Chapter 4
“A job for Aliz, I think,” she said.
Aliz is her name for a seven-inch artilleryman’s stiletto, one of her most treasured possessions.
It’s a narrow, square section length of best Olbian steel, tapering to a needlepoint; the blade is marked at one-inch intervals, the idea being that catapult crews use them for measuring the diameter of stone balls.
She likes it because she can tell at a glance how far she’s stuck it into some poor devil’s neck.
I think the idea of giving a name to a weapon is morbid bordering on grotesque.
It’s one of those points on which we long ago agreed to differ.
“Good choice,” I said.
That disconcerted her more than ever. “Fine,” she said. “What are you taking?”
“Me? Nothing. I don’t know what we’re likely to face, so whatever I choose will probably be wrong, and I don’t want to lumber myself with unnecessary kit if I’ve got to climb walls in the dark. If needs be I can thump somebody and take what they’ve got. Talking of which, have you got any rope?”
“Of course.”
“Of course you have. I was only making conversation.”
I was working on a couple of passes. In order to be on the spot bright and early, we needed to stay in the chantry after vespers and wait there till the bell went for lauds.
But if something went wrong with that, we’d need to be able to get back into the main basilica between midnight and third watch, and all I could think of on that score was a couple of diplomatic tickets which a guard wouldn’t think to question.
All I could come up with was a pair of letters of identity, from Abbot Simocatta (because I happened to have a fake copy of his seal matrix in the toe of my left boot; no idea how it got there) to the princess’s personal chaplain.
I knew for a fact that the abbot and the chaplain didn’t know each other and had never had occasion to correspond, but a junior guard captain on the night shift wouldn’t know that.
He’d see the big seal and the strained expressions on our faces, and think of the trouble he’d be in if he screwed up some important diplomatic deal, and that would be enough to get us past the door and out through the vestry window.
The seal was right, because I’d faked it myself.
The parchment was right, because I’d helped myself to a full sheet from Simocatta’s clerk’s desk while he was away taking a pee: likewise the ink and the wax.
That just left the handwriting. I was taking exceptional care over that, even though my putative guard captain would never have seen an example of Simocatta’s clerk’s fist, because a convincing forgery must always be perfect.
Otherwise, you can guarantee that the most unlikely people will sense there’s something wrong, and then you’re in real trouble.
Exceptional care in this instance meant writing fast, because that’s what Simocatta’s clerk would have done. Writing fast and with extreme care is a neat trick, which it’s taken me years to master. Svangerd isn’t the only obsessive craftsman in our little outfit.
“You’ll need to crease those up a bit, make them look like they’ve been carried around in a pocket.”
I gave her my sour look. “What you do, Grandma,” I said, “is you make a hole in the pointed end with a sharp instrument, taking care not to fracture the shell—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Grandmothers and sucking eggs. Go and sharpen something, I’m trying to concentrate.”
Fact is, I’d been trying to concentrate ever since I talked to the short man, but with a deplorable lack of success.
I’d reached the stage where I was shouting down the little voice at the back of my head; the next step would be to send in the troops and have it arrested.
I had this mental image of Svangerd smiling at me in a patronising fashion, and encouraging me to have faith, like she did.
I hate faith. It’s the antithesis of reason and everything the old empire stood for.
I would be bitterly ashamed if I thought I was guilty of it, especially faith in atheism.
Once the passes were dry I made a point of creasing them up real good, leaving them looking as though they’d been run over by a cart loaded with masonry blocks. I gave her one and tucked the other in my sleeve. “How do I look?” she said.
“Convincing,” I told her, the highest compliment you can pay in our line of work.
“I decided against the rope,” she said. “If we get caught and searched, we couldn’t explain it away.”
Under other circumstances I’d have kicked up a fuss, but I couldn’t be bothered. “Have it your way,” I said. “Are you ready?”
“Yup.”
“Right, then.” I realised I wasn’t even scared, which disturbed me considerably. “We’d better go.”
She didn’t move. “What’s the matter with you? Come on, I need to know. What’s got into you lately?”
“Nothing, really. Toothache.”
She peered at me. “Why didn’t you say? Well, that’s not a problem. Ten seconds and a pair of tongs. If you’d said earlier, I could’ve fixed it for you, easy as pie.”
The basilica was crowded for vespers. We sat at the back, behind a pillar.
Waltharius of Schanz gave the sermon, on a text from Symmachus’ Patristics, but we were in the dead spot and I couldn’t make out a word he said.
When the service was over, we flattened ourselves against the back of the pillar and stayed in the shadows until the vergers killed the lamps and locked the main and side doors. Piece of cake.
“We’d better go and make sure the door to the cloisters is still open,” she hissed in my ear. “I didn’t hear the bolt get shot, but I don’t want any awkward surprises.”
She’s much better than me at finding her way silently in the dark. I followed, holding the end of her belt. “The door’s open,” she assured me. “We’re fine. Now we just sit here till we hear the matins bell.”
Simple as that. “Don’t fall asleep,” I told her.
“Piss off.”
No chance of me falling asleep, at any rate.
To keep from thinking about what I didn’t want to think about, I thought about various things: Marduin’s commentaries on Procopius, the height of the cloister garden wall, digging a drain with my brothers across the back meadow when I was ten, the small scar on the side of Svangerd’s neck, the melody of the plainsong in the melismatic Gloria, how I’d set about making an undetectable copy of the White Book of Uisbach.
All that got me was an intense feeling of unease and a mild but persistent headache; also, one of my back teeth started to throb, which if nothing else proves that teeth have a sense of humour.
At some point I realised she was muttering under her breath. I made a special effort and listened. She was praying, fast and intense: the general confession and the pleas for intercession, over and over again. And why not, I thought. It was something to listen to, so I listened.
What with one thing and another, I’d forgotten that there’s a genuine Mezentine clockwork clock in the basilica at Choris, probably the last working example in the world, unless there’s one in Echmen somewhere.
The chime is broken, of course, but every hour on the hour it makes a dull thunking noise, where the hammer hits the spot of empty air where the bell used to be, and the base of the hammer arm slams into the receiver.
The first time it did it, we both jumped out of our skins.
The second time, we didn’t mind. Then we sat waiting for the next one, like slaves or kids waiting to be hit.
We never got to hear it. Instead, we heard yelling, people running about, someone in a high, scared voice shouting orders we couldn’t quite make out. We both recognised that kind of row. It’s what you usually get when someone like us has done something, and the proper authorities discover the body.
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she said. “Now what?”
I tried to think, but the noise got in the way. “Abort,” I said. “This is no bloody good.”
She thought for maybe three seconds, then said, “Agreed. Let’s get out of here.”
“No. We don’t know where anyone is or what’s going on. We sit tight until the yelling’s stopped, then we head for the cloister.”
“Right.”
It was a bad place for us to be in the circumstances, but I felt a wave of relief that made me feel light-headed. I’d been let off murdering a princess, if only for a few hours. That’s a good feeling.
The noise went on for a long time, and I started to worry. I really didn’t fancy the idea of soldiers making a thorough search of the basilica. “Changed my mind,” I said. “Let’s go.”
She swore at me quietly, and I carefully opened the cloister door.
It had one of those tongue-and-bar latches that make a noise like a cavalry battle if you drop them too quickly.
My hands were shaking, but I managed it.
Out into the air – it was too dark to see any difference, but there was a fresh draught coming up the cloister, which I felt on my face, and the stale-incense-and-musty-old-soft-furnishings smell was gone, so we were outside.
Then it was a simple matter of feeling for and locating the garden side of the cloister wall, and following that until we found our window.
Through that, and we were in pale moonlight.
That made me wince and her swear; it was light enough to show us up when we moved, if anyone was watching.
But the shouting and running about was further away than it had been when we were in the basilica; meaningless, of course, because there could be patrols anywhere, if they were looking for someone.
Under such circumstances, I tend to abdicate responsibility and follow where Svangerd leads. She makes some really bad decisions in such cases, but she can see in the dark much better than I can, so she knows when someone’s coming. She darted off like a cat; I followed her.