K Parker: The Escapement

He looked away, feeling disgusted and betrayed. For her sake, he'd risked and lost everything. In that sense, she was to blame; the astonishingly fierce desire he'd felt for her at first, which had made everything else seem trivial, couldn't reasonably be called his fault, since he'd had no control over it, none whatsoever. Now it had gone, evaporated as the heat of the consequences burned through his life, and here they were, stuck with each other, like an old couple resentfully celebrating sixty years of an arranged marriage. It was hard to believe that either of them were the same people they'd been then, of course. But at least she still had enough to eat, and slept in a bed, under a roof that didn't leak. And as for the scale of losses incurred, there was no possible comparison. What had she lost? Nothing at all. She'd traded one unsatisfactory husband for another, but the two men were practically interchangeable in any event, they even did the same job, so that couldn't possibly count as a loss. He, on the other hand-well, that didn't bear thinking about.

"I'd better go," she said awkwardly. "I'll try and come tomorrow."

"You've got to find me somewhere better than this," he said angrily. "I can't live here. At least find me somewhere I can have a fire. I've been wet through to the skin for days now."

"I'll try."

But that was always her answer: she'd try, she'd do her best. "I'm sure you will," he replied, knowing that she wouldn't hear the irony-because naturally she did try, she did do her best, but it wasn't enough. "Maybe it's time I got out of the City for a while," he said.

"No." She almost barked the word at him, and he could see panic in her face. "No, you mustn't do that. How am I supposed to bring you food and stuff if you're…?"

"You wouldn't have to," he replied reasonably. "If you bring me some things I can sell-just ordinary household junk, they'll buy anything City-made in the villages. It'd be better than sleeping in a godawful hole like this, and I wouldn't be scared to death every time a watchman looked at me."

"But what about the savages?" she said, and he knew that what she really meant was what about me? At least she had the instinctive good sense to realise what a poor argument that was these days. "People are saying they'll be here any day now."

"Are they? How soon?"

She frowned. "I don't know, it's hard to know what to believe. Some people say ten days, some people say five, they're just guessing."

"Then there's nothing to worry about, is there?"

The panic glowed brighter in her eyes; at last, some sign of life. She looked better for it. "But the savages really are coming, everybody knows that," she said. "And suppose they shut the gates, and you can't get back in? And what happens when you run out of money? You can't go, it'd be dangerous." She'd wanted to use another word. He wondered: is this love? Or just a habit, unwanted but now unbreakable; a dependency, which is what love always becomes. Like alcohol, or smoking hemp; the need increases as the pleasure fades into pain. Better to be abstemious, to indulge only occasionally, socially, among friends.

"Fine," he said, making a show of resentful concession. "I'll stay here, then, if you're that worried. But you've got to find me another place."

"All right."

All right, not I'll try. "And a new coat."

She nodded. "There's his old winter coat he never wears any more. There's a hole, but I can darn it. If he misses it, I'll say the moths got at it. He'll be angry at me for not looking after it, but…" She realised he wasn't listening, and added, "I love you, Maris."

"I love you too." She turned to leave. The child was playing with the remains of a rotten sack, pulling threads out of a frayed hole; she grabbed it by the hand and it stood up. "Don't forget the coat," he added, because women never heard anything unless they were told at least three times. She left him and walked quickly up the narrow alley until she reached Chairmakers' Street. Moritsa was tugging at her hand. "Are we going to see the doctor now?" she asked.

"No."

"Oh. I thought…"

"It's all right. You don't have to see the doctor."

"Oh. Does that mean I'm better?"

"Yes."

That seemed to make sense to her, and they walked in silence for a while. Then she asked, "Mummy, who was that man?"

"Just a friend." She frowned, and went on, "He's been very unlucky and lost his home and all his money, so we're looking after him until things get better for him."

"I see. He sounded very unhappy."

"Yes. But you mustn't tell anybody about him, do you understand? It's very important. There are bad people looking for him, and if they find him they'll hurt him, and we don't want that to happen, do we?"

"No." A pause, then: "Did he do something wrong?"

"No. Just remember, not a word to anybody. All right?"

At the top of Chairmakers' Street, left into Spangate. A fine drizzle, just enough to be annoying. She'd been longer than she'd expected to be, but she could explain that by saying she'd had to wait for the doctor. With luck, he wouldn't have noticed anyway. Most likely he'd be asleep in his chair, like an old man. She found the thought of him mildly disgusting, and considered whether she could get away with taking one of his shirts as well as the coat. She decided she probably could, if she let it get burnt while it was drying in front of the fire. Stealing from him pleased her; it was like winning, like achieving something positive.

He wasn't asleep when she got home; but he was sitting at the table with a pile of papers and his counting-board, and he didn't look up as she closed the door behind her. She sent Moritsa straight off to bed, then stood over him until he looked up.

"The doctor says she's fine," she told him. "Just a tummy bug, it'll clear up in a day or two."

He frowned, then said, "That's good."

She didn't move. "You could at least make it sound like you cared."

She saw him wince. It meant he didn't want to fight, couldn't face the aggravation that would follow if he answered her back. "Of course I care," he said. "But you said yourself it wasn't anything serious. I just-"

"It's all right," she snapped. "But I'll need six quarters to pay the doctor."

He nodded, felt in his pocket for the coins. That'd buy a shirt; a cheap new one, or a good one second hand. He never begrudged her money so long as she said what it was for. Somehow, she tended to see that as a fault rather than a virtue.

"Are you going to be long?"

He nodded. "I've got to get these costings finished by tomorrow, and you know what I'm like with figures. I keep asking them to give me a clerk, but…" He stopped; that I-know-I'm-boring-you gesture of the head and shoulders. "I don't know how long I'll be. You'd better go on to bed."

"It's all right," she said wearily. "You know the light keeps me awake."

That pleased her, too; another tiny wound inflicted, another pinprick of guilt. Sometimes she imagined him as a piece of knitting, and she was unpicking him a stitch at a time. Very occasionally, it occurred to her to wonder why, but when she did, she never liked the answer very much. Besides, he'd brought it on himself. Any man who'd betray his friend just to get his wife deserved to end up with the sort of woman who'd cheat on her husband with his best friend. To pass the time, she took the old winter coat down from behind the door and started darning the hole.

After she'd done five rows, she asked, "Have you heard anything new about how the war's going?"

She pitched it just right; as though she was making conversation as a way of showing she'd forgiven him. He paused, two brass counters held between his fingers. "The latest is, we've made an alliance with the Cure Doce."

"Who?"

"Quite." He put the counters carefully down on a square, shifted another from the bottom to the top. "They live out east, on the Vadani border. Little better than savages, really, but they're sending troops, and we're in no position to be fussy."