“Yes,” I said.
“But not any more.” He stood up, and for a split second I was terrified. But he walked to the table and poured a glass of wine. “I don’t know what’s got into you, but the difference is extraordinary.” He pointed to the second glass. I nodded, and he poured. “You write like you’re not afraid of the music any more. In fact, it sounds like you’re not afraid of anything. That’s the secret, you know.”
“I was always terrified of failure.”
“Not unreasonably,” he said, and brought the glasses over. I took mine and set it down beside the bed. “Good stuff, this.”
“I can afford the best.”
He nodded. “Do you like it?”
“Not much.”
That made him smile. He topped up his glass. “My father had excellent taste in wine,” he said. “If it wasn’t at least twenty years old and bottled within sight of Mount Bezar, it was only fit for pickling onions. He drank the farm and the timber lot and six blocks of good City property which brought in more than all the rest put together, and then he died and left my older brother to sort out the mess. Last I heard, he was a little old man in a straw hat working all the hours God made, and still the bank foreclosed; he’s three years older than me, for crying out loud. And my other brother had to join the army. He died at Settingen. Everlasting glory they called it in temple, but I know for a fact he was terrified of soldiering. He tried to hide in the barn when the carriage came to take him to the academy, and my mother dragged him out by his hair. Which has led me to the view that sometimes, refinement and gracious living come at too high a price.” He looked at me over the rim of the glass and smiled. “But I don’t suppose you’d agree.”
I shrugged. “I’m still living in the same rooms in college,” I replied. “And five days a week, dinner is still bread and cheese on a tray in front of the fire. It wasn’t greed for all the luxuries. It was being afraid of the other thing.” My turn to smile. “Never make the mistake of attributing to greed that which can be explained by fear. I should know. I’ve lived with fear every day of my life.”
He sighed. “You’re not drinking,” he said.
“I think I’ve got the start of an ulcer,” I said.
He shook his head sadly. “I really am genuinely pleased,” he said. “About your music. You know what? I always used to despise you; all that knowledge, all that skill and technique, and no wings. You couldn’t soar, so you spent your life trying to invent a flying machine. I learned to fly by jumping off cliffs.” He yawned, and scratched the back of his neck. “Of course, most people who try it that way end up splattered all over the place, but it worked just fine for me.”
“I didn’t jump,” I said. “I was pushed.”
A big, wide grin spread slowly over his face, like oil on water. “And now you want to tell me how grateful you are.”
“Not really, no.”
“Oh come on.” He wasn’t the least bit angry, just amused. Probably just as well the sword was in the trunk. “What the hell did I ever do to you? Look at what I’ve given you, over the years. The prestige and reflected glory of being my teacher. The symphony. And now you can write music almost as good, all on your own. And what did I get in return? A hundred angels.”
“Two hundred,” I said coldly. “You’ve forgotten the previous loan.”
He laughed, and dug a hand in his pocket. “Actually, no,” he said. “The other reason I’m here.” He took out a fat, fist-sized purse and put it on the table. “A hundred and ten angels. I’m guessing at the interest, since we didn’t agree a specific rate at the time.”
Neither of us said a word for quite some time. Then I stood up, leaned across the table and took the purse.
“Aren’t you going to count it?”
“You’re a gentleman,” I said. “I trust you.”
He nodded, like a fencer admitting a good hit. “I think,” he said, “that makes us all square, don’t you? Unless there’s anything else I’ve forgotten about.”
“All square,” I said. “Except for one thing.”
That took him by surprise. “What?”
“You shouldn’t have given up music,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped at me. “I’d have been arrested and hung.”
I shrugged. “Small price to pay,” I said. Which is what he’d said, when he first told me he’d killed a man; a small price to pay for genius. And what I’d said, when I heard all the details. “Don’t glower at me like that,” I went on. “You were a genius. You wrote music that’ll still be played when Perimadeia’s just a grassy hill. The Grand Mass, the Third symphony, that’s probably all that’ll survive of the empire in a thousand years. What was the life of one layabout and one prison warder, against that? Nothing.”
“I’d have agreed with you once,” he replied. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Oh, I am. Absolutely certain of it. And if it was worth their lives, it’s worth the life of an olive oil merchant, if there was to be just one more concerto. As it is—” I shrugged. “Not up to me, of course, I was just your teacher. That’s all I’ll ever be, in a thousand years’ time. I guess I should count myself lucky for that.”
He looked at me for a long time. “Bullshit,” he said. “You and I only ever wrote for money. And you don’t mean a word of what you’ve just said.” He stood up. “It was nice to see you again. Keep writing. At this rate, one of these days you’ll produce something worth listening to.”
He left, and I bolted the door; too late by then, of course. That’s me all over, of course; I always leave things too late, until they no longer matter.
When I got back to the university, I paid a visit to a colleague of mine in the natural philosophy department. I took with me a little bottle, into which I’d poured the contents of a wineglass. A few days later he called on me and said, “You were right.”
I nodded. “I thought so.”
“Archer’s root,” he said. “Enough of it to kill a dozen men. Where in God’s name did you come by it?”
“Long story,” I told him. “Thank you. Please don’t mention it to anybody, there’s a good fellow.”
He shrugged, and gave me back the bottle. I took it outside and poured it away in a flower bed. Later that day I made a donation—one hundred and ten angels—to the Poor Brothers, for their orphanage in Lower Town; the first, last and only charitable donation of my life. The Father recognised me, of course, and asked if I wanted it to be anonymous.
“Not likely,” I said. “I want my name up on a wall somewhere, where people can see it. Otherwise, where’s the point?”
I think I may have mentioned my elder brother, Segibert; the one I rescued from the cart on the mountainside, along with my father. I remember him with fondness, though I realised at a comparatively early age that he was a stupid man, bone idle and a coward. My father knew it too, and my mother, so when Segibert was nineteen he left home. Nobody was sorry to see him go. He made a sort of a living doing the best he could, and even his best was never much good. When he was thirty-five he drifted into Perimadeia, married a retired prostitute (her retirement didn’t last very long, apparently) and made a valiant attempt at running a tavern, which lasted for a really quite creditable eight months. By the time the bailiffs went in, his wife was pregnant, the money was long gone, and Segibert could best be described as a series of brief intervals between drinks. I’d just been elected to my chair, the youngest ever professor of music; the last thing I wanted was any contact whatsoever with my disastrous brother. In the end I gave him thirty angels, all the money I had, on condition that he went away and I never saw him again. He fulfilled his end of the deal by dying a few months later. By then, however, he’d acquired a son as well as a widow. She had her vocation to fall back on, which was doubtless a great comfort to her. When he came of age, or somewhat before, my nephew followed his father’s old profession. I got a scribbled note from him when he was nineteen, asking me for bail money, which I neglected to answer, and that was all the contact there was between us. I never met him. He died young.