The thought that he was to inherit a third of the Charity & Social Justice, an idea that had never even crossed his mind as a wild fantasy before, left Bassano gasping for breath. Before he could say anything, Basso went on: "You'll need money, to live on, and for politics. It makes it so much easier when the Treasury runs out of money; you just say, 'don't worry, I'll pay for that', and then you don't have to bother with cutting deals with the Optimates. You'll be able to be your own man, in everything. I believe in you, Bassano. In fact, you're about the only thing I believe in, apart from luck. I have faith that you'll make the world a better place." He grinned unexpectedly. "Not exactly my first priority. It's something I tend to do by accident. You'll do it on purpose."
Bassano took a deep breath. "You overestimate me," he said. "What've I ever done to make you think I'm the saviour of the world?"
"You're not," Basso said. "Not yet. That's why you've got to go to Mavortis. By the time you've finished there, you'll have grown into the man I take you for." He looked away, took a walnut from the bowl on the table to his left, squeezed it in his right hand till it cracked. "You can refuse, of course. Entirely up to you."
Bassano burst out laughing. "I can refuse," he said. "Oh, right. You're going to melt down the world and recast it to suit me, but I can just say, thanks but no thanks, and that'll be that."
"That's right," Basso said, picking bits of nut out of the handful of crushed shell. "I'm quite certain you won't, but you do have that option. You don't have to decide here and now," he went on. "Think about it, if you like. There's no mad panic."
"And if I say no?"
Basso shrugged. "Then we'll have to think up something else instead," he replied. "But it won't be nearly as good."
"I think..." Bassano stopped, then made a hopeless gesture. "For pity's sake, Uncle," he said. "An hour ago, I was thrilled to bits and deeply happy just because I'd passed some stupid fencing test. Now you tell me I'm going to be the Emperor of the West. You really know how to screw up a person's evening."
"Here's a hint for you," Basso replied, busy sorting bits of nut from shell splinters. "If you hadn't passed the exam, I wouldn't have made you this offer."
"What's that supposed to...?"
"If you hadn't increased production at the Mint by a third and cut costs by ten per cent, I wouldn't have thought up the idea," Basso went on. "Same goes for your grades at the Studium."
Bassano leaned forward, hunching his thin shoulders. "Do I get Aelius?" he asked.
"Of course," Basso replied. "I want you to learn from him, the way I learned from Antigonus. You'll have other advisers, of course. I don't expect you to do anything except watch and learn for the first year. After that--well, you'll take it at your own pace. I have every--"
"Aelius," Bassano interrupted. "Have you discussed this with him? What does he think about it?"
"I haven't told him yet," Basso replied.
"About me?"
"Any of it." Basso cupped his hands and sucked down the last of the nut fragments. "No point getting him involved until you've agreed. But he'll be all right. He likes you."
"He's only met me a couple of times," Bassano said. "At functions, for a few minutes."
"True," Basso replied. "But I've told him about you."
"I'd have thought I was exactly the type he'd have no time for."
"On the contrary," Basso said. "He's got far more issues with me, but we get along just fine." Basso made a show of dusting off his hands, then drank some wine. "Aelius and Antigonus are the two people I've relied on to get where I am. He'll take care of you, provided you listen to him. Which you will."
Bassano looked down at his hands, as if he'd only just noticed he had them. "You really think I can do this."
"If you want to do it, yes," Basso said. "If your heart's not in it, say so and we'll forget the whole thing. You can be a lawyer or an art historian instead."
Bassano closed his eyes and laughed. "You really think..."
"Yes." Basso interlaced his fingers. "One thing I'm never wrong about is people. I'm sure you'd make a really fine lawyer or an exceptional art historian, but I believe you'll enjoy this a whole lot more."
"Enjoy," Bassano repeated, as though the word was meaningless. "What's that got to do with it?"
"Everything," Basso said. "In that respect, I do believe you are a bit like me. Really," he added, "do you think I'd be doing this job if it wasn't a whole load of fun?"
It was probably the last thing he'd have predicted his uncle to say, but now that he'd heard it, he decided it was probably true. "Fun," he repeated.
"The best there is," Basso said. "But so far, I've barely scratched the surface. Let's see, what exactly have I
done
since I got this job?" He started counting on his fingers. "The Auxentine war: well, that was really unfinished business left over from the previous regime. It turned out all right, but it's the stuff of footnotes. The citizenship law: that was fun, but it was only just a start. Refining the currency, I enjoyed that. The plague was a mess--we all tried really hard to do something intelligent, but in the end we might as well not have bothered. The Treasury raid was mostly Aelius, so the only real pleasure I got out of that was proving I'd chosen the right man. It's been a pretty hectic year, and all I've really done is react and cope. I like it so much more when I'm making the running." Basso yawned. "You're going to say, my idea of fun isn't the same as yours. Quite true. That's why you'll be better at this job than me. Every day when I turn up for work, there's this nagging feeling at the back of my mind that sooner or later I'm going to get found out; someone's going to realise that I'm not fit to be in charge of the Vesani Republic, and then I'll be thrown out into the street. I feel like a boy who's stolen his father's horse. You won't be like that. In many ways you're a whole lot more grown up than me."
Bassano sighed, long and deep. "I'm going to have to think about it," he said. "Is that all right? Really?"
"Of course," Basso said. "Now, if you'd clapped your hands together and said, 'that's fantastic, when can I start?' I'd have been really worried."
Bassano looked at him. "And the real reason? Come on, you can tell me."
For a long time, Basso sat very still and looked at him. Then he said, "The real reason?"
"The real reason."
"Simple." Basso put on a solemn face, which made Bassano want to laugh. "To avoid a catastrophic drain on the public finances, the Bank will be investing heavily in all this. In return for five million nomismata, we get a quarter share of all revenues, in perpetuity. We stand to make an enormous sum of money, and since Antigonus is too old to go, you're the only one I'd trust not to rip us off." He smiled. "I'd have thought you'd have worked that one out for yourself."
Bassano shook his head. "That's
a
reason," he said.
"All right." Basso sighed. "The reason is, to annoy your mother. Make her son the most powerful man in the world, whether she likes it or not. What better reason could you ask for?"
Bassano nodded. "That's a reason," he said. "Coming from you, I'll accept that."
"And you'll do it?"
At that moment, Melsuntha came back in with the brandy and the honey-cakes.
She arrived late one evening, just as the clerks were putting out the lamps and getting ready to leave. They sent for the duty guard sergeant, who wasn't even aware that the First Citizen had a sister. She demanded to speak to his superior; he went away and came back with the only officer still in the building, a young Cazar lieutenant who ran the Pay Office. He knew the First Citizen had a sister, and that they didn't get on. He sent a clerk to ask Basso if he wanted to see her.
"What?" he said, looking up from his work.
"Says she's your sister, sir," the lieutenant said nervously. It was the first time he'd been in the great man's presence, and legends about what happened to officers who disturbed Him when he was working were many and exaggerated.
"Oh." Basso laid down his pen. He looked mildly stunned. "Send her up. No, just a moment. Give me a few minutes, then show her into the cabinet room. Get someone to light some lamps, and a fire."
The cabinet room had been gorgeously decorated by Basso's father; it was one of his few lasting achievements. The walls were covered with a fresco of Trade and Liberty presenting gold crowns to the personified Vesani people; the buxom, slightly stout woman who represented the Republic was supposed to be either the painter's wife or the First Citizen's mistress (some historians later claimed that she was both). The table, cut from a single board of Auxentine walnut, had been taken from an unarmed Auxentine merchant ship as reparations for the expulsion of some minor Vesani diplomat. The chairs had been borrowed from the Studium, the unwanted gift of a rich and tiresome benefactor two hundred years earlier; they were gilded and painted, in the late Rationalist style. The ceiling, which Basso's father hadn't got around to altering, was gilded mosaic, left over from when the room was the Chancellor's private chapel. Basso had made them remove the gilt-ivory statue of Prosperity that his father had borrowed from the Sutlers' Guild; he hadn't given it back to the Sutlers, and it was crated up somewhere in the basement, along with the rest of the junk.
"Bassano told me," she said, before he could open his mouth.
"Fine," Basso said. "I thought he probably would."
She sat down, perching on the edge of one of the Studium chairs. She was thinner than when he'd seen her last, and her hair was going grey at the sides, something he found hard to accept. She looked like a stallholder in the market.
"I won't allow it."
"Oh for pity's sake," Basso said wearily. "Why ever not?"
"I know why you're doing it," she said. "You're trying to steal him from me."
Basso nodded. "Obviously," he said. "He's all I've got."
"He's all I've got," she replied. "And we can't both have him."
Basso met her glare. It took some doing. "Then surely it's up to him to choose between us."
"No." She said it quietly. When you're really angry, you tend not to shout. "You have more to offer. But I won't allow it."
"Think about it," Basso said, trying to keep his voice even. "It's the best opportunity he could ever have. He'll be a magnificent First Citizen, and it'll give him tremendous satisfaction. Don't you want him to be happy?"
"Under other circumstances, of course."
Basso closed his eyes. "You mean, you hate me more than you love your son."
She clicked her tongue--a sharp but everyday rebuke. "If you insist on putting it in those terms."
Basso opened his eyes again and looked at her. "That's dreadful," he said. "You ought to think about that."
"It's not what I'd have chosen," she replied. "And if it's as bad as that, you're to blame. This whole thing is entirely your fault. You murdered my husband. If you had a shred of decency, you'd have left me my son."
"Fine." Basso realised he couldn't be doing with this discussion. "You won't allow it. What do you propose doing about it?"
Her face was closed right down. "I'm going to file charges against you," she said. "For Palo's murder."
Later, he was quite proud of the way he let the shock break over him. "I think you'll find you've left it too long," he said, crisp and businesslike. "There's a limitation period of fifteen years--"
"Not for murder," she replied, quick and precise, like someone dead-heading a rose. "Really, Basso, you of all people ought to know the law. Murder, treason and gross incompetence in public office have no limitation period. I can bring charges whenever I like."
Basso nodded. "Quite right," he said. "You don't think that'd be something of an overreaction, bearing in mind that all I'm trying to do is give your son the best possible start in life?"
"It's a question of motives," she replied. "Like I just said, you took away my husband. I won't let you have my son as well."
Basso nodded, as if he could see the sense in that. "In that case," he said, "you go ahead. In fact, I'd like that. I must say, I never thought you'd actually do it, but I won't pretend it hasn't been a worry at the back of my mind over the years. I'd be pleased to get rid of that particular threat. So yes, go ahead." He paused, to see if she'd react, then went on: "Of course, I could have the charges quashed just by signing a bit of paper. The Optimates are in no position to make a fuss about it, because I'm backing their war--something they never expected me to do, of course, which is probably why I did it. While the war's still in hand, they can't really make trouble for me about anything."
"You're very sure about that," she said, but she was frightened.
"Even if they tried to," Basso went on, "I've got a two-to-one majority in the House and nobody on my side wants me to fall--a pretty unusual state of affairs, I grant you, but if you don't believe me, ask around. Too many people owe me money. Or," he went on, not allowing her a chance, "I could let the charges go ahead. There isn't a hope in hell that any jury would convict me of anything right now. I could refuse to offer a defence, and they'd still acquit. Or I could defend the action, pointing out it was self-defence--which is true, of course--and asking the jury to consider your motives in bringing the charges after such a long time. I could make it impossible for you to stay in this city. You'd have crowds outside your house throwing rocks through your windows."