The man was tall and thin, with high cheekbones and a friendly, slightly comical face. The woman, obviously his twin sister - he remembered something he’d read about twins and naturals a long time ago, an attractive theory about two minds with an inherent, spontaneous empathy somehow attracting the Principle, in the same way copper attracts lightning - was strikingly similar, yet at the same time beautiful where her brother was, at best, odd-looking. When Alexius glanced at her, the sides of his head throbbed painfully. So.
It would have been helpful, he realised, to have anticipated this moment and to have worked out in advance what he was going to say. There was, however, a reasonable chance that the locksmith would recognise him and greet him in a manner that would make it plain to a foreign visitor that they were in the presence of one of the local sights. He stuck his hand in his pocket, checked that he had some money with him and went into the shop.
It began well. The locksmith and the male foreigner had been engaged in some sort of complicated negotiation, and a distraction was apparently to the locksmith’s tactical advantage, for he immediately broke off and made a show of welcoming his distinguished visitor, pointedly asking Alexius if the padlock he’d bought from him had been satisfactory. The words
By Appointment to the Patriarch of Perimadeia
seemed to hang in the air like sea mist in the early morning.
The foreigners exchanged glances. It was working.
‘Don’t let me interrupt,’ Alexius said. ‘I’m in no particular hurry.’
After a moment’s hesitation, the foreigner and the locksmith resumed their duel, which seemed to be about a special rate for four dozen padlocks with keys and fixings. Alexius was just wondering how to start up a conversation with the female when he found it wasn’t going to be necessary.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but I was wondering. I’ve heard ever so much about you, and what you do. Is it really true you can do magic?’
It would have been better if his head wasn’t hurting so much, but he managed to tune out the discomfort. He smiled.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It’s true that the philosophical and scientific researches we engage in offer us some rather abstruse insights into principles of nature that, generally speaking, the layman cannot observe for himself; in consequence, and purely incidentally to what we actually set out to do, we can perform certain, well, let’s call them effects, which lay observers confuse with magic. But we can’t change lead into gold or men into frogs, or fly through the air or hurl lightning.’
It took her a while to translate all that; then she looked a little disappointed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet a real magician. Oh, I’m sorry. That sounded awfully rude.’
Alexius’ cue to smile avuncularly. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet one too. But the nearest I’m ever likely to get to a real magician is what we call a natural.’
‘Oh? What’s that?’
Out of the corner of his eye, Alexius observed the state of the negotiation; if anything, it was getting more entrenched. His head was splitting—
She’s doing this. She wants to talk to me without being interrupted, so she’s making the deal get complicated. How—?
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I wish I knew. You see, naturals are very rare, and the chances of actually encountering one are very small, at least here, in the city. We just don’t seem to produce them locally.’
‘I see. Where do they come from, then?’
Alexius raised an eyebrow. ‘Oddly enough,’ he improvised, ‘a surprising number of the documented instances appear to have originated on the Island. Am I right in assuming that you—?’
The girl beamed. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘that’s where we’re from. Oh, I suppose it must be obvious,’ she added, ‘from our accents and clothes and such. It’s odd, though, because I’ve never heard of any of our people being able to do magic.’
‘That word again,’ Alexius said. ‘The point is that you could live in the same town as a natural for fifty years and never even guess. The most that a natural can do is make things happen - perfectly ordinary, everyday things, nothing anybody would notice; a slate sliding off a roof, two men falling out over the price of milk - but he would
make
them happen. Quite possibly,’ he added, involuntarily massaging his temples, ‘without even knowing it.’
‘Fancy,’ the girl said. ‘So I could be one myself and never even know?’
The pain was no longer an irritation; it was downright intolerable, and it was as much as Alexius could do to keep it from showing. Even so, he couldn’t help feeling that this was all too easy.
‘It’s possible,’ he said. ‘Extraordinarily unlikely, of course, simply because there are so few—’
‘That you know about,’ the girl interrupted. ‘What I mean is, if what they do is just ordinary things, as opposed to raising storms and turning people into frogs, how would you know? Or could someone like you recognise one if you met one?’
Perhaps, Alexius wondered, the pain is a sort of diversionary tactic, to keep me so preoccupied that I won’t realise I’m being led by the nose. But why would she want to?
‘Never having met one, I wouldn’t know. That’s the point, you see; the phenomenon is so rare that next to nothing is known about it. For all I know,’ he added, all too aware that potentially he was walking into the most desperate ambush - but all he wanted was for this to be over so that he could take his head away and stop it hurting - ‘For all I know, every one in six Islanders, or one in twelve, or any proportion you like; perhaps all Islanders have the ability to a greater or lesser extent. It’s
possible
, but of course nobody’s researched the point yet. It would be an interesting study,’ he added, with as much conviction as he could muster.
‘Would it?’ The girl looked interested, pleased. ‘Then how’d it be if - No, please forget I spoke. I’m sure you’re very busy.’
As he replied to the effect that if she was volunteering herself and her brother as specimens for study, he and his colleague would be only too delighted, Alexius could almost feel the hook catch in his lip. It was too late now, of course, and this damned headache—
‘Assuming,’ he added, ‘that your brother could spare the time—’
‘Oh, we hadn’t got anything planned for this afternoon. Venart,’ she added, nudging him in the ribs, ‘we aren’t busy this afternoon, are we?’
‘What? Oh, no. At least, weren’t we going to have a look round the second city? I thought you wanted to see the Academy and—’
‘In that case,’ Alexius said, and he could almost feel strings pulling him, like a wooden puppet in a children’s show, ‘please allow me to be your guide. There are a number of features of interest not open to the general public—’
‘Oh, how wonderful!’ The girl’s eyes were shining, and the pain in his head—‘Oh, Venart, do let’s! It’d be such fun.’
Not long afterwards, Alexius escorted his two new companions through the second-level gate. Every time he took a step, it was like jarring a broken bone. One small consolation: fairly soon, Gannadius was going to have a bad headache as well. On balance, he felt it would serve him right.
After a day’s ride, Temrai was stiff and sore, although he dared not admit it. He was, after all, the chief of a nation of horsemen.
‘We’ll stop here,’ he announced, when the pain at the base of his spine became more than he could bear. ‘There’s water, and we can camp under the trees.’
Jurrai shrugged. ‘There’s an hour more of daylight,’ he replied. ‘I was thinking we could make Okba ford before dark if we pressed on.’
‘We’ll stop here.’
‘All right.’ Jurrai reined in and slid off the back of his horse, landing easily on his toes. I could do that once, Temrai reflected in awe. Only a few months ago, I could do that. Instead, he waited until his companion’s back was turned before levering himself off the horse and alighting awkwardly on the side of his left foot.
Interesting, he reflected; I’ve known Jurrai since I was a kid and he was my father’s First Rider. Gods, how I looked up to him then; and now here he is, doing what I tell him to.
He decided to experiment.
‘Jurrai,’ he said, as casually as he could manage. ‘Run and fill my water bottle, would you?’ He held the bottle out, fully expecting a clip round the ear. Instead, Jurrai took it without a word and ran - yes,
ran
, after a hard day’s ride - down to the stream. Amazing, Temrai thought; I can order him about, almost as if I was my father . . .
Yes. Well, just because I can doesn’t mean I have to. ‘It’s all right,’ he called out, as Jurrai set about picking up sticks for the fire. ‘I’ll do that. You see to the horses.’
There was a grin on Jurrai’s face as he tied the hobbles and took off the bridles; of course, he knows me as well as I know myself, should do after all these years. Except he doesn’t know what happened while I was in the city. Not that there’s all that much to know.
‘Well, then,’ he said, once the fire was glowing (at least I can still light a fire; thank the gods for that) and they’d built the low wall of dry thorns that no traveller on the plains would think of neglecting when sleeping away from the caravan. ‘You’d better fill me in on what’s been happening.’
‘Apart from the main thing, not much,’ Jurrai replied, and at once embarked on a succinct but nonetheless interminable report that covered the state of the herd (including losses from wolves, disease, straying and beasts swept away in river crossings), old horses lost, new geldings broken in, milk yields, cheese production, the number of hides cured, tanned and in store; sundry quarrels, fights, conspiracies, adulteries, betrothals; the results of horse races, polo matches, chess games, archery tournaments and musical contests; a brief itinerary, with reports on the state of important roads, fords and mountain passes; old folk dead, children born, a few fatal accidents, injuries serious and trivial, illnesses lingering and likely to prove terminal; one man blinded for hamstringing his enemy’s horse; two tents blown away by a freak wind, all losses and damage made up by special dispensation of the chief from clan reserves; an abortive raid by bandits forestalled by an observant herd-boy (duly commended for his actions and rewarded with a horse from the chief’s own herd), a few arrows loosed, no stock lost or men hurt on either side.
‘And that’s about it,’ he concluded, taking a sip of water from his bottle. ‘How about you? I get the impression you got everything you went for.’
Temrai nodded. ‘If I say it’s going to be easy,’ he said, ‘the gods’ll hear and it won’t. Let’s say I’ve got a reasonable idea of what’s got to be done.’
‘And the city?’ Jurrai went on, avoiding his eye. ‘What about it? What’s it really like?’
‘Ah.’ Temrai shook his head. ‘Jurrai, you just won’t believe what it’s really like. It’s . . .’ He hesitated. ‘It’s different,’ he said.
‘Just different?’
‘
Really
different.’ Temrai gestured despairingly. ‘In small ways mostly, except for the really big differences, of course.’
‘Lord Temrai,’ Jurrai interrupted, his voice low and faintly sarcastic, ‘I find it hard to believe that a mere three months among the enemy have made you forget completely how to file a coherent report.’
Temrai looked up; angry at first, then ashamed of his anger. The voice had been his father’s, the soft, sardonic tone that cut more deeply than a hazel switch. He nodded abruptly.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Very well, then. It’ll be good practice for when we get back.’ He paused, and concentrated for a moment. ‘The walls of the City of the Sword on the sides that face the confluence of the two rivers are approximately forty-two feet high, eighteen feet thick at the base and fifteen at the top, so that two carts can pass each other on the walkway. There are watchtowers every hundred and fifty yards, each tower rising a further twenty-four feet above the line of the ramparts and capable of providing full cover for a dozen archers, a siege engine and a full crew of engineers. Each tower carries a store of fifteen hundred arrows and fifty projectiles for the engine, and guards the stairway connecting the rampart walkway with the ground.
‘The four gates on the landward side are each flanked with bastions, capable of accommodating two hundred archers, five of the ordinary siege engines and one of the heavier sort for use against siege towers and rams. The bridges that cross the rivers end in drawbridges, and the water is something in the order of twenty feet deep, although the bottom is reasonably firm. The walls and towers are in good repair, the drawbridge mechanisms are well-maintained and adequately shielded, and the engines are frequently examined and used for target practice by permanently assigned crews...’
Jurrai nodded. ‘Carry on,’ he said.
‘Once inside the walls,’ Temrai continued, ‘an invading force would be faced with severe difficulty in making an orderly advance in the event that the lower city is diligently defended. The streets are narrow enough to be readily blocked, and the arrangement of side streets and alleys would make it a relatively simple matter for an insurgent force to be outflanked and surrounded with very little warning. Setting fire to the lower city would probably result in the insurgents being trapped and unable to escape.
‘The defences are designed to be held by a relatively small number of men, and any number significantly above the optimum would most likely prove a hindrance rather than a help. I would put the optimum at roughly five thousand archers and three thousand men-at-arms, which more or less agrees with the numbers of trained men on standby at any given time. This force can be mobilised and in position within twenty minutes of the alarm being raised; there are also reserves of some ten thousand able-bodied men with the relevant training and equipment. As for military stores of all kinds, I wasn’t able to get any definite information, probably because none exists; they’ve been stockpiling for many years, and for all practical purposes the stores can be regarded as infinite, leaving aside the daily production capacity of the city arsenal.’