Devices and Desires

Chapter Twenty-Three

They waited until the surgeon had finished with him before they gave Melancton the casualty reports. It had taken an hour to dig the two arrowheads out of him-one in his stomach, the other in his shoulder-and he'd lost a lot of blood. His aides said the report could surely wait till morning (the dead would still be dead tomorrow, and possibly the day after, too), but the officer in charge pleaded an express order.

Seventeen thousand, four hundred and sixty-three dead. Lying in his tent, he looked at it as if it was a random squiggle on the scrap of parchment. Nobody could really understand a figure like seventeen thousand. A quick calculation-he'd always been good at mental arithmetic-told him that he'd lost slightly over half his men, and therefore, according to all the recognised authorities on the art of war, he now had insufficient forces at his disposal to carry the city. He'd failed.

Somehow, that hardly mattered. He was a mercenary, a skilled tradesman paid to do a job; they weren't going to behead him or lock him up, as they might well have done if he'd cost them that many citizens instead of mere migrant workers. He'd go home, unpaid, his career ruined, and that'd be that. Years ago he'd bought a reasonable-sized estate just outside the city where he'd been born, somewhere to retire to when his soldiering days were over. He'd been looking forward to it, in a vague sort of way.

Seventeen thousand. He remembered a story he'd heard years ago, about a man who owned a piece of land on which a great battle had been fought. He came back home a week after the battle to find the dead still lying. He was a fairly well-to-do farmer, with twenty men working for him; it had taken them weeks just to cart away the bodies and dump them in a disused quarry a couple of hundred yards from the battlefield. The land itself was ruined. Some of his neighbours put it down to malign influences, others reckoned the sheer quantity of blood that had drained into the soil had poisoned the ground. Ploughing was next to impossible, because every few yards the share would jam on a helmet or a breastplate or some other piece of discarded junk. He tried a heavy mulch of manure for a couple of years, but nothing would grow except bindweed and nettles.

Seventeen thousand. As he stared at the tent roof, trying not to move (the doctor had given him all sorts of dire warnings about that), he made a few attempts at visualising the number, but once he got past five thousand it all broke down.

The Mezentine liaisons came to see him around midday. For once, they didn't have much to say for themselves; he got the impression that they were preoccupied with what was likely to happen to them when they got home. One of them made a few half-hearted suggestions about a surprise attack by night; the other two ignored him.

'Can we at least say we've got enough men left to mount an effective siege?' another one asked him. 'According to one set of reports, they probably outnumber us by now'

Melancton shrugged. 'If they tried to make a sortie and chase us off, they'd be walking into our scorpions,' he pointed out. 'I'd love it if they tried, but I don't suppose they will. No, I think they'll sit tight and watch us use up our stocks of food. They're better supplied than we are. We weren't anticipating a siege.'

One of the liaisons shifted uncomfortably. 'How long can we stay here, then?' he asked.

Melancton grinned. 'Well, we've got a lot fewer mouths to feed than we had this time yesterday, so we can probably stick it out for three weeks, assuming we want to. I can't see any point in that, though. They must have supplies for at least six months, probably more.'

'Three weeks,' the liaison repeated. 'Well, it's possible that the reinforcements could get here by then. In the meantime, we'll send to the City for a supply train-'

'Reinforcements?' Melancton frowned, as though he didn't know what the word meant. 'I don't understand.'

'Fresh troops, from your country,' the liaison explained. 'Obviously we're going to have to raise another army before we try again. That's going to take time, naturally, so meanwhile our job will be to mount an effective siege-'

'Try again.' Melancton couldn't think of any words for what he wanted to say. 'You're going to try again?'

'Of course. The Republic never loses a war. As I was saying, time is going to be the key. Based on what we've just seen, we're going to have to make very substantial modifications to the long-range engines, and that'll probably mean shipping them back to the City for a complete refit. How long that'll take I simply don't know, but…'

Melancton paid no real attention to the rest of what they said. It wasn't any of his business any more. Curiously, they'd spoken as though they assumed he'd still be in command when the reinforcements arrived; he thought about that. It was possible, of course, that the Mezentines wouldn't want to replace him, because that would be an acknowledgement of the disaster. Maybe they're just going to pretend it never happened, he thought; and of course, they could do that, it'd be possible. Getting another army from home forty-five or fifty thousand this time-was also eminently feasible, given the time of year and the political situation. There'd be no shortage of recruits, assuming they had the common sense not to say anything about what had happened to the last expedition.

'Soon as you're up and about again,' the liaison continued, making it sound as though he was getting over a nasty dose of flu, 'we'll get you to come back with us to the City so you can brief Council on the sort of modifications needed to bring the engines up to the mark. The important thing,' he added, 'is to keep a sense of perspective.'

They went away again shortly after that, and Melancton slid into a shallow doze. When he woke up, there was a man standing over him who looked vaguely familiar. Beside him was the day-officer, looking unhappy.

'Insists on seeing you,' he said. 'I told him you were asleep.'

Falier; the name rose to the surface of his mind. Falier, the engineer from the ordnance factory. Presumably he was here to start mulling over those design modifications. 'Tell him to go away,' Melancton said.

'It's important.' Falier was shouting, which surprised him. On the couple of occasions when they'd met, he'd formed an impression of a weak, scared little man whose main ambition was to be somewhere else. 'I've got vital information, about the war.'

Melancton raised an eyebrow. Melodrama. 'Can't it wait?' he muttered.

'I know how to break into the city without a full assault.'

That was almost worth sitting up for. 'Is that right?' Melancton said.

'Yes. We can get in without them noticing, until it's too late.'

It happened sometimes, after a serious disaster. You got people who suddenly declared they'd been visited by angels, or who'd just realised they were the Son of God. Usually the voices told them how to achieve total victory without further bloodshed. Occasionally, they decided they were some ancient warrior saint reincarnated, and they'd trot off on their own, sword drawn, yelling, towards the enemy, and be shot down by outlying archers. 'You've found this out just now, I suppose,' Melancton said wearily. 'In a dream, or something.'

'No.' The little man was getting angry. 'Look, it's all in here.' He was holding out a silly little scrap of parchment, much folded. 'It's a letter from Vaatzes, the traitor.'

First, Melancton told the day-officer to get out, then, painfully, he raised himself just enough so he could reach the paper gripped in Falier's outstretched hand. 'Give me that,' he said. 'What are you doing, getting letters from him?'

He remembered the answer before Falier gave it; there had been a footnote in his personnel file. 'I knew him,' Falier was saying. 'I worked with him. We were friends.'

The man's handwriting was atrocious; small, cramped, full of dots and needles. That made it frustrating, because there were several key words he couldn't make out. In the end he had to hand it back. 'Read it to me,' he said.

Falier cleared his throat, like a boy about to make a speech on Founder's Day. Ziani Vaatzes to Falier Zenonis.

I hope you'll read this, Falier, rather than be all high-minded and burn it without breaking the seal-though if that's what you've done, I can't really blame you. After all, I'm entirely responsible for the terrible things that have happened over the last day or so.

Will you believe me, I wonder, when I say that I want to try and make amends? You'll have to form your own opinion. I hope you decide in my favour. It'll go badly with what's left of my conscience if you don't.

What I want you to do is take this letter to the military authorities, as high up the chain of command as you can possibly get. What follows are detailed instructions for capturing the city, easily, quickly and with minimal loss of life. I guess you could say I've had a change of heart; or maybe what I saw from the ramparts yesterday was more than even I could bear.

The key to it all is the city's water supply system. It's actually quite a remarkable thing. The mountain is honeycombed-I think that's the right word-with caves, tunnels and natural lakes. The Eremians have spent the last couple of centuries judiciously improving on nature. They can now store a year's supply of clean water, using nothing but the runoff from the eaves of their houses. Extraordinary piece of design; but it's also a glaring weak spot in the defences. You see, in order to move around inside the mountain, so as to maintain and repair, they've enlarged or added to the cave network; there's a maze of tunnels and corridors under the mountain, wide enough to drive a cart along. And-this is where they were too smart by half-there's an entrance at the foot of the mountain, on the north side, one hundred and eighty degrees from the main gate. In fact, it's a drain plug. If there's unusually heavy rainfall and the cisterns get full up and there's a risk of backup and overflow, they open this plug and drain off the surplus water. Naturally it's a deadly secret, but these people aren't very good at secrecy.

You'll find the outside entrance to the drain directly under an outcrop of rock shaped like a parsnip. You'll know you've got the right place, because if you stand under it and look straight up, you'll see a watch-tower on the wall with a definite lean to it-six degrees or thereabouts.

Once you're inside, you'll find yourself in a long, straight tunnel. There are loads of turnings off it, but you need to keep going straight for six hundred yards, until you reach a fork. Take the left turning, and you'll be in a wide gallery, curving very slightly to the right all the time. You're actually following the line of the wall. Every fifty yards or so, you'll find a stairwell; the Stairs go up to landings and then on again, right up to the level of the city floor, so to speak. Each stairwell is numbered; you keep going till you come to number 548. Go up the stairs, you'll find yourself on a landing or mezzanine, and then there'll be more stairs, another landing, and so on, till you've gone up eleven levels to a circular platform under a high stone ceiling. At that point, you're directly under the cistern for the guardhouse of the main gate. At roughly a hundred and ten degrees, you'll find a small passageway that leads to a heavy oak door. You'll need to smash your way through that; it's the failsafe plug, in case the cistern leaks. Get through that and you're in the cistern overflow, which is a sort of wellshaft leading right up into the guardhouse itself; there's an iron ladder bolted to the wall. You go up that, and you're no more than fifteen yards from the gate. After that, it's up to you.

You'll have noticed, I'm sure, that I'm giving you the information before I ask for something in return. Well, I never did have a head for business, and bargaining isn't my strong suit. What I'm asking for-well, let's be realistic. I know I can never go home. I've accepted that. I know if I struck a deal to give away this information in return for a pardon or whatever, they'd go back on their side of it as soon as they'd taken the city. The Perpetual Republic doesn't bargain with traitors and abominators, and isn't bound by its word when negotiating with them. Nor should it be. So, let's be realistic. This isn't an attempt to bargain, it's a simple plea for mercy. Please ask them to let Ariessa and Moritsa go; they've done nothing wrong, everything was my fault. I can't insist, I know; I can only beg, and try and set the score straight. I'm doing this because, in the final analysis, I've only ever loved my family and the Republic, and I've caused terrible harm to both of them. I can't go on living with that on my conscience, and simply killing myself without trying to make amends would only be another form of running away.

Well, Falier my dear old friend, that's all I've got to say for myself. If I survive the assault, I expect I'll be captured, taken home and killed in some-flamboyant manner or other. That'd be no more than I deserve. I'm not brave enough to cut my own throat. I don't suppose I'll see you again. Please, please take care of Ariessa and Moritsa. I love them more than anything else. I've just got a lousy way of showing it, that's all. Melancton looked up.

'That's his handwriting?' he said.

Falier nodded. 'I can guarantee it,' he said.

'You think he's telling the truth?'

'Yes,' Falier said.

Melancton thought for a long time. 'If he's lying,' he said, 'what would it achieve? At best, he'd have lured a couple of dozen of our men into a trap. Big deal, he's already killed seventeen thousand-' He broke off and grinned. 'Hadn't you heard? That's the number, as far as we can make out. That's what your friend's got to answer for.'

'I didn't know,' Falier said quietly.

'Don't take it to heart.' Melancton shrugged. 'It's not like it's your fault. Doesn't make any odds, though. Whether or not the Guilds do as he asks and let the family go is political, nothing to do with me.' He paused and frowned. 'I believe him,' he said. 'Mostly because there's nothing to be gained by lying, in the position he's in. Tell me, you know him; is he screwed up enough to do something like this?'

Falier hesitated. 'Yes,' he said.

'Splendid.' Melancton sighed, and let his head sink back on to the pillow. 'It seems like he caused the mess and now he's going to put it right for us. Nobody need ever know, of course. As far as the folks back home are concerned, we found it out for ourselves. What about the family, by the way? What happened to them?'

'Nothing,' Falier said. 'The Republic doesn't do things like that, taking it out on innocent women and children. They're fine.'

'Well then, that's all right,' Melancton said bitterly. 'He gets what he wants, and so do we. I may even be able to salvage my career from this godawful mess. Wouldn't that be nice? We'll give it a try; things can't get any worse if it doesn't work.' He paused, scowling. 'There's one thing, though. He talks about opening the gate, but that's out of the question. We smashed the gate in, and they've blocked the gateway up with rubble. Even if we get men inside, there's nothing much they can do.'

Evidently Falier hadn't thought of that. 'No,' he said, 'I see your point.'

'It's a strange mistake to make,' Melancton said. 'He must know about the gate; I don't understand. But…' He closed his eyes. 'I suppose that if we sent in, say, three dozen men, they might be able to make a breach before they're cut down. They must have beams and so forth shoring the blockage up from the inside; someone told me it's just bricks and rubble, they haven't had time to do a proper job. It's not as though I've got anything to lose, and what's three dozen men more or less?' He laughed out loud, for some reason. 'Fine,' he said. 'Do me a favour, go and find my general staff, and we'll see what we can do about this. I wish I could see the point of this gate business, but there's always something. The bizarrely inexplicable is generally a factor in great events of world history-you know, the bridge unaccountably left unbroken, the sentry not posted because someone thought it was someone else's job.' He yawned. 'I'm rambling. I've had enough of this war.'

Falier was glad to get out of the tent. He had the impression that whoever it was that the general had been talking to, it hadn't been him.

Find the general staff, he'd said. Of course, Falier had no idea how to go about something like that so he stopped the first officer he came across and told him to do it. The officer looked startled and bolted away like a rabbit.

Seventeen thousand, Falier thought. Of course, it didn't really matter, since they were only mercenaries, and there were proverbially plenty more where they'd come from. Nevertheless. He'd done exactly what Ziani had told him to do in his covering letter; it came naturally, doing what Ziani said, and he hadn't really thought about what the consequences might be. If he'd taken the letter to someone in authority straight away, as soon as he'd received it, things would be very different now. Before, he'd seen the situation only in terms of inevitabilities; it was inevitable that Civitas Eremiae would fall and that the Republic would prevail, that Ziani would be killed, and that he would be promoted to chief supervisor of the ordnance factory, in recognition of the part he'd played in bringing the war to a successful conclusion. He'd seen it all as one complex mechanism, designed by someone with a clearer eye than his, as complete and remote as a Guild Specification. Accordingly, he hadn't interfered (to alter Specification is an act of abomination, after all) and had relied instead on faith, as a good engineer should. In which case, his conscience was clear. Besides, they were all only foreigners.

He went back to his tent. Until yesterday he'd had to share it with an artillery captain, a loathsome man who snored, smelt of onions and stole things from his trunk. Now, however, he had it all to himself. His immediate reaction when they'd told him had been joy at the prospect of getting a good night's sleep; that wasn't good, he knew, but he really couldn't help it. There was, of course, a vast divide between failing to mourn the death of a nuisance and doing the sort of things Ziani had done, but even a vast divide is made up of small subdivisions of space, which add up to the whole.

They hadn't come for the artilleryman's things yet. Understandable; they were busy. The clutter of dirty clothes and boots was still there, but now at least he could brush them out of his way without any risk of being shouted at or hit. He cleared a space on the top of his trunk, opened it and took out his writing-set. The artilleryman had plundered six of his nine sheets of parchment; if he'd lived, he'd probably have had the other three before too long, so maybe everything had turned out for the best. He flipped the lid of the inkwell, dribbled in a few drops of water, stirred, and thought about what he was going to say. My darling

Words on paper had never come easily to him. I miss you, it's terrible being here without you, I don't know how much longer I can go on; all perfectly true, but if he wrote that and sent it to her, she'd think he was cracking up, and he wasn't. He was unhappy, and being separated from her had a lot to do with that, but it wasn't the only thing. This horrible war… Would they censor that? He didn't want to attract further attention to himself, given his links to the traitor, and the part he'd played in passing on his message. He knew what he wanted to say, but words were always difficult (he thought of Ziani, and his dreadful bad poetry; what had she made of it? he wondered. She'd never struck him as the poetic sort, somehow). My darling, I wish I was back home with you instead of stuck here in this miserable place. I can't really say too much in a letter about how the war's going, but at present there's no real way of knowing how long it's likely to take.

He scowled. If the artilleryman hadn't been so free with his paper, he'd have screwed the sheet up and started again. He was, he knew, at a disadvantage in a situation like this, because he loved her so much more than she loved him. It was something he'd come to terms with, but it made him feel uncomfortably vulnerable when it came to expressing how he felt. Unfortunate; but there's no accounting for love. If all goes well [he could say that; he wasn't specifying how things might go well] I may be home again fairly soon; I just don't know. You mustn't worry about money or anything like that, I've taken care of everything. If anything happens to me, I've seen to it you'll be all right. Not that I'm in any danger, I hasten to add. I'm just an engineer, after all, not a soldier.

When I get home, I've got a surprise for you. I won't spoil it, but I think you'll like it.

Anyway, that'll have to do for now, they're keeping me pretty busy. All my love, Falier. Being used to a fairly active life, Miel Ducas found it hard to get to sleep after a day spent sitting around. Previously, before his arrest, his main problem had been staying awake; now he tended to spend the night lying on his back staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling by a single flickering candle. That was another recent development. He'd never been afraid of the dark when he was young, but lately-it wasn't fear, as such, but he felt uncomfortable unless there was light in the room. Maybe it was just the noise; his bedroom at home was perfectly, superbly quiet, but the wind sighed round the tower he was confined in, and he found it very hard not to notice it. The intrusion was worse in the dark, somehow; it made him feel as though people were whispering somewhere nearby, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.

Ever since the victory (everyone he'd talked to had called it that) he'd been hoping things would sort themselves out. If the Mezentines had really taken a beating, and the siege was on the point of being lifted, maybe Orsea would be able to find the time to come and see him, or at least answer his letters. A few minutes would be all it'd take; Orsea, what on earth is all this in aid of? he'd say; and Orsea would tell him, and then he'd explain, and that'd be that.

But in the dark, he tended to think about the letter, and the terrible things the guard captain had told him, and the possibility that Orsea wasn't ever going to come and let him out. That was as good a reason as any for burning a candle. It'd be nice, though, to have something to read, apart from the three books he'd read so often that he practically knew them by heart. Jarnac had promised to bring him some more books from home, but if what the guards had told him was true, Jarnac wouldn't be coming to visit for quite some time. Of course, Jarnac could have told his servant to bring them, but presumably the promise had slipped his mind, what with one thing and another.

It was ironic, therefore, that when he had finally managed to drift off to sleep, some fool should come along and wake him up. It turned out to be the night captain; a pleasant enough man, though not much of a conversationalist. He was standing in the doorway holding a lantern.

'Sorry to disturb you,' he said. 'But there's someone who wants to see you. Says it's very urgent.'

'Really?' Miel sat up and yawned. 'That doesn't sound likely. Who the hell is it?'

'It's the Mezentine,' the captain said, frowning. 'Engineer Vaatzes. I didn't like to tell him he'd have to come back in the morning.'

Miel shrugged. 'I suppose not,' he said. 'Well, you'd better show him in, and then we'll know what all this is about.'

Vaatzes looked tired; more tired, Miel thought, than anyone he'd ever seen before in his life. He moved as if all his joints ached, and he grunted as he sat down. His clothes were filthy with brick-dust, sawdust and iron filings.

'You too?' Miel said.'

'What?'

'You can't sleep either,' Miel replied. 'So you thought you'd come over here, and I could bore you to sleep with stories of the Ducas family through the ages.'

Vaatzes grinned. 'Oh, I could sleep all right,' he said. 'I could shut my eyes and fall over, and hitting the floor wouldn't wake me up. Too much to do, though.'

'And here's me sitting idle all day,' Miel said reproachfully. 'I'd love to come and help you, even if it was just carrying your tools for you, only I don't think they'd let me.'

'No.' Vaatzes let his head loll forward on to his chest for a moment, then lifted it again. 'I'll come to the point,' he said. 'Frankly I'm too tired to dress it up, even if I wanted to. The fact is, I suppose I'm here to say I'm sorry.'

Miel looked at him. 'Sorry? What for?'

'For this.' Vaatzes made a vague encircling gesture. 'For being responsible for you ending up here. I suppose you could call it betrayal.'

Strange feeling; like walking into a tree, or putting your foot in a rabbit hole. 'You?' Miel said stupidly.

'Me.' Vaatzes nodded. 'I got hold of Duke Valens' letter to the Duchess and I gave it to Duke Orsea. And I told him where it came from.'

'Oh.' Miel was too amazed to be angry. He thought about getting up, but found he couldn't. 'Why?'

'Long story'

Miel frowned. 'Was it because I told Orsea I thought you were a spy, back when we found you?'

'No, certainly not,' Vaatzes said. 'Though in a way, I suppose, that was partly the cause of all your troubles. It showed you had good instincts.' He grinned, like some kind of predator. 'Your master is a dangerous fool, but you've always made up for that. And he trusted you far more than he trusted himself. Would you like me to tell you the long story, or at least the part of it that concerns you?'

'I suppose so,' Miel said.

'Fine.' Vaatzes yawned again. 'Please excuse me,' he said, 'I'm dreadfully tired. We've been working on patching up the defences for-what, seventy-two hours without a break. When I decided to make myself indispensable around here, I didn't realise how much hard work I'd be letting myself in for. Can I push my luck just a little further and beg a mouthful of whatever you've got in that jug?'

Miel smiled bleakly. 'Help yourself,' he said. 'It's a rather pleasant sweet white wine from my estate in the Northfold.'

'Very good,' Vaatzes said, after he'd swallowed a cupful. 'Though I have to say, I've got no taste in wine. We drink beer and cider in Mezentia, or water. Now then, I'm not quite sure where to start. There's a lot of background stuff that doesn't concern you, and it's quite personal, but you probably won't be able to follow the logic of the story unless I tell it to you.'

Miel shrugged.

'Right,' Vaatzes said. He poured out half a cup of wine and put it down on the floor by his feet. 'You know why I was condemned to death back home?'

Miel pulled a face. 'Sort of,' he said. 'Something about making changes to a design.'

'Essentially, yes. It was a stupid thing to do. I knew it was wrong, but I thought I could get away with it. I didn't; someone betrayed me. I have no idea who it was, but it doesn't really matter. I committed a terrible crime, for which I should have been punished. Instead, I killed some innocent men and ran away-',

'Hang on,' Miel interrupted-he was still feeling completely numb and vague from the astonishment Vaatzes' announcement had caused; he could hear himself talking calmly and pleasantly to this man, and he wondered why.

Probably, he decided, because he didn't really believe him. 'You make it sound like you-well, like you approve of what they were planning to do to you.'

'You could put it like that.'

'Fine. So why did you escape?'

Vaatzes smiled. 'For a very basic, stupid reason. I'm in love with my wife, you see. If I die, I'll never see her again. So I had to stay alive. It's that simple.'

Miel frowned. 'But-sorry if I'm being a bit blunt-running away, coming here, and then building all the war engines so we could beat off the invasion. There's no way you'll ever be able to go home.'

'We'll see about that,' Vaatzes said mildly. 'I rather believe I will, some day. But we're drifting away from the point. When I came here, it didn't take me long to realise how this country works. Basically, it's all rather haphazard. The people who rule this place aren't chosen because they're wise or talented, it goes entirely by what I believe is called the accident of birth. To make up for that, you noblemen are trained from birth to do the jobs you're born to; and you grow up having a code of duty and honour drilled into you, to the point where you aren't really in charge of your own actions. You do the right thing, instinctively' Vaatzes shrugged. 'There are worse ways of running things,' he said. 'But I saw, straight away, that you're the man who the Duke listens to. And that's because he knows he's a bad leader and you're a better one; he's a fool, but clever enough to recognise a better man and let him run things. That's why I had to get rid of you; part of it, anyway, but the rest of it's a bit complicated. Anyway; I asked questions. I was sure that you must have a weak spot somewhere, a point where you'd be vulnerable, and it didn't take me long to find it. It's common knowledge that you were always supposed to marry Duchess Veatriz, because that was the best possible match for both of you, politically and socially. Also, you were more or less in love with her-not that it mattered, since the whole thing was a foregone conclusion.'

Miel shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

'Well,' Vaatzes went on, 'as soon as love came into it, I knew I'd found the weak point, something I could hammer a wedge into. Love's always the most dangerous thing; so much of the unhappiness and quite a lot of the evil in the world comes directly out of it. I guessed that you'd played the good loser, ever since Orsea married her, and that there'd never actually been anything between you and her after he won and you lost. Also, I reckoned it was extremely likely that, deep inside somewhere, Orsea would never really believe that she loves him and not you. Logical enough; he's a fool and you're a good man, everything he wishes he could be but can't. That was perfect, as far as I was concerned. Because you're innocent, you never had anything to hide, you never imagined you'd be vulnerable to attack on that front. All I had to do was find something wrong that I could involve the two of you in-you and her.'

He paused and sipped his cup of wine. He looked so weary that Miel felt sorry for him, because he knew how it felt to be that tired.

'Instinct, I guess you could call it,' Vaatzes went on. 'Everything I heard about the Duchess led me to believe that she couldn't survive in a marriage with someone like Orsea unless she had an escape mechanism; a way of making up for everything he couldn't give her. I was pretty sure it wasn't just sex or anything as basic as that; I wasn't looking for torrid affairs with grooms and footmen. I was sure that somewhere the Duchess had-well, a friend. I talked to servants who'd known her family. She was always reading books when she was a child; alone most of the time, and then sent away to be a hostage, which must have been really horrible. But she survived; and she hadn't gone off the tracks and had affairs or anything like that. So she must have that escape mechanism somewhere, something or someone she could turn to when she desperately needed to be herself. I took the chance that there'd be something of the kind, and I set myself the job of finding out what it was.'

'You seem to have a remarkable grasp of human nature,' Miel said, 'for an engineer.'

Vaatzes shrugged. 'I use the tools and materials available to me,' he said. 'If I can't use steel, I have to use flesh instead. Not what I'd have chosen, but you do your best with what you've got. People are easy enough to figure out, if you make an effort.'

Miel shook his head but said nothing. Vaatzes went on: 'The next step was to find out as much about her as I could. Servants were the obvious source, and one of her maids told me that she often spent time alone writing. That suggested either a diary or letters, but none of the servants had seen a diary, and it's the kind of thing they'd notice, or know about. Letters, then; and if so, who would she write to? Her sisters; well, that seemed reasonable enough, except I rather got the impression that there was something furtive, guilty even, about the way she went about writing these letters. Also, none of the servants could remember her making arrangements for letters to be sent or carried-well, a few, but not nearly enough to account for the time she spent writing them. Now that was significant, you see. If she writes more letters than get sent, it seems likely that she's carrying on a correspondence she doesn't want anybody to know about, and that the important letters are being carried secretly.'

'What a clever man you are,' Miel said quietly.

'I'm an engineer,' Vaatzes said. 'I study and understand mechanisms. This was purely a mechanical problem; more letters written than sent, so where are they going? I thought about who might be likely to carry these secret letters, and fairly soon I decided it must be the female merchants. They come and go freely, and they call on the Duchess regularly. She buys all sorts of stuff from them, the servants told me, but never wears any of it. In fact, most of what she buys is hideous rubbish, which struck the servants as odd because she's got such good taste.'

'I never thought of that,' Miel said.

'Why should you? You weren't actively looking for a mystery' Vaatzes shrugged. 'By this point I'd set up my factory, and I had some dealings with the merchant women myself. I gambled on my theory being right and did a bit of gossiping with the ladies in red, making it sound like I knew what was going on, with the merchants carrying the Duchess' letters, and wasn't it an amusing little gobbet of scandal? I got some very odd looks until finally I was fortunate enough to find one who knew what I was talking about. She assumed I was in on the secret, that I was a courier in the secret correspondence myself. That was perfect. I found out who the letters were going to; and as soon as I knew that, everything slotted neatly into place. It was as though some kind friend had done half my work for me. Or you could say it was a gift from heaven, if you believe in a benign providence.'

Vaatzes paused for a moment. Telling the story had made him rather more animated, but he still looked haggard and weak, a pitiful object.

'After that, it was a question of patient fieldwork. I arranged for servants to report the comings and goings of merchants to me; I worked out a pattern, the usual interval between incoming letters-from Valens-and her replies. Quite by chance-and this was almost enough to make me start believing in that benign providence-I also discovered that the merchants were carrying information back to agents of the Republic. Which was only to be expected, of course, but it made it delightfully easy for me to complete the circle, so to speak, and get you involved.'

'I see,' Miel said, and it was as though he'd just had a conjuring trick explained to him, or seen his opponent complete a complex gambit at chess. 'It was you who informed on that merchant, the one we arrested for spying.'

Vaatzes nodded. 'The one who was carrying his letter,' he said. 'Which meant it came into your hands. And I knew exactly what you'd do. I felt sorry for you, torn between conflicting duties of terrible and equal force: your duty to Veatriz, your duty to Orsea. I knew you'd keep the letter and try to hide it. After that, it was a simple matter to find out where your own special hiding-place was; the one you thought only you knew about, but of course the servants had known about it for years. I had to pay a lot of money for it, the price of a good farm-'

'Oh,' Miel said, and for the first time he felt angry. 'So that's where she got the money from.'

'Your housekeeper. She didn't realise the harm she was doing,' Vaatzes said. 'I made it sound like some trivial thing, a joke some friends wanted to play on you. There was no malice on her part.'

'No,' Miel said softly, 'I don't suppose there was. So, it was all to destroy me, so you could deprive Orsea of my advice and bring down the city. I suppose I'm flattered.'

'You can see it as a tribute to all your hard work for the people of Eremia.'

'Yes,' Miel said, 'but it doesn't make any sense. I can see why you'd want to bring us down. If you could prove to your people that you'd helped win the war for them, maybe they'd forgive you and let you go home. But that's not what you've been doing. Exactly the opposite. You made it possible for us to win the war. You built the engines for us. Thanks to them, we killed thousands and thousands of the enemy's soldiers and drove them back; there's no way they can win now, they simply haven't got the manpower. And it's so totally obvious that it was you-nobody else could've built the scorpions-it must mean that you're the most evil man in the world, as far as they're concerned. They must hate you more than ever. You'll never be able to go home now.'

Vaatzes shrugged. 'That's another part of the mechanism,' he said, 'and I'm tired, and I haven't got the strength to go into it tonight. I think I'll go to bed now. I need to get some sleep; tomorrow's going to be a very hectic day, and it'll be an early start. Goodnight.' He stood up. 'For what it's worth, I'm sorry. You've been very kind to me, ever since we first encountered each other. I wish I'd had the time to figure out another mechanism that didn't involve hurting so many people. Regrettably-'

'I ought to kill you,' Miel said. 'For ruining my life, and hers, and Orsea's. I ought to break your neck right now.'

But Vaatzes shook his head, as though they were discussing some abstraction, and he respectfully disagreed on some point. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'After all, I haven't really done anything wrong, as far as you're concerned. I didn't betray Orsea; you did that. All I did was find out about it and tell him.' He yawned again, mumbling an apology as he did so. 'If you'd done the right thing and taken the letter to Orsea straight away, as soon as you got hold of it, you wouldn't be here now and my schemes would've failed. No, I'm sorry, you can't offload the blame on me. It was your decision. You chose her over him.'

It was Miel's turn to shake his head. 'I wasn't talking about that,' he said. 'I ought to kill you for what you did to her. And to Orsea, my best friend.'

Vaatzes considered that. 'You'd have a stronger case on those grounds, certainly,' he said. 'But that wouldn't be the real reason, just an excuse. No,' he went on, getting painfully to his feet, 'you won't do anything to me. For all sorts of reasons. Saving my life, for instance. That took some arranging, by the way.'

Miel had thought he was beyond surprise by now. 'Arranging?'

Vaatzes smiled and nodded. 'On reflection,' he said, 'it was worth the effort. It got me into your house for an extended stay, which meant I was able to make contact with your housekeeper and various other members of the household. It was hard work, though; hours and hours reading those ridiculous books-King Fashion and the Mirror; and teaching myself to shoot a bow and arrow. All that, just so I could talk to a few domestic servants without making them suspicious.'

'I don't understand,' Miel said weakly.

'What? Oh, right.' Vaatzes leaned against the doorframe. 'I read in one of the books, King Fashion, I think, about the dangers of boar-hunting. It said that a boar who's been shot in the back leg with an arrow is particularly dangerous; it can't run away, which is what its instincts tell it to, but it can still use its front legs to drag itself along and get at you, so you can pretty well guarantee it'll attack. So I made myself a bow and I practised until I could hit a target the size of a boar's back leg every time. I knew there'd be no guarantee that the perfect opportunity would arise, but it was worth going along just in case it did. And I got lucky; and it all worked out perfectly after all. That benign providence again, I suppose. On balance, I'd have preferred it if you'd shown up about five seconds earlier; I'd have got away with some nasty cuts and bruises, and I could've faked broken bones and internal injuries instead of having to put up with the real things. But, like I said, it all came out just right. I got into your house like I wanted; also, because of your personal code of chivalry, it turned me into one of your responsibilities, someone you had to help and look out for thereafter. Naturally, that made my life much easier, by putting me above suspicion.' He smiled slowly. 'I won't deny I've had one or two really big slices of luck, but at least I've made the most out of them. A bit like a man killing a pig; nothing goes to waste, it all turns out to be useful.'

Miel looked at him. 'Get out,' he said. 'And if I ever set eyes on you again, I will kill you. For the reasons stated.'

Vaatzes nodded, thanked him for the wine and left. He'd have liked to stay longer and explain further, but as always he was racing a deadline. Soon-he wasn't sure when, of course, he was basing all his timings on estimates, little more than guesses-soon the Mezentines would be creeping up through the maintenance tunnels, heading for the gate. That would be a problem, of course; when he'd sent his letters to Falier, the first of them months ago, with the instructions enclosed, he hadn't foreseen the destruction and walling up of the gateway. It remained to be seen what effect it would have on the overall working out of the design; from here on, for a while, it was all out of his hands. He felt a degree of apprehension about that, quite naturally, and also a certain relief. He was far more tired than he'd anticipated he would be at this point, and that in itself was a reason to feel apprehensive.

Now, at least, he didn't have anything in particular to do. He daren't go back to his room at the factory and fall asleep; the factory was too near the gate, for one thing, and he would need to be fairly close to the palace. He didn't relish the prospect of wandering aimlessly about for an hour, or three hours, however long it was going to be. The sensible thing to do would be to find somewhere light and sheltered, and read the book he'd brought with him.

(Ludicrous, he thought; who else but me would remember to bring a book to read while waiting for a massacre to start? But, he reflected, all his life he'd had a peculiar horror of being bored, and he'd been saving this particular book for when he needed to take his mind off something. So; it was just a perfectly reasonable act of preparation.)

He wandered out into the courtyard, just below the tower. Since he was already inside the restricted area, and the guards knew who he was and why he was here, nobody was likely to bother him. They kept torches burning all night here-visibility was important, prisoners can escape better in the dark-and there was a bench he could sit on. Light to read by, and it wasn't uncomfortably cold, just fresh enough to help him stay awake. He sat down, curled his coat tails round his knees, and opened his book. The candidate [he read] is not expected to understand the theoretical basis of perfection; nor is he encouraged to consider such matters in any further detail than that included in the syllabus. It is sufficient for him to be aware that, in a necessarily imperfect world, perfection is most immediately and tangibly represented in the various established specifications ordained by each Guild for its members.

However, some observations on the basic principles of this subject will prove useful to the candidate, and should be committed to memory. First, perfection can be expressed as the smallest degree of tolerance of error or divergence from Specification that can be obtained in the circumstances prevailing in each instance. Thus, a standard tolerance of one thousandth of an inch is allowed for in specifications of lathe work and most milling operations. In casting, a tolerance of ten thousandths is permitted; in general carpentry, twenty thousandths, although in fine joinery and cabinet-making this is reduced to ten thousandths.

None of these divergences can be taken to express perfection; a perfect artefact must conform to Specification exactly. Given the inevitability of error, however, the Guild recognises the need for strictly regulated tolerance, and such tolerance is therefore included in the specification. The question arises, therefore, whether an artefact that is perfect, i.e. one that contains no error whatsoever, can be in accordance with Specification; since it differs from the prescribed form by omitting the permissible degree of error, is it not therefore out of Specification, and therefore an abomination?

This issue was addressed by the seventh extraordinary assembly of the united Guilds, who declared that a perfect artefact is permitted provided that in its creation there was no inherent intent to improve upon Specification by reducing error beyond permitted tolerance. Evidence of such intent would be, among other things, modification of other components to allow for or take advantage of perfection in any one component. Thus, if a mechanism is found to have only one perfect component, intent is not found; whereas if more than one component is perfect, and if the perfection of one component is ancillary to or dependent upon the perfection of another (for example, where two parts fit together), there is a rebuttable presumption of such intent, and the accused must prove beyond reasonable doubt that no such intent was in his mind when he produced the components.

He rested the book on his knees for a moment, then turned the page. Perfection is most often attained, or, more usually, aspired to, through the destruction or removal of material. Such destroyed or discarded material is referred to as waste. Waste can he created by separation (for instance, by sawing off surplus material) or by attrition (e.g. filing, turning). The creation of waste can therefore be partly or wholly destructive. It is policy that wherever possible, partial destruction is preferred to total destruction, since surplus material that is only partially destroyed-off cuts, for example-can often be put to good use. However, this preference should not be allowed to interfere with the imperatives of precision. Thus, where a more exact result can be obtained by a wholly destructive process, e.g. filing or milling, than by a partially destructive one such as sawing or chain-drilling, total destruction is preferred. Acceptable levels of waste are, of course, allowed for in all Specifications, and any attempt to reduce waste beyond the specified levels is prohibited. As the report of the ninth general review committee puts it, waste is part and parcel of any properly conducted procedure; material is there to be cut and destroyed in the furtherance of the design.

He closed his eyes for a moment. There wasn't, as far as he was aware, a specification for the cutting and piercing of flesh, the bending and breaking of bone and sinew; there was no established tolerance through which perfection in this sphere could be expressed. In the absence of anything of the sort, it was impossible to establish what represented a permissible degree of waste. However, the basic rule must still apply: where a more exact result can be obtained by total destruction, it is preferred. He closed his hands around his face, and tried to find the absolution those words ought to bring. It was only logical. The mechanism he'd built wasn't some whim of his own. It was the only possible device that could be capable of achieving his only objective, and that objective had been forced on him by the men who'd taken him away from his house, his family, the only things in the world that mattered to him. So he'd followed the design to its logical end, accepting the inevitability of a high level of wholly destructive waste; in effect, he'd been following the design specified by the actions of his betters in the Guild, and it was the imperatives of precision that had destroyed Miel Ducas and Duchess Veatriz and Duke Orsea, and were even now threading their nervous way through the tunnels in the rock under his feet, heading for a gate that shouldn't have been blocked, with a view to the laying waste, by cutting and attrition, of an entire city.

He was glad that it was all outside his control for a while.

They had no idea what to expect as they lifted the heavy trapdoor. They weren't supposed to know that the whole plan was the work of the traitor-abominator Vaatzes, but the deputy chief of staff had felt obliged to tell them, just in case it was all a trap. It wasn't the sort of information that inspires confidence, particularly when taken together with the obvious mistake about the gate.

Nevertheless, a colour-sergeant by the name of Pasargades lifted the trapdoor, took a deep breath and scrambled out of the tunnel into the sweet night air. He may have ducked his head involuntarily, as though anticipating a cut or a blow, but nothing like that happened. He jumped out, looked round quickly and dropped to his knees to help the next man out.

The first thing they noticed was how quiet it was. No voices, which was encouraging; no boots grinding on the cobbles, no scrape of heels or spear-butts. There was a certain degree of light, from a lantern hanging off a bracket five yards or so away. So far, the abominator had done them proud.

Thirty-six men followed Colour-Sergeant Pasargades out of the tunnel: two infantry platoons, one squad of engineers and the commanding officer, Captain Boustrophedon. They were light enough on their feet-minimum armour, sidearms only, and the engineers' tools. All they had to do was breach the rubble blocking the gate. The army would do the rest.

The captain led the way, as was only right and proper. One platoon of infantry followed him, then the engineers, then the second infantry unit. They had a fair idea of where to go. The last Mezentine diplomat to visit the city had briefed them on the layout of the gatehouse, not that there was much to tell. Through the archway into a large empty room, and there was the gate.

Or there it wasn't. Instead, blocking a ragged-sided hole in the wall, there was a heap of wicker baskets, piled on top of each other, each one filled with rubble. In front of the heap someone had made a start on a brick wall, but as yet it was only three courses high. You could step over that without any bother. Propping up the heap of baskets were half a dozen beams-they looked like rafters, or something of the sort. Presumably the idea was that if there was another battering-ram attack, the beams would to some extent brace the baskets against the impact; either that, or the bricklayers were afraid that the heap was unsteady and might come crashing down on them at any moment. All in all, it was a fairly unconvincing piece of fortification. Once the brick wall was finished, of course, it'd be better, though not much. Not that it mattered. Even if the gate was wide open, the Mezentines didn't have the manpower for a direct assault, not if their entry was resisted.

Simple, thought Captain Boustrophedon: knock away the beams, get a grappling-hook into a few of those baskets, and pull. Of course, you wouldn't live to enjoy being a hero. The rubble would come down on you like a rockslide in the mountains, you'd be a bag full of splintered bones when you died.

Someone was calling out; an enquiry rather than a challenge, but it had to go unanswered. More voices, which meant choosing a course of action quickly and hoping it'd work. Well, the captain thought, if we can't have the rubble collapsing inwards, we'll have to try pushing instead. He wasn't particularly happy about it, but there wasn't time to draw diagrams and calculate angles.

'Get hold of those beams and push,' he ordered.

The back platoon were already engaged. He heard a shout or two, then a yell as someone got hurt-them or us, hardly matters. So long as this gateway's opened up in the next fifteen seconds.

They pushed. A couple of arrows skittered off the side wall, someone was yelling, 'In there!' They pushed again, and in the split second it took for Boustrophedon to realise he'd made the wrong decision, the Eremian guards swept away the nine men of the back platoon who were still standing, and charged into the gatehouse.

Boustrophedon lived long enough to see the first gleam of light through the breach. He hardly noticed it, although it meant he'd succeeded; there was surprisingly little pain, but his sight was being squeezed into a narrow ring by encroaching darkness. The air was full of dust. He died, and a Mezentine soldier stumbling through the breach trod on his head before an Eremian shot him. That hardly mattered, in the grand scheme of things. There were plenty more where he'd just come from. What was left of the defenders was shoved out of the way as the assault party burst through. The Eremian night patrol, who might have made a difference if they'd arrived twenty seconds earlier, hardly slowed the attack up at all. The first objective, the square behind the main gate, was secured within a minute of the opening of the breach; five minutes, and the Mezentines were on the wall, racing along the ramparts to secure access to the whole city.