Alexius had already opened his mouth to reply when what she’d said sunk in. He sat quite still for two or three seconds without speaking.
‘And like you said,’ Niessa Loredan went on, ‘you’ve never realised what you can do. Come on, think about it. That business with my daughter and my brother Bardas; you did some fairly strong magic there, and I’ll bet you couldn’t tell me how you did it. Well?’
Again Alexius opened his mouth, then hesitated. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t. Well, in very general terms, yes; but a step-by-step description of the procedure, no.’ He narrowed his eyebrows. ‘You’re telling me that you can?’
Niessa stifled a yawn. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘It’s what you might call simple but difficult. Like it’s a fairly simple operation to lift a huge boulder, but impossible to do unless you’re very strong. I know how to lift things, but I’m not strong enough to go humping boulders around. It’s the same with magic.’ She looked him in the eye for a moment, then continued, ‘I can see you’re uncomfortable with that word, but I can’t think of a better one. I suppose you’d call it “anomalous physical phenomena associated with manipulation of the Principle”, but that’s too much of a mouthful for me. Well? Do you want to learn, or don’t you?’
Alexius thought of his uncle’s wife. ‘You’re asking me to buy goods I haven’t seen,’ he said.
‘No,’ Niessa replied. ‘The deal is this. We agree the terms, then you get the goods, then you pay for them. After all, you can’t do what I want you to until you’ve learnt what I’ve got to teach you.’
‘All right,’ Alexius said cautiously. ‘Tell me what you want me to do first.’
Again, Niessa looked him in the eyes before answering. It was meant to be unnerving, and it worked. ‘It’s no more than you did for my daughter,’ she said.
Alexius shook his head. ‘I can’t be certain because I don’t know enough about it,’ he replied, ‘but I have an idea that what I did at the very least contributed to the fall of the City. It certainly caused an awful lot of trouble, and also made me very ill. I don’t think I want to get involved in anything like that, even if it means not learning what you know about magic. After all,’ he added, with a slight shrug that his aunt-by-marriage would have approved of, ‘it isn’t actually what I’m interested in.’
‘Very well,’ Niessa said. ‘Now let me tell you a little bit about my family. As you know, when we were younger and still living in the Mesoge, my brother Gorgas set me up to be raped by two rich young men from the City, and then murdered my father and my husband and tried to kill me and our brother Bardas, in an attempt to cover up what he’d done. When he got away, my brothers all blamed me for what happened – and yes, I’d been making eyes at the two City boys, hoping they’d take me with them to Perimadeia. Gorgas killed them too, which means he killed the father of my daughter. In spite of that,’ she went on, with a little shake of her head, ‘Gorgas and I are quite good friends; at least, we’re all the family each of us has got, since Bardas and Clefas and Zonaras all refuse to have anything to do with us.
‘Now Gorgas really believes in family; I’m not so bothered, I can take it or leave it alone. I’ve had to lock my daughter up in the guard house, because she’s not right in the head and keeps making threats and saying all sorts of dreadful things. Gorgas thinks I’m horrible for doing that, but since most of the threats are against Bardas – he dotes on Bardas, always has – he agrees it’s the right thing to do. But you see, Gorgas and I are business people; we know when to cut our losses, when to put the past behind us, we knew that together we could make a future for ourselves, and we did.’
Niessa paused for a moment, letting Alexius digest what she’d told him. ‘I suppose you could say that above all else, we’re single-minded, and practical. We’re practical about life and death, love and hate, right and wrong; and we’re practical about this thing you call lots of long, difficult words and we call magic. And that’s the sort of people we are. And if you think you have any choice about whether or not you help us,’ she added, with a slight smile, ‘then all I can say is, for an old man you’re pretty naive.’
Alexius nodded. ‘You want me to kill someone,’ he said. ‘Lots of people, because one man wouldn’t need magic.’
‘Oh, no,’ Niessa said. ‘Again, you haven’t been listening. Now this time, listen and use your brain. We don’t want anybody killed; quite the reverse. You were the one who wanted to kill Bardas, remember, and we stopped you. And now,’ she went on pleasantly, ‘we want you to make Bardas love us again. It’s for Gorgas’ sake more than mine, really, but it’d please me too. It’s time we were a family again, what’s left of us. And besides,’ she added, ‘we could use him in the business. You’re his friend; don’t you want to see him reconciled with his nearest and dearest?’
Alexius smoothed his beard with the palm of his hand. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You want to give your brother your other brother as a birthday present?’
Niessa smiled. ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘After all, it’s something he wants.’
The boy looked up. His face was glowing in the light of the fire.
‘Why do we have to do this at this time of year, when it’s cold and dark?’ he said. ‘We could have finished in a single day back in the summer.’
Loredan didn’t turn his head; he was staring into the fire.
‘It’s better to cut the staves when the sap’s down,’ he said. ‘That way, they’re easier to season. When I was your age, we’d wait till the snow was a foot thick on the ground before we’d even think of cutting timber.’
The boy looked at him. ‘You’re not from the City, are you?’ he asked. ‘Originally, I mean.’
Loredan shook his head. ‘You haven’t heard of where I’m from,’ he said, without expression. ‘It really snows there. This is what spring’s like where I was brought up.’
The boy shivered. ‘Sounds horrid,’ he said. ‘This is bad enough. I suppose I’ll get used to it,’ he added forlornly. Loredan smiled.
‘Amazing what you can get used to if you have to,’ he said. ‘Try putting on more clothes, for a start. You shouldn’t have to be told that, at your age.’
The boy stared into the fire, as if trying to see what Loredan was looking at. ‘Is this what you used to do,’ he said, ‘before you came to the City?’
‘Not really, no. We were farmers, just like everybody else. But that meant you had to know all sorts of things. We never bought anything we could possibly make ourselves. I learnt this trade along with a couple of dozen others, and thought no more of it. I mean,’ he added with a grin, ‘it’s not exactly difficult, is it?’
The boy pulled a face. ‘I think it’s difficult,’ he said.
‘You would,’ Loredan replied pleasantly. ‘I don’t suppose you can shoe horses, either. Or build a house, or make nails, or cast pots, or weave rope. I can. Not well, mind you,’ he added, ‘but well enough. But I’ll admit, I was always better at this line of work than most people. And it’s light work and by no means disagreeable. Not a bad living, either, in these parts. This is a remarkably cack-handed race we’ve found ourselves among.’
‘Farmers,’ said the boy. ‘Oh, sorry, no offence.’
Loredan shook his head. ‘Not farmers,’ he said, ‘peasants. There’s a difference. I didn’t use to think so, but it’s true. Still, that’s none of our business. Thank the gods for the military, that’s what I say. All the work we can handle and they pay on delivery.’
The boy sucked his teeth. ‘I thought they specified yew or osage,’ he said. ‘Why’re we cutting ash?’
Loredan chuckled. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘that lot couldn’t tell the difference between a yew tree and a stick of celery. They just said yew or osage because that’s what they read in some book. Ash’ll do just fine, so long as we back it with rawhide.’
He threw another lump of dead wood on the fire and lay back, his hands behind his head. Far away, down in the valley, a wolf howled. The boy sat up with a start.
‘Calm down,’ Loredan said, with a grin.
The boy looked at him nervously. ‘That was a wolf,’ he said.