Chapter 3 #5
He nodded. “It was a good plan,” he said.
“And a brilliant forgery. I’d have believed in it like a shot.
But it wasn’t to be, so there you go. Now maybe you’ll get some idea of what it’s like for us, when we go to infinite lengths to set something up, paying exquisite attention to detail and contemplating every possible contingency, only to have it all kicked back downstairs by the other lot, or someone like you.
As happened,” he added, “in Choris.” He paused, looked at me and went on.
“Luckily for you, we don’t bear grudges.
Also, as I think I mentioned, you’re off limits.
Needed for something else, whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean.
Naturally,” he went on before I could interrupt, “if something goes wrong and you get yourself killed before you can fulfil the destiny we have lined up for you, that’ll be a pain in the arse but most definitely not the end of the world.
We’ll adapt, the plan will be redrawn to take account of your unavailability, quite probably the revised plan will be an improvement, it usually is.
The moral being, from your point of view, don’t push your luck.
We’ve got you listed as an asset for the time being, but nobody’s indispensible. ”
I’m not a violent man, really I’m not, but the urge to push his face out through his ears was practically irresistible. “So what are we supposed to do now?” I said.
“Go home.” He shrugged. “Make up an excuse. Or—” He paused, as if he’d just thought of something brilliant. “I know what I’d do, if I was in your shoes. You were sent to steal a book, right? But nobody’s got the faintest idea what’s in it. So—”
He waited for me to say something. “So?”
“Oh, come on, you’re not usually this dense.
You’re one of the best forgers in the world.
Well,” he added, “definitely in the top twenty. You cooked up that perfectly delightful letter. It’d be a piece of cake.
” He beamed at me. “Don’t kid a kidder,” he added.
“Don’t ask me to believe the thought hadn’t already crossed your mind. ”
Forge the book? I could do that. I could do it exceptionally well. And who the hell could ever possibly know? “That’s what you want me to do, is it?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“As part of your grand design. The long game.”
“You asked,” he said. “I made a suggestion.”
It’s part of the self-imposed mythology of the Loyal Opposition that they don’t tell lies. On the other hand, their definition of truth is a bit idiosyncratic, if you ask me. “If that’s what you want me to do, I won’t do it.”
He sighed. “You clown,” he said. “So you go home empty-handed, after spending all that money, and darling Tysapherna says, never mind, you did your best. Sorry,” he said.
“There are some miracles even I can’t perform.
Look, why don’t you talk to Svangerd about it?
She’s the one with the brains in your outfit, though you’re too blind to see it.
Odd, considering how you feel about her, but there you go. ”
My fists were clenched. I unclenched them.
“Look,” he said, “if it helps, think of it this way. I deliberately put the idea of making a fake book into your head, on purpose to stop you doing it. Therefore I don’t want you to do it. Therefore it must be the right thing to do. Well?”
“Can I go now, please?”
He clicked his tongue. “I don’t know,” he said. “We spent ages arguing in committee to get free will for you people, and what do you do with it? Like giving an astrolabe to a bunch of savages.”
“What’s an astrolabe?”
That made him beam at me, for some reason.
“Turn left as you go out of the door, second staircase on your right, down three flights will bring you out into the stable yard. Oh, and you’ll be wanting this.
” He threw something at my face and I caught it just before it took my eye out.
It was my purse, with the ninety gulden.
“Take care of yourself,” he said. “After all, you’re an asset. ”
The muscle’s brother-in-law did a tolerable fish stew, at a perfectly reasonable price. “I don’t know how you can sit there stuffing your face,” she said. “We’re in so much trouble.”
“We’re alive, aren’t we?” I said with my mouth full.
“Yes, but we can’t go home.” She dipped her bread in her stew, then put it down again. “Look,” she said, “this book. Nobody’s actually seen it, have they? Nobody’s got any idea what’s supposed to be in it.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “No,” I said.
“Well, then. You fake it. That’s what you’re good at. You make a fake book, we go home, everybody’s happy.”
If you’d asked me before I left his room if it was possible for me to hate the man with the nose more than I did at that moment, I’d have said no. Shows how wrong you can be. “I don’t think so,” I said.
“You what? Are you crazy?”
“Think about it,” I said. “If Tysapherna wants that book so much, I bet you anything you like she’s got at least some idea of what’s in it. And she’ll be suspecting a fake, because she knows I’m the best forger in the world. We can’t risk it.”
She rolled her eyes. “So what do you suggest?”
“We don’t go home,” I said.
For a moment I thought she was going to have some sort of seizure.
I remember thinking, that’s not good, not in Angkola, they don’t know spit about proper medicine here.
If I fetch a doctor, he’ll probably slice into a vein and draw off a pint of blood, which is what they do for everything, from a sprained ankle to leprosy.
The empire never quite achieved the level of medical science they enjoy in Echmen, but they figured out a thousand years ago that bleeding is actually the worst thing you can do in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred.
Instead, they discovered and painstakingly recorded a whole pharmacopoeia of remedies that actually worked, none of which survived the burning of the Great Library of Ap’ Escatoy. “You what?” she said.
“We don’t go home,” I said. “We go somewhere else instead. We can read and write, everybody needs clerks and scribes, especially right here in Angkola. We could make a good living.”
“You arsehole, what about our vows?” She was so angry she could barely speak. That and her crushed windpipe made her voice sound like somebody sharpening a scythe. “That’s apostasy. That’s the worst thing anybody can do. That’s—”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it, and there was no need.
Apostasy means the death of the soul. It’s worse than mortal sin; it’s worse than never having been a believer to begin with.
It’s the crime committed by the fallen angels who rebelled against heaven.
In other words, I’d gone and said the wrong thing.
“I take it that’s out of the question,” I said. She nodded. “Fine. Just pretend I never suggested it.”
“I’ll try.”
“In which case,” I said, “we’re going to have to carry out the mission.
Which means breaking into the citadel and either stealing or copying out the book.
Which is,” I added quickly, “what you suggested before they arrested us. But we didn’t do that, because there’s a problem with it. It’s impossible. Can’t be done.”
She allowed herself a little smile. “There’s no such word as can’t,” she said.
Factually inaccurate. Every single one of the many languages I know has a word for can’t, although some of them can’t accommodate the contraction. “I had an idea you’d say that. And I bet you’ve got a plan.”
“No,” she said, “but I’ve got a broad outline for an idea.”
I shrugged. “Shoot.”
“We wait till it’s dark,” she said, “we sneak up to the gatehouse, we wait till someone comes out, we clobber them and steal their clothes, we go inside, we find the library, we do the job. Then more or less the same in reverse to get out again. Or alternatively we scale the outer wall and get in through a window, but I don’t suppose you’ll want to do that because you’re such a girl about heights. ”
Oh dear.
It was, as she herself said, a broad outline for a plan.
I reckoned we could do a little better. We talked about it.
At one point she accused me of cheating, because I burst into tears and carried on sobbing until she agreed to do what I wanted.
Actually the tears were entirely genuine, but she can be quite cynical at times.
Next on the agenda was a careful, scientific analysis of the exterior of the citadel.
Time spent on reconnaissance, I quoted at her, is never wasted.
So we bought a couple of monks’ habits in the rag market, to make us invisible, and took a long, slow walk round the city, eyeballing the citadel walls from every accessible angle and trying to figure out the internal geography –
“Fluids,” I said. “To be precise, water and sewage. That thing was designed with sieges in mind, so they’ll have given careful thought to how to get water in and get shit and piss out.
Now, you’ll have observed the fairly sophisticated system of guttering, intended to collect every last drop of rain that falls on the roofs and conduct it safely into one of the four large rainwater tanks you can see at the cardinal points of the building. With me so far?”
She yawned.
“Now then,” I said. “The fact that they’ve gone to all that trouble and effort to capture and store rainwater suggests to me that it’s their only or main source of water supply.
Which means there isn’t a well, or an aqueduct or a handy conduit or anything like that.
Which is unfortunate, since infiltration through water supply conduits is one of the most commonly used techniques of breaking into a fortified city in classical military theory. Turning to sewage—”
“Actually,” she said, “you’re wrong.”
“Excuse me?”
“They’ve got a well,” she said. “A really deep one. I don’t know if it’s where they get their everyday water from or whether it’s just for emergencies, but they’ve got one all right.”
“How do you know that?”