The Proof House (36 page)

‘Send you home, of course,’ Temrai answered, with a brilliant smile. ‘Though in your case, Mr Philosopher, I’m going to have to ask you to specify which one. You seem to have so many.’

‘The Island will do fine,’ Gannadius replied quickly. ‘Or Shastel. Whichever’s the most convenient, really.’

‘Anywhere but here, in fact?’

‘Yes,’ Gannadius admitted.

‘I quite understand.’ Temrai winced, as his knee twinged. ‘Please excuse me,’ he said. ‘I managed to damage my knee the other day.’

Gannadius nodded. ‘Strangling an Imperial trooper with your bare hands, so I gather,’ he said. ‘No mean feat, I’m sure.’

‘With a helmet strap, actually,’ Temrai replied. ‘Well, I think that’s everything. I believe there’s a ship sailing for the Island in a few days’ time; I don’t know the name offhand, I’m afraid. I strongly suggest you get on it; sea traffic’s more or less at a standstill at the moment, ever since the Empire hired all the ships on the Island.’

Gannadius clearly hadn’t heard about that. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘May I ask, do you know why?’

‘They’re going to attack us by sea,’ Temrai replied, ‘and the Islanders are lending them the ships to do it with, since the Empire hasn’t got any of its own. Sorry; hiring, not lending. I’d hate to offend your Island sensibilities by suggesting you’d ever do anything like that for free.’

‘That’s quite all right,’ Gannadius replied. ‘As you know, I’m really a Perimadeian, so I don’t mind.’

Temrai looked at the young man, Theudas (strange to be able to put a name to the face after all these years of nightmares). He was as white as a sheet, his hands balled into tight fists. ‘If you should happen to see Colonel Loredan before I do,’ he said, ‘please give him my regards and tell him to keep as far away from me as possible.’

Theudas was about to say something, but Gannadius was quicker. ‘We’ll be sure to deliver your message if we see him,’ he said, ‘though I would think that’s quite unlikely, really. After all, the only reason we’re here - no offence to you or your admirable hospitality, your people couldn’t have been kinder - is that the Imperials were trying to kill us.’

Temrai smiled. ‘Because they mistook you for Shastel.’

‘Oh, we are. At least I am. At least,’ Gannadius added gravely, ‘some of the time.’

‘It must be wonderful to be so many different people,’ Temrai said. ‘I’ve only ever been me. I envy you.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. If I’d been able to choose my identity, I wouldn’t have had to do the things I did, and I wouldn’t be faced with the problems that are facing me. Everything I’ve ever been or done or had to suffer’s been because of who I am; but you - well, you’re lucky.’ He beckoned to the guard, who opened the tent-flap. ‘Thank you for stopping by,’ he said. ‘It’s been interesting talking to you.’

‘Likewise,’ Gannadius replied. ‘It was a pleasure meeting you, after all this time.’

 

‘Ap’ Calick?’ said the Son of Heaven. ‘Then you probably met my cousin.’

The column had pitched camp for the night, and the cooks were starting the evening meal. They’d just killed and paunched a sheep the foragers had brought in, and were putting up a trestle to hang it from. Being a Son of Heaven, Colonel Estar was taking a personal interest.

‘Your cousin,’ Bardas repeated.

‘His name’s Anax,’ Estar replied. ‘He runs the proof house. Short, bald chap in his late seventies. You’d remember him if you’d seen him.’

Although Bardas hadn’t been in the Imperial army for very long (at least, not by Imperial standards) he had an idea that it was unusual, to say the least, for the commanding officer of a column to sit under a tree beside the cooking-fire chatting amiably with an outlander, even if the outlander was nominally his co-commander. Either he was bored, or he found Bardas an unusually fascinating companion, or he was taking an opportunity to assess the army’s secret weapon in plenty of time before actually deploying it against the enemy. From what little he’d been able to gather about the Sons of Heaven, it was most likely a combination of all three.

‘Oh, yes,’ he replied, ‘I met Anax all right. He made me the armour I’ve been wearing today.’

‘Really?’ The cooks had managed to get the trestle to stay up, and were threading a rope between the bone and the sinew of the sheep’s back legs, just above the ankle. ‘I haven’t seen him in years. Really, I ought to make the effort and go to visit him next time I find myself out that way. How’s he keeping?’

‘Pretty well,’ Bardas replied. ‘Remarkable, for a man of his age.’

‘Good,’ Estar said, his eyes fixed on the work in progress before him. ‘He’s - let’s see, he’s my father’s mother’s eldest sister’s son. I expect you were surprised to find - well, one of us, working with his hands for a living.’

Bardas nodded. The cooks had strung up the dead sheep and were starting to skin it; one of them knelt down and pulled on its front legs, while the other made a delicate cut around the leg just below the point where they’d passed the rope through, taking care not to nick the tendon. ‘I assumed it’s what he likes doing,’ Bardas said. ‘I can’t imagine any other reason.’

Estar smiled. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘The truth is, Anax has led what you might call an interesting life, one way and another. At one time he was a deputy prefect in the commissioner’s department, right in the heart of the Empire. That was when he made a mistake.’

Now the cooks were slitting the skin down along the legs, following the bone with the specially shaped points of their knives until they reached the wide opening they’d made in the belly when they scooped out the guts. ‘Mistake,’ Bardas repeated. ‘I’d better not ask about that.’

‘Oh, whyever not?’ Estar grinned. ‘I’m not so cruel as to drop a tantalising hint like that and then leave you hanging, so to speak. He was in charge of a district, and a rebellion broke out. Well, it wasn’t even a rebellion, properly speaking; there was a tax-collector who was a bit too heavy-handed in his methods, and he came to a bad end. It should have been perfectly possible to sort it out. But for some reason, Anax got it wrong; first he let them get away with it for far too long, and then he sent in a platoon of soldiers to demolish the village. After that, there really was a rebellion.’

Now they were cutting away round the vent; one of them caught hold of the tail and twisted sharply, until the bones cracked. ‘I see,’ Bardas said. ‘What happened?’

‘It dragged on for ages,’ Estar replied. ‘Anax sent more troops, the rebels burned their village to the ground and hid in the woods. The soldiers tried to bring them out by attacking the other villages in the district, but that just made matters worse, because all the people they displaced went to join the rebels. It wasn’t long before there were several thousand men in the woods; enough to inflict a serious defeat on us if we tried to go in after them and messed it up. On the other hand, Anax couldn’t just ignore something like that, and in the end he had no option. The whole thing was a disaster from beginning to end, really.’

They were peeling the skin off the sheep’s back, pressing down into the opening flap with their fists to keep the flesh from being torn off. There’s no other sound like it. ‘I assume he won, though,’ Bardas said, watching the cooks as they worked. ‘In the end, I mean.’

‘Well, of course. The Empire always
wins
; what matters is how it wins. And in this case, we didn’t win well. I forget how many men he lost crashing about in the woods before he finally managed to pin them down, but it was a couple of hundred; that’s pretty disastrous in any context, but for a police action in a supposedly quiet and peaceful inner province—’ Estar shook his head. ‘He had to burn them out in the end; he cleared firebreaks right the way round the part of the wood they were ensconced in, stationed guards in the drives and set fire to everything in the middle. None of them even tried to come out. Apparently the smell was quite revolting.’

To get the skin off the ribs without tearing it, the cooks were shaving the membranes between the hide and the bone, going carefully so as not to nick the skin and start a tear. ‘I can imagine,’ Bardas said, pulling a wry face. ‘So what happened to Anax after that?’

Estar poured himself a drink from the little cherry-wood flask Bardas had seen tucked into his sash. ‘They were going to put him on trial,’ he said, ‘but the family pulled some strings; instead, he was officially censured and posted to the western frontier - what was the western frontier then, forty years ago; of course, it’s moved on since then, but Anax stayed where he was. Officially he was the deputy master of the proof house; in reality, he was shoved in there and told he was never coming out. And there he’s been ever since, amusing himself as best he can. He brought it on himself, I suppose, but I can’t help thinking it was a pretty harsh way to treat a man for what was, after all, an error of judgement.’

With the points of their knives, following the bone by feel, they were slitting down the line of the front legs. ‘It’s not for me to comment,’ Bardas said. ‘I suppose you have to live with the risk of something like that, once you start taking responsibility for other people’s lives.’

‘Oh, it’s everybody’s nightmare, isn’t it?’ Estar answered, pulling a sad face. ‘You’re the man in command when everything starts going wrong; or you’re the man who has to fight the battle that can’t be won, attack the impregnable city, hold off the unstoppable horde. You could say he was just plain unlucky. I mean, who’s to say you or I would have done any better, in his position?’

- And finally, with much effort and exertion, they pulled the skin over the shoulders and away from the severed neck, so that it came off whole and undamaged, clean on the inside, without spoiling either the hide or the carcass. The flesh glistened slightly in the glow of the fire, like a newly born baby, or a man shiny with sweat as he takes off his armour on a hot day. Then they started to joint it, while the kitchen boy set about breaking open the head with a big pair of shears. ‘I’m going to pull rank and ask for the brains,’ Estar said with a smile. ‘Straight from the bone, simmer for half an hour in brine, add a couple of eggs and some lemon juice; there’s nothing to beat it. Some people reckon you should sauté them, but to my mind that’s sacrilege.’

Bardas shrugged. ‘My mother used to cook them when we were kids,’ he said, ‘but I can’t remember what they were like. Everything she cooked tended to taste the same, anyway. Since then, I’ve never been all that interested in food.’

Estar laughed. ‘I pity you,’ he said. ‘One of the great pleasures of life you’ve missed out on there, and now I suppose it’s too late for you to learn to appreciate it. That’s a shame.’ He watched the kitchen boy attentively. ‘And I thought Perimadeia was famous for the variety and quality of its cuisine.’

‘It was,’ Bardas said. ‘Or so people told me. I was quite happy to take their word for it.’

‘And what about the wine, then?’ Estar asked. ‘Or don’t you drink, either?’

‘Mostly we drank cider,’ Bardas replied. ‘Cheap, and it did the job. Better for you than the wine; at least, the sort of wine they sold in the sort of places I used to go. I don’t think you’d have liked it very much.’

They were cutting through the breastbone with a saw. ‘Oh, I’ve drunk my fair share of rotgut,’ Estar said, ‘when I was a penniless student. Remarkable how quickly you can get used to it, if there isn’t anything else.’ Bardas noticed how intently he was watching the cooks. It was more than the obsessive attention to detail of the true gourmet. Maybe Estar was aware of his interest, because he smiled and said, ‘All this is part of a boy’s education, back home. At the same time as we’re learning spelling and basic algebra and geometry, we’re being taught the one true way of jointing and dressing meat. The idea is that by the time a boy’s ten years old, you should be able to give him a dead sheep and a sharp knife, go away for a couple of hours and come back to a perfect meal of roast mutton, seasoned with rosemary and bay and served in the proper manner, according to the specifications set down in the Book. If I were at home right now, I’d be doing all this - it’s the host’s privilege to prepare food for his guests; we take that sort of thing very seriously. Good food, good wine, good music and good conversation. Everything else is just a necessary evil.’

‘That’s an interesting point of view,’ Bardas said diplomatically. ‘Of course, it does rather depend on having something to eat in the first place.’

Estar frowned for a moment, then laughed. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he said. ‘The very essence of luxury is simplicity. Luxury’s not really got anything to do with being rich and powerful; it’s just that the two are often found together, like horseflies and dung. Suppose that all you’ve got is a slingshot and a handful of pebbles; you can walk up the mountain and kill a sand-grouse as easily as walking down the mountain and killing a rabbit; as you go, you gather a few essential herbs and seasonings, and when you get back you take a little more care and trouble over cooking the meal than you absolutely have to. Good wine’s made from the same materials as bad wine; as for good music and good conversation, they cost nothing.’ He sighed and put his hands behind his head. ‘You should read some of our great poets, Bardas,’ he said. ‘Dalshin and Silat and the
Rose-Scented Arrow
. They’re all about the simple life, an ideal existence from which everything gross and intrusive has been purged away - refined, in the true sense of the word. That’s the very root and source of our culture; it’s who we are. “No man can fold a bolt of silk as perfect as a rose”—’

‘I see,’ Bardas interrupted, before Estar could get any further. ‘So what are you doing here?’

Estar closed his eyes. ‘Necessary evil,’ he replied. ‘To live the perfect life, you must first have stability, security. How can you possibly concentrate on the essentials of existence if there’s any possibility of danger from outside? The army, the provinces - they’re a wall we’ve built around us, they’re the armour we need to protect us; strength outside, sweet simplicity within. Sadly, it means that some of us have to turn our backs on the important things for some of the time; it’s worth it, though, because we know the simple perfection will always be there, waiting for us when we come home.’ He opened his eyes and sat up. ‘You’re smiling,’ he said. ‘Obviously you don’t agree.’