Poldarn couldn't help remembering the burning of Deymeson, and Copis with a sword in her hands, straightening up into the front guard. So maybe it had just been something he'd said 'She's a nutcase, all right,' someone else said, 'but it's the Mad Monk who's the really dangerous one; because he's mad, sure enough, but not rolling-on-the-floor mad, that's not really a problem so long as you stay clear. He's more the ninety-per-cent sane type. They're the ones you got to look out for, because one minute you're standing there talking to them all nice and pleasant about the weather or the war or something, and next minute they'll pull out a knife and try and chop your bollocks off. Never know where you are with them, see.'
Nobody seemed inclined to comment on that for a while. Then someone else (Sineysri, from the mould-scraping crew) coughed nervously and said that the Mad Monk and the crazy bitch were one thing, but at least they weren't anything like as bad as Feron Amathy. 'And if you ask me,' he went on, 'absolutely the worst bloody thing they could do now is what they're planning to do, by all accounts: give Feron Amathy the job of sorting those two out.'
General mutter of agreement. 'Total disaster,' someone said. 'Those religious nutters prowling about up one end of the country, the Amathy house on the loose down the other, and us poor buggers caught in the middle. All it'd take would be for the raiders to show up, and it'd be damn well near the end of the world.'
'That's right.' Someone Poldarn knew, but couldn't put a name to: thin voice, slight speech impediment. 'If you ask me, old Tazencius has got the right idea for once with these tube things.'
'Sure,' someone interrupted. 'If only we can make bastards work.'
Muted laughter. 'That's right,' Thin-voice went on, 'and that'll only be when that little short bugger pushes off and lets Spenno alone to figure it out for them. But if it all works out, I reckon it's not the raiders they'll be wanting to point the tubes at, it's the Amathy house, followed by the Mad Monk. Then we might be getting somewhere at last.'
'You say that,' growled a deep voice from the dark edge, where Poldarn couldn't see. 'But you know exactly what'll happen, soon as they hand those tubes over to some general or other-assuming they do what they reckon they'll do, and don't just go off phut like a old ewe farting. They'll hand them over to some general and tell him, go fight the raiders or Feron Amathy or whatever; and he'll turn right round and stick 'em up Tazencius's arse, and next day we'll have a new emperor. And so on, over and over. Truth is, there's nobody in this empire you'd trust as far as you could sneeze 'em, not since Cronan died. No, the simple fact is, it's time for us here in Tulice to say enough's enough, boot the garrisons out of Falcata and Torneviz, and get on with it ourselves. Same for the folks in Morevich, and the Two Rivers country. Let those arseholes in Torcea play their games in their own back yard, and see how they like it.'
The discussion got lively after that, and Poldarn decided that it might be sensible to take his toasted cheese and eat it somewhere else, just in case Brigadier Muno or one of his staff were hanging about somewhere in the shadows, learning a few illuminating facts about the loyalties of some of the workers engaged on his last-best-hope project.
Brigadier Muno: if he'd got it straight (he sat down under a cart, one of the monsters they used for hauling the finished bells-huge wheels, plenty of room under them to sit upright, and the dropped sides kept out the night breeze), then this Brigadier Muno was the uncle of the sad young cavalry officer he'd saved from looters and scavengers in the aftermath of some damn-fool battle or other, when he'd come across him lying all bloody beside a river, surrounded by dead men. Whether that memory was an asset or a liability he wasn't entirely sure. The officer he'd carried on his back as far as the man's unit's camp had been properly grateful at the time; but now he was a very grand general, and his attitude to previous benefactors might have warped a little, like sawn planks left lying in the wet. A lot would depend, for a start, on whether Muno Silsny recognised him if and when he saw him again; if not, and if the story of the river rescue was tolerably well known, Poldarn could turn up at the great man's tent only to find he was the fifteenth person that week to have come forward claiming to be the general's personal angel of mercy. That could be enough to embarrass a man to death.
And, since it appeared that he was in a contemplative mood and thinking about old times: what if Gain Aciava had been telling the truth…?
That old question again. It was beginning to lose its meaning, like a word endlessly repeated until it became a mere sound. Besides, Poldarn knew the answer, and entirely unhelpful it was, too: Some of what Gain Aciava told me was almost certainly true.
But that was only a starting point. A better question was: What did Gain Aciava want from me? It had to be something to do with Copis; because she was a celebrity now, a household name-the mad woman, the crazy bitch. (And how had she got that way?) But he couldn't bring himself to believe in any of that. Not her style, madness; she'd stood and watched him kill people-soldiers, two successive gods-in-the-cart-and the only aspect of it that had seemed to bother her was the inconvenience, the interference with her plans. He'd seen her angry, but that was something else entirely. Even at Deymeson, she'd been entirely rational when she'd tried to kill him.
If their child was still alive, he'd be about three years old now. He or she.
So what use would Poldarn be to Gain Aciava in some matter relating to Copis? To use against her, presumably, since she was a public enemy and therefore liable to be worth money, or money's worth. But in what way? She felt quite strongly about him, for sure, but Aciava seemed to know all about the terms on which they'd parted, so it wasn't likely that his role was bait for a trap (unless she hated him enough to take foolish risks to get at him, which he doubted). It'd help, of course, if he knew what she was really playing at.
Then again, it was possible that the fall of Deymeson and the ruin of the order had unhinged Copis's mind. She must have believed in it, loved it, to do what she'd done with him, to him, on its behalf. He could almost believe that, until he remembered her eyes. (Cold, bright, always full of life, always devoid of feeling; he couldn't see her going mad for the fall of the order, just as he couldn't see her dying for it. Living for it, yes, even if her life had become an intolerable burden. But Copis wasn't the dying sort.)
A dog was peering at Poldarn through the spokes of the cartwheel, as if he was some strange new animal never hitherto seen in those parts. He reached about for a stone to throw at it, but couldn't find one.
The sensible thing, of course, would be to find Gain Aciava and ask him. Quite likely he'd only get lies or evasions, but any kind of data was better than none at all. But that was out of the question-all leave cancelled, nobody to leave the premises without written permission, deserters hunted down without mercy. Maybe Poldarn could have written Aciava a letter, if he had any idea where to send it and some way of getting it out past the brigadier's soldiers. Instead, all he could do was wait and see what snippets of information he could scrounge out of his own dreams. Hardly scientific. Poldarn stretched out his legs as far as they'd go, closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep; and-to his intense disgust upon waking-dreamed an entirely unhelpful dream about haymaking at Haldersness when he'd been seven.