‘Just a moment,’ she called out. Well, it wasn’t her mother, at any rate. Mother never knocked before barging into a room. ‘All right, come in.’
But it was just the porter; the big, dozy-looking man who sat between her and the rest of the world, when he wasn’t cleaning her shoes or making her soup. He was harmless enough, too stupid to recognise an ink-horn or a penknife if he saw one. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘Man here to see you,’ the porter replied; and over his shoulder she could see one of Them, the Children of Heaven, in a fancy dark-blue travelling cloak with a gold pin that told you his rank if you understood about such things.
‘All right,’ she said.
The porter got out of the way, and her visitor came in. He was old; long and thin, as many of Them were, with grizzled white hair sticking to his head like bits of cobweb. He looked round without saying anything, then sat down without being asked.
‘Iseutz Loredan?’ he said.
She nodded. ‘And you are?’
‘Colonel Abrain. I have a commission from the prefect of Ap’ Escatoy.’
He didn’t seem in any hurry to let her see it, and she couldn’t be bothered to ask. ‘You’ve come a long way, then. What does the prefect want from me?’ she asked.
Her visitor looked at her again, as if she were a mathematical problem, a complicated diagram in algebra. ‘You have an uncle,’ he said, ‘Bardas Loredan. You’ve repeatedly threatened to kill him. The prefect would like to know more about him.’
She frowned. ‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why,’ she said.
‘I’ll tell you if you want me to,’ the man replied. ‘I assume you know about the fall of Ap’ Escatoy, and the part your uncle played in it.’
‘Of course. Everybody does.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Let’s see,’ she said. ‘Uncle Bardas is now a war hero, and you don’t want me to kill him after all. Am I warm?’
She watched him puzzle out the unfamiliar idiom. ‘The prefect doesn’t see you as a threat, if that’s what you mean,’ he replied. ‘And although it’s true that Sergeant Loredan did distinguish himself-’
‘Sergeant Loredan.’
He looked annoyed. ‘That is his current rank in the provincial office, yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re used to thinking of him as Colonel Loredan. Well, now, in the provincial office, rank is earned, not carried forward from an individual’s last employment.’
‘That sounds reasonable enough,’ Iseutz said. ‘So, what do you want to know about Sergeant Loredan?’
He shifted in his chair in such a way as to suggest that he had a bad leg; it could just as easily be arthritis as an honourable war-wound. ‘The prefect would like to find out as much as he can about the relationship between your uncle Bardas Loredan and the barbarian King of Perimadeia, Temrai. He understands that their mutual antagonism dates back to before the Fall of the City. He is also interested in finding out about Bardas Loredan’s service with General Maxen; it seems likely that his experience in fighting the plains tribes might be helpful to the Empire in the event of war between themselves and us.’
Iseutz shrugged her bony shoulders. ‘Why ask me?’ she said. ‘If you think we’ve had long, cosy evenings of niece-and-uncle chats by the fireside with him telling me all about his interesting life, you’ve got the wrong family. I didn’t even find out he was my uncle until after he did this.’ She held up her ruined hand; the Son of Heaven looked at it and frowned a little. ‘Yes, I know he fought against the tribes when he was in Maxen’s army; Maxen did a lot of really terrible things to them, which was why Temrai hated us so much. And yes, I would think Uncle Bardas probably knows more about killing the tribes than anybody else in the whole world. But you knew that before you came here.’
The Son of Heaven nodded. ‘And you have nothing further to offer by way of insights or additional data?’
‘Sorry.’
The small, precise gesture of his hands suggested that he forgave her. ‘I understand that you are on bad terms with your uncle Bardas,’ he said. ‘But I gather your relationship with your uncle Gorgas is rather better. You write to him regularly.’
‘Yes. How did you know that?’
He indicated her hand with a tiny dip of his head. ‘Writing is obviously difficult for you, but you make the effort. Clearly you’re quite close to your uncle Gorgas.’
She smiled. Most people looked away when she smiled at them, but not Colonel Abrain. ‘In a way,’ she said. ‘I’m the only family he’s got, really, since my mother betrayed him and Uncle Bardas murdered his son. Oh, there’s his other two brothers in the Mesoge, of course, I was forgetting them. They’re very easy to forget.’
‘Tell me about him,’ said Colonel Abrain.
Iseutz shook her head. ‘I don’t think I will,’ she said. ‘Not unless you tell me why you’re interested in him.’
‘I find your entire family fascinating,’ the Son of Heaven replied impassively. ‘I’m a student of human nature.’
‘Really.’
‘It’s something of a passion among my people.’ He steepled his fingers. ‘More to the point, he has approached us with a view to forming an alliance against King Temrai. Obviously we would wish to interview as many of his close associates as possible before reaching a decision on this proposal.’
Iseutz thought for a moment. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I don’t suppose anything I can tell you about him can do him any harm. Tell you what; you tell me what you already know, and I’ll fill in the gaps.’
The colonel smiled thinly. ‘As you wish,’ he said. ‘We know that when he was a young man, he prostituted his sister and then murdered his father and brother-in-law when they found out what he had done. He also tried to kill his sister, but failed. In the same incident, he murdered your father; isn’t that so?’
Iseutz nodded. ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘What a lot of things you people know.’
‘We pride ourselves on attention to detail. After committing these murders, he escaped from the Mesoge and spent a while as a pirate and soldier of fortune, until his sister – your mother – established the Bank on Scona; he joined her there and worked for her as head of the Bank’s security forces; in which capacity, we understand, he opened the gates of Perimadeia to the forces of King Temrai, allowing the city to be taken and burned to the ground. Three years ago, matters between the Bank and the Shastel Order came to a head; Gorgas Loredan conducted a brilliant defence, considering the disparity in size and quality between the armies of the Order and the forces available to the Bank, but in spite of two remarkable victories in pitched battle, the Order prevailed and Scona was captured. Your uncle deserted the island immediately before its fall, taking with him the remnants of the Scona army; he sailed directly to the Mesoge and seized power there. After a few initial incidents, his regime has apparently become stable, although reliable information from the Mesoge has become rather difficult to obtain.’ He unfolded his hands and laid them palm down on his knees. ‘Is that summary basically accurate?’
‘I’m impressed,’ Iseutz said. ‘You people are good at this, I can tell. Well, you didn’t mention that the reason why he gave up and let Shastel walk right into Scona was because just before he was due to fight their third army – he’d annihilated the other two, as you know – Uncle Bardas killed his son, and my mother skipped out and left him; what with one thing and another, he couldn’t see any point in prolonging the agony.’
The colonel nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Now, what else can you tell me about him?’
Iseutz thought for a long while. ‘I suppose you could say he’s an uneasy mix of idealism and pragmatism,’ she said. ‘The idealism bit is this notion of family that he’s got buried deep down inside; he’s convinced that he believes in family as the most important thing. I don’t think that’s actually the case; what I mean is, I think he’s fooling himself when he thinks that, but it’s what he sincerely believes. I think.’ She paused for a moment, her lips pressed to the back of her hand. ‘The pragmatism bit’s the other side of the coin. His philosophy is, what’s done is done, no point crying over spilt milk, the thing is to make the best of the situation you find yourself in and not to let the past get in the way of the future.’ She grinned. ‘I guess you could say he takes that particular philosophy to extremes rather. But he’s a pretty extreme person.’