‘You didn’t do me any favours.’
The fear was getting worse, not better. There are hysterical women with knives who say they’re going to kill you and then talk at you instead; they don’t inspire fear in the hearts of men who can carve a path through an enemy army while thinking about something else. But he was definitely scared of Iseutz, almost to the point of speechlessness and loss of bladder control. After all, she was his niece; if there was anything in heredity, he was in serious trouble.
‘You’ve lost me,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you explain, instead of making me guess?’
‘All right, I’ll explain.’ She was leaning on the knife a little harder. ‘It’s quite simple, really. You made me into this.’ (Listen to the disgust she managed to load into that one little word.) ‘You made me what I am today, Uncle Bardas. I’ll say this for you, you’re a hell of a craftsman. You made my cousin Luha into a bow, and you’ve made me into another sort of weapon, you made me into a Loredan. Thank you very much.’
Bardas’ mouth was full of something that tasted foul. He swallowed it. ‘Be fair,’ he said. ‘Your mother did that, not me.’
‘Oh, she started it, which is why she’s definitely not a good insurance risk. But I got away from her, I was going to be a Hedin instead, until you interfered. That’s why I’m going to kill you.’
‘I see,’ Bardas said. ‘And won’t killing me just make you more of what you don’t want to be?’
‘No,’ Iseutz said. ‘Loredans don’t kill family. Uncle Gorgas, now; you murdered his son and he forgave you. You had a chance to kill me, but you didn’t. Mother could’ve had me put down any time she chose, but she didn’t. It’s not our way.’ She laughed. ‘The more I think about it, the more I get the impression I’ll be doing you a kindness. Come on, Uncle Bardas, what possible reason could you have for wanting to stay alive? If I’d done half the things you’ve done, I’d die of exhaustion through never being able to sleep. Your life must be really horrible; I mean, mine’s bad enough and I’ve hardly even started.’
‘What a thing to say,’ Bardas replied. ‘Consequences aside, I can’t think of a single thing I’ve done that I didn’t do for the best.’
‘That wasn’t a very sensible thing to say, in the circumstances. ’
‘Really?’ Bardas was just about able to keep himself from shaking like a dog that’s just climbed out of a pond, but it was hard work. ‘I don’t think so. You aren’t really going to kill me. If you were I’d be dead by now.’
‘You reckon?’ Iseutz said, and jammed the knife home.
Later, Bardas decided that it made up for all the mistakes he’d made that day, that one deftly planned tactical success. By provoking her so skilfully, he’d at least known exactly when the thrust was going to happen. This made it possible for him to jerk his head forward and sideways – he still got a horrendous gash across the base of his scalp, but it wasn’t enough to die of – while simultaneously shoving hard with both feet to slam the back of the chair into where he hoped her solar plexus was likely to be. With the same impetus he threw himself to the ground, rolled and grabbed at the place where (provided nobody had moved it) Theudas’ penknife ought to be, in his writing-tray on the floor. After three years in the mines it was second nature, easier to do in the dark by feel and memory than if he were in the light and able to see. The knife-hilt found his hand and the act of throwing it was a continuation of the retrieve – economy of movement, an essential in the mines. He heard the impact and the gasp of pain – bad, because if she could cry out, he’d missed – but he was already reaching for the scimitar he’d left lying on the map-table.
She said, ‘Uncle Bardas, no…’ Then he heard the wet crunch of steel cutting flesh and sinew, the sharp edge compressing the fibres and shearing them. ‘Thank you,’ he said instinctively, and waited (always count to ten before moving; another valuable lesson he’d learned in the mines) before lowering the scimitar, getting up and groping for the tinder-box and the lamp.
She was dead by the time he had a light; cutting the neck vein is messy but quick. There was fear in her eyes too, probably that last-second realisation that she had wanted to live after all (he’d seen it so often). Her mouth was open and she’d thrown the knife away; but in the dark, of course, he couldn’t have been expected to see that. Theudas’ penknife had slit her cheek open, a gaudy but trivial flesh-wound like the one she’d given him. He stood and looked at her for a while. One less Loredan. Well.
So it goes on, he thought, so it goes on. And now I’ve got a dead girl in my tent. She’d fallen, needless to say, across the bed, which was now fairly comprehensively saturated with blood. So he slept in the chair instead.
Away from the fighting, in peace and quiet; he felt like he couldn’t remember a time when there hadn’t been dust and the constant pounding of the trebuchets.
He remembered this place from years before. He’d been about ten years old, the whole family had gone off for the day after a distant, unconfirmed rumour of geese on the flooded levels; there weren’t any geese, of course, but they did find wild strawberries and some mushrooms that Uncle maintained were edible. As was usually the way on these occasions, they brought more food with them than they took back, but that wasn’t really the point. Though nobody would have put it in quite those terms, it was about getting away from the rest of the clan for a while, a token act of separation. They were the only family he knew who did such things; it was regarded as a rather quaint eccentricity, and nobody ever asked if they could come too.
He remembered the cave; well, cave was an overstatement, the scrape under a rock where there’d been plenty of room for a ten-year-old to crawl in and imagine he was living in a house, one of those strange, non-mobile dwellings the Enemy lived in, when they weren’t being the enemy.
He remembered it because of the strange feeling of security it gave him; walls that were rock and clay, not felt. One day, he thought, I’d like to live in a house. And so he had, years later, until the Enemy (another Enemy, but the same one) came to Ap’ Escatoy and pulled his house down into their cave.
He remembered it also because while they were away from the clan, the Enemy had raided the camp; it was the day they killed Temrai’s mother and rode off most of the herd, causing the famine that killed off so many people that winter. He remembered what it had been like riding back into the camp, seeing the scraps of burned felt flapping from the charred poles, the bodies left lying because there were so many of them it would take a whole day to clear up – he frowned, superimposing that memory on what he’d just seen.
(He’d seen a lot over the years, and remembered more of it than he’d have chosen; but that’s what a spy does. He sees, and remembers; and then does what he’s told.)
The scrape was still there (no reason why it shouldn’t be); it was smaller than he remembered, but plenty big enough to shelter him for the rest of the night and give him somewhere to work. He tied his horse to the thorn-tree (still there too; but it was nearly dead now), unslung his saddlebag and crawled into the dark tunnel.
The tinder flared at the third attempt (outside it had started to rain). He lit his lamp, then the little oil-stove that had belonged to his uncle. It flickered rather alarmingly, but he had light and enough warmth to keep his hands steady. That was enough.
He took the meat out of the bag and looked at it; then fished in the saddlebag for the little wooden box that held his uncle’s most prized and mysterious treasure, the thin-bladed jointing and filleting knife. Think twice, cut once, he thought, then chose his spot for the first incision.