Sharps (3 page)

So Phrantzes had to go and say good night to the Senator, and once he’d gone the party cooled down quite quickly and people began to drift away. As they waited outside for their chair to be brought round, Corbulo said to Xanthe, “It’s a terrible admission to make, but I still don’t know the wretched woman’s name. I tried to catch it during the ceremony, but of course he mumbled, and obviously I can’t ask him now and I can’t spend the rest of my life referring to her as ‘your good lady’. Did you happen to …?”

“Sphagia,” Xanthe said.

“What?”

“Sphagia,” she repeated slowly. “S-P—”

“Good grief.”

“It’s a Thelite name,” she said, “meaning ‘rose’. Or, if you pronounce it Sph
a
gia, with the long
a
, ‘blood sausage’. I expect he’s got a nickname for her by now. You’d have to, wouldn’t you?”

Their chair appeared beside the mounting block. As they climbed in, Corbulo asked, “Was that one of the Carnufex boys I saw?”

“Yes. Addo, the youngest.”

“Good heavens. I never realised Phran knew those sorts of people.”

“From fencing,” Xanthe explained. “It’s a pity you never fenced. We might have got to meet some decent people, instead of all your dreary business contacts. Shit,” she added, as her foot slipped off the running board and landed in a puddle of icy water. “Now look what you’ve made me do.”

Suidas Deutzel left the wedding early and went straight home, passing the Sun in Splendour, the Beautiful Revelation of St Arcadius and the Charity and Chastity without even stopping to sniff at the door. He hadn’t drunk anything at the wedding either.

“Well,” she said, as he let himself in, “did you win?”

He nodded. “Fifty nomismata.”

“Thank God.”

He dropped into the one functional chair and closed his eyes. “Sharps,” he said. “They made us fight with bloody sharps. I really don’t see the need for that sort of thing. It’s barbaric.”

“The money,” she reminded him.

“What? Oh, right.” He reached in his pocket and produced first the handkerchief, which he frowned at and threw on the floor, and then the purse of coins, which he held out to her. She snapped it up, teased it open and started to count.

“It’s all there,” he said.

“You counted it?”

“They’re decent people.”

“No such thing.” The coins clicked together in the hollow of her hand. “Fifty.”

“See?”

“Now then.” She sat upright on the floor, forming short columns of coins with the practised touch of a banker. “Ten for the rent. Ten for Taducian – we owe fifteen, but he can go to hell. Three for the poll tax. Twelve to pay back last month’s housekeeping. Fourteen for your cousin Hammo – it’ll be worth it just to keep him off my back, I’m sick of him pouncing on me every time I put my head round the door.” She held up one coin. “And that’s for us to live on, till you can earn some more.”

He stared at her. “You’re kidding me.”

“One nomisma,” she confirmed grimly. “And if you so much as look at a bottle, I’ll kill you. Understood?”

He sighed. “I thought we’d be all right,” he said.

“Oh, we are,” she replied. “At least, by our standards. We’re bloody rich, with one nomisma. Of course we still owe for the coal, the water and the window tax, but I can stave them off for another week.”

“I’m sorry,” he said bitterly. She didn’t reply. Instead, she crawled across the floor and retrieved the handkerchief.

“You can have it if you like,” he said.

She was examining it. “I can get nine trachy on that,” she said.

“It’s worth—”

“Nine trachy,” she said, “to us, at Blemmyo’s.” She turned it over and picked at the hem with her fingernail. “Was the chairman there?”

He nodded.

“Did you ask him?”

“I sort of hinted,” he replied defensively.

“Did you ask him?”

“Not in so many words.” Her face hardened. “Look, it was a social occasion, all right? People lolling around drinking and enjoying themselves. It wasn’t exactly the time and the place for touting for work.”

“You didn’t ask him.”

“I’ll go round to the office tomorrow,” he said angrily. “All right?”

“Do what you like.”

He sighed melodramatically and lay back in the chair, surveying the room. There wasn’t a lot to see. Except for the chair and the mattress (the bailiff’s men had taken the bed frame) there was nothing there apart from the range, which was built into the wall, and an empty fig crate, on which rested the three-foot-tall solid-gold triple-handed cup that you got lent for a year for being the fencing champion of the Republic of Scheria. She used it to store their arsewipe cabbage leaves in.

“You could go back to work,” he said.

She gave him a furious look. “Believe me, I’m tempted,” she said. “At least I’d be warm, instead of freezing to death in this icebox. But unfortunately they’re not hiring right now. Maybe in the spring.”

His eyes widened. “You asked.”

“Grow up, Suidas.”

“I didn’t mean
that
,” he said awkwardly. “I thought maybe a few days a week in a shop, something like that. Just till we’re all right again.”

“Suidas.” When she was really angry, she always spoke softly. “I was principal soubrette at the Palace Theatre. I’m damned if I’m going to work myself to death in a shop just because you’re completely useless with money.” She paused, to let him know she meant what was coming next. “If I go back to work, I’ll leave you. Up to you. Your choice.”

He looked at her. “For crying out loud, Sontha,” he said wearily. “Do you think we live like this because I want to? It’s just …”

He didn’t bother with the rest of it. No point. He had his ultimatum, and it was perfectly reasonable. He’d never been able to argue with her, because she had the infuriating knack of being in the right all the time; and Suidas had been a fencer so long that he’d become incapable of not acknowledging a clean hit.

“Well?”

“Fair enough,” he said (and her face changed to unreadable). “I’ll go and see the chairman tomorrow, I promise. And anything that’s going, I’ll take.”

It hadn’t been the right thing to say, and she slept with her back to him that night, while he lay awake and tried to think of something else he could possibly do, besides fencing. But he couldn’t; so just before dawn, he got up and shaved, using the cup as a mirror. His other shirt was being pressed under the mattress and he couldn’t very well retrieve it without waking her up; not a good idea at such an intemperately early hour. Luckily, the cold weather meant he hadn’t sweated too much the previous evening, so yesterday’s shirt was just about wearable. He buckled on his sword belt, thought for a moment and took it off again, in case he ran into the bailiff’s men in the street.

In his sleep he heard someone repeating his name over and over again: Giraut, Giraut, Giraut Bryennius. He opened his eyes and saw light, which wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“I’m alive,” he said.

“Indeed.” A woman’s voice, possibly the one he’d just heard, but he wasn’t sure. “There’s no justice.”

A moment of confusion; then the joy of discovering that he hadn’t bled to death in the bell tower after all; then the horrible recollection of what he’d done, and what was going to happen to him.

“Look at me,” the voice said.

He turned his head. His neck hurt.

She was middle-aged, with streaks of grey at the sides of her head; a stern, plain woman who immediately made him feel stupid. She was wearing black, and smelt very faintly of roses.

“You’re in the infirmary of the Lesser Studium,” she said. “You lost a great deal of blood and you’re still very weak, but the brothers tell me you’ll live.” She smiled at him, cold as an archaic statue. “Perhaps that’s not what you wanted to hear. If I was in your shoes, I’d rather have died before they found me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I know you.”

Her face went through the motions of laughter, though she made no sound. “Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’ve never seen me before. You killed my husband.”

Oh, he thought. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” she repeated. “Well then.” She picked up a jug and a cup from the table beside the bed, poured some water and handed it to him. “It’s all right,” she said, “I haven’t put poison in it. Go on.”

Now she mentioned it, he was painfully thirsty. He drank, spilling water down his chin.

“I really am sorry,” he said. “About your—”

“No you’re not.” She said it calmly, as if correcting a trivial error. “You’re sorry for yourself, and deeply embarrassed. You have no idea what the proper form of words is for apologising to the widow of your victim.” She put the jug down and settled herself in her straight-backed chair, her hands folded in her lap. “My husband,” she went on, “was a pig. He was a boor and a bully, forever making a fool of himself with the female servants, shamefully neglectful of his family and absolutely hopeless with money. I was married to him for twenty-seven years. The reason you’re here, rather than in a cell in the Watch house, is that I went to the Prefect and asked him for clemency. Theoretically, you’ve been remanded into my custody while the court decides what’s to be done with you. In practice, they’ve more or less left it up to me to decide.”

He stared at her. She was looking straight at him, frowning slightly, as if he was some rather unsatisfactory object she’d bought on a whim and paid too much for. He remembered something else, and said, “I’m really sorry about your daughter.”

“Oh, her.” She shrugged. “I got the truth out of her. She’s never been able to lie to me, though not for want of trying. I knew it was a mistake allowing her to go to college, but her father insisted.” She paused for a moment, as though taking time to ratify her own decision. “I’m in the interesting position,” she said, “of being able to decide what happened. Once I’ve chosen a version of events, it’ll be accepted as true and nobody will question it. I can decide it was rape and murder or a stupid misunderstanding and involuntary manslaughter. Usually only the Invincible Sun can retrospectively alter the course of history, but apparently on this occasion He’s delegated that power to me. As you can imagine, I’ve given it a certain amount of thought.”

She stopped again and looked at him; creating suspense, just for wickedness, because she could. Eventually she leaned forward just a little – there was something rather motherly about the way she sat, almost as if she was about to read him a story. “I was strongly tempted to allow my dislike for my late husband to influence me into letting you get away with it,” she went on. “He’d have been absolutely furious at the thought that his killer might walk free, and he was always so very pompous when he was angry. On the other hand, our family enjoys a certain position in this city. It really wouldn’t do if people got the idea that someone could kill the head of the Chrysostomas and not be punished for it. Also,” she went on, reaching down to a velvet bag on the floor and taking out a small embroidery frame, “there’s you to consider.”

She stopped talking long enough to thread a needle with red embroidery silk. His mother was the same. She’d been doing needlework so long she couldn’t think properly unless she was stitching at something.

“I spoke to your parents,” she went on. “Your mother was inclined to be hysterical, and your father … That reminds me.” From her bag she took a folded sheet of paper. “He asked me to give you this. Go on, read it.”

He took the paper and unfolded it. Not his father’s atrocious handwriting; he’d had it written out formally by a professional clerk.

WHEREAS my son Giraut Bryennius has by his wicked and unforgivable conduct disgraced himself and his family for ever and WHEREAS my said son Giraut stands by the will of my father Jilaum Bryennius and sundry other family trusts hereinafter specified to inherit certain properties more specifically described in the schedule hereto NOW THIS DEED WITNESSES that I Tancre Bryennius entirely disinherit and dispossess my said son Giraut of all properties real and personal in being or hereafter acquired that would otherwise
—

“If you like,” she said gently, “I can talk to him for you when he’s had a chance to calm down. The fact remains,” she went on, “that even your own parents agree that you’re basically worthless. I think your father blames himself and your mother blames him, but really, that’s none of my business. The point is,” and she paused to pick exactly the right place to insert her needle into the cloth, “you may be entirely without value to society; my husband, for all his many faults, was not. I don’t suppose you follow current affairs, but he was a leading light of the Redemptionist faction; very much a radical, and remarkably, something of an idealist. It’s rather a pity he didn’t bring his enlightened thinking home with him in the evenings, but the fact remains, politically he was a good man, possibly even a great one, which is probably why I put up with him for so long. And you killed him.”

The silence that followed was so oppressive that he felt he had to say something, even though anything he said would undoubtedly make him feel worse. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t. And even if you had, it wouldn’t have made the slightest difference, when my husband was lashing around with his sword trying to kill you. That’s men for you,” she added, “always looking for the easiest response instead of the best.” She lifted the embroidery frame to her mouth and bit through the last inch of thread; neat and efficient, like a hawk. “Because of you, the land reform bill, the slavery bill and quite probably the poor relief bill won’t go through this session, and maybe not at all. I don’t suppose you care very much, but I do. Which is why,” she went on, licking the end of a new length of thread, “you’re going to Permia.”

His eyes opened very wide. “Excuse me,” he said, “but you don’t mean—”

“Yes.” Her expression hadn’t changed, but suddenly he felt very cold. “Congratulations,” she went on. “You’ve been chosen to represent the Republic.”

He didn’t understand. “As a diplomat?”

She actually smiled. It didn’t help. Quite the reverse. “Good God, no.”