Loredan was pleased with how it went, each wedge in turn opening the crack a little further, splitting the wood along his chosen line and releasing the previous wedge until it could be lifted free without effort. Curious, he mused, the way my life’s become a sort of celebration of mechanical advantage. It’s enough to fool a man into thinking he’s in control of things. The final wedge, driven in diagonally, split the last couple of inches and the two halves of the log rolled apart on either side of his synthetic line, as neat and consistent as a proposition in algebra. He nodded, and handed the axe to the boy. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘Split the halves into quarters. And if you cock it up, you’re walking home.’
The boy looked at him resentfully, then stooped down to gather the wedges. ‘I’ll bet you didn’t get it right the first time you did it,’ he said.
Loredan laughed. ‘As a matter of fact, I did,’ he said, as the boy knelt down and studied the timber. ‘It was the second time when I wrecked the stave, chipped the wedge and broke the axe. It was two days before I dared show my face in the house again. So think on.’
‘Huh.’ Loredan watched the boy scrutinising the grain with all the fierce, brief concentration of youth, and suppressed a grin. It was like stepping back and watching himself, as if in a dream. He could remember that same furious indecision, the frustration of not allowing himself to ask advice. Look for the flaw, he wanted to say, there’s always a weak spot in every billet, it’s just a matter of knowing where to look. But he managed not to; let the boy work it out for himself, and then he’d know it for ever.
‘Got it,’ the boy said. He looked up and saw the stump of the tree, then slid the billet along the ground until it was jammed against it. Loredan nodded his approval, but the boy wasn’t looking. That was a good sign, too.
‘This time,’ he said, ‘for crying out loud don’t bust the axe. We’ll be here all week if we’ve got to stop and make new handles.’
‘All right,’ the boy replied, annoyed. ‘I’m trying to concentrate, you know,’ he added.
‘Sorry,’ Loredan said meekly. ‘You carry on.’
The boy took a deep breath and started tapping the wedge. The axe was too big and heavy for him to be able to manage it single-handed with any degree of comfort, and the wedge refused to bite. At the third attempt, the boy rapped his knuckles and swore.
‘Want me to start it for you?’ Loredan asked.
‘It’s all right,’ the boy said angrily. ‘I can manage.’
Loredan kept quiet. In the back of his mind he could see his father showing him the other way of starting the split, standing up straight with one foot bracing the wedge, holding the axe by the end of the handle and letting it swing gently like a pendulum to apply the small, measured degree of force necessary for the first bite. He could remember himself, raw-knuckled, red-faced and close to tears after he’d tried so many times and failed, and been told to get out of the way. On the other hand, this was a job of work, not an Academy seminar. ‘Stand up and brace the wedge with your foot,’ he said. ‘You might find it easier that way.’
As the boy straightened his back, Loredan looked away and then down at his hands, noticing the calluses that fringed his palms, the thick pads of skin between the first and middle joints of his first three fingers, the shaven patch on his left arm just above the wide purple bruise across the inside of his wrist, the characteristic and unavoidable injuries of his trade, that had become part of him over the last two years; because every human occupation leaves its own very specific disfigurements, and these were at least preferable to many. An observant man would know at once from these who he was and what he did, or at least what he did now.
The crisp chime of the axe-head on the wedge made him look up. ‘It’s starting to go,’ the boy said proudly. Loredan nodded. ‘Steady does it,’ he replied, ‘don’t go mad.’ The boy didn’t reply, he was concentrating on what he was doing, and without having to be told. Loredan turned his back. He could tell if the boy was doing it right by the sound of the axe-head. It didn’t sound too bad.
‘There, all done,’ the boy said. ‘Come and tell me if that’ll do.’
Loredan examined the work gravely, like a colonel inspecting his troops. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Now you can do the other one, while I make a start on stripping the bark off.’
‘Oh.’ The boy picked up the axe again, a little less enthusiastically this time, while Loredan walked over to the cart and took the drawknife out of the box. The sky was clouding over. It’d be a good idea to get a move on if they didn’t want to have to finish the job off in the pouring rain. He felt the edge with his thumb; it was sharp enough for sloughing off bark, for which purpose a slightly dull blade is marginally preferable. As he turned to walk back, he heard the sound of the axe pecking the wedge.
‘That’s the ticket,’ he called out. ‘You never know, we might make a bowyer of you yet.’
It was late afternoon by the time Gorgas Loredan’s ship dropped anchor in Scona Bay, and he decided to put off making his report until the next morning. There was, after all, no hurry; the enemy would still be dead tomorrow, and quite probably the day after as well, and he could see no pressing reason why he should toil all the way up the steep hill to the Director’s office and hang about there for an hour or so until his sister condescended to see him when he could be at home, with his boots off and his feet up on a footstool, watching the sun set over Shastel with a mug of hot spiced wine in his hand.
From the Quay he strolled down the long sweep of the Traders’ Dock, making a mental note of the ships that had arrived since he left and checking them against his comprehensive mental register: two more ore-freighters from Colleon (Why all this activity in the copper trade? Was someone trying to corner the market?); a huge timber-ship from the South Coast with thirty enormous cedar logs stacked pyramid-fashion the whole length of the ship; a handful of light, fast cutters from the Island, three of which he’d never seen before. It was good to see the dock this busy; it suggested confidence.
As usual at this time of day, the Dock was crowded with people taking the pre-dinner stroll around which the life of Scona seemed to revolve. This was the time of day when the shops and stalls did their best business, while merchants gathered under the white awnings of the taverns to put deals together and deplore whatever it was that was threatening them all with penury and ruin that week. Craftsmen and shop owners walked slowly with their families along the curve of the sea-wall at the top end of the Dock, husbands and wives arm in arm, their eyes fixed straight ahead in case they caught sight of someone they didn’t want to have to stop and talk to, while the children ambushed each other from behind the barrels and bales that stood outside the warehouses of the Bank. The deep hum of voices in pleasant conversation that pervaded the place always reminded Gorgas of sleepy bees on a hot day, and put him in mind of the seven hives that used to stand at the top of their home orchard, a perpetual terror to him when he was a boy; perhaps it was that association that always made him uneasy here on the Dock in the early evening. He preferred to take his walk in the Square, and let his children play round the base of the grand fountain, with its three sad-looking bronze lions.
He left the Dock and walked uphill along the Promenade into the Square, passing the vast bulk of the Bank’s new offices on his left. Half the facade was still covered in scaffolding, masking its outline like three hundred years’ growth of ivy, so that he still didn’t really know what the building was going to look like. Given the awesome scale of the thing it was almost self-effacing; a stranger could quite conceivably walk past it and not notice. Partly this was because it had been chipped out of the side of the great rocky outcrop that dominated the town, so that the frontage was just a small panel cut into the side of the hill, like the worked face of a quarry. Mostly, though, it was because they couldn’t be bothered with grandiose columns and porticoes and all the other clutter of which builders were so fond. There was no need to tell the people of Scona that this was an important building. They knew that already.