The Proof House (24 page)

When they’d gone, Bardas tried very hard to stay awake. He managed to keep going for an hour; then he woke up in a panic to find Bollo standing over him with a bowl of salt porridge and a wooden spoon.

Once the fire has been lit
, the report said,
it must be kept going to maintain the necessary level of heat. Approximately twenty-four loads of charcoal are needed to produce eight tons of pig-iron.

Athli closed her eyes, then opened them again. It was late, and she wanted to go to bed; but the report had been sitting on her desk for two days now, and she wouldn’t have time to read it tomorrow - meetings all day, and the accounts to audit after that. She found the place again and tried to concentrate.

Athli yawned. At first glance, it had seemed like a sound enough proposition; with wars breaking out here and there, the Empire on the move, its neighbours panicking, generals and masters of ordnance everywhere looking to upgrade equipment, what better investment than an armour factory, either here on the Island or away in Colleon, where labour was cheap and raw materials conveniently to hand? But she was cautious, getting more so every day, and so she’d asked the librarian at the Merchant Venturers’ Hall, who owed her a favour, to see if there was anything about the economics of running an armoury; and he’d found an old report by the warden of the city armoury of Perimadeia, compiled thirty years ago and more, which he’d had copied and sent to her wrapped in silk and tied with a broad blue ribbon. It was very kind of him, though it wasn’t going to get him anywhere, if that’s what he was thinking; but the very least she could do was read it, after he’d been to all that trouble.

She tried to focus, but her eyes slid across the page like a colt trying to cross a frozen river. Dry stuff; well, of course, what did she expect, a love interest? Concentrate, she urged herself, this is the good bit. If one man can make one and a half hundredweight of plate a day, and if five hundredweight makes twenty cuirasses (with pauldrons, whatever a pauldron was), but using coal, not charcoal; twenty-four loads of charcoal makes eight tons, of which one ton is lost; but how much charcoal do you get in a load? She scowled, and rearranged the counters on her counting-board.

Coincidence, she thought; apparently Bardas has been posted to the armoury at Ap’ Calick. Hey, why don’t I just go to Ap’ Calick and ask him about all this stuff, instead of killing myself trying to understand it from a book? What a good idea. No, thank you. Not even if he knows what a pauldron is, or whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing to have with a cuirass.

Who could she think of - who
else
could she think of who’d be likely to know what a pauldron was? On the Island, armour came in barrels stuffed with straw and sealed with the factory seal, and it stayed there until it was offloaded on the customer’s dock and paid for. What was inside the barrel, nobody knew or cared. The Islanders knew a lot of things - they had a library, after all - but technical military information wasn’t the sort of thing that interested them. Chances were, she could find ten people who could tell her how much a pauldron was worth, twenty who happened to know where there was a consignment of best-quality pauldrons, cancelled order, virtually at cost; forty who were crying out for pauldrons to meet an order, cash on the nail, good customer, but the stuff’s never about when you want it. Show them a pauldron and they’d probably try to poach an egg in it. She shuffled the counters up and down the lines and wrote the result on the wax tablet next to the board. Good, solid, meaningless data.

Armour, she thought. Was there really going to be a war? Everybody seemed to think so; they were counting on it, planning ahead for it, stockpiling and getting rid - Maupas is buying arrowheads and selling paintbrushes, because nobody’s going to want to buy brushes when there’s a war on; Ren is buying Maupas’ brushes, because the price is right and after the war is over, people will want brushes again; but in order to pay for the brushes, he’s got to sell the two hundred thousand copper rivets he got cheap in Aguill all those years ago - but that’s all right, because they use rivets to make armour, soon people will be crying out for rivets because of the war, so wouldn’t he be better off keeping the rivets and passing on the brushes? It was an odd way to look at a war, purely in terms of all the things needed to make it work - all the arrows that would be shot off, armour that would be bashed up and mangled, all the hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes and miles of strap leather, all the belt buckles and whetstones and cartwheel spokes and nails and pickaxe handles and parchment-roll covers and stockings and planks and feathers and axle pins and water bottles. You could take away all the people, and still a war is a massive thing, a vast collection of goods, an endless supply and demand of materiel, all being crammed into the mouth of the war; such a displacement of things. And why? Because war is inevitable. Fancy you needing to ask.

Perimadeia, displaced. The war had been inevitable. Likewise, presumably, the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, brought low by one Bardas Loredan. Such a displacement of people; but things were easier to deal with, things were her business now. If I knew what a pauldron was, would it all suddenly become clear, would I truly understand? Possibly. Possibly not.

Once the fire has been lit, it must be kept burning to maintain the necessary level of heat.
She pulled a face; read that bit already. Why couldn’t these people want to make something she knew a bit about, like carpet?

The counting-house door opened; Sabel Votz, her chief clerk, in a hurry and a fluster.

‘Visitors,’ she said, as if announcing the end of the world. ‘From the provincial office. Downstairs, in the hall.’

If Athli had taken her cue from her clerk’s tone of voice, she’d have been in two minds whether to send for wine and cakes or barricade the doors. Fortunately she was used to Sabel by now. ‘Really,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s about time. Bring them up, wait two minutes, then fetch in a tray.’

Sabel looked at her disapprovingly. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘And no interruptions?’

‘Exactly.’ Sabel went away again, and Athli looked round instinctively to make sure the place was tidy. A silly instinct, that; she wasn’t a housewife suddenly descended upon by her husband’s mother, she was the Island agent for the Shastel Order, and as such a person of consequence. At the last moment she caught sight of a pair of shoes, lying under the table where she’d kicked them off the night before. She just had time to scoop them up and hide them behind a cushion before the door opened, and Sabel ushered in two Sons of Heaven and a long, thin, pale clerk, who looked as if he’d been put out in the sun to dry and forgotten about.

Exceedingly polite, these Sons of Heaven (they were called Iqueval and Fesal, and both of them were lieutenant commanders in the Imperial Navy; this came as something of a surprise to Athli, who wasn’t aware the Empire had a navy). Even sitting down, they seemed to loom over her, the way the towers of Commercial Hall looked down on all the houses in her street. Both had white hair and short tufts of beard on the points of their chins; but she could tell them apart because Iqueval’s collar buttons were black lacquered horn, and Fesal’s were silver plate.

‘Yes,’ she said, when they’d explained the purpose of their visit, ‘I have two ships, and I’d be perfectly happy to—’

Fesal cleared his throat. ‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘that’s no longer the case. You now have only one ship. I’m sorry to have to tell you the
Fencer
ran aground on a reef while apparently trying to slip past an Imperial blockade. She broke up before salvage was possible, and sank. I do hope for your sake she was properly insured.’ The Son of Heaven smiled consolingly, then added, ‘If it helps at all, I can provide you with a certificate of shipwreck to prove the loss, in case your insurer makes difficulties over the claim. After all,’ he added with a smile, ‘knowledge is one thing, proof is another.’

‘Thank you,’ Athli said. ‘Do you happen to know if there were any survivors?’

‘Regrettably, we have no information one way or another,’ Iqueval replied, ‘beyond a report from one of our patrols in the vicinity who encountered unauthorised foreigners in a restricted area shortly afterwards. One of our men was killed in the encounter, I believe. The intruders escaped north, towards Perimadeia.’

Athli nodded. ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ she said. She felt slightly numb and rather dizzy, as if she had a bad cold; just disorientating enough to make communication tiresome. ‘Well then, I’ve got
one
ship. I imagine you know all about that one, too.’

‘Indeed,’ Iqueval confirmed. ‘The
Arrow
; sixty foot, two hundred tons burden, twin mast square-rigger, under the command of Captain Dondas Mosten, a Perimadeian; presently at anchor here, due to sail the day after tomorrow for Shastel with a cargo of mixed luxury goods, books and furniture. We would very much like to charter your ship, at a quarter per ton per week plus wages, provisions and damages.’

Athli thought for a moment. ‘Starting when?’ she said.

‘That hasn’t been decided yet,’ said Fesal. ‘Our intention is to start the charter, at full hire except for wages and provisions, some time before we actually start our work; this will be necessary to ensure that all the ships we’re chartering will be available when we need them.’

‘I see,’ Athli said. ‘And what would this work of yours be?’

Fesal smiled tightly. ‘That’s restricted, I’m afraid,’ he said.

‘Oh.’ Athli looked him in the eye, but saw nothing there. ‘I’m only concerned in case there’s an element of risk. To be perfectly straight with you, I don’t want to get involved in anything that would leave my ship at the bottom of the sea, particularly,’ she added, ‘now that it’s the only one I’ve got. I do have certain commercial interests quite separate from the Bank, you see, and I need my ship—’

‘In the event of damage,’ said Fesal firmly, ‘or indeed outright loss, we will pay you compensation in full, in accordance with the market value of the ship as at the date of the charter, such value to be fixed by an independent local valuer. This will be a term of the charter. So really, you needn’t be concerned.’

Athli frowned. ‘What about lost earnings?’ she said. ‘Between you losing my ship and me getting another one, I mean. Is that included?’

Fesal was obviously impressed. ‘I believe we can come to some agreement on that score,’ he said. ‘For example, we might take out insurance to cover such losses, in your name, of course. But we feel sure that loss and serious damage are unlikely to occur.’

‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Athli answered. ‘I don’t suppose you’d care to comment about these rumours flying around, that you’re hiring a fleet to carry your army to war against the plainspeople?’

‘Is there a rumour?’ Iqueval said.

Athli smiled. ‘Oh, there’s always a rumour,’ she replied. ‘But some rumours are more believable than others. Still, it’s good money - well, you know that, I’m sure you’re completely up to date on charter tariffs. You aren’t about to tell me how long this job of yours is expected to take, are you?’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Fesal, ‘we aren’t. That information is, obviously, restricted.’ He made a placatory gesture with his long, fine hands. ‘It goes without saying that entering into an open-ended arrangement of this sort is both unusual and, potentially, inconvenient. We believe that the level of payment we’re offering is more than adequate compensation. Ultimately, the choice is yours.’

‘Oh, quite,’ Athli said. ‘Well, I suppose I’d have to be an idiot to turn down an offer like this. About payment, though - will that be in advance or arrears? I’m sorry if that sounds fussy, but . . .’

‘There’s no need to apologise for a firm grasp of the essentials of your profession,’ Fesal replied. ‘In advance for the first month, in arrears after that. We believe that’s a reasonable compromise. Is that acceptable?’

‘Method of payment?’

‘By letter of credit,’ Iqueval said, ‘drawn on the provincial office, redeemable wherever you choose to specify. In your case, I assume, in Shastel; you can then write it directly to yourself here.’ He smiled. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few of your compatriots elect to have their payments written to Shastel, which ought to be good for business. You may care to put arrangements in hand, though of course it’s not for me to tell you how to run your franchise. Still, with the Loredan Bank gone, there aren’t that many banks outside the Empire for people to choose from.’

And only one inside the Empire
, Athli didn’t reply. Instead, she said, ‘That’ll be fine. And yes, I’ll be happy to arrange exchange facilities for anybody else who wants to use us, though with the sort of money you’re talking about floating around, it’ll be quite an undertaking. I’ll probably end up having to lay off some of the credit with other people here on the Island.’

Fesal stood up. ‘You’re going to be busy,’ he said. ‘Well, thank you for your time. We’ll be in touch when we’re ready to make a start. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’

‘Likewise.’

When they’d gone, Athli spent a fascinating few minutes with her counting-board and tablets, first making the calculations and then checking them three times to make sure she wasn’t making some elementary mistake that made the sum she’d be due to receive seem much larger than it should be. But it worked out the same each time; good money, indeed.