t tell you. He might be a cusp, or he might be purely serendipitous.’

‘Right.’

He slowed down, carefully shifting his weight with each knee-stride forward so as to make no sound at all. He smelt of blood, of course, and probably sweat, too. The man smelt of pepper and coriander.

‘That’s it, you’ve got him. Now do be careful.’

Bardas didn’t answer, not this close.
Where were you just now, when I could have done with someone to talk to?
He could hear the man’s breathing now, and the very faint creak of the leather cops on his knees as he worked.

‘He’s got his back to you.’

I know. Now please go away, I’m busy.
He moved closer (couldn’t be more than a yard now) and reached towards the top of his boot for his knife-hilt. Sometimes the blade made a very slight hissing noise as it rubbed along the cloth of his breeches. Fortunately, not this time.

Afterwards, he thanked him—

‘Why do you do that?’ Alexius asked, puzzled. ‘I’ll be straight with you, I find it rather morbid.’

‘Do you?’ Loredan shrugged (pointless gesture in the dark, where not even people who weren’t there could see him do it). ‘Personally, I think it’s a nice tradition.’

‘A nice tradition,’ Alexius repeated. ‘Like blackberry-picking or hanging bunches of primroses over the door at Spring Festival.’

‘Yes,’ Loredan said firmly. ‘Like putting out saucers of milk for the likes of you.’

‘Please, don’t trouble yourself on my account. If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s soggy bread in sour milk.’

‘Well, you wouldn’t have us waste the good stuff, would you?’

He crawled over the dead man; still no clue what it was he’d been doing there, so quiet and meticulous. Unimportant. Couldn’t be much further now and he’d be at the face.

(‘Then how come,’ he’d asked once, ‘if you’re wholly imaginary, you keep telling me things I don’t know, like the enemy’s up ahead or vapour-pockets? And you’re nearly always right, too.’

Alexius had thought for a moment. ‘Possibly,’ he’d said, ‘you’re unconsciously picking up clues that are so slight your mind can’t take notice of them in the usual way - tiny noises you don’t know you’ve heard, just the faintest taste of a smell, that sort of thing - so it invents me out of thin air as a way of getting the information to you.’

‘Possible, I suppose,’ he’d replied. ‘But wouldn’t it be easier just to admit that you exist?’

‘Maybe,’ Alexius had replied. ‘But just because a thing’s more likely doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.’)

Sometimes he tried to picture it all in his mind; where he was in real terms, in relation to the city and the Great King’s camp and the river and the estuary. He still believed in them, just about, though at times his faith was sorely tried. Maybe it would help if he left them the occasional bowl of milk.

He could hear digging; four, possibly five distinct noises. He could smell coriander, and sweat, and steel, freshly cut clay, a very faint trace of vapour, not enough to be dangerous; leather and wet cloth and urine, and the blood on his own hands and knees. For some reason he was having difficulty estimating the range - it could well be because he was near the face, where the solid wall of clay ahead soaked up the sound, or perhaps the roof was higher than usual, creating a slight echo. Five men digging, so there’d be a scavenger to each man, and at least two chippies - but he couldn’t hear scavengers’ hooks or carpentry tools, implying that they’d only just started work, and if that was the case, pretty soon a man would come up the gallery with the rope to pull the spoil-dolly. He listened, but Alexius wasn’t there (typical; but everybody knew you couldn’t rely on the voices). Trying not to worry, he felt the side-walls carefully for a spur, a lay-by, a point where the gallery widened enough for him to tuck in out of the way and let the rope-bearer go by - or failing that, somewhere he could turn round and go back. If the worst came to the worst he’d have to crawl backwards, but that was very much a last resort, since there was always a risk of meeting someone, coriander, coming the other way.

As luck would have it there was a wide place, where they’d had to cut through a rock when they’d built the gallery. The carpenters hadn’t bothered to board over what was left of the rock, and the cutters had split it so deeply with their fire and vinegar that there was a crack wide enough for him to squeeze into, if he wasn’t too fussy about breathing.

He didn’t have to wait long; he heard the rope scuffling along behind the man, and not long after that he could smell him. He let the man go a little way, and afterwards he thanked him; if anyone came down the gallery, they’d blunder into him and make a noise, enough to give notice. It was a friendly thing to do, and in the mines you had to take friends where you found them.