The Two of Swords: Part 7 by K. J. Parker

Author:K. J. Parker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780356505626
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2015-08-17T22:00:00+00:00

Attention to detail – the scholar’s mentality – had always been Glauca’s weakness, and his strength. Weakness, in all its connotations, was very much in his mind when he finally made it back to the Blue Chamber, having personally seen to the boy’s transfer to the hospital, then driven to the Exchequer to see about the money. As he subsided painfully into his chair he realised that he was completely exhausted. He had no strength left; it’d be several hours before he’d be able to stand up again, and his hands were shaking uncontrollably. Hard to believe that only hours before he’d fought and killed a man. But he had. The pride he felt in that accomplishment shocked him rather, but he couldn’t deny it. From his father, he supposed; Father had always valued men directly according to their ability to fight – let the best man win was, to him, a meaningless exhortation, since the winner was always the better man, by definition— He had a vague idea that someone really ought to give him a medal, or a trophy of some sort; who, though, he had no idea.

Attention to detail, then; he’d known he wouldn’t be able to sit still and be peaceful until he was sure the boy was safely in a hospital bed, and the fifty thousand angels were irrevocably earmarked and written up as such in the books. That done, he could relax—

No, he couldn’t. The Sleeping Dog Pack. He desperately wanted to get to his feet, but he knew he couldn’t, so he rang the bell. It took for ever – nine or ten seconds – for that damned fool Crinuo to get there. As soon as the door opened, he snapped, “The scholiast on Abbianus, quick as you like. And Dasenna, and the Universal Concordat, and Nurisetta on miracles, and the sixth book of Nardanes’ War Chronicles. And get me my rug,” he added, “before I freeze to death.”

Two hours later, he was sure. The books had proved it. The pack the boy had seen was either the genuine Sleeping Dog, lost for two hundred years and possibly the oldest silver pack still in existence, or a forgery perpetrated by scholars of the highest possible calibre. He examined the second hypothesis first.

Naturally, he knew every academician working in the field; a few by repute only, most of them personally. It was possible that one of them might have been tempted or suborned; anything’s possible, including winged serpents and the men with no heads and eyes in their stomachs recorded in Essynias, but he wasn’t inclined to believe in them. No; there were five men, apart from himself, with the necessary knowledge. Four of them would be there in an hour if he sent for them; the fifth, Carytta, must be ninety if he was a day, nearly blind last time he’d heard, living in a monastery on top of some godforsaken mountain in the Mesogaea. Further or in the alternative; why would anybody

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