Gorgas frowned. He chewed for a moment, making a loud crunching noise, then swallowed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, ’ he said, ‘you’re family. Nothing’s more important than family. But I got the better of them in the end – or I thought I did. I gave them the Mesoge.’
Iseutz opened her eyes wide. ‘You did what?’
‘I handed it over to them, free, gratis and for nothing.’ He grinned. ‘The look on that oily bastard of an envoy’s face – well, he looked just like you look now, like he’d swallowed a doughnut and found it was a hedgehog. On reflection,’ he added, ‘it may be that they tried to grab you as security for the deal, in case I changed my mind. Anyway, whatever they did it for, it isn’t on. If they want their damned pirate they’ll have to give me Niessa and what I originally asked for. In fact,’ he added, frowning a little, ‘you’ve just given me an idea. This trip might turn out to be more useful than I’d thought.’
Iseutz smiled. ‘Glad to have inspired you,’ she said. ‘Look, I don’t want to rush you or anything, but is this business of yours going to take awfully long, because I’d really like to be on my way as soon as possible. I’m sure all these soldiers have much more important things on their minds than stray prisoners, but they make me nervous.’
Gorgas nodded. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said. ‘If there’s one thing the provincial office truly despises, it’s losing a prisoner. No, you’re right to be worried. The best thing would be to get you safely on board my ship and off this island. I’ll tell them to come back for me.’
‘Are you sure? I don’t want to be a nuisance or anything. ’
Gorgas looked at her. ‘There’s no need to overdo it,’ he said. ‘Come on, you can be straight with me, I’m your uncle. I’m the one you spat at when you were in that prison on Scona. That’s why we get on so well together; we haven’t got any illusions about each other. It’s how it should be, between family.’
Iseutz scowled at him, then shook her head. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to be insulting.’
‘Ah well, I’m insult-proof,’ Gorgas replied with a smile. ‘Look, I’ll be straight with you, the way I want you to be with me. I want you somewhere safe where the prefect’s bogies can’t get to you, because I don’t want to let them have another hostage. If that means I’ve got to spend five days here instead of two, that’s no big deal; it’ll give me time for this other little job I’ve just thought up for myself. You’re doing me a favour – two, actually, because you gave me that idea – and I’m doing you one in return. And we’re both happy, and that’s good. Now then, you’ve had your dinner, so let’s get you down to the dock. If there anything you want to take with you, or are you ready now?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ Iseutz replied. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what this great idea is, are you?’
‘No, I’m not. Come on, let’s be on our way. Actually, the soup wasn’t half bad, I must remember this place. We’ll go out the back way.’
As they passed the table where Vetriz was sitting, Gorgas stopped, nodded politely and went on.
‘Who was that?’ Iseutz asked.
‘Friend of your uncle Bardas.’
‘Oh,’ Iseutz said.
Meanwhile, Eseutz Mesatges was leaning forward and asking, ‘Come on, who is he?’
‘Like I said,’ Vetriz replied angrily, ‘none of your-’
‘You’re upset,’ Eseutz went on, ‘because he had a girl with him. Young enough to be his daughter, too. You’re well rid, if you ask me.’
‘I don’t,’ Vetriz said, ‘so shut up.’
‘Not another word. But I thought you were still hung up on this Bardas Loredan character; you know, the one who made a hero of himself at Ap’ Escatoy-’
‘Eseutz.’
‘Sorry.’ Eseutz grinned and held up her hands. ‘Change subject. Didn’t mean to pry. Only you’re no fun at all in that direction, you’re never interested in anybody, so you can hardly blame me if – all right,’ she added, as Vetriz glared at her. ‘Completely different subject. Did you buy those shoes you were telling me about? Only I tried a pair of them myself and they cut my heels to ribbons. Talk about an instrument of torture – forget your red-hot irons and your thumbscrews, five minutes in those sandals and I’d tell you anything.’
When she finally managed to get rid of Eseutz, Vetriz went straight home and put the bolt on the door. It was a pointless gesture, and Venart would be furious when he got home and found he was locked out, but it went a little way towards making her feel better. She went up to the first-floor balcony and sat behind the curtain, watching the street, until it was too dark to see.
For her part, Eseutz dropped in at the wool exchange, where there was nothing doing, called on Cens Lauzeta, the fish-oil baron, who wasn’t at home, bought a sea-bass and an inkstone in the Salvage Market and stopped off at the jeweller’s to see if they’d mended her grasshopper brooch yet, which they hadn’t. Then she went home.
There were two men sitting in the porch when she got there. One, annoyingly, was Cens Lauzeta. The other one she recognised, though she didn’t know his name.
That, however, was quickly remedied, because as soon as he’d chided her for staying out late, Cens introduced him. His name, apparently, was Gorgas Loredan, and he had a business proposition.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘I’d find it downright funny if I wasn’t scared out of my brain,’ Temrai said, letting go of the saw-handle and sitting down on the beam. ‘Here I am building fortifications for Bardas Loredan to come and lay siege to.’ He wiped sawdust out of his eyes, then went on, ‘It’s like when we were kids and took it in turns to be the good guys and the bad guys. Unfortunately, I seem to have lost count, so I’m not sure which I am at the moment.’
They had almost reached the Grey Slate River by the time the news reached them: Cidrocai’s army wiped out, Bardas Loredan in command of the enemy column following the death of the Imperial colonel. (‘Just my luck,’ Temrai had said when he heard about it. ‘We kill a colonel, and look what happens.’) Temrai had halted the march immediately (into the jaws of death; yes, certainly. Into the arms of Bardas Loredan; no) and sent out scouts to find a place he could fortify, with extreme prejudice, against the inevitable confrontation.
As it turned out, he couldn’t have chosen better if he’d been planning to dig in all along. An hour’s march away the scouts had found a steep-sided plateau rising out of a flat, dry plain, with a wood below it on one side and a lively little river curling round it on the other. When he first saw it, Temrai couldn’t help grinning; with time and a certain amount of work, it could be made into a fairly passable replica of the Triple City.
‘At least it gives us a pattern to follow,’ he’d pointed out to his engineers. ‘We’ll just copy what they did as best we can in the time we’ve got. We should be able to get quite a bit done if we all knuckle down and get on with it.’
No question; one thing the plainspeople did know how to do was work. There had been no complaints or objections when he sketched out the first phase for the council of war – dig a channel to divert the river so that it surrounded the plateau on all sides; fell and dress up all the usable timber in the forest; fetch bastions out of the sides of the plateau to make platforms for the artillery. Effectively he was asking them to rebuild Perimadeia in a month; so far, nobody had even suggested it was going to be difficult, let alone impossible.
The man on the other end of the saw (a distant relative by the name of Morosai; elderly, short, bald-headed and with about five times his stamina) yawned and passed him the water bottle. ‘Going well,’ he said.
‘Isn’t it?’ Temrai replied. ‘Better than I expected, to be honest with you.’
‘They’re glad to have something to do,’ Morosai said. ‘When people are doing something, they don’t feel quite so helpless. The harder the job is, the better it makes them feel.’
Temrai shrugged. ‘I wish it worked that way for me,’ he said.