Memory (3 page)

‘You aren't sure?'

‘That's right.' Poldarn could feel cramp coming on in his left leg. He tried to stretch out, but there wasn't room. ‘Truth is,' he said, ‘I don't really know much about myself.'

Basano looked at him.

‘Really,' Poldarn felt compelled to add. ‘Actually, the first thing I can remember, apart from a few little scrappy bits, is waking up lying in the mud beside a river; and that was just under four years ago.'

‘Get away.'

‘Honestly.' Poldarn swallowed a yawn, and went on: ‘I guess I must've had – well, an accident or something, because I woke up and suddenly I realised I couldn't remember anything. Not my name, or where I was from, or what I did for a living, whether I had any family, nothing at all.'

‘Fuck,' Basano said, with feeling. ‘So how long did that last?'

Poldarn smiled weakly. ‘It's still lasting,' he said, tilting the jug over his cup and handing it back. ‘To start with, I kept expecting it all to come back to me, but it didn't, or at least it hasn't yet. Anyhow, while I still thought there'd be a chance of remembering, or running into somebody who could tell me who I was, I just sort of wandered about, not settling to anything – well, where'd be the point, if at any moment I'd be going home? But time went on, and nothing came back to me, so I thought, screw this, I'd better get on and make a new life for myself.'

‘So you joined up at the foundry?'

Poldarn hesitated. There'd been a lot more to it than that, of course, but he was damned if he was going to tell anybody about it, even if the beer was starting to taste almost palatable. ‘That's right,' he said.

Basano's face crumpled into a thoughtful scowl. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘but surely there's some thing you've been able to figure out. Like, your accent, the way you talk. That ought to place you pretty well. I mean, round here they can tell which village you were born in just from the way you fart.'

‘Not in my case,' Poldarn said. ‘At least, nobody I've met so far's recognised my accent and said, “Ah, you're from such and such a place.” Actually, I don't even know how many languages I can speak. It's half a dozen at least, maybe more.'

‘Bloody hell,' Basano said, clearly impressed.

Poldarn shook his head. The hut wobbled a little. ‘Oh, it's not like it's anything clever,' he said. ‘Don't even know I'm doing it half the time. Sometimes I'll be talking to someone and they'll start looking at me all funny, and it's because I've suddenly switched to a different language without realising it. I just hear my own voice in my head, you see.'

‘Oh. And what about when other people talk to you?'

‘Same thing. I just hear what they're saying, not the words they use. I think—' He checked himself. He'd been about to say that it could be something to do with his people back home on the islands in the western sea being natural telepaths; but if he said that, Basano would only stare at him even more fiercely, since nobody in the Empire knew that the western islands existed, let alone that their inhabitants were the merciless, invincible raiders who'd burned so many cities and done so much damage over the years. Saying something that'd identify him with them probably wasn't a good idea. ‘I think I must be from the capital or something, where there's people from all over the Empire. You'd probably pick up several languages if you lived somewhere like that, maybe even get so used to switching from one to the other without thinking that you wouldn't notice.'

‘Or maybe you were in the army,' Basano said. ‘Been posted all over the place, learned a bit of this and that every place you've spent time in. I knew a man once, he'd been in the services, and he could do that. Knew twenty-six different words for beer.'

‘Useful,' Poldarn said with a grin, whereupon Basano passed the jug. Nothing would ever make him like the stuff, of course, but he was feeling rather dry, he couldn't help noticing. The heat, or something to do with the hut being built of turf. Something like that, anyhow.

‘Still,' Basano was saying, ‘must be bloody odd. I mean, the thought that once you had a completely different life, and any minute it could all come back, like a roof falling in. I mean, any second now, maybe you're going to turn to me and say, “Bloody hell, I just remembered, I used to be a rich merchant,” or “My dad used to run the biggest brewery in Tulice.”' He shook his head. ‘That'd get to me, the thought that I could be, you know, really stinking rich or a nobleman or something, and yet here you are wasting your life pounding sand in the foundry. All that money just waiting for you to come back home and spend it. Or women, maybe. Or you could be the son and heir of a district magistrate, even.'

Poldarn looked away. ‘Sure,' he said. ‘Or maybe I was something really horrible, like a day labourer in a tannery. Or an escaped convict, maybe, or like you said, I was in the army and I deserted. That's why I stopped trying to find out, actually, for fear that I wouldn't like what I discovered. Think about it: what if I turned out to be somebody really evil and disgusting, someone that everybody hates?'

Basano thought for a moment. ‘Well, if everybody hated you, surely you'd have been recognised before now. And if you were on the run from the gallows or the stone-yards, they'd have been looking for you and someone would've caught you. And if you were like a dangerous nutcase or whatever, sooner or later you'd murder someone or set fire to a temple or whatever it might be, and then you'd know that way. And if you found out you'd only ever been a milkman, or the bloke who cleans the blood off the slaughterhouse floor, well, that'd be all right, you wouldn't have to go back to your rotten old life if you didn't want to, and that way at least you'd know—'

Poldarn pulled a face. Partly it was the foul taste of the beer. ‘There's other bad things it could be,' he said. ‘Like, suppose I was married and there was trouble at home, something like that. My theory is, you see, that deep down I don't want to remember, which is why my memory hasn't come back long since. I reckon you'd have to be stupid to take a risk like that.'

Basano pursed his lips. ‘I guess so,' he said. ‘It'd depend on how good life was where I am now. I mean, do you really, really like working in the foundry?'

Poldarn shrugged. ‘It's all right, I suppose.'

‘You're settled in just the way you like it? Got yourself a really tasty bird, nice house, all that stuff?'

‘Well, no.' Poldarn frowned. ‘But that sort of thing comes with time. I mean, you find somewhere you want to be and settle down, and happiness just sort of grows on you, like moss on rocks.'

Basano nodded. ‘And you don't think any happiness had grown on you before you had your accident and forgot it all? I mean, a man of your age, you'd expect to be settled and doing well. So maybe you were.'

‘Like you are, you mean?'

‘Oh, I'm not doing so bad,' Basano answered, wriggling sideways as a handful of dirt dropped from the roof onto his head. ‘I told you, we're doing a hell of a trade, I'm putting a lot of good money by. Another ten years or so, I'll be able to retire, buy a place, spend the rest of my life playing at being a gentleman.' He grinned. ‘I got it all worked out, don't you worry. See, I know where I'm from, so I can make up my mind where it is I want to go. You don't, so you can't. See what I'm getting at?'

‘Sort of.'

‘Well, there you go.' Basano suddenly froze, and said, ‘Shit.'

‘What's the matter?'

‘Beer jug's empty. Excuse me, I have to go to the outhouse and fill it up again.'

That, Poldarn felt, was open to misinterpretation; but when Basano came back and refilled both their cups, the beer tasted no worse than before. ‘I was thinking,' Basano said.

‘Hm?'

‘About what you were saying. You not wanting to know, in case you turned out to be the nastiest man in the world. Well, you can set your mind at rest there.'

‘Can I? Oh, good.'

‘Sure.' Basano grabbed two handfuls of wood and threw them on the fire. ‘It's like this. You go anywhere, ask anybody you like who's the nastiest man in the world, they'll all give you the same answer. Well,' he added, after a pause for thought, ‘maybe not, because we've just had the taxes round here, so a lot of folks would say the Emperor. Bastard,' he added, with feeling.

‘He's not popular?'

‘You can say that again.'

Poldarn nodded. ‘I don't even know who the Emperor is,' he confessed.

‘Really? Well, we had a change recently, just over a year ago. The old Emperor died. Throat cut. Terrible business, even if he was a complete arsehole.'

‘I'm sure. So who's Emperor now?'

Basano yawned. ‘A man called Tazencius,' he replied. ‘Cousin or second cousin of the last bloke.'

‘And he cut the last man's throat, did he?'

Basano shook his head. ‘No,' he said. ‘In fact, he was hundreds of miles away when it happened. Oh, he was in on the plot all right, he just wasn't around for the actual killing. Anyhow, everybody was mighty pleased when the old bastard got cut up, but by all accounts, this Tazencius is even worse. Well, that goes without saying: taxes up by a fifth. And what's worse, they actually collect them, even out here.'

‘That's unusual, is it?'

‘Too right. First tax collector some of the younger blokes had ever seen, caused quite a stir. Anyhow, we cracked him over the head and stuck his body in number three, and reckoned that ought to be the end of it.'

‘And was it?'

‘No way.' Basano pulled a wry face. ‘Couple of months later, a whole army shows up. Well, several dozen, anyhow, all in armour and stuff, asking had we seen this man, because he'd gone missing, and he'd been headed out our way. So we said, no, we'd never set eyes on anybody like that; and of course they couldn't prove anything. But they made us hand over the money. Two thousand gross-quarters. Worse than robbery, if you ask me, because with robbers at least you can fight back. But if you scrag two dozen soldiers, all that happens is that next time they send two hundred, and then you're screwed.'

Poldarn dipped his head by way of acknowledgement. ‘Well,' he said, ‘I'm definitely not the Emperor Tazencius,' he said. No earthly point in mentioning that he had good reason to believe that Tazencius, assuming they were talking about the same man, had at one stage been his father-in-law. ‘How about the second nastiest?'

Basano grinned. ‘If you ask me, Tazencius is a pussycat compared to five or six other people. No, if you'd asked the question any time when we hadn't just had the taxes, what everybody'd have said was Feron Amathy. General Feron Amathy, he is now, or probably Marshal or Protector, because it's practically a known fact that it was him as had the old Emperor killed. Pretty much running things, especially since he married Tazencius's daughter. Makes him next in line to the throne, see, if anything happens to Tazencius. Which it will,' Basano added, ‘or I'm an earwig.'

Poldarn dipped his head again. ‘So that's two nasty men I'm definitely not,' he said.

‘Three,' Basano said, pouring beer and getting a respectable proportion of it into the cup. ‘Third nastiest by anybody's reckoning is this priest bastard, the one who's running around with all the sword-monks and that sort.'

‘Sword-monks,' Poldarn repeated. ‘Weren't they all killed by the raiders?'

‘Most of them,' Basano confirmed. ‘But not nearly enough. Actually, that made things a whole lot worse; because before the raiders burned down the monks' castle, place called Deymeson, the monks mostly stayed home and didn't bother anybody, apart from princes and rich merchants and the like. But now they've got no home, so they're just sort of wandering about the place, stealing and killing anything that moves. And a lot of other scumbags have joined up with them. Supposed to be all about religion – the end of the world is nigh and all that shit – but if you ask me it's just an excuse for riding round the home provinces in this huge caravan of carts and slaughtering people. Anyhow, their boss is some ex-monk who goes by the name of Monach – which is just some foreign word for “monk”, so nobody knows what his real name is. Could care less; he's just some evil shit who likes killing people. Wouldn't be you, though, since he only started off doing it a couple of years ago, and only last month he was in Iapetta.'

‘I see,' Poldarn said. ‘Well, that's a great comfort, I must say.'

‘And then there's number four,' Basano continued. ‘General Muno Silsny, there's another really unpleasant man for you.' He frowned. ‘Not in the same league as Feron Amathy or this Monach character, and of course he's not the Emperor, but you'd have to be a total arsehole to be anything like as nasty as he is. And he only popped up a few years back. Hell of a taleteller, Silsny; that's how he's got on so fast. Came out of nowhere; he started off as nothing but a poxy little captain in some outfit of second-rate horsefuckers, but then there was this battle and he got his leg broke, and he went around telling everybody he was snatched out of the jaws of death by the divine Poldarn himself, no less. For some crazy reason folks believed him, and since then he's every place you look. Fought alongside General Cronan, rest his soul, when he beat the raiders; then he was off fighting the rebels, really making a name for himself. But he must be smart, because he changed sides at just the right time, joined up with the Amathy lot right after he'd kicked shit out of them in some battle, and now he's commander-in-chief of the home provinces, no less. And you can't be him, either.'

Poldarn's smile had glazed over, like a properly fired pot. Muno Silsny was the name of the wounded soldier he'd saved from being murdered by looters after some battle in a river; he'd practically tripped over the man, and for some reason had wasted time and effort getting him back to his camp instead of leaving him to die.