K Parker - Colours in the Steel

‘This evening, then, after dinner. If you call at the side gate, I’ll make sure I open the door personally.’

‘Thank you.’

Gannadius trotted away, the soles of his fashionable slippers clacking on the flagstones. A curious man, Alexius reflected. He had been Archimandrite of the City Academy for seven years, a record tenure for an office that was generally regarded as a tedious preliminary formality on the highly structured road to the Patriarchate; yet in all that time he had never displayed any inclination to accept promotion, let alone scheme and contrive for it. He could have had the Patriarchate of the Canea for the asking three years ago, but preferred to allow his own archdeacon, whom he particularly loathed and despised, to advance on the vacant post like an invading army and virtually take it by direct frontal assault. And yet to all appearances he was the very model of the archetypal career man; younger son of a powerful city family, owning substantial estates and investments inherited from his mother’s family and assiduously courted by the small weevil-like men who spend their lives under the flat stones of district politics. Alexius shook his head; perhaps the cold winds and the sea frets of the Canea hadn’t appealed to him. Or perhaps he was an honest man at heart. Curiously enough, Alexius was inclined to believe the latter.

Accordingly, Alexius slipped out while the evening meal was still raging below his cell, and made his way cautiously through the streets of the middle city to the northern stair. The gate was locked for the night but the porters knew him well enough; since the inhabitants of the upper city were never seen, the Patriarch was the closest thing the city had to a visible civic figurehead. For a man doing his best to cross the middle city incognito, this was a serious drawback; nevertheless, Alexius eventually managed to reach the City Academy without being either recognised or robbed, and rapped on the side gate with the pommel of his walking-sword.

‘Ah, there you are,’ said Gannadius through the sliding panel in the door. ‘I was beginning to wonder if you were coming.’

The Archimandrite’s lodging was about five times the size of Alexius’ own cell. There were valuable tapestries on the walls, five extremely fine carved and gilded chairs, a curtained bed on a low dais, several quite beautiful chests and coffers of well-figured walnut, a high desk inlaid with hunting scenes in mother of pearl, a footstool of highly polished whalebone and a handsome silver-gilt wine service; all quite new and smelling strongly of camphor and beeswax. Alexius had no doubt that his colleague would have been able to give an accurate up-to-date valuation, sale price or replacement cost, for each individual item or the whole as a job lot.

‘You disapprove,’ Gannadius said equably.

Alexius shook his head. ‘Not in the least,’ he replied. ‘You live in the style appropriate to a great temporal lord, which of course you are. Myself, I’d find it all too distracting, but only a savage disapproves of beauty per se . And I’m sure you appreciate it all far more than the dried-fruit merchants and anchovy barons who need to fill their houses with such things simply to prove to themselves that they’re now men of stature.’

‘You disapprove, nonetheless. Personally, I’d gladly trade all of this clutter for the mosaics on your ceiling. But I doubt whether they’re for sale.’

Alexius smiled. ‘One day you may well be sleeping under them as a matter of course,’ he replied. ‘Or do you still maintain that you have no ambitions in that direction?’

Gannadius shrugged. ‘It’s more a question of whether I’m fitted to do the job,’ he replied. ‘And the fact is that I’m not. Not yet, at any rate.’

‘That’s a very honest reply to a rather snide remark. Mind you, I’m not saying for a moment that I believe you.’

‘Just because a remark is honest doesn’t necessarily mean it’s sincere,’ Gannadius replied with a grin. ‘Shall we stop fencing round each other and get to business?’

‘That would be best,’ Alexius said, and he told Gannadius what had happened, leaving nothing out. When he’d finished, the Archimandrite sat for a while in his rather magnificent chair, rubbing the bridge of his small, blunt nose with the forefinger of his left hand.

‘I think I see what’s happened,’ he said. ‘In the event, the curse you laid was not the right one.’

‘It wasn’t the curse the girl intended. Since it was her curse, and I was just the instrument by which she laid it, it could well be significant that I got it wrong. The result will have been an error in the Principle.’

‘Quite.’ Gannadius nodded. ‘In essence, you’ve taken a gap in nature and put into it something that doesn’t fit. You are now having to contend with the effects of the disruption.’

Alexius nodded slowly. ‘It makes sense, I agree. What I’m not sure about is how to put it right.’

‘Oh, but that’s simple,’ his colleague interrupted. ‘You must return to the moment and put it right. If you take off the wrong curse and replace it with the right one-’

Alexius held up his hand. ‘Naturally, I’ve tried that,’ he said. ‘The only problem is that I can’t. After all, it’s not my curse, so I can’t lift it. All I can do is put a shield around the confounded man to prevent the curse working; and even that’s proving difficult. Every time I’ve tried, I’ve found it gone again by the next day. I really don’t relish the prospect of having to raise new shields around this fellow every day for the rest of my life.’

‘It’s a difficult problem,’ Gannadius said. ‘All I can suggest is that we try it together. And before you say anything, I quite agree that there’s no evidence for assuming that our joint efforts will be any more successful than your solitary attempts. What we really need, of course, is the girl.’

Alexius sighed. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you there,’ he said. ‘Still, if you’re willing to join me, I think it must be worth trying – provided you’re prepared to take the risk. I can’t recommend the state you’re likely to be left in if it backfires.’

‘Ah, well.’ Gannadius shrugged. ‘There’s no gain without risk. You forget, I haven’t named my price yet.’

‘A permanent view of my mosaics, presumably,’ Alexius replied. ‘I’m not sure I can make that promise; and besides, you’re about the same age as I am. There’s no guarantee whatsoever that you’ll live to collect your fee.’ He smiled. ‘I’m assuming you’re not planning on taking steps to collect it early.’

Gannadius looked genuinely offended. ‘Actually, no,’ he said. ‘If I’d wanted the Patriarchate, be sure I’d have taken it by now; or at the very least I’d be coughing and blowing my nose in the Canea. My price is far more esoteric than that. I want you to tell me the seventh aspect of the Principle.’

In spite of himself, Alexius was shocked. Knowledge of the seventh aspect was a secret shared only by the Patriarch of Perimadeia, the Primate of the Holy Pirates and the Abbot of the Academy of the Silver Spear; in effect, it was what defined high office in the Order. It was also the one secret that had always been kept, no matter how grave the circumstances or how venial the office-holder. ‘Why?’ he said quietly.

Gannadius frowned. ‘Because I want to know,’ he replied. ‘Is that so remarkable? Whether you believe it or not, I joined the Order to learn how to understand the Principle, or what little of it there is that can be understood. Logically, I need to know all seven aspects if I’m even to begin my studies.’

‘I think I believe you,’ Alexius said. ‘That doesn’t make your request any less offensive.’