Memory

Tazencius looked at him. 'Very nicely put,' he said, 'but what do you want?'

Poldarn grinned. 'I'd like to go now, please.'

Long, awkward silence; then Tazencius said, 'Fine. Can't say I'll be sorry to see the back of you. Do you want to take that woman with you?' He made a vague gesture in Copis's direction. Poldarn shook his head. 'No, thank you,' he said. 'I suppose I ought to care what becomes of her, but I don't really.' He hesitated, frowned. 'I'll tell you what, though,' he said. 'If you want an intermediary between my people and yours, you could send her and-' He paused, trying to shape the words, like an engineer struggling to work from a vague verbal specification of something he'd never seen and couldn't understand. 'Her and our son,' he said. 'Send them home to my country. The boy's the rightful heir to Haldersness-you don't know where that is, but it doesn't matter, my people will know. You want to know what I want? That's it. The boy's still young enough to be raised as one of them. The thought of the poor little bastard growing up here makes me feel sick. Will you do that for me?'

Tazencius smiled. 'Actually, I will,' he said. 'I have scholars who know your language, I'll find a way. After all, I did it before, when I restored you to your doting grandfather. Is he still alive?'

Poldarn shook his head. 'I haven't got a clue who's in charge there now,' he said. 'But send them to Asburn the smith, in the Haldersness region. He'll see them right.' He frowned, as if making sure that there wasn't anything he'd forgotten; then he realised what he was doing, and smiled at the irony. 'That's all,' he said. Then he turned his head a little. 'Sorry,' he said, to Noja or whatever her name was. 'One thing I can guarantee, you'll be better off without me.'

'I know,' she said. 'But that's no consolation.'

He turned away from her-easily, as if from a stranger-and scanned the Amathy house people for someone who looked like a leader. But they all looked the same, like crows in a flock. 'Sorry,' he repeated. 'You'll have to find someone else. You couldn't have trusted me, in any case. Believe me; I've known myself for over three years now, and I wouldn't trust me further than I can spit.'

Nobody said anything. He got the impression that they were glad he was leaving, though on balance they'd have preferred it if he'd been lying on the floor with his neck cut through. But they were pragmatists-they knew they couldn't always have everything they wanted. One of them did call out, 'Where will you go?' but Poldarn didn't answer. Only because he didn't know. He picked up the backsabre, backflipped it absent-mindedly a couple of times, and walked towards the door. All the way there, across a desert of black and white marble tiles, he waited for the pressure on the perimeter of his circle. But it didn't come. No more guards wanted to die, nobody hated him enough to risk the moment of religion as the curved blade swung. It's a special kind of hate, he told himself, when they don't mind letting you live just so long as you go away for ever, so they can pretend you never existed; so they can cut you out of memory, like a child making dolls from folded paper.

When he got tired of walking the streets (the ludicrous luxury shoes rubbed his toes until he pulled them off and threw them away, leaving him a clown in red velvet and cloth of gold, barefoot on the sharp cobbles) he flopped down under the eaves of a shuttered workshop. Above his head he could see a thin plate sign swinging wearily, a black shadow of an anvil against the dark blue sky; his instincts had led him to a smithy, as befitted a hereditary Master of Haldersness. He laughed and stretched out his sore feet, wishing the smith was there so he could beg leave to soak his poor toes in the black, oily water of the slack tub. He closed his eyes, daydreaming about the morning: the smith finding him there asleep, taking pity; casual conversation between strangers, a chance remark-I used to be a bit of a smith myself back home-leading to an offer of work, at least until after the fair, when the rush dies down; work, a livelihood, a home. He was, after all, a skilled man. Give him a good fire, an anvil and a hammer and there wasn't anything he couldn't make.

Eyes tight shut, he smiled; and in his daydream the fire burst up through the hearth, melting the tue-iron into glowing red slag that gushed onto the floor and filled the city, while the sky clogged with fluttering cinders of black ash, wheeling and screaming to each other as they searched for a place to pitch, a beanfield or a battlefield, somewhere beside a river where the God of Fire and Death was waiting for them, feeder and murderer of crows. He saw himself at the anvil, holding his own shadow down in the fire until it stopped shrieking and struggling, until it glowed cherry red, freed from its memories and ready for the hammer; he saw himself draw it down, jump it up and upset it, flatten and fuller and swage it into shape and then plunge it into the water, a little pool fringed with ferns under a waterfall; he looked down, and saw gripped in the tongs his own reflection, a face melted and cast into a blank; and the blank's mouth opened and said, 'My name is Feron Amathy, among others,' before he let go with the tongs and allowed it to sink.

But the morning came, the sun came up cherry red out of the Bay (which was wrong, since the sea should have quenched it) and the smith arrived for work and told him to get lost before he had the dogs set on him. He doubted very much whether the smith had a dog, but one thing he had learned was when he wasn't welcome.

Instead he wandered down towards the docks; and on the way he saw something lying in the street, a bundle of rags and a distinctive broad-brimmed leather hat, and next to it a squashed wicker cage. Two crows were floating overhead. They circled a couple of times, turned in to the slight breeze to slow themselves down, opened their wings and glided in to pitch. He came up close; the crows lifted their heads and looked at him, as though they recognised him in spite of his ludicrously long body and lack of wings; then they hauled themselves sadly into the air and flapped away, like tired men sailing home.

The old woman was still alive, though not by much. 'Hello,' she said, trying to smile; but he guessed her face was nearly cold by now, as the metal grows cold and becomes too brittle to be worked.

'What happened?' he asked, kneeling beside her.

'It was all my own silly fault,' she said. 'I was crossing the road and I didn't look, and a cart ran me over. It doesn't hurt much, though.'

For some reason, he couldn't begin to understand, he could feel tears on his cheeks; the first time he could remember the sensation since his newly grown skin had become so sensitive. 'Your cage,' he said. 'It's broken.'

'Oh, it's all right,' she said cheerfully, 'it's quite all right. I let them go, you see, as soon as you very kindly got me out of that dreadful prison. And now they're here, and everything's going to be all right.'

Poldarn found it hard to breathe. 'Well,' he said, 'I'm glad to hear it.'

'It's such a relief,' the old woman said. 'I was so worried about them, all the way here from Morevich, such a terrible journey.' With a ferocious effort, like a man drawing an over-heavy bow, she managed to complete the smile. 'I expect you think I'm just a silly old woman, but I won't forget how kind you've been to me. If it wasn't for you, you know, I'd never have made it here, and everything would have been for nothing. But now everything's been put to rights, and that's all that matters.'

He winced; the pain of not being able to do anything-But she reached out her hand and touched his arm, comforting him. 'I'd like you to know about it,' she said. 'It doesn't matter, of course, because nobody will remember, but I'd like you to know, because you'll understand. It was my son, you see. My poor boy, Elaos. They took him away to be a priest, and then they killed him. Well, that was never right, no matter what they said. So I knew, they had to be punished, and things had to be put right.'