Devices and Desires

Chapter Seventeen

On the morning after the Duke's hunt, a tall stocky middle-aged woman whose florid complexion matched her loud red dress left Civitas Eremiae by the east gate, riding a light-boned skewbald horse in the middle of a caravan. With her were her escort, nine riders in armour who doubtless made up for in experience what they lacked in youth; three muleteers on elderly dog's-meat palfreys; a pale, thin young woman with a bad cold, and twenty-seven well-laden mules.

It was necessarily slow going down the mountain. The thin young woman looked nervous as she leaned back in the saddle, as if she expected to vanish backwards over the horse's tail at any moment. Her aunt, the woman in the red dress, spread her ample seat comfortably, as though her knees were stitched tight to the girths. She yawned once or twice, not bothering to cover her mouth.

At the crossroads the party turned east along the rutted, dusty track that followed the top of the ridge until it joined the Edgeway, which in turn led to the Butter Pass. The guards, riding in front and somewhat close together, talked for a while about cock-fighting, horse-racing and the chances of war with Mezentia, which they decided was most unlikely. The muleteers were busy keeping the mules moving. The merchant and her niece rode side by side most of the time, but didn't talk to each other. They rested for an hour at noon, in the shade of a knot of canted, scrubby thorn trees that marked the point where the Butter Pass began. They picked the pace up gradually in the afternoon, and by nightfall they were close enough to the border to see the lights of the Vadani frontier post. Shortly after midnight they crossed into Vadani territory, following a narrow path along the bed of a steep-sided gully that kept them well out of sight of the border guards. It would have been an awkward ride in the dark, except that they and their horses knew the way very well indeed, and didn't need to see the hazards in order to avoid them.

At some point in the small hours they rejoined the road, a little way beyond a village by the name of Gueritz, and spent the rest of the night there, recovering from the stresses of their prosaic little adventure. At first light they rode on as far as Schantz, where they stopped at the inn for breakfast, and to have one of the guards' horses reshod. Two of the muleteers entertained the Schantz ostlers and grooms with an account of Duke Orsea's hunt, which they'd heard from one of Jarnac's men in an inn in Civitas Eremiae the night before they left. Such parts of the account as were not invented were greatly exaggerated: Miel Ducas had been savagely mauled by the boar and it was uncertain whether he'd recover; the Mezentine exile Vaatzes was also hovering at death's door, having been picked up bodily on the boar's snout and hurled down a rock-lined goyle into a riverbed; the Ducas had killed the boar that mangled him, after wrestling it to the ground and cutting its throat with his short knife.

The road from Schantz to Pasador was broad, flat and easy; they had the river on their right all the way, and they stopped several times to water the horses. Even so, they made Pasador by noon and sat in out of the heat in a ruined barn, while two muleteers who wanted to stretch their legs walked into the village and bought bread, cheese, figs and white wheat beer for the midday meal. When the edge had gone off the sun, they carried on briskly and peacefully as far as the crossroads, where they picked up the Silver Pass, leading direct to Civitas Vadanis. It was only the delay caused by having the guard's horse shod that stopped them reaching the city gate before dark; as it was, they had to ride the last hour and a half by moonlight, which was no great hardship. In fact, they were happy to enter the city in the dark, since it made them less conspicuous. Since the sheep-driving season was over for the year, they were able to pen the mules in a small paddock in the main stockyard, handy for the inns. The guards and the muleteers limped off to go drinking; the merchant and her niece washed up in the back yard of the Convention before setting off for Duke Valens' castle, in the north-east corner of the city.

The story of Orsea's hunt was told many times that evening in the stockyard inns, each containing a slight development on its predecessor. By the time it was recited in the Gold Silvermen's Hall, a large and popular inn on the edge of the assay court, both the Ducas and Vaatzes had been killed, though not before the Ducas had given the boar its death-wound with the shattered truncheon of his spear.

One of Valens' austringers left the Gold Silver shortly after that and headed up the hill to the castle. He was aware that he'd had rather more to drink than he'd have liked, since his duty was to seek an immediate audience with the Duke himself. The news of the Mezentine exile's death, however, shouldn't really be left till morning, and besides, he knew a couple of other people who'd want to hear about it straight away. He had to tell the Duke first, of course, he realised that; but afterwards, time would be of the essence with his other customers, who wouldn't want to pay him if they'd already heard the news from someone else.

'He's dead,' Psellus announced at the general staff meeting. He paused, then added: 'Apparently, he was killed by a pig.'

There was an element of shock in the silence that followed; also the tension of strong, serious men trying not to laugh. Eventually, a senior officer of the Coppersmiths' said, 'A pig?'

'A wild pig,' Psellus said. 'It appears that he was invited to go hunting with the Duke and his courtiers. A wild pig killed him-apparently they are quite ferocious animals, capable of inflicting serious injury. One of the courtiers was killed also.'

A different kind of silence; thoughtful, reticent. The Coppersmith broke it to say: 'This changes nothing. But I am surprised to hear that he was invited to hunt with the Duke and his court. My understanding is that only persons of high social standing attend on these occasions.'

Psellus nodded. 'As participants,' he said. 'But please bear in mind that the hunters are accompanied by a substantial number of assistants. There are men who look after the dogs, others who drive the animals out of hiding by making a noise, and of course there are porters, to carry equipment and the carcasses. My understanding is that the hunters usually hire casual labour for some of these tasks. It's highly possible that he was there in that capacity, rather than as a guest.' Psellus hesitated. 'Unfortunately, my sources-I must stress, these are preliminary reports only-my sources weren't able to furnish any details, so the theory remains uncorroborated. Nevertheless…' He hesitated again. 'If these reports are accurate, Vaatzes is dead. I think we can safely assume that, contrary to what my colleague has just said, the position has changed significantly. In fact, I would ask the commission to consider whether the war is still necessary.'

'On what grounds?' Tropaeus, needless to say, defending the infant war as though it was his cub. 'If there has been a change,' he went on, 'it's for the worse. Let us put your theory on one side for a moment and assume that Vaatzes was there as a guest. In that case, logic suggests that he was on good terms with the Eremian aristocracy-a Mezentine, a representative of the nation that wiped out the flower of their army. There can only be one explanation, just as Vaatzes had only one commodity to sell in order to buy their favour. In other words, we must conclude that Vaatzes had already betrayed the technical secrets entrusted to him by virtue of his position at the ordnance factory, or was preparing to do so.'

Psellus coughed mildly. 'Assuming,' he said, 'the wretched man was there as a guest. If not, if he was simply a day-labourer, surely it implies the opposite; that he was destitute, or at least forced by necessity to take any work he could get, and therefore that either he made no attempt to sell our secrets, or he had tried and failed. I should add,' he went on before Tropaeus could interrupt, 'that I have seen minutes of a meeting of the Eremian council at which an offer to introduce new skills and methods of metalworking were offered to the Duke by an unnamed Mezentine, and refused. Unless our security is even worse than we've been supposing, I can only assume that the man refused by the council must be Vaatzes.'

'We've all seen that report,' someone objected-he was sitting too far back for Psellus to see his face; he thought the voice was familiar but he couldn't put a name to it. 'But you're missing the point, both of you. It doesn't matter. So Vaatzes is dead; so we have evidence to suggest that the Eremians refused to listen to him. What are you suggesting? Are you trying to argue that we shouldn't go on with the invasion?'

Psellus stiffened. 'I don't recall proposing that,' he said. 'And I fully accept the argument that we need to make sure there's no possibility of leakage of restricted Guild knowledge.'

'Which means the Eremians must be wiped out,' the unseen man broke in. 'We've discussed all this. So, unless you're saying we should reopen that decision-which, personally, I'm not inclined to do unless you can produce some pretty strong new arguments that we haven't considered previously-I don't see what difference Vaatzes' death makes to anything. We've got the soldiers, right here, kicking their heels and waiting to go. I won't remind you how much they're costing us per day. I'm not aware of any significant strategic or tactical considerations which would keep us from launching the invasion immediately. Gentlemen, we're wasting time and money. Let's get on and do what we've already agreed has to be done.'

Loud rumble of approval. Very unwillingly, Psellus got to his feet once more. 'I'm not opposing that view,' he said, 'or arguing against the invasion. All I'm trying to ask is whether it's quite so urgent now that Vaatzes himself is dead-'

'If he is dead,' someone else put in. 'A moment ago you said it was unconfirmed.'

'It is,' Psellus said raggedly. 'But let's assume it's right. If Vaatzes is dead, he won't be giving away any more secrets. We know from the Eremian council minutes that they turned him down. So we're left with any secrets he passed on to someone else, private citizens rather than the Eremian government, before his death. And I can't help wondering-'

'It changes nothing,' said another voice, off to his left. 'Even if Vaatzes said nothing, or nobody listened to him, it's all beside the point. We've got to be sure; and the only way we can be sure is to invade. It's how-we've managed to keep our total monopoly for well over a hundred years; and if it means we have to go to war, then we've got to do it. I propose that Commissioner Psellus receive our thanks for updating us on these new developments; I further propose that we set a definite date for the launch of the invasion, namely ten days from now. Do I have a seconder for that?'

Motion carried; orders issued to the commander in chief, requisitions to the Treasurer's office and other parties concerned; vote of thanks to Commissioner Psellus, as minuted.

What was I doing, Psellus asked himself, as he climbed the stairs back to his office; was I trying to stop the war? Somebody thought so, and now we've got a firm date. I didn't think that was what I was trying to do. I don't know any more. It's as though this war's alive now. It's crawled in from wherever wars come from, like bees getting in through a thin place in the thatch, and already it's too big and too clever to be stopped.

The sooner it starts, the sooner it'll be over and I won't have to think about it any more.

'Where the hell have you been?' Cantacusene said, as Ziani limped through the factory gate. He'd been measuring out timber for the scorpion frames; a boxwood rule in one hand, a nail in the other. 'They've been saying you're dead.'

'Don't you believe it,' Ziani replied, and Cantacusene wondered what'd made him so cheerful. 'If you think a wild pig could succeed where the Guild tribunal and the compliance directorate failed, you're a bigger fool than I took you for. How's it going? Did they get that problem with the sear-plate bolts sorted out?'

Cantacusene nodded. 'We're ahead of the book,' he said, with more than a hint of pride. 'You said run four shifts, so I've been keeping them going flat out. Haven't been home since you've been away.'

'Fine. Good.' Ziani wished he'd put a bit more sincerity into that, but too late now. 'The good news is, the Duke has just doubled the order. He wants a hundred.'

'That's all right,' Cantacusene said. 'At this rate, he can have them in a week.'

'At this rate maybe,' Ziani said, and he set off for the long gallery. Cantacusene dropped the rule and dashed after him. 'But this rate's too bloody slow. Day after tomorrow at the very latest, he'll be back asking for two hundred in a fortnight. I'm planning for two hundred and fifty in ten days.'

Cantacusene stopped. He had a stitch and he was out of breath. 'Impossible.'

'No.' Ziani hadn't stopped. Cantacusene set off again. 'Perfectly possible. We just need more men. I stopped off at Calaphates' place and told him to get his men out recruiting. Also, he's seeing to materials; we're all right for timber, but we'll need more quarter-inch iron plate. It can be done, you'll see.'

'Why two hundred and fifty?'

'Because that's what it'll take to defend this city,' Ziani replied, as though it was perfectly obvious. 'Two hunded and fifty is the minimum number, we should have seventy-five more but I've got an idea about that. If only we'd had time to build a rolling mill, I wouldn't be relying on bloody merchants for my quarter plate.' He shook his head. 'Everything's going quite well,' he said. 'You never know, we might just get there.'

He left Cantacusene at the gallery door, and headed straight for the forge, where the springs were being tempered. It was the stage in the process where things were most likely to go wrong, he knew perfectly well; ideally, that was where he needed to be for the next week or so, judging each spring by eye as it lifted orange off the fire. The lead-baths took all the skill out of drawing the temper, but he was still obliged to trust Eremians for the hardening pass. The thought of that worried and annoyed him, but he had no choice.

The heat in the forge was overwhelming. As instructed, they'd laid in an extra half-dozen double-action bellows, which meant ten fires were running on a hearth designed for five. There was water all over the floor, and a pall of black smoke from the tempering oil wreathed the roof-beams like summer morning mist in a forest. He watched them for quarter of an hour; one man on each fire worked the bellows, another splashed water from a ladle around the hearth-bed and tue-iron to keep them from overheating, while the third used tongs to draw the spring slowly backwards and forwards through the tunnel of ash and clinker that covered the roaring red heart of the fire. When the orange heat had soaked all the way through the whole spring, so that it seemed to glow from the inside, the tong-worker fished it out like an angler landing a fish and dipped it full-length in the upright oil-filled pipe. The oil lit, raising a sheet of flame as long as a man's arm, and almost immediately put itself out; as soon as the oil had stopped bubbling, out it came; a rod up through the middle of the coil to carry it by, and across the room it went to the great iron trough full of molten lead, where another man picked it.off the rod with tongs and dunked it under the scum of the lead-bath to temper.

Not bad, Ziani thought, though he was a little concerned that the oil in the quenching tubes was running a bit too hot. He watched a man pause to wipe his face on his sleeve, dragging a white furrow through the smear of wet soot. Sweating near the lead-bath was asking for trouble; a spot of water on the molten lead would make it spit, enough to blind you if your luck was out. They were learning quickly, which was what he needed. Another man was coughing through the quench-smoke. One of the bellows had a slight leak, and whistled as it drew. It wasn't the ordnance factory, of course; it resembled the real thing like a child's drawing. But all he needed was two hundred and fifty scorpions by the time the Mezentines arrived. That was all. Anything else would be mere finish and ornament. They were going to make it; which meant that the design had moved on from here, and now everything depended on his colleague and dear friend Falier back in Mezentia; so far away, so hard to control at such distance, so fragile and governed by so tenuous a connection. But he knew Falier, in ways he could never know the Eremians; he trusted him to do the job he'd given him. After that, the weight of the design would pull everything into shape, just as it is its own weight that brings down a felled tree, and all the woodsmen do with their ropes and wedges is guide the lie.

He left the forge and headed for the fitting room, to see the fitting of the lockplates into the frames. So he was dead, was he? If only. He thought of the boar, dragging the dogs along with it. He remembered Miel Ducas stooping in mid-leap to slash a hinge in its spine with his falchion. It had been, he recognised, a moment of glorious, extraordinary grace, forced on an unwilling and unlikely man by honour, fear, courage and duty. That was Ducas' problem: his life was too complicated, and all his actions were stained with a contradictory mixture of motives. If only he'd had a simple job to do, he could've been a productive and efficient man, for an Eremian. As it was, he'd be useful, and that was all that mattered. Ziani considered for a moment the slender connecting rod that joined the Ducas and Falier and Duke Orsea and his Duchess and all the other little parts of the mechanism, and smiled to think that so many disparate people had something so vital in common. Almost he wished he could tell them; but that, of course…

When he had time, after he'd done his rounds and made sure everything was running smoothly, he took a quarter of an hour to do a few calculations, see how close his estimate would be. The variables were, of course, only rough reckonings, in some cases little more than guesses; nevertheless, he felt reasonably sure that by the time the Mezentines arrived to assault the city, he should have enough scorpions available to allow them to be placed at sixteen-yard intervals right along the city wall; that meant he could put just under twenty thousand bolts in the air every hour (ordinary fence-palings and vine-props with a folded sheet-iron tip; all in hand). Only a third of what the Eremians had faced in the battle, but precisely the right number for his purposes.

He smiled to himself, and thought of Falier.

He'd had to buy two tablecloths, two sets of matching napkins, two dozen pillowcases embroidered with songbirds, a dozen tapestry cushions and a rug. He hated them all at first sight, and as soon as she'd gone, he sent for his chamberlain and ordered him to take them away.

'Give them to somebody,' he said.

'Very good,' the chamberlain replied. 'Who?'

Valens considered. 'Who don't you like?'.

'Sir?'

'Think of somebody you hate very much.'

The chamberlain's turn to consider. 'My wife's mother's sister,' he said. 'She's got a small white dog she's trained to walk on its hind legs. It's got its own little silver drinking bowl and everything.'

'Perfect,' Valens said, with grim satisfaction. 'Tell her they're from me, and hint I may be coming to dinner.'

He'd never seen his chamberlain grin before. Well, it was good to make somebody happy.

It was nearly mid-morning. The sun had burnt the last of the dew off the grass, but the wind was rising. It would've been a good day to fly the goshawks, or try for duck on the long lake. He had something else to do, however, and he wanted to make the most of it.

Each time he opened a letter from her, he was afraid, in case it was the last. I can't write to you any more-he'd seen those words in his mind's eye a thousand times, he knew the shape of the letters by heart. When the day came and he saw them traced for real on parchment, it'd be like coming back to a familiar place; a runaway slave recaptured and dragged home, a criminal brought to the town gallows. This time he was stiff with fear, because it'd been so long since she'd written, because she'd missed a letter. Staring at the small, squat packet in the exact centre of his reading table, he felt like he was walking up a wounded boar in dense briars, waiting for it to charge. He thought of all the risks he chose to take, in the hunt, in war, knowing that the worst that could happen was that he'd be killed. There are circumstances where staying alive could be worse than that.

With the tips of his forefingers, he prised apart the fold until the seal split neatly down the middle. A few crumbs of broken wax fell away as he bent the stiff parchment back on itself (like the unmaking of the quarry, he thought). Her handwriting was even smaller than usual, and for a moment he wasn't sure he'd be able to read it-now that would be a devilish refinement of torture, worthy of the stories of the punishments reserved for damned souls in hell, to have a letter from her and not to be able to make out what it said. Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.

Well, he'd found; the wolf, the bear, the boar were here, ready for him. It'd be churlish to keep them waiting. You never replied to my last letter.

He frowned. 'Yes I did,' he said aloud. 'You're the one who didn't write back.' I suppose there could be several different reasons. I offended you; I was putting pressure on you, breaking the rules of our friendship; I brought Orsea into it, when this has always been just you and me. Or perhaps you're just tired of me and bored by my letters. If it's any one of those, I'd understand.

For a moment he felt as if he'd lost his balance and was about to fall. Then he realised: fear had made him stupid, and it was perfectly obvious what had happened. His letter to her, or her reply, had gone astray. Somebody, some fat woman in a red dress, had lost it or forgotten about it or used it to start a fire or pad a shoe where it rubbed her heel. For a moment he wanted to do something about that; send his guard to arrest every woman in a red dress in the country and have them all thrown in a snake-pit, to teach them respect. But I haven't got a snake-pit, he reminded himself, and it'd take too long to build one and collect enough snakes to fill it.

He read the rest of the letter. It felt cold, because it was all based on error. It irritated him, as though he'd corrected her mistake but she carried on regardless, missing the point, refusing to listen to him. That was wrong; in fact, she was saying things he'd never thought she'd ever say, things that changed the world for ever, but he found it very difficult to get past the frustration. He made an effort and cleared his mind of it; but the damage had been done. A letter from her had been wasted because of a misunderstanding, and all the things she could have said in it would have to wait till next time, or the time after that. He felt cheated, and had to remind himself that it wasn't her fault.

Someone was standing in the doorway. 'Go away,' he snapped, then pulled a face. 'No,' he said, 'it's all right, take no notice. What is it?'

Stellachus, his chief of intelligence. 'You sent for me,' he said apologetically.

'Did I? Yes, I did. Come in and close the door.'

Valens put his hand over the letter. If Stellachus noticed, he didn't show it.

'The Mezentine defector,' Valens said. 'The one who went to Eremia. Apparently he's dead.'

Stellachus frowned. 'I see,' he said. 'May I ask…?'

Valens told him about the austringer's report of what he'd heard in the inn. 'Find out if it's true,' Valens went on. 'It sounds a bit unlikely, but I expect there's something behind it. Also, I don't seem to have seen anything recently about what's going on in Mezentia. Last I heard, they'd got a bloody great big army sitting around doing nothing, and that's not the way they like to do business. If you can get me accurate numbers, that'd be very good; also, they must be feeding them on something, and I want to know where all those supplies are coming from. And when you've done that,' he added with a grin, 'I'd better see the chiefs of staff. Get someone to round them up for mid-afternoon, all right?'

Stellachus bowed formally and went away, leaving him with the letter. His mind was clogged up with distractions (troop movements, supply routes, frontiers and lines on maps) and he felt as though the field had gone on ahead and left him behind. The world was tightening around him, he could feel it; it was a bad time not to be able to concentrate.

He straightened his mind. He had the rest of the morning and the first half of the afternoon to reply to her letter-not long enough, but the first priority was to get a reply on its way as soon as possible, to make sure she wasn't fretting. It's all right; my previous letter didn't reach you would probably be enough, but he couldn't quite leave it at that, though perhaps he should. Then he'd need to think hard about the Mezentines-he'd let that slip, worrying about not having heard from her-but he needed the intelligence reports first, so it could wait a little while. Then there were other considerations, basic housekeeping: money, for one thing, and stocks of flour and oil and honey and the like, duty rosters and mobilisation times, musters and resources. It'd be nice if he didn't have to see to every last detail himself…

Rain again, and he couldn't help smiling as he remembered what she'd written. For some reason, summer rain falling on oak leaves always makes me think of you. I have no idea why, since the one time I saw you (that I can remember), we were both indoors and it was quite unbearably hot. Maybe I went out with the hunt one time, and we sheltered from the rain under an oak tree, but if so, I can't remember that, either. To put this observation in context, the sound of horses on a hot day puts me in mind of my father, and I can't smell onions without thinking of my mother. The last example can have no possible significance whatsoever. My mother hated onions, except when cooked for a long time in a stew.

There was going to be a war, and she was going to be caught up in it. The realisation made him stop dead, as though he'd walked into a wall. If the Mezentines laid siege to Civitas Eremiae there'd be no more women in red dresses bringing him letters; and she… He scowled. The Mezentines were strange, cold people but they weren't savages. They didn't butcher civilians, or sell them into slavery. Nevertheless, there was going to be a war, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. What he could do (had to do) was keep the war from seeping through into his own territory, because it was a simple fact of life that nobody ever beat the Mezentines at anything. If half of what he'd heard about the army mustering outside Mezentia was true, this was more than a punitive expedition or a judicious redefining of buffer zones and frontiers. The one aspect of the matter he wasn't quite clear about was the reason behind it; but the Mezentines were under no obligation to explain to anybody, before or after the fact.

Even so…

Predictably, Stellachus was in the old library. He'd annexed the two small rooms at the back-nobody could remember what they'd been built for, and Valens' father had used them to store and display his collection of hoods and jesses-and he spent most of his time there, when he wasn't out trying to look busy. He glanced up in surprise as Valens walked in, and just possibly (his reactions were quick, as befitted a fencer) he pushed a small book he'd been reading under a sheaf of worthy-looking papers.

'Sorry to barge in,' Valens said, with a slight grin. 'Just a quick thought, before the meeting. You passed the word round, I take it.'

Stellachus nodded twice. 'They're all on notice to attend,' he said.

'Splendid.' Valens sat down, reached across the table, lifted the papers. The Garden of Love in Idleness, according to the small book's spine. He covered it up again. 'The Mezentines,' he said. 'We both know that army's headed for Eremia. What's bothering me rather is why.'

Stellachus did his best to look wise. 'Retribution, presumably. Duke Orsea's unprovoked attack.'

Valens shrugged. 'Hardly necessary,' he said. 'It was a massacre, and if the Mezentines lost any men, I haven't heard about it. That army they've put together must be costing them a fortune. They don't spend money for fun.'

'To make sure nothing of the sort ever happens again,' Stellachus said. 'Last time, the Mezentines won an easy victory because of their war machines. They had plenty of time to deploy them, and the machines came as a complete surprise to Orsea and his people. Next time, they won't walk so obligingly into the trap.'

'Possibly,' Valens said, rubbing his palms together slowly. 'And from their point of view, the Eremians are irrational, stupid; it's only been five minutes since they got out of that crippling war with us, and what do they do? They pick on the most powerful nation in the world. People that stupid are capable of anything, and next time they might get incredibly lucky.' He frowned. 'They might be thinking that way if they were us,' he said. 'I mean, if they had a king or a duke who could make decisions on a whim. But they aren't like that. Everything's got to be debated in committees and sub-committees and special assemblies and general assemblies. For which we should be eternally grateful, since it means they move slowly and cautiously. Everything's political with them, unless it goes right down deep under the politics to something really fundamental. If it was just a good-idea-at-the-time thing, it'd never get through. One party'd be in favour, all the other parties would be against, and you'd be able to hear them debating it from halfway across the desert.' He shrugged. 'Don't you agree?'

'I hear what you're saying,' Stellachus replied cautiously. 'But it's the party politics that makes them do a lot of apparently pointless or inexplicable things-inexplicable to outsiders, who don't know the finer points of their infighting.'

There was a degree of truth in that, Valens conceded. 'Still,' he went on, 'it seems a strange way to carry on, because surely it's to their disadvantage to stamp on the Eremians too hard.'

'You mean the Cure Hardy,' Stellachus said.

'Exactly. They need Eremia as a buffer. That's why they helped broker the peace between us and the Eremians, because they need both of us as a first line of defence. Weaken the Eremians too much, or wipe them out completely, and that just leaves us between them and the people they're most afraid of. Now, how can that possibly make any sense?'

Stellachus got up, poured two cups of wine, put one in front of Valens, sat down again. Valens sipped his cup, to be polite. 'I don't know,' Stellachus said. 'All I can do is theorise. Would that help?'

Valens lifted his hands. 'Go ahead.'

'Well.' Stellachus took a long pull at his wine (I must watch that, Valens thought; I guess he's been under pressure recently). 'Two possibilities come to mind. First, it's like you say, something to do with Mezentine politics. Actually,' he added with a slight frown, 'make that three possibilities. As I was saying; Mezentine politics. There's a power struggle between two factions, and for some reason one of them wants a big war, to help with whatever their agenda may be. They're looking round for someone to hit; Eremia's the best target, because they're unpunished aggressors and they're small. That's the first possibility. Number two. Let's consider the size of this army of theirs.' He hesitated. 'Now we can't do that properly, because I haven't got you the full data yet; but we'll forgive me for that and move on. It's a very large army, costing them a lot of money, causing them all sorts of logistical problems which presumably they've figured out how to handle. Query: is this the biggest army Mezentia's ever put in the field? Don't know, but we'll find out. Anyway, it's big; and the Mezentine policy's always been to defend themselves with clever machines rather than big armies. A defensive strategy, in other words.'

Valens dipped his head in acknowledgement of a valid point. 'They've changed, then,' he said. 'From machines to men; from defensive to offensive.'

'It's a hypothesis,' Stellachus said, 'but no proof. Possibility two is that they've been taking a long-term approach to the Cure Hardy problem, and this invasion of Eremia's just a prelude to them taking the offensive against the Cure Hardy. Now why they'd want to do that is another issue; the Cure Hardy live a long way away and have never caused the Mezentines any bother-which isn't to say they wouldn't if they could, and through sheer force of numbers they're the only power we know of that could give the Mezentines a bad time. The way they think-if I'm right about that-a threat in being simply isn't acceptable. As long as the Cure Hardy exist, the Mezentines can't sleep at night. You'd have to look at all sorts of factors-economics, cash reserves, manpower levels-and see if there's a pattern that'd suggest that the Mezentines have been working toward this point for some time, where they're strong enough to go on the offensive against the Cure Hardy. If so, crushing Eremia might make sense as a preparatory move. Personally, in their shoes, I'd want them as allies-us, too-if I was considering something like that, but the Mezentines' minds work differently to ours. Quite possibly they'd see wiping out the Eremians as a necessary preliminary chore; clearing away the brushwood, if you like, before you start felling.'

Valens nodded again. 'And number three?'

'Number three,' Stellachus repeated. 'You said earlier that sometimes they do things because of reasons that go right down under the politics to something absolutely basic, something that's so deeply ingrained in their mindset that even they won't bicker and bitch about it. In which case,' he went on, 'I don't suppose they'd stop to consider the effects on the balance of power or regional stability; not if it's-well, a matter of principle. Actually, of the three this one fits best what we know about this business.'

'Which isn't as much as we should,' Valens said quietly.

'Granted.' Stellachus looked away. 'But we'll put that right, I promise. It seems to me, though, that the Mezentines have moved very quickly, very decisively, on this; by their standards, I mean. And what I'm getting at isn't what we've heard but what we haven't heard. I mean, normally we'd expect to be hearing reports and rumours about major ructions and debates in the Guilds long before any armies landed. Instead, practically the first thing we know about it is soldiers getting off ships. Therefore, I suggest, we've got a cause of war that doesn't need to be endlessly argued over and politicked about; and I think I know what it might be.'

Valens smiled. 'The defector,' he said.

Really, it was a shame to disappoint him, after he'd worked towards his grand finale so artfully. 'Yes,' Stellachus said, 'the one they wanted information about.'

'The one who's just died,' Valens pointed out.

'Indeed. Now we know how the Republic thinks about defectors; it's legendary, they're hunted down and killed, no messing. But this particular one, who was not only a defector but a murderer and possibly a political dissident as well; and a big wheel at one of their factories, so he must've known a lot of sensitive stuff about engineering-'

'Foreman at the ordnance factory,' Valens said. 'You should read your own reports.'

Stellachus didn't wince visibly; he was growing a thick hide, Valens noted with approval. 'This one's obviously worse than usual,' he said. 'And as soon as he escaped he headed straight for Eremia and Duke Orsea. Like, let's say, a homing pigeon.'

Valens smiled. 'Nicely put,' he said. 'So Orsea's implicated, in their minds at least. Hence open war rather than the usual covert assassination.'

'Mezentine defectors traditionally don't get very far,' Stellachus said. 'The price on their heads is too tempting, and of course a brown face is pretty hard to overlook. Nobody wants anything to do with them, because it's too dangerous. But this one-'

'Ziani Vaatzes.'

'Vaatzes,' Stellachus said, 'makes a clean getaway and goes straight to Duke Orsea, who takes him back to Eremia on his way home from having the shit kicked out of him by the Mezentine war engines. Vaatzes used to work in the factory where those engines were made. Now, some of it may be coincidence, but-'

Valens held up a hand. 'The Eremians couldn't make copies of the war engines,' he said. 'You'd have to start from scratch, build the machines that make the machines that make the special steel, and all that. It'd mean years of expensive investment. And besides,' he added, 'I happen to know, Vaatzes suggested it and Orsea turned him down. And if I know that, the Mezentines do too.'

'Doesn't signify,' Stellachus said emphatically. 'It creates a possibility, you see; something else besides the Cure Hardy for the Mezentines to lie awake worrying about. If I'm right, the moment Orsea and Vaatzes met, under those rather special circumstances, this invasion was inevitable. In which case,' he went on, 'it won't just be an invasion.'

For a moment, Valens was silent. 'That's a rather large undertaking,' he said.

'Hence,' Stellachus replied, 'the rather large army. We know they don't do things by halves. No skin off their noses, of course; that's the charm of using mercenaries. Every casualty's a saving on the wage bill rather than a dead citizen.'

It was Valens' turn to look away. 'Have you ever been to Civitas Eremiae? Me neither. But by all accounts it's the perfect defensive position, massively fortified-'

'War engines,' Stellachus said. 'Why send a man where you can send a large rock, or a big steel spike? Probably just the sort of technical challenge your red-blooded Mezentine engineer relishes.'

The Mezentines aren't savages, Valens reminded himself, but it didn't sound so reassuring this time. 'Storming Civitas Eremiae,' he said slowly, 'would be an impressive achievement.'

'The Cure Hardy'

'Quite.' Valens frowned. 'Assuming it's possible to impress them, or that they care. But I can see how the Mezentines would view it as a pleasant fringe benefit, to scare the wits out of the Cure Hardy'

'And it'd make a first-class frontier post,' Stellachus added, 'assuming they don't level it to the ground in the process. Anyway' he said briskly, 'that's three possibilities. There could well be others; those were just the first things that came to mind.'

Valens grinned. It'd be wise to keep an eye on Stellachus' drinking, and he was as lazy as a fat dog, but he was still most likely the best man for his job. 'Think about it some more,' he said. 'Meanwhile, I'll let you get back to your paperwork.'

Stellachus inclined his head, like a fencer admitting a touch. 'I'll have the stuff you need about the Mezentine army as soon as possible,' he said.

'Good. See you later, at the meeting.'

As he retraced his steps back to his reading room, Valens wondered how on earth he was going to reply to her letter now, with his mind full of what Stellachus had suggested.

Perhaps she didn't know there was going to be a war; perhaps Orsea didn't know… He lifted his head and stared blankly out of the window, at the billowing curtain of thin, slanted rain. If the defector was dead, surely the problem had solved itself; no Vaatzes, no risk to the Republic, no war. Somehow, he knew it wouldn't work like that.

I'm not in control of this situation, he told himself suddenly. I wonder who is.

He sat down, laid his sheet of parchment flat on the table-top, looked at it. At that moment it put him in mind of the very best tempered steel armour; warranted impossible to make a mark on it, no matter how hard you tried. Valens Valentinianus to Veatriz Sirupati, greetings.

He put the pen down, lined it up carefully with the edge of the desk. Precision in all things, like a Mezentine.

(I'll have to tell her, he thought. Maybe, if I can make her understand, I can get her to promise; as soon as the Mezentines get too close, she'll come here-she can bring him too, if she likes, just so long as she's safe, here, with me…)

He closed his eyes. I might as well soak the palace in lamp-oil and set light to it, he told himself. I've just been thinking how stupid Orsea is, and I've proved I'm worse than him. To bring the war here; unforgivable. I shouldn't even think it, in case they can read minds; they seem to be able to do pretty much everything else.

He sighed. No point hating the Mezentines; you might as well hate the winter, or lightning, or disease, or death. As far as he knew-he actually paused and thought about it for a moment-he didn't hate anybody; not even Orsea, though at times he came quite close. Hate, like love, was an indulgence he didn't need and refused to waste lifespan on-

(Correction, he admitted; I hated Father sometimes. But that was inevitable, and besides, I should be proud of myself for the elegant economy of effort. Hatred and love only once, and both for the same person.)

In any event; hate and anger wouldn't make anything better. His fencing instructor had taught him that; they make the hand shake, they spoil your concentration. The most you can ever feel for your opponent, if you want to defeat and kill him, is a certain mild dislike.

He picked the pen up. You never got my last letter, [he wrote]. So that settles that, and we needn't discuss it.

I don't know where the wet oak leaves business comes from; can't have been anything I said. As a matter of fact, I despise getting wet, particularly in the morning. The smell of damp cloth drying out depresses me and gives me a headache. I like bright sunlight, cool breezes, tidy blue skies without piles of cloud left scattered about, moonlit nights-I like to be able to see for miles in every direction. Not quite sure where I stand on the issue of forests; I like them because that's where the quarry tends to be, and every bush could be hiding the record buck or the boar the farmers have been telling me about for weeks. But I don't like the tangle, or the obstruction. You can't go fast in a forest, and you can't see. I like to flush my quarry out into the open. Unfortunately, it doesn't always work like that.

Veatriz, I need to ask you something. Do you think there's going to be a war? I don't know how much Orsea's told you, or even how much he knows himself; but the Mezentines have raised a large army, and it looks horribly like they mean to use it against Eremia. I'd like to say don't be scared, but I can't. If you haven't talked to Orsea about it, maybe you should. And-I'm going to have to be obnoxious for a bit, so bite your tongue and don't yell at me-the truth is, I have my doubts about how Orsea's likely to handle this. I think Orsea is a good man, from what I've heard about him. He's brave, and conscientious, he cares very much about doing his job and not letting his people down. That's why I'm worried. You see, I believe that if the Mezentines invade, Orsea would rather die than run away and desert his people; which is all very well, and I'd like to think I'd do the same in his shoes, though I wouldn't bet money on it. I'm not a good, noble man, like he is. If I'd been good and noble, I'd be dead by now.

I'm still writing this letter; you haven't read it yet; so the waves of furious anger and resentment I can feel coming back at me off the paper must just he my imagination. Yes, I know. How dare I criticise Orsea, or suggest… We both know what you're thinking. But listen to me, please. Your place is at your husband's side, yes, right. But

Valens stopped writing. He knew that if he finished the sentence, he could be condemning the Vadani to war and death. Why would he want to do something like that? I want you to know that, if things go badly-you don't know the Mezentines like I do, once they start something, they don't give up-if things go badly, I can protect you, both of you, if you come here. I don't know how, exactly, but you can leave that to me. I can do it, and I will. Piece of cake.

There; now you see what I mean about getting the quarry out in the open. You do it by bursting in, making a noise, waving your arms, yelling, making a complete exhibition of yourself, being as loud and as scary as you possibly can. This is going very badly. I'm not thinking. For a start, even if you're prepared to do as I say, how are you going to persuade Orsea? He doesn't know you and I are (Valens hesitated for a very long time.) friends; so why on earth would he want to come here, to the lair of his traditional enemy and all that? I can see him, he's looking at you as though you've gone soft in the head. He's asking himself, why's she saying this, what on earth makes her think we'd be safer with the bloody Vadani than we are here? And besides, I couldn't ever do that, it'd be betraying my people.

Veatriz, I'm worried. I'm scared, and I can't make the fear go away. Please, at least think about it. The Mezentines aren't savages, but they're very different from us, they think in a completely different way.

I have no right to make this sort of proposition to you; it's worse than making a pass at you, in some ways. Most ways, actually. But if you think I've been wicked and hateful and manipulative, you just wait and see what I'm going to say next. Namely: I know you love Orsea, and your place is with him, and you'd never do anything to hurt him. But which do you think is the better option: Orsea good and brave and keeping faith with his people and dead, or Orsea ashamed, dishonoured and alive? I'm your friend. I want to keep you safe. If, when, if the Mezentines get to Palicuro (in case you don't know it, it's a small village on the main east-west road, about seventeen miles from Civitas; inn, smithy, little village square with an old almond tree in the middle), I want to ask you to think very carefully about what I've suggested. It's the only thing I'll ever ask you to do for me. Please.

A short, round woman whose red dress didn't suit her complexion at all was half-killing her elderly grey palfrey, making it lug her not insignificant weight all the way up the long uphill road to Civitas Eremiae. She'd come to sell perfumes, flower essences and herbal remedies to the Duchess at extortionate prices. She came away smirking.

In the heel of her shoe was a little piece of folded parchment. It was sharp-edged and it chafed like hell, but she didn't mind; she was riding rather than walking, and besides, it would make it possible for her to sell perfumes, flower essences and herbal remedies to the Duke of the Vadani for an absurdly large sum of money. Her feet hurt anyway, because of the corns.

The Duchess had asked her to wait while she wrote the reply, and she'd been expecting to be kept hanging about for a long time; she'd made a little nest of cushions for herself in the handsome window-seat in the small gallery (such a good view down across the valley) and she'd brought a book-The Garden of Love in Idleness; very hard to get hold of a copy, especially one with quality pictures-but she'd hardly had time to open it when the Duchess came back again. She'd looked tense and unhappy, but that was her business.

The woman in the red dress didn't take her shoe off until she reached the inn at Palicuro (miserable little place, and some clown had cut down the almond tree). She was a thoughtful woman, careful and attentive to detail, so she packed her shoes with lavender overnight. The Vadani Duke was reckoned to be a good mark and a cash customer; he wouldn't want his letter smelling of hot feet.

An hour or so after the woman in the red dress reached the bottom of the mountain, a team of carpenters, stonemasons and guardsmen set about installing the first batch of the new war engines on the ramparts of Civitas Eremiae.

It was a bitch of a job. The stupid things were heavy, but their wooden frames weren't robust enough to allow them to be hauled about on ropes and cranes (the little Mezentine had been very fussy about that) so they had to be manhandled up the stairs, and they were an awkward shape. There wasn't anywhere you could hold on to them easily, and unless you shuffled along a few inches at a time, you barked your shins on the legs of the stand. It was the general consensus of opinion that if the little Mezentine had had to install the things himself, he'd have given a bit more thought to stuff like that; also, that the engines themselves were a complete waste of public money, since nobody in their right mind would ever dream of attacking Civitas,' which was universally acknowledged to be impregnable; and only a born idiot like Duke Orsea would've been gullible enough to buy such a load of old junk in the first place. Still, what could you expect from someone who spent all his time pig-hunting when he should be running the country?

Forty-seven of the things-they'd been delivered fifty, but there was simply no way of fitting fifty on to the top platform of the old gate tower, there just wasn't room, and if only people would take the time to measure up for a job before starting, it'd make life so much easier for the poor sods who had to do the actual work-eventually sat in their cradles overlooking the road, like elderly wooden vultures waiting for something to die. In theory they were adjustable for windage and elevation-you made the adjustments by knocking in a series of little wedges until you'd got the angle, but you just had to look at it to know it wouldn't actually work in practice-and the range was supposedly up to three hundred yards. Word was that the Duke had upped the order to two hundred, proving the old saying about fools and their money, not that it was actually his money, when you stopped and thought about it.

The installation crews finished their work, stood shaking their heads sadly for a while, and went away. Tomorrow they had the equally rotten job of fetching up the arrow things to shoot out of them. Stupid. It wasn't like there was going to be a war anyway, not now that this Valens character was in charge of the Vadani. Another rich bastard who spent all his time chasing pigs. What they all saw in it was a mystery.

Just as it was beginning to get dark, Ziani Vaatzes climbed up the long stair and stood on the top platform for a while. He'd come to inspect the scorpions, set his mind at rest, but instead he looked down at the road, dropping steeply away into the valley.

It was a great pity, he thought, and if there had been any other way he'd have taken it. But he'd had no choice, no more than a dropped stone has a choice about falling. He hadn't started it. It wasn't his fault.