The Belly of the Bow (25 page)

He didn’t know the man to his left, but on his right was one Haime Mogre, who lectured in Applied Metaphysics and Military Administration. They’d exchanged a few words at some faculty meeting or other; as far as he could tell, the Mogre were a powerful family among the Poor, their family name meaning ‘thin’ or ‘starved’ (not a hereditary characteristic), and Haime was the youngest son in his generation, which meant that he’d ended up with the lowliest post that his birth and position permitted him to accept - a profound nuisance, since he’d have been far better suited to one of the lowlier faculties, such as Accountancy or Poetry, both of which were too low-class for him to be allowed to work in. Haime was, by his own admission, a poor metaphysician and a dreadful administrator, but (as he pointed out on every possible occasion) not nearly as bad at either as his brother Huy, who was a year his senior and his immediate superior in both departments.

‘This is terrible,’ Haime muttered to him, leaning over and whispering in his ear so softly that Gannadius could hardly catch the words; those confounded acoustics, presumably. ‘An absolute disaster.’

Gannadius nodded sympathetically. ‘I suppose so,’ he whispered back, though why it was necessary to be so secretive he didn’t know. ‘Two defeats in a row—’

Haime Mogre looked at him as if he was simple. ‘I’m not talking about the military situation,’ he replied. ‘Damn it, the day we can’t take the loss of a couple of hundred men in our stride is the day we start packing and looking for somewhere else to live. No, I mean the effect this is going to have on the balance of power. I really can’t see how we’re going to get out of it this time.’

‘Ah,’ Gannadius replied. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not terribly well up on Foundation politics.’

‘Well,’ Mogre replied, drawing in a deep breath; and he started to explain. Gannadius was hampered by the extreme quietness of his voice, the quite incredible complexity of the situation, and the fact that in the key family of the Deporf, whose members were evenly divided between three out of the four warring factions, all the male children were traditionally given the forename Hain. Nevertheless, he managed to piece together enough snippets and scraps to know that Juifrez Bovert, the commander of the first lost unit and now a prisoner of the Bank, had belonged to the Redemptionist faction (which had once favoured allowing the hectemores to redeem the mortgages but now bitterly opposed the idea), which was why the Separatists (supporters of a separate committee on finance and general purposes) had insisted that Renvaut Soef lead the retaliatory strike, because the Separatists were at daggers-drawn with the Redemptionists over proposed revisions to the Military History syllabus, with the unfortunate consequence that the Dissenters (who had objected to the annexation of Doure seventy years ago) now had plenty of ammunition to use against the Separatists in their dispute over the vacant seat on the Minor Arts faculty council, in which dispute they were siding with the Traditionalists (advocates of the traditional, as opposed to the First, Second and Third Revised, wording of the Articles of Foundation) in exchange for their support on the vexed issue of the recognition of Medicine as a separate faculty, rather than a part of Minor Sciences. The situation was complicated by the irresponsible behaviour of Hain Doce Deporf, who had suddenly taken it into his head to change sides on the Annexation issue -

(‘Are they still arguing about that?’ Gannadius interrupted. ‘After seventy years?’

‘Of course,’ Mogre replied. ‘In fact, the debate is just starting to get interesting.’)

- thereby tilting the balance on the Acquisitions committee dangerously in favour of the Traditionalists, who didn’t gave a damn about the Annexation, but who now had a majority over the Redemptionists on the subcommittee that was considering the issue.

‘And now this has to happen,’ Mogre continued. (Gannadius still didn’t have a clue which faction he supported.) ‘You can see what’s going to happen, can’t you? The Separatists are going to do their best to bury the hostages and forget about the whole thing, since all this is basically their fault, which means the Dissenters will demand a rescue attempt to embarrass them
and
the Redemptionists, so the Traditionalists’ll be able to force the Separatists to back down on condemning the Amended Declaration if they want the Traditionalists to vote against the Dissenters on the hostage crisis. All this,’ he concluded, ‘just when we thought we were getting somewhere on the Standards issue. It’s enough to make you weep.’

Before Gannadius could ask about the Amended Declaration, let alone Standards, the chief usher banged the floor of the rostrum with his ebony staff for silence, and everybody stood up as the faculty heads filed in. They were all old, old men, two of them so decrepit that they had to be bustled along by a couple of ushers, like drunks being helped home by their friends. But they all wore flowing scarlet robes under sleeveless gilded mailshirts that reached below the knee and must have weighed forty pounds, and each one gripped a ceremonial sword and a huge copy of the Articles in a long silver tube the size of a standard Perimadeian drainpipe section, which the ushers took from them before they sat down and piled neatly in a stack behind the rostrum.
Clowns
, Gannadius muttered to himself.
Even we were never as bad as this, and look what happened to us
.

The debate started with a bang and carried on getting hotter and hotter. There was a three-way shouting match (‘Who’s that?’ Gannadius asked, pointing at a tall man who was shaking his fist at the rostrum and yelling at the top of his voice. ‘Hain Deporf,’ Mogre replied) which went on for several minutes before one of the very old men on the rostrum staggered to his feet and joined in in one of the loudest voices Gannadius had ever heard. That shut up the three previous speakers, but then another very old man on the rostrum joined in, talking in a whispery croak that the remarkable acoustics made audible right back where Gannadius was sitting. Since he was making a savage personal attack on another council member (not the man he’d interrupted), being able to hear every word didn’t help Gannadius terribly much; it struck him as ironic that, thanks to the truly exceptional design of this magnificent building, he should be able to hear so much and understand so little.

Just as he was on the point of drifting off into sleep, he heard his name mentioned and discovered that everybody in the place seemed to be looking at him. It was a terrifying moment, and at first he wasn’t able to get his legs working and stand up.

‘All I wanted to say,’ he announced, and his voice curled and echoed round the huge chamber like thunder reverberating in a canyon, ‘is that Alexius, former Patriarch of Perimadeia, is on Scona.’

He blinked and looked round again. Everybody was still staring, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say. He forced himself, and went on.

‘The reason why I think this may be important,’ he said, ‘is this. I’ve known Alexius for many years, and I can’t imagine anything that’d make him go to Scona of his own free will. So my guess is that he was somehow induced to go there by someone in their government. Now then,’ he went on, gradually getting into his stride, ‘you’re wondering what the Bank of Scona wants with a seventy-five-year-old philosopher. That puzzled me too, until I remembered something I’d heard about the Loredan family.’

He paused for effect; sure enough, the name Loredan had caught their attention. He took a deep breath and went on. ‘As you may know, the brother of Niessa and Gorgas Loredan lived in Perimadeia; in fact, it was Bardas Loredan who conducted the defence of the City against the plainspeople. I should mention in passing that, contrary to what you may have heard, he made a splendid job of it in the face of quite dreadful odds, not only the overwhelming numbers and determination of the enemy but the run-down state of the City defences and a criminal lack of co-operation from the City authorities. Before that, he learnt his trade as a soldier under the City’s most illustrious general, his uncle Maxen. Make no mistake: Bardas Loredan is a thoroughly accomplished and talented soldier, and I’d hate to be on the opposing side to him in a war.’

Gannadius paused again, then continued, ‘Unfortunately, that might be about to happen. It’s common knowledge, on Scona and here, that Bardas Loredan fell out with his brother and sister many years ago and wants nothing more to do with them, even though he’s been living on Scona ever since the fall of the City. What you may not know is that one of Bardas’ few close friends in the old days was the Patriarch Alexius; and if anybody could reconcile Bardas Loredan to his sister, it’d be Alexius. I’m talking, of course, about ordinary persuasion, because I know that not all of you really believe in the rather abstruse metaphysical side effects of the workings of the Principle by which it’s supposedly possible to change the future and influence people’s actions. For what it’s worth, however, if you do believe in all that, then you’ll be interested to know that Alexius - and I, come to that - were involved in a strange and rather baffling sequence of events which we believe concerned Bardas Loredan and some sort of manipulation of the Principle, and Alexius was, let’s say, the main conduit of the Principle in all this. In any event, I put it to you that the prospect of Scona acquiring the services of a soldier of Bardas Loredan’s calibre ought to make you think long and hard before getting into any kind of military confrontation with them. I’m no student of warfare, the gods know, but even I can see that even without him, war with Scona could do us a lot of harm if we lose and not gain us anything much if we win. Bardas Loredan could make a bad situation much worse; so, as we used to say in the City, think on.’

The silence that followed this speech was somewhat unnerving, enough to make Gannadius wish he’d expressed himself a little less flippantly (but they’d annoyed him; they’d been annoying him ever since he’d arrived, and he’d wanted to annoy them back). For a moment, Gannadius believed he’d made an utter fool of himself and that nobody was going to pay the slightest attention to what he’d said. But then someone stood up in the middle of the third row, and said that surely that settled it, on no condition should they send more men to Scona now that they had this new commander - obviously he was working for them, it explained how they’d managed to score two consecutive victories over the superior forces of the Foundation. Before he’d finished, someone else jumped up and said, on the contrary, that was precisely why Shastel should act now and with
overwhelming force
, to nip the threat in the bud before this new Loredan had time to retrain their whole army and make it invincible. Fairly soon, the magnificent acoustics of the chapter house were pounding Gannadius with monstrous waves of raised and querulous voices, each one crystal clear and marvellously audible. He closed his eyes, slouched back in his hard seat, and groaned.

 

He was standing over her looking down, a puzzled expression on his face, as if he was trying to remember who she was. A slight twitch of the eyebrows; he’d remembered, and now he was trying to work out what she was doing here. Wherever here was.

‘It’s me,’ she tried to say, ‘Vetriz. You remember, we met in the City; first after that time you fought someone in the lawcourts and you weren’t expected to win, and we were sitting behind you in a tavern discussing the fight and saying all sorts of tactless things; and then we sort of kept bumping into each other, and when you were in charge of defending the City you and Venart had that deal with the rope . . .’ She could hear herself saying all that, and she knew perfectly well that the words weren’t getting out, for some reason.

Because she was dead.

I don’t like this dream. I think it’s horrid
.

‘What makes you think it’s a dream?’ Without moving - she didn’t seem able to move - she looked the other way and saw the other Loredan brother, Gorgas; another familiar face, but not one that was welcome in her dreams. There had been the time when, quite uncharacteristically, she’d allowed herself to be picked up by this attractive but repulsive man, while her brother was away . . . And now here he was telling her she was dead.
Go away
.

‘I can’t,’ he replied with a grin. ‘I’m not here. And, strictly speaking, neither are you. This is just your dead body. You drowned.’

Gorgas Loredan nodded. ‘Shipwreck,’ he said; and she realised that his brother Bardas didn’t seem to be aware of his presence. ‘You were sailing home after you completed your business here, and your brother misjudged the currents and got hit by a strong north-easterly squall. You were blown onto Ustel Point. You never had a chance, among those rocks at night. Hell of a way to go,’ he added sadly.

But Venart’s a good navigator. Whatever else he may not be quite so good at, he can handle the ship. He’d never make a mistake like that
.

‘Not left to himself, perhaps.’ Gorgas Loredan smiled sweetly. ‘But you’re not the only one who has strange dreams. And people are very vulnerable to suggestions when they’re asleep. Well-known fact, that.’

Angrily, Vetriz tried to move. What she really wanted to do was give Gorgas Loredan a smack across the face he wouldn’t forget in a hurry, but she’d have settled for any kind of violent reproach. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to work; it was like being on the wrong side of a locked door.

‘It’s all right,’ Gorgas said, with a rather hateful grin, ‘I couldn’t do that sort of thing even if I wanted to. And I really have no idea why your brother’s usually flawless navigation had such dire consequences on this occasion. I’ve only the vaguest idea how this stuff works.’

Inside whatever part of her mind that was still functional, Vetriz felt something slide into place, like the tongue of a rusty lock.
You’re a - what was that word Alexius used? - a natural. You can do that stuff that isn’t really magic but looks just like it
.

Gorgas nodded gravely. ‘In very general terms,’ he replied. ‘Truth to tell, I’m not convinced it’s really me at all; no, that’s putting it very badly. Let’s say the part of me that can do this is very much a minority, and a rather unpleasant and disruptive one at that. Whenever there’s a big issue and the whole of Me in convocation gathers together to decide on something, it’s the part that always gets voted down. If I were inclined to melodrama, which quite emphatically I’m not, I’d call it the devil in me, though that would also be hopelessly misleading - makes it sound like some external influence that somehow possesses me, and it’s nothing like that at all. But yes, there is a part of me that’s unnaturally attuned to the Principle to such an extent that it has this bizarre ability to exist for just a few seconds in the future as well as the present and the past. The only way I can explain it is that it’s some sort of compensation for all the time I have to spend in my own past, which isn’t a very nice place to be. Does that make any kind of sense to you?’