Devices and Desires

Chapter Fourteen

The unmaking [he read] is the crown, the very flower of the hunt; therefore it follows that it must be conducted solemnly, seriously and with respect. There are two parts thereof, namely the abay and the undoing. First, let the carcass be turned on its back and the skin of the throat cut open most carefully up the length of the neck, and let cuts be made through the flesh to the bone. Let the master of the hunt approach then, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow, and let the huntsmen sound the death on their horns; thereafter let the hounds first and then the lymers be loosed so that they might tear at the neck before they are coupled up, that the taste thereof might quicken them to the chase thereafter. Then let a forked stick with one arm longer than the other be set up in the earth beside the carcass, and let the master with his garniture split the skin from throat to vent…

Valens frowned. The book, with its brightly coloured pictures and carefully pumiced margins, had cost him the price of a small farm; but all they'd done was loosely paraphrase Cadentius, leaving a few bits out and dressing up other bits in fancy prose. For a start, the lengthwise cut was part of the undoing, not the abay; and whoever wrote this had no idea what a garniture was.

He sighed, closed the book and stood up. The woman in the red dress had sworn blind that it was the last known surviving copy of a rare early text attributed to Polinus Rex, but Polinus was three hundred years earlier than Cadentius, who'd been the first to have the master roll up his sleeves. He'd been had; twenty good-weight thalers he'd never see again, and still the woman in the red dress hadn't brought a letter…

Through the window he could see the raindrops dripping from the pine-branches. It was a hunting day, but there wasn't any point going out in this; there'd be no scent in the wet, the mud would make the going treacherous, the deer would be holding in the high wood where there'd be precious little chance of finding them. The sharpness of his disappointment surprised him; the rain would stop soon, there would be other days, the deer would still be there next week, but every day lost was a precious thing stolen from him, a treat held just out of reach to tease him. Instead, he'd have to read letters, convene the council, do work. He smiled; he could hear his eight-year-old self saying it, not fair. To which one of many voices replies: life isn't fair, the sooner you learn that, the better.

It wasn't fair that she hadn't written back; it had never been this long before, and it was no good saying there hadn't been a suitable courier, because five women in red dresses had been and gone (a velvet cloak, a set of rosewood and whalebone chessmen, a pair of pointy-toed shoes, very latest style, a marquetry box to keep things in, and finally the bloody useless book), all from Eremia, all without a letter. And on top of that, it was raining.

On a table beside the window lay a pile of documents; routine reports, mostly, from his prefects, agents and observers, making sure he knew the facts before anybody else did. He sat down and picked one off the top of the heap. The handwriting was steep and cramped, and he recognised it-his man in Lonazep, with a full account of the landing of the Mezentine mercenary army. He'd had the gist already, but there would be a great deal to be gleaned from the details, from the descriptions of the staff officers to the number of barrels of arrows. He read it, then read it again; the information was good and solid, but he couldn't get his mind to bite on it. He smiled, because he could picture his father sitting at this very table (back then, of course, it was downstairs in the small anteroom off the great solar; but the daylight lasted longer here in the West Tower), wading through his paperwork with palpable growing impatience, until he jumped up from his chair and stormed out of the room to go and look at the horses or the dogs. Somehow he'd always managed to absorb just enough from his reports to stay sharp, but he'd always lived in and for the present, content or resigned to react to each development as it came. He'd been the same when playing chess, too; he'd never quite come to terms with the idea that the point of the game was to trap the enemy king, rather than slaughter the opponent's pieces like sheep. That thought brought back the first time Valens had ever beaten him. It was an ambiguous memory, because even now he couldn't call it to mind without an automatic smirk of pride; he'd used his father's aggression against him, lured him into checkmate with the offer of a gaggle of defenceless pawns, pinned him in a corner with his only two surviving capital pieces, while his father's queen, bishops and knights stood by, unused and impotent. But he also remembered the disbelief, followed by the hurt, followed by the anger. They hadn't spoken to each other for two days afterwards.

A report from Boton about a meeting between Duke Orsea and representatives of the Cure Hardy. Well; he knew about that. Orsea had picked the wrong sect to make eyes at, and the whole thing had been a waste of time. A report from Civitas Eremiae about the Mezentine defector, Vaatzes; what he was up to was still unclear, but he'd got money from somewhere to set up a factory, and was buying up bloom iron, old horseshoes, farm scrap iron of all kinds; also, he'd hired half the blacksmiths and carpenters in the city. Valens raised an eyebrow at that. If he'd heard about it, he was pretty sure the Mezentines had too, and surely such reports would confirm their worst fears about defectors betraying their precious trade secrets. If this Vaatzes had deliberately set out to antagonise the Republic, he couldn't have gone about it better. Valens went back a line: broken scythe blades, rakes, pitchfork tines, hooks, hammers, any kind of scrap made of hardening steel; also charcoal in enormous quantities, planed and unplaned lumber. The steel suggested weapons; the lumber sounded more like building works. He folded down a corner of the dispatch and moved on.

Petitions; he groaned aloud, allowing himself the indulgence of a little melodrama, since there was nobody else there to see. Not just petitions; appeals, from the general assizes and the marches assizes and the levy sessions; appeals on points of law and points of fact, procedural irregularities (the original summons recited in the presence of eight witnesses rather than the prescribed seven; how that could possibly invalidate a man's case he had no idea, but that was the law), limitations and claims out of time. He could just about have endured a morning in court, with a couple of clever speakers to entertain him, but the thought of sitting at a table and fighting his way through a two-inch wedge of the stuff made him wince.

Nevertheless, he told himself; I am the Duke, and therefore duty's slave. Never mind. He broke the seal on the first one and tried to concentrate. Alleged: that Marcianus Lolliotes of Ascra in the Dalmatic ward beginning in the time of Duke Valentinius on occasions too numerous to particularise entered upon the demesne land of Aetius Cassinus with the intention of cutting hay, the property of the said Cassinus. Defended: that the said land was not the demesne land of the said Cassinus, having been charged by the said Cassinus' grandfather in the time of Duke Valentius with payment to the great-grandfather of the said Lolliotes of heriot and customary mortmain, which payments were duly made but without the interest thereto pertaining; accordingly, the said Lolliotes having an interest in the said land, there was no trespass; further or in the alternative…

It took him a long time, and he had to check many cross-references in many books before he managed to get it all straight in his mind, but he got there in the end. As usual, it was nobody's fault, both of them were sort of right and slightly wrong, and there wasn't a clear-cut or obvious solution, because the law was outdated, contradictory and sloppily drawn, made up on the spot by his great-greatgrandfather, probably because he was bored and wanted to go outside in the fresh air and kill something rather than sitting indoors. Wearily, Valens uncapped his ink-well, dipped the nib and started to write. It didn't have to be fair copy; he had secretaries to do the bland, beautiful, cursive law-hand that needed to stay legible for centuries. But the sheer effort of writing made his wrist and forearm ache, and although he knew what he wanted to say, it was hard to keep everything in order; the points, facts and conclusions strayed like wilful sheep and had to be chased back into the fold. He lost his way twice, had to cross out and go back; the pen dropped a big fat blot and he'd swept his sleeve across it before he noticed. When finally it was done he read it through twice (once silently, once aloud) for errors and ambiguities; made three corrections; read it through again and realised one correction was actually a mistake; corrected the correction, read it through one more time, sprinkled and blew off sand, put it on the corner of the desk for the copyist to deal with later. Last step: he made a note in the margin of the relevant page of his copy of the Consolidated Digest, in his smallest writing (can't charge for heriot in 3d generation, statute barred after 2d, but reliefs apply in equity), to save himself the effort of doing all the research if the point happened to come up ever again. It was a good practice, recommended by several authors on jurisprudence, and he'd wasted more time looking for notes he'd made eighteen months ago but forgotten exactly where or under what than he'd have spent looking it all up from scratch.

(Just think, he told himself; men scheme and betray and murder so as to get to be kings and dukes, and this is what they end up doing all day long. Serves them right, really.)

Mercifully, the next three petitions weren't nearly so bad. Two of them were points he knew, and there was already an annotation on the relevant page of the book for the third-not his writing, or his father's; his grandfather, maybe, or his great-uncle, during his father's short but disastrous regency. Possibly on a better day he'd have checked for himself rather than take the unknown writer's word for it; possibly not. The fifth petition made up for the three easy ones; it was something to do with uses on lives in being and the perpetuity rules, which he'd never been able to understand, and there was a barred entail, a claim of adverse possession and the hedge-and-ditch rule thrown in for good measure. He could have been outside in the fresh air killing something (wry smile for his earlier self-righteousness) but he fought his way through to the end, realised he still couldn't make head or tail of it, and decided to split the difference: farmer Mazaninus could have the north end of the field and farmer Ischinus could have the south end, and they could share the bloody water and like it. Enough justice for one day. Too much fun is bad for the soul.

Perhaps, he thought (the ink-bottle was still uncapped, he had plenty of paper left), he should write to her again-no mention of the fact that she hadn't replied to his last letter, just something bright and witty and entertaining, the sort of thing he could do well, for some reason he'd never been able to grasp. If what he'd said the last time had offended her, maybe it'd be the right thing to pretend that letter had never been written; they could start again, talking about Mannerist poetry, observations on birds and flowers, the weather. But if he knew her (he'd only talked to her once, but how could there be anybody in the world he knew better?) she wouldn't sulk if he'd offended her, or break off entirely; she'd tell him he was wrong, stupid, insensitive, horrible, but she'd write back, if she possibly could. So maybe she couldn't.

The hell with this, he thought. He frowned, took a new sheet of paper, and started to write: to Lelius Lelianus, alias Nustea Cordatzes, timber merchant in Civitas Eremiae and his best spy in Eremia. Query: any rumours circulating anywhere about the Duchess, ructions in the Duke's household, society scandals, unexplained disappearances of Merchant Adventurers. Urgent. That one he wrote out himself, rather than adding it to the pile for copying.

Outside, the rain had slowed to a fine drizzle. He went down two flights to his wardrobe, quickly put on an oilskin cloak, big hat and waxed boots, collected a bow and quiver from the ascham (an old self-bow that wouldn't come apart in the wet) and left the castle by the north-end postern, heading for the dew-ponds. There might be duck there, though strictly speaking ducks didn't start for a month (but what's the point in being supreme and final judge of appeals if you can't bend the rules in an emergency?), and he hadn't shot for weeks.

The air smelt wet. It had been an unusually dry summer, so the rain hadn't sunk in to what passed for soil in the high marches. Water trickled down from his hair into his eyes, like tears, and he mopped it away with the back of his hand. Nobody had been this way for several days; the footprints in the softened dirt of the track had baked into puddled cups, filling with rain. He brushed past a low branch, spraying water. A drop landed on his tongue, and he spared some attention to taste it. I'm a different man outside, he thought; not better, but different.

The path down to the ponds was steep, slicked with dust turned to mud; he had to dig his heels in to keep upright, and the soles of his boots were too smooth (some hobnails would deal with that, if he remembered later). The light below the treeline was grey and faintly misty, and he could smell the leaves and the wet leaf-mould. He was aware of the silence, until something crashed away twenty yards or so to his left; a pricket buck, probably (he'll keep, he thought, and made an entry in his mental register). There weren't any duck, which was probably just as well for his conscience. He stood under a crooked beech tree for half an hour, listening to the rain and watching for ducks flighting in for the evening feed, but nothing showed; so he shot a big old crow out of the upper branches and went home.

They had told her that Orsea was in the arbour behind the chestnut tree. She called his name a few times, but he didn't reply, so she assumed he'd gone back inside. Then she caught sight of a flash of blue through the curtain of trailing vine. He hadn't answered her because he was asleep.

Like an old man, she thought, snoozing in the afternoon. Orsea never slept during the day; indeed, he resented sleep on principle, the way people resent paying taxes. It wasn't fair, he'd told her once, that nature only gave you a very short time on earth, and then saw fit to steal a third of it back from you. At one time he'd tried to train himself to make do with less of it-like a devious banker, he'd said, clipping little bits off the edges of coins. If he learned how to get by on seven hours a night instead of eight, he'd told her, at the end of a year he'd have gained fifteen days. Suppose he lived another forty years; that'd be over eighteen months, absolutely free. But it hadn't lasted, of course. He struggled through six weeks of the new regime, yawning and drifting off into daydreams, and then issued a revised opinion. Scrounging extra time by neglecting a vital function like sleep was counterproductive. For every waking hour gained you sacrificed two or three spent in a daze halfway between concussion and a bad hangover. In fact, eight hours wasn't really enough. Nine hours, on the other hand; nine hours would lose you eighteen months, theoretically speaking, but the extra energy and zest you'd get from being properly rested would mean you'd fit more activity into your voluntarily truncated life than you'd manage to wring out of your unnaturally extended one.

He was asleep now, though; dead to the world, with his head cradled on his arms, his face buried in the extravagant sleeves of his blue slash-cut doublet. Men say that the sight of a man asleep touches a woman's maternal instinct; for once, she thought, men might have a point. He looked about twelve years old, his hair scrambled, the tip of his nose visible in the crook of his elbow. She felt a deep-seated urge to tuck a blanket round him.

'Orsea,' she said. He didn't stir, so she came closer. 'Orsea.'

At least he didn't snore. She could never have endured a snorer. Her brother had snored so badly, all through her early years, when he slept at her end of the great solar, no barrier to the excruciating noise except a tapestry screen, that her first thought when they told her he was dead was that now she'd be able to sleep at night. False optimism; by the time she'd driven his face out of her dreams, her father's had replaced it. Lately, she'd dreamed about Orsea, dead on the battlefield or hanging by his hair from the low branches of a tree.

'Orsea,' she said. He twitched a little, like a pig. She smiled, and sat down beside him. When he was so fast asleep that her voice didn't stir him, it meant he'd wake up of his own accord quite soon. She could wait. She could sit and read the letter from Maiaut, and get that particular chore out of the way. Maiaut to Veatriz: greetings.

Or not. It was a warm, mellow autumn day, too pleasant to spoil with echoes of the most annoying of all her sisters. There was something about Maiaut, even on paper, that made her want to break things. That was, of course, unreasonable. It wasn't Maiaut's fault that she was a widow; and there was nothing inherently wrong with a noblewoman in reduced circumstances putting on the red dress and trekking around the world buying and selling things. It had taken her away from home, and it meant that her visits to Civitas Eremiae were pleasantly infrequent, though not nearly infrequent enough. She made enough money at it, God only knew (there were times, black times in the middle of the night when her dreams stabbed her awake, when she suspected that Maiaut had considerably more money than she did; and wouldn't that count as' high treason, being richer than your Duchess?), and it gave her plenty of scope for her exceptional gift for whining. Maiaut to Veatriz, greetings.

Well, here I am in Caervox. It's a nasty, smelly place. The water in the public reservoir is green on top and there are green squiggly things living in it; probably explains why the people here don't wash. The food tastes like armpit. I'm stuck here for another three days at least, probably more like five, because I'm waiting for a mule-train from Corsus, and the Cure Doce muleteers are the laziest people on earth. Also the most careless, so they may not arrive at all, or else they'll turn up without the cargo, having dropped it down a crevasse or lost it crossing a river. If by some miracle they do eventually show up, I'll be taking fifteen hundred rolls of gaudy, stringy carpet with me south to Herulia; sell enough of it therefor a grubstake, and move on to Civitas Vadanis by slow, easy stages. At least the Vadani pay in silver and I won't be lumbered with anything bulky or heavy, though of course the western passes are swarming with bandits.

'Orsea,' Veatriz said loudly, and still he didn't move. She resented him for not waking up and saving her from Maiaut's letter. Mind you, bandits are likely to be the least of my troubles crossing the border, if the latest rumours are true. They were saying in Durodrice that there could be a war, Eremia against the Republic. I told them don't be silly, the war's been and gone, but they reckon there's going to be another one. I asked them, how could they possibly know that? Of course, you can't get a straight answer out of these people. It makes doing business with them very trying indeed. They just smile at you and look dumb and innocent, or gabble away among themselves.

'Triz,' said a voice beside her. 'Where did you appear from? I didn't see you come.'

There were times when she'd wondered if she really loved him; because if she did, why did she feel hot and panicky when she saw Valens' name on the top line of a letter? And there were times like this, when it was so obvious she loved him, it was surprising how passers-by could see them together and not grin. She'd never doubted him like that. She knew exactly what and how Orsea felt, as though there was a little window in the side of his head and she could read all his thoughts written up on a blackboard.

'You were fast asleep,' she said.

He groaned. 'What's the time? I only came out here so I could concentrate on this wretched report. I tried reading it indoors but people kept coming up and talking to me, so I slipped out here.'

'About an hour after noon,' she said. 'Hungry?'

He shook his head. He was never hungry when he'd just woken up. 'I'll have something later. I'll need to see Miel about this purchase order business; we can have something together.'

She nodded, hurt; but he was looking dozy and creased, and she knew he hadn't meant it to sound the way it came out. 'What's the report about?' she asked. 'Something important?'

'Unfortunately,' he said. 'Those horrible machines the Mezentines used on us. The exile, that chap we found, he reckons he can build them for us, loads of them and quickly. The committee's agreed and placed an order.'

'Can they do that?' she asked. 'Without you agreeing, I mean?'

He smiled. 'No they can't,' he said, 'which is why I've got to read their report and then sign it. Then they'll be able to. In practice I leave them to it, they know all about this sort of stuff, far more than I do, so I'd be stupid not to do as they say. So the decision's been made already, but I've still got to plough my way through it.'

'Can't you just sign it and pretend you've read it?'

He laughed, as though she'd meant it as a joke. 'He offered me something like it before,' he said, 'the day we found him, in fact. I turned him down. To listen to him talk, he was going to turn the whole of Civitas into one huge factory. Now he's back again, apparently, and he's got Sorit Calaphates putting up the money and an old tanner's yard, which he's-'

'Sorit Calaphates?' she interrupted. 'Lycaena's father?'

Orsea thought for a moment. 'That's right,' he said. 'I'd forgotten you knew the family. How is Lycaena, by the way?'

'Haven't seen her for a while.' She hesitated, but the hesitation was too obvious; he'd noticed it. 'Careo was wounded in the war,' she said. 'He lost an arm, and he was in pretty bad shape for a while. But last time I heard he was on the mend; they've gone back to his uncle's place out on the Green River while he gets his strength back.'

'Ah,' Orsea said, and for a moment she saw that terrible look in his eyes; something new to feel guilty about, ambushing him in his safe place, like the hunters in bow-and-stable. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'that's what this report's about; and even if I could say no now that the council's approved it, I wouldn't.' He shook his head, like a horse plagued with flies in summer. 'I hate the thought of those machines, after what they did to us. I can't get those pictures out of my head, all those dead men pinned to the ground, and the ones who weren't dead yet… But if there's going to be an invasion-'

'Which there won't be,' she said.

'If there's going to be an invasion, and if this wretched man can make them for us, so we can put them up on the ramparts and shoot down at the road; just think, Triz, it could be the difference between surviving and being wiped out. So of course we've got to have them, even if it's an evil, wicked thing.' He turned his head away so he wasn't looking at her; as if he could pass on the infection through his eyes. 'People used to think,' he said, 'that there were gods who punished you if you did bad things, and sometimes I wonder if they're not still up there, in the clouds or on top of Crane Mountain or wherever it was they were supposed to live. It'd be a joke if they were, don't you think? But if they really are still there, it'd be better if they only had me to pick on for arming the city with scorpions, rather than all of us. It all comes from my mistake, so-'

'You should hear yourself,' she said. 'Really, Orsea. This is so stupid.'

He shook his head again. 'I keep having these dreams,' he said. 'I'm at this place my uncle Achima took me to once, when I was a kid. It's on a hilltop in the Lanceta; there's a river winding round the bottom of the hill, really peaceful and quiet, you can see for miles but you won't see another human being. But years ago-a thousand years, Uncle Ach said-it was a great castle; you can still make out ditches and ramparts and gateways, just dips and humps in the ground now, with grass growing. In my dream, I'm climbing up this hill and I'm asking my uncle who built it, and he says nobody knows, they all died out so long ago we don't know a thing about them; and when I get to the top and look down, it's not the Lanceta any more, it's here; and then I realise that I'm seeing where Civitas used to be, before the Mezentines came and killed us all, till there weren't any of us left; and they only came because of me-'

'That's ridiculous,' she said. 'It's just a dream.'

He turned a little more; his back was to her. 'Anyhow,' he said, 'that's why I've got to read the stupid report.'

'I see,' she said. 'I'm sorry. I wouldn't have woken you up if I'd known.'

'Triz…' He was still looking away, so she couldn't see. 'If I abdicated, do you think Miel would make a good Duke?'

'You can't abdicate,' she said. 'You know that.'

'I'm the Duke because I'm married to you,' he said.

'I think it's a stupid question,' she said. 'And there won't be an invasion, because they've got no reason to invade. It won't make money for them if we're all dead. And as long as you're like this, you're no good to anybody.'

She didn't wait to see if he turned round. She crossed the lawn to the arch that led back into the cloister, straight up the stairs to the little solar. Most of all, she hated Valens, because he hadn't answered her letter, and instead she had to reply to her insufferable sister, who thought there was going to be an invasion, because that was what they were saying in the market at Durodrice, wherever the hell that was. (If there was an invasion, she thought, could they escape to Durodrice, among the peaceful, cowlike Cure Doce? Would they take them in, or would they be afraid of the Mezentines?) She had a good mind to sit down right now and write to Valens, telling him she didn't want to hear from him any more. It was wrong, anyway, this secret correspondence; she ought to put an end to it before it was found out, and people got the wrong idea. Would Valens protect them? Protect them both? The boy she'd spoken to would, but he wasn't the man who wrote to her about Mannerist poetry and the hover of the peregrine and the blind carter whose dog opened gates for him. She knew him too well. He'd protect both of them, just as he'd rescued Orsea in the Butter Pass, even if it brought the Mezentines down on him and lost him his duchy. He'd do it, for her, but she'd lose him; and if she lost him, she'd have nothing; except Orsea.

I love Orsea, and I could never love anybody else. But would that be enough? If I had nothing else?

Ziani was tired; he felt like he hadn't had a good night's sleep for a year, though in fact it was only a few days; only since Jarnac Ducas had placed his order. Since then he'd been up at first light each day, cutting sixteen-ounce leather on the saddler's shear, ready for when Cantacusene arrived. He cut out the pieces, Cantacusene nailed them to the formers, did the boiling, shaping and tempering; when Cantacusene went home in the evening, Ziani did the riveting, assembly and fitting. They were getting on well, ahead of schedule. When he'd finished work for the day on the hunting armours, he went round the main shop, checking the men's progress on the first batch of scorpions-they were turning out well, too, even the lockwork and the springs. After that, he'd sit in the tower and read-either King Fashion, or the equally seminal and tedious Mirror of the Chase; he couldn't make up his mind which of them he hated more, but he now knew two thirds of both of them by heart-before finishing up the day with an hour's archery practice in the cellar.

He was doing well with the archery. This was perhaps the most surprising thing of all, since he'd never held a bow in his life before he left Mezentia. Because he had no money to buy one with and didn't know how to make one, he'd had to re-invent the bow from scratch. A bow, he realised, is just a spring. He knew how to make springs, so that was all right. He had no idea whether there was such a thing as a steel bow; but he went across to the forge after the men had gone home, drew down a length of broken cart-spring into a long, elongated diamond, worked each end down to a gentle distal taper, shaped it till it looked like pictures he'd seen in books, and tempered it to a deep blue. His first attempt at a string was three strands of fine wire, which cut his fingertips like cheese. Luckily, King Fashion had a bit to say about bowstrings; they should be linen, he reckoned, rather than hemp. He made his second string out of twelve strands of strong linen serving thread; and when it broke, the top limb of the bow smacked him so hard under the chin he blacked out for quite some time. His next attempt, eighteen strands, seemed to be strong enough, and hadn't broken yet.

Whether or not the thing he practised with was a bow in any conventional sense of the term, it did seem to work. He was using three-eighths cedar dowel for arrows; he knew you were meant to tie or glue bits of feather on the ends, but he didn't have any feathers, and the arrows seemed to go through the air quite happily without them. He cut his arrows at thirty inches, because that was as far as he could draw them without them falling off the bow.

For a target he had a sack, lying on its side, stuffed with rags, straw and general rubbish. He'd painted a circle on it with whitewash, and at fifteen yards (which was as far back as you could go in the cellar before you bumped up against a wall) he could hit the circle four times out of six, thanks to the Mirror, a picture he'd seen in a book many years ago, dogged perseverance and a certain degree of common sense. One time in five that he loosed the arrow, the string would come back and lash the inside of his left forearm. He had a huge purple bruise there, which meant he had to keep his sleeve buttoned all day in case one of the men noticed. He'd made up a guard for it out of offcuts of leather, but it still hurt. Meanwhile, the inside of his right forefinger tip was red and raw, and there wasn't much he could do about that.

But nevertheless; progress was being made, and if he could get to the stage where he hit the whitewash circle six times out of six, that'd be good enough (that word again) for his purposes. Whether or not the opportunity would present itself when the time came was, of course, entirely outside his control. It depended on the whim of a hunted animal and the choices and decisions of an unascertained number of hunters, beaters and other unknowns, following rules he was struggling to learn out of a book and didn't really understand. It'd be sheer luck; he hated that. But if he got the chance, at least he'd be prepared to make the most of it. Hence King Fashion, the Mirror, the steel bow and archery practice.

Yesterday he'd forgotten to eat anything. Stupid; there was plenty of food, a woman brought it in a basket every morning and left it in the lodge. Calaphates had seen to that-a curious thing to do, almost as if he was concerned about Ziani's well-being. And he'd asked about it, the last two times he'd visited: are you sure you're eating properly, as though he was Ziani's mother.

Just looking after his investment, Ziani told himself as he lined up the leather in the shear. All these people care about is how much money I can make for them. If I don't eat and I get sick, I can't work. That explains it all.

He fed the edge of the hide in under the top blade of the shear, making sure it was in line. He'd drawn the shape on to the leather with a stick of charcoal because that was all he had to mark up with. Because of that, the lines were far too thick, allowing too great a margin of error, so he had to concentrate hard to see the true line he needed to follow. There was far too much play in the shear for his liking (he'd had to buy a shear, because there hadn't been time to make one; it was Mezentine-made, but very old and bent by years of brutal mishandling). He hated every part of this sloppy, inaccurate work, but it had to be done, just in case the opportunity arose.

'You there?'

Cantacusene. He glanced up at the high, narrow window, but he was kidding himself. Back home, there were clocks to tell the time by. Here, they seemed to be able to manage it by looking at the sun; but the slim section of grey and blue framed by the window had no sun in it. He had an idea that Cantacusene was early this morning, but he couldn't verify it. God, what a country.

'Yes, come through.' He smiled. By unspoken agreement, they didn't use each other's names. Cantacusene couldn't very well call him Ziani, and Master Vaatzes would've been ridiculous coming from a man who'd been peening rivets and curling lames for the nobility when Ziani was still learning to walk; for his part, he didn't understand Eremian industrial etiquette and couldn't be bothered to learn. With goodwill and understanding on both sides and a certain degree of imagination, they'd so far managed to bypass the issue completely.

'Are you early?' he.asked, as Cantacusene shuffled in.

'A bit. We need to get a move on. We've still got half the greaves and cuisses and all the gorgets to do.'

Ziani shrugged. 'I've cut out the gorget lames, they're ready for you. I'll have the greaves and the cuisses by dinnertime.'

Cantacusene looked at him; a curious blend of admiration, devotion and hatred. He could more or less understand it. A few days ago, Ziani had known nothing about the subtle art of making boiled leather armour, and Cantacusene had been back on his familiar ground, where he knew the rules. He hadn't presumed on that superiority, but it was pretty clear he'd relished it while it lasted. Now, here was Ziani cutting out a thick stack of lames before breakfast, as well or better than Cantacusene could have done it. A god would feel unsettled, Ziani thought, if a mortal learned in a week how to make rain and raise the dead.

'That's all right, then,' Cantacusene said. 'I'll get a fire laid in.'

'Already done,' Ziani said. 'You can get on with nailing up while the water boils.'

The shear was even more sluggish today than usual. It munched the leather rather than slicing it, chewing ragged, hairy edges instead of crisp, square-sided cuts. Ziani quickly diagnosed the problem as drift and slippage in the jaw alignment. He could fix it, but he'd have to take the shear apart, heat the frame and bend it a little. A sloppy cut, on the other hand, was no big deal in this line of work, since the shrinkage turned even a perfectly square-shorn edge into a rounded burr in need of facing off with a rasp. There was something infuriating about seeing poor work come out indistinguishable from good work. Tolerating it was practically collaborating with evil.

The greaves were one big piece rather than lots of small lames put together, but their profile was all curves; a misery to cut, even when the shear had still been working properly. He knew how to design and build a throatless rotary shear, Mezentine pattern, that would handle the curved profiles effortlessly, but there wasn't time. It was horribly frustrating, and he felt ashamed of himself. But it was better work than the Duchy's foremost armourer could've done. That was no consolation whatsoever.

The men were turning up for the start of their day. They would be cutting and joining wood to make scorpion frames, forging the joining bands, filing and shaping the lockwork. Other hands than mine, he thought, and he wasn't sure whether that was a good thing or not. They would be doing his work, while he was wasting his time cutting and riveting leather to protect an aristocrat and his hangers-on from pigs with big teeth. It was hard to relate that to the invisible machine. Faith was needed, and he'd never really believed in anything much, apart from the two things he'd lost, and which were all that mattered.

Cantacusene was whistling. He did it very badly; so badly, in fact, that Ziani stopped work to listen. If there was a tune involved, he couldn't detect it. He found he was grinning. Cantacusene and music, even horribly mutilated music, didn't seem to go together.

'You're in a good mood,' he said, when Cantacusene came in to collect the next batch of cut-out pieces.

'What makes you say that?'

Ziani shrugged. 'I don't know,' he said.

Cantacusene hesitated; apparently he had something on his mind, but was uncertain as to whether he could or should talk about it. Ziani turned back to the shear. It would have been quicker to take it to bits and straighten it after all. He hated the shear, and everything it stood for; at that moment, all the evil in the world resided in its bent and misused frame. There's a certain comfort in knowing who your enemies are.

'If you must know,' Cantacusene said, 'my wife's coming home today'

'Is that right?' Ziani said to the shear. 'She's been away, then?'

'Yes.' He couldn't see Cantacusene's face, and the word was just a word. 'She's in service, see. Ladies' maid. The family's been away out east for three months.'

'Ah,' Ziani said. 'So that's why you're in a good mood.'

'Well, yes.' There was obviously something in his manner that was annoying Cantacusene, keeping him there talking when he should be next door, nailing bits of leather to bits of wood. 'I missed her, see. I don't like it when she's got to go away. But she doesn't want to leave the family. Been with them fifteen years.'

'Well,' Ziani said, 'if you don't like her going away, you should tell her to pack it in. I should think you could do without her wages, now you're working here.'

'Like I said, she wouldn't want to let the family down.'

Ziani didn't answer, and he hunched his shoulders a little to show that it was none of his business. But Cantacusene didn't seem to be able to read body language. 'You married?' he asked.

'Yes.'

'Kids?'

'A daughter,' Ziani replied.

Silence; then Cantacusene said: 'Must be hard on you, then.'

'Yes,' Ziani said. 'And I don't suppose I'll ever see them again.'

'I couldn't handle that,' Cantacusene said.

'No.' Ziani let go of the shear handle. It was important that the line be cut straight, since the lame had to sit true. 'Nor me.' He turned round slowly. 'It's difficult,' he said. 'It's fortunate I'm an engineer, really. Otherwise…' He shrugged. 'What time's she due back?'

'Not till this evening,' Cantacusene said. 'Look, I'm sorry. Didn't mean to upset you or anything.'

'No, of course.' Ziani smiled, though his face felt numb. 'If you want to knock off early, you go ahead.'

'That's all right. Like I said, she's not back till late.'

'Suit yourself.' It felt like all the poison in his blood was sinking into his toes and fingers. 'If you change your mind, go on anyway.'

'Thanks.' Cantacusene frowned, as if considering a puzzle. 'I'd better be getting on,' he continued. 'If we lay into it, we can have the greaves finished today'

'Fine.' Ziani turned his back on him, laid his hand on the shear handle. He heard footsteps, and then the whistling, far away and still terrible. He drew the handle toward him, feeling the slight spring in the leather as the blade cut it.

It was like an abcess: full of poison, under the skin, swelling, ready to burst. It was a disease lying latent in his blood, breeding and eating him. It was the worst thing in the world. It was love, and that idiot Cantacusene had reminded him of it, after he'd done so well to put it away where he couldn't see it.

Almost certainly, he knew, Cantacusene would die because of him; and his wife, the ladies' maid who spent so much precious time away, not knowing how little there was of it left. Each nail the poor fool drove through the leather into the wood brought his own death a little nearer. That wasn't so bad, Ziani reflected. Only a coward is afraid of dying for himself; the true terror in death, the fear that crawls into the mind and stays there for ever, comes from the lethal mixture of death and love, the knowledge that dying will bring unbearable pain to those we love, those who love us. Death is to be feared because of the pain and loss it inflicts through love, and for no other reason.

Not the shear, after all. Reaching down to turn the half-cut lame, Ziani admitted to himself the pre-eminently obvious fact that he'd been denying ever since Compliance came for him in the early hours of the morning when everything went wrong. All the evil in the world, all the harm and suffering it's possible to come to, are concentrated in one place; in love. If there was no love, there'd be no fear in death, no pain in loss, no suffering anywhere. If he could string his steel bow and nock an arrow and kill love with a single shot to the head, it'd go down in history as the day mankind was rescued from all its torments and miseries; if he could meet love face to face down the narrow shaft of a spear, like a hunter standing up to the charging boar, wolf or bear, if he could kill the monster and set the people free from all evil, then the Eremians wouldn't have to die, or the Mezentines, or the Vadani or the Cure Hardy or the Cure Doce or all the other nations of victims whose names he didn't even know yet. In old stories there are dragons who burn cities, gigantic bulls from the sea and boars with steel tusks, terrible birds with the heads of women and the bodies of lions, and a hero kills them; it's so simple in stories, because once the monster is dead the pain is over and done with. The monster has a heart or a brain or lungs that can be pierced, it's a simple mechanical problem of how to get a length of sharp steel through the hide and the scales and the armour. But love hovers over the dying, it lies coiled waiting to strike at the exile, the lover betrayed or unrequited, it chains men to the places where they can't bear to be, forces them to endure all tyrannies, injustices and humiliations rather than run away and leave the ones they love, the ones who love them; it baits its trap with everything good in the world and arms it with everything bad; and it survives, thriving on its own poisons, growing where nothing else can live; an infestation, a parasite, a disease.

Cantacusene misses his wife, he thought; me too. And it's likely I'll never see her again, but because of love I'm building a machine that'll smash cities and slaughter nations and bring to an end the magnificent, glorious, holy Perpetual Republic of Mezentia; all simply so that one day I might be able to go home and see her again, see them both, my wife and my daughter. Such a little thing to ask, such a simple operation for a machine to perform. Every day in cities, towns, villages all over the world, men come home to their wives and children. A simple thing, it's nothing at all, for everybody else but not for me. I've got to breach the city wall, bash through the gates, pick my way over the dead bodies of millions, just to reach my own front door and get home. So much easier and more sensible to give up, start again, stay here in Civitas Eremiae and get a job; but I don't have that choice, because of love. Instead, I have the machine, and faith that love will prevail, because love conquers all.

Someone came in and asked him to go and look at the scorpion frames. Ziani followed him, not really aware of who he was or what he wanted. He saw them, squat and ugly and botched, inherently flawed, abominations in every sense of the word. He measured a few of them at random with the yard and the inside callipers and the dogleg callipers. They were sloppy and only fitted where they touched, but they were within tolerance (because he was working on a completely different set of tolerances now). He looked at them, drawn up like a squad of newly levied troops, awkward, horrible. In his mind's eye he gave them locks, springs, sliders, winches, and saw that they were abominations, but they would do what had to be done. He loved them, because they would slaughter the hireling Mezentine army by the tens of thousands, they would defend the citadel of Eremia for a time, and then they would fail.