Chapter 8 #5
That got me a cold, hard stare. “I believe I can tell you that right now.”
“In general terms, maybe. I want names and faces. I mean, it’s got to be somebody here on the spot, at the council. If we can figure out who it is, identify him, talk to him—”
“Cut his throat.”
“Yes, that might do it; it all depends. Think about it. If you do manage to get rid of Kotkel, what’s to stop whoever it is getting hold of another one of my horrible relatives and carrying on, business as usual?
Wouldn’t it be better to find out who’s controlling the operation?
We need the archer, not the arrows. Otherwise, we’re just putting ourselves in harm’s way for the fun of it. ”
She frowned. “Fair enough,” she said. “Just one thing.”
“What?”
“You reckoned that short man who got killed was the man in charge.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“But he got killed. Therefore, he must’ve been lying.”
I could feel it all slipping through my hands, like when you’re droving sheep, and one of them drifts off, and while you’re rounding it up another one wanders off a different way, and then another –
“Forget about him,” I said. “Maybe he was executed by his own side for failing to do something, or because he warned me, I don’t know—”
“Yes,” she said. “Why did he do that?”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said firmly. “Not now, at any rate. What we need to do is find out who’s in charge now. Find him, talk to him—”
“Guzzle him.”
“If that’s the best course of action, guzzle him by all means. “At the very least,” I added temptingly, “if he sees us trying to out him, he’ll probably send Kotkel after us, and then at least we won’t have to find my brother: my brother will find us. Either way, we get our chance. Smart, or what?”
She scowled. “Kind of smart. Yes, all right, we’ll try it your way. How do we go about it, exactly?”
To which, of course, I had no answer, since I hadn’t expected her to agree. “Simple, straightforward intelligence work,” I said confidently. “We circulate, ask questions, find out what we can: process of elimination. Isn’t that supposed to be our job?”
“Speak for yourself. Mine is taking out the bad people.” She shrugged, then nodded. “It’s got to be better than camping out in draughty corridors,” she said. “All right, we’ll try it. It’s not like we’ve got anything better to do.”
It occurred to me, as I left her in the main courtyard and headed over to the council chamber, that I’d unintentionally said something rather perceptive.
Asking questions might well prompt the double-chinned man to do something nasty, though I was pretty sure he’d stop short of killing Svangerd.
If he did that, he’d have no way of forcing me to confess to forging the true gospels.
But there were plenty of other people he could kill.
My guess was that the four sentries died to let me know that Kotkel was still very much a force to be reckoned with.
I hate it when people show off just to impress me.
Fortunately, it doesn’t happen all that often.
Talk, or think, of the devil. I wasn’t aware of him until he tapped me on the shoulder. I spun round and there he was: brown eyes, curly hair, plethora of chins. “How’s it going?” he said.
“Get lost.”
He took hold of my arm. He had a weak grip, like an old lady you’re helping across the street. “Come and sit down for a minute,” he said. “Over here, in the shade.”
Well, I thought. “What do you want?”
“To tell you things,” he said. “Actually, I have a confession to make. I may have given you the wrong impression about myself. Deliberately,” he added, with a sort of twinkling grin. “Sorry about that.”
I sat down. “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re misunderstood. You had an unhappy childhood.”
“No, actually. In fact I didn’t really have a childhood at all, not the way you understand it. But let’s not go there right now. Later, maybe. Who do you think I am?”
“You’re an arsehole.”
“That’s what, not who. Answer the question.”
I took a moment to rally my thoughts. “I think,” I said, “that you somehow believe that you’re a duly appointed agent of the Powers of Darkness.
Which is dogshit,” I added, “because there’s no such thing, but I think you believe it.
Which makes you a dangerous lunatic, especially when you drag my family into it. ”
“Interesting,” he said. “You very seldom swear, but you’ve just used two obscenities, practically in consecutive sentences. So you think I’m Loyal Opposition.”
“That’s what you good as told me.”
“I may have been bending the truth,” he said. “A little. Actually, rather a lot. Maybe a hundred and eighty degrees, something like that.”
One time when I was a kid, I was having fun with Kotkel: taunting him, running verbal rings round him, hurting him just because I could; and I was in full flow and mid-sentence, and he suddenly lashed out and caught me on the point of the chin.
I remember to this day the sudden feeling of utter bewilderment.
I had no idea who I was, or what was going on, or what had just happened to me. “You what?”
“Oh, don’t look at me like that. You’re not stupid. I’m not the Loyal Opposition. I pretended I was, in order to get you to do as you were told, but I was fibbing.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He sighed. “You know perfectly well. Let’s just say, I’m on the side of the angels.” He laughed. “You know, I really wish I had a mirror to show you. I thought you didn’t believe in any of this stuff.”
“I don’t.”
“Are you absolutely sure about that?” He was beaming at me.
“Because if that’s true, how come you’re so desperately shocked and horrified?
You are, you know. I’ve just turned your entire world upside down.
I couldn’t have done that if you don’t believe just a teeny bit.
Now then,” he added quickly, “there’s no call to get violent.
You’re better than that. You’re an intellectual. ”
I took a long, deep breath. It didn’t help one bit. “So all that stuff about forcing a schism,” I said. “What was all that about? Were you testing me? Temptation? To see where my true loyalties—?”
He shook his head. “No,” he said, “we need you to do that; it’s really important. That’s got to happen, and you’re the only one who can do it. There’s got to be a schism. It’s essential.”
Why me? I thought. I’m not important. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” he practically cooed, “but that’s all right, you’re not supposed to.
It’d be a miracle if you’d been able to figure it all out for yourself, from first principles.
You’d have to be Saloninus to do that. It’s all about the long game, you see.
Which is so long, and so indescribably vast, that you couldn’t possibly fit understanding it into one mortal lifetime.
If you tried to step back far enough to see the whole thing, you’d almost certainly fall off the edge. ”
“This is all bullshit.”
“Three times in five minutes. Obviously you’re feeling a bit overwrought, and I don’t blame you.” He paused. “You do know about the long game, don’t you?”
“Yes. No. What about it?”
He smiled and folded his hands in his lap.
“It’s the name we give to the eternal battle between Good and Evil,” he replied.
“It’s been going on since the moment of Creation, and it won’t finish until the world does.
World without end,” he added, tweaking his face into a grin, “which adds a different dimension to it, don’t you think? ”
I looked away so I wouldn’t have to see his face, which I’d decided I didn’t like. “Oh,” I said. “That.”
“Yes, that.” He was enjoying himself, as though he’d made the speech ever so many times before, and was just getting to his favourite part.
“Now you may ask, why doesn’t Good just stamp on Evil once and for all?
And if you ask that, you’re missing the point completely, because 99.
9 per cent of the things Evil does to further the grand design aren’t evil at all.
A child is born: what’s evil about that?
It’s only when he’s grown-up and recruiting soldiers for his crusade that he counts as evil per se and Good’s entitled to step in and squash him.
A man stands at a crossroads. If he goes west, he’ll get a job as a clerk in a sawmill, marry a nice girl and end up a respected member of the community and a churchwarden.
If he goes east, he’ll start a heresy that leads to a whole nation being excommunicated and a thousand blasphemers being burned at the stake.
Evil nudges him into going east, but choosing which road to follow at a crossroads isn’t an evil act; people do it every day.
Good can’t step in and make a commandment, ‘Thou shalt not go east’.
And if it did, Evil would simply make a few adjustments and be right back in business.
It’s the long game,” he said, with a happy smile on his face.
“It’s huge and all-pervasive and because it’s been going on for such a very long time, every single thing that happens, every single man and woman and dog and tree-stump and drop of rain is caught up in it somehow or other.
And tell you what, Eternity would be a real drag to get through without it.
But you’re not supposed to think of it like that, so forget I said it. ”
I stared at him. It was all I could do.
“You, of course,” he went on, “don’t believe in any of this.
You think that there’s no plan or grand design, therefore no planners and designers, so everything happens by random chance, good luck, bad luck, whatever.
That’s perfectly all right,” he said; “in fact it’s rather sweet, and people like you give us hours of innocent amusement as we watch you trying to make sense of life.
How you manage to get past the blindingly obvious nature of Saloninus’ clock I have no idea, but somehow you manage it, and good luck to you. ”
“Saloninus’ what?”