‘Shall I send the clerk for the guard?’ the administrator asked.
The prefect shook his head. ‘He isn’t doing anything wrong,’ he replied.
The administrator raised an eyebrow. ‘Disturbing the peace,’ he said. ‘Loitering with intent. Blasphemy-’
‘I didn’t say he wasn’t breaking any laws,’ the prefect replied with a smile. ‘But it’s every man’s duty to preach the scriptures. It’s just a pity that he’s choosing to do it at the top of his voice.’
(But it wasn’t that, of course; it was the tone of voice that was so disturbing, the savage anger with which the fellow was reciting those calm, measured, impersonal statements of doctrine, those elegantly balanced maxims, so perfectly phrased that not one single word could be replaced by a synonym without radically altering the sense. It was like listening to a wolf howling Substantialist poetry.)
‘Sooner or later,’ the prefect went on, ‘someone else will call the guard, the wretched creature will be taken away and we’ll have some peace again. Until then, I shall pretend I can’t hear it. I’m sorry, you were saying-’
The administrator nodded. ‘The proposed alliance,’ he went on, ‘is of course out of the question; this man Gorgas Loredan is nothing but an adventurer, a small-scale warlord who’s set himself up in a backwater and is desperately trying to enlist powerful friends against the day when his subjects get tired of him and throw him out. Doing anything that would appear to recognise his regime would reflect very badly on us. Quite simply, we don’t do business with that class of person.’
‘Agreed,’ replied the prefect, trying to concentrate. ‘But there’s more to it, I can tell.’
The administrator nodded wearily. ‘Unfortunately,’ he went on, ‘the confounded man has had a quite extraordinary stroke of good luck. Two days ago, the small port that lies on his border – Tornoys, it’s called – was raided by a pirate ship. One ship, fifty or so men; they were after the dispatch clipper from Ap’ Escatoy, which they’d been stalking all the way up the coast until it was driven into Tornoys by a sudden storm on the previous day. They followed it in, got badly knocked about by the storm themselves, and spent the night riding it out before coming into harbour just after dawn. Now I’m not sure what happened after that, but Gorgas Loredan and his men arrived before they could do anything about the clipper and engaged them in battle; half of the pirates were killed, and Gorgas has the survivors locked up in a barn somewhere. He’s also holding on to the clipper, though he hasn’t given any reasons.’
The prefect was scowling. ‘It’s Hain Partek, isn’t it?’ he said.
The administrator nodded. ‘And Gorgas knows precisely who it is he’s got hold of,’ he went on. ‘Well, he’d have to be singularly ill-informed not to; after all, we’ve been offering large sums of money for him and posting his description up all over the province these past ten years; and of course it’s wonderful news that he’s been caught, I suppose. I just wish, though, that it had been somebody else and not this Gorgas person.’
‘Quite.’ The prefect leaned back in his chair. ‘Had we told him we weren’t interested in his alliance?’
‘Unfortunately, yes,’ the administrator said, picking up a small ivory figure from the desk, examining it briefly and putting it back. ‘The timing couldn’t have been worse. As soon as he got our response, he sat down and fired off a reply; most extraordinary letter I’ve read in a long time, a thoroughly bizarre mixture of obsequiousness and threats – you ought to read it yourself, if only for the entertainment value. My assessor reckons he’s off his head, and after reading this letter I’m inclined to agree with him. Apparently, when the letter telling him we didn’t want the alliance reached him, he was in a farmyard splitting wood.’
‘Splitting wood,’ the prefect repeated. ‘Why?’
‘I get the impression he likes splitting wood. Not per se; he enjoys making believe he’s a farmer. He comes from a farming family, apparently, though he had to leave home in something of a hurry. So far, the only possible explanation I’ve heard for what he’s done in the Mesoge is that it was the only way he could ever go home.’
‘He does sound deranged, I’ll admit.’ The prefect made a slight gesture with his hands. ‘Insanity isn’t necessarily an obstacle to success in his line of work, though,’ he observed. ‘Frequently, in fact, it’s an asset, if properly used. Has he said what he wants from us yet?’
The administrator shook his head. ‘All we’ve had is a terse little note saying he’s got Partek in custody and would like us to send someone to discuss matters with him. I imagine he’d far rather we made the opening bid; which is reasonable enough, I suppose, from his point of view. I mean, all he knows is what we’ve said openly, he’s got no way of knowing how important to us Partek really is.’ The administrator hesitated for a moment, and then went on. ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I’m not entirely sure myself. What’s the official line on that these days?’
The prefect sighed. ‘He’s important enough,’ he said. ‘Not as important as he was five years ago, but he’s still a damned nuisance; not because of anything he’s done or anything he’s capable of doing, it’s more the fact that he’s still out there, and we haven’t been able to do a damn thing about it.’ He frowned, and scratched his ear. ‘It’s amusing, really; the less he actually achieves, the more his legend grows. In some parts of the south-eastern region, they’re firmly convinced he’s in control of the western peninsula and he’s raising an army to march on the Homeland. No, we need to be able to point to his head nailed to a door in Ap’ Silas; if we could do that, it’d be a good day’s work.’
‘Which means,’ said the administrator, ‘we have to give Gorgas Loredan what he asks for?’
‘Not necessarily.’ The prefect paused for a moment. He couldn’t hear the madman any more; someone must have come and dealt with him. ‘There’s no reason why we should necessarily replace a big problem with a smaller one. Now then,’ he went on, ‘if I remember correctly, this Gorgas Loredan’s the brother of our own Bardas Loredan.’
‘The hero,’ replied the administrator with a grin. ‘That’s right. Extraordinary family; if only the Mesoge produced more men like that, it might be – well, interesting to have an alliance with them. They’re both barking mad, of course, but you can’t help but admire their vitality.’
‘I can,’ the prefect said, ‘when it causes me difficulties. Let’s see, then. We need Bardas Loredan to be the figurehead against the plainspeople, so presumably we can’t play rough with Gorgas Loredan, for fear of offending him-’
‘I don’t know about that,’ the administrator interrupted. ‘By all accounts, Bardas hates Gorgas like poison – there’s a really wonderful backstory to all that, by the way, remind me to tell you about it when we’ve got five minutes – so I wouldn’t worry too much about that. But Gorgas, apparently, dotes on Bardas-’
The prefect held up his hands. ‘This is all a bit much,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, please go on. I just find all this a trifle bewildering, that’s all.’
‘So do I,’ the administrator replied with a smile. ‘But you must admit, it’s rather more intriguing than the quarterly establishment returns.’
The heavy clouds that had been masking the sun lifted, and a blinding beam of amber sunlight dazzled the prefect for a moment. He shifted his chair a little to avoid it. ‘At my time of life I can manage quite well without being intrigued, so long as I don’t have to deal with messy little people living in obscure places,’ he said grimly. ‘On the other hand,’ he went on, lightening up a little, ‘I must confess, Bardas Loredan was something of a collector’s item. He obviously didn’t have a clue who he was talking to, which was really quite refreshing. Anyway, where were we?’
The prefect leaned back, his fingertips pressed against his lips. ‘We need Bardas because of Temrai, and now Gorgas has got Partek; but we don’t want to be seen to be friends with Gorgas, and Bardas won’t mind if we aren’t friends with Gorgas… What was that you said about the clipper?’ he added, leaning forward again. ‘He’s detaining it, you say?’