The Hammer Part 15

When he got back to the store, Furio went straight to the back store room. As usual, there was an open bottle of white brandy; today, a quarter full. He sloshed brandy over his blistered hands and winced sharply.

His aunt had left him some dinner (mutton stew in a bowl covered with a dishcloth). He devoured it so quickly that later he couldn't remember having eaten, then limped out to the porch. Teucer was there.

"Good day at work?" she asked.

He wasn't in a Teucer mood. "Fine," he said. "We're making excellent progress. Gignomai's turned the operation into a partners.h.i.+p."

"Equal shares?"

"Not quite."

She shrugged. "It's a really stupid idea," she said. "As soon as Home finds out, they'll send a platoon of soldiers and shut you down. You'll be lucky if you're not arrested."

Furio turned his head. There was a light in the upper window of the livery. "Unlikely," he said. "For a start, they won't have a chance to find out till the spring s.h.i.+p comes, by which time we'll be up and running, and people will have started getting stuff from us-cheaper, better stuff than they get off the s.h.i.+ps. Uncle Marzo will be raking in money from his end of the deal, and the farmers who'll be buying the stuff won't be in any hurry to squeal to the government. And if they do find out, we're not on colony land. They won't risk a war with the savages."

"You quoted all that from memory," she said. "I'm impressed."

He felt a little surge of anger, partly with her, partly with himself (though "risk a war with the savages" was the only direct direct quote from Gignomai). "You lay off him," he said. "He's my friend." quote from Gignomai). "You lay off him," he said. "He's my friend."

She yawned. "I think he's getting bored with you."

"Thank you for sharing your opinion with me." He s.h.i.+vered, like a horse trying to dislodge a horse-fly. It didn't get rid of her. "I expect you're frozen, sitting out in the cold night air. You'd be better off indoors in the warm."

"I've got my shawl," she said equably.

He remembered how he'd felt the first time he saw her. Hard to believe, now that he knew her better, and a valuable warning against judging by first impressions.

"He's up to something," she said abruptly. "And he's going to drag you into it, and you'll be sorry."

He made himself laugh. "Is that based on hard evidence, or your unique insight into human nature?"

"You don't have to listen to me if you don't want to. But you know I'm right."

"You're just miserable," Furio snapped. Then inspiration prompted him to add, "You're down on him because he doesn't fancy you. Well?"

She shrugged. It was her best gesture, and he guessed she knew it. "What I think about it isn't the issue. You're angry because you know I'm right."

The proper course of action would have been to go inside and leave her there. Instead, he said, "Up to what?"

"I don't know. You should, you're his friend. Think about it. Why would he have a secret scheme and not tell you about it?"

"He doesn't have a secret scheme. Unless you count liberating the Colony."

"That's not a secret," she replied imperturbably. "That's just something he hasn't told everybody about yet. Well, they'll have to know, won't they? You can't have a revolution and not tell people."

"You have a wonderful imagination," Furio said. "You ought to try and find something useful to do with it."

She gave him a sad, sweet smile, stood up and went into the house. In the distance, a fox barked. The light had gone out in the window of the livery.

The hardest week of his life, no question about that. He'd appropriated a pair of gentlemen's kid gloves from a box of fancy goods Uncle Marzo had bought sight unseen from a s.h.i.+p's captain and regretted ever since. They quickly wore into large holes, but they protected his hands from the worst of it. The partners noticed him wearing them, of course, but he never managed to find out what they said about him when his back was turned. He tried his very best to be useful and occasionally succeeded. Gignomai didn't talk to him much, he was far too busy, issuing orders, setting the pace. The partners didn't say things about him when his back was turned. Of course, Furio reflected, that's one of the marks of your true n.o.bility: leaders.h.i.+p, leading by example, never asking the men to do something you can't or wouldn't do yourself.

"Where did you learn to saw a straight line?" he asked Gignomai, on one of the rare occasions when they talked.

"Here," Gignomai replied. "Had to, no choice in the matter. I got Senza to show me once and made sure I took it all in. Actually it's not hard, once you've got the hang of it."

Furio couldn't make a saw do what he wanted it to no matter how hard he tried. "I thought you had to be brought up in the trade from childhood," he said. "That's what people've told me."

Gignomai grinned. "Well, they would," he said. "They want you to pay them for doing a job you can do yourself."

At some point Uncle Marzo lost his wonderful eyegla.s.ses, the ones Gignomai had given him, the ones he'd stolen from his father. Uncle had the whole house and store turned upside down, but there was no sign of them. A homeless man who sometimes did odd jobs at the livery was suspected, since he'd come in the store at some point, but when he was looked for he couldn't be found.

By the end of the week, the front and rear frames were in place. Furio hitched lifts to and from the site on lumber carts, which at least saved him the misery of the long walk. One of the carters was furiously angry with the three partners who'd deserted the sawmill. He yelled at them each time he set eyes on them and had a hammer thrown at his head for his trouble. Another carter wanted to run away and join the project, but Gignomai told him gently that they weren't hiring right now. Empty flour and bean barrels went back on the carts at night. There seemed to be an awful lot of them, and Furio thought about Uncle Marzo's dilemma. He'd heard people talking in the store about how much stuff was going out to the met'Oc boy's wild venture, and how there was bound to be a shortfall-higher prices to start with, and most likely shortages to follow. Two or three men from the colony found their way out to the site and asked for work. Furio reckoned Gig was right to send them away; either they were known to be no good or hiring them would cause trouble with their families. Besides, as Gig pointed out, the work was coming along just fine. They didn't need anybody else.

One night he waited for the livery window to light up, then walked silently down the street to the corner. He'd climbed into the livery many times when he was a boy, using the stunted sycamore tree as a handy leg-up and hauling himself up onto the roof by the guttering. Time had pa.s.sed, of course. He weighed more and was rather less flexible. There were a couple of nasty moments, as branches groaned and slates came away in his hand. He made it, though, and decided he had two weeks of grinding manual labour to thank. He was certainly fitter and stronger than he used to be. It was just a shame that everything hurt all the time.

Once he was on the roof it was easy. The back eaves overhung the hayloft door; it was no trouble dropping down onto the loading platform, where men stood to fork up the hay, and of course the hayloft door wasn't barred. He opened it as carefully as he could, but the faint creak of the hinges sounded like a scream in the quiet dark. He left the door slightly ajar, and crawled over the hay until he could look down onto the main area of the top floor.

The light came from a big bra.s.s lamp on a strong-looking table. Behind it stood a man. Furio could only see the top of his head, which was bald and garlanded with wisps of thin grey hair. The man was bending over a solid, heavy-duty bench vice, a rare and expensive item that Furio had last seen in Uncle's back store, lying on a bed of straw and still in its grease from the foundry. Clamped in the jaws of the vice was a small metal thing, too small to make out but s.h.i.+ning with the harsh white gleam of newly cut steel. The man was working on it with a round file, slowly, carefully, a few strokes then stop, examine, measure with calipers. There were at least a dozen files lying on the table, also a couple of small hammers, cold chisels, two frame-saws with thin blades like wire. There was something else, which Furio didn't recognise, about eighteen inches long, steel and wood, wrapped in cloth. From time to time the man took the metal thing out of the vice and compared it with something else, another small metal thing that lay beside the vice when he wasn't using it. At one point he clamped that thing and the thing he'd been filing in the vice together, back to back, presumably so he could use one as a pattern for the other. The smell of cut steel was strong enough to make itself noticed over the hay.

The man took the thing he was working on out of the vice and held it up to the light. As he did so, something on his face sparkled, and Furio knew where Uncle's eyegla.s.ses had got to.

The next day he took Gignomai aside and asked him, "Why is Aurelio camping out in the livery?"

Gignomai looked at him. "What?"

"Your man Aurelio," he said. "The blacksmith. What's he up to in the livery?"

Gignomai was holding a hammer in one hand and a pine s.h.i.+ngle in the other; he had a nail between his lips. He slid the hammer into his belt and spat the nail out into his hand. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Ah," Furio replied. "Only someone's been staying at the livery. He's been there a few weeks now. And he's got a workbench in there and a bunch of tools, and he's doing some kind of fancy metalwork."

"Is that right." Gignomai frowned slightly. "Well, he's nothing to do with me." He located the s.h.i.+ngle against the uprights and positioned the nail, jamming the s.h.i.+ngle in place with his elbow. "What makes you think it's Aurelio?"

"I just a.s.sumed," Furio replied. "I wouldn't know, I've never seen the man. Where is he, anyway?"

"He got sick," Gignomai said. "So he's out at the Lascio farm in the long valley. They're some kind of off-relations."

Furio nodded and went back to work. In consideration of his skill and ability with a hammer and a nail, he'd been given the essential and uniquely responsible job of piling up s.h.i.+ngles in stacks of twenty. That wasn't right, he thought. Hadn't Aurelio left the colony in a hurry as a young man, on account of some bother over a girl that left one man dead and another a cripple, and weren't the victims supposed to be members of his own family? In which case, his relatives would doubtless be delighted to see him, but not the other way round. It was possible that time had healed the wound, but not likely. Good-quality grudges were treated like heirlooms in the colony, where the desire to draw blood was never far from the surface, but rarely found a solid enough pretext. When the news of Aurelio's defection had broken, come to think of it, there had been a certain amount of excitement and speculation about his whereabouts. Ra.s.so at the livery was, however, a good friend of Uncle Marzo and deeply in his debt.

He's up to something, she'd said, she'd said, and he's going to drag you into it and he's going to drag you into it.

He dropped an armful of s.h.i.+ngles and scowled at them. He asked himself if the warning had come from anybody else, would he be less reluctant to consider it? The answer had to be yes, which tormented him like an unreachable itch. On the other hand, Gignomai was his friend, had been ever since they were kids; he'd repeatedly broken out of the Tabletop just to visit him, which was no small matter. Besides, what secret could Gig possibly have that he wouldn't want to share with his oldest, his only friend? Surely Gig knew that there was absolutely no chance he'd betray Aurelio to his family, not even by an inadvertent slip of the tongue. And in any case, why would Aurelio be hiding dangerously in town, rather than here at the site, where his relatives and other enemies wouldn't dare come after him?

I ought to ask him, he told himself. It was more of a rebuke than a decision. If he needed to ask, he couldn't be sure of getting a straight answer, and more than anything else he dreaded creating a situation where Gig lied to him and he knew it was a lie. It would be one of those places you can't get back from, and he didn't want to think about the inevitable consequences.

Velio Fasandro had been helmsman on a beef freighter until a falling spar crushed his back and rendered him more or less useless, at which point he was promoted to harbour master of the colony. Most days he sat on a barrel on the quay, watching seagulls. In the falling down wooden shack that const.i.tuted the harbour office and de facto seat of colonial government he had a slate, on which he scratched the names and due dates of incoming s.h.i.+pping with a nail, which lived in a hole bored in the door frame specifically for that purpose. He had no calendar or almanac, so the dates were somewhat detached from relevance, but so long as the sky was clear he could guess the time of the month more or less adequately by the phases of the moon. Besides, Marzo at the store always told him well in advance when a s.h.i.+p was due. Not that it mattered terribly much. He was always at his post, on his barrel, and when a s.h.i.+p came in, all he had to do was take official notice of it, scratch its name off his slate, and stay out of the way while it was unloading.

On the day in question, therefore, when he saw what looked disturbingly like a mast on the horizon he a.s.sumed it was a product of his failing eyesight and looked the other way for an hour or so. When he looked back again, however, it was palpably a mast, with a s.h.i.+p under it, heading straight for the line of buoys that marked the only safe road into the harbour.

He sat perfectly still, wondering what it could mean. In twenty-three years, he'd never known a s.h.i.+p to be blown off course or forced into the colony by bad weather. Only s.h.i.+ps for the colony came close enough to be forced in there; there were no other destinations. Also, it didn't look right. Colony s.h.i.+ps were brigs or galliots, fat as pigs and painfully slow, or fly-boats, the great long cattle barges that looked like floating islands. This one-he broke the crust on his memory and fished out the word ketch-twin-masted, square-rigged on the foremast and fore-and-aft on the main, stepped well aft, light, fast and nimble, a hundred tons burden, if that; as much chance of seeing something like that in colony waters as finding a d.u.c.h.ess in a laundry. Unless, of course, it was a government boat. Velio Fasandro believed in the government in the same way some country people still believed in the Little Folk, and expected about as much good from them. Still, who else could it possibly be?

He studied it carefully for a while. If it really was the government, someone should be told. Who, though? He thought about it, and came to the unpleasant conclusion: himself. He was, after all, the only public servant in the colony, paid (whenever anyone remembered) out of harbour dues, in theory entrusted with the full delegated powers of the central authority. In which case...

Quickly, he put that thought out of his mind. If the government had come here, it wanted to talk to somebody important, which could only mean Marzo at the store, Ra.s.so at the livery or Gimao the chandler. Marzo was closest. Velio stood up, took one more look at the s.h.i.+p (it was getting bigger every time he looked at it, like a monster in a nightmare) and hobbled up the quay as fast as he could go.

"Can't be the government," Gimao the chandler protested, lengthening his stride to keep up. "They've forgotten about us. They don't even know we're still here."

Marzo didn't bother to answer. The government didn't feature anywhere in his personal bestiary of possible threats from the sea. The Company, on the other hand, was a horrible possibility at all times. He managed to sleep at night because he'd always told himself that the discrepancies and anomalies in the accounts he sent them as their duly appointed agent were too slight and trivial to justify the bother and expense of sending a s.h.i.+p, and the captains of the regular s.h.i.+ps were his friends and all, in one way or another, in his power. But the possibility that the Company's never blinking eye might some day rest on him and decide to make an example lived always with him, like an arrowhead buried in an old soldier's chest, gradually creeping towards his heart. He glanced sideways at Ra.s.so the liveryman, who winced and looked away.

Velio had caught them up by the time the s.h.i.+p crossed the harbour mouth. They silently rearranged themselves so that Velio was at the front, and watched as a boat pulled away from the s.h.i.+p's side. Six men in some kind of uniform were at the oars; there was a canopy at the back, so they couldn't see who else was on board.

We could kill them, Marzo thought, and row them out with rocks tied to their legs, and say they died of fever. But their friends on the s.h.i.+p would want to know more, it'd all go wrong and then we'd really be in trouble. Besides, what was to stop the Company sending another s.h.i.+p, and another one after that? He couldn't really face the prospect of filling up the bay with murdered men. Quarantine? A sudden outbreak of plague, which meant they couldn't possibly land? He reckoned he could pull it off, but the other three... He dismissed the idea and tried to stand up straight, as the boat pulled up to the steps. One of the oarsmen stood up and threw a rope, which n.o.body moved to catch. Then Ra.s.so nudged Velio in the back, and Velio shuffled over to the rope and made it fast to an iron ring, half rusted through. The canopy curtains opened, and...

Dead silence, as the two strangers made their way up the steps. They moved slowly and awkwardly, because of their ludicrously unsuitable footwear. The woman was wearing knee-length black boots with thumb-long heels. So, for that matter, was the man.

"h.e.l.lo," the man said. "Could you possibly tell me who's in charge here?"

He was an extraordinary creature. For one thing, he was tall. The only human being any of them had seen whose head was that far off the ground was Luso met'Oc, and the resemblance didn't end there. The only word, Marzo said later, was beautiful, though you couldn't really say that about a man, could you? But he had long hair, like a girl (or Luso met'Oc) and long, delicate hands, which somehow didn't seem out of place with his broad shoulders and heroic chest. He was dressed from head to foot in brown buckskin, cut in the most jaw-droppingly exotic style, with apparently meaningless bra.s.s studs all over in a pattern, and slashes in the sleeves so that the white s.h.i.+rt underneath poked through-that had to be deliberate, but why would you do it?-and more pockets than the average family had between them. The woman was dressed exactly the same-in trousers trousers-and her hair was the same length and colour, and she really was beautiful by any relevant criteria. They were about the same age (Furio's age, Marzo thought, but they might as well have been a different species); they could almost have been twins, except the woman came up to the man's armpit.

Marzo suddenly realised that n.o.body had answered the man's question. "I'm Marzo Opello," Marzo said (it sounded like a dreadful thing to have to own up to), "I run the-" No, wrong. He reconsidered quickly. "I'm the Company agent."

"Ah." The man frowned slightly. You could see him weighing the matter up in his mind, and deciding to be magnanimous and to forgive. "Permission to come ash.o.r.e."

A stupid little voice in the back of Marzo's head insisted that he really ought to ask their names before he gave them permission, though of course it wasn't his to give. He ignored it. At the same moment, it dawned on him that whoever these gorgeous creatures were, they weren't the government or the Company. A tiny part of him couldn't help wis.h.i.+ng they were. Better the devil you know than the G.o.ds you don't.

At that point he had to move out of the way. The men from the boat were bringing up luggage-a trunk so huge that two of them could barely manage it, followed by another, followed by a third. The men disappeared, with the dogged, energetic air of men who have lots more heavy lifting still to do. Marzo dragged his eyes away from the trunk and said, "Of course, yes," and stopped. If he carried on talking, he'd have to ask them who they were and what they wanted, and although he desperately wanted to know, he couldn't bring himself to ask.

The man was smiling at him. He had the sort of smile you vainly wish you could be worthy of. "Do you think you could point us in the direction of the inn?" he said.

"There isn't-" Gimao started to say, but Ra.s.so trod on his foot. "You're welcome to stay with us," Ra.s.so said. "As our guests."

Idiot, Marzo thought, but it was too late to say anything. Fortunately, the man smiled and said, "Oh, it's not for us. We've got a tent." He made it sound unbelievably exotic, like a tame gryphon. "But my men here will need billets."

"There isn't an inn," Marzo said, looking down at his feet. "But there are farmers who'll put up men from the s.h.i.+ps, if that's all right." He took a deep breath and said it; it felt like diving into a frozen pond. "What are you here for, exactly?"

The man and the woman looked at each other. Then the woman said, "We've come to visit our cousins. Maybe you know them," she added, "the met'Oc."

Her voice was like drowning in honey. "Oh yes," Ra.s.so said. "We know them. They live..." He hesitated; presumably he'd just looked down and noticed he'd walked off a cliff. "Up country a way."

"Ah." The man smiled again. "Is it far?"

Yes and no, Marzo wanted to say. "Not very far," Gimao said. "About three hours' walk."

The man frowned. The woman looked both distressed and disgusted. Intemperate use of the W word, Marzo guessed. "Ra.s.so here can let you have horses," he said quickly.

Yet more luggage: hat-boxes, musical instrument cases, writing-slopes, a huge sack with poles sticking out of it (the famous tent, presumably), a double sword-case, boot-boxes. Very occasionally, Marzo saw tradesmen's lists from home; one of the beef captains knew he liked realistic props in his dreams. The most recent one he'd seen had been five years old. He rapidly priced the growing barricade; nearly a hundred and fifty thalers just for the containers. The thought of what was inside them made his throat dry up. "Will you be staying long?" he asked, but neither of them seemed to have heard him.

A small crowd was gathering: children, mostly, a few women, two or three old men with nothing to do. In an hour or so, Marzo thought, the whole town will know. He wasn't sure why that worried him. He heard the man say, "Horses would be an excellent idea, definitely," and realised that Ra.s.so hadn't moved. He trod on the back of his heel, which woke him up. He nodded twice, bowed awkwardly, walked three paces backwards, turned and fled.

Now there was an awkward silence, the sort that sucks unguarded remarks out of you. Marzo heard himself say, "Actually, the youngest met'Oc boy is a guest in my house," just as his rational mind resolved not to admit to any connection whatsoever. Too late. The woman looked interested and the man turned his head, smiled again and said, "Excellent. Perhaps we could meet him, and he could show us the way."

"Unfortunately he's not at home right now," Marzo said. "He's..." Words failed him completely. The hole he'd dug himself was so deep, so sheer-sided that he could see no way of getting out of it other than feigning an epileptic seizure. Gimao (presumably trying to help) said, "He's working out in the savages' country," before Marzo's furious glare cut him short.

The man and woman looked at each other. "How fascinating," the man said. "Is that far?"

"Oh yes." Marzo snapped the words out like a man drawing a knife. "Several hours, and in the opposite direction."

"Never mind," the woman said. "We'll just have to call on him another day." She glanced at the man, then added, "You've all been most kind but we really mustn't hold you up any longer. Thank you so much." It took Marzo a moment or so to translate that into go away, go away, but as soon as the message went home he felt a surge of relief. Gimao didn't seem to have figured it out for himself, so he grabbed him by the elbow and kept a firm grip as he started to back away, towing him like a horse pulling a barge. As he turned his back on them and started to walk away, he heard the man call out, "Thank you!", but decided he was deaf and hadn't heard it. He realised he'd left Velio behind, but it was too late to go back for him now. Besides, Velio had nowhere else to go, and he didn't matter anyway. As they pa.s.sed Velio's shed, they met Ra.s.so hurrying along leading two horses: the not-quite-dead-yet mare and the gelding Teucer called the Anatomy Lesson, because you could see most of its bones. Welcome to the new world, he thought, and bolted for home. but as soon as the message went home he felt a surge of relief. Gimao didn't seem to have figured it out for himself, so he grabbed him by the elbow and kept a firm grip as he started to back away, towing him like a horse pulling a barge. As he turned his back on them and started to walk away, he heard the man call out, "Thank you!", but decided he was deaf and hadn't heard it. He realised he'd left Velio behind, but it was too late to go back for him now. Besides, Velio had nowhere else to go, and he didn't matter anyway. As they pa.s.sed Velio's shed, they met Ra.s.so hurrying along leading two horses: the not-quite-dead-yet mare and the gelding Teucer called the Anatomy Lesson, because you could see most of its bones. Welcome to the new world, he thought, and bolted for home.

"And then they rode off towards the Tabletop," the old woman said, "like they were the king and queen off hunting." She shook her head, sad and wise. "Just what we need," she added. "More of them."

Furio had kept his head down during the narrative, which (stripped of commentary) had given him little more than he'd already gathered from his uncle. He detached himself discreetly from the group and set off for the factory site.

When he got there, they were raising the roof-tree, and n.o.body could spare the attention to notice that he'd got there, or was late, or had important news. After a while he was yelled at to come and pull on a rope, which he did to the best of his limited ability. Apart from that, he played no part in the operation. At midday the job was done, and Gignomai allowed a rest and a small barrel of cider to celebrate. Furio saw his chance and darted over to him when he moved away to study the diagrams in his book.

"Yes, I know," he said, when Furio gave him the broad outline. "The carters told me, when they brought up the last lot of s.h.i.+ngles. You didn't happen to hear a name, did you?"

Furio confessed he hadn't. "n.o.body asked," he said.

"Oh." Gignomai shrugged. "Well, I expect Father'll be pleased. I reckon they're in for a shock, though. I don't imagine our place is quite what they'll have been expecting."

Furio waited for something, anything else, but apparently that was that. Gignomai was engrossed in his book. The diagram, pale brown lines on yellow vellum, nearly translucent, bore no resemblance to the skeleton of the shed that he could see, but Gignomai seemed happy enough with it. If he hadn't been, everybody within earshot would have known about it. He looked tired, Furio thought, but somehow larger; as though he'd walked out of one picture into another, but with no reduction of scale. Furio had never seen Luso, let alone Stheno, but he could imagine them quite clearly by looking at Gig and splitting him into two parts, the one who heaved great big beams about and the one who gave orders.

When he got home that evening, there had been no further sightings. As far as anybody knew, the strangers had ridden towards the Tabletop and the world had swallowed them up. Their luggage-the pile of trunks and boxes that had come ash.o.r.e with the boat-had gone on a cart to the Heddo farm, where the six oarsmen had been billeted. According to the best intelligence, they'd taken over an empty barn and closed the door, and all that could be heard from outside was low voices, too soft to make out words. The s.h.i.+p was still bobbing in the harbour, where the keenest-sighted boys from the town were working s.h.i.+fts. So far they'd seen about a dozen men and the thin smoke from the galley fire. One boy claimed to have seen light flas.h.i.+ng off a bronze tube on the rail of the castle. He was known to be imaginative, but a bronze tube could be a telescope (Marzo vouched for the existence of such things; he'd actually handled one, courtesy of a friendly captain) or a rail-gun-n.o.body quite knew what that meant; it was some kind of warlike jewellery or accoutrement worn by wars.h.i.+ps-and Ra.s.so's uncle said his father had seen one once, when a frigate called at the colony in the early days. They couldn't quite make out whether Ra.s.so's uncle was referring to the gun or the s.h.i.+p, and it was too much trouble to press the point. In any event, telescopes and rail-guns were both unbelievably exotic items, and the thought that the strangers might own one made them seem even more magnificent and unreal.

A week went by, a roof appeared on the shed, the cradle for the waterwheel was well under way, the town boys had stopped watching the s.h.i.+p and the strangers were, as far as anybody knew, still up at the Tabletop. Ra.s.so was deeply concerned about his horses, on account of which no actual money had yet changed hands. The six oarsmen still hadn't left the barn: food went in and a chamber pot was emptied out back twice a day, but otherwise they might as well not have been there. The colony stopped holding its breath, and some people began to wonder if the strangers had been real, or just a dream shared by a small number of otherwise rational people.

Gignomai didn't seem interested, and Furio was rather relieved. Not so long ago, when he'd come back from the Tabletop with the sword, all that had been keeping him here was the lack of a s.h.i.+p. Now there was a s.h.i.+p, totally unexpected, owned by relatives of his who surely wouldn't begrudge him a lift back to civilisation. Or would they, now he'd been formally disowned? But the strangers had never seen Gignomai, so if he gave them a false name, or went direct to the captain and offered to work his pa.s.sage-if he really wanted to be on that s.h.i.+p when it sailed, he'd have found a way. Instead, he was pointedly taking no notice. That, Furio felt, had to be a good sign.

Early afternoon, and they were nailing blades to the frames of the waterwheel, while Gignomai and one of the smiths negotiated over some technical problem to do with bearings for the main shaft. No cart was expected that day, so Furio was surprised to see one bouncing down the road through the trees. It was worn and rutted now, after all the use it had been getting, and the cart was being tossed around like a rat caught by a dog. When it reached the foot of the hill, Furio saw it carried two pa.s.sengers: a man and a woman.

He nearly dropped his hammer into the river. The man was tall even sitting down. His hair was long under a tall, stiff hat with a very narrow brim. The woman wore what looked like a sailor's bad-weather cap, except that it seemed to be made of blue silk. When the cart stopped and she jumped down, he saw that she was wearing trousers trousers.

He wasn't the only one to have noticed. Work stopped. n.o.body spoke; everybody looked. Both the man and the woman were dressed in identical close-fitting suits of green buckskin, with high ta.s.selled brown boots. Both of them had swords-like Gignomai's-hanging from their belts. The only difference between their outfits, in fact, was the man's broad dark green sash, into which something had been wedged: a short club, or a hammer.

Gignomai marked his place and closed the book. He hadn't been sure this would happen, and though he'd spent a certain amount of time trying to prepare his mind, he hadn't managed to come up with a coherent strategy. There was too much he didn't know, and it would be counterproductive to lay plans in the absence of data.

When he saw them, he had to make an effort not to smile. He recognised the outfits at once. There were clothes just like them in an old trunk back home. They'd belonged to his grandfather and grandmother, so clearly fas.h.i.+ons hadn't changed much. They represented a City bespoke tailor's idea of practical, hard-wearing apparel for well-bred adventurers, inspired by a famous description of a hero and heroine in a popular romance about three centuries old. The velvet-covered b.u.t.tons were, he decided, a particularly nice touch. You never knew when the glint of sunlight on gold or silver might give your position away to an enemy. The only thing that was different was the man's sash, and that was explained when Gignomai caught sight of a wooden ball with a steel finial sticking out of it. He knew the pommel of a snapping-hen when he saw one.

Oh well, he thought, and straightened his back as he stood up and turned to face them. "h.e.l.lo," he said. "Are you looking for me?"

"Cousin Gignomai," the man said. No doubt in his voice. The family resemblance, presumably. "I'm delighted to meet you at last. I'm Boulomai met'Ousa, and this is my sister Pasi."

Father would have been proud of him, under other circ.u.mstances, because he had no trouble at all visualising the offshoot of the family tree that linked the met'Oc to the met'Ousa. Third cousins, and a long way back. The visit, therefore, wasn't just social.

For the first time in his life, Gignomai was glad he'd been made to learn the formal first salutation: front leg straight, back leg slightly bent; head dipped but not too much, not too much, unless you want to be taken for a tradesman; slight movement of the right arm, left hand tight to the chest; look pleasant, but whatever you do, don't smile. He performed it better than he'd ever done when he was being drilled in the nursery, because this time it mattered. A faultless greeting from a man in labourer's boots and a torn s.h.i.+rt would say more than words ever could. unless you want to be taken for a tradesman; slight movement of the right arm, left hand tight to the chest; look pleasant, but whatever you do, don't smile. He performed it better than he'd ever done when he was being drilled in the nursery, because this time it mattered. A faultless greeting from a man in labourer's boots and a torn s.h.i.+rt would say more than words ever could.