K Parker - Memory

She sounded offended. 'Now you're treating me like I'm stupid,' she said. 'You don't believe that. You know-'

'What do I know? Only what I've seen. I've seen how everywhere I go, cities burn and people die, and all because of me-I don't do the burning and killing, but I'm always the cause. I'm the dog with a burning brush tied to its tail-my intentions don't matter, only the effect I have. So it was inevitable I'd come here, to Torcea, and wreck the place. And here I am. That's so perfect it's-well, religion.'

'You'd know more about that than me,' Noja replied. 'But you're just making all that up to be annoying-everybody knows there's no such thing as the god in the cart.'

'Do they?'

'Well, of course. It's just an old Morevich story that Cleapho dug out of some book and started putting around so that superstitious people'd panic. It's not even a genuine old story; some bunch of monks made it up to boost offertory revenue. Any intelligent person knows that.'

Poldarn laughed. 'It may not have been true when Cleapho made it up,' he replied. 'But doesn't it seem to you that it's true now? You know, religion, that sort of thing. After all, nobody knows how gods come to be born. Maybe what Cleapho did is how you make a god.' He sighed. 'We probably learned all about making gods in fourth year, but of course I don't remember.'

'No.' Noja sounded bored and annoyed. 'No gods, sorry. And the world isn't going to end. And the weapons will work.' Hesitation in her voice. 'Won't they? I mean, you were there, you aren't stupid. Will they work or won't they?'

Poldarn thought for a moment. 'I don't see why not,' he replied. 'Basically, it was Spenno who did it all, and I think if anybody could make a Poldarn's Flute, it'd be him. But that part of it's all a bit sloppy, isn't it? What if the Flutes work just fine, but they only manage to sink two ships out of two hundred? And besides, I don't believe the raiders will turn up at precisely the right moment to get blown out of the water, and I should know, I was there only a year or so ago-' He frowned. 'It's not the raiders he's thinking about, is it? He wants the Flutes to use against someone else.'

Noja didn't reply, and Poldarn saw no advantage in pressing the point: he wasn't interested, he'd just pointed out the discrepancy to keep her in play, like that angler with the heavy fish. 'Anyhow,' he said, when the silence was starting to get awkward, 'you can believe me or not, it's up to you. But how about this: if we go to Beal, if I'm not going there to kill Tazencius, what else would I have in mind? Go on, you tell me. I'm not going there to make my peace with him, we both know that; and the honey festival sounds like fun, but not enough to risk my life for.'

She was a long time in answering. 'You could try and run away.'

'I could've run away tonight,' Poldarn said. 'I could've killed your pathetic excuses for guards out there in the yard, easy as anything. But then I'd have had to steal a horse and ask the way to Beal. Too much like hard work.'

'Assuming Beal was where you wanted to go.' Assuming Gain Aciava was telling the truth; and Copis, and Cleapho, and Copis's sister who's just admitted she's a liar.

All right,' he said, 'I could've killed them and gone anywhere. But here I am.'

A long silence, unbroken until Noja sighed. 'Yes,' she said slowly, 'here you are.' She was looking at him as though she'd expected more. 'Did you really love her?' she asked.

'Sorry?' he said. 'Who are we talking about?'

Her face remained the same, but her eyes had taken the cold, like molten bronze setting in the mould, flawless and strong. 'My sister, of course. Did you really love her?'

Poldarn considered his answer. 'I honestly don't know,' he said.

'I see. So the child-'

'I loved her then,' he said. 'I suppose; I'm not entirely sure. It was more-well, I guess it was something like signing a formal contract between business partners, or a peace treaty. I know that when I thought she might've come to harm, at Deymeson, when the monks captured me, I was worried sick; it wasn't my main priority, but it was always at the back of my mind. But that was probably mostly because she was, at that point in time, my oldest friend; I mean, I'd met her only a few hours after I woke up in the river, and we'd been together ever since, on and off. That's something, but not love-' He frowned. 'Sorry,' he said, 'that probably sounds really bad. But I'm too tired to lie.'

'That's all right,' Noja said, sounding almost relieved. 'And before that, at school and so on. You can't remember?'

He shook his head. 'I've been told all sorts of things,' he said, 'and if it doesn't sound too crazy, I've had dreams about those days, which might be memories of some kind, or maybe not. But if I was in love with her, I don't remember.'

'So,' she went on, as if she hadn't heard him, 'when you married Tazencius's daughter, and she loved you, you don't remember if you were really in love with Xipho all the time? Or did you ever feel anything genuine for her-Lysalis, I mean.'

'I have no idea,' Poldarn said. 'The part of me that I'm still on speaking terms with reckons that if the worst thing I've ever done is either marry one girl while still being in love with another, or else ditch one girl because I've met someone I prefer, then it could be a lot worse.'

Noja stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. 'That's fair enough, I suppose,' she said. 'I mean, it wouldn't make you the most evil man in the world, or anything.'

Rain. Rain, just like bloody always. Rain, when he really didn't want it; because Runting had just woken him up out of his recurring nightmare, the one he was glad he could never remember when he woke up, and told him to get his trousers on, because the enemy were at the gates The enemy, he muttered to himself, at the gates. Which would've been just fine, absolutely no fucking problem, if it wasn't bloody raining. Because if only it was dry, the enemy at the gates would be the perfect test medium for the four finished, fettled, furnished, burnished, done and dusted but not actually yet test-fired Poldarn's Flutes sitting comfortably in their wooden cradles like cats on rugs on top of the watchtower. The defence of Dui Chirra would've gone down in history as the day when the world changed for ever; when all the art-of-war manuals and all the precepts of religion had to be rewritten, because a few hundred scruffs with four brass parsnips had beaten off the Empire's best troops led by the Empire's best general in the time it takes to boil a kettle. If only it wasn't raining.

Instead, Monach reflected bitterly, we're all going to be killed; and some other bugger, someone who hasn't had to put up with Spenno and Galand Dev and all the mind-meltingly annoying politics they go in for in this horrible place, is going to get all the glory and be a footnote in the appendix at the back of the history of the world. And And I wouldn't have let down my friends. That's the worst-no (he decided firmly as he dragged on his wet boots), no, dying's going to be the worst thing, but failing Cordo, and Xipho, when they trusted me-the Earwig, they'll say, give him a simple job to do, and a weapon that sneezes hellfire and lightning to do it with, and he screws up, all because of a little spot of rain. Should've known better than to trust 'Are you coming or not?' someone was yelling: 'They're coming up the east road. There's bloody thousands of them.'

And why are wet boots so much harder to get your feet into than dry ones? That said, a man in charge, commander of the garrison of the most vital strategic point in the world, ought surely to be entitled to more than one pair of fucking boots Monach stumbled out of the drawing office, trying to find the right hole in his sword belt by feel alone and failing, and splashed through the puddles on his way to the watch-tower stair. People everywhere, of course; most of them foundrymen, standing about looking miserable, muttering, not showing any inclination to make themselves useful-damn it, better that they should be trying to open the gates and let the enemy in than just standing about getting under hard-working soldiers' feet. If they were actively hostile, we could massacre the whole useless lot of them, and then we'd only have the enemy to put up with Wet boots on the wet wooden stairs, squelch. Rain gets in your eyes, makes them blurry, stings. Up to the top of the stairs, up to the rampart-people getting out of his way, that's more like it-and look over, and-never seen so many people all together in one place before in my life. Not a parade in Sansory, or Torcea hiring fair, or Formal Service at the Chapel Royal, when everybody who's anybody piles into the great courtyard, pushing and shoving and trampling each other underfoot to get a seat and hear the Chaplain in Ordinary's sermon (Cordo, shooting his mouth off in front of all those people; must be a sight to make a pig laugh). Yes; you measure scenes like that by the thousand, but this is tens of thousands, a huge army The enemy, coming to get us, the defending garrison. Shit.