The Last Witness (4 page)

I couldn’t speak, so I mouthed the word;
nobody
.
Someone behind me dropped the noose over my head. “Get on with it,” the old man said. I tried to think of something to say, a lie, something he’d want to hear, but—here’s an interesting fact for you. When you’re winded so bad you can’t breathe, you can’t lie, your imagination simply blanks out and making stuff up is impossible, you just can’t do it. You don’t have the strength, simple as that.

Someone hauled on the rope. I felt my feet lift off the ground. I felt this excruciating pain. And then—

* * *

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This clerk came to see me; a boy, seventeen at most, with a long turkey neck and big ears. He worked for them, the old man and his son. They were pleased with the job I’d done for them, and would I help them out with another little problem? You’ll recall that I was broke again at this point. Depends what it is, I replied. The clerk said he didn’t know the details, but to meet them outside the Flawless Diamonds of Orthodoxy at third watch that evening. What about the curfew? I asked. The boy just grinned nervously and gave me a piece of paper. It was a draft on the Merchant Union, two hundred angels.

“He betrayed us,” the old man told me. It was dark and bitter cold, and I’d come out without my scarf (now I come to think of it, I’d traded my scarf for a loaf of bread). “He’ll deny it, of course. He’d rather die than tell. That’s what we need you for.”

The rest you know. They picked the lock and we all trooped up the stairs quiet as little mice; they woke him up by pulling him out of bed onto the floor. He claimed he was innocent and hadn’t betrayed them or stolen from them, not a bent stuiver. After a while, they threw a rope over a rafter and hung him. I was inside his mind when he died. He’d been telling the truth. He was a lawyer, by the way, acting for the Temple oversight committee.

“Well?” the old man asked me.

“Nothing,” I told him. “He was telling the truth. He didn’t betray you. He didn’t steal anything.” I paused. “I could’ve told you that anyhow. There was no need—”

I got frowned at for that, so I shut up. Customers always think they know best. “You sure?”

“Positive,” I said. “If he’d had that on his mind, I’d have seen it. But there wasn’t anything.”

I got the feeling he didn’t believe me. Stupid. Why would I lie? Well, obviously, if I meant to blackmail them or sell them out to their enemies; but I wouldn’t do that, because it’d be unprofessional. I may be no angel but I have standards. Of course, they had no way of knowing that.

“Get out,” the old man said. “And keep yourself available. We may want you again.”

“You’ve just made me accessory to a murder,” I said. “I’m not pleased about that.”

He shook his head. “Not murder,” he said. “Suicide. And don’t you ever talk back to me. Got that?”

I considered the evidence of my own eyes. There’s this man, hanging from a rafter. The only chair in the room is lying on its side, right under his dangling feet. No sign of forced entry, or anyway, there won’t be, ten minutes from now. Sure looks like suicide, and the only evidence to the contrary is a memory. “Point taken,” I said. It’s amazing how many people construe that as
yes
.
“Suicide,” I said. “Silly me. I’ll go now.”

“Hold on.” The younger man was looking at me. “Before he goes, he can make himself useful.”

The old man looked at him; he was nodding stupidly at the hired men. Oh, come on, I thought, there’s six of them. “That’s a point,” the old man said.

“You can’t afford it,” I told him.

He grinned at me. “Reduced rate for quantity. Or you could be feeling really depressed and sad.”

Oh, I thought. Sad enough to jump off the Haymarket bridge, and (as the man said) who would miss me? Fair enough. “Tell you what,” I said. “This one’s on the house.”

The young man grinned. The old man said he wouldn’t hear of it. The labourer is worthy of his hire. So I did all six of them for fifteen angels each.

Not that it mattered all that much. Forty-eight hours later I was broke again.

* * *

The point being; I died in that room. I know I did, because I remember it clear as day.

I died, but here I am. Explain that, if you can. Simple. I died, and I was born again, just like it says in the Testament. Proof positive. I have difficulty with the faith aspect of it, but the plain facts admit of no other explanation. Blessed are those who have seen and yet have believed.

* * *

We call them the Temple trustees and everybody knows who we mean, but their proper name is the Guardians of the Perpetual Fund for the Proliferation of Orthodoxy. They’re serious men, and they own all the best grazing land from the Hog’s Back right out to the Blackwater, as well as half the prime real estate in the Capital and a whole lot of other nice things, all of which came into the possession of the Fund through the bequests and endowments of former Guardians. The income from these assets is divided between the Commissioners of the Fabric, who maintain and improve the Temple buildings throughout the empire, and the Social Fund, which pays for the soup kitchens and the way stations and the diocesan free schools, not to mention the travelling doctors and the Last Chance advocates who defend prisoners on capital charges who haven’t got the money to hire a real lawyer. I seem to remember someone telling me that about a third of the wealth of the empire passes through the trustees’ hands, and that the trustees themselves are chosen from the select few who have the brains to do the job and so much money of their own that they have no possible incentive to steal; in fact, you have to pay an annual fee equivalent to the cost of outfitting and maintaining a regiment in the field in order to belong to the College of Guardians, and there’s a waiting list a mile long. It’s probably quite true. When you’re that rich, money is just a way of keeping score.

That was the sort of people I was dealing with; rich, powerful men, peers of the gods, the sort who make and alter truth—What is truth? Truth is what you know, if you’re one of them. Truth is what you own. If the whim takes you, you can say, “On the banks of the Blackwater there’s a city constructed entirely of marble.” Actually, no, there isn’t. “Oh, yes, there is. I had it built, last week.” Or: “There never was a war between the Blemyans and the Aram Chantat.” You go to the Temple library to look up the references to refute this idiotic statement, and all the relevant books are missing all the relevant pages. Or: “Who? There’s no such person.” Indeed. Men like gods who can ordain the future, regulate the present, and amend the past—pretty well everything worthwhile that ever happened in history was done by men like that; they built cities, instituted trade and manufacture, fostered the sciences and the arts, and endowed charities.
Let it be so,
they said, and it was so. And, quite rightly, what they paid for, they own: the freeholds, the equity. And us. Without them, we’d be dressed in animal skins and living in caves. I believe in them, the way I believe in the Invincible Sun—which is to say, I acknowledge their existence, and their authority, and their power. Doesn’t mean I have to like them. Or Him, for that matter.

* * *

When I was nineteen, not long after I left home, I met this girl. I can close my eyes and picture her exactly, as though Euxis the Mannerist had painted her on the inside of my eyelids. Not that Euxis would’ve accepted the commission, since he only ever painted incarnations of perfection, absolute physical beauty—and she was hardly that. Pretty, yes, but—my mother had a saying,
she’s prettier than she looks
.
And anyway, Euxis wasn’t all that good. He couldn’t do hands worth spit.

The good thing about the way she looked was that she inspired no interest in the handsome, rich, charming young men who could’ve taken her away from me just by noticing her. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t that sort of girl, but I know perfectly well that some things are outside one’s control. Beauty, of course, is one of them. Alongside the rich, in the pantheon of gods, are the beautiful. They too can change the world, a smile here, a frown there. They can inspire and kill love as easily as a rich man can endow a hospital or arrange a murder, and they do it because they can. But I worshipped her because she was no goddess, and if only there were someone else who could do what I can do, I’d pay him anything he asked for to get her out of my mind. She died, you see, and when I went down on my knees and prayed to the gods to bring her back to life, they just ignored me. Forget her, they told me, move on. I can only assume they were trying to be funny. Anyhow, I won’t forget that in a hurry, believe me.

* * *

My next job for the old man and his son was quick, easy, and safe, or so they told me. A business associate of theirs was to be entrusted with certain sensitive information in order to carry out a certain confidential transaction on their behalf. Once the deal had been done, I was to remove the whole episode from his memory. He had (they told me) been fully informed about my special abilities, and had readily agreed to the procedure. He would just sit there, perfectly still and quiet, while I did my thing. In spite of this, I would be paid the same fee I’d received for more arduous work.

At the time I was not well off for money, as a result of some unsatisfactory experiments into certain aspects of probability theory. One of the worst things about poverty is that when people like the old man call on you, you’re actually glad to see them. Delighted, I told them, and thank you for your valued custom. They told me a time and a place. I promised I’d be there, and went away to wash my other shirt, because a smart appearance creates a good impression.

If they’re worth the money, you don’t notice them, not until they’re right on top of you and there’s nothing you can do. These two—I wish I knew their names, so that I could hire them myself if I ever need any help with violence. One of them was vaguely familiar, I may have caught a glimpse of him in the street at some point over the last few days (I never forget a face) and thought nothing of it; the other one I’d never seen before in my life. They hit me with a short wooden club and dropped a sack over my head, and that was that.

When the sack came off, I barely noticed, because the room was dark. I was vaguely aware of the shape of a man not far away. I was sitting down, but my hands and feet were tied. I heard a man’s voice, not the man whose shape I could just make out. It said, “This thing you do.”

I waited. Someone nudged the back of my head with a sharp object. “Yes?” I said.

“The person you do it to,” the voice went on. “Do they know about it?”

“It hurts,” I replied. “But they don’t necessarily realise it’s me doing it. They may think it’s a heart attack, or something like that.”

“So it hurts a lot.”

“Yes.”

Pause for mature consideration. Then I screamed, because someone was holding a red-hot iron to the back of my neck. “As bad as that?”

It took me a moment to catch my breath. “Different sort of pain, I think,” I said. “But purely in terms of quantity, about that, yes.”

“Mphm.” I heard movement behind me, and the cherry-red end of an iron rod appeared in front of my eyes. “Can you make it a bit less painful, if you really try hard?”

“No,” I said. From a slight intake of breath, I guessed I’d said the wrong thing. “Of course, I can remove the memory of the pain. That’s easy.”

(A slight overstatement; like saying the sea is a bit damp. But I can do that, yes.)

“Ah.” He liked me again. The red-hot iron went away, though probably only as far as a charcoal brazier. “So you can do it to someone and he won’t know about it.”

“Yes.”

“Splendid.” Slight pause. “Now, I’m going to ask you that again, and this time, if you were lying, tell the truth. You can do it to someone and he won’t know?”

“Yes. You have my word.”

I’d said something funny. “Fair enough,” said the voice. “The word of a gentleman is always good enough for me. Now, then. You work for—” And he mentioned two names. They weren’t the names I knew the old man and his son by, but I’d done a little research. “Yes,” I said, and braced myself for another touch of the hot iron.

“Relax,” the voice said. “I’m not going to ask you to betray confidences, I know you wouldn’t do that.” Pause. “Not for some time, and by then you’d be no good for anything. But I am going to ask you to do something that isn’t in the best interests of your employers. I’m going to ask you to bleach something out of their minds. Would that be awkward for you, ethically speaking?”

Believe it or not, I did actually think about it before answering. Not for terribly long. “No,” I said, “that wouldn’t be a problem.” Silence; so I expanded a little. “My duty to my client is not to divulge things he doesn’t want known. That’s it, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Particularly if he never knows about it.”

“Particularly, yes.”

The voice laughed gently. “Because if nobody knows about it, it never happened. Splendid. I believe your usual charge is a thousand angels.”

Wonderful, what people believe. But I have nothing against good honest faith. We could do with more of it in this world. “That’s right, yes.”

“Two thousand angels, since there are two of them, father and son.”

I was beginning to warm to him. “That’s right, yes.”

“The rest of you, out.” Shuffling noises. The man in front of me stood up and walked away. A door closed. “Now I’m going to tell you what I need you to remove. I know I can trust your discretion, because you’re a gentleman. Listen carefully.”

* * *

Burns on the back of the neck are no fun at all; every time you turn your head, you stretch them, and it hurts. Something to remember him by.

Still; two thousand angels. I lay awake (on my face; I can only get to sleep lying on my side) all that night thinking of what I could do with two thousand angels. Buy a large farm, fully stocked, and hire a good bailiff. Or invest in shipping, which is going to be the next big thing, or copper mines in Scheria (or maybe not; too much of a gamble for my taste). Give up work for good. Get rich. Become a god.