Sharps (4 page)

“It’ll be the first officially sanctioned tour of Permia since before the War,” the chairman said. “As you can imagine, it’s been an absolute nightmare setting it up, but now it really does look like it’s going ahead. According to Senator Glycerius, it’s the biggest diplomatic coup of our generation.” He unstoppered the wine jug. “Really, it’s the only thing we and the Permians have in common, apart from the War itself.”

“I never knew they even liked fencing.”

The chairman laughed. “They’re crazy about it, absolutely crazy. More so than we are, even. It’s all they ever talk about. Glycerius says that if you go into any bar in Luzir Beal, you can be sure they’ll be talking about the latest results in the Nationals. All sections of society, from the mine workers to the great nobles in the hill country. They’re obsessed with it. Every kid in Permia wants to be a fencer when he grows up.”

Suidas was watching the wine jug. He hadn’t been offered a drink yet, so he’d had no opportunity to refuse. “I didn’t realise,” he said. “I suppose we never thought about them as people, back then.”

“You were in the War? I’d have thought—”

“Boy soldier,” Suidas said, without expression. “I was with the Fifteenth.”

Without asking, the chairman poured two glasses. It looked very red, like the other red stuff; clear and rich and smooth. I’ll take the glass, he told himself, but I won’t drink it.

“Anyway,” the chairman went on, “you don’t need me to tell you what’s riding on this. If it’s a success – well, who knows? We could be in the history books, you and me. If it goes wrong, we might very well start another war. It matters that much.”

“Oh come on,” Suidas said. “It’s just fencing.”

The chairman turned round slowly, like a man carrying a log on his shoulder. “You’re wrong,” he said. “It’s really important you understand what’s at stake here. Half of the Senate wants another war. They still think we can win, God help us. They think Permia’s on its knees, and one final shove will have them down.”

“Maybe they’re right.”

The chairman winced. “My son was a captain in the Seventh,” he said. “He’d have been thirty-two, the first of last month. For pity’s sake, Deutzel, you were there. You know what it was like.”

Suidas shrugged. “I’m in no hurry to be back in uniform,” he said.

“It’s not just our side,” the chairman went on, placing one glass on the table next to Suidas’ chair. “The Permians are pretty desperate. The whole country’s in a mess, they really don’t know what to do next …”

Suidas frowned. He didn’t follow the news if he could avoid it. “This is that business with the new mines in Choris Androu.”

“Exactly.” The chairman nodded fiercely. “Of course, the real effects won’t start to bite for a while yet, not until the contracts expire. After that …” He shrugged. “What happens if you deprive an entire nation of its livelihood? We have no idea, it’s never happened before. You’ve got some people saying it’s the best possible thing, our oldest and most bitter enemy on their knees, starving in the streets. Or they’ll tell you it’s a disaster just waiting to happen, tens of thousands of angry Permians with absolutely nothing left to lose. The Bank wants peace, naturally. The nobility’s saying that now’s the best possible time to finish them off, like we should’ve done seven years ago.” He shivered a little, and spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “It’s not like we’re exactly a model of political and social stability right now. I really don’t know what to make of it, and neither does anyone else. It’s a mess. But if there’s anything we can do to help, anything at all – well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Suidas didn’t think anything was obvious, but he held his tongue. “I’m not sure,” he said. “If it’s as bad over there as you say …”

“The job pays twenty-five thousand nomismata.”

That shut him up like a slap across the face. The chairman looked at him and smiled. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said, “but I get the impression you could use the money.”

“Yes.”

The chairman nodded slowly. “You’ll do it, then.”

Twenty-five thousand nomismata. “Yes.”

“Splendid.” The chairman frowned and looked away. “I’m so glad you agreed. If you’d refused, I was authorised to use blackmail and entrapment, or in the last resort we’d have framed you for a murder or something of the sort. I know,” he added quickly, as Suidas opened his mouth and no words came out. “These people I’m dealing with, they’re – well, you wouldn’t think it was possible, not in a civilised society. God only knows what they’d be capable of, and I’m in absolutely no hurry to find out. But I guess, with so much at stake …” He shook his head. “I promise you’ll get the money. It’ll be paid into an account in your name at the Bank on the day you leave here for Permia. As soon as you get home, you’ll be authorised to draw on it. Or, if – well, if things don’t go so well, you can leave it as a bequest in your will. You have my personal guarantee it’ll be honoured.”

Suidas looked at him. “This is insane,” he said. “I’m a professional fencer, not a—”

“I know,” the chairman said.

The Bank’s decision to repossess the Golden Spire temple and convert it into their headquarters led, needless to say, to a furious response from both the Studium and the public at large. The Bank’s response was that the move was entirely reasonable and logical. They urgently needed larger premises; that wasn’t in dispute. Twelve years ago the Studium had borrowed the sum of seven million nomismata, to pay its war tax and fit out three privateer regiments. The privateers, far from returning a substantial profit from battlefield spoils and the plunder of captured enemy towns, had been wiped out in their first serious engagement. Furthermore, the war loan stock the Studium received from the Treasury in return for its tax payments had been downgraded to junk status following the Great Crash. There was, therefore, no realistic prospect of the Studium repaying its loan in the middle or long term. The Bank had tried to be realistic and had agreed to annual interest-only payments for twenty years. Five of these payments had not been made, which meant the compromise agreement was null and void. The only security available to the Bank was the Studium’s realty, and they held mortgages on nine of the great City temples. They’d had all nine independently valued. The Golden Spire was worth five million, but the Bank was prepared to accept it in full and final settlement. Since they needed offices rather than a very large chapel, they had no option but to convert the building. However, they were only too happy to undertake to do so in as sympathetic a manner as reasonably possible. The internal fabric would remain substantially unchanged except for the addition of new partitions. None of the frescoes, reliefs and mosaics for which the Golden Spire was famous throughout the civilised world would be damaged or altered in any way, and the public would be given access to them on five designated open days every year, which was rather more than the Fathers had ever been prepared to allow. Finally, if at any time during the next fifty years the Studium found itself in a position to be able to pay off the original loan plus the interest accumulated to the date of foreclosure, the Bank would transfer the Temple back to their ownership, having first restored it to its original state and condition. They couldn’t, they felt, say fairer than that.

The Studium didn’t agree; the public did. The transfer was ratified by plebiscite 4/23, a majority of seventeen wards to five. Since the Patriarch refused to sign the transfer documents, the Bank obtained a court order and instructed the Land Registrar to amend the register. On the day the Bank took formal possession, three monks tried to chain themselves to the Antelope Gate and set themselves on fire. Two of them had either faulty tinderboxes or insufficient strength of purpose; the third was severely burned, but was put out in time by Bank guards, carrying water from the Fountain of Symmachus in their helmets.

The architect’s plans designated the East Cloister as the site of the new boardroom, but it wouldn’t be ready for at least eighteen months. The Board therefore met in the chapter house, with its magnificent mosaic ceilings by Theophano the Elder and its notoriously poor acoustics. On the day in question it happened to be raining heavily. Forty-six buckets were brought in to the chamber to catch the drips and prevent further damage to the tesselated floor (attributed to Chrysophanes, third century
AUC
); together they sounded like a huge musical instrument played by a hesitant beginner.

The first hour was taken up with routine business; formal repossession of the estates of the Leucas and the Blemmyas, and the sealing of several hundred conveyances and mortgages in favour of the existing tenants. Then Mihel Tzimisces, chairman and chief executive officer, announced that the Carnufex family had paid off the last instalment of capital and interest on its loans, and its debt was therefore extinguished. He personally fixed the Bank’s seal to the deed of redemption, which was dispatched to General Carnufex by special messenger.

The courier entrusted with this mission rode directly to the Irrigator’s country house at Bluewater, pausing only to change horses at the Bank’s way station at Ridgeway Cross. He handed the deed, with Chairman Tzimisces’ covering letter, to the house steward, who signed the receipt. The courier returned to the city by way of Monsacer, where he stopped for a drink at the Blessed Annunciation in the abbey foregate. There he happened to meet the abbot’s cupbearer, who’d been in the same regiment as him during the War. The cupbearer reported back to the abbot, who immediately wrote to the Patriarch’s chaplain, who reported to evening Chapter.

“The only thing that surprises me,” one of the canons commented, “is that he left it so long to pay the damn thing off. Everybody knows the Irrigator did pretty well out of the War. He can’t have been short of money.”

“Tax reasons,” suggested one of his colleagues. “You get basic-rate relief on interest payments on war loans with private providers. I’d have thought you’d have known that.”

The canon shrugged. “Not that it matters. I’d have liked to have seen them try putting the old man out on the street. They’d have been lynched before they got five yards.”

The abbot, a third cousin of the General, frowned. “The Carnufex,” he said, “and the Phocas, and the elder branch of the Bardanes; they’re pretty much all that’s left now. And the Phocas aren’t what they were. I gather they had to sell a lot of land towards the end.”

“And guess who bought it,” said the prior.

“I hadn’t heard that,” the abbot said.

“Quite true. It was all perfectly proper and above board, but they might as well not have bothered. Who else was going to buy it anyway? Nobody’s got any money.”

Another canon, a huge man with a bald head and a long black beard, laughed. “The Bank hasn’t got any money,” he said. “Not of its own, at any rate. It’s all borrowed from the Western Empire, at stupid interest. It’s perfectly obvious what’s happening, but nobody’s prepared to recognise it for what it is. I guess they’re afraid they’d have to do something about it if they did.”

“Who would
they
be, in that context?” the abbot asked quietly. “For all practical purposes, the Bank is the government now. I don’t really see them prosecuting themselves for procedural irregularities.”

The big canon gestured helplessly. “If the people really understood what’s going on …”

The abbot smiled at him. “My dear fellow,” he said. “You’ve always had the gift of seeing complex issues in such delightfully simple terms. It’s a tremendous asset in matters of doctrine, but you’d be wise to avoid politics or finance. The people are better off than they’ve been for a hundred years.”

There was a brief, awkward silence. Then the prior said, “In the short term, maybe.”

“Nonsense.” The abbot closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “We really mustn’t allow ourselves the luxury of belittling our enemy’s achievements. It’s an undisputed fact that the Bank is guided by the best of motives, and has achieved more for the public good than we or our friends in the nobility have managed to do in living memory.”

“The best of motives,” someone repeated. “All things considered, I’m inclined to doubt that.”

“Really?” The abbot gave him a puzzled look. “I believe their motives are simple and straightforward. Having lent tens of millions to the nobility so they could finance the War, the Bank realised that we were losing, and if we lost the War all those loans would default and they’d be ruined. What else could they possibly do except foreclose on the loans, bankrupt the nobility, take over effective political control and end the War as quickly as possible? Oh, it took a great deal of courage and a considerable leap of imagination; but looked at objectively, it was the only thing they could have done. Then, faced with the backlash from a dispossessed former ruling elite, they did the only sensible thing and bought the everlasting love of the common people. They sold them the freeholds of the land they’d hitherto been tenants of, and since there was never any question of the peasantry being able to pay for the land, they took two-hundred-year mortgages with capital repayment deferred for seventy years. In practical terms, the peasants pay their rent to the Bank, not the big house on the hilltop; everything stays the same, but everything’s changed for ever. It’s every politician’s dream, and they contrived to find a way of doing it quietly and without bloodshed. I really do have the greatest respect for Tzimisces and his people, and I wish they were on our side and not our sworn enemies. But there it is. And if you’re waiting for the Phocas and my cousin Herec to rise up and drive the Bankers out of the Golden Spire, I suspect you’ll be waiting for a very long time, during which you could’ve been doing something useful.”

In the exact centre of the iconostasis above his head, the single silver tear on the cheek of the Lady of the Moon reflected the glow of the twelve brass lamps on the pedestals surrounding the Low Stations. The lamps had been gold once, before the war tax was levied on monastic institutions. The abbot maintained that the brass ones gave a better light, because of the improved reflectors.