Memory

'But hold on,' Poldarn interrupted. 'This stuff is all-what's the word?-circumstantial. I thought you meant there were witnesses or something.'

'Just let me tell the story, all right?' Gain complained. 'But you're right, and that on its own wouldn't have set Elaos thinking, because he wasn't that sort, seeing plots and conspiracies everywhere. And there was something else, too,' Gain went on. 'You and Lysatis, not killing Turvo, all that. Elaos asked us, he said how come a scruff like you-offcomer, no family, no money-how come a prince of the blood like Tazencius was letting you marry his daughter. Never mind giving his consent; you'd have thought he'd have had you strung up from a tree just for looking at her. But no, you asked for her and you got her-and then, instead of the big wedding the very next day, before he's had a chance to change his mind, you're still here, still training to be a monk, still drooling round after Xipho.'

'All right,' Poldarn said. 'So what's your point?'

'Not mine,' Gain said. 'Elaos's point. He said, what if Tazencius is in league with the raiders, and you're the link, the contact man? And before you ask, we asked it too-why the hell would Tazencius do that? But Elaos had an answer to that; he said, suppose Tazencius is ambitious, wants to be Emperor; but he's too far down the list to get his chance-unless something happens. Like maybe the raiders become a major threat, and Tazencius defeats them, becomes the popular hero with an army devoted to him, prepared to follow him if he marches on Torcea? Or maybe he's planning to use the raiders to take Torcea for him. Or there's his feud with General Cronan; was that genuine or just a blind? Was he in with Cronan-he supplies the big threat, then sets the scene for Cronan to win a big victory, and Cronan takes over, instals Tazencius as Emperor, they share the cake between them? There were any number of possible reasons, he said.'

'Speculation,' Poldarn broke in. 'Drivel. No evidence-'

'Let me finish, for the gods' sakes,' Gain said. 'Actually, Elaos said exactly the same thing when we all started raising the same objections. He'd told us all that, he said, just so we'd take him seriously when he spoke about what he'd seen and heard; otherwise we'd all think he was nuts, seeing things, or making it up out of spite.'

They'd stopped driving posts, at any rate. The only sound apart from Gain's voice was rain on the roof. They won't be able to pour in the rain, Poldarn thought absently. Water dropping on molten bronze is very bad news indeed. 'Go on,' he said.

'Here's what Elaos told us,' Gain continued. 'He said that one morning, early, before Prime, he'd got up because of a stomach bug, couldn't get back to sleep; so he walked down as far as the sally-port in the back eastern wall. He was sitting in the crook of the old fallen-down watchtower there-you could lurk up there and have a grand view over the wall, be able to hear someone talking through the sally-port, and they'd never guess there was anybody there. Anyhow, he said that he heard you, talking to someone; so he scriggled round until he could see. There you were. The sally-port gate was half open; outside there were a man and a woman sitting in a cart, with their hoods drawn right down over their faces, and that's who you were talking to. And there in the cart, at the man's feet, he could distinctly see a raider backsabre.'

Rain on the roof; no chance of the doctor coming out from Falcata while it was raining, the roads'd be a quagmire.

'Well,' Gain was saying. 'Everybody knows, the only people who carry those things are raiders; apart from them, nobody's got one. People said that there were only maybe a dozen in the whole Empire, and they were all in Torcea, at the palace or GHQ. Peasants in carts didn't carry them around for splitting firewood. Also, Elaos said, you were talking to these two in that strange weird language you used when you talked in your sleep, and they were using it too. Inference: the couple in the cart were scouts from a raider army, and you were briefing them. Not much on its own, maybe; but put it together with all that circumstantial stuff-He wasn't saying it was proof, he added, or anything like it; but it raised a question, was all, and until he got an answer that convinced him there was an innocent explanation, he was worried. Like, should he tell Father Tutor about it?'

'So,' Poldarn said. 'What did you all decide?'

'We didn't,' Gain said. 'Like I told you, it was way too much for us all to take on board. We couldn't actually bring ourselves to believe it, but we couldn't disprove it. Upshot was, we decided we'd all think it over, and have a meeting in a week's time, reach a decision then.'

'Fine,' Poldarn said, more than a little angry. 'And what did you decide at your grand meeting?'

'Never happened,' Gain said. 'Because the very next day, Elaos was found up in the same place, the old tower by the sally-port, with his neck sliced open.'

Oh, Poldarn thought. So did Gain trace me here to kill me? 'Was that me?' he asked. 'Did I do it?'

Pause. 'And a couple of hours later,' Gain went on, in a completely neutral voice, 'Father Abbot called a special emergency chapter, told everybody what'd happened, and said that the murderer had been caught and the matter was closed.'

'Not me, then?'

'You were at chapter with the rest of us,' Gain said.

'And did he explain what'd happened, why Elaos was killed?'

'No.' Gain's voice had become slightly brittle. 'The matter was closed, that's all he said. And we all wanted to believe him, of course. We wanted it to be outsiders-robbers or some wandering lunatic, someone who was nothing to do with us. It was very strange,' Gain went on. 'Elaos getting killed-well, if he'd died at year-end, that wouldn't have been a problem, we'd just have put him out of our minds, pretended he'd never existed. We'd learned how to handle that sort of thing, goes without saying. You had to, at Deymeson, or the place wouldn't have been able to keep going. But there's a huge difference between-well, failing an exam, and being murdered. That's the difference malice makes, malice or desperation or just sheer indifference, like where someone's murdered simply because he's inconvenient, in the way of some grand plan. Indifference is the scariest of the lot, believe me.'

Poldarn was silent for a moment. 'You didn't answer my question,' he said. 'Was it me? Did I kill him?'

'I don't know,' Gain replied without emotion. 'It's possible. Or else someone else killed him to protect you-and if so, you may have known about it in advance, or not. We didn't know; what's more, we didn't want to. Really didn't want to. You of all people can understand that, can't you?' Gain sighed. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but I'm feeling really tired now. I've got to get some sleep. I'll tell you the rest some other time.'