Read Online Memory by K. J. Parker - Free Book Online

forge, and before you joined up, you were working in a blacksmith’s shop. You learned the trade back in Haldersness, and when you wound up over here and needed to start earning a living, it was the only useful thing you knew how to do.’
    â€˜I see,’ Poldarn said. ‘That explains – no, forget it. None of your business.’
    â€˜Suit yourself.’ Aciava shrugged. ‘So that’s your name,’ he said. ‘I reckoned there couldn’t be any harm in telling you, since that’s what you’ve been calling yourself anyway. And of course, it’s not your actual name, because really you’re Ciartan. Bit of a non-issue, really.’
    â€˜I’ve had enough of this,’ Poldarn said, jumping up again. ‘I think I was right to start with. I don’t want to know any more, it’s just making me angry—’
    Aciava nodded gravely. ‘Because you’re finding out you’ve been made a fool of. Same old Poldarn, always was scared to death of being made to look stupid in front of the class.’
    If he’d had a sword, Poldarn would probably have drawn it; he could feel the intrusion into his circle, like a splinter in the joint of a finger. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But you’ve told me now, and I don’t want to know any more, thanks all the same. You can piss off now.’
    â€˜Fine.’ Aciava held his hands up. ‘Whatever you like. But a moment ago you were dead set on knowing why I’d come looking for you. Obviously you’ve changed your mind.’
    Poldarn closed his eyes. ‘You said you missed me.’
    â€˜Oh, I did.’ Aciava laughed. ‘But I miss loads of people. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t ask myself what happened to old so-and-so. But I don’t go hunting them down across half the Empire. There’s a reason why I’m here, something that affects your present and your future, not just your past. You can ignore it if you like.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ Poldarn said, and left.
    Three hours’ walk, down a muddy, rutted lane in the dark, when he could probably have had a good night’s sleep on a soft mattress in the Virtue Triumphant, at the gold-tooth people’s expense. He cursed himself as he walked; never did know a good thing when he saw it. It was hard to imagine a sensible person in his situation walking out on a good offer like that. All that had been expected of him in return was sitting still and listening to some stuff about some people he used to know, one of them being himself. He carried on, feeling the mud slopping under his boots. It was a long nine miles, and his own stupidity went with him all the way.
    The tragedy of my life, he thought; wherever I go, I take myself with me. And I expect my mother warned me about getting into bad company.
    Copis, he thought (and at that moment, the low branch across the road that he knew was around there somewhere smacked him across the face; it probably laughed at him too, behind his back). Why the hell should the worst thing, the most important thing, be that she made a fool of me? All that time, on the road, in that bloody cart; she knew and I didn’t. At Deymeson she said she was quietly hating me all the way, under her breath, because she knew who I was and what I’d done. Our kid’ll be – what, two, nearly three by now, assuming she didn’t strangle it as soon as it was born.
    It’d be so much simpler, so much better, if Aciava (his real name? God knows) was lying. Sure, he knew all that stuff about the old country, but maybe a whole lot of people knew that once, in which case he could’ve found it out easily enough. Poldarn stopped, one foot in a puddle; just because he knows who I am doesn’t necessarily mean he’s telling me the truth. Think of what the sword-monks did to me, and he even says he’s one of them. Probably I was one of them – it’d explain