Free The Honours by Tim Clare

speak of honour, my dear brother.’ He crossed the room with a strange elegance. ‘We speak only . . . of will .’ At this final word his hand engulfed Gideon’s, pumping furiously.
    Gideon stared into the old foreigner’s wide grey eyes. For an instant, he thought he felt a freezing current flowing up his arm.
    Mr Propp let go.
    Gideon blinked. He flexed his fingers. The tension in his forehead had dissolved to almost nothing.
    â€˜You.’ Mr Propp pointed. ‘You are artist.’
    â€˜How do you know?’ Gideon looked at his hand. ‘Did you . . . ’
    â€˜No, no.’ The old man laughed. ‘Your wife tells me. Come.’ He beckoned. ‘Quick, before we eat. I show you something. In my study.’

    Delphine told herself not to rush. She had plenty of time.
    Propp’s study had no windows. One wall was taken up with glass-fronted bookshelves that rose to the ceiling. There was an armchair, a wardrobe, a wicker basket heaped with logs, a mahogany escritoire writing desk with its lid rolled down, and a wide fireplace. In the middle of the rug was a tea trolley. Several saucers, a knife, a plate covered in crumbs, an empty bottle of calvados and two crystal tumblers jankled as she pushed it aside to get to the desk.
    The room stank of pipesmoke and brandy. It was surprisingly cold – the skin on her neck and forearms had pricked up. She tugged at the desk lid.
    It was locked.
    She cast around for a key. What if she forced it?
    But then Propp would know he had been found out. He might flee, or hunt her down.
    She was about to turn her back when she noticed a tiny whitetriangle poking from beneath the closed lid. She knelt. It was the corner of a piece of paper.
    Delphine licked her thumb and forefinger and tugged. The paper resisted. She tried again. It started to slide out through the crack.
    She almost had it out when the paper snagged on something. She pulled. The top of the sheet tore sickeningly.
    She examined the damage. The rip went right along the top of the page. She felt as if she were choking. She tried holding it back together. Was it still noticeable? Yes, very.
    There was nothing to be done. She just had to hope that Propp would not notice. She spread the page flat on the desk lid. It was handwritten in blue ink on smooth rag paper with crisp edges. The text was annotated in several spots by a second author – the marginal notes were not in English; they were peppered with exclamation marks. These additions, she assumed, had been made by Propp.
    She read:

    believe we were sent as punishment for their sins. They had grown idle – so the second book teaches – foregoing the hunt and strength and the extermination of fear, and adopting the sedentary life of the farmer. They had forgotten Hem, Makash, Requen, Dar, Matesh and Ko, cultivated grain alcohol and opened their minds to foreign ideas. They had mixed with the vesperi. * And when we came – so the third book teaches – their warriors were slow with drink and they had lost the tongue of the horned pantheon and so could not call to Hem, Makash, Requen, Dar, Matesh nor Ko (who would not have heeded their petitions in any case), and thus they were brought low, and made serfs in the land they once ruled. Whether atonement (if possible at all) is best reached through self-abnegation and acceptance of this divine punishment or by exacting vengeance upon their subjugators is a tense point of doctrinal

    And the page ended there.
    It sounded like something from the Bible. Delphine did not recogniseany of the names. She wrinkled her nose. Maybe it was a red herring.
    She slipped the paper back under the lid, taking care not to tear it any further, and turned to the bookshelves. As she crossed the room, she noticed four deep dents in the rug, left by the trolley’s casters. She would have to remember to return it to its original position before she left.
    She tried to open the