He closed his eyes. Outside it was raining, but he couldn't hear that. He couldn't hear the sound of boots squelching in mud, or cartwheels in the street, as the Amathy house left Cric and went to war.
What difference would it make if the deceiver acts in furtherance of the general good? Of a manifest destiny? What difference would it make if the deceiver incorrectly but sincerely believes that he acts in furtherance of a just cause or a manifest destiny? What difference would it make if the deceiver commits the deception knowing that the legitimate just cause or manifest destiny so authorising his deception has failed? Assuming that the deceiver is so justified, would that justification extend to fraudulent use or consumption of articles conducive to mere physical comfort, as opposed to the bare essentials required for survival? In such context, what would such bare essentials consist of?
What difference would it make if the deceiver were a god?
Chapter Twenty-Two
They came for him the next morning, just as the voice in the night had said they would, and they took him to the abbot's lodgings, where the abbot told him all the lies the voice had warned him to expect. He pretended to believe them, just as the voice had advised him to do: Of course, he said, his voice low with wonder, it's all coming back to me now. I remember this place-over there's the drill hall, where I did my twelve grades, and the novices' dormitory's in the next yard over, and opposite that's the dining-hall. The voice had drilled it into him the night before, made him repeat it all a dozen times, to make sure the geography of the place was firmly fixed in his mind.
Listening to the deceptions, knowing the truth, Poldarn couldn't help feeling a sense of elation, of release-partly because he was the one who was deceiving them, not the other way round, mostly because now, for the first time in a long time, he knew who he was. To begin with it had come as a complete shock; then he'd started to remember-not actual memories, but fragments of dreams in which he'd been the man he now knew he was, in which he'd heard and seen and known things that couldn't possibly have been picked up by eavesdropping on stray conversations or extrapolating from what Copis had told him. Also, it made perfect sense, explained so many of the strange, meaningless things that had happened to him-the attack on the cart by the three horsemen, shortly before they reached Cric; the meeting with Chaplain Cleapho in Sansory, and the soldier who'd recognised him in the kitchens of the inn, the one he'd had to kill before he could make the man tell him his own name. Most exhilarating of all was the realisation that his life had meant something, that he'd attempted and achieved things worthy of his talents and abilities, that he was on the right side.
(And now he was about to achieve something else, far more important and beneficial than anything he'd ever done before; furthermore, he'd have the opportunity to punish the order with appropriate savagery for trying to trick and use him. No wonder he was the sworn enemy of these people, or that they'd been so keen to get him out of the way.)
He listened carefully to what they had to say, while speculating as to which of the grave, solemn men sitting round the table was the voice he'd heard the night before. Only one of them spoke, making it possible for Poldarn to eliminate him at once (the prior of observances; and he was too tall, anyhow), which left him nine to choose from. Five of them were the right height and build. He'd have time and opportunity to figure it out over the next few days, and then he'd be able to make direct contact with his ally and put into operation a plan of his own that ought, if everything went as it should, to set everything right.
(Your name, the voice had told him, is Cronan Suvilois. You were born on the sixth day of the Ninth, in the fourth year of Emperor Massin Dasa, in Torcea. Your family are southerners. Your father's name was Lalicot, and your mother, before her marriage, was called Actin Doricalceo. Your family was comfortable rather than wealthy, minor provincial nobility, of no great account in the capital; your father felt, correctly, that in order to make your way in the world you would need to follow a career, either the army or religion. Accordingly, when you were six years old, he sent you to the Paupers' Institute at Collibortaca-)
'Of course,' the abbot was saying, 'we appreciate the fact that you probably won't remember the details of what you used to know for some while yet; as it happens, we have doctors here who've made a study of your sort of condition and probably know more about it than anybody else in the empire. When there's time, we'll send them to take a look at you, see if there's anything they can do. I believe they've managed to cure some pretty stubborn cases in the past.'
'That'd be wonderful,' Poldarn said, making a mental note to add this to the list of crimes for which these people had to be punished, this wanton planting of false hopes. 'You don't know how much it means to me, even the hope of someone finding a cure. It'd be something to live for.'
The abbot nodded. 'Plenty of time for that later,' he said. His face was stern but sympathetic, wisdom, justice and mercy combined in it like three elderly sisters sharing a house, ideal for the role of father, or god. 'First things first; we've got to get you back to where you're needed. Probably best if we supply you with an escort-trying to keep track of where you'd be likely to run into one of Cronan's scouting or foraging parties is a sure way to go mad, the way this war's going. With fifty horsemen along for the ride, it won't actually matter who you run into, short of a full cavalry squadron or a field army.'
Awkward, Poldarn thought, but he had the presence of mind to appear pleased and grateful. He did it very well, and that seemed to disconcert the monks. No bad thing, needless to say.
'Talking of which,' he asked as a diversion, or the equivalent of a rest in music, 'how is the war going? Has anything much been happening?'
The abbot smiled. 'That's a very good question,' he said. 'If you mean battles and sieges and the like, then no, not much. It's what's not been happening that's so confusing.'
It wasn't just the abbot who talked like that, of course. These monks all seemed to have the annoying habit of being gratuitously cryptic. He wondered what it was like in the dining-hall, when the grand prior wanted to ask the dean of the archives to pass the horseradish.
(You graduated with honours from the Academy of Arts and War at nineteen, the voice had said, the youngest officer ever to join the service. Your first command was a platoon of pioneers attached to a frontier station on the Morevich border-no accident that you were given such a miserable assignment, you'd made enemies as well as friends at the Academy. That was the year the raiders sacked Malevolinza; with the main provincial garrison wiped out to a man, your station was the only Imperial resource left between the mountains and the sea. The Morevich rebels and the mountain tribesmen saw their chance; a dawn attack came within a hair's breadth of forcing the gates. They were beaten back, but all the station's command staff were killed in the first hour, leaving you in charge of a desperate, impossible defence-)
'When do you think I should leave?' he asked. 'From what you've just told me, it'd better be sooner than later, surely.'
The abbot dipped his head in agreement. 'Quite right,' he said. 'There are a few things we'll need to sort out in due course, and when you get back we'll have to give you a quick refresher course on being a sword-monk, and a good bit of additional background material on Brother Stellico, to make up for what you can't remember yet. But there really isn't time for any of that now.'
What if they were telling the truth, and the voice in the night had been lying?
He let the thought sit quiet for a moment, afraid of waking it up. 'What about my-' Involuntary hesitation; couldn't think of the right word. 'Wife' wasn't true; 'friend' was fatuously coy. 'What about my business partner?' he asked. 'I haven't seen her since this morning.'