The Folding Knife (28 page)

"Don't be stupid," Basso said. "A senior cleric doesn't just take it into his head to pick a fight with a student. Volusiano is an Optimate, his brother's the shadow chancellor. Obviously this was about me. Your mother will blame me, and she'll be quite right."

"Oh." Bassano looked down at his hands. "I'm sorry."

"So you should be." Basso poured him another brandy. "There's a jar on the floor. Honey-cakes."

"But why?" Bassano said. "Why would getting me thrown out of the Studium affect you?"

Basso gave him a mildly contemptuous look. "Although," he said, "it's an odd way of going about things. A bit limp-wristed, if you follow me."

"Sorry?"

"First, an assassination attempt. Then, when that fails, they have my nephew thrown out of college. It's hardly an escalation of terror."

"You think it was--"

"Yes," Basso said. "But that's beside the point." He paused, and thought for a moment. "I'm guessing," he said, "that they're trying to get at me through your mother. Her deal with me about Olybrias must be common knowledge in the Optimate inner circle. Presumably, they want to get your mother really mad at me, so she'll forget about our deal and marry Olybrias to punish me. That'd account for the timing," he went on. "They'll have heard that I'm keeping my side of the bargain, so they decided to push her hand."

Bassano looked at him. "Do people really do things like that?"

"Politicians do," Basso replied. "I tend not to, but only because I've never been on the losing side and therefore desperate." He shook his head. "On balance, I'd rather they'd had another go at killing me. Still, I imagine they took that into account."

"I'm sorry," Bassano said.

"Not your fault," Basso replied crisply. "Though smacking the Patriarch of the Studium around with a candlestick wasn't perhaps the brightest act on record. Still, I'm hardly in a position to lecture anybody about losing one's temper. Did you know they tried to press charges?"

Bassano looked scared. "Tried to?"

"Oh yes." Basso nodded. "The first I heard of all this was General Aelius banging on the door in the early hours of the morning. Pure luck. Because the Studium's privileged ground, the Guard can't execute an arrest warrant there unless it's signed by the military prefect. The prefect had the wit to see there was something funny going on, and went to Aelius, as Commander-in-Chief. Aelius told me, bless him, and I was able to put a stop to it then and there. You've been granted a prerogative pardon, by the way; first time in eighty years, but luckily Sentio found the precedent in some book. There'll be fun and games in the House about that, I expect." He grinned. "If it hadn't been for Aelius, you'd probably be in jail right now, and we'd have a devil of a job getting you out."

"Jail." It was the first time he'd heard fear in Bassano's voice. Of course, it was the first time he'd had anything to be afraid of. "But that's..."

"You did break his arm," Basso said.

"I didn't mean to."

"I know. You said. Anyway, that's all dealt with." He paused, then said: "Where do you want to go?"

It hadn't occurred to him that he was now homeless. He didn't know what to say.

"Your mother's, presumably," Basso went on. "Though I don't suppose she'll be overjoyed to see you. Getting expelled for violent assault; she has a wonderful turn of phrase when she's angry. With me, of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if she took it out on you. Not the clearest of thinkers, somehow."

Bassano shivered. Basso said, "You can stay with me if you like."

"But Mother..."

"Won't know," Basso replied. "Send her a letter, say you're staying with friends till you find a place."

Bassano hesitated, then nodded. "If that's all right with you," he said.

"Of course. Stay as long as you like. At least," he added quickly, "until the wedding."

The carriage stopped, and Basso quickly leaned forward and twitched the curtain aside. "We're here," he said, and Bassano noticed he'd been suddenly tense, until he saw why they'd stopped moving. He wondered: will that stay with him for the rest of his life? "We've got to wait for the guards to open the door," he said, in a rather self-consciously long-suffering voice. "They have to make sure there's no assassins hiding behind the flowerpots before we're allowed to get out."

"About the wedding," Bassano said.

"Yes. Thought you'd ask. Well, you can meet her for yourself. I'd like to know," he added, in a voice Bassano hadn't heard before, "what you think."

(And Bassano realised, with a shock like twisting your ankle: I could put a stop to it, with just a few words. If I said no, you can't possibly marry this woman, he wouldn't.)

"I'm hardly an authority," Bassano said.

Basso gave him a scowl. "I'm not asking you to field-test her for me," he said, "just give me your opinion."

"I didn't..."

Basso laughed. "Of course you didn't," he said. "I just want to know if you like her, that's all."

"What do the twins think?"

"They have no opinion," Basso said.

"Have they met her?"

"No."

"Really? Why not?"

Basso shrugged. "They haven't asked to meet her, I haven't suggested it. That would imply that all three of us think it's not really any of our business."

"Ah," Bassano said; and then the guard knocked on the door of the carriage, which meant they could leave.

The First Citizen's decision to increase the purity of the Vesani nomisma had a number of far-reaching effects. The most obvious of these was an influx of foreign money, as Auxentine and Sclerian bankers sent hundreds of tons of gold, in coin and metal scrap, to the Vesani Mint to be exchanged for the new high-standard coins. Basso had stipulated that the differential should be kept low: five per cent to begin with, rising to five and a half when the mint supervisor complained that his staff were being overwhelmed, and the new dies were wearing out faster than the engravers could cut replacements. Even so, the income generated was far in excess of what had been expected. The whole world, it seemed, wanted to buy and sell in Vesani currency, and those who didn't soon found they had no choice. In Auxentia, it was practically impossible to pay anything other than taxes in Auxentine coin; not that that mattered, since at least two-thirds of the country's circulating medium (according to conservative estimates) had already been shipped to the Vesani Mint, melted down and reissued as nomismata, with Basso's head on one side and Victory advancing left on the other. The fact that the Victory in question could only be the recent Vesani---Auxentine war didn't seem to bother anybody. The Sclerian government tried to ban the use of Vesani currency; and when the new law was universally ignored, the King made an example of some Auxentine merchants, which prompted the Auxentines to cut off all trade with Scleria for two months, after which hunger riots in the capital induced the King to relent. By then, however, Vesani banks and trading companies had taken full advantage and concluded long-term deals for a number of desirable commodities that had hitherto been staples of Sclerian commerce. The King had his finance minister disgraced and thrown in jail, but for some reason that didn't serve to woo the Auxentines back. Meanwhile, the differential income...

"I don't understand," she said. "How does it work, exactly?"

Basso smiled. "Simple," he said. "Suppose you're an Auxentine trader. You need to be able to pay for your stuff in Vesani nomismata, because that's all your trading partners are prepared to accept--"

"Why?"

"Because our coins are guaranteed ninety-eight per cent pure gold. Other people's coins have got all manner of old rubbish in them. So a hundred pounds' weight of nomismata is guaranteed to be ninety-eight pounds' weight of good stuff. A hundredweight of Mavortine staters, on the other hand--no offence intended--means you've got about seventy pounds of gold and thirty pounds of copper, tin, zinc and God knows what else."

"But the Auxentine coins are ninety-six per cent."

"I know," Basso said. "Really, there's no sense to it, but that's what happens in business. You insist on the best coin available, which now means nomismata." He stopped and flicked the dead head off a flower. "Anyway, the Auxentines and everybody else have been bringing their domestic coins to us; we melt them down, take out the rubbish and mint nomismata, which we give back to them."

"Less five and a half per cent."

Basso nodded. "For our trouble. It's done on the pure gold content, of course. You're an Auxentine; you bring me a hundred tons of your coins, from which I get ninety-six tons of pure gold. I rake off five and a half per cent--just over five and a quarter tons, which I keep. Then I add two tons of copper to the pure stuff, mint it into coins and give it back. My profit is therefore just under six tons, because I'm not paying you back in pure gold, I'm giving you ninety-eight per cent pure."

"I see," she said, and he thought: yes, she does. He was impressed. "That's a good deal."

"Particularly," Basso added, "since the bankers organising the exchange--it's all got to be done through banks, of course--take one per cent commission on top of what the government takes."

"That's you."

He smiled. "That's me. May not sound much, one per cent, but it's a lot. Eight hundred thousand nomismata so far. It'll pay for the new shipyard."

She frowned. "With which..."

"With which I'll build a new fleet for the Navy, cheaper than the government yards could do it but still quite profitably."

"With which?"

"With which," Basso said, "when the time comes, we'll drive the Auxentines out of the White Sea altogether and get a monopoly of the main grain routes to the East."

"Using ships paid for with their money."

"Essentially, yes." He grinned. "The differential income will pay for the ships, so yes, we're getting our new empire for free. Once we've got the monopoly, of course, every Auxentine ship carrying grain from the Auxentine farming colonies to the homeland will have to pay us half a nomisma on the ton, or risk ending up at the bottom of the sea. In due course, when the price of grain in Auxentia gets so high that people can't afford to pay, we'll offer them membership of the Vesani Commonwealth. It's all right," he added, "you don't know about that, because it doesn't exist yet. That's about ten stages down the line."

"An empire."

"An empire, and no stupid great wars of conquest," Basso said. "Better still, an empire that doesn't
feel
like an empire, so nobody will mind. All they'll see will be the valuable benefits: free trade inside the Commonwealth, Vesani currency, weights and measures, Vesani law, Commonwealth citizenship, a single Commonwealth army--which won't have anybody to fight, of course, so it won't cost a fortune and thousands of young men won't die. All that for a slight increase in taxes, probably offset by lower prices in the marketplace. And all that," he added, "because, on a whim, I wanted to annoy the Optimates."

She looked at him, then turned away and watched the fountain in the middle of the courtyard. "You don't feel apprehensive," she said, "changing the world to suit yourself."

"No." He took her hand and led her to the stone bench. "The secret is, always to give something back." He sat down; she sat beside him. "A hundred of my predecessors tried to make the world a better place," he said. "They tried so hard, we've had poverty, economic collapse, and so many wars I lose count. My approach is, I try and make money for myself in a way that benefits the Republic. It's not exactly difficult. If it was, I don't suppose I'd be able to do it."

"Really."

"Quite true. That sort of thing's always come easily to me. Like the Reserve, for example. Did I tell you about that?"

(Maybe I love her, he thought, because at last I've found someone I can brag to.)

"What's the Reserve?"

"My big idea," Basso said proudly. "The government pays a living wage, not a fortune but enough to support a man and his family, to any man between the ages of eighteen and sixty who's fit and strong enough to row a galley in the Fleet. In order to get the money, he doesn't have to do anything; all he's committing himself to is serving in the Fleet when we're at war, plus a few weeks' training every year. He gets paid extra for training and active service, and the rest of the time, he can do any job he wants to earn more money. Or, if he can't get a job or if he doesn't like the way that working for a living tends to cut into your free time, he can get by and his children won't starve. Result: we have a fully trained standing navy when we need it, but which we don't have to pay through the nose for, like they do in other countries; and nobody need ever go hungry again, which is something my predecessors have been trying to achieve for a thousand years, with a total lack of success."

She frowned. "That's the thing," she said. "You add on getting rid of starvation and poverty like it's a fringe benefit. Like the slice of lemon you get with a plate of whitebait."

He laughed. "That's why I succeed," he said, "where the men with beautiful souls always fail. If you walk through the market asking the stallholders to give you a slice of lemon for free, they'd laugh in your face. Pay for the whitebait and you get a good meal of whitebait for your money, plus the free lemon. It's like the jury pay scheme."