K. Parker - The Proof House

‘Doesn’t work at all if you ask me.’

‘You’re entitled to your opinion,’ Gannadius said wearily. ‘But no, you’re quite right. I can’t conjure up magic carpets or flatten the enemy with a fireball or turn them all into newts. A great pity, but there it is.’

The boy shrugged. ‘All right then,’ he said, ‘we’ll walk. It can’t be that far to Ap’ Amodi.’

‘Actually,’ Gannadius said, ‘Ap’ Amodi’s in the other direction. I may not be a wizard, but I can read a map. Inasmuch as we’re headed anywhere, we’re heading straight for Ap’ Escatoy, and I respectfully suggest we don’t want to go there.’

‘Ap’ Escatoy,’ the boy repeated. ‘Isn’t that where-?’

‘Exactly. Like I said, not a place we really want to intrude on.’

The boy rubbed his chin with a muddy hand. ‘But what if Bardas really is there? He’ll look after us, I know he will. We’ll be all right.’

Gannadius sighed. ‘I wouldn’t bank on it if I were you. Even if we were able to get to him before we were captured, or if we were able to get a message to him, there’s no reason to believe he’d be able to do anything for us. There’s no reason to believe he’s an officer or anything.’

The boy gave him a rebellious stare. ‘Bardas wouldn’t let anything happen to us,’ he said. ‘Not if he knew we were in trouble.’

‘Maybe not. But there’s ever such a lot of ways we could die without his knowing a thing about it. I say we find a way of doubling back and heading up the coast, towards Ap’ Amodi. Not too far up, mind, or we’ll find ourselves in Perimadeia.’

The boy nodded. ‘And you know the way, do you?’

Gannadius shook his head. ‘I’ve got a vague mental picture of the map I looked at, and that’s it. Don’t ask me about distances, either. We could be a day away, or three weeks.’

‘Oh.’ The boy suddenly looked very young and frightened, something which Gannadius found extremely disconcerting. ‘And there’s nothing you can do? I mean, with your… powers?’

Gannadius smiled. ‘Nothing at all, sorry.’

‘Not much good for anything, are they?’

‘No, not really.’

The boy stood up. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘If they were following us, they’d have caught us by now. Which way? In general terms,’ he added.

Gannadius thought for a moment. ‘In general terms,’ he said, ‘I’d say north-east, which ought to be over there. Unless there’s a mountain or a river or something in the way. Cartography’s not exactly a precise science in Shastel.’

The boy studied the undergrowth for a moment, then took a mighty swing at the dense brambles with the halberd. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, as he jerked the snagged blade loose again. ‘Better make a start, I suppose.’ He swung again, then gave up. ‘Let’s go back the way we came, see if we can pick up that path we were following.’

‘All right,’ Gannadius said. ‘What if we run into more soldiers?’

‘Then we’re stuffed,’ the boy replied. ‘But there’s no earthly way we’re going to get through this. It’d take twenty men a week just to get as far as that tall tree over there.’

Gannadius sighed, and followed. Alexius , he thought, where the hell are you when I need you? Can’t you find me, tell me what to do? But of course, it didn’t work like that, as he knew perfectly well. He could speculate all he liked about why, three years earlier, he’d seen that short, rather ludicrous battle in the mud-patch in some sort of random, Principle-induced vision. The fact was that the Principle wasn’t a tool, something you could use. It was something that happened to you, like bad luck or rain. He trudged forward, fitting his feet into the boy’s deep footprints. Too old for this. And at this rate, unlikely to get any older.

‘The path should be here somewhere.’ The boy’s voice, bouncing him out of his enclosed train of thought. ‘We must have missed it.’

‘Quite likely,’ Gannadius replied miserably. ‘It’s getting too dark for this. I say we stop here and wait till morning.’

‘All right.’ The boy flopped down where he stood, dropping the halberd in the mud. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.

‘Tough. If you want, you can go and see if you can kill something. If there’s anything to kill in this horrible swamp except soldiers, which I doubt.’

The boy shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen any sign of anything,’ he replied.

‘Then we’ll just have to make do without, and try not to think about it.’

‘All right.’

A few minutes later the boy was fast asleep. Gannadius closed his eyes, but it didn’t do him any good, not for a long time. When at last he did fall asleep, he had the dream again, and that was worse.

Gannadius?

He was in the dream: burning thatch, falling timbers whipping up clouds of sparks as they crashed to the ground, smoke and confused shouts. ‘Alexius?’ he asked. ‘What are you doing here?’

There he was, standing in front of him. I don’t know. I haven’t been here for a long time. Where are you?

‘I was hoping you could tell me,’ Gannadius replied. ‘What can you see?’

Well, this , Alexius replied. The Fall of Perimadeia. What did you want me to see?

Gannadius frowned. ‘My nephew and I are lost in a swamp somewhere between Ap’ Escatoy and Ap’ Amodi. I was hoping you could tell me what to do.’

Sorry. Alexius shrugged. Did you say Ap’ Escatoy? That’s curious. That’s where I keep going lately.

‘Fascinating. I look forward to reading your monograph on the subject. Can’t you make an effort and see if you can find out where we are? It’d be a tremendous help, you know.’

I really wish I could help, but you know how it is. Just out of interest, what are you doing in a swamp in the disputed territories, anyway? Last I heard, you had a nice, comfortable job in Shastel.

Around him, Perimadeia continued to burn. Gannadius tried not to watch. ‘I hope I still do,’ he said, ‘though if I don’t get back there soon they’ll assume I’m dead and give it to somebody else. No, I went to the Island to see my nephew.’

Your nephew – oh, yes, I remember. The boy Bardas Loredan rescued from the City and took with him to Scona. Now that’s a curious thing, as well.

‘Quite,’ Gannadius said, with a hint of impatience. ‘The idea was, Athli Zeuxis – you remember her?’

Of course. Bardas’ clerk. She’s a merchant on the Island now, isn’t she?

‘That’s right. Anyway, she brought the boy with her to the Island when Bardas went through that bad patch a few years ago, around the time she got the Island franchise for the Shastel Bank. Well, she’s done very well for herself since then, to the extent that she needs to open a corresponding office back at head-quarters, on Shastel; and she thought it’d be a good idea all round if young Theudas-’

Your nephew.

‘That’s right. Named after me in fact-’

Your original name was Theudas?

‘Yes. Theudas Morosin.’

Good gods We’ve known each other all these years and I never knew that. Sorry, please go on.

‘Athli thought it’d be a good idea,’ Gannadius continued patiently, ‘if young Theudas spent some time in Shastel with her agent there, setting up the office, learning the trade, and spending some time with me, of course, since I’m practically his only living relative – apart from his father, of course, but he’s disappeared again, and he never was any sort of father to the boy.’

It sounds like a splendid idea. What went wrong?

Gannadius sighed. ‘It was just my luck,’ he said. ‘A day or so after we left the Island, Shastel picked a fight with the provincial office over some wretched little island or other – really, it’s all to do with this Ap’ Escatoy business; obviously Shastel is scared stiff about what’s going to happen next – and now the provincial fleet’s blockading the Straits of Escati. If we’d had any sense we’d have turned back and gone the long way round – they haven’t closed that off, as far as I know – or at the very least we could have sat tight in Ap’ Amodi until the sabres stopped rattling. But no, we had to be clever and run the blockade. And instead, we ran on to the rocks, and then we ran into a patrol, and here we are. In a swamp.’