K Parker: Colours in the Steel

The block Loredan lived in was not one of these.

‘Seventh floor,’ Loredan said, leaning against the door-frame to catch his breath.

‘Right,’ Athli replied through gritted teeth. The weight of his arm was crushing her shoulder, and he kept treading on her feet.

The stairwell was dark – some ‘islands’ had lamps burning on the stairs at all hours of the day and night; not this one – and the stairs were narrow and slippery. It was a long climb.

‘Key?’

‘There isn’t one,’ he replied. ‘Kick the door, it sticks.’

Loredan’s home turned out to be bare, cold and immaculately clean. There was a bed and a table, a finely carved chair with dragons’ heads for arms, a once-valuable threadbare tapestry on the far wall; one cup, one pewter plate, one spoon, a large book box with a heavy padlock, a clothes-press, a chopping block with a knife lying across it, the blade worn foil-thin with careful sharpening; a spare pair of shoes and a leather hat hanging from a nail driven into the wall; a pottery lamp; a jar with the monogram of some wine shop embossed in the side; one spare blanket.

‘All right,’ Athli asked. ‘What do you spend your money on?’

Loredan groaned and flopped onto the bed. ‘There should be some wine in the jug,’ he said. ‘And bandages in the press.’

Athli watched while he bathed the wound, swabbed it out with wine from the jug and wound himself up in bandages with a skill that clearly came from practice. ‘What about something to eat?’ she asked.

Loredan turned his head towards the chopping block. ‘Apparently not,’ he said. ‘I’ll go down to the bakery a bit later on. Thanks for the help.’

Athli shrugged and said nothing. She had blood all over her clerk’s gown. Loredan was making it clear he expected her to leave now. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asked awkwardly. Loredan shook his head.

‘When’s the next one?’ he asked.

‘Three weeks.’

‘The charcoal people?’

Athli nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Any idea who they’ve got yet?’

‘I haven’t heard anything definite,’ Athli lied.

‘Indefinitely, then.’

She pulled a face. ‘Alvise,’ she said. ‘Perhaps. Like I said, it’s not confirmed.’

‘Alvise. I see,’ Loredan sighed; he looked very, very tired. ‘Looks like our boys offended the opposition good and proper, if they’re prepared to lay out that sort of money.’

What a dismal epitaph, Athli reflected. What she said was, ‘Probably just a rumour, to make our boys settle out of court. He’d cost them twice the sum in issue.’

Loredan shrugged painfully. ‘Matter of principle, quite probably. Ah, well, we’ll see.’

Athli opened the door. ‘If you like, I can drop by later on, make sure you’re all right.’

‘I’ll be fine. Thanks again.’

Athli could feel the blood seeping through her gown onto her skin; cold and clammy, like sweat. ‘Be seeing you, then,’ she said, and closed the door behind her.

Loredan listened to the clicking of her footsteps on the stairs; then he rolled uncomfortably onto his back and lay staring at the long crack in the ceiling. In three weeks, with this messy cut just starting to knit together properly (if he was lucky and it stayed fresh) he’d have to stand up in court against Ziani Alvise, the Advocate General and Imperial Champion. There was better fencers; four of them, maybe five, none of whom was Bardas Loredan. Strange, he reflected, how calmly I’ve accepted advance notice of my own death. A nod of the head, a wry face, as if to say, Well, that’s that, then ; two lines of script cut on a plain headstone-

There were, Loredan knew perfectly well, no gods; and if there were any, they lived far away in less enlightened lands, well out of earshot. Nevertheless, he prayed; If I get out of this, I’ll pack it in for good, retire, set up a school or something . And if there were gods, he knew they wouldn’t believe him, because they’d heard it all before. And here he still was, an advocate of ten years’ call, a man who showed promise while still young but failed to live up to it, and then simply failed to live.

Perhaps the charcoal people would settle, after all. Men like Alvise only fight one in ten of the cases they’re retained for, because no litigant likes to go into court when there’s money at stake knowing for certain he’s going to lose. But the charcoal cartel weren’t the settling kind; he’d met them, recognised them at once. They were the sort of men who get themselves tangled up in the most desperate messes through their own pig-headed greed, and then react with astonishment and fury when the inevitable disaster follows. He could picture them, striding out of the court with their heavy gowns flapping round their ankles, muttering bitterly about the incompetence of their late advocate and the unfairness of the legal system, and swearing great oaths that they’d rather be skinned alive than pay one penny of the bill for such a badly handled case.

I could always back out, he thought. There is always that possibility. It would make perfectly good sense; I’d be finished in the profession, but so what? I’d still be alive. I could do something else.

He grinned, and rolled over onto his side. Of course, he could never withdraw from a case just because he was afraid, or even because he knew he was going to die. It was one of those things that just don’t happen; if it did, the whole system would collapse and then where would everyone be? It was, after all, the solidity of its commercial law that had made Perimadeia the greatest trading city in the world. And besides, you didn’t become an advocate in order to live for ever.

He had decided, many years ago, that the last thing he wanted to do was live for ever. Twelve years later, here he was; and if he hadn’t done much, he’d done enough. Traditionally, a fencer’s coffin is borne by six of his colleagues in the profession, wearing their collegiate robes and with empty scabbards on their belts, while on the coffin lid rides the deceased’s second-best sword – his best sword, of course, having reverted to the winner – and a single white rose, symbolic of Justice. In practice it was rather different, of course; the coffin rode on the shoulders of six men who’d had the sense to leave the profession early and take up pallbearing instead, the sword was hired from the undertaker and, somehow, it always seemed to rain. He’d stood beside a lot of muddy graves when he was younger. These days he didn’t bother to go.

Just my luck that the Guelan should break right when I need it most.

A thought occurred to him and he leant over, groaning, and groped under the bed until his fingers made contact with a coarse woolen bundle. He pulled it out. It was garlanded with cobwebs and grey with dust, but the knot fell away easily, leaving him holding a battered black scabbard with a plain brown steel hilt projecting out of it. Now here’s a thing, he said to himself; I haven’t given it a thought in ten years. But why not? It can’t make any difference, after all.

Twelve years ago, a young man already old after three years in the foreign wars had joined the fencing school by the Protector’s Gate, paying his fees in ready money from a fat purse and bringing with him a cheap, plain sword with no maker’s name on the ricasso. Once he’d finished the course, there was enough coin left in the purse to buy a genuine Guelan, and the cheap, plain sword had been consigned to second best, third best, emergency use only and finally a blanket under a bed on the seventh floor of Island Thirty-nine. It wasn’t, properly speaking, a lawyer’s sword at all; just a military blade from the arsenal ground down to reduce the weight, roughly re-tempered and fitted with a plain turned grip. It had killed a lot of men before it lost weight, but since then it had been used for school work and practice, never once being called upon to carry the weight of a man’s life. It was worth a quarter and a half, if that. He’d never liked it much. It didn’t owe him anything. It would do.