Temrai selected a pair of tongs, pulled the red blade out of the fire and examined it. The edges were wired to the core, and all down the join were little orange crumbs of glowing flux. He looked round, found the bucket of water and plunged the blade into it.
‘Sorry,’ he explained. ‘Wrong way.’
The bald man was scowling, but Temrai took no notice. When the blade was cool he cut the brittle wires with pincers and tapped the edges free of the core with a small hammer. From his satchel he took his own jar of flux - a ram’s horn hollowed out and full of the dusty white powder that constituted the most substantial part of his nation’s greatest miracle.
He shook out a few pinches of the powder onto a flat stone, nudged it into a heap and spat into it a few times; then he mixed with the tip of his little finger until he had a smooth, creamy paste. Taking care not to lay it on too thick, he smeared the core and the edges where they were to join, having first scraped off the old, baked flux with his small knife. The bald man handed him a length of wire, and he bound the blade up tight, making sure that the seams were true. Then he put it back into the small furnace and pumped the bellows enthusiastically until he could feel the heat pricking his legs.
‘We must get it hot,’ he explained, ‘or the silver won’t run.’
The difference - virtually the whole difference - was that here they used spelter (made from copper and zinc), or (even worse) soft solder made out of lead and tin. On the plains, they knew better. Three parts copper, one part zinc and six parts silver made a solder that flowed like water at a far lower heat and joined steel to iron in a way that spelter and lead never could.
When the blade was bright orange, Temrai took a stick of solder from his satchel, rolled it in what was left of the flux and spat down it for luck. Then he lifted the blade out of the heat and drew the stick along the join. As soon as the stick touched the blade, the solder melted and vanished into the thin crack, leaving only a trace of a white line under a greyish crust. When he’d done both sides, front and back, he returned the blade to the fire, recited the prayers to the swordsmith’s god under his breath (not because he expected the god to hear him in this distant place, but because that was how long it took to cook the solder deep into the joint), pulled the blade out and looked round for the pot of oil. There wasn’t one.
‘No,’ the bald man said when he asked. ‘There’s water. What d’you want oil for?’
‘Oil,’ Temrai repeated. ‘If you have any. Or lard or butter if you don’t.’
The man shrugged and walked away, returning a few seconds later with a tall jar full of rancid butter. ‘Sure we use it for tempering,’ he said. ‘But water’s for cooling.’
‘No,’ Temrai replied, as kindly as he could. ‘Oil is best, but butter will do. Otherwise the blade cools too quick, and the joint is weak.’
The blade slid into the butter with a hiss and a curl of foul smoke. He left it there for the space of three invocations to the fire-genie, pulled it out and let it rest in the water bucket.
‘Done,’ he said.
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh.’ The bald man shrugged. ‘I thought there was more to it than that. I thought you people did magic and stuff.’
Temrai shook his head. ‘No magic,’ he replied. ‘Silver. And flux. And oil or lard is better than butter, if you could get some.’
He lifted the blade onto the anvil, praying that he’d done it right and that when he knocked the crust off there’d be a beautiful, straight, golden line with no holes or pockets. He wasn’t disappointed; it was a good job. He nipped off the wires, took a small file from the rack and wiped away the few little knobs of flash that stood up proud of the blade. Now all that remained was to heat the blade gently until it turned a dark straw colour and quench it in water (not oil, lard or butter, as the man had said; how come they didn’t know these things?), then polish it and grind the edges; simple work that anybody can do, a chore the master can safely leave to the boy. Strange, though, that here in the City of the Sword, where everything was decided by swords and good blades were valued above all else, they didn’t know the proper way to make things. And yet on the plains, where they had the skill and the knowledge, swords were largely an afterthought, little valued by a nation of archers. If you came close enough to the enemy to be able to use the sword, the chances were that someone had made a serious mistake.
The man looked at the blade, rubbing his chin. He inspected both sides, ran his fingertip up and down the seam a few times, then quite suddenly swung his arm over and brought the blade down with all his might on the beak of the anvil. There was a dreadful clang, the sword cut a gash the thickness of a bowstring in the metal of the anvil, bounced off, twisted out of the bald man’s hand and fell on the floor with a clatter.
‘You’re hired,’ the man said. ‘Five gold quarters a month. Be here an hour after dawn tomorrow.’ He rubbed the palm of his right hand with the thumb of his left. ‘I’ll get some oil,’ he added. ‘Olive do you?’
Temrai shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ he said ‘Where I come from we have purified fat. I expect your sort will do just as well.’
Five silver pennies bought him a corner of a room in an inn round the corner; the old, thin woman who ran the place had grumbled about something-or-other foreigners in her nice clean house (except that it wasn’t clean, and a man and a woman were making love noisily in the far corner and an old man was apparently dying in the bedspace next to his, and nobody but Temrai seemed to notice) and took pains to make sure he understood about no animals in the room and meals being extra. If the half-eaten messes on the various plates that lay about on the tables in the common room were anything to go by, Temrai reckoned he’d far rather get his own food. As for animals, he sold his horse later that evening and got two gold quarters for it. At home you could buy a string of good horses for two of the Emperor’s gold quarters, and have somewhere to ride them into the bargain.
So here he was, he reflected, as he squirmed his way into a comfortable part of the straw and pulled his coat under his head for a pillow. So far he’d done everything right, greatly to his own surprise. He would be able to learn what his father needed to know; where the walls were weak and how the sentries were organised, how many people lived here and who held the keys to the gate; how many arrowheads and spear blades the arsenal could produce in a day; at what times of day the tides were low in the estuary and whether the bridges could be cut in time to prevent an assault party gaining control of them.
If he did his work well, he might make it possible for his father to fulfil his oath and find peace when his time came to ride into the sky; and that would all be well and good. Nevertheless, he couldn’t help but wonder exactly why his father wanted this place. To burn it to the ground would be a waste, hateful to the gods. To sack it - but all the wagons of his clan couldn’t hold the wealth of this city, and none of it was anything anybody actually
needed
. And to drive the city people out and live here themselves; that was truly unthinkable, an abomination. There had to be some other reason why his father would shed so much of the blood of his archers in order to buy this strange thing; but for the life of him he couldn’t work out what it might be.
Which (he reflected, as he fell into a doze) is why I’m still not ready to be a clan chief. So that’s all right.
At the last moment, Loredan stepped into the other man’s lunge, turning his body sideways, and thrust out his right arm as far as he could. The other man’s blade scored a line across his chest an inch above his nipples; his own sword stuck neatly in the other man’s eye, killing him before he even had a chance to take the smug grin off his face. The usual dead-weight
flump!
as the body hit the floor; judgement for the plaintiff.
The usher waved languidly to the court surgeon, but Loredan shook his head; contrary to popular belief the official doctors didn’t kill quite as many people as the lawyers did, though not for want of trying. It didn’t hurt yet, though the blood was coming freely. Gingerly, Loredan picked the sodden cloth of his shirt away from the cut and shivered.
‘Come on,’ said Athli at his elbow. ‘That needs cleaning up. I really thought you’d had it then, you know.’
‘So did I,’ Loredan replied quietly. ‘I
hate
divorce work.’
‘You should have quit,’ Athli said, leading him by the sleeve. He was still holding his sword, and it was awkward threading a way through the milling crowd of spectators without accidently laying someone’s knee open. ‘He had you beaten from the start.’
Loredan shook his head. ‘Quitting’s for losers.’
‘That is the general idea, yes. But you’re
allowed
to lose in divorce, that’s the whole point. Gambling your life on a split-second reflex and winning by a thousandth of an inch - well, in this context it’s just plain
silly
.’
‘Thank you so much.’ Once they were outside, Loredan handed the sword over to Athli, who wiped it and put it away in the case. He felt weak, and sick, and rather as if he was the one who’d been killed but nobody else had noticed. ‘Drink?’
‘Forget it. Home.’
Loredan decided not to protest. ‘Your place or mine?’
‘I knew you’d say that to me one of these days. I think yours is nearer.’
Of course, Athli had never been to Loredan’s home; no reason to, after all. She knew roughly where it was, and guessed from the address that he lived in one of the ‘islands’, the tall, jerry-built apartment blocks that had sprung up in the circus district after the great fire a hundred years or so ago. Some of them, she knew, were better than others; some of them had clean water in the courtyard, hypocausts to provide heating in winter, walls that stayed put because of sound engineering rather than force of habit.
The block Loredan lived in was not one of these.
‘Seventh floor,’ Loredan said, leaning against the door-frame to catch his breath.
‘Right,’ Athli replied through gritted teeth. The weight of his arm was crushing her shoulder, and he kept treading on her feet.
The stairwell was dark - some ‘islands’ had lamps burning on the stairs at all hours of the day and night; not this one - and the stairs were narrow and slippery. It was a long climb.
‘Key?’
‘There isn’t one,’ he replied. ‘Kick the door, it sticks.’
Loredan’s home turned out to be bare, cold and immaculately clean. There was a bed and a table, a finely carved chair with dragons’ heads for arms, a once-valuable threadbare tapestry on the far wall; one cup, one pewter plate, one spoon, a large book box with a heavy padlock, a clothes-press, a chopping block with a knife lying across it, the blade worn foil-thin with careful sharpening; a spare pair of shoes and a leather hat hanging from a nail driven into the wall; a pottery lamp; a jar with the monogram of some wine shop embossed in the side; one spare blanket.
‘All right,’ Athli asked. ‘What
do
you spend your money on?’
Loredan groaned and flopped onto the bed. ‘There should be some wine in the jug,’ he said. ‘And bandages in the press.’
Athli watched while he bathed the wound, swabbed it out with wine from the jug and wound himself up in bandages with a skill that clearly came from practice. ‘What about something to eat?’ she asked.
Loredan turned his head towards the chopping block. ‘Apparently not,’ he said. ‘I’ll go down to the bakery a bit later on. Thanks for the help.’
Athli shrugged and said nothing. She had blood all over her clerk’s gown. Loredan was making it clear he expected her to leave now. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked awkwardly. Loredan shook his head.
‘When’s the next one?’ he asked.
‘Three weeks.’
‘The charcoal people?’
Athli nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Any idea who they’ve got yet?’
‘I haven’t heard anything definite,’ Athli lied.
‘Indefinitely, then.’
She pulled a face. ‘Alvise,’ she said. ‘Perhaps. Like I said, it’s not confirmed.’
‘Alvise. I see,’ Loredan sighed; he looked very, very tired. ‘Looks like our boys offended the opposition good and proper, if they’re prepared to lay out that sort of money.’
What a dismal epitaph, Athli reflected. What she said was, ‘Probably just a rumour, to make our boys settle out of court. He’d cost them twice the sum in issue.’
Loredan shrugged painfully. ‘Matter of principle, quite probably. Ah, well, we’ll see.’
Athli opened the door. ‘If you like, I can drop by later on, make sure you’re all right.’
‘I’ll be fine. Thanks again.’
Athli could feel the blood seeping through her gown onto her skin; cold and clammy, like sweat. ‘Be seeing you, then,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.
Loredan listened to the clicking of her footsteps on the stairs; then he rolled uncomfortably onto his back and lay staring at the long crack in the ceiling. In three weeks, with this messy cut just starting to knit together properly (if he was lucky and it stayed fresh) he’d have to stand up in court against Ziani Alvise, the Advocate General and Imperial Champion. There was better fencers; four of them, maybe five, none of whom was Bardas Loredan. Strange, he reflected, how calmly I’ve accepted advance notice of my own death. A nod of the head, a wry face, as if to say,
Well, that’s that, then
; two lines of script cut on a plain headstone—
BARDAS LOREDAN
He Gave His Life For The Charcoal People
There were, Loredan knew perfectly well, no gods; and if there were any, they lived far away in less enlightened lands, well out of earshot. Nevertheless, he prayed;
If I get out of this, I’ll pack it in for good, retire, set up a school or something
. And if there were gods, he knew they wouldn’t believe him, because they’d heard it all before. And here he still was, an advocate of ten years’ call, a man who showed promise while still young but failed to live up to it, and then simply failed to live.