Chapter 5
I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. All other considerations flew out of my mind, like a flock of pigeons put up off a field of laid barley. I felt the side of her neck: no pulse there either. I’d killed Svangerd, the only woman, the only human being, I ever loved in my entire life.
She sat up. “You idiot,” she said.
I snatched my hand away. I think I wiped it on my sleeve. Really stupid thing to do, but that’s instinct for you.
“Who are you?” I said.
She tried to turn her head, then realised her neck was broken. Then she turned her head. “How long have you known?” she said.
It was her voice. “Since we were on the boat,” I said. “I sort of figured it out.”
She laughed. “So I take it you’re now a believer.”
“No,” I said.
“Oh, come on.”
“No,” I repeated. “There is no God, therefore there is no devil. I have no idea what you are, but it’s just another form of wildlife. You don’t have to believe in God to acknowledge the existence of vermin.”
She laughed. “Suit yourself,” she said. “That’s quite a punch you’ve got there, by the way. Did you mean to kill her?”
“No.”
“You nearly killed poor Brother Ausonius.”
“The man with the nose?”
She nodded. “You left him lying unconscious in a burning building,” she said. “It was pure luck that a couple of clerks found him and dragged him out before the roof caved in. If he’d died, that would’ve been murder.”
I shook my head. “Not homicide but pesticide,” I said, which made her giggle. “Is she still alive?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. Thanks entirely to us. Well, me. I mended her broken neck.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I think.”
“She’s no use to me with a broken spine.”
I sat down on the damp, muddy ground. It was time to do that thing I despise: ask a question to which I already knew the answer. “You were in the book,” I said.
“Yup.”
“Why?”
She laughed. “Would you believe, I was hiding? Well, to begin with, anyway. After that, a more pertinent word would be trapped.”
“Hiding as in lying in ambush?”
She shrugged. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Gratian thought he was being really smart, conjuring up a demon and trapping it. A bit like that craze they had in the middle empire for pressing flowers in books. Actually, I was told to let myself get caught. They told me it was a long-term strategy, vital to the success of the grand design. Mind you, they say that about everything.”
“So that’s why Mother Tysapherna—”
I’d spoken my thought aloud. She grinned.
“Yup,” she said. “Your sainted pillar of Holy Mother Church wanted a real live demon. Actually, as far as I know, she isn’t one of ours.
I don’t know, maybe she wanted it to experiment on, find out new ways of casting us out, tease out our weaknesses so she can attack them more effectively.
Somehow I doubt that, but whenever possible I prefer to take the charitable view.
” She paused, beaming. She looked gorgeous.
“I say as far as I know. I’ve been out of the loop for a while, remember.
I’ve been getting updates ever since I got out of the book, but the fact is, I’m not particularly high up the chain of command.
Actually, it’s a bitch. I was something of a high-flyer when they put me in there.
Now it looks like all the deadheads and no-hopers have been promoted while I was away, and I’m still a rotten Grade Five.
Still, I’m out now, so I can start making up lost ground.
” Grin. “Which, you must admit, I’ve done with a vengeance. ”
I remembered the library. All gone, all those books. “Yes,” I said. “You have.”
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I know, it must have been particularly painful for you. But something of a coup for me. Only been back on the job five minutes, and already I’ve set back the development of the human race by two thousand years. Go me.”
My fists were clenched again, but I knew it would be nothing but self-indulgence.
If I was a believer, I’d believe that violence is wrong, per se.
If the devil tempts you to hit him, the only person you’re hurting is yourself.
“Quite,” she said. “So feel free, hit away. I’ll turn the other cheek if it’ll make it easier for you. Not my body, after all.”
I deliberately unclenched my hands and steepled them in front of my chest. “Fine,” I said. “Understood.”
“Actually,” she went on, “burning the library wasn’t an unalloyed victory.
Don’t know if you noticed, but they had a copy of Twilight of the Idols.
Only surviving copy anywhere. In it, Saloninus conclusively disproves the existence of the Invincible Sun.
If that book had been rediscovered, it would’ve triggered a wave of passionate atheism which would’ve engulfed half the West and brought Holy Mother Church to its knees.
” She shrugged. “That’s what we do,” she said, “we negotiate, with the other lot. Give them something they can show to their oversight committee and claim as a victory. Which means we can press on with the grand design, as slightly modified. No, we won’t be able to use Saloninus’ book to subvert organised religion across half a continent, but we have got rid of sixty-three masterpieces of enlightened rational thought which would have led to a renaissance, the likes of which the world has never seen.
Our number-crunchers did the math and reckoned it was worth the trade-off.
I imagine the other lot did the same thing.
It helps that they have different criteria for success on the other side. ”
I faked a yawn. “Remember who you’re talking to,” I said.
“I don’t believe any of it. You’re just some kind of pest species, and there’s no such thing as God or the devil.
Probably there was a bit in one of those books you torched explaining what you are in rational scientific terms. Where I come from, in the Mesoge, bad people don’t stay dead, not unless you cut off their heads and burn them to cold ashes.
That’s not the supernatural. That’s just science we don’t know about yet, or, more likely, science we once knew but have now forgotten.
Thanks to some clown burning down a library. ”
She smiled. “You can be very sweet sometimes,” she said. “She thinks so.”
“Piss off.”
That made her laugh. “Swearing,” she said. “You never swear.”
I took a deep breath. It’s supposed to help. It doesn’t. “I’ll get you out of there,” I said. “And when I’ve done it, I’ll find some way to hurt you. That’s a promise.”
She sighed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you managed it,” she said.
“You’re actually a very impressive person, though you don’t know it.
You’re smart, educated, determined, very brave, exceptionally resourceful, and you do love her ever so much.
Fine, I consider myself duly threatened.
And if you ever make good on your threats, believe me, I won’t blame you one bit.
You have every right to be cross with me, and if you do get me I’ll have deserved it.
There,” she added, “how’s that? Pre-emptive absolution from your victim.
The other lot don’t have a monopoly on forgiveness, you know. ”
Some things are simply intolerable. Toothache can be one of them, if it’s bad enough.
Also, so people tell me, kidney stones. It gets to a point where you just can’t take it any more, and then it carries on, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it, short of suicide. Or I could walk away. I stood up.
“Not so fast,” she said. “I haven’t finished with you yet.”
“Fuck off.”
“If you walk away, I’ll bite off one of her fingers.”
I sat down again. “Noted,” I said. “Look, why don’t you just kill me? Presumably you’ll get points for that.”
“Oh dear. You really don’t understand, do you?”
“No.”
She paused for a moment. “For one thing,” she said, “killing you would be about a million times more than my job’s worth.
You’re needed, for the grand design. Don’t bother asking me for details because I don’t need to know, so I don’t know.
Just take it from me, you are. Also, I’m not some sort of glorified ratcatcher, I don’t get two stuivers per tail.
It’s so not that straightforward. It’d be lovely if it was, but it isn’t. ”
I’d heard something of the sort before, in Choris.
I didn’t believe a word of it then, either.
“I know,” I said. “It’s all about the grand design, which is constantly changing, because every time you lot manage to set up some great catastrophe for the human race, the angels come along and derail it, so you have to redesign it, taking account of the change in circumstances.
In a world without end, there can be no final victory, so what matters is staying in the game.
Bullshit. You’re just a bunch of vicious lunatics who like hurting people. So what?”
“Please,” she said, “don’t use the A-word.”
“Angels,” I said. “Angels, angels, angels, angels—”
“Fine. Award yourself one point. It’s not like garlic or holy water, it doesn’t hurt me. It’s just not respectful, that’s all. Like calling someone a blueskin or a milkface.”
“Garlic and holy water,” I said. “Thanks.”
She laughed. “They don’t work, silly, that’s just superstition.
” She put her hands behind her head and lay down on her back, looking straight up at the sky.
“You know what,” she said, “this is so much better than being in a book. Especially Bausa of Chasetz on metallurgy. The really awful thing about it was, so much of it’s wrong.
You know, factually inaccurate. It was like wearing a hair shirt all the time, being cooped up in there with all that false information. ”
I know when I’m being fed a cue. “Talking of books,” I said, “there’s a whole shelf of them in Simocatta’s library about how to exorcise evil spirits.”