The Folding Knife (66 page)

But the priest was smiling; not in a nice way. "Let's see," he said (he had a strong Auxentine accent). "You look exactly like him, and those boots must've cost two weeks' wages for a working man. Nice coat, too, except you look like you've been sleeping on a shitheap in it."

Basso shook his head. "Charity," he said. "I only beg at the very best houses."

"That's not a beggar's voice," the priest said. He looked stupid, but he didn't sound it. "You're him, aren't you?"

Basso sighed. "Tell you what," he said. "This beautiful silver inkwell for a loaf of bread. Well?"

The priest took it from him, looked at it and handed it back. "Got one," he said. "Got a whole shelf of them."

"Fine," Basso snapped. "So how'd it be if I cut your throat and helped myself?"

The priest laughed. "You can try," he said. "I wasn't always a priest. The likes of you I could have for breakfast."

Basso shrugged. "So what are you doing in the middle of nowhere with no driver?"

"You don't use your eyes, is your trouble," the priest said. "Axle's busted. Wheel's off. They've gone back to the town to get the smith and the joiner. I couldn't be arsed to walk." He reached down by his side and produced a slab of something, wrapped in vine leaves. Auxentine smoked lamb, most likely. "You are him, aren't you?"

"For what you're holding I can be anybody you like."

The priest smiled and threw him the meat; he tried to catch it left-handed, and it ended up in the dust. He brushed it off carefully. "If you're him," the priest went on, "I owe you a favour, specially if you're down on your luck."

"I'm him," Basso said.

The priest laughed. "You haven't got a fucking clue who I am, have you?"

"No."

The priest didn't seem to mind. "I'm Magnentius," he said, "cardinal of the Auxentines. You sent me a box of candied figs when I got elected."

Basso remembered. "You sat on the throne and refused to move," he said.

"That's me," Magnentius replied. "Anyhow, they were bloody good figs. I'm very partial to them, and you can't get 'em at home."

Basso laughed, as if the world suddenly made sense. "And a book," he said. "I sent you a book."

"Did you?" Magnentius shrugged. "I get sent a lot of books. So," he went on, "now you know who I am."

"I'm Bassianus Severus," Basso replied. "Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," Magnentius said. "What're you doing tramping the roads looking like shit?"

So Basso told him. When he'd finished, Magnentius frowned. "You just cleared out?" he said. "Buggered off and let them win?"

"Yes," Basso replied. "Not what you'd have done."

"Too right," Magnentius said. "I'd have fought the bastards, and won. Still, that's my way. I started off working the docks, you know; I learned the hard way. Never back down, never turn your back on a friend."

The second part, Basso reflected, could be interpreted two ways. Both equally valid. "Well," he said, "it was a pleasure meeting you. I'd be grateful if you don't tell anybody you've seen me."

Magnentius was thinking, clearly a process that took both time and effort. "I'll do better than that," he said. "Listen, you must be quite handy with figures, right?"

"They wouldn't agree back home," Basso said. "But I can do simple arithmetic, if that's what you mean."

"Tell you what." Magnentius didn't seem aware that he'd spoken. "I'm piss-poor with figures, always have been. Can't read or write either," he added, with what could only have been pride. "And here's you, smart fellow, in need of a job; and you sent me a jar of figs when you didn't have to." Magnentius seemed to hesitate; then he said: "Here's what I'm saying. You come and work for me, clerking and figuring, and I'll see you right. You'll be safe in Auxentia, so long as nobody knows who you are."

Basso's turn to frown. "Just because of a jar of figs."

"Take it or leave it," Magnentius said. "I'll say this, you won't get far on your own, not on this road. Nearest town's a day's walk east, and they'll cut your throat for your shoes."

It was, Basso decided, essentially perfect. It took him all his strength of mind not to burst out laughing. "That's very kind of you," he said. "Thank you."

"You'll have to work, mind," Magnentius said. "Hard work, long hours, and don't expect any favours."

"Of course," Basso said. "Out of curiosity, though: why?"

Magnentius shrugged, and his chins shook. "I do as the fancy takes me," he said. "Maybe it's your lucky day."

They came back with the smith and the joiner that evening, and worked through the night. Magnentius introduced Basso as a poor clerk, down on his luck, name of--

"Antigonus," Basso said.

In the morning, they tacked up the horses and drove on. They were heading for the crossroads; north, to inspect the episcopal estates on the Blemmyan border. It would be a long journey, but nobody was in any hurry. Basso rode on the roof of the coach, with the porter, the guard and the cardinal's valet.

K. J. P
ARKER
is a pseudonym. Find more about the author at
www.kjparker.com
.

introducing

If you enjoyed

THE FOLDING KNIFE,

look out for

by K. J. Parker

Hoping for a better life, five war veterans colonize an abandoned island. They take with them everything they could possibly need--food, clothes, tools, weapons, even wives.

But an unanticipated discovery shatters their dream and replaces it with a very different one. The colonists feel sure that their friendship will keep them together. Only then do they begin to realize that they've brought with them rather more than they bargained for.

For one of them, it seems, has been hiding a terrible secret from the rest of the company. And when the truth begins to emerge, it soon becomes clear that the war is far from over.

W
hen Teuche Kunessin was thirteen years old, the war came to Faralia. General Oionoisin led the Seventh Regiment down the Blue River valley, trying to catch the enemy's last remaining field army before it could get to the coast, where the fleet was waiting to take it home. With hindsight, he admitted that he sent his cavalry too far ahead; the enemy dragoons cut them off and routed them at Sherden, whereupon their commander lost his nerve and withdrew them behind the defences of the coast fort at Greenmuir. The enemy immediately turned on General Oionoisin and, making full use of their cavalry superiority, forced him to fight a pitched battle six miles east of Faralia, on a high ridge of open moorland pasture. The Seventh fought well, holding off the dragoons for over an hour before their square finally broke. Once the pike wall was disrupted, however, the enemy infantry moved against them and their annihilation was inevitable. After the battle, in the absence of any effective opposition in the west, the enemy retraced their steps as far as Meshway, defeated General Houneka's Fifth Regiment and laid siege to the city. Most authorities now agree that Oionoisin's error of judgement at Faralia prolonged the war by ten years.

Teuche's father knew the soldiers were somewhere in the parish. He'd met Tolly Epersen as he was driving the herd back to the sheds for evening milking, and Tolly reckoned he'd seen them, a dark grey blur on the slopes of Farmoor. Teuche's father was worried, naturally enough. His sheep were on Big Moor, a hopelessly tempting prize for a large body of hungry men. He considered the risks and options: if Tolly had seen them on Farmoor an hour ago, even if they were coming straight down the combe, it'd still take them four hours to reach the pasture where the sheep were. There should be plenty of time, therefore, to get up to Big Moor and drive the flock into Redwater combe, where with any luck they wouldn't be noticed. Normally he'd have gone himself and left the milking to Teuche, but as luck would have it, he'd put his foot in a rabbit hole and turned over his ankle two days earlier, and was still limping badly. He didn't like the thought of sending the boy out where there might be stray soldiers, but he couldn't risk anything happening to the sheep. He called Teuche out of the barn, where he'd been mending hurdles, and told him what to do.

Teuche clearly wasn't wild about the idea, but he could see that it had to be done, and that his father was in no fit state to do it. He whistled up the dogs, put some rope in his pocket just in case he did meet any soldiers (if the dogs ran ahead, they'd give him away; once he got up on the top he'd put them on the lead, just in case) and set off up the course of the dried-up stream. It wasn't the shortest way, but he figured he could keep out of sight behind the high banks on that side, if there turned out to be soldiers on the moor.

The stream bed ran down the steepest side of the hill, but Teuche was young, fit and in a hurry. Because he was keeping well over to the lower side, in the shade of the ninety-year-old copper beeches his great-grandfather had planted along the top of the bank to act as a windbreak, he could neither see nor be seen, and the wind in the branches made enough noise to mask any sound he made, though of course going quietly had long since been second nature to him. It took him no more than an hour to reach the gate in the bank that led from Pit Mead into Big Moor. There he paused, pulled himself together, and peered over the gate to see what he could see.

To begin with, he had no idea what they could be. They were far too dark to be sheep, too big to be rooks or crows. If he'd been a stranger to the neighbourhood he might well have taken them for rocks and large stones; not an unusual sight on the top of the moor, where the soil was so thin and the wind scoured more of it away every year. But, thanks to his great-grandfather's windbreak, Big Moor was good pasture with relatively deep, firm soil; there were one or two outcrops down on the southern side, but none at all in the middle, and these things, whatever they were, were everywhere. His best guess was that they were some kind of very large birds; geese, perhaps.

At first, they only puzzled him; he was too preoccupied by what wasn't there, namely the sheep. He curbed the impulse to run out into the field and look for them. If they weren't there, it might well mean that the soldiers had got there first and were down out of sight in the dip on the eastern side. By the same token, the sheep might be down there too, though they only tended to crowd in down there when they needed to shelter from the rain. He couldn't decide what to do for the best, and as he tried to make up his mind, he considered the unidentified things scattered all over the field; not sheep or rooks, not stones, and there had to be hundreds of them. Thousands.

He stayed in the gateway for a long while, until he realised that time was getting on, and he still didn't know where the sheep were. Very cautiously, he climbed the gate and dropped down as close as he could to the bank, where he'd be harder to see. His idea was to work his way along the bank as far as the boggy patch, where he could use the cover of the reeds to get far enough out into the field to spy down into the hidden dip. It was a good plan of action. In spite of his anxiety, he felt moderately proud of himself for keeping his head in a difficult situation.

The first one he found was lying in the bottom of the narrow drainage rhine that went under the bank about a hundred yards down from the gate. Because of the clumps of couch grass that edged the rhine, he didn't see him until he was no more than five feet away. He stopped dead, as though he'd walked into a wall in the dark.

The man was lying on his face, his arms by his sides, and Teuche's first thought was that he was drunk; passed out and sleeping it off in a ditch, like old Hetori Laon from Blueside. He noticed that the man had what looked like a steel shell that covered his top half, from his neck down to his waist, and under that a shirt apparently made out of thousands of small, linked steel rings. Then he realised that the man's face was submerged in the black, filthy water that ran in the rhine. He ran forward to see if he could help, but stopped before he got much closer.

He'd never seen a dead man before. When Grandfather died, his mother had made him stay out in the barn; when he was allowed back inside there was no body to be seen, just a long plank box with the lid already nailed down. Maybe as a result of that, he'd always imagined that a dead body would be a horrifying, scary sight; in the event, it was no such thing. It looked just like a man lying down--a man lying down drunk, even, which was comedy, not tragedy--but he could tell just by looking at it that it wasn't human any more, it wasn't a person, just a thing. Teuche wasn't afraid of things. He went closer.