“Would he have done the same for me?”

“Indeed he would not-so all the more reason to have exploited his weakness. If you had let him live, you could have won yourself golden opinions from the Materazzi and made him look like nothing. Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it as it is to its victims-the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is that nobody really possesses the kind of power that you have for long. Those who have it on loan from Fate count on it too much and are themselves destroyed.”

“Did you make that up or was it someone else who never had to stand in front of a mob, barking to see them gutted for something to do of an afternoon?”

“Self-pity, is it? You need never have been there and you know it.”

Irritated, not least because he had no good answer, Cale turned to leave.

“By the way, the report on what happened last night will diminish significantly your contribution and that of your friends. You will not complain about this.”

“And why’s that?”

“After your performance at the Red Opera, you are much loathed. Think about what I’ve just told you and it will become clear enough. Even if it does not, you will say nothing about what happened yesterday.”

“I couldn’t care less what the Materazzi think one way or the other.”

“That’s your problem, isn’t it, that you don’t care what people think? But you should.”

Over the next week Materazzi from their estates came pouring into Memphis. It was barely possible to move for knights, their men-at-arms, their wives, their wives’ servants and the vast number of thieves, histers, tarts, gamblers, bagmen, hot prowlers, loan sharks and ordinary traders all after the opportunity to make the large amounts of money to be had from a war. But there was wheeling and dealing other than that concerning money. There were complicated matters of precedence to be settled among the Materazzi nobility. Where you were placed in the order of battle was a sign of where you stood in Materazzi society-a Materazzi battle plan was partly a military strategy and partly like the seating arrangement at a royal wedding. Opportunities to give and take offense were endless. So it was that, despite the pressing business of war, the Marshal spent most of his time throwing dinners and gatherings of one kind or another solely in order to smooth dangerously ruffled feathers by explaining that what looked like a slight was in reality an honor of the greatest significance.

It was at one of these banquets to which Cale had been invited (at Vipond’s request, as part of his attempt at rehabilitation) that events, yet again, took an unexpected turn. Despite the Marshal’s general desire not to have Simon in his presence, and particularly not in public, it was not always possible, particularly when Arbell had begged that Simon be invited.

Lord Vipond was a master of information, true and untrue. He had a considerable network of individuals at all levels of Memphis society, from lord to lowly bootblack. If he wished something to be widely known, or at least widely believed, these informers would be given a story, true or untrue, and then they would spread the word. Such a means of disseminating useful rumors and denying damaging ones has, of course, been used by every ruler from the Ozymandian King of Kings to the Mayor of Nothing-upon-Nowhere. The difference between Vipond and all these other practitioners of the black art of rumor was that Vipond knew that, for his informers to be believed when it really mattered, nearly everything they said had to be true. The result was that any lies that Vipond did want generally accepted were nearly always swallowed whole. He had used up some of his valuable capital on Cale because he was only too aware of the spirit of revenge that had been fired in those related or close to Solomon Solomon. His assassination was a near certainty. Vipond, despite what he had said to Cale, had it put about that Cale had fought bravely alongside the Materazzi in helping to save Arbell, and thus the immediate threat to Cale of poison or a knife in the back in a dark alley had been much, although not completely, diminished. Unusually, had Vipond been asked why he was spending so much time on someone of no significance, he would not have been able to say. But then there was no one to ask him.

Vipond and Marshal Materazzi had been meeting together for several hours in a frustrating attempt to create a battle plan that took into account all the complicated questions of status and power posed by putting the Materazzi into the field. The truth was that they were missing Solomon Solomon, whose heroic reputation as a soldier had made him invaluable as a man who could negotiate and deliver compromises between the various Materazzi factions struggling for precedence in the line of battle.

“You know, Vipond,” said the Marshal, miserably, “as much as I admire the subtleties of the way you deal with these matters, I have to say that, when all’s said and done, there are few problems in this world that can’t be solved by a large bribe or by shoving your enemy over a steep cliff on a dark night.”

“Meaning, my lord?”

“That boy, Cale. I’m not defending Solomon Solomon-you know I tried to stop it-but if the truth be known, I didn’t think the boy had a chance against him.”

“And if you had realized?”

“There’s no point in putting on that high-and-mighty tone; don’t tell me you always do the right thing rather than the wise thing. The point is we need Solomon Solomon; he could have smoothed things over and whipped these bastards into line. It’s simple-we need Solomon Solomon and we don’t need Cale.”

“Cale saved your daughter, my lord, and very nearly lost his own life in the process.”

“You see, there you go-of all people, you should know I can’t take things personally. I know what he did and I’m grateful. But only as a father. As a ruler, I’m pointing out that the state needs Solomon Solomon a lot more that it needs Cale. That’s just the obvious truth and there’s no point in you denying it.”

“So what do you regret, my lord? Not having him thrown over a cliff before the fight?”

“You think you can embarrass me into backing down? First of all, I would have given him a large bag of gold and told him to bugger off and never come back. Which, incidentally, is exactly what I intend to do when this war is over.”

“And what if he’d said no?”

“I’d have been pretty damn suspicious. Why is he hanging around here, anyway?”

“Because you gave him a good job in the middle of the most protected square mile in the entire world.”

“So it’s my fault? Well, if it is, I’m going to put it right. That boy is a menace. He’s a jinx like that fellow in the belly of the whale.”

“Jesus of Nazareth?”

“Yes, him. Once this business with the Redeemers is sorted, Cale is gone and that’s all there is to it.”

What also had the Marshal in such a foul temper was the prospect of having to sit with his son for an entire evening-the humiliation was almost more than he could endure.

As it turned out, the banquet went well. The nobles present seemed ready and even willing to set aside old resentments and squabbles and present a united front in the face of the threat from the Redeemers to Memphis in general and Arbell Swan-Neck in particular. Throughout the dinner she was so sweet and yet gently amusing and so astonishingly beautiful that she made the Redeemers’ grotesque portrait of her seem an increasingly powerful reason to put aside petty differences and face the threat that these religious fanatics posed to all of them.

Throughout the banquet she tried desperately not to look at Cale. So intensely did she love and desire him that she felt sure it would be obvious even to the most thick-skinned. Cale, for his part, was in a sulk because he interpreted this as her avoiding him. She was ashamed of him, he could see, embarrassed to be around him in public. The Marshal’s fears, on the other hand, that he would be mortified by Simon seemed to be groundless. True enough, the boy sat there inevitably saying nothing-but his habitual expression of alarm and terrified bewilderment had vanished. Indeed, his expression seemed entirely normal: now a look of interest, now one of amusement. The Marshal felt increasingly irritable as he had been unable to shake a tickly cough, probably caused by having to yap so much to his endless petitioners.