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else to go). Most of all there was the exchequer table itself: a solid square of oak covered with black and white mosaic tiles, like a giant chessboard, piled with heaps of brass and silver counters. He was taught how to use it to make calculations by the chief clerk, a short, elderly Jazygite eunuch by the name of Antigonus Poliorcetes, who'd been given the task of teaching him the basics of his new profession. The clerk was generally considered to be a difficult man, fussy and short-tempered, only kept on because he was indispensable. Basso rather liked him, and tried hard to be a good student. He felt he was making good progress. He quickly got the hang of the exchequer, double-entry bookkeeping, currency conversion and elementary accounting procedures. It was boring, but no more so than literature or philosophy, and unlike those two annoyances of his youth, he could see there was a point to it.
    At the end of the second week, Antigonus closed the ledger they'd been working through together, capped the inkwells, washed his hands in the rather fine silver bowl he kept specially for the purpose, dried them on a towel and said, "So, how do you think you're doing?"
    It wasn't for Basso to say, surely. "Not bad," he replied.
    "You think so." Antigonus frowned. "Let me put it this way. You have a choice. We can go through the motions, like we've been doing, and at the end of the month I can tell your father you've learned everything you need to know, and then you can get out of here back into the sunshine and go hunting or partying or whatever it is you want to do, and everybody will be happy. Or you can make a serious effort to learn what I can teach you. It's entirely up to you, but it'd be helpful if you could decide now. I have a lot of work to do, and this isn't achieving anything."
    "Oh," Basso said. "I thought I was doing quite well."
    Antigonus shook his head and smiled. "Listen," he said. "When I was five years old, soldiers came to our village. They burned down the houses, separated the men from the women and children, and marched us onto a ship. Later, they cut my bollocks off and taught me to read and write and do arithmetic, and your grandfather bought me and made me a junior clerk." He paused for a moment, looking out of the tiny window behind Basso's head. "Well, you know what they say. What you never had, you never miss. If the soldiers hadn't taken me, I'd be a goatherd. More likely, I'd be dead, because people don't live long enough to get old where I come from, so I'm not complaining. But I got here because I made an effort. Do you understand?"
    Basso nodded slowly. "And I'm not."
    "Correct." Antigonus got up, crossed the room and shook charcoal from the scuttle onto the fire. Basso was sweating; it was a warm day. "As I said, the choice is yours. Do you want to do this, or not?"
    He realised that he didn't know the answer to that question. He also knew that "I'm not sure" would be construed as "No". Later, when he reflected on how he'd come to reach his decision, he realised it was mostly because he liked Antigonus more than most of the other people he knew, though why that should be he wasn't quite sure. Maybe it was because the old man pointed out his mistakes.
    "Yes," he said.
    The next question was difficult. "Why?"
    He took a moment, then said, "Because one day I'll own the Bank, assuming Father doesn't run it into the ground first, and I'd like to know how to manage it." Fortunately, Antigonus believed him, or at any rate accepted the answer, and he wasn't called upon to show how he'd arrived at it, like in a mathematical problem.
    Things were different after that. To begin with, they were seriously, horribly worse. Why he'd ever imagined he liked the cruel, sarcastic, hectoring, petty-minded old fool he had no idea. Nothing he did was ever right. Furthermore the work, which had seemed so straightforward not so long ago, turned out to be unbelievably difficult. Everything needed thinking about, and