Chapter 3 #2
“I gather we’re supposed to make shift for ourselves,” he replied. “I’m all right because I’ve got a guest room at the consulate. How about you?”
After we’d presented our credentials to the clerks and been accepted as bona fide delegates, we went looking for somewhere to stay. Since I’d been to Choris before and knew the ropes, it didn’t take me very long.
“It’s a hayloft,” she said.
“Nothing wrong with a nice hayloft,” I said.
“It’s warm and dry and there’s plenty of soft, sweet-smelling hay, and we can afford it and there’s absolutely nothing else.
We’re lucky to have found it. You heard the man.
There’s bishops sleeping in doorways all over town. Well, archdeacons, at any rate.”
Because I’d solved the problem, by finding us a nice hayloft, everything to do with accommodations automatically became my fault.
I’ve noticed this tendency before, and it explains a great deal about the world and human life.
Why would anyone want to fix anything when you get punished so severely just for trying?
“We’re going to look like idiots,” she said the next morning, doing her best to get the wisps of hay off her habit.
“And you know what that means? We’ll be conspicuous.
And the one thing in the world we can’t afford to be—”
“There’ll be loads of others in the same boat,” I said. “I take it you haven’t come up with a plan yet.”
“Don’t be stupid. How can I plan anything when we haven’t even set foot inside the place?”
I’d been hoping she’d say that, because it meant we’d spend the first session of the council sitting peacefully on a bench listening to the speeches, rather than sneaking around throttling guards and getting arrested.
The first item was the keynote address, given by our target, the princess.
After that, there was to be an open debate between Hrabanus and Luitbrand of Nissenbracht on the essential unity of the Word, which I was determined not to miss.
Hrabanus, as you know as well as I do, maintains that because the Word was with the Invincible Sun and the Word was the Invincible Sun, it naturally follows that they are indivisible in essence and substance.
Luitbrand, however, contends that once uttered, the Word was both united with and separated from the speaker, and must therefore represent two substances sharing one essence.
Since Caradacus would be speaking in support of the motion, and Beppa of Stachel was bound to weigh in against it, we were in for a real treat, and I didn’t want to miss a single word, nuance or impassioned gesture.
So we filed in to the Chapter House, which was hot and smelled the way you’d expect a building to smell when crammed with a thousand men and women in thick wool robes. We wanted to see without being seen, so we stayed at the back and stood up so we could look over people’s heads.
The Chapter House was built under the empire and I imagine that it was once a miracle of applied acoustics.
The collapse of the dome spoiled all that, of course, so from where we were, we could barely make out anything the princess said in her opening address.
No big deal – a positive, in fact, as far as I was concerned, since it wouldn’t have made it any easier for me to kill her if I’d been thrilled to the marrow by her eloquence and wisdom.
Instead, we got a reasonably clear view of her at a distance of maybe a hundred yards; enough to be sure we’d recognise her and not go killing the wrong woman out of ignorance, as has been known to happen.
What I saw was a shortish, stoutish woman with short grey hair, who stood up perfectly straight and talked to a thousand very important people like an officer addressing troops.
There was no hint of hesitation or nerves, nor did she make any effort to show off or play to the gallery.
The impression she gave was of a woman who wasn’t afraid of anybody and didn’t need anything from anyone because she had it all already.
Not somebody you could ever bring yourself to like, but if she told you to do something, you’d do it, not because she was scary or gorgeous but because you’d naturally assume it was the right thing to do.
After her speech there was a recess, to give everybody a chance to flood out into the cloisters and breathe. “Well,” Svangerd asked me, “what do you reckon?”
“You first,” I said.
“She walks with a slight limp, so she’s probably not too fast on her feet,” she said, “but did you see the way she lifted that heavy book on and off the lectern? I’d say she has better than average upper body strength for a woman her age.
Good hearing, too. Someone dropped something and made a noise right at the back, and she heard it and stopped for a moment.
She’s short-sighted, because I saw her peering at the book, but that may mean she’s got good eyesight at longer distances.
I don’t think she scares easily, but she notices things.
She was constantly looking about her while she was speaking.
And she’s got a loud voice, good lung-power, because she wasn’t shouting but I could hear every word. ”
“Could you? What did she say?”
“What? Oh, the usual stuff.”
Svangerd has ears like a bat. “What usual stuff?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.”
I’d been paying attention, but all that useful information about our target had gone over my head like a flock of geese. I was about to ask her for more details when someone tapped me on the shoulder, and I heard my name being muttered in my ear. Not my name in religion. The one I was born with.
I glanced over my shoulder and saw a short, bald man in a plain brown habit. “I’d like to talk to you,” he said. “About a box.”
The delegates were starting to move back into the main hall. “You go on,” I said to Svangerd. “I’ll catch you up.”
She looked at me. “But you particularly wanted to hear—”
“Won’t be a minute,” I said.
She looked at me again, and whatever she saw in my face was enough to persuade her. Terror, probably, tinged by the sort of desperation that could easily turn to violence if she did anything to hinder me. “Don’t be long,” she said. “I’ll take notes.”
Everyone had gone back inside. Just me and the short man, in the empty cloister.
“What box?” I said.
“You know what box,” he replied. He had a mild, soft face, the sort you instinctively feel sure you can get the better of, a fairly nondescript city accent and very small hands with short, stubby fingers. “Why don’t we sit down? I rather like this cloister. It reminds me of the old days.”
Something told me that this man and I were not destined to be great friends. I don’t know what. One of those pesky instincts, probably. “I don’t know anything about any box.”
“Right now,” he said, “it’s wedged into a little space where the rafters meet the floorboards in a hayloft over a stable behind the More Joy in Heaven in Cat Street.
You piled up some loose hay round it so she won’t see it.
You’re afraid that if she does, she’ll insist on it being destroyed.
You don’t want that, but you have very mixed feelings about the box.
” He smiled at me. “If you want to carry on denying it, please feel free. But we both know the truth.”
“All right,” I said. “Who are you?”
“I think you can probably figure that out for yourself.”
“You’re overestimating my intelligence. Tell me.”
“In so many words?” Something was amusing him.
“It’s all right,” he went on. “I’m not going to take your precious box away from you.
If I’d wanted it, I’d have gone round to the More Joy and helped myself.
But it’s still there. You can run back and make sure if you like. In a minute, after we’ve had our talk.”
“You’re not who you say you are,” I said.
“I never said anything.”
“You can’t be,” I said, “because they don’t exist. They’re a myth. Legend, superstition and old wives’ tales. The opiate of the masses.”
He was enjoying talking to me, I could tell. There was a tiny smirk on his face that meant pure harmless entertainment. “I exist,” he said, and before I could move, he lifted one hand off his knee and slapped me across the face with it. “See? Pretty solid, for an illusion.”
I have fast, trained reflexes. They hadn’t been nearly fast enough.
Any harder and he’d have drawn blood, but they’re not allowed to do that, so people say.
“All right,” I said. “You’re real. Proves nothing.
I’m real, for crying out loud, but that doesn’t make me an angel.
Why are you pretending to be an entirely legendary, mythical monster? ”
“Monster.” His eyes twinkled. “If you don’t believe in us, why call us names?
You can’t hate and fear something that doesn’t exist. Well, you can, but it’s silly.
Maybe that lovingly crafted scepticism of yours needs repointing where it’s starting to crumble.
” The smirk widened into a grin. “Now you’re going to bluster and act all tough and ask me how I know about the box.
But you know perfectly well how I know. Don’t you? ”
He was making my skin crawl. Not much does that.
“I don’t believe,” I said, “in the Invincible Sun. Therefore it follows that I don’t believe in the Loyal Opposition.
The same goes for dragons, unicorns, elves, angels, revenants, little men in Ostar who hop around on one foot with their faces in the middle of their chests, or goblins or the Tooth Fairy.
Accordingly, any explanation of perceived events that relies on elements of the supernatural must, by definition, be false. Got that?”