Colours in the Steel (28 page)

After she’d offered him everything she could think of, he finally agreed to accept a chair next to a pillar and a view of the class. ‘And if I could trouble you for a drink of water,’ he added, ‘that would be very kind. I’m afraid I woke up this morning with rather an unpleasant headache.’

Oh, gods, where am I going to find him something to drink out of?
‘No trouble at all,’ she said firmly. ‘I won’t be a moment, if you’re sure you’re all right there.’

‘Perfectly comfortable, thank you,’ Alexius replied. ‘You really are most kind.’

Once he’d got rid of the clerk - a sweet girl, but inclined to fuss; or maybe she’s afraid I’ll turn her into a frog - Alexius slumped into the chair and caught his breath. He felt dreadful, quite apart from his headache, and he knew he shouldn’t have come; but it would have been equally impossible not to, after the dream he’d had last night.

Loredan’s brother
. He felt an irrational surge of resentment towards Gannadius for not being there, although he knew perfectly well that his colleague had a meeting he couldn’t get out of that would last until the middle of the afternoon. But he desperately wanted to know what Gannadius had made of the dream, and whether he’d seen the same things. Still, that couldn’t be helped. More important to speak to Loredan himself, something he should really have done long before now, except that he couldn’t face having to tell Loredan what he’d done. But there really wasn’t any choice in the matter now. Heaven alone knew what he was going to say.

He opened his eyes and found he was looking at Loredan’s back, masking the group of energetic-looking young people who were hopping and prancing round in a semicircle in response to his brisk commands. He’d decided he’d seen enough of that when the semicircle turned and he could see the faces of the students—

With an effort, Alexius made himself stay calm and keep breathing, though the pain in his chest and arm was enough to make him want to cry out. One of Loredan’s students was that girl, the one who was the cause of all the trouble—

The one who wanted Loredan maimed; who’d been practising fencing exercises with him in that vision he’d had from the Islander woman - of course, how stupid of me not to have thought of it.

The one who was pointing a sword at Loredan’s throat right this very minute.

Well, of course; she was learning how to fence. She’d have to learn, if she wanted to be skilled enough to mutilate an experienced and highly talented swordsman. The logic behind it all made him feel cold down to the soles of his feet.

That decided him; he’d have to tell Loredan everything, warn him of the danger. Once he’d done that, it might be possible, with Gannadius helping, to lift the curse and get this dreadful mess cleared up once and for all.
If only I’d had the sense and the courage to do it in the first place, instead of rushing off looking for naturals
—Best not to think of that. And now this horrible puzzle of Gorgas, the intellectual who dressed like an Islander and turned up in his dream along with the only other two Islanders he’d had dealings with recently. If ever he did manage to get clear of this, it would make a wonderful case study: something that could be included in the foundation course as a dreadful warning of the dangers of misusing the Principle.

‘Here you are.’ It was the fussy girl again, holding out to him an incredibly ornate silver cup. ‘I’m sorry I was so long.’

He smiled, took the cup - heavens, it was some sort of fencing trophy - and drank deeply. ‘Might I ask,’ he said, ‘who that young lady is? The one in Master Loredan’s class.’

‘Oh, that’s—’ Athli froze. It was on the tip of her tongue, but however hard she tried she simply couldn’t remember the horrid girl’s name. ‘That’s our star pupil,’ she went on. ‘Bardas - Master Loredan thinks very highly of her. A natural talent, he reckons.’

‘I see,’ Alexius replied, trying not to react to her unfortunate choice of words. ‘And she’s a regular member of the class?’

‘Very much so,’ Athli replied, nodding vehemently. ‘We hope she’ll be a credit to us in years to come.’

A sharp crash of colliding metal made them both look up. Loredan was teaching a back-foot parry in the Old fence. To demonstrate it, he’d got the girl to lunge at him, while he flicked her blade away, took a neat back-foot step to the right and counterattacked in the same movement. But it hadn’t quite worked like that; the girl’s thrust had almost beaten his defence, and he was off balance, holding her blade off by brute strength.

‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘my fault. We’d better do that again.’

The girl disengaged her sword; Loredan resumed his position. Alexius could feel the pain of his fingernails digging into the palm of his hand.

‘And, now,’ Loredan said. This time he caught the blade perfectly, turned it, made his sideways move and brought the tip of his sword precisely up under the girl’s chin, all in a fraction of a second. It was quite beautiful to watch. He lowered his sword and turned to the class to explain.

The girl lunged again.

The speed of Loredan’s reaction was astounding. There was very little to see; a blur of reflected light, a clank and a bump and a crack as the girl’s sword was knocked out of her hand and landed on the flagstones. The tip of Loredan’s blade - it was the Spe Bref; Athli knew he kept it so sharp that it could pass through your skin into your flesh before you felt anything - was touching the soft, smooth skin just under the girl’s chin, applying enough pressure to prick without drawing blood. He gave her a long, puzzled look down the length of the blade, withdrew it with a short, economical movement, and turned back to the class.

‘As I was saying,’ he began, ‘it’s vitally important to keep the wrist and elbow level throughout the manoeuvre...’

The girl was white as a sheet and trembling, both hands around her neck. The rest of the class were staring at the two of them in fascinated horror, hardly daring to breathe. Athli, who’d have screamed if there had been time, had dropped her satchel, and the lid of her portable inkwell had come off, letting dark-brown ink seep through the cloth onto the floor. As for Alexius, it was only several seconds after the affair was over that he realised how bad the pain in his chest and arm had become. He tried to get up out of his chair, but that quickly proved to be impossible. He was about to panic when he felt the pain ebb rapidly away, like water out of a punctured skin. As if to redress the balance, his head was even more blindingly painful.

In a roughly similar way, though rather more slowly, the tension ebbed away too, as the brains of all present set about the task of revising what they’d just seen to make it more credible, fit to be stored in the memory. Even Alexius wondered for a moment whether he’d made it all up, seen what his melodramatic imagination secretly expected or hoped to see, rather than what had actually taken place. It might even have been a momentary relapse into the dream, a fragment of his vision interpolated like a scholar’s note scribbled in tiny handwriting between the lines of a book. He had heard of such phenomena, particularly among the mentally disturbed and those who tried to enhance their meditations by chewing peculiar herbs; while you’re speaking to him, a man’s head can suddenly turn into that of a lizard or a bird, and then become human again in a fraction of a second. There were fortune tellers who reckoned that they saw into the future that way, and other charlatans and mystics who claimed they could tell if a man was guilty of murder, because there would be a split second when they could see the dead man’s blood on his slayer’s hands. Maybe it was something like that, Alexius told himself comfortingly. And maybe, he replied, it wasn’t.

At midday the class rested as usual. The girl walked quickly away towards the drinking fountain; the rest of the students immediately formed a close, whispering huddle. Loredan, looking painfully weary, sat down on a kitbox and stared at the floor, rubbing his forehead with his fingertips.

‘Bardas—’ Athli began.

‘Don’t tell me I imagined it,’ he interrupted savagely, not looking up. ‘She tried to kill me. I just don’t understand it. Why should...?’

‘Bardas,’ Athli repeated. ‘The Patriarch is here to see you.’

Loredan looked up, frowning. ‘Don’t be silly, Athli,’ he said. ‘What on earth would the Patriarch want to see me for?’

‘Come over here and ask him for yourself.’

Before Loredan could argue further, he caught sight of the man sitting in the chair in the shadows of the colonnade. ‘That’s him?’ he asked. ‘This is turning out to be quite a day.’

Athli nodded. ‘Shall I tell that girl to get lost?’ she said. ‘I’ll get her bill ready and—’

She broke off; Loredan was grinning. ‘You’re going to protect me from a crazed assassin with an invoice, are you? Don’t you dare. Fairly soon, that strange creature’s going to be a first-class advertisement for this school. Right fool I’d look slinging her out now.’

‘But she tried—’

‘Unsuccessfully. Now then, shall we go and find out what the wizard wants?’

He knelt beside the Patriarch’s chair while Athli (rather reluctantly) made herself scarce. Loredan was just about to launch into a general to-what-do-we-owe-the-honour babble when Alexius leant forward, close to his ear.

‘Excuse the question, but have you got a headache?’

Loredan looked puzzled. ‘Why, does it show?’ he said. ‘Actually it’s better than it was. Earlier on I felt like a road gang was splitting rocks just behind my eyes.’

Alexius took a deep breath. ‘Also,’ he said, ‘may I ask, do you have a brother called Gorgas?’

This time Loredan recoiled, like a man who’s just put his foot down on a snake. ‘As a matter of fact I do,’ he replied. ‘Or I did; he may be dead by now, for all I know. Or care, come to that.’ He shifted his weight, to stop his leg going to sleep. ‘In return,’ he said, ‘could you do something for me?’

‘If I can.’

‘All right. Could you tell me as much as you possibly can about the dream you had last night? I have a feeling about that, actually.’

‘I will indeed,’ Alexius replied. ‘Finally, would you kill an old man who can barely walk, but who’s desperately sorry and is trying his best to clear up the mess?’

‘I suppose not. Why d’you ask?’

Alexius explained. When he’d finished, Loredan, who had been frowning as if trying to follow a conversation in a foreign language he could just about speak, nodded his head and said, ‘I see.’

‘I thought I’d better tell you,’ Alexius continued. ‘I should have done it long before this, of course, but...’

Loredan shrugged. ‘Well, you’ve told me now.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m badly out of my depth here. I’ve never had much to do with magic and that sort of thing, you see.’

For once, Alexius didn’t even try and explain that it wasn’t actually magic. ‘It seemed - well, quite innocent at the time,’ he went on, knowing that he was making things worse with every word, but unable to stop. The truly galling thing about it was that he had the feeling that Loredan simply didn’t believe in any of this; the Principle, curses, naturals. A moment later Loredan, rather apologetically, confirmed this impression.

‘I’m sorry if that sounds rude or disrespectful,’ he added diffidently. ‘It’s just that I’ve always reckoned there was enough aggravation in the real world without making up a whole lot of spooky supernatural stuff as well. And so as far as I’m concerned, you’ve got nothing to apologise for.’ He smiled. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ he added. ‘If my neighbours heard me talking like this to the Patriarch, they’d dip me in a tar barrel for blasphemy. But thank you for telling me about
her
. I knew there was something seriously wrong there, but it hadn’t occurred to me it might be personal. It’s odd,’ he went on, ‘but in all my years in the business I never came across anything like that; I mean, advocates’ families all know the score, you just don’t get blood feuds and nonsense like that. If you did, the whole system’d be unworkable.’ He sighed. ‘Just my luck, really. The only half-decent student I’ve got, and she’s only learning the trade because she wants to kill
me
. Well, she’s wasted her money, because I’ve retired. If she kills me it’ll have to be good, honest murder, and you said you reckoned her principles wouldn’t let her do that.’

Alexius nodded. ‘So she said. But when she tried to kill you just now . . .’

Loredan shrugged. ‘Actually, I don’t think that was anything premeditated, just a student losing her rag. It happens. Only the other week we had a student go berserk in a tutorial, got himself killed. It’s a damn nuisance when it happens, it makes terrible trouble for the Schools for a month or so until it all blows over. I’m getting my clerk to draw up a disclaimer for the students to sign before they start the course, just as a precaution.’ He stood up. ‘Anyway, many thanks for telling me all this, and, like I said, please forgive me if I’ve insulted you. It’s nothing personal; I really admire what you people do, it’s just I don’t happen to believe in it.’

‘I . . .’ Alexius stopped, and nodded. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘don’t worry about that. I do believe in it, and I’m still extremely concerned, but,’ he added, as a flicker of alarm crossed Loredan’s face, ‘I’m certainly not going to preach at you or try and convert you to the true faith.’ He smiled, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘It occurs to me that if you really have retired from legal practice then the curse is comprehensively defeated, since the duel I saw can’t ever happen. So it must have sorted itself out,’ he added, ‘somehow or other. Certainly with no help from me, which puts me in my place. What are you going to do about her, if I might ask?’

‘Hm.’ Loredan rubbed his nose against the palm of his hand. ‘That’s a tricky one. The obvious thing would be to throw her out on her ear, but I’m not sure I can do that. I mean, she’s paid for her tuition.’ A thought occurred to him, making him grin. ‘If I was to tell her to sling her hook now,’ he said, ‘that’d be a breach of contract, for which she’d be fully entitled to take me to law. If she did that I’d have to conduct my own defence - think how it’d look for me professionally if I hired a lawyer, me being a trainer and all - and then I would be giving her a chance to kill me in the courtroom; counterproductive, yes? At the moment, of course, I could beat her with one hand tied behind my back, but at the rate she’s going, if she joined another class she’d be a real threat inside a year, which is well within the statute of limitations on a contract dispute.’