Evil for Evil

17

It was as though a volcano had erupted in the middle of Civitas Vadanis, and was blowing out carts instead of lava and ash. The streets were jammed with them, their tailgates crushed against the necks of the horses behind, their wheel-hubs jammed against gateposts and thresholds. Lines of backed-up carts flowed down the gate turnpikes like frozen rivers, while soldiers and gatekeepers strained to lift, push and drag the stranded and the stuck, to clear the bottlenecks. Under the thin, high-arched promenade bridge, which carried the elevated walkway over the main street, two hay wagons coming from opposite directions had tried to pass each other and had ended up fixed as tight as hammer-wedges; a group of hopeless optimists from the rampart watch were trying to lift one of them up out of the way, using ropes lowered from the bridge boardwalk. A free spirit who'd tried to jump the line by taking a short cut through the yard of the ducal palace was being taken, much against his will, to explain his reasoning to the duty officer.

"We should've told them to muster in the long lists, under the east wall," someone said gloomily, as Valens watched the mess from the top of the North Tower.

"We did," someone else replied. "But that's the public for you, always got to know best."

Valens leaned his elbows on the battlements. "What we should have done," he observed sourly, "is stagger the arrivals, so they didn't all arrive at once; assemble them down in the valley, then send them up in batches of a dozen."

"We did that too," said a young, dough-faced man, with a sheepish grin. "Unfortunately, the steelyard crews seem to have underestimated the time they'd need, so they're way behind and all our careful timetabling's gone out of the window. You can't blame the yard workers, though. I went down to check on progress about an hour ago, never seen men work so hard."

Valens lifted his head. "Who did you get the time estimates from?" he asked.

"That creepy chap, the thin one with the ponytail. He told me, half an hour per cart, start to finish. But it's not all his fault, either. Apparently, they were kept hanging about waiting for a consignment of bolts from the forge."

Valens yawned. "I see," he said. "In that case, we'll hold up on the beheadings until we can be absolutely sure whose fault this is. Meanwhile, would it help if we sent some more men down to the yard, to clear the backlog?"

The young man sighed. "Not really," he said. "I offered earlier, but the creepy bloke said that extra bodies would just be in the way. Apparently, the problem is, they've only got a limited number of those drill things-sorry, I don't know the right word. Curly steel thing like a pig's tail, and you turn a handle like a wheel spoke."

"Augers," Valens said.

"That's them," the young man said cheerfully. "They've only got two dozen of the things, so Mister Creepy told me, and drilling the holes is the bit that takes all the time. Once that's done, offering up the plates and bolting them down is a piece of cake. That Mezentine's rigged up cranes and winches and things to move the plates about, and wooden frame things to show them where to drill the holes-"

"Jigs," Valens said.

"Is that the word? Anyway, all highly ingenious stuff, but I guess he's used to this sort of thing."

Valens shrugged. "We'll get there in the end," he said. "But I want Orchard Street cleared and kept open; we need one way in and out of the town, even if all the rest are blocked solid."

Someone nodded, accepting the commission, and disappeared down the spiral staircase. Valens groped for his name; an Eremian, from one of the leading families. Surprisingly knowledgeable about falconry, for an Eremian. "Who just left?" he asked.

"Jarnac Ducas," someone said. "You put him in charge of the day watch, remember?"

"Did I?" Valens shrugged. "I've lost track of who's doing what these days."

"He volunteered," someone said, and someone else sniggered. "Very keen, the Eremians. Some of them, at any rate."

"I remember him now," Valens said. "Annoying but highly competent. Well, at any rate he'll get the traffic moving again, if he has to kill every carter in the city with his bare hands." He frowned. "I shouldn't joke about that," he added. "I saw him fighting at the siege of Civitas Eremiae. Quite glad he's on our side, really." He looked up at the sky: well past noon. "I suppose I'd better go and do some work," he said sadly. "Does anybody know where Mezentius has got to?"

He found him in the exchequer office, sitting at the great checkered counting table, his head in his hands and a heap of silver counters scattered in front of him. "Bad time?" he asked.

Mezentius looked up. "I've got a confession to make," he said angrily. "I don't know how to work this stupid bloody thing."

Valens frowned. "It's not exactly straightforward," he said. "I spent hours trying to learn when I was a kid, and I still have trouble."

Mezentius spun a counter on its rim, then flicked it across the tabletop. "No you don't," he said. "You can make it come out every time."

"True." Valens picked up the counter and put it back with the rest of the pile. "I have trouble, but I overcome it, slowly and painfully. I find the key to success is not losing my temper."

Mezentius sighed. "Point taken," he said. "But I shouldn't be having to do this, there should be clerks."

"There were. But I had to promote them all, remember? So, for the time being, we all do our own tiresome and menial chores. I'm sorry, but there it is. Duty must be done, and all that."

"Quite. How's married life, by the way?"

"Delightful, thank you," Valens snapped. "Now, when you've finished whatever it is you're doing, I need to talk to you about who's going to command the light cavalry decoy detachments. I did ask you for some names about a week ago, but I'm assuming you've been busy."

"I'll see to it," Mezentius said. "You know, I liked it better when we were soldiers."

"We still are," Valens replied. "Unfortunately." He turned to leave, then remembered something and paused. "While I think of it," he said. "Have we heard back about the demands yet?"

"Nothing."

"Ah well. I.thought we could play for time, but obviously they aren't that stupid. Happy figuring."

Crossing the yard, he could hear the forges, the shrill, distant clank and bash of the trip-hammers and sledges beating out hot iron blooms into plate. What it must be like for people in the city, he didn't like to think. They were working three shifts now. He hoped for his fellow citizens' sake that after a while they got so used to it that they stopped noticing it; hoped, but doubted. It wasn't a sound you could ignore.

Next chore: he unlocked the little sally port that gave access through the back wall of the palace into the narrow lane that led down into the flower market. The steep gradient and pinched, winding alleys made it impossible for carts to get this far, and the congestion was keeping the traders from getting through, so the market was deserted. From the corner of the square, a long flight of steps took him down to a derelict block where the big tanners' yard used to be, and from there he followed a spider's web of snickets and entries until he arrived at the side gate of the old covered market where Vaatzes had set up his small-assemblies workshop.

The noise was different there. The screeching and graunching of files was loud enough to blur out the beat of the hammers; it reminded him of grasshoppers, but there was a tension about the place that made him feel uneasy. He was getting used to it, however; he experienced it wherever Vaatzes had made his presence felt, a kind of sad, determined anger.

Where the old market stalls had been, there were now rows of long, narrow benches, to which stout wooden vises were bolted at intervals of six feet or so. Behind each vise stood a man, his neck bent, his feet a shoulder's width apart, his arms reciprocating backward and forward as he guided his file; each man just slightly out of time with his neighbor, so that the movements appeared sequential rather than concerted, like the escapement of a vast mechanism. Valens walked the length of one aisle and came to the drilling benches, set at right angles to the rest of the shop. He vaguely remembered Vaatzes complaining about something or other to do with drilling; there weren't enough proper pedestal drills in the duchy, so he was having to waste valuable time and skilled manpower building them, badly, with wooden frames instead of cast iron. Presumably that was what the men were doing; they worked in teams of three, one man working a treadle, one man feeding a squared beam along a bed of rollers, the third man slowly drawing down a lever to guide a fast-spinning chuck. They stood up to their ankles in yellow dust; it spilled out of the holes they drilled like blood from wounds, and from time to time a spurt would belch up into the air, blinding them and making them cough. There was a clogging smell of dust, sap and burning, and the air was painfully dry. Beyond the drills were more benches, more processes, different shapes but the same shared movement, as though the whole building was powered from one shaft driven by one flywheel, hidden and turning imperceptibly slowly.

A worried-looking man with a bundle of notched tallies cradled in his arms tried to step round him; a supervisor, presumably.

Valens moved just enough to block him, and shouted, "Where's Vaatzes?"

The supervisor frowned, shrugged, said something Valens couldn't make out through the noise.

"Vaatzes," he repeated, louder. The man tried to point, lost his hold on his tallies, and watched them slither out under his elbows onto the floor. It was probably just as well that Valens couldn't make out what he had to say about that, as he stooped to gather them.

"Vaatzes," he said a third time, putting his foot on a tally so the man couldn't retrieve it. That got him a ferocious scowl and a vague indication, somewhere beyond the banks of buffing wheels. "Thank you so much," he said, and walked on.

In the end, he found Vaatzes standing at a bench, cutting a slot in a steel plate with a file. He tapped him on the shoulder; Vaatzes turned, hesitated for a moment and put the file down, saying something Valens couldn't hear.

"Is there somewhere we can hear ourselves think?" Valens shouted.

Vaatzes nodded and led the way, down the aisle to what looked like a square hole in the floor, with the top rungs of a ladder sticking up out of it. "Down here," Vaatzes yelled, and vanished down the hole before Valens could object.

Strange place for the Duke of the Vadani to be; certainly somewhere he'd never been before. After a moment's thought he decided it was probably the market's old meat cellar, somewhere cool to keep the unsold stock overnight. It had the feel of a tomb about it, a stone-faced chamber carefully designed for storing dead flesh. There was a plain, cheap table in the middle of it, on which stood a single lamp, a sheaf of papers and an inkwell.

"My office," Vaatzes explained. "The real one, where I actually do some work. About the only place in this town you can hear yourself think."

True enough; no distant thumping of hammers, even the squeal of files was missing. "Excellent," Valens said. "I might just commandeer it for myself, until all this is over."

Flat joke; so flat you could have played bowls on it. "You wanted to see me," Vaatzes said. "I could have come to the palace."

Valens waved that aside. "You're busier than I am," he said, "your time's worth more. And I was curious, I wanted to take a look for myself. I've never seen anything like it before."

Vaatzes gestured toward the single chair. Valens raised his palm in polite refusal. "It's not a pretty sight, I'm afraid," Vaatzes said. "If you want to see the real thing, go and visit the ordnance factory, or any of the Guild shops in the city. The best you can say for this lot is, we're getting the job done, more or less."

"Not up to the standard you're used to?"

Vaatzes laughed. "Not really."

"Pity," Valens replied. "I'd have liked to think you were making yourself at home. Or at least, as close to home as you can make it. I get the feeling you aren't comfortable out of your proper surroundings."

"Curious thing to say," Vaatzes replied. "I can't say I'd thought of it like that before. You think I'm trying to turn all the places I go to into little replicas of the city, just because I'm homesick."

Valens shrugged. "Something like that. Not that it bothers me if you are. We need your help, simple as that. None of our people could've set up something like this."

"True," Vaatzes said. "It's just as well we aren't trying anything ambitious. It was different in Eremia. Yes, they were primitive by Mezentine standards, but in the event it didn't take long to get the local artisans up to speed. Here…" He pulled a sad face. "You've got no real tradition of making things," he said. "Understandable, no need, when you could buy anything you wanted in trade. But we're coping. This time tomorrow, it should all be finished."

"Really?"

Vaatzes nodded. "It may look like a shambles, but actually it's going well. The only problem I'm anticipating is getting the finished carts out of the way, once they've been armored."

"I've got someone taking care of all that," Valens replied. "Anyhow, I'm relieved to hear you say we'll be ready more or less on time, because I've decided to bring the evacuation forward by two days. If we leave early, people won't have time for their last-minute packing, they'll have to grab what they can and run. That way, we can keep the wagons from getting laden down with unnecessary junk." He hesitated. He was finding it hard to concentrate. A conclusion was trying to form in his mind, but as yet he couldn't find the shape of it. "Anyway, that's all I wanted to ask you. I'll let you get back to work."

But Vaatzes was looking at him. "You came a long way just to get a progress report. You could've sent someone."

That was true, but it hadn't occurred to Valens to send a messenger. "I haven't had a chance to talk to you," he said, "not since the attack." He frowned. "I guess I ought to thank you, for raising the alarm."

"Self-interest," Vaatzes replied shortly.

"Maybe, but if you hadn't…" The conclusion? Only the leading edge of it. "I'll admit," he said, "it scared me. I don't think I'd realized just how close they are."

"Hence the hurry to get the evacuation under way?"

"Partly." No, he realized. It's not the Mezentines that frighten me. "That man of yours, Daurenja. Where did you get him from? He came in handy."

A slight reaction, as though he'd grazed a sore place. "He just turned up one day, wanting a job," Vaatzes replied. "To be honest with you, I don't know what to make of him either. But he works hard, and he's been very useful."

They were just making conversation; acquaintances spinning out a tenuous discussion to plaster over a silence. "Let me know as soon as the last cart's been done," Valens said briskly. "And I'm obliged to you. It can't have been easy, but you've done a good job."

The praise seemed to glance off, like a file off hardened steel; hardly what you'd expect from a refugee artisan praised by his noble patron. I don't matter particularly to him, Valens realized; and maybe that's the conclusion, or another of its projections. "I'll let you get on now."

"There's one other thing." The tone of Vaatzes' voice stopped him in his tracks.

"Go on."

Vaatzes was looking straight at him, as though aiming. "Did you ever find out what the object of the attack was?"

"Fairly obvious, surely."

"To get you, you mean?"

It had seemed obvious, not so long ago. "You don't think so."

"I was wondering," Vaatzes said, "if it was me they were after."

"What makes you think that?"

"Well, this whole war's about me, more or less." He said it as though it was something so generally accepted as to be trite and not worth emphasizing. "They invaded Eremia because I was there. Now I'm here. Maybe, if they haven't got the stomach for another full-scale war, they reckoned they could get out of it by going straight to the heart of the problem, so to speak."

Valens decided his other commitments could wait. "I'm not sure I agree," he said. "They're upset with me because I made an unprovoked attack on them, at Civitas Eremiae. Can't say I blame them for that."

"Maybe." Vaatzes was still looking straight at him. "But suppose I'm right. Suppose it's me they really want, and that's what the attack was all about. If you thought that, what would you do?"

"That's easy," Valens said quietly. "I'd let them have you."

"Of course. Has the thought crossed your mind at all?"

"Yes." He hadn't intended to say that. "I consider all the options. I decided against it."

Vaatzes nodded, a mute acknowledgment. "Why?" he asked.

"I don't believe it'd get them off my back," Valens said. "And you're very useful to me. And I don't think the war's about you, or at least, not anymore. It's all about Mezentine internal politics now. Sending you back might get me a truce, but they'd be back again before too long."

"My fault again." Vaatzes smiled. "If I hadn't built the scorpions for Duke Orsea, they'd have had a quick, easy victory in Eremia. Instead they were humiliated, and they've got to get their self-respect back. They need me for that."

"You make it sound like you want to be sent back. Do you like yourself as a martyr or something?"

"Of course not. I just want to know where I stand."

"Reasonable enough." Valens wanted to look away, but that wouldn't be a good idea. "You've got nothing to worry about on that score," he said. "It's against my nature to give up anything I can use as a weapon, when my enemies are breathing down my neck. If they'd asked me politely, at the beginning…" He paused, and shook his head. "I wouldn't have trusted them, even then. If the war's anybody's fault, it's mine. I attacked them, it's very straightforward."

(Later, it occurred to Valens that Vaatzes didn't ask him why he'd taken his cavalry to Civitas Eremiae. Perhaps it was diffidence, or simple politeness.)

"Well, that's all right then," Vaatzes said, and Valens felt as though he'd been released, on bail. "You'll excuse me for asking, but you'll understand my concern. Especially after the attack."

After he'd shown the Duke out, Vaatzes came back to his cellar and sat down at his table. For a while he didn't move, almost as though he was bracing himself for something unpleasant. Eventually, he reached for a sheaf of drawings, picked them up and put them neatly on one side. Under them was a small sheet of parchment, marked by fold-lines. I enclose a notarized copy of the marriage certificate. You know as well as I do that a Mezentine notary wouldn't falsify a certificate…

He frowned. Notaries; he'd never given them much thought before, but now their code of professional ethics had suddenly become the most important issue in the world. He cast his mind back, trying to remember everything he could about notaries.

…a Mezentine notary wouldn't falsify a certificate for anybody, not even the Guilds in supreme convocation. But if that's not good enough for you, ask for whatever proof you need and I'll try and get it for you.

He had, of course, already sent his reply.

But so what; so what if the certificate was genuine, and she really had married Falier? It didn't necessarily mean anything. If they'd told her he was dead… She had their daughter to think of; maybe they'd told her he was dead and they were going to throw her out of the house, she'd need somewhere to go, someone to look after them both. Falier had been taking care of them, he'd have felt the obligation. If she thought he was dead, marrying Falier would be the practical, sensible thing to do; and on his part, no more than the logical extension of his duty to care for his friend's wife and child. There was a raid on the Vadani capital, they'd have told them; we sent a squadron of cavalry to kill him, and we succeeded. Oh, the savages won't admit it, they'll probably make out he's still alive; but you can believe it, he's dead, he's not coming back. So she married Falier; why not? She's got to take care of herself, of them both. Think about what you've already lost, permanently and beyond hope of recovery, and what you may still be able to salvage from the wreckage.

He smiled at that. Where everybody went wrong was in assuming that he was some kind of complex, unfathomable creature, full of deep, subtle motives and enigmatic desires, when all the time he was the simplest man who ever lived.

But supposing… He winced at the thought. Supposing she really had married Falier, and that with him she'd found some sort of quiet, comfortable resolution. Wife of the foreman of the ordnance factory… All he wanted to do was get back what had been lost; for her, for himself, for the three of them. Supposing she'd already done that (believing he was dead, of course)-quietly, without needing to slaughter tens of thousands, throw down cities, rearrange the whole world just to put back one small piece where it belonged. Suppose, just suppose, that the mechanism was complete, functional, all except for one component that suddenly was no longer necessary to its operation…

Just suppose.

He picked the letter up. It would, surely, be the height of stupidity not to accept the mechanism simply because it no longer needed him. If she was all right; if she didn't need him anymore; to have married Falier-the symmetry couldn't be mere coincidence, could it? And if he carried on with the design, wasn't there the danger of wrecking the whole machine just to accommodate the bit left over at the end, after it'd all been put back together? He laughed, because that was an old joke among engineers.

The question was simple enough. When he'd escaped from the Guildhall, as soon as he was outside the walls and free again, he'd known what he had to do. It had been quite obvious, no ambiguities, compromises, no choices at all. Now the question arose: who was he making the mechanism for? Up till now, that had been the most obvious part of it: for us, because the three of them were inseparable-the assumption being, she couldn't survive without him, just as he couldn't exist without her. But that was an equation, the variables susceptible to revaluation; if she could survive without him-no great effort to calculate-his existence wasn't necessary anymore. He could simply drop out, and then both sides would balance.

Drop out. He stood up and listened; the sound of the files was faint and far away. If there was something he could gain for her by ending the war, that would be justification enough for having started it. Give them what they wanted-the Vadani, himself-any bargain would be a good one, since what he had to give them had no value other than what it might buy her. He smiled at the thought: promote Falier to superintendent of works, and I'll betray Valens to you and give myself up. It doesn't matter how much you pay, if the money's what you've stolen from the buyer in the first place. It would be a relief, as well, if nobody else had to die or have their lives ruined to serve the mechanism. All in all, it was unfortunate that it had proved so demanding, in terms of effort and materials; it had taken on a life of its own, the way great enterprises do. Being rid of it would be no bad thing, in itself.

Assuming she believed that he was dead.

But there were too many assumptions: that one, and the assumption that the certificate was genuine, that she really had married Falier. Maybe, when the Mezentine got here, he could ask to see Falier, hear it straight from him. Could this Psellus arrange that? he wondered. But that could be a mistake, since presumably Falier too believed he was dead, or he'd never have married her. Assuming he had. Assuming.

Bad practice; making the components before you make the frame. How soon could Psellus get here? Nothing quite as frustrating as waiting for parts to arrive from the contractor, before you can get on.

Slowly he pulled open the drawer under his table, and took out a plain rosewood box. It wasn't even his. Daurenja had lent it to him, when he'd been moaning to nobody in particular about not having a decent set of measuring and marking-out instruments. He flicked the two brass hooks that held it shut and leaned back the lid. Inside, the gleam of steel, burnished and mirror-polished, astonished him, as it always had. Silver's too pale; gold and brass distort the light with their sentimental yellow glow. But steel-filed, ground, rubbed patiently on a stone until the last toolmark and burr has vanished, rubbed again for hours on end with a scrap of leather soaked in oilstone slurry, finally buffed on a wheel charged with a soap of the finest pumice dust-shines with a depth and clarity that stuns and shatters, like the sun on still water in winter. The reflection is deep enough to drown in, the image perfect, free from all distortion. A scriber, a square, dividers, straight and dog-leg calipers, a rule, thread gauges, gapping shims, transfer punches, and a three-sided blade, six inches long, tapering to a needle point, for reaming off burrs from the edges of newly drilled holes.

He lifted out the burr reamer and tested its point against the ball of his thumb.

Think three times before cutting once; they'd told him that on his first day. The wisdom of the ages-taking metal off is easy, putting it back is fraught with difficulty, sometimes impossible, and even more so, of course, with blood. A sharp point placed against an artery, gentle but firm pressure to punch a small, neat hole; any fool of a junior apprentice on his first day in the workshop could be trusted to do it. Even a Vadani.

He thought for a moment about the thing he'd built, which would survive him. Too late now, of course, to do anything about it. He'd brought war down on the Eremians, decimated them, moved on to the Vadani, marked them out for cutting, set the feed and speed, engaged the worm-drive and started the spindle running; if he dropped out now, who would he spare? The Cure Hardy-well, who gave a damn about them? — and the Mezentines, of course. A little gentle pressure on the handle of the burr reamer would save the lives of tens of thousands of his fellow Guildsmen, turn away the siege engines and the sappers from the city walls; so much could still be saved, even at this late stage, if he only saw fit to modify the design a little, just enough to take out one process, the evolution that restored one small component to its original place. Surely, if there was a cheaper, quicker, easier way of getting the job done, even if it meant sacrificing one function, it would be good design and good practice.

He grinned. Been here before. If he'd learned one lesson, it was not to try and improve on the specified design. There was a good old-fashioned Mezentine word for that, and only a complete idiot makes the same mistake twice.

He saw his face in the shimmering flat of the burr reamer, with the Mezentine maker's stamp neatly in the middle of his forehead. He wasn't a great one for omens in the usual course of things, but he wasn't completely blind to serendipitous hints. With all proper respect he put the reamer back in the box, straightened the tools so the lid would shut and flipped the catches back. Wait for Psellus, check the assumptions, consider the implications, and then cut.

They sent someone to call him, and he climbed up out of the cellar into extraordinary silence. No screech of files or pounding of triphammers, nobody shouting to make themselves heard, no clatter of chains or grinding of winches, and the man they'd sent to fetch him wanted him to be quick, because everybody was waiting. As he hurried through the workshop he saw men standing beside their benches, arms folded or by their sides, nobody working. Outside in the crisp, cold air people stood about in groups, turning to look at him as he passed, as though he was the guest of honor. A cluster of men he didn't know were waiting for him at the gate, like runners in a relay race. They led him through the city to the yard, which was jammed with men and carts; and each cart had a square plate of sheet iron bolted to one side, supported by a frame of wooden battens, loads shifted to the other side to counterbalance the weight. "Is there a problem?" he asked several times, but maybe they were too far ahead of him to hear. They were walking fast, and he had to make an effort to keep up.

He saw the cranes, jigs and fixtures, but nobody was doing anything. There was one cart drawn up in position, one iron sheet dangling from a crane. A man was leaning on the crossbar of an auger; another held a long spanner for tightening the retaining bolts; and standing next to him, Daurenja.

He guessed before Daurenja spoke. "Thought you might like to be here when we finished the last cart," Daurenja said, beaming like an idiot. They'd already drilled the holes, done the alignment, inserted the bolts. Some kind of ceremony, then. Well, presumably it was good for morale, or something like that. He looked round and saw Duke Valens, looking uncomfortably cold in a long gray coat, surrounded by bored-looking officials. He hoped there wouldn't be any speeches.

Daurenja nodded to someone he couldn't see. The crane winch creaked as it took the strain, lifting the iron sheet a few inches. Two men pressed against it, moved it slightly to line up the projecting bolt-ends with the holes in the sheet. The man with the spanner stepped forward; someone passed him the nuts and he wound them on-finger-tight to begin with, then tightening them all in turn with the long wrench. Nobody seemed particularly inspired or overawed, even when the spannerman put his weight on the long handle for the last time, straightened his back and stepped away. The job was finished, successfully and on time. So what?

The Duke stood up and began to speak. Not a speech, any more than his own mumbled, preoccupied words to his workers were speeches; he was giving the order for the evacuation to begin, commands without explanations-schedules, details of who should report where and when, rules and prohibitions. The Vadani listened in complete silence.

"… utmost importance that we shouldn't take anything with us we won't immediately need; food, clothes, blankets, tools, weapons, and that's it. For security reasons I can't tell you which direction we'll be heading in. You'll find that out soon enough in any case. Don't worry about how long the food's going to last. We've got supply points already in place, plenty for everybody so long as we're careful; don't go loading your wagons down with a year's supply of salt fish and dried plums, you'll only slow yourselves down, and anybody who can't keep up the pace is going to get left behind, as simple as that."

The silence was amazement, fear, a little anger (but not at Valens), but mostly they were listening carefully so they could do exactly as they were told. Remarkable, Ziani thought. Just think about that for a moment. He stands up and says they're going to have to leave their homes, all their things, all the places they know, their work, all the components that make up the mechanisms of their lives. Prospects of ever coming back: uncertain at best, probably none. Some people, of course, couldn't accept something like that. Some people would refuse, or at least they'd go with the full intention of coming back, even if they had to make a bit of trouble along the way.

(He thought of the rosewood box and the burr reamer; there's more than one way of refusing to go along.)

Yet here were the Vadani; careless, inept craftsmen, the sort of people who can't be taught why it's morally wrong to use a chisel as a screwdriver, but so flexible, so trusting that they'll pack up a few scraps of their lives in a steel-plated cart and take to the cold, windy road, just because the Duke thinks it's the best idea in the circumstances. It could only be faith; and hadn't he had faith, in the Guilds, the doctrine of specifications, the assertion that perfection had been found and written down? Could you get the Mezentines to leave their city, pile onto wagons and leave everything behind to be burned, looted, trashed by savages? Of course, the Guilds would never give such an order. They'd prefer to stay in the city and burn with it. In the end, for a Mezentine, it comes down to place: knowing one's place and staying there, if the worst comes to the worst fighting to the death to get back there. For the Vadani, it must be different somehow, presumably because they're primitives, more pack animals than men. That had to be it. No other explanation could account for it.

Silence broke his train of thought. Valens had stopped talking, and the dead quiet that followed had a curious quality about it. In other places his speech would've been received with shouts and cheers, or there'd have been trouble. No such reaction from the Vadani, just as the foreman doesn't get a round of applause after handing out the day's assignments. He'd given them their instructions, and that was all there was to it. No enthusiasm, no grumbling, not even any discussion. People started to walk away. A man clambered up onto the newly plated cart, as the ostlers backed the horses into the traces. He'd go home, load his few permitted possessions, then go to the place where he'd been told to go, pick up his neighbors' things, a few passengers, elderly, sick, babes in arms, and set off to join the convoy. Remarkable; except for one enormous difference, which Ziani cursed himself for only just spotting. They weren't leaving home, because they were taking home with them. To them it wasn't a place; it was people.

He remembered Jarnac Ducas when he saw him: a huge man, far too much material for one human being, like a double-yolked egg. He remembered his annoying manner, his knack of coming too close and talking a little bit too loud; his vast smile, his insufferable good humor.

"Broad Street's clear and moving freely." Boomed into his face, like the blast from a forge. "There's a bottleneck in the Haymarket, of course, only to be expected, but I've got some men down there directing traffic. We'll stagger the departures, naturally, so I'm not expecting any problems there."

"Excellent," Valens said, trying not to meet those ferociously blue, shallow eyes. He wasn't sure why. For all his size, volume and intrusiveness, there wasn't anything intimidating about Jarnac. Maybe it was just fear of bursting out laughing, and giving offense. "You've got it all under control, then. That's good."

Jarnac Ducas soaked up praise like a sponge; it made him grow even bigger. "Just one other thing," he said. "What about you? Your party, I mean. I don't seem to have any details down in the manifest…"

"Don't worry about that," Valens replied. "I'll be riding with the rearguard, and we'll be escorting my wife and her people. Tell you what," he added. "You could do me one last favor."

"Of course." Big, expectant eyes, like a dog watching you at mealtimes.

"I'd like you to ride with Orsea and his lot," Valens said. "Unless you've made other arrangements."

Jarnac grinned, as though he'd been given the treat he'd been hoping for. "I'd be happy to," he said. "I'll keep an eye on them for you." As he said it, a thought must've crossed his mind; the frown was there and gone again as fast as a twitch. Valens had a fair idea of what the thought must have been: that it wasn't Orsea he wanted specially guarded… Not that it mattered what Jarnac Ducas thought about anything.

"Fine, thanks," Valens said, "carry on." That had the desired shooing effect; Ducas bowed and strode away. It was enough to exhaust you, just watching him walk. There was a man who went through life like someone forcing his way through a tangle of briars, powering through the obstacles by sheer determined energy, not caring too much if the thorns caught and snagged him. A rare breed, fortunately.

There was something he'd forgotten to do. What was it, now? Ah yes. Pack.

The Duke, of course, wasn't bound by his own orders and could therefore take with him whatever the hell he liked, even if it meant filling up half the carts in the convoy with superfluous junk. He could be absolutely certain that nobody would object. They'd naturally assume that whatever the Duke chose to take with him had, by definition, to be essential-velvet gowns, porcelain dinner services, stuffed bears' heads, whatever. With that in mind, Valens rammed two clean shirts, a pair of trousers, two pairs of boots and a scarf into a satchel, and filled another small bag with books. He opened the closet where his armor was stored, and saw that his business harness wasn't there; someone else had packed it for him, so that was all right. He looked round the tower room at his possessions; he knew each of them so well that he could close his eyes and picture them, or describe them in detail from memory, down to the last chip and scratch. Not to worry. The Mezentines could have them, and welcome. As a very last afterthought, he grabbed the cheap and nasty hanger the stallholder in the market had given him, and tucked it under his arm. He supposed it had brought him luck when the Mezentine raiding party had attacked; either the hanger, or something else. Anyway, he took it.

On the threshold, he paused. It was a rule of his life that, every time he packed to go away, he forgot something. He wondered, with a sort of detached interest, what it'd turn out to be this time. All of it, said a voice in his head, and that was entirely possible. He'd known all his life but never admitted that his claim that he'd never been in love had always been a lie. There were things in this room, possessions, that he loved far more than any human he'd ever known. He loved the silver niello of his Mezentine falchion for its startling beauty; the comfort and loyalty of his favorite hat, the company of his favorite books, every memory he shared with the things that had been his companions when people were too uncertain and dangerous to allow himself to become attached to them. Suddenly he realized that he'd never see or hold or use them again, and the pain staggered him, freezing his legs and loosening his knees. His breath caught and his eyes blurred-you idiot, crying over things-and for a moment he didn't dare move, because if he turned his back they'd all be lost, forever. Wasn't there an old story about the man who went down to hell to rescue his girl from death; and the lord of the dead told him he could take her, so long as he never took his eyes off her until they were both safely back in the light? Turning away from them now would be the end of them; just things, wood and metal, cloth, leather, paint, ink, artifacts and manufactures, irreplaceable, precious, inert, dead. I'd give my life for them if it'd help, he realized, with surprise and shame, but unfortunately that option isn't available. For some reason he thought of Vaatzes, the Mezentine. He remembered him telling how he'd escaped by jumping through a window and running, taking nothing with him but the clothes he was wearing. Curious how he'd never appreciated the implications of that before: to leave behind every familiar thing-your shoes, your hat, the spoon you ate with, your belt, your hairbrush, everything. A man gathers a life around him like a hedgehog collecting leaves on its spines; what sticks to you defines you, and without them you're bare, defenseless, a yolk without a shell. To leave home, and take nothing with him except people. I guess that means I've never really liked people very much. Sad to think that that was quite probably true.

He turned and walked away, leaving the door open; no point in shutting it, the Mezentines could press a thumb on a latch and push. Turning your back on love is the only freedom.

Mezentius was waiting in the courtyard, holding his horse for him, while the escort sat motionless in their saddles. As he reached up for the reins, his horse pushed back its hind legs and arched its back to piss, clearly not aware that this was a solemn and momentous occasion. He stepped back just in time to avoid being splashed, and nobody laughed.

He mounted, checked the girth and the stirrup leathers. The Mezentines would probably burn and raze the palace to rubble; he knew every inch of it by heart, but the day would come, if he lived so long, when he'd find he couldn't picture it anymore in his mind; he'd forget the covered alley that led from the stable yard to the well court, the half-moon balcony at the top of the back stairs, the alcove in the laundry, the attic room where the big spider had scared him half to death when he was five. The pain of love is how slowly it dies. "Well," he said. "We'd better be going."

As evacuations go, it was virtually flawless. Everybody did as they were told, and the plan turned out to have been a good one, efficient and practical as a well-designed machine. By twilight, the last cart had rumbled under the gatehouse, echoing for a couple of seconds. The rearguard of three hundred riders stayed behind, to put the required distance between themselves and the convoy; they left an hour after sunset, making out the road by memory and contrast in the shadows. They left lamps and fires burning, as canny householders do to make thieves think somebody's at home.

The last man to leave Civitas Vadanis was Mezentius. When the evacuation was first planned, he'd made a point of asking to be duty officer, with the task of locking the palace gates at sunset and bringing the Duke the key. Instead of doing that, however, he went to the throne room and left a letter on Valens' chair. It was addressed to a minor Mezentine official by the name of Lucao Psellus. When he rejoined the rearguard, Valens didn't ask him for the key, which saved him the effort of pretending he'd dropped it.