Sharps (61 page)

Phrantzes smiled, then deliberately folded away the smile and straightened his face. “Tzimisces is dead,” he said.

Giraut was more shocked than he’d have expected. “How?”

“Killed himself,” Phrantzes replied quietly. “Poison. He was about to be indicted for treason, so I gather.” He clicked his tongue. “That man always did have the knack of not being there when things got nasty.”

Giraut took a deep breath and let it go. “No great loss,” he said.

“No, not really. He was a thoroughly unpleasant man, and he had my wife locked up in a convent. Even so.” He shook his head. “Not a great loss, but a loss nevertheless.”

Giraut laughed. “Next you’ll be telling me you’re nostalgic for Permia.”

“I don’t think I could ever be that,” Phrantzes said. “I suppose it’s a bit like the people you meet who tell you they miss being in the army. Well, at least it looks now like there isn’t going to be another war.” He put down his glass. “We ought to go outside,” he said.

“I’m not feeling very sociable,” Giraut replied. “Tell me, do you ever think about – well, you know. What we saw. What we did.”

“Not if I can help it. My wife says she always knows when I’m thinking about all that. Luckily, she’s learned how to make me stop.”

“Really? How?”

Phrantzes grinned. “Sex, mostly. And keeping anything sharp safely under lock and key.”

A side door opened, and Addo and Iseutz came through. They looked furtive, as though they weren’t supposed to be there. “We’re meant to be admiring the wedding presents,” Addo explained. “But we saw you were here, so we escaped.”

“We climbed out of a window,” Iseutz said. “In our own house. That’s ridiculous.”

It occurred to Giraut that
our own house
suggested a singular lack of understanding of her new position in life. “Thanks,” he said. “Actually, I was hoping for a quiet word with you. Got something for you.” He put his hand in his pocket and produced a small silver box. “From Suidas.”

Iseutz looked at him, then at Addo. “That’s nice,” she said. “How is he, by the way?”

“Oh, fine,” Giraut said. He turned to Addo. “He told me to tell you. First, it’s not a wedding present. Second, it’s something that money couldn’t buy.”

Addo took the box and looked at it as though it was a gateway to a dangerous place. “Well,” Iseutz said. “Go on, open it.”

The lid slid back. Inside, packed in coarse grey salt, was a man’s finger. Iseutz opened her mouth, caught Giraut’s eye and took a step back. Addo closed the lid carefully and put the box in his pocket. “Thanks,” he told Giraut. “Tell Suidas I’ll take good care of it.”

The groom’s present to the bride was to have the old stylite tower repaired, with proper stairs and a handrail. As time went on, she used to go there more and more often. She said that from the top of the column, she could see clearly where she’d come from. Addo had the carp pond filled in and turned into a strawberry bed, though it was too high and exposed for such a delicate fruit. When Addo was killed, at the age of sixty-two, leading his men to victory against the invading armies of the Western Empire, she had the column demolished and the stone re-dressed and used to build his cenotaph, where the old pond used to be. Two years later, after six weeks of unseasonal heavy rain following a dry spell, the mill leat broke down the embankment and flooded the hollow completely, turning it into the lake that can be seen there to this day.

Acknowledgements

My heartfelt thanks are due to Chris and Josh, the fencing instructors at Cricket St Thomas, who taught me the basics of classical foil so I could write this book. It can’t have been fun for them getting poked at with a bit of wire with a button on the end by an aggressive, overweight, middle-aged novice. I hope the result in some ways justifies their ordeal.

extras

about the author

Having worked in the law, journalism and numismatics,
K. J. Parker
now writes and makes things out of wood and metal. Parker is married to a solicitor and lives in southern England. For more information visit
www.kjparker.com

Find out more about K. J. Parker and other Orbit authors by registering for the free monthly newsletter at
www.orbitbooks.net

if you enjoyed

SHARPS

look out for

THE HAMMER

also by

K. J. Parker

Seven Years Before

W
hen Gignomai was seven years old, his brother Stheno gave him three chickens.

“They’re not yours, of course,” Stheno said, “you’re just looking after them. Food and water twice a day, muck ’em out when the smell gets bad, make sure the fox doesn’t get them. No big deal. Father thinks it’s time you learned about taking responsibility.”

“Oh,” Gignomai said. “How about the eggs?”

“They go to the kitchen,” Stheno said.

For a week, Gignomai did exactly as he’d been told. As soon as he woke up, he ran out into the yard, being careful not to slam the door in case it disturbed Father in his study, and went to the grain barrel, where he measured out a double handful of wheat into the battered old pewter cup he’d found in the barn. He scattered the grain all round the foot of the mounting-block, filled the tin pail with water, counted the chickens to make sure they were all there and made a tour of inspection of the yard palings. One paling was rotten at the base, and Gignomai was worried that a fox could shove against it, break it and get in. He reported his concerns to Stheno, who said he’d see to it when he had a moment. Nothing was done. Two days later, something broke in during the night and killed the chickens.

“Not a fox,” his brother Luso said, examining the soft earth next to the broken palings. Luso was a great hunter, and knew everything there was to know about predators. “Look at the size of its feet. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a wolf, only we haven’t seen one of them for years. Most likely it’s a stray dog from town.”

That made sense. Town was a strange, barbarous place where common people lived, barely human. It followed that their dogs would run wild and murder chickens. Luso undertook to patrol the woods with his gun (any excuse). Stheno told Gignomai not to worry about it; these things happened, it wasn’t his fault (said in a way that made it clear that it was, really), and if you kept livestock, sooner or later you’d get dead stock, and there was nothing more to be said. That would have been fine, except that he then issued Gignomai with three more chickens.

“Try to take better care of them,” he said. “The supply isn’t exactly infinite, you know.”

For three days, Gignomai tended the chickens as before. For three nights, he sat in the bow window overlooking the grand double doors of the hall. He was too young to be allowed out after dark, and from the bow window you could just about see the far western corner of the yard. He managed to stay awake for the first two nights. On the third night he fell asleep, and the predator broke in and killed the chickens.

“Not your fault,” Stheno said wearily. “For a start, you wouldn’t have seen anything from there, and it was dark, so you wouldn’t have seen anything anyway. And even if you’d seen something, it’d have taken too long. You’d have had to come and wake me up, and by the time I’d got out there, the damage would’ve been done.”

It was the same large, unfamiliar paw print. Luso still maintained it was a dog.

“You didn’t mend the broken paling,” Gignomai said.

“I will,” Stheno replied, “soon as I’ve got a minute.”

Custody of the remaining dozen chickens was awarded to one of Luso’s huntsmen. The paling didn’t get fixed. Two nights later, the leftovers from two more hens and the cock were scattered round the yard.

“We’ll have to get a cock from one of the farms,” Luso said. The met’Oc didn’t condescend to trade with their neighbours, but from time to time Luso and his huntsmen went out at night and took things. It wasn’t stealing, Mother said, but she didn’t explain why not. Stheno tied the paling to the rail with a bit of twine from his pocket. Gignomai knew why he hadn’t mended it: he had the farm to run, and he did most of the work himself because the farm workers were weak and lazy and not to be trusted. Stheno was twenty-one and looked like Father’s younger brother rather than his son.

The next night, Gignomai climbed out through the kitchen window. He’d noticed some time before that the catch didn’t fasten; he’d made a note of this fact, which could well be strategically useful, but had decided not to squander the opportunity on a pointless excursion. He took with him a horn lantern he’d found in the trap-house, a knife from the kitchen and some string.

The predator came just before dawn. It wasn’t a dog. It was huge and graceful and quiet, and it nosed aside the broken paling as though it wasn’t there. It jumped the half-door of the chicken-house in a single fluid movement, and came out a short time later with a dead chicken in his jaws. Gignomai watched it carefully, and didn’t move until it had gone.

He thought about it. The predator was a wolf. He’d seen pictures in the
Bestiary
in Father’s library, and read the descriptions in Luso’s
Art of the Chase
. Quite likely it was the last surviving wolf on the Tabletop, or maybe in the whole colony. The met’Oc had waged war on the wolves when they first came here. Luso had always wanted to kill a wolf, but he’d only ever seen one, a long way away. This wolf was probably old, which would explain why it had taken to burglary; they did that when they were too old and tired to pull down deer, and when they were alone with no pack to support them. There was no way a seven-year-old could fight a wolf, or even scare one away if it didn’t want to go. He could tell Stheno or Luso, but they almost certainly wouldn’t believe him.

Well, he decided. The job had to be done or it’d kill all the chickens, and nobody else was going to do it because they wouldn’t believe he’d seen a wolf.

He thought hard all the next day. Then, just as it was beginning to get dark and the curfew came into force, he went as unobtrusively as he could to the chicken-house, chose the oldest and weakest hen and pulled her neck. With the knife he’d borrowed from the kitchen and neglected to return, he opened the guts and carefully laid a trail of drops of blood across the yard to the woodshed, where he put the corpse on top of the stacked brushwood. He scrounged some loose straw from the stables and laid it in the shed doorway, and found a stout, straight stick about three feet long, which he leaned up against the wall. It was the best way of doing it that he could think of. There’d be trouble, but he couldn’t help that.

The wolf came earlier that night. Gignomai had been waiting long enough for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark, and besides, there was a helpful three-quarter moon and no cloud. He watched the wolf’s nose shove past the paling and pick up the scent of blood. He kept perfectly still as it followed the trail, pausing many times to look up. It was suspicious, he knew, but it couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Old and a bit stupid, but still a wolf. He made sure of his grip on the lantern, and waited.

Eventually, the wolf followed the blood all the way into the woodshed. Gignomai kept still until the very tip of its tail had disappeared inside; then he jumped up, took a deep breath, and crept on the sides of his feet, the way Luso had taught him, across the yard. He could smell the wolf as he groped for the stick he’d put ready earlier. As quickly as he could, he opened the front of the lantern and hurled it into the shed, hoping it’d land on the nice dry straw. He slammed the door and wedged the stick under the latch.

Nothing happened for a disturbingly long time. Then he heard a yelp – a spark or a cinder, he guessed, falling on the wolf’s back – followed by a crash as it threw itself against the door. He’d anticipated that, and wished he’d been able to steal a strong plank and some nails, to secure the door properly. But the stick jammed against the latch worked just fine. He could see an orange glow under the door. The wolf howled.

He hadn’t anticipated that. It was guaranteed to wake the house and bring Luso running out with his gun. Luso would open the door and either he’d be jumped by a maddened, terrified wolf, or the burning lintel would come down and crush him, and there’d be nothing Gignomai could do. He considered wedging the house door with another stick, but there wasn’t time and he didn’t know where to find the necessary materials. Then the thatch shifted – it seemed to slump, the way lead does just before it melts – and tongues of flame burst out of it, like crocuses in spring.

Stheno came running out. Gignomai heard him yelling, “Shit, the woodshed’s on fire!” and then he was ordering people Gignomai couldn’t see to fetch buckets. One of the farm men rushed past where he was crouching, unaware he was there, nearly treading on him. Quickly Gignomai revised the recent past. As soon as it was safe to do so, he got up quietly and headed for the house door. Luso intercepted him and grabbed his shoulder.