‘Do my ears really stick out like that?’
‘Yes.’ The painter dipped his brush in solvent and wiped it on a scrap of rag. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘just so happens I’ve got this really nice set of laudatory verses, five stanzas of elegaics, cancelled order, dirt cheap. Just go nicely round the edges, look. Two quarters.’
‘No.’
‘Trouble with some people is, they fail to recognise the vital importance of positive marketing.’
‘Tragic.’
The painter sighed and cut the beeswax round the neck of a jar of varnish. ‘How about a set of five identical miniatures to hang up in places where the rich and fashionable love to congregate? Gesture of goodwill, call it three quarters?’
‘You can call it what you like so long as you don’t expect me to pay for it.’
‘The miniatures and the laudatory verses for seven eighths, and I’ll throw in half a yard of picture cord.’
(-From the ropewalks, three squares over to the west, where they stretch the skeins right across the square on sliding wooden pins; another trade, another hundred or so men whose lives extend just so far and no further.)
‘Thanks, but no. Finished yet?’
‘Give me a chance, will you?’ the painter groaned. ‘If you’re not careful it smears for a pastime.’
And of course, Loredan reflected as the painter daubed on the varnish, there’s far more to it than that. On each of these busy tradesmen depends another complex system; wives and families to feed and clothe, children needing to be taught their proper skills, have husbands or apprenticeships found for them; rent to be paid, guild fees and licences and taxes to be met, parents and parents-in-law to be supported in their declining years, burial clubs and friendly societies to be given their dues. By these subsystems each component is locked into the whole so fast that he dare not stir out of his place, so that every part of the machine needs to run smoothly for fear of destroying everything. Curious to think that in other parts of the world, people somehow managed to live without all of this. They were, of course, savages, little better than beasts, creatures who never in all their lives had their portrait painted or took a case to the courts of law; which was why they had to be kept back where they belonged, out of sight of the walls and gates of the Triple City, just in case a busy man on his way to work in the morning might chance to see them and wonder just why in hell he bothered.
‘Finished,’ the painter announced. ‘Still be wet for an hour or so, mind. You can take it now if you like, but you’ll get dust in the varnish, sure as eggs.’
‘I see,’ Loredan replied, nodding. ‘How’d it be if I left it here for a couple of hours and then came back?’
‘Fine,’ said the painter, wiping his hands on a hank of flax. ‘That’ll be five quarters, please.’
Two hours with nothing to do. Ordinarily, he’d find a tavern (when you have time to kill, it makes sense to take it to a purpose-built abattoir), but he remembered that he didn’t do that sort of thing any more. No money to waste on wine, no drinking in the middle of the day and sleeping it off in the afternoon. Well, then; he could walk back to the Schools, ask if his piece of parchment had been drawn up, be told to come back in an hour or so and still have time to get back to the signwriters’ district before the varnish was dry. Instead, he strolled lazily out in the direction of the Drovers’ Bridge, a part of the city he didn’t often visit. Hectically successful trainers don’t have time to go sightseeing during working hours, so he might as well make the most of it while he could.
‘’Scuse me.’
He looked round, then down. A small child, female, slightly grubby, was pulling his trouser leg. He sighed and felt in his belt pouch for a coin.
‘’Scuse me,’ the child said, ‘but you’re Bardas Loredan.’
Don’t blame yourself, kid, it isn’t your fault. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘How do you know who I am?’
‘You’re an advocate, aren’t you?’ The child said the long word like a chicken laying a hexagonal egg: slowly, carefully and with a triumphant flourish at the end. ‘You’re the best in the world, my dad says.’
‘Was,’ Loredan replied, frowning. ‘What’s your dad do, then? Is he an advocate?’
The girl shook her head. ‘He makes barrels,’ she said. ‘But he likes watching law. He takes me to see law, sometimes.’
‘Does he? How… That’s nice.’
The girl nodded. ‘He took me to see you yesterday when you killed that man.’ She beamed. ‘I like going to see law, because my dad always buys me a cake to eat when I’m watching.’
‘You like cakes, then?’
‘Cakes are my favourite.’
He fished a copper half out of his pouch. ‘Then why don’t you go and buy yourself a nice cake right now? You’d like that.’
The girl shook her head vigorously. ‘My dad says I shouldn’t take cakes from strange men.’
Loredan sighed. ‘Your dad is quite right,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think it applies to being given money and sent to buy your own. Go on, shoo.’
The girl thought for a moment. ‘I could go to my dad’s shop and ask him if it’s all right,’ she said. ‘You wait here.’
‘Tell you what,’ Loredan suggested. ‘You go and find your dad, and take the money with you to show him. How’d that be?’
The girl hesitated, then nodded. ‘All right,’ she said.
As soon as she was safely out of sight, Loredan hurried across the street and dived into the nearest large building, which happened to be the city arsenal. With any luck, she wouldn’t follow him in there.
Over ten years since he’d last been in the arsenal. He winced – first meeting Garidas, now this; the damned army was following him around today like a hungry dog. It didn’t appear to have changed much since he’d come here with his uncle to collect twenty barrels of arrows, frequently promised and never delivered and finally having to be fetched personally. (Why was it they’d had to tussle with the Ordnance Department for every last hobnail, bow cover and biscuit?) Still a hot, dark, noisy place, with sweaty backs gleaming in the forgelight, sparks flying unexpectedly and sizzling on bare skin, huge billets of metal in transit to be sidestepped, incomprehensible shouts from men high up on scaffolding towers, the clanging of dropped tools, the thump of mechanical hammers seeping up through the paved floor. Boiling glue, burning fat, smoke, sawdust and the distinctive smell of freshly cut metal, the squeal of badly lubricated drills and lathe tools, the scudding rhythm of treadles and the scouring sound of hard-driven grindstones, the clatter of ball-peen hammers beating out sheet metal over wooden forms, the fizz of tempering. In another mood, he’d find it an exciting place; there was no lack of vitality in the midst of all this creation.
‘You.’
‘Me?’ He glanced round but couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.
‘Yes, you. What d’you want?’
Loredan grinned sheepishly. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘just looking around. I didn’t mean to-’
‘Then bloody well go and look around somewhere else. This isn’t a park.’
Still he couldn’t see who was talking to him; not that he particularly wanted to carry on the conversation. ‘Sorry,’ he repeated and headed for the door, to find his way blocked by a cart full of charcoal. He walked round it and found himself eye to eye with a short, slight young man who was holding a billet of red-hot iron in a pair of tongs about six inches from his face.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
The young man quickly moved the iron out of the way. ‘My fault,’ he said in a familiar accent. ‘I didn’t see you with the cart in the way.’
Plainsman; all he needed. Haven’t seen a plainsman in a very long time. Never particularly wanted to see one again. The flaming sword waggling about a few inches from his nose didn’t improve matters, either. He smiled bleakly and edged his way past, not stopping until he was out in the fresh air again.
He wandered for a while until he came to the city gate; if he was going to spend the day rubbing his own nose in his inglorious past, he might as well make a complete job of it. He climbed up onto the wall and stood for a long while, thinking in general terms about a great many things, all of them now past mending. Then he found a tavern.