K Parker - Memory

'No,' Poldarn said. 'People have been telling me things, but I'm not sure I believe all of them.'

Tazencius looked at his daughter, then folded his hands. 'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'I guess it's time we stopped fighting. Faults on both sides, that sort of thing. Besides,' he went on, 'as your wife's been at great pains to tell me, essentially I was nursing a murderous grudge against someone who doesn't really exist any more.'

'I'm glad you can see it that way,' Poldarn replied slowly. 'I know I did a lot of bad things. I get the impression that a lot of the bad things involved you. What I haven't got straight is how much of them I did with you, and how much to you.'

Tazencius was silent for what felt like a very long time. Then he said, 'Like it matters. The fact is, you're my son-in-law, whether I like it or not, and if anything happens to you, she'll never speak to me again. Silly, isn't it? All my life I've been trying to get-well, this; and in the end, all I care about is whether my daughter likes me. I guess you're the punishment I deserve.'

She scowled at him, but didn't say anything. He seemed not to have noticed.

'Anyway,' he went on, 'we don't have to like each other, just be civil. Will you be wanting your old job back? I hope not. I'd far rather you just hung about the place eating and drinking and sleeping; I don't need you for anything any more.'

'Suits me,' Poldarn replied. 'For what it's worth, I have a vague idea what my old job was, but I'd really rather you didn't tell me.'

'As you like,' Tazencius said. 'It's a pity about the new man-he did me a good turn. But he's got to go. It's time to kick away the ladder.'

Whatever that meant; asking for explanations was the last thing on Poldarn's mind. Right now, everything was painfully awkward and embarrassing, but it was better than sleeping in a turf shack and being forced to kill strangers all the time. Besides, he kept telling himself, an opportunity will crop up, and I will be able to run away and get clear of all these people, sooner or later.

'Anyway,' Tazencius was saying, 'tonight it's dinner with the Amathy house. Horrible chore, but we need to be out in the open about that sort of thing.'

Amathy house? Weren't they the enemy? Poldarn decided not to worry about it. People have dinner with their enemies all the time. 'Thank you,' he decided to say.

'What for?'

Poldarn grinned. 'I don't know,' he said. 'You're clearly making a big effort to put a lot of things out of your mind so we can all put the past behind us and get on with our lives. Since I don't know what the things are, I can't gauge exactly how magnanimous you're being. But thank you, anyhow.'

Tazencius looked puzzled; then he laughed. 'I'll take that in the spirit in which I think it was meant,' he said. 'But I still don't see us ever being friends.'

'Unnecessary,' Poldarn replied. 'I just want to keep out of everybody's way.'

As they walked back down a long, high-roofed cloister, she frowned at him. 'You were rude,' she said, 'talking to him like that.'

'I'm sorry,' Poldarn said. 'It's the only way I know how to talk to people.'

'No, it isn't,' she replied. 'But it doesn't matter. I think the best thing would be if you stay out of his way as much as possible.'

'That'd suit me.'

She walked on a little further, then stopped and looked at him. 'Tell me the truth,' she said. 'Did you really come to Torcea in order to murder him?'

Poldarn laughed and shook his head. 'Of course not,' he said. 'Why on earth would I want to do a thing like that?'

She shrugged. 'Because he's a very bad man who's done some appalling things.'

'None of my business,' Poldarn replied promptly. 'Anything he's done to me I've forgotten. And things he's done to other people are nothing to do with me. I may be a lot of bad things myself, but at least I'm not an idealist.'

She laughed, for some reason. 'Nobody could ever accuse you of that,' she said. 'So why did you come?'

He shrugged. 'I got sick to death of blundering about in the dark,' he said. 'People would insist on telling me things, but only because they hoped I'd be useful if I was nudged along, one way or the other. That man Cleapho, who apparently is someone I went to school with: he's the one who wants me to kill your father. All I wanted was to find out the truth-not because I want my past back, I'd have to be crazy to want that; but I figured that if I came here and gave myself up, then either your father would kill me or not, but the chances were that at least he'd tell me the truth.'

'Daddy telling the truth,' she mused. 'No, I don't see that.'

'I do,' Poldarn said. 'Because he knows it'd hurt me more than anything else he could do. The clever trick I'd have played on him is that not knowing, now that I've been told all these things that may be lies or may be true, hurts even more.' He breathed out slowly. 'Perhaps I wanted him to kill me,' he added. 'Put me out of my misery, as they say. There comes a time when holding still and being caught begins to have a definite appeal.'

'I never figured you for a quitter,' she said.

'Really?' He smiled bleakly. 'Maybe it was just that I couldn't remember ever having been to Torcea, and everybody ought to see the capital once in their lives.'

She thought for a moment. 'Do you want me to tell you?' she said.

'No,' he said firmly. 'I've changed my mind since I've been here.'

Cold look. 'Because of me.'

He nodded. 'And the things that come with you, of course, such as clean clothes and regular meals. The plain fact is, when it comes to whether I live or die, I really don't have particularly strong views one way or the other. I'm-empty,' he said. 'Describes it pretty well. I might as well go on living as not, and that's about it.'

She looked at him, then looked away. 'Well, do that, then,' she said. 'I feel a bit like that right now; but it matters to me that I don't lose. I need to get what I want and then hang on to it, or else I feel I've been beaten by somebody. Pretty poor justification for the things I've had to do, but then, I'm not accountable to anybody.' She looked past him, over his shoulder. 'It feels like it's been a very long day and I'm very tired and just want to fall into bed and go to sleep; so, as long as I can make my unilateral declaration of victory without anybody contradicting me, I'll settle for what I've got and not worry about anything else. Does that make any sense to you?'

'Perfect sense,' he said. 'What did he mean, "the new man"?'

She was still looking away, so he couldn't see her expression. 'The man who took over the job you were doing.'

'You mean, when I lost my memory?'

'Shortly before that.'

Inside the cloister was the usual small garden: a square of green lawn, four formal flower beds, diamond-shaped, with a stone fountain in the middle. A single crow dropped out of the air, its approach masked by the cloister columns, so that it looked as if it had come out of nowhere. It settled on the lip of the fountain and pecked lightly at the surface of the water, as if looking at its reflection. Poldarn, who knew about crows and their behaviour, guessed it was a scout, sent on ahead of the main party, to see if it was safe and if there was anything there worth eating.

The guests are starting to arrive, he thought; the Amathy house, and whoever else is coming to dinner. Possibly, Feron Amathy himself would be there-Feron Amathy, who Cleapho had tried to persuade him was the most evil man in the world. That'll make three of us, then, Poldarn thought. Just like the song, which suddenly he could rememberTwo crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree Two crows sitting in a tall thin tree And along came the Dodger, and he made up three.

He felt better for remembering that; a half-remembered song is like an itch you can't reach, and its incomplete pattern rattles around in your head, the broken parts spinning round in an infuriating cycle that gradually drives out everything else. He had no idea what it meant, or who the Dodger was supposed to be, or why they sang the same, fairly uninspiring, song both here in the Empire and far away, at Haldersness. Presumably at some distant time, someone had made up the song to commemorate some important event; the reason for the song had long since been forgotten but the song remained behind, like the head of an arrow deep in a wound when the shaft has been broken off. Memory had put the song there, and then been lost, leaving only its barbed and rusty sting behind. (The bee dies when it stings, its guts pulled out; the sting remains in the wound. Probably religion; everything else is.)