Read The Two of Swords: Part 8 Online
Authors: K. J. Parker
The Two of Swords: Part 8
Y
K. J. P
ARKER
The Fencer trilogy
Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
The Scavenger trilogy
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
The Engineer trilogy
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
The Company
The Folding Knife
The Hammer
Sharps
The Two of Swords (e-novellas)
BY TOM HOLT
Expecting Someone Taller
Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?
Flying Dutch
Ye Gods!
Overtime
Here Comes the Sun
Grailblazers
Faust Among Equals
Odds and Gods
Djinn Rummy
My Hero
Paint Your Dragon
Open Sesame
Wish You Were Here
Only Human
Snow White and the Seven Samurai
Valhalla
Nothing But Blue Skies
Falling Sideways
Little People
The Portable Door
In Your Dreams
Earth, Air, Fire and Custard
You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps
Someone Like Me
Barking
The Better Mousetrap
May Contain Traces of Magic
Blonde Bombshell
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages
Doughnut
When It’s A Jar
The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice
The Good, the Bad and the Smug
Dead Funny: Omnibus 1
Mightier Than the Sword: Omnibus 2
The Divine Comedies: Omnibus 3
For Two Nights Only: Omnibus 4
Tall Stories: Omnibus 5
Saints and Sinners: Omnibus 6
Fishy Wishes: Omnibus 7
The Walled Orchard
Alexander at the World’s End
Olympiad
A Song for Nero
Meadowland
I, Margaret
Lucia Triumphant
Lucia in Wartime
For David Barrett, with thanks
Published by Orbit
ISBN: 978-0-356-50563-3
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by K. J. Parker
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
O
RBIT
Carmelite House
Little, Brown Book Group
50 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DZ
Eight of Swords
A nice inconspicuous four-wheeled cart, chipped paintwork, the sort of thing nobody notices; an elderly, massive black mare, just the right side of dead, and a stocky piebald gelding. “You’ll be fine,” the groom had assured them both. “They know what to do, even if you don’t.”
“You’re not a horseman, then,” Musen said as they rolled slowly down Foregate towards the Land Gates.
“Me? God, no.” Pleda shifted uncomfortably on the driver’s bench. “My dad kept horses, but I never got to drive. Fuller, he was. Him and me, we used to go round the City first thing and empty all the piss-pots. Dad drove, I did all the running around. Filthy bloody job.” He looked at the boy, then added, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Sorry.”
Pleda shrugged. “Don’t suppose they have fullers where you come from. How do you bleach your fine cloth, then?”
“We don’t.”
Pleda nodded. “Figures,” he said. “Anyway, it’s a foul job, that’s all you need to know about it.”
“We had horses on the farm,” Musen said. “I steered clear of them, as much as I could. Got kicked in the head when I was six. Been scared of them ever since.”
Not true, Pleda thought. At least, not true about being frightened of horses, he could tell by the way the horses had reacted to him, right from when they were led out of the stable. Horses know, and the black mare had recognised a horseman. Odd lie to tell, though he could think of half a dozen perfectly good reasons. “Still,” he said, “beats walking. I hate walking. Tires you out and makes your feet hurt.”
Foregate was busy today. Tomorrow was the first day of the Old and New Fair, and the country people had come to town. They were setting up stalls and pens for livestock – at one point the cart had to negotiate its way through a couple of hundred geese, waddling like a tired army, filling the street like floodwater. It was a long forced march from the poultry-keeping villages that straggled alongside the South road, so every single goose had been shod – wooden pattens with leather straps; Pleda remembered that job from his youth, struggles and feathers and goose shit everywhere, the smell got into your hair and stayed with you for days. The marching geese made him think of Senza’s army, herded efficiently along other roads to a slightly different kind of fair. And as well as geese there were escaped rams, too fast and nimble to catch, too terrified to bribe, and the sticking-out back ends of carts, and sudden unexpected lengths of scaffolding pole, thrust out into the carriageway like pikes by men not thinking about what they were doing. Busy, stupid, thoughtless people, with work to do and a small but entrancing possibility of getting their hands on some real money, just for once; five donkeys loaded till their legs buckled with rolls of good coarse hemp matting; an old, thin man carefully arranging two dozen blue duck eggs on a mat of straw in the middle of a very big trestle table; two cheerful women tipping the last of last year’s store apples out of buckets into a sawn-in-half barrel, not giving a damn if the apples got bruised; a splendidly dressed fat man and his splendidly dressed fat wife, laying out a huge stall of the shabbiest second-hand clothes Pleda had ever seen. Two men, so dark they might almost have been Imperials, dragging a long wooden crate overflowing with nails, that grey and purple colour that tells you they’re fire salvage, no good, soft, bend double at the gentlest tap. A very big stall of kettles and fire pots made out of soldiers’ helmets; and, a few yards further down, hundreds of faggots comprised of suspiciously straight, planed inch-and-a-half round poles, broken spear shafts, only the best five-year-seasoned cornel wood. They’ll sell quick, Pleda told himself, and plenty more where they came from; someone had got hold of a good thing there, assuming the carriage costs were manageable. Boots, of course, one thing the war had done for the common man was ensure a plentiful supply of good, cheap footwear. And gilded bronze finger-rings, the sort the Southerners wore, you couldn’t give those away; some optimist had set out two great big tar barrels full of them, at a stuiver each or six for a quarter, but mostly they went straight into the melt and came out as candlesticks or buttons for the military, and each ring represented a dead soldier’s hand; not so good if you had a tendency to mental arithmetic. All in all, it was a good day to leave the City. The noise would be intolerable, and the smell, for a man with a delicate palate—
The boy, he noticed, was fascinated by it all; first sight of the big City doing what it does best. So many
things
, so much property – cities do things very well, never quite got the hang of people; where the boy came from, no doubt, a man could probably list all the man-made things in his village – an easily estimated quantity of ploughs, axes, spades, knives, spoons, ladles, pairs of boots, straw bonnets, work shirts and best shirts, you’d be able to compile a tolerably accurate inventory. He must think we’re rich, Pleda thought; stupidly rich, with all this stuff. Then he remembered the boy was a thief, a profession which gives you a slightly different perspective on material objects, especially the readily portable kind. Actually, more like a vocation; classified along with priest, artist, philosopher, actor, it’s something you do because you’re made that way, and, no matter how hard you try, that’s what you are, and always will be. A different way of seeing the world, he guessed. Add soldier to that list? Maybe. But thief, definitely.
A country thief, seeing his first City market. Definitely a spiritual experience. “Bit different from what you’re used to,” he said.
“What? Oh, God, yes. It’s amazing.”
Pleda tried straightening his back, stretching it a little. Didn’t help. “Can’t have been easy for you, back home.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Stands to reason,” Pleda said. “In a small place, something goes missing, people notice.”
The boy didn’t like that. “You learn to be careful,” he said.
“Must cramp your style, though. I mean, how do you get rid of the stuff? Nobody’s going to buy something off you if the moment the real owner sees it, he yells out, hey, that’s mine, what’re you doing with it?”
For a moment he was sure the boy was going to get angry with him. Then a sudden grin, and the boy relaxed. “Like I said,” he replied, “you learn to be careful. Like, if I stole your billhook, I’d knock the handle off and whittle a new one. Or, more likely, I’d wait a couple of weeks, then give it back to you and tell you I found it in a hedge somewhere. You’d be so pleased you’d give me something, or do something for me. That’s better than money, where I used to live.”
Pleda nodded. “And no harm done,” he said, “and everybody’s happy.”
“Exactly.”
Not just a liar, Pleda thought, a special kind of liar – like the actors who prepare for a role by pretending to be the man they’re going to portray on stage; don’t think, just
be
. That’s why he lies all the time, even when he doesn’t need to. He likes to practise. That was why it was so hard to tell the boy’s lies from the truth. They were jumbled in together, like beans and peas in a casserole, and because he lied for no reason it was almost impossible to catch him out. Someone who lies with no immediate intent to deceive, who steals not for money or gain but because he wants to, needs to; oh yes, they’d been quite right about this one. A collector’s item, like the Sleeping Dog.
Even so. He waited until they’d passed through the Land Gate, and the traffic had evaporated, and they were to all intents and purposes alone on the road. Then, as casually as he could, he said, “Hold on a minute, I need to take a leak.” He slid off the bench and handed the boy the reins to hold. Under cover of a roadside thorn bush, he took the pack of cards from the inside pocket sewn into his robe, palmed the three top cards, put the rest away. Then, as he scrambled back up and took back the reins, he slipped the cards into Musen’s hand.
It was a moment or so before the boy realised what he’d done; he noticed something in his hand, looked down to see what it was. Pleda made a point of not looking at him. He got the horses moving. Not a word from the boy. All right, then.
“Four of Spears,” he said. “Victory. Ace of Arrows.”
The boy said, “What’s all this about?”
“Four of Spears,” Pleda repeated. “Victory. Ace of Arrows. Well?”
Just for a moment Pleda felt a little pang of apprehension. He had a padded jack under his topcoat, proof against a casual knife thrust but that was about all. The boy could quite easily have hidden a knife or a blade of some kind in the sling that supported his broken arm. Then: “Nine of Coins, the Angel, Ten of Spears.”
“And?”
“What? Oh, God, sorry, Eight of Swords.”
“Say again.”
“Eight of Swords.”
There is, of course, no suit of Swords. Not in a normal pack.
So that was all right, then. With a sigh, Pleda shifted the reins from his right hand to his left, then balled his right fist and, without looking, swung it sideways. He hit the boy on the elbow of his broken arm. As he’d expected, the boy howled with pain. Quickly, Pleda stuffed the reins under his left thigh and clamped both hands on the collar of the boy’s coat, twisting it, almost but not quite tight enough to throttle him. “You bloody fool,” he said.