The Two of Swords: Part 7 (3 page)

“I believe you, sir.”

“Damn it, boy, don’t you ever look at your money? That’s my face on the coins, don’t you know.”

“We don’t have a lot of money where I come from, sir.”

A smart answer, maybe just a little bit too glib. Glauca thought for a moment, then swung his fist at the boy’s jaw. The impact jarred his arm right down to the elbow, and he discovered he’d cut the skin on his knuckles. Stupid thing to do. Should’ve quit while he was ahead, where fighting was concerned. “Don’t be funny with me, boy,” he said – it didn’t come out quite right because the pain made his voice a little shaky. Still, it was pleasant to know he hadn’t entirely lost his punch; the boy was shaking and plainly terrified. “Get it into your thick skull. The people out there want to hang you. If you annoy me, I’ll let them do it. Do you understand?”

The boy nodded. It occurred to Glauca that maybe he’d broken the boy’s jaw, in which case he wouldn’t be able to tell him anything for weeks. “Answer me when I talk to you,” he shouted.

“Sir.”

Glauca waited, then realised he hadn’t actually asked any questions yet. “So you admit it. You’re a thief.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did you come here to steal?”

“A map, sir. There’s a special map in one of the rooms directly under that tower.”

The cartulary, in other words. Yes, plenty of special maps in there: the coastal defences, the supply lines, the map Senza had filed with him showing his anticipated movements for the next three months – not that it was worth the parchment it was drawn on, the way that boy kept changing his mind. Directly under the observatory tower, perfectly true. If you were in the cartulary and heard someone coming, you’d leg it up into the tower till they’d gone, because nobody ever went up there. “You’re sure about that.”

“Yes, sir. Perfectly sure.”

Glauca scrabbled for a moment in the pocket of his robe. Other things – a handkerchief, a small book, a bronze miniature by Calopa he always carried with him, because he couldn’t bear to be parted from it. Ah. He found it. “So what was this for?”

He thrust the pack of cards under the boy’s nose. “You recognise them, yes?”

“Oh yes, sir. They’re mine.” A slight pause; the boy could tell Glauca didn’t believe him. “Really, sir, they’re mine. I made them.”

For a moment, Glauca’s head swam, as though he’d been the one who’d just been punched. “You did what?”

“Made them, sir. I cut the boards out of a thin bit of wood from a packing case, and I painted them.”

He’s lying, Glauca thought; he must be. But, if so, he was a superb actor. “You can’t have.”

“I did, sir. Really.”

“Nonsense, boy. Rubbish. Whoever sent you here gave them to you, so you’d know which pack from my collection to steal. Well? Isn’t that the truth?”

“No, sir.” The boy was looking straight at him. “I painted them myself.”

Glauca had to make an effort to breathe. “Who told you what to paint?”

“I copied the pack the brothers showed me, back home, in our village. They’ve got a pack like that one, only it’s not made of wood, it’s thin sheets of silver. I remembered the pictures, and I painted them as close as I could.”

“Silver,” Glauca repeated.

“Oh yes, sir. They’re all black because they’re never cleaned, but the raised bits on the figures, the silver’s rubbed through and they shine, where the brothers put their fingers when they deal. And that’s what I copied.”

Glauca didn’t know what to do. Part of him wanted to smash the boy’s face in, for telling such a cruel, tantalising lie. The rest of him was afraid he’d shatter, like a porcelain plate that can never really be mended so it doesn’t show. “You’re lying.”

“No, sir, really. I promise.”

Glauca took a deep breath. His heart was pounding. Hell of a good way to assassinate him, he thought: tell him this particular lie and let his own heart do the rest. “What brothers?”

“The brothers,” the boy said. “Usually there’s five or six of them, and they go round the villages with a donkey cart. People give them food and let them sleep in their barns. Sometimes, if you ask them just right, they’ll tell you about – well, all sorts of stuff.”

“These brothers have a pack of silver cards.” The boy nodded. “And they let you copy them.”

“Not really.” The boy hesitated, as if wondering if he’d done something wrong he shouldn’t admit to. “The brothers showed them to me, and I liked them so much I made my own pack, like I just said. I didn’t think it’d do any harm.”

Glauca could feel his heart pounding. “All right,” he said. “Describe them. In detail.”

“Well,” the boy said. “The Ace of Arrows—”

“Forget about that. Describe Poverty.”

The boy nodded. He cleared his throat and began to recite. “She’s standing under an apple tree, wearing a crown of bay leaves—”

“Which way’s her head turned? Right or left?”

Trick question. “She’s sort of looking straight at you,” the boy said. “And in her left hand there’s an empty bowl, and in her right hand there’s a pair of tongs.”

“How many apples on the tree?”

“Five,” the boy replied without hesitating. “And there’s two birds in the tree, crows I
think
, and under the tree on her left there’s a thin dog with its ribs showing, and on the right there’s a fire altar with a loaf of bread on it and something else, I couldn’t figure out what it was meant to be because it was so worn, on the card the brothers showed me, I mean. Oh yes, and in the background there’s three men and a cart.”

Three men and a cart. Glauca held back a smile; a fine way to describe Photeus and his brothers on their way to found the New City. “You’re sure the dog’s on the left.”

“Oh yes.”

“And two crows in the tree, not three.”

“I’m sure of it, yes.”

“Anything else? Think.”

The boy frowned, then relaxed. “Sorry,” he said. “Yes, there’s a jug next to the dog. It’s broken in three pieces.”

Glauca’s knees had gone soft; he couldn’t have stood up if he’d wanted to. The two crows might be a coincidence, and maybe the something else on the altar might not be the globus cruciger. But the crows, the second object on the altar, the tongs, Poverty full-face
and
the broken jug— And the tongs were only recorded in a footnote to the commentary on Abbianus, which only he and maybe three other scholars in the world were aware of, and they were right here, in the City. The Sleeping Dog. It had to be. Every detail he’d looked for had been there. His hand shook as he took out his writing set and opened the lid. “Draw it,” he said. “Now.”

The boy lifted his chained left hand. “That’d be awkward,” he said. “I’m right-handed.”

“
Do it
.” He made himself calm down. “Do the best you can. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

It came out quite ludicrous; a shaky, smudgy Poverty under a lopsided tree, and the dog looked like a goat. But Glauca could tell even so; the boy had drawn the pack, the style was definitely the same. He was telling the truth, Glauca was sure of it. In which case, this boy, this clown, terrified incompetent thief, had seen the Sleeping Dog Pack itself – seen it, maybe even touched it.
It existed
. It was somewhere out in the world, at large, obtainable.

He wasn’t sure he could cope with that.

“Listen very carefully.” His voice was shrill and unsteady. “I want you to go and get that pack for me. If you get it and bring it here to me, I’ll give you twenty thousand gold angels. Do you understand?”

The boy was staring at him. Of course he didn’t understand. “I don’t think the brothers would want to sell it,” he said.

“So what? You’re a thief.”

Glauca had been reading human beings even longer than he’d been reading books. He told himself he was good at it, and the fact that he was still alive after so many years on the throne suggested he was right. And if he’d read the boy anything like accurately, he’d just shocked him so deeply that his next words would be a refusal. There might not be a way back from that. “They’ll sell it,” he said. “For thirty thousand.”

“Thirty—”

“And twenty for yourself,” Glauca said. “When you put the pack in my hand, twenty thousand angels, new gold coins. And an estate, a thousand acres. You could be anything you wanted.”

“I don’t know.” The pain in the boy’s voice was far worse than anything the examiners could generate. Even Tencuilo, author of the
True Dialogue of Tortures
, couldn’t hurt anyone that much. “I couldn’t steal from the brothers, sir,” he said, “I couldn’t.” He paused, and his eyes were enough to break Glauca’s heart. “I’ll try and make them sell it,” he said. “But I couldn’t steal it.”

“Good lad. Very good.” Glauca started to get up, but cramp stopped him. He had to wait, regroup, concentrate before he was able to stand. “I’ll get you out of here and into the hospital, and they’ll fix you up in no time. Good men, my doctors, even if they do fuss all the damn time.” Senza’s army, he realised as he spoke; the fifty thousand would have to come out of the money for paying the soldiers, and Senza wouldn’t be happy about that. “I’ll see to it that all the arrangements are made. Of course,” he went on, just a bit too casually, “if the brothers do agree to sell, I’ll need to see the pack before I hand over the money, but I’m sure they’ll understand.” He stopped. “What did you say your name was?”

“Musen, sir.”

“Musen anything, or just Musen?”

“Just Musen, sir.”

“Who sent you, Musen?”

The boy looked at him. “Do I have to say, sir? Only, they said if I told on them, they’d kill my mother.”

What was it the boy had come to steal? Some map. Spy stuff. The hell with maps. “You can tell me when you get back,” he said. “You’ll be a rich man then, they won’t be able to touch you. I’ll see to that. I promise.”

He could tell the boy was relieved, as though he’d put down a heavy sack he’d been just about to drop. “Thank you, sir.”

“Perfectly all right, my dear fellow. Don’t you worry about anything. You’ll have your money and your land, and you and your mother will never have to worry about anything ever again. You have my word on that.”

“You can trust me, sir,” the boy said. “Really you can.”

Attention to detail – the scholar’s mentality – had always been Glauca’s weakness, and his strength. Weakness, in all its connotations, was very much in his mind when he finally made it back to the Blue Chamber, having personally seen to the boy’s transfer to the hospital, then driven to the Exchequer to see about the money. As he subsided painfully into his chair he realised that he was completely exhausted. He had no strength left; it’d be several hours before he’d be able to stand up again, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably. Hard to believe that only hours before he’d fought and killed a man. But he had. The pride he felt in that accomplishment shocked him rather, but he couldn’t deny it. From his father, he supposed; Father had always valued men directly according to their ability to fight –
let the best man win
was, to him, a meaningless exhortation, since the winner was always the better man, by definition— He had a vague idea that someone really ought to give him a medal, or a trophy of some sort; who, though, he had no idea.

Attention to detail, then; he’d known he wouldn’t be able to sit still and be peaceful until he was sure the boy was safely in a hospital bed, and the fifty thousand angels were irrevocably earmarked and written up as such in the books. That done, he could relax—

No, he couldn’t.
The Sleeping Dog Pack
. He desperately wanted to get to his feet, but he knew he couldn’t, so he rang the bell. It took for ever – nine or ten seconds – for that damned fool Crinuo to get there. As soon as the door opened, he snapped, “The scholiast on Abbianus, quick as you like. And Dasenna, and the
Universal Concordat
, and Nurisetta on miracles, and the sixth book of Nardanes’
War Chronicles
. And get me my rug,” he added, “before I freeze to death.”

Two hours later, he was sure. The books had proved it. The pack the boy had seen was either the genuine Sleeping Dog, lost for two hundred years and possibly the oldest silver pack still in existence, or a forgery perpetrated by scholars of the highest possible calibre. He examined the second hypothesis first.

Naturally, he knew every academician working in the field; a few by repute only, most of them personally. It was possible that one of them might have been tempted or suborned; anything’s possible, including winged serpents and the men with no heads and eyes in their stomachs recorded in Essynias, but he wasn’t inclined to believe in them. No; there were five men, apart from himself, with the necessary knowledge. Four of them would be there in an hour if he sent for them; the fifth, Carytta, must be ninety if he was a day, nearly blind last time he’d heard, living in a monastery on top of some godforsaken mountain in the Mesogaea. Further or in the alternative; why would anybody go to the trouble of tempting or suborning a first-rate scholar to make a forgery of the Sleeping Dog, and then give it to some band of wandering hedge-priests in the barren wilderness of Rhus? He’d seen enough forgeries over the years, God only knew; superb, some of them, true works of art in their own right, created by the finest craftsmen, at staggering expense. The motive was obvious. Two or three times a year someone would come to him with the Sleeping Dog or the Broken Bow – always with a story of course, a cast-iron provenance. It had been captured by pirates or raiders from such and such an irreproachably documented previous owner, and the robbers had buried their loot and then been killed, but the great-grandson of one of the robbers had come across a map; or it was looted from such and such a temple by an ignorant soldier, and his widow had sold it to someone who had no idea what he’d bought, and then the buyer’s great-grandson had overheard a chance remark; or it had passed into the collection of such and such a great family, and so-and-so, a junior footman, had pocketed it and then panicked and hidden it; they told wonderful stories when they came to see him, dressed up with real people and genuine facts, like almonds on a fruit cake, and it was always just to get money, and when you saw the silverware, if you knew what to look for, it was always so obvious— Not this time, though. In the end it came down to the feel of it, the man’s eyes, the tone of his voice. The boy believed he was telling the truth; of that, Glauca was certain. Of course, that was no reason to assume that what the boy had been told was actually true. It would be an ingenious way of planting a fake provenance. Take an ordinary farm boy, stupid but a genuinely talented thief; send him to steal a map from the cartulary, on the one night when a properly learned astronomer would know that the emperor was guaranteed to be climbing the observation tower. The boy is caught; in his pocket is found a pack of craftsman’s cards, cunningly wrought to snag the attention of the greatest living authority on the silver packs; the boy has been skilfully coached so as to be able to pretend quite plausibly—