She relaxed – relaxed savagely – and Gannadius had to make an effort not to laugh. ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘Oh, I see. Yes, I think it’s working.’
It can’t be, surely. ‘Are you sure?’ he said, forcing himself to stay calm. ‘Just look around you and tell me what you see.’
‘I’m not sure,’ she muttered. ‘It’s somewhere I’ve never been. The nearest place to it I can think of is the library. And there’s-’ She lifted her head, her closed eyes directly in line with his (although he’d moved since she closed them; how did she know where he was?). ‘Doctor Gannadius, you’re-’ Suddenly she screamed, a horrible, shrill, painful noise that seemed to vibrate along the very same nerves in his head that the headache was affecting. He jumped up and grabbed her hands, which she was paddling wildly in the air like a drowning cat; she pulled her hands free and pushed him in the face so hard that he fell over on his backside, and swore.
‘Doctor Gannadius!’ She was gazing at him with a mixture of horror and terminal shame, and her eyes were as big as catapult-shot. ‘What did I do?’
He picked himself up and made a humorous play of dusting himself down. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Nothing broken that I’ve used in a long time. Tell me what you saw.’
‘But Doctor-’
He sat down and looked at her. ‘Tell me,’ he said quietly, ‘what you saw.’
She found a handkerchief in her sleeve and started twisting it. ‘Doctor Gannadius,’ she said, and the horror was already tinted with just the faintest flush of pride, ‘I think I saw the fall of the City. You know, Perimadeia. And-’ She swallowed and took a deep breath, as if she was about to dive off a high rock. ‘I think I saw you get killed.’
Gannadius nodded. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Tell me, how’s your head?’
She felt the back of her skull. ‘You think I might have banged it and I’m seeing things? I’m sure I-’
‘How’s your head?’
‘Fine. Well,’ she added, looking down at her hands, ‘I do have a bit of a headache, but apart from that-’
‘How did I die?’ Gannadius asked. He was perfectly still and his voice was perfectly even; only the palms of his crumpled-up hands were sweating. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I won’t be offended.’
‘You were shot,’ she replied in a tiny voice. ‘An arrow hit you in the face, it went right through-’ She stopped and made a succession of alarming noises, which sent Gannadius scurrying for a big copper bowl that usually held fruit. He made it back with the bowl just in time.
‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It was the stress, it can take people that way sometimes. I should have warned you.’
She looked up, the lower part of her face muffled by the handkerchief. ‘So you do believe me?’ she said. ‘Oh, I’m so glad – oh, that sounds such a stupid thing to say, what I meant was-’
‘I know what you meant. If it’s any comfort,’ he lied, ‘I was sick the first time too. And I didn’t even see anything horrible.’
‘Doctor Gannadius-’ She stood up, sat down, stood up again. ‘I – please, do let me wash out the bowl for you. I am so terribly sorry-’
Not half as sorry as I am, Gannadius reflected, once he’d finally shooed her away to her cell. I think disasters must follow me round like a sausage-maker’s dog. A natural, someone who can break through into the Principle at will… A really sensible man would follow her back to her cell and cut her throat at once. But.
‘Damn,’ he muttered, flopping onto the bed and curling his legs round. As he closed his eyes, he thought of his former colleague Alexius – apparently still alive, by some miracle, and cooped up on the Island, miles away from this war and presumably safe. For a while he toyed with the idea of trying to reach him by projection – Are you out of your tiny mind? You don’t stop a fire in a timber-yard by setting light to your neighbour’s oil store. Remarkably soon under the circumstances he fell asleep; and though he had vivid dreams, he couldn’t remember anything about them when he woke up.
Towards the evening of the second day they found a single straight ash tree growing in the ruins of a derelict cottage.
‘It’s not perfect,’ he said, ‘but it’ll have to do.’
Bardas Loredan let the reins slip through his hands and sat for a while looking at the ruins, the stones standing out through the light sprinkling of snow like elbows poking through a frayed sleeve. Burnt down, by the look of it, maybe fifty or sixty years before; even after all that time, the marks of fire were plain enough. This high up in the mountains, moss and ivy and the other types of vegetation that seem to regard it as their duty to cover up human errors don’t seem able to take hold on fallen masonry; there were a few patches of wispy grass growing in the cracks of the exposed mortar, two young rowan saplings perversely trying to make a living in the gap between the wall and the hard earth, and this fine, mature ash tree he had chosen to cut down, standing tall in what should have been the middle of the floor. If he was a superstitious man and one given to reflecting on past horror and glories, he might be tempted to make a connection between the fall of the house and the rise of the tree. But he wasn’t, and it was the only piece of straight timber he’d seen in two days.
Beside him on the cart’s box, the boy shifted impatiently.
‘That’s ash, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I thought we were after yew or osage.’
‘It’ll do,’ Loredan repeated.
The boy jumped down from the cart and saw to the horses while Loredan walked round the base of the tree, peering up into its branches and mumbling calculations under his breath. The boy watched him with his head on one side.
‘I thought you said this stuff was rubbish,’ he commented. ‘More trouble than it’s worth, you told me.’
Loredan frowned. ‘Maybe I exaggerated,’ he replied. ‘Get a fire going, then come and give me a hand.’
He lifted the big axe down from the cart and tested its edge with his thumb. It felt dull, and he licked it over with the stone before slipping off his coat and squaring his shoulders for the first stroke.
‘I can’t get this fire to light,’ the boy complained. ‘Everything’s damp.’
Loredan sighed. ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it after we’ve done this. Got your axe? Right, you go round the other side and try and match me cut for cut, try and keep it even. And for pity’s sake watch what you’re doing with that thing. Take it steady, don’t go wild.’
He adjusted the position of his hands on the axe, left hand at the bottom of the handle, right hand just under the axe-head, then fixed his eyes on where he wanted the blow to fall and swung. The shock of impact jarred his shoulders and he felt an uncomfortable twinge in his back, warning him to ease off a little.
‘Don’t just stand there,’ he grunted. ‘Your turn.’
The boy swung; typical boy with a big axe, wanting to show how strong he was. It was a wild, flailing swing, and he missed, hitting the tree with the handle of the axe rather than the blade. Needless to say, the head snapped off, whistled past disconcertingly close to Loredan’s elbow and landed in a patch of nettles.
‘Idiot,’ Loredan said indulgently. He remembered doing exactly the same thing himself when he was just a kid; younger than this boy, of course – by the time he was the boy’s age he really had known everything there is to know about felling a tree, instead of merely thinking that he did. ‘Go and find the axe-head.’
‘It went in the nettles,’ the boy replied.
‘I know.’
He carried on cutting, swinging the axe in a slow, economical rhythm, letting the weight of the head do all the work. After twenty or so strokes he moved round to the other side and evened up the cut; then he started again a quarter-circumference round, until he’d cut through to the core on three sides. He paused and leant on the axe-handle.
‘Found it yet?’
‘No.’
‘Gods, you’re slow, it’ll be dark soon,’ he said. ‘Come on, leave that and fetch the ropes.’