The Two of Swords: Part 11

The Fencer trilogy

Colours in the Steel

The Belly of the Bow

The Proof House

The Scavenger trilogy

Shadow

Pattern

Memory

The Engineer trilogy

Devices and Desires

Evil for Evil

The Escapement

The Company

The Folding Knife

The Hammer

Sharps

The Two of Swords (e-novellas)

B
Y
T
OM
H
OLT

Expecting Someone Taller

Who’s Afraid of Beowulf?

Flying Dutch

Ye Gods!

Overtime

Here Comes the Sun

Grailblazers

Faust Among Equals

Odds and Gods

Djinn Rummy

My Hero

Paint Your Dragon

Open Sesame

Wish You Were Here

Only Human

Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Valhalla

Nothing But Blue Skies

Falling Sideways

Little People

The Portable Door

In Your Dreams

Earth, Air, Fire and Custard

You Don’t Have to be Evil to Work Here, But It Helps

Someone Like Me

Barking

The Better Mousetrap

May Contain Traces of Magic

Blonde Bombshell

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages

Doughnut

When It’s A Jar

The Outsorcerer’s Apprentice

The Good, the Bad and the Smug

Dead Funny: Omnibus 1

Mightier Than the Sword: Omnibus 2

The Divine Comedies: Omnibus 3

For Two Nights Only: Omnibus 4

Tall Stories: Omnibus 5

Saints and Sinners: Omnibus 6

Fishy Wishes: Omnibus 7

The Walled Orchard

Alexander at the World’s End

Olympiad

A Song for Nero

Meadowland

I, Margaret

Lucia Triumphant

Lucia in Wartime

Published by Orbit

ISBN: 978-0-356-50618-0

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by K. J. Parker

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

Orbit

Little, Brown Book Group

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www.orbitbooks.net

www.littlebrown.co.uk

www.hachette.co.uk

Title Page

By K. J. Parker

Copyright

Four of Stars

About the Author

Axeo shrugged, screwed up the scrap of parchment into a ball and went to throw it on the fire, only to find it had gone out. He sighed, stood up and grabbed two handfuls of kindling from the sack by the hearth, then felt in his pocket for his tinderbox. Then he scowled.

“Musen,” he shouted. “Get in here.”

A few moments later an impossibly tall, flat-faced young man pushed aside the sacking curtain. “What?”

Axeo held out his hand. “Give it back. My tinderbox.”

“I haven’t got it.”

“Oh, come on.” Axeo gave him a grim smile. “I’ll say this for you, you’re getting better. The first time you stole it, I felt you. For crying out loud, son, it’s freezing in here.”

“I haven’t got it.”

Axeo nodded and turned away, immediately turned back. Musen saw him coming and took a long step to the rear but not quickly enough; Axeo was behind him, and trod down hard on the inside of his knee. Musen dropped to the ground. Axeo stooped and put his hand round his windpipe, bearable but firm pressure from thumb and forefinger. “Pockets,” he said.

Musen turned out his pockets; then, unasked, took off his boots and shook them out. Axeo sighed. “You’ve sold it,” he said. “Marvellous. So now we both sit here and freeze.”

“I can light a fire.”

Axeo let go of him. “The point about tinderboxes is,” he said, “they make lighting a fire
easier
. That’s why it’d be nice if one or the other of us had got one.” He sat down again, while Musen squatted by the hearth and picked through the kindling. “Who’d you sell it to?”

No answer. Musen broke a piece of dry bark off a log, gathered some withered moss from another.

“Presumably that horrible old woman who hangs round the stables,” Axeo said. “I think I’ll have her arrested and strung up. Then I might get to keep some of my stuff.”

“It wasn’t—” Musen checked himself. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“Ah.” Axeo nodded. “In that case it was that fat groom on the night shift. If he tries to
sell
it back to me, I’ll break his arm.” Musen was twirling a bit of stick. That’ll never work, Axeo thought, then saw a tiny feather of smoke. “That tinderbox happened to be a present from my brother.”

“I thought you couldn’t stand him.”

“I can’t.” Axeo closed his eyes and tried to get comfortable in his chair. Physically impossible. “How do you do that, exactly? Whenever I try, it doesn’t work.”

“I don’t know,” Musen said. “I’ve always done it this way, and it always works for me.”

He blew on the dry moss and it glowed red. He tipped it into the grate and started laying kindling over it, rafters-fashion. Axeo got up, unhooked the remains of a side of bacon from the wall, took out his folding knife and cut four thick, ragged slices, which he stuck on the tines of a home-made toasting fork, four strands of the heavy-grade fence wire twisted together. Musen tipped charcoal from the bucket on to the fire, crouched down on his hands and knees and blew on it until the first tentative flames appeared.

“It’s dumb stealing things from people you live with,” Axeo said. “Doesn’t matter how well you cover your tracks, they know it’s you because they know stuff’s missing and you’re a thief. True, there’s not a shred of evidence, but who needs evidence when you
know
? Like the Craft, really, I can’t prove the Transmutation by Fire, but I know it happens. I’m surprised you do it, actually, because in other respects you’re not completely stupid.”

Musen took the toasting fork from him and held it in front of the fire. After a while, drops of fat dripped into the flames and ignited in a brief yellow flare.

“Some of them reckon you can’t help it,” Axeo went on, yawning. “They say you’re ill, it’s something loose up here. I don’t think so.” He paused. “Out of interest, why do you do it? I’m interested, that’s all.”

Musen didn’t turn round. “It’s my gift.”

“Mphm.” Axeo closed his eyes. “The Great Smith made you a thief, and it’s the Lodge’s duty to find a good use for you. I know that’s what they taught you at Beal Defoir. Do you believe it?”

“Yes.”

“Fair enough. But if I catch you perfecting your gift around my stuff ever again, I’ll break all your fingers. Understood?”

He knew he’d phrased that wrong, since he wouldn’t catch Musen, not now. But it was too late to rephrase, that would just be weak. Besides, they both knew it was an empty threat. Thou shalt not damage the property of the Lodge. Ribs were different, though. Musen didn’t use his ribs to steal.

“I don’t know why you annoy me so much,” he said, almost as an admission of his error. “My guess is that you’re smart and you act stupid. Growing up with my brother, I’m used to the other way round, so you confuse me. Tell you what,” he went on, “stop doing it and I’ll stop giving you a hard time. How about it?”

Musen went on toasting the bacon. Axeo rather admired him for that. It takes a degree of integrity, as well as intelligence, not to give in to an offer of friendship. He was beginning to see why Beal Defoir had thought so highly of the boy. Even so. It was irksome, not being able to talk. The prospect of the job he was about to do was making him nervous, and the sound of his own voice soothed him like nothing else.

They had no special privilege on the southbound mail, which was crowded, and ending up riding on the roof, squashed in between two merchants’ couriers and a government official. Axeo wedged his back against the rail, closed his eyes and eavesdropped.

It was all going really badly, the government man said; he was on his way to take up his new appointment as Clerk of Tolls at Saphes, but whether there’d be a job for him when he got there he simply didn’t know. Everything was done through Rasch, and it was quite possible that the letter confirming his appointment hadn’t got out before the siege started, in which case he’d get to Saphes and nobody would have the faintest idea who he was. Furthermore, even if there was a job for him there, it was anybody’s guess how he was supposed to do it. The main function of the Clerk of Tolls at a provincial capital is to send the returns compiled by the sheriffs to Rasch, and then receive a reply and pass it on to the governor’s office, who passed it on to the sheriffs, who did whatever they did. With Rasch cut off, what was he supposed to do all day?

The merchants’ couriers weren’t impressed. Their employers had tens of thousands of angels’ worth of scrip signed off against deposits with the Knights and the Temple Trustees and a dozen or so private banks; they’d handed out hard cash against this paper, to the point where they had nothing left but a few boxes of old green copper change, and now nobody was interested in taking their notes, because everybody knew their money was the wrong side of Senza Belot’s army and quite possibly only a few days away from a cart ride to Choris. Meanwhile, honest, hard-working couriers were expected to rush around the countryside with letters of credit and bills of exchange that were probably only good for mending shoes and wiping arses. It wouldn’t be so bad (one of the couriers added) if Rasch would only get a move on and surrender. Then the war would be over, and presumably some sort of arrangement could be made with the new administration to overwrite existing deposits at so many stuivers in the angel – life would go on, after all, once the war was over, and whoever won they’d need banks and merchant venturers, and all that money couldn’t simply evaporate, like rainwater on a sunny day—