The Folding Knife Part 20

"You're the protocol expert, you tell me."

"Let's see." She counted on her fingers. "Scholars.h.i.+p and literature. He could be a philosopher."

Ba.s.so laughed. "He'd never finish anything. Besides, that's not a career, that's a hobby."

"Very well. Politics."

"Wouldn't last five minutes."

"I'm inclined to agree with you," she said. "I know you don't want him to join the Bank, but what about some other branch of business? You could set him up as a merchant, or in manufacturing."

Ba.s.so shook his head. "He'd be wretched," he said. "s.h.i.+ps and horses and lice in the bed. And I really don't see Ba.s.sano running a s.h.i.+pyard or a foundry, do you?"

"I like him," she said. "He's one of the few clever men I've met who hasn't let his intelligence spoil him."

Ba.s.so thought about that for a while. "Also," he said, "if I pack him off to Auxentia to buy carpets, I'll never see him. That'd be missing the point. It's got to be something he can do here. Otherwise, he could go and be a provincial governor."

She smiled. As yet, the Vesani Republic had no provinces to govern, but that could be changed. "If you were him," she said, "what would you want to do?"

"Join the Bank," Ba.s.so replied. "Because I'd want to take after my uncle Ba.s.so. Which is why he can't do that."

She sighed. "It really is a shame about the priesthood," she said. "It would have suited him very well. I don't suppose-"

"He tried to bash the Patriarch's head in with a candlestick," Ba.s.so said. "I've thought about getting a new Patriarch, but that'd be a step too far. The University's out, too. It's under the direct supervision of the Studium. I considered founding a new one, but..." He grinned. "Do you think the Invincible Sun had this much trouble, when he was deciding what to do with the human race?"

She raised her eyebrows. "I don't believe in the Invincible Sun," she said.

"I don't suppose you do." He leaned forward a little, his wrists lying on his knees. "What do they believe in where you come from?"

"We believe that the world was created by the Skyfather out of the ribcage of a bear," she replied. "In the twelve hundred years of our recorded history, it doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody to ask why. I have no religious beliefs."

"There's the law," Ba.s.so said doubtfully. "He could be a judge."

She considered that. "He has a mind well suited to subtle and abstruse argument," she said. "It's possible that he might enjoy the fine points of legal interpretation, as a mental exercise."

"You're right," Ba.s.so said, "it's a stupid idea. Besides, too political. I don't want there to be any danger of them hurting him just to get at me."

"I'll think about it some more," she said, standing up. "Would you like to play a game of chess, or would you rather stay here?"

He won five games, drew one and lost two deliberately, which made her quietly and furiously angry for a while. For some reason, that cheered him up.

"Am I right in thinking," he asked her, "that where you come from, s.e.x before marriage is a deadly sin?"

She looked at him. "Yes."

"But you don't think that."

"Actually, yes I do."

He nodded. "Tell you what," he said. "We'll play one more game. If I win-"

"That's not fair," she said. "You're a better player than me."

"I'll give you a knight handicap."

She thought for a moment. "A knight and a rook."

He considered that. "All right."

"And a stalemate counts as a win for me."

"No." He shook his head. "Stalemate, we play again."

"Very well." She was fiddling with the beads of her necklace: an ugly, barbaric-looking thing, which he a.s.sumed was from the old country. "But I get first move."

She was a very good chess player indeed when she really applied her mind to it. At the end, there were only seven pieces on the board. They'd been playing for well over an hour. He saw the winning move quite suddenly, as though he'd just walked into the room and looked over the players' shoulders. He could've sworn it hadn't been there a moment ago, or surely he'd have noticed it; or maybe it was just a slightly different way of looking at the world, a minuscule s.h.i.+ft in perspective.

She'd been building a trap for him for some time, a relatively clumsy one, which he knew he could avoid. He picked up his king, the piece that would set up his victory, and let its weight hang on his fingertips. It was the best game she'd ever given him, and he could see she was confident of forcing a draw, with some hope of winning. He thought: I am Ba.s.so the Merciless, who always gets what he wants. What do I want? I want to lose this game.

He put the king back and moved his one remaining p.a.w.n instead. She winced; he'd wrecked her trap, which she'd worked so hard to build.

"It's a draw," he said. "Neither of us can win from here."

"You think so."

He shrugged. "We can play it out if you like."

She moved her rook; empty gesture of aggression. He defended his p.a.w.n. "I agree," she said, "it's a draw. That means we play again."

The next game was possibly the best he'd ever played. He lost it without letting her see he was trying to lose, which took so much more skill than just winning. She was delighted; not, he was fairly sure, by the reprieve of her virtue, but because she'd beaten him at chess. It was a lie, of course, and properly speaking there's no place for lies in a good marriage. He understood why she got so angry when he cheated to let her win.

"Best of three?" he said.

She grinned at him. "Certainly not," she said. "I don't believe in pus.h.i.+ng my luck."

"That wasn't luck, it was skill."

"If you say so." She started putting the pieces back where they belonged. "My people would say that Skyfather guided my hand, to keep me from sin."

"I hope not," he replied. "That'd be cheating."

She frowned. "I don't know," she said. "As I understand it, if Skyfather helps you with something, you're still ent.i.tled to take all the credit. It's certainly that way with battles, so presumably it holds true with chess as well."

He put back the last two black pieces. "You don't believe in your G.o.ds, but you believe in sin," he said. "That's a contradiction."

"Yes." She smiled at him. "You seem very interested in my people," she said. "I'm surprised at that. I'd have thought you'd consider us to be mere savages."

"I like savages," he said. "In moderation, of course. Enough to marry one, at any rate."

"Ah." She pulled a stern face. "But I'm not a savage any more. I'm civilised."

He nodded. "Just as well one of us is, I suppose."

"All Vesani are civilised," she said. "The definition of civilisation is being like the Vesani. It would never occur to you to take seriously the idea of a universe adapted from the ribcage of a bear."

"True," Ba.s.so said. "We'd ask where the bear came from in the first place."

"Indeed. Where do you think the universe came from?"

"I neither know nor care." He stood up. "I'm feeling much better now. I think I'll go and do some work."

She nodded. "It would help," she said. "Shall I tell them to send you up some tea?"

"Yes, thanks." He paused to look at her. "My sister's a h.e.l.l of a chess player," he said.

"As good as you?"

"No," he replied. "But she really hates to lose. Her idea of a deeply satisfying game is a bitterly contested draw. Ba.s.sano, on the other hand, either wins in the first twelve moves or loses interest and makes stupid mistakes."

"I've been thinking," she said.

He walked back to his chair and sat down. "Well?"

"A job for him. Not a career," she added. "Start him off with a job, and see how he takes to it. That will help you decide what he's best suited to."

Ba.s.so raised an eyebrow. "I think I follow," he said. "What did you have in mind?"

She folded her hands in her lap. "You told Sentio you had reason to believe that the governor of the Mint is dishonest."

"Yes. And?"

"Dismiss him," she said. "Appoint Ba.s.sano in his place."

Ba.s.so frowned. "I'm not so sure about that," he said. "It's a serious job."

"Give him someone to advise him," she replied. "It has to be a serious job in order to engage his interest. You should tell him you need him to do it, since there's n.o.body else you can trust. In the present circ.u.mstances, trustworthiness matters far more than experience or even ability. You can also point out that the job will be temporary, while you choose a suitable permanent replacement."

"I'm still not sure," Ba.s.so said. "It'd all depend who I put in with him. I can't spare Antigonus. I suppose we could do without Tragazes for a couple of months, but I don't know that Ba.s.sano would work well with him. Also, he's looking after the twins."

She moved her shoulders very slightly; not really a shrug. "I'm sure you can find someone," she said. "You asked me for a suggestion. I wouldn't presume to advise you about the details."

Ba.s.so clicked his tongue. "Why is it," he said sadly, "that when people duck out of the difficult, boring stuff and leave it all for me to do, they call it not presuming?" She laughed. He knew she had no sense of humour, just a very good sense of timing. "That's all right," he said, "I'll think of someone. And yes, it's a good idea. Thank you."

She accepted his thanks with a slight nod, like an emperor acknowledging the loyalty of his troops.

"It's the most extraordinary place," Ba.s.sano said. "The people are all lunatics, and the noise is unbelievable. They've put extra-thick curtains on the back of my door so I can hear myself think when I'm actually sitting in my office, but once you go outside into the main shop..."

"But you like it there."

"G.o.d, yes. It's..." Ba.s.sano grinned. "It's different."

Overhead, a single beam of light sliced down through the red, blue and purple of the round window, directly above the altar. The idea was that the first light of dawn should fall directly on the huge (to Ba.s.so's way of thinking, rather vulgar) golden statue of the Invincible Sun, striking the mirror in His outstretched left hand and reflecting onto the central panel of the jewelled triptych on the centre of the altar; at which point, so the theory ran, He was considered to be present in Temple, and the service could begin. It was unfortunate that Ba.s.so should have chosen to get married on a cloudy day. The light kept darting around (all over the place, his father would have said, like the mad woman's s.h.i.+t) but so far it had managed to avoid the mirror. That meant Ba.s.so and Ba.s.sano were trapped over on one side of the chapel, Melsuntha and her lot were hunkered down out of sight on the other side, and nothing could happen.

"I'm glad you've settled in so well," Ba.s.so said.

"Me too. And astonished," Ba.s.sano added. "After all, it's the first actual job of work I've ever done. I fully expected I'd be useless at it. Mind you, your man Bringas is keeping a very close eye on me, which is just as well. I like him. He's got a very dry sense of humour."

News to me, Ba.s.so thought. Maybe he's one of those tiresome people who think you can only show proper respect by being boring. "It hadn't occurred to me that the noise would be a problem," he said.

"In the Mint? Are you kidding? Close on a thousand men with hammers bas.h.i.+ng steel dies all day long." Ba.s.sano s.h.i.+fted a little; cramp, presumably, from standing still in one place for so long. "There's one particular note," he went on. "Actually, there's about five; but four of them mean a slight misstrike. The fifth one's what you get when a coin's been struck perfectly. It's like a thousand-part orchestra all playing the triangle, very slightly out of time."

The light flashed off the silver s.h.i.+eld of Victory, on the other side of the nave. Way off target. "I'm amazed anybody can work there," he said.

"Oh, they're all deaf," Ba.s.sano said. "Which means they shout all the time, even when it's quiet. I imagine you'd know all about that."

"Bringas says you're doing a good job," Ba.s.so said.

"Well, he would."

"Not to me." Ba.s.so smiled. "We went through that when I gave him the a.s.signment. If he says you're doing well, I believe him."

Ba.s.sano shrugged. "I was about to say it's no big deal, it's not exactly difficult, but that's not true. It's not difficult like advanced calculus, or differentiating between primary and secondary premises in applied logic. It's just there's so much of it."

"So much of what?"

"Everything." Ba.s.sano grinned. "The moment you've dealt with one thing, there's something else needing to be done immediately. You haven't got time to think, you just do stuff, all day. That's what I mean by different."

"Welcome to the real world," Ba.s.so said.

"I like it. Maybe not for the rest of my life, but-"

"We're on, I think." The mirror was flas.h.i.+ng, and the priest had come scurrying forward. "You've got the ring?"

A private service, in the chapel of the House. Father Chrysophilus, late of the Studium, now chaplain-in-ordinary to the First Citizen (a three-hundred-year-old sinecure Ba.s.so had revived specially for him), conducted a brief, slightly nervous ceremony in front of fifteen people, four of them armed guards, who kept looking round for hidden a.s.sa.s.sins even while they were joining in the hymns. Cinio and Sentio were there for the government, with Senator Olybrias (at Ba.s.so's particular request) representing the loyal Opposition. Antigonus hadn't been able to make it, so Tragazes represented the Bank. He had a loud singing voice, like a drunk in an alley. The whole thing reminded Ba.s.so of a pauper's funeral, the only difference that he could see being that it wasn't being conducted at the public expense.

When it was over, he went with Cinio and Sentio straight to a highways oversight committee meeting. Ba.s.sano and Melsuntha rode home together in a hired chaise.

"It went well," she said.

Ba.s.sano didn't comment on that. Instead, he said, "I'm very fond of my uncle."

"I know." She gave him a look that wasn't a smile, but which conveyed approval. "So am I."

"Good," Ba.s.sano said. "You know all about what happened, with him and my mother."

"Of course."

He thought: it won't change anything. "I'm a bit concerned he's off his guard where my mother's concerned. He beat her fair and square over Olybrias, but..."