Blue and Gold Read Free Page B

years?
I know you wouldn’t murder my sister.
    And you know
me. It’s all right. Really.
    We can sort it
all out, I promise; but not if the Watch catches you. You know how things are with
me and the Prefect’s office. Pescennius would just love to put you on trial, to
get at me. Don’t overestimate what I can do. There will eventually come a point
where I can’t protect you any more.
    The best thing
would be if you stay put at Sty’s place and have him write me you’re there.
I’ll send scuttlehats to bring you out nice and quiet.
    What the hell
were you thinking about, running away like that? For crying out loud, Nino.
    *
    “Plain paper,” I
said. “His own hand.” Astyages was doing his letter, really concentrating on
gold-leafing a loopy-scrolly bit. I folded the letter and put it inside my
jacket, safe. Used just right, that letter could be a neat weapon. I picked up
a sheet of blank paper from the table. “Do you mind?” I said.
    He looked up.
“What?”
    “Better get rid of
this,” I said, holding up the sheet.
    “What? Oh, yes,
good idea.” He bent his head over the page in front of him. One smudge or
ink-blob and he could screw up two days’ work. I went over to the fireplace,
made a show of screwing up the paper into a ball and throwing it into the fire.
Phocas had always had a genius for details; he’d make sure his men asked; what did he do with the letter once he’d read it?
    “What did it say?”
Astyages asked.
    “Come home, all is
forgiven.” I sat down on the edge of the table. He scowled at me, and I stood
up again. “What do you think?” I asked.
    He took time off
to consider his reply. “I honestly couldn’t say,” he said. “Give him his due,
he’s a fair-minded man. If he believes it was an accident, he’s capable of
forgiving you. Also, I don’t think they ever got on, not even as kids.
Especially as kids. And there’s always politics, which I know absolutely
nothing about. Could be you’ve done him a favour, for all I know.”
    “Or he could be
trying to lure me back so he can have me slowly tortured to death.”
    “That’s possible,
yes.” Helpful as ever. “So,” he said, pausing to tweak the hairs of his brush
into a sharp point, “what’re you going to do?”
    *
    It’d depend on whom you asked. Ask,
say, the Dean of Philosophy at Elpis, and he’d say my crowning achievement was
the Dialogues, in which I expound the theory of correlative forms. Ask
the master of the Temple, he’d say the Essay on Ethical Theory. Ask the
president of the Mystery, he’d tell you it was vis mercuriae, or possibly
combining mel fortis with strong acids on a block of ice to make ichor tonans.
The chairman of the Literary Association would go for Aspis, though I’d
be inclined to doubt he’s ever managed to read all forty-seven cantos;
privately he’d tell you he much prefers the sonnets, or Fulvia and Luso. Down at the patents registry, they wouldn’t have to think about it; the Vesani
wheel, for forming curves in sheet metal, and if only I’d held on to the
patent, instead of selling it for the price of a good pair of boots, I’d have
been a rich man at twenty and none of this would ever have happened. If it was
the chief of the watch, he’d have no hesitation in going for the Lystra Bank
job; I believe it’s still required reading for fast-trackers in the Criminal Investigations
division. Ask me what the best thing I’ve ever done is, I’d have to reply; I
don’t know, I haven’t done it yet.
    Ask me what I’m
proudest of; no problem. None of it.
    Well, hell.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the logic of the Dialogues that nobody’s
figured out yet, but they will, one day, and then my reputation will be
landfill. Ichor tonans was, admittedly, a stroke of genius, but what’s it good
for? Blowing things up. I believe they’re allowed to use it in the mines, and
for blasting roads through the mountains, but even so. You can’t really glory
in the invention of