"And making cheese, yes. I don't know what you've got in mind, but just think what you could achieve back Home. Think about it, for crying out loud. You want to build factories? Well, fine. You could be the richest man in-"

"You're not going Home," Gignomai said quietly. "Not ever."

Luso was furious. "You stupid little b.a.s.t.a.r.d, haven't you been listening? I told you, the met'Oc-"

"It's not going to happen," Gignomai said. "Trust me."

"You don't know anything about it," Luso roared at him. "Listen to me for once in your stupid life. We're going Home. It's a done deal; it's settled. And I'm d.a.m.ned if I'm going to let your stupid pride get in the way of our family being where it ought to be."

"Fine. You go."

"Not without you. Not acceptable."

Gignomai shivered. The blood from his cut was trickling down his nose, and it tickled. He wiped it away with the back of his hand; there was a lot of it. He could feel the cut throbbing, as if it was keeping time with the rhythm of the hammer, subst.i.tuting for it now that it was silent. "You really want me to come."

"Yes."

"Then I'm definitely not coming." He wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y hand on the seat of his trousers. "Just for once, you can't have everything your own way. Interesting new experience for you."

He watched Luso closely, expecting him to move any moment: a lunge, an attack initiated. Fencing lessons. But Luso didn't move, which surprised him.

"I've missed you," Luso said.

Gignomai felt a sharp pain in his head; the hammer, extremely strong. "Is that right?"

"Yes."

"Afraid you're running out of siblings, I a.s.sume."

It was a clumsier thrust than he'd have liked, but it made Luso shake. "That's it?"

"Yes, that's it."

Luso stood up. "You're a fool to yourself," he said. "I'll expect you to be there. Don't mess me around. Understood?"

"What're you going to do, Luso? Send your men to drag me there? Tie me to a chair?"

"The thought had crossed my mind." Suddenly Luso sighed. He seemed to deflate a little. "But I decided against. I thought I'd appeal to your better nature instead."

"Tell you what." Finally, he'd found what he'd been looking for. It had slipped through a hole in the pocket and lodged in the lining. He teased it back through the hole with his fingertips and closed his hand around it. "I may come, after all. But in case I don't, here's my wedding present for my new sister-in-law."

He started to take his hand out of his pocket. Luso froze, watching the hand, as if he was afraid it'd be a weapon. Except, if it had been a weapon, Luso wouldn't have frozen.

"Gig," Luso said.

Gignomai removed his hand from his pocket and opened it. On his palm lay a small silver brooch, mounting a single blue stone. "Go on," he said. "Take it."

He'd waited all his life for Luso to look at him like that. "Take it," he repeated. "After all, it's a family heirloom. She ought to have it, don't you think?"

Luso turned and walked away. Gignomai watched him until the trees swallowed him up, then wrapped the brooch in the foul sc.r.a.p of cloth he used as a handkerchief, oily rag and emergency bandage, and stowed it carefully in his other pocket.

The Calimeo family came to town to buy rope.

Furio, standing on the porch, saw them coming up the street and darted inside. Marzo stopped him before he could disappear into the cellar.

"What?" Marzo demanded.

"They're coming," Furio said.

Marzo frowned. "Who? The met'Oc? The government?"

"Worse."

"Oh." Marzo somehow managed to slide between Furio and the cellar door. "Would you mind seeing to them? I've got to fetch something."

Portly he might have been, but Marzo could be diabolically agile when he wanted to be. Furio addressed his refusal to a closing cellar door, and then the shop door opened. He turned round slowly, and smiled.

The Calimeos were generally referred to as the Summer Cold (annoying and so very hard to get rid of). There were six of them, always together: father, mother, uncle and three juvenile daughters, or it might have been the same daughter projected back in time and observed at eighteen-month intervals. The daughters never, ever spoke. Their elders made up for it.

"What can I-?" was as far as Furio got before the torrent overwhelmed him. All three of them tended to talk at once, all on different, equally fatuous topics, none of them apparently aware that the other two were in the same room. If, as a result of the blended hubbub of their voices, their interlocutor appeared to be having trouble understanding them, they helpfully shouted. Furio fixed a smile on his face, said yes, sure, is that right at fixed intervals, and hoped very much that Uncle Marzo would meet a giant rat in the cellar, which would eat him up.

"d.a.m.nedest thing," the uncle was saying. "Them savages."

Furio blinked. "Savages?"

Infuriatingly, the uncle chose that moment to pause a fraction of second to breathe in, and Mother filled the empty fragment of time with a question, which he entirely failed to hear. She repeated it at full volume at precisely the same time as Uncle replied to Furio's enquiry.

"What savages?" Furio said.

"At East Ford." Furio strained his ears to pick uncle's theme out of the fugue. "Fifteen or twenty. Just sat there. All day. d.a.m.nedest thing."

East Ford. He tried to picture it in his mind. Seven miles or so upstream from the factory site, a flat, treeless meadow, good grazing, p.r.o.ne to flooding in the spring and autumn. Empty, nothing to see. Flat. You could see, or be seen, for miles.

Fifteen or twenty?

Forcibly, as though dragging a reluctant animal, he pulled the picture of the savages' camp into his mind. "Did they have livestock?" he asked. "Wagons, tents, that sort of-?"

Father Calimeo was telling him about an encounter he'd had with the met'Oc raiders, twenty years ago. They'd ridden past him on their way to somewhere else. It had been the standout event of his life. "Did they have livestock?" Furio repeated loudly. Maybe the other two were talking to people next to him, people he couldn't see. Imaginary friends.

"No, no livestock," Uncle Calimeo replied. "Just fifteen or twenty of them, men and women too. Just sat there cross-legged in the gra.s.s like they were waiting on something. Watching me. d.a.m.nedest thing."

Watching someone who didn't exist. Waiting on something. Mother Calimeo was describing a bolt of cloth she'd seen on the shelf behind his head six years ago. Either her memory was exceptionally vivid, or she could see back through time. Oddly enough, he remembered the exact same bolt: blue cotton, with a faint yellow check. Father had sold it to...

"Geant Poneta," Mother Calimeo said, a split second before he could. "She made it up into two shirts for the boys and a working dress for her niece, for her eighteenth. It had a double row of horn b.u.t.tons."

"Can't think what they were looking at that was so d.a.m.ned interesting," Uncle Calimeo went on. "I was just rounding up the stock, moving them up the valley, same as I've done every year for I don't remember how long. Just sat there and watched. You wouldn't credit it."

"We want to buy some rope," Father Calimeo said loudly, as if to a deaf man, or a stranger. "Thirty ells of the hemp three-ply. Rope," he added, making a coiling round the arm gesture.

"Rope," Furio repeated. "I'll see what we've got."

"Bought some rope in here sixteen years ago," Uncle said. "Jute four-ply, d.a.m.ned good rope. Left it out in the rain one year and after that it was no good anyhow."

d.a.m.nedest thing, Furio thought, fifteen or twenty of them, watching. How could you watch someone you knew wasn't really there? He turned round and looked Uncle straight in the eye. "Was one of them an old man?" he asked.

"Rain gets in it, in between the strands, it starts to rot," Uncle replied. "Next thing you know, it comes apart in your hands."

"No old man," Father said. "Reckon they was all about your age. Mind, it's hard to tell with them savages."

Furio dropped the rope. "You saw them too."

"Sure I saw them. There was twenty-six."

"Fifteen or twenty," Uncle said. "No old man, though. Not as I could see."

"They were just sat there," Father said. "Watching what we was doing. I yelled at them, "Go on, get lost," but they just went on sitting."

Uncle shook his head. "d.a.m.nedest thing," he said.

"That's the niece over to Wellhead," mother pointed out. "Married Daso Disiano, but he died. He was a thin, short man, went bald early. You won't remember him, I don't suppose. There was a daughter."

The three Calimeo girls were sitting on a long packing case containing Gignomai-made hay rakes, only two left. They sat in a row, swinging their legs, not in time. "That's four-ply," Uncle pointed out, "not three-ply. We asked for three-ply. Three-ply hemp."

"I think we may have some in the cellar," Furio said, and bolted like a rabbit.

There was a man called Sao Glabrio, who lived at Middle Bridge. There was no bridge at Middle Bridge, though there may have been one once, and the Fesennas were always talking about building one there. Glabrio farmed in a small way: two brood sows, a small suckler herd of roundback dairy cows, a handful of goats who wandered on and off the property as the mood took them. His wife had died long since; his daughter was married to Desio Heddo. Glabrio and Heddo loathed each other and never spoke a civil word. The only member of his family Glabrio had any time for was his grandson, Scarpedino, who would inherit the Glabrio place when the time came, a.s.suming he could be bothered with it. Glabrio didn't get on particularly well with his neighbours, either-the Biasige on the north side or the Fesennas on the south.

Not long before the met'Ousa arrived on their ship, the eldest Fesenna boy and some friends of his decided to go long-netting on Glabrio's pond. Glabrio called it a lake. It was half an acre of brown water and eight-foot-tall sedge, surrounded by bog. No use to anybody except for a few winter duck. The Fesenna boy called on Glabrio to ask his permission, which was refused. This didn't matter, since long-netting is best done at night, and Glabrio's house was on the other side of a tall ridge, so lights and noise wouldn't carry. Glabrio always did his early morning ch.o.r.es at the same time, in the same order, and wouldn't be anywhere near the pond until mid-morning.

The boys reached the pond at about midnight and set up the net all round the pond, hanging it from the tops of sedge stalks. Then they loosed their dogs into the pond to put up the ducks. They were good at their job. They got a dozen ducks rising up off the water, and another half dozen coming back in again. It all went pretty well, until the youngest Fesenna boy (too young, really, but he'd whined to be allowed to come) fell in the water.

It was a cold night-just right for fowling; not so good for a swim-and they all got fairly well soaked hauling the boy out again. By the time they'd done that it was about an hour before dawn, the coldest time of all. The boy was shivering and moaning, and the elder Fesenna was worried. He'd neglected to tell his mother he was taking the kid, and he had a fair idea what she'd have to say if he brought him home with pneumonia. It was a two-hour walk back home. Glabrio would still be in bed. Fesenna decided to light a fire to dry them all out.

Lighting a fire in the sedge wasn't a problem. The leaves were dry and papery and burnt hot quickly. The boys tore up armfuls and piled them on, delighting in the wild flames. One of them suggested plucking and roasting a duck for a field breakfast. They were debating the motion when a stiff wind got up.

It shouldn't have, not at that time of day in that season, but it did. The fire blew into the tall stand of sedge at the foot of the ridge, which went up like gunpowder. The boys dumped the ducks and ran.

Glabrio saw the smoke as he came out of the chicken-house. By that time, with the sun well up and the wind dropped back. It was just a tall, thin plume and he a.s.sumed it was somebody camped out on their way somewhere. Trespa.s.sing, by definition. He called up his dogs and set off, grinning, to shout at them.

By the time he got there, all the sedge on the south side of the pond had burnt down to black ash. Glabrio, who relied on the sedge for winter bedding, stood still and breathless for quite some time, then trudged miserably down the ridge to investigate. He found half a charred long-net and the incinerated bones of eighteen ducks, piled up in a heap.

He wasn't the world's greatest a.n.a.lytical thinker. He didn't have to be.

Melo Fesenna, the boys' father, apologised fulsomely and with a grim, strained face. He'd see to it that both boys wouldn't lie down comfortably for a fortnight, and he'd make up the lost sedge with straw and reed from his own barn. Glabrio wasn't satisfied. There was also trespa.s.s, poaching, fire-starting and reckless endangerment (neither of them knew what that meant, but it sounded ominously legal), all of which amounted in Glabrio's estimation to ten silver thalers. Fesenna, who'd had enough of his neighbour by this point, laughed in his face. Glabrio's whole place wasn't worth ten thalers, he said. He wouldn't pay such a sum even if he'd got it, which he hadn't. Two carts of reeds and one of straw, take it or leave it. Glabrio swore at him and walked away.

And there the matter festered for quite some time. From time to time, one of the Fesennas would run into Glabrio on the road or out on the boundaries. Glabrio would yell abuse, the Fesenna would ignore him, no big deal. When Melo Fasenna cut his reeds, he had two carts loaded and sent round to Glabrio's place. Glabrio wouldn't let the men unload, and threw stones at them until they drove off. When Melo heard that, he shrugged and said that'd have to be an end of it.

Around the time that the news of Luso met'Oc's wedding broke, there was a fire one night in the Fesennas' barn. All the reed went up and a good quarter of the straw, but they managed to get the animals out and save the hay. The next morning, while they were damping down, Melo Fasenna noticed something unusual about the barn door. At first glance it looked like a knot-hole, but there hadn't been such a hole in the door before, and he'd known that door for fifty years. He took out his pocketknife and probed about in the hole, and found something soft.

They had to drill it out from the back with a bit and brace. It proved to be a squashed lump of lead, about thumbnail size.

Melo looked at it for a while, then he called for his eldest son and told him to ride into town and fetch the mayor.

"It's possible," Marzo reluctantly conceded.

"Possible be d.a.m.ned." Melo was one of those people whose anger is slow and steady. By this time, it was starting to get good and hot. "Any fool can see what happened. He set the barn on fire to draw me out, so he could take a shot at me and kill me. Here's the hole, look." He turned round and pointed in the opposite direction. "Straight line from that clump of briars. That'll be where he was sat waiting." He stood with his back to the door. The hole was a foot higher than the top of his head. "And that's how much he missed me by. Too d.a.m.n close, I reckon."

Marzo knew what the reply would be, but he had to ask. "And who would he be?"

"Scarpedino Heddo, of course." Melo closed his fist hard around the lead lump. "Everybody knows he's up on the hill these days, and everybody knows he'll have Glabrio's place when he's gone. Obvious. Glabrio went to the boy and told him to kill me, because of that business back along."

Marzo thought, If I was Scarpedino, and if Scarpedino was the sort of monster who'd kill a man because his crazy grandpa told him to, I wouldn't do it like this, because it wouldn't work, and it didn't. No, I'd have wedged the house door with a bit of plank and set fire to the thatch. "It's going to be hard proving it," he said.

"Like h.e.l.l." Melo swung his fist under Marzo's nose and opened it. "What's this, then? It's a pistol ball. Who's got pistols? The met'Oc. Where's Scarpedino now? Well, is that proof or isn't it?"

As delicately as he could, Marzo lifted the lump off Melo's palm and dropped it in his pocket. "If it was Scarpedino-"

"No if about it."

"Then," Marzo went on, "I'll take it up with Lusomai met'Oc, I promise you. But you said, you didn't hear a shot fired. Those things make a h.e.l.l of a racket."

"Means nothing," Melo snapped at him. "All the noise of the fire, everybody yelling, there were beams falling in. That's all my winter reed gone and a good part of the straw, and who's going to pay for lumber and time for fixing the barn? You're d.a.m.ned right you're going to take it up with the met'Oc, and Glabrio too. That crazy old man wants stringing up."

"I hate to say it," Furio said, "but he's probably right."

"Don't," Marzo replied, lifting the scales with his left hand. The pans danced, and he dampened them with a finger. "I've known Glabrio all my life. He's a nasty mean old man with a vicious temper. He's not a killer."

"Scarpedino is."

Marzo put the crushed lump of lead in one pan, and an unfired ball in the other. "How'd he get hold of a snapping-hen? Luso wouldn't just lend him one, and he keeps them locked up."

"In which case, Luso must've done it. Come on, which is more likely?"

The pans weren't balancing; nowhere near. Marzo frowned, laid them down and took the bullets out of the pans. "I think we can rule out Luso," he said.

"And Boulo met'Ousa?"

Marzo didn't reply. He'd laid the two bullets side by side. Even allowing for loss of metal as a result of being shot into and dug out of a door, it was definitely smaller than the unfired specimen. He looked up. Furio was looking straight at him.

"Would Boulo met'Ousa lend Scarpedino his gun?" Furio asked.

"Or Boulo doesn't lock his bedroom door," Marzo replied. He picked up the bullets and put them in a drawer of his desk. "Didn't you say you'd seen Scarpedino at Gignomai's place?"

Furio nodded. "Surprised me," he said, "but I didn't ask about it."

Marzo sat down. The bottle was empty. "If I wanted to kill Melo Fesenna, I'd burn him in his house. It's no bother to do, most likely people would think it was an accident, and I'd be sure of getting him. Setting a fire so I'd have a shot at him, in the dark, at thirty-five yards' range; you'd have to be a b.l.o.o.d.y fool to do it that way."

Furio thought for a moment. "If you burnt the house you'd kill them all," he said. "Maybe..."