Chapter 7 #6
At the top of the stairs I knocked on a door, which opened into a double set of small, cramped rooms. Each room was a semicircle; we were up in a turret, a long way off the ground. The view from the window would have been astonishing, but it was dark.
A man and a woman – the ones I’d seen in the chapel – got up off the floor, where they’d been praying.
Svangerd sent me, I told them. They nodded.
“She’s asleep,” the woman said. “Don’t wake her.
” I glanced through the doorway into the other room, where a lamp was flickering.
I saw a plain plank bed, and someone very small lying in it.
“Do your best,” the man said, which made me feel about three inches tall. I said I would, and they left.
I sat down with my back to the wall, the lamp beside me on one side, the billhook handy on the other, and opened my book.
Nicephorus’ Commentaries. I was given it by my tutor when I was a young novice.
He’d copied it himself, using flyleaves and end-papers, offcuts and leftovers from the scriptorium, mostly as an exercise in writing as small as he could while still staying legible.
He was good at it, so he managed to cram the whole of Nicephorus into something not much bigger than the palm of my hand.
When I accepted the book and thanked him, he smiled and told me I’d failed the test. By agreeing to own property, I had betrayed my vow.
I looked properly horrified at what I’d done but he only grinned and told me to keep it, and I have, ever since.
It’s not a terribly good book. Nicephorus was a scholar in the middle empire, a lazy-minded man who wasn’t nearly as smart as he thought he was; some of his conclusions are plainly false, and some of his theories are more far-fetched than nutmeg from Denaura.
Mostly his value lies in the other works he quotes from or summarises, which have of course been lost and now only exist in bits and pieces embedded in his fatuous text – like amber on a beach, or my father’s ashes dissolved in the sea.
I’ve carried that book around with me for years, dipped into it every time I was bored and had nothing to do, but there were – are – still bits I’ve never read, one of which caught my eye as I huddled against the wall, straining to make out the tiny letters by the light of my inadequate lamp.
In the northern waste known as the Mesoge (wrote Nicephorus) we encounter the phenomenon known as afterwalking, which occurs nowhere else and is remarkable.
The most comprehensive study of this curious behaviour is, of course, Tractantius’ Concerning Life, and it would be superfluous to recapitulate his conclusions, since they are widely available and universally known.
Tractantius was surely correct in the main thrust of his argument.
However, it would be unwise to dismiss out of hand the observations of Thrasamund, in his Natural History, and Lactantius, in his Reflections; both of which might seem at first glance to contradict Tractantius’ hypothesis, but which on closer scrutiny tend to confirm it.
Scaphio of Iden’s Universal Geography contains an exhaustive summary of how the phenomenon originally came about, and Tarsenna in his commentary on Scaphio adds some valuable insights drawn from Permian sources, now lost. By the time Saloninus came to write about afterwalking in the third book of Beyond Good and Evil, there was relatively little he could add to our understanding of this remarkable and well-documented syndrome …
Tarsenna. Tarsenna, for crying out loud: wasn’t there a copy of that listed in the index of the old library at Hauksness?
Yes, of course there was; it was about number seven on Simocatta’s want list, because there was only one copy in existence, et cetera.
In fact, now I came to think of it, I’d been offered the job of going to Hauksness and making a clandestine copy, but I’d turned it down because I hadn’t fancied crossing the Hog’s Back Pass in winter, so the job was assigned to Brother Polydore, who was killed in action before he could get round to it, so the project lapsed.
Some valuable insights drawn from Permian sources, now lost. Written, no doubt, in Old High Permian, which I can’t read; but someone could, and he’d used it to compile a list, with my name on it. A list I wasn’t supposed to see.
For some reason I looked up, and saw him. He was sitting opposite me, his back to the wall like mine was, his knees drawn up under his chin and his wrists resting on them. So like my brother. He was watching me. I had no idea how long he’d been there.
I realised I wasn’t afraid. “Hello, Kotkel,” I said. “Are you going to kill me?”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Oh, I don’t know, let me think. Killing is wrong: how about that?”
“Fuck off.”
“Not a very compelling argument, I grant you. All right, try this. You’re not supposed to kill me. That’s not what you were told to do. You aren’t allowed to kill me.”
He growled, like a wary dog. “I do what I like.”
“Of course you do. But you don’t like to kill me. Come on, Kel. The other one’s got bells on.”
Before I could react, he reached across and grabbed the billhook.
He gripped the handle in his left hand, placed his right thumb against the middle of the flat of the blade and curled his fingers round the end.
One brisk flexing movement, the billhook bent, then snapped in two.
He let the pieces drop on the floor. That’s Kotkel for you.
He always took great pleasure in breaking my things.
“Happy now?” I said.
“Get out of my way,” he said. “I’m going to kill the old woman.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll make your girl cry.”
I stood up. “Fine, Kel,” I said, “but you’ll have to kill me first. Oh, I forgot. You don’t want to do that.”
“I told you to get out of my way.”
“That’s right, so you did. But I’m not going to.”
He was moving his head, peering, looking to see if there was a way to get round me. I could feel his frustration building, buzzing inside his head like angry bees. I took a step back, until I filled the doorway.
“Admit it, Kel,” I said, “you’re just an old softie. You don’t want to hurt me. Why’s that, Kel? Afraid Dad’ll give you a clip round the ear?”
“You fucking shut up about Dad.”
Interesting. “Why, Kel? You forget, I’m out of touch. What happened to Dad, anyway? How did he die?”
There was the time when someone left the henhouse door open, and a fox got in and killed nine chickens.
That someone was Kotkel, because it was my job to make sure the turnbuckle was fastened, so I was the one who’d be blamed.
And I was, until my father realised that at the precise moment I was supposed to have been negligently not shutting doors, I was with him in the orchard, digging a drain.
In fact, the only member of the family whose movements were unaccounted for was Kotkel.
Dad hit him so hard he fell over, then gave him a look that was worse than the blow, and the look on Kel’s face …
That look, guilt and fury, hatred and pleading for forgiveness; let nobody ever say that my brother wasn’t, isn’t a complicated individual. “Kel?” I said. “What’ve you done?”
He moved way too fast for me to do anything about it. I felt his hand round my neck and I remember thinking, Well, this is it. I felt the bones in my neck flex, like the billhook had done. But that was all.
“Shut your face,” he said.
No worries on that score; he was crushing my windpipe, so I couldn’t speak. He looked me straight in the eyes. I felt sorry for him.
“Fuck you,” he said, and let me go. I toppled over backwards, clouting my head on the door-frame. Kotkel turned, I heard the lamp splinter under his foot, and everything went dark.
I lay there for quite a while – no choice in the matter, I felt like I was three parts dead – then I got up on my hands and knees and looked back into the other room.
The lamp there was still flickering, and I saw the prioress, just where she’d been when I last saw her.
I pulled myself to my feet and staggered into the room. She was still alive, still breathing.
I remember thinking, I hope Kel doesn’t get into trouble for not doing as he was told. Weird, the things that cross your mind after you’ve nearly been strangled.
There was a chair beside the prioress’s bed – the only other piece of furniture in the room.
I sat down on it. It occurred to me that, judging entirely by outcomes, I’d won, or at least achieved a favourable draw.
I’d done what Svangerd asked of me – had she actually asked, in so many words?
I couldn’t remember. In any case, I’d sort of prevailed, not with imperial steel or heroic strength and dauntless courage; in fact I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d managed it, but I had.
Curious thought: presumably that put me on a par with Angantyr the Strong and Bothvar Biarki and Gunnlaug of Lithsness and all the other mythical hooligans I’d grown up hearing about – which was patently absurd, of course.
It was so stupid it was practically low burlesque (which, if you remember your Polemon’s Aesthetics, is where a tragic theme is satirised by the introduction of a comic protagonist).
Beats cock-fighting, as my dad used to say.
It was so quiet I could hear the prioress breathing.
Well, of course: nobody about; they were all at the big debate.
Just my luck – a defining moment in the history of Holy Mother Church, therefore the world, and I’m not there to see it.
For which, of course, I was profoundly grateful.
I wondered how Svangerd was getting on. Had she made her speech yet?
Would she have had the chance, or was everybody on their feet yelling?
I mused on the perversity of things – Svangerd the natural-born killer fighting her greatest battle with words; me, couldn’t get out of the Mesoge fast enough, doing the ultimate Mesoge thing and facing down a walker – but I decided that these weren’t fitting themes for amusing paradox.
I still had no idea what was going on, and the world was still very much about to end.
Instead, I fell to thinking about that confounded list on Egil’s desk.
Old High Permian – and how come I’d never seen that passage in Nicephorus before?
Probably my head was still spinning from the crack against the doorpost. Maybe I hadn’t seen it before because it hadn’t been there before; if the devil could bring half my family from the Mesoge to Choris, with being dead not being a problem, presumably he could change the words in some old book …
Idiot, I told myself. I reached for the book, with some idea of looking at it again, but it wasn’t there.
Must’ve dropped it in the fight. Call it a fight; must’ve dropped it when Kel was throwing me around like a rag doll.
Too dark to look for it now. It’ll still be there in the morning.
I suppose it’s possible that I may have fallen asleep. In any case, she needn’t have hit me quite so hard.
“You’re supposed to be guarding her, you arsehole,” Svangerd said as I opened my eyes.
Well, she was still alive, which was the main thing. “How did it go?” I asked. Difficult to get the words out; my face was swollen and my lips didn’t seem to belong to me any more.
“What the hell happened to you?”
“My brother came by.”
“You—”
“Yes.”
“Is he dead?”
That made me laugh, which hurt. “You know what I mean,” she said angrily. “Did you get him?”
“No,” I said. “He smacked me around a bit, then stormed off in a huff. Just like old times.”
She looked past me, at the prioress, still sleeping. There was a look on her face I don’t often get to see. I rather like it. “That’s all right,” she said. “I’ll see to him myself, later.”
That was the funniest thing I’d heard in a long time, but I kept a straight, though horribly distended, face. “Sure you will,” I said. “How did it go? The debate.”
“Oh, that.”
“You made the speech?”
She nodded. “Not my speech,” she said. “Hers.”
“Did they listen?”
“Yes.” Suddenly she looked tired, as though she’d just been carrying the entire world. “Doesn’t look like there’s going to be a schism after all,” she said. “Thanks to her.”
I forgot about everything else. “You what?”
“It was a good speech,” she said. “It went down well. The upshot is, they named a commission of enquiry that everybody was happy with, and they’re going to report on your stupid gospels and decide if they’re scripture or not.”
“And they were all right with that?”
“Thanks to her.”
No, I thought; or at least, thanks to her only in part. Now I really wished I could’ve been there, even if it had meant missing out on quality time with my family. “You did it.”
“Oh, shut up,” she said. “I really don’t want to talk about it.”