‘Quite,’ Athli said, looking down at a tray of silver ankle-bracelets. ‘And if I start flooding the Island with paper, it won’t be long before it’s “that’s what they used to say about Athli Zeuxis”. No, thank you. I’ll just have to write some of it off with Hiro and Venart. It shaves my margins, but at least I’ll still be here this time next year.’
One of the dressmaker’s girls appeared from the back room and started fluttering round Eseutz with a measuring tape. Eseutz didn’t seem to have noticed she was there. ‘I wouldn’t object to a bit of that, if there’s any to spare,’ she said innocuously. ‘Bear me in mind, will you?’
Athli smiled. ‘No,’ she said.
‘Ah well, no harm in trying,’ Eseutz replied. ‘Actually – no kidding – just at this precise moment in time I’d be good for the money.’ She frowned. ‘That’s what’s bothering me; I’m not used to being in credit. Being in credit is nature’s way of telling you you’re missing out on an opportunity somewhere.’
‘Maybe,’ Athli said. ‘But your opportunities have an unfortunate habit of sinking.’
‘That’s an exaggeration. It was just the one time…’
‘Or getting impounded by the excise,’ Athli went on, ‘or stolen by pirates, or infested with weevils, or repossessed by the original owner…’
‘It’s true, I do like to go after investments with a certain element of risk. They don’t all turn yellow on me, you know.’
‘All the ones I ever backed did.’
‘Oh, come on. What about those seventeen barrels of turmeric?’
Athli wrinkled her brow. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘I’d forgotten that. I’ll admit, that turned out all right in the end, after I bought out that other partner of yours you hadn’t got around to telling me about, and paid off the import duty you’d forgotten to mention. The profit I made on that deal kept me in lamp-oil for a week.’ She winced slightly, as the girl with the tape started on her. ‘No offence, but I’ll take my chances with Hiro and Venart, thank you very much. Hey, what do you reckon?’ she added, holding up an amethyst-and-silver pendant. ‘Will it go with the mauve silk, do you think?’
Eseutz shook her head. ‘Overstated,’ she said. ‘You want something small and intense with that, like diamonds. So, how long do you think the war will last? You ought to know about these plainspeople, if anyone does.’
‘Depends.’ Athli carefully gathered up the pendant chain and put it back. ‘An all-out assault, and it ought to be over quickly. If they let themselves get bogged down, it could drag on for months.’
‘This man Loredan,’ Eseutz went on. ‘What’s he like? You knew him for years, didn’t you?’
Athli nodded. ‘I worked for him,’ she said, ‘as a clerk. Gods, that seems like another life. Somewhere at home I’ve got a sword that used to belong to him. I wonder if I should send it on.’
Eseutz examined her carefully for a moment, as if she were an investment with a certain element of risk. ‘You’ve gone all woolly,’ she said. ‘Well, none of my business-’
‘Actually, you’re wrong. But yes, it’s none of your business. I thought you were asking for my opinion of him as a military leader.’
‘Mphm. Any good?’
Athli nodded. ‘He did amazingly well, considering what he had to put up with from the City authorities. But I don’t think he’d have been able to save the City, even if he’d had a free hand. He doesn’t really have the single-mindedness you need to be a high-class general.’
‘But this thing he’s supposed to have over the plains King,’ Eseutz said. ‘Is there any truth in that?’
Athli shrugged. ‘There was something there, I’m pretty sure. But he never talked about that stuff, so I wouldn’t know. Besides, from what I’ve gathered, he’s only going to be a sort of figurehead; it’s the provincial office commanders who’ll actually be running the war, and I don’t know the first thing about any of them. If they’re provincial office staff, you can be sure they’re competent, at the very least. The job will get done, one way or another.’
On her way home, Athli couldn’t help thinking about the war, and her tiny part in it. Had there ever been a time, she wondered, when she hadn’t been in the business of making money out of other people’s deaths? That’s what she’d done as Bardas’ clerk, that’s what she was about to do now. Yet she’d never seen herself in those terms, as some kind of carrion-eater circling high over plague-pits and battlefields. All she’d ever set out to do was earn a decent sum, on her own merits, living an independent life. And she’d succeeded, going from strength to strength; except that so many people had to die to keep her in the manner to which she’d become accustomed. It was the Loredan factor – in spite of all her efforts, everything she’d ever been was by and through him; as his clerk in Perimadeia, now this war – and she’d only got her start here on the Island through Venart and Vetriz Auzeil, who she’d met because of Bardas. What was it, she wondered, about these damned Loredans that meant that they started everything, finished everything, ran through everything like a bloodstain saturating cloth? She thought of Alexius, and the Principle; she missed Alexius.
As if to confirm her musings, she found Vetriz Auzeil waiting for her at home, wanting to know if she had any news about the war.
‘You mean any news about Bardas,’ she replied, because she was tired and fed up. ‘No, sorry. If there’s anything in the despatches from Shastel, I’ll let you know.’
‘Oh.’ Vetriz smiled. ‘That obvious, is it?’
‘Pretty well,’ Athli replied, wondering just what Eseutz had meant by ‘woolly’. An odd term to use. ‘If you’re that bothered, why not just write him a letter? I’m pretty sure the Shastel courier would pass it on; there’s a regular diplomatic bag now between Shastel and the provincial office, and once it’s there, the Imperial post is excellent.’
‘Thanks,’ Vetriz said, ‘but I don’t really have anything to say. I was just curious, really; you know how it is, when someone you know is mixed up in something important. You take an interest.’
Hanging around in someone’s porch waiting for them to come home just in case they had some news struck Athli as rather more than just taking an interest; but it wouldn’t help matters to point that out. ‘Coming in?’ she asked.
‘Why not?’
Athli opened the door. ‘Actually,’ she went on, ‘I did hear something that might interest you, since you spent all that time as a guest of the other Loredans. Gorgas is making trouble again.’
Vetriz caught her breath. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘Why am I not surprised?’
‘I’m going to pour myself a drink; can I get you anything? Apparently, he wrote to the prefect offering an alliance against Temrai. The prefect turned him down flat.’
‘Well, he would,’ Vetriz said. ‘Who’d want to be associated with the likes of Gorgas Loredan?’
Athli smiled. ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘but it gets better. A day or so after Gorgas got the get-lost letter from Ap’ Escatoy, he managed to capture a man called Partek-’
‘Now that name’s familiar.’
‘It should be,’ Athli said. ‘He’s been on the Empire’s Most Wanted list for years. He’s some kind of rebel leader, apparently.’
She handed Vetriz a cup of sweet cider, spiced Perimadeian style with honey and cloves. Vetriz managed not to pull a face when she sipped it. ‘Really? I didn’t think the Empire had rebels.’
‘Well, it does,’ Athli said, dropping on to a couch and kicking off her slippers. ‘Though they hate admitting to it; the warrants always say pirate or highway robber. But it’s common knowledge that they’ll do whatever it takes to get hold of Partek.’ She closed her eyes. ‘I must admit, I resent it when people like Gorgas get strokes of luck like that. I mean, it’s not as if he’ll do anybody any good with it; probably not even himself, if his record’s anything to go by.’
Vetriz had become uncharacteristically quiet; she was staring at the wall a foot or so above Athli’s head as if something was written there. Athli decided to change the subject-
But Vetriz wasn’t listening. Oh, damn, she thought, I thought I’d seen the end of this sort of thing. Apparently not; she was standing in some kind of workshop or factory, and the first thing she noticed (couldn’t help but notice) was the noise. Men were bashing bits of metal with hammers. The light slanted in from high, tall windows, marking out silver squares on the floor and making the rest of the building seem dark and gloomy by comparison. In the middle of the floor she could see a pile of what looked like body parts: arms, legs, heads, torsos, heaped and jumbled up – it was in the dark part, and she couldn’t see clearly, only a flash of metal and the evocative shapes of joints and limbs. The men at the benches were bashing away at more of the same, hammering a leg or a torso or a hand, then adding it to the pile. Why were they doing this, she wondered? There didn’t seem much point, bashing a limb that was already severed; or maybe this was a factory where they made mechanical men, like the ones in the fairy tale she remembered from when she was little. Then the angle of the light shifted a little, and she saw that they were making armour -