Chapter 7 #3
I like Ridichen, though it’s never liked me much.
The sixth archduke rebuilt it out of the proceeds of the salt trade, as far as possible using the original stone, which he retrieved from the walls of farmhouses, barns and linhays right across the valley.
The result is a bit comical, especially when you get up close, but from a distance the city practically shines when the sun catches all that Blemmyan white marble.
The roofs, of course, are practically all thatch, since the imperial city was roofed with lead and copper, all of which is long gone, and nobody knows how to do it any more.
Thus you’re greeted on every street corner with the incongruous spectacle of a neo-Mannerist facade with a portico, nine radiant white Aelian columns and a roof covered with bundles of dried reeds, which lets in the damp like you wouldn’t believe since the rafters are all wrong for thatch.
But the layout of the streets is more or less authentic, and the half-dozen buildings that survived the Aram Chantat and eight hundred years of neglect and misuse have cleaned up nicely and look magnificent.
Together they form the archduke’s summer palace, though the present incumbent has never set foot inside.
Svangerd and I spent a year based in Ridichen when we first started in the church militant, and if the concept of home has any meaning for me, that’s it.
That year was actually fairly horrible. There was basic training, which I hated, followed by a succession of terrifying missions, several of which we barely escaped from with our lives, interspersed with all the joys of internal Order politics and culminating in our ignominious expulsion from the duchy.
The fact that I still get all soppy at a distant prospect of the White City ought to say something about me, or my new life working for Abbot Simocatta, but I prefer not to dwell on that sort of thing if I can help it.
“We’re going to have to be so careful,” she hissed in my ear as we rode up to the Southgate. “We’ll be recognised, sure as eggs.”
“So what if we are?” I said. “We have credentials. I have credentials,” I amended, as a thought flicked across my mind like a trout in a shallow pool. Quickly, but not quickly enough.
“No way,” she said. “Absolutely not.”
My turn to grin. “Fine,” I said. “We’ll do it your way. Sorry, what was your way exactly? I’m sure you must have told me, but offhand I can’t remember.”
We did it my way. When we reached the gate, I stopped dead, blocking the traffic, and told the sentry to fetch the duty officer. That got us a stone bench in the guardhouse for an hour, and then a soldier appeared. He was about nineteen, slim, big nose, under which I held my scrap of parchment.
“Oh, my God,” he said. “Sorry. Nobody told me.”
“This woman,” I said, “is my prisoner. It’s absolutely vital to national security that I get her on a ship to Boc Temenac as quickly as possible.
We’re being hunted by enemy agents, and it’s more or less inevitable that they’ll try and kill me and rescue her somewhere between here and the coast. Make the arrangements. ”
He gazed at me as though I was a squadron of enemy lancers. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll notify the colonel at once.”
Which, bless him, he did. The colonel showed up within the hour. “God almighty,” he said. “You.”
I smiled at him and showed him the scrap of parchment. “Shit,” he said. “And isn’t that—?”
“Yes. And if you’d care to cast your mind back, you’ll remember that she used to be the most dangerous agent in the church militant.
” I leaned forward and lowered my voice.
“Which is why Simocatta’s prepared to pay top dollar to get her back, only it’s not money he’s offering.
Screw this up and we’re both in more trouble than you could possibly imagine. ”
I’d have felt bad about what I was doing to him, except that I never liked him much. But he was efficient, I’ll say that for him. Half an hour later we were in a covered wagon, with an escort of forty dragoons, on the road to the sea. “Admit it,” I said. “I handled that rather well.”
In my hand was a brass tube, inside which was a warrant authorising me to requisition any ship I chose to get me out of the jurisdiction as quickly as possible.
Not just a couple of berths, the whole ship.
“A warship, naturally,” I said. “I was thinking one of those three-bank galleys. They can outrun practically anything, and their standard complement includes fifty marines and a siege catapult. Somehow I don’t see Grimhild being able to cap that. ”
“You’re doing exactly what she wants you to do,” she replied. “Underestimating her.”
“A galley, for crying out loud. How is that underestimating?”
“The trouble with you is you’re predictable. Grimhild’s a problem solver. She can handle anything, so long as she knows what it is. And intercepting a single galley on the open sea is hardly difficult. Six Sherden longships could do it easily.”
They could, at that. “Which is why,” I said, “we won’t be on the galley. We’ll be on a fishing boat.”
“Of course we will. Exactly what she’ll expect.”
My head was starting to ache. “We’ll be on the galley,” I said. “Will we?”
There was compassion in her eyes, as well as contempt. Pure Svangerd. “What you need to start doing,” she said, “is thinking outside the box.”
Indeed. Visualise if you can a box so huge that nothing is outside it, not even God. “We’ll be on the galley,” I said. “She wouldn’t anticipate that in a thousand years.”
“If we get a move on,” she was saying, “we can stop for the night at the Modesty and Grace. I haven’t been there for years. I wonder if they still do that amazing fish stew.”
“You’re barred from the Grace,” I reminded her. “For biting that man’s ear off.”
“Ah, but you’ve got credentials. Hello, why are we stopping?”
Good question. I crawled forward and poked my head out through the flap.
It took me a moment to figure it out. Where had the coachman and the guard gone?
More to the point, where were the dragoons?
Then I saw one of them. He was on foot, running well for a man in full armour.
A boy on a pony cantered up behind him, drew a short bow as easily and fluently as a girl arranging flowers, and shot him in the back at a range of about five yards. Oh, I thought.
Another word not found in the Flos de Glaia language is loyalty.
On the other hand, they have seven different words meaning homesickness.
Pay them enough so they can go home and they’ll do anything you want.
The boy on the pony drew up, considered the man he’d just killed, then turned his head and looked straight at me.
He was too far off for me to see the expression on his face, but I imagine he was frowning.
I dived back under the canopy. “Come on,” I said. “No, not that way, out the back.”
Svangerd would’ve argued. Instead, she snaked up and slipped through the gap between the canvas and the tailgate. I charged after her, but I’m too big for small openings. I had to stop, fumble with the tailgate latch. By the time I got out, she was away and running.
Bad idea. The Flos learned to shoot from the saddle so they could hunt a particular species of gazelle, small and very fast. They actually find it harder to hit a stationary target than a moving one.
I watched as an arrow hit her. She stopped for a moment, rocked by the force of its impact, then started running again.
It occurred to me that there was absolutely nothing I could do; not for her, not for myself.
Oh, I thought; this is it, the end of the road. Pity about that, but –
A pony came trotting round the cart, on the blind side. I saw the rider at precisely the same moment he saw me. He had an arrow on the string.
There wasn’t time for me to reach him, so I didn’t try.
Instead, I hurled myself off the cart, landed awkwardly just short of the pony’s front hooves, rolled and scrambled to my feet.
At which point I should’ve been shot, except – I figured this all out later – my shadow must’ve fallen across the pony’s eyes and spooked him a little, causing him to shuffle a step or two back.
The archer twisted round in the saddle, but couldn’t quite get a clear shot.
The Flos don’t use stirrups, for the same reason fish don’t bother with boats.
I lurched forward, grabbed his foot and lifted it, as hard as I could.
I caught him off guard, and he slid off the pony’s back onto the ground.
I punched the pony in the ribs, and it bolted.
The archer was on his knees, trying to rescue his valuable bow from under the pony’s hooves.
I kicked him in the face, probably rather harder than absolutely necessary, because I was scared stiff.
I looked up and saw Svangerd, just as a horseman shot her. Close range, no more than ten yards. The arrow entered about four inches above the navel and came out the other side. She pulled it out, ran at the horseman and rammed the arrow into his pony’s neck.