Evil for Evil

3

Partly because he was bored and had nothing better to do, Ziani Vaatzes crossed the yard, left the castle by the middle gate, and walked slowly down the slight hill toward the huddle of buildings that snuggled against the outside of the curtain wall like chicks under the wings of a broody hen. He was looking for smoke; not just the wisps of an ordinary household fire, but the intermittent gusts of gray cloud from a well-worked bellows. Once he'd found what he was looking for, he followed it until he heard the ring of a hammer, and then he followed that.

Inevitably, there was a small crowd in the doorway of the smithy. There always is: a customer waiting for his job to be finished, poor and frugal types who'd rather keep warm by someone else's fire, old men wanting to be listened to, chancers waiting for a good moment to ask a favor. One of the old men was talking when he got there. Nobody could hear a word he said over the sound of the hammer, but he didn't seem to care, or to have noticed. One or two heads turned to look as Ziani joined the back of the group. A month or so ago they'd all have stared at him, but the Duke's pet black-faced Mezentine had stopped being news some time back. Now he was just one more straggler from the castle, an aristocrat by association, a somebody but nobody important. They probably all knew that he was an engineer, which would in itself explain why he was hanging round the forge; an assumption, and perfectly true.

He watched the smith drawing down a round bar into a tapered square section, and allowed his mind to drift; the chime of the hammer and the rasping breath of the bellows soothed him like the most expensive music, and the warmth of the fire made him yawn. None of these people would have heard the news yet; they didn't know about the plan to abandon the city and strike out into the plains. Probably just as well, or there'd be panic, anger, moaning, reluctance. Valens wouldn't break the news until all the arrangements for the evacuation had been made, right down to what each of them would be allowed to take with him and which cart it'd be stowed in. There'd be an announcement, and just enough time for the evacuation to be carried out smoothly and efficiently, not enough time for anybody to have a chance to think about it. The Vadani didn't strike him as the sort of people who worried too much about the decisions their duke made on their behalf, such as abandoning their home, or starting a war with the Perpetual Republic. He wondered about that. You could evacuate Mezentia in a day; everybody would do as he was told, because that was what they'd been brought up to do. The Vadani would do it because they believed that Valens knew best. In this case, of course, he did. The policy was irreproachably sensible and practical. Ziani smiled at the thought, as a god might smile at the enlightened self-interest of his creation.

The smith paused to quench the top half of his work and swill down a mug of water before leaning into the bellows handle. The old man was still talking. Someone else cut across him to ask the smith a question, which was answered with a shrug and a shake of the head. Reasonable enough; why bother with words when you know nobody can ever hear what you say. The bellows wheezed like a giant snoring, as though the old man's interminable droning had put it to sleep.

He's working the steel too cold, Ziani thought; but of course it wasn't his place to say so, not in someone else's shop, when his opinion hadn't been asked for. The slovenliness annoyed him a little, just enough to spoil the pleasure of watching metal being worked. As unobtrusively as possible, he disengaged and left the forge. I must find myself some work to do, he told himself, I need to be busy. I wash my hands three times a day here, but they never get dirty.

Back through the gate in the curtain wall; as he walked through it, he felt someone following him. He frowned. Duke Valens was far too well-mannered to have his guests shadowed, and far too sensible to waste an employee's time on such a pointless exercise. He quickened his step a little. There were plenty of people about, no reason to be concerned.

"Excuse me."

He hesitated, then carried on, walking a little faster. "Excuse me," the voice said again; then a shadow fell across his face, and someone was standing in front of him, blocking his path.

Not the strangest-looking human being Ziani had ever seen, but not far off it. He was absurdly tall, not much under seven feet, and his sleeveless jerkin and plain hose did nothing to disguise how extraordinarily thin he was. Probably not starvation, because the clothes themselves looked new and fairly expensive, and he didn't have the concave cheeks and sunken eyes of a starving man. Instead, his face was almost perfectly flat-minute stump for a nose, stupid little slit for a mouth, and tiny ears-though the rest of his head was round and slightly pointed, like an onion. He had a little crest of black hair on the very top (at first glance Ziani had taken it for a cap) and small, round eyes. The best guess Ziani could make at his age was somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.

"Sorry if I startled you," he said. "Are you Ziani Vaatzes, the Mezentine?"

"That's me," Ziani replied. "Who're you?"

The thin man smiled, and his face changed completely. He looked like an allegorical representation of Joy, painted by an enthusiastic but half-trained apprentice. "My name is Gace Raimbaut Elemosyn Daurenja," he replied. "May I say what a pleasure and an honor it is to meet you."

Oh, Ziani thought. He made a sort of half-polite grunting noise.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the thin man went on, and Ziani noticed that there were dark red scars on both his earlobes. "Like yourself I am an engineer and student of natural philosophy and the physical world. I have been an admirer of your work for some time, and feel that there's a great deal I could learn from you."

He's learned that speech by heart, Ziani thought; but why bother? "I see," he said. "Well, that's very…" He ran out of words, and couldn't be bothered to look for any more.

The thin man shifted a little, and Ziani could just about have squeezed through the gap between him and the wall without committing an assault. But he stayed where he was.

"I must apologize for accosting you like this," the thin man went on. "It is, of course, a deplorable breach of good manners, and not the sort of thing I would normally dream of doing. However…" He hesitated, but Ziani was fairly sure the pause was part of the script. Stage direction; look thoughtful. "We move in rather different social circles," the thin man went on, and Ziani wished he knew a little bit more about Vadani accents. He was fairly sure the man had one, but he couldn't place it well enough to grasp its significance. "You enjoy the well-deserved favor of the Duke. I am only a poor student. It's hardly likely our paths would have crossed in the normal course of events."

"Student," Ziani said, repeating the only word in the speech he'd been able to get any sort of grip on. "At a university, you. mean?"

"Indeed." The thin man's smile widened like sunrise on the open plains. "I have honors degrees in philosophy, music, literature, astronomy, law, medicine and architecture. I have also completed apprenticeships in many crafts and trades, including carpentry, gold, silver, copper, foundry and blacksmith work, building and masonry, coopering, tanning, farriery and charcoal-burning. I am qualified to act as a public scrivener and notary in four jurisdictions, and I can play the lute, the rebec and the recorder. People have asked me from time to time if there's anything I can't do; usually I answer that only time will tell." The smile was beginning to slop over into a smirk; he restrained it and pulled it back into a look of modest pride. "I was wondering," he went on, "if you would care to give me a job."

Ziani's imagination had been busy while the thin man was talking, but even so he hadn't been expecting that. "A job," he repeated.

"That's right. Terms and conditions fully negotiable."

Ziani made an effort and pulled himself together. "Sorry," he said. "I don't have any jobs that need doing."

A tiny wisp of a frown floated across the thin man's face, but not for long. "Please don't get the idea that I'm too delicate and refined for hard manual labor," he went on. "Quite the contrary. At various times I've worked in the fields and the mines. I can dig ditches and lay a straight hedge. I can also cook, sew and clean; in fact, I was for five months senior footman to the Diomenes house in Eremia."

Try as he might, Ziani couldn't think of anything to say to that; so he said, "I see. So why did you leave?"

Every trace of expression drained out of the thin man's face. "There was a misunderstanding," he said. "However, we parted on good terms in the end, and I have references."

Ziani almost had to shake himself to break the spell. "Look," he said, "that's all very impressive, but I'm not hiring right now, and if I did give you a job, I couldn't pay you. I'm just…" He ran out of words again. "I'm just a guest here, not much better than a refugee. God only knows why the Duke lets me hang around, but he does. I'm very sorry, and it's very flattering to be asked, but I haven't got anything for you."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the thin man said. "Very sorry indeed. I'm afraid I'd allowed myself to hope." He seemed to fold inwards, then almost immediately reflated. "If you'd like to see my certificates and references, I have them here, in this bag." He pulled a small goatskin satchel off his shoulder and began undoing the buckles. "Some of them may be a little creased, but-"

"No," Ziani said, rather more forcefully than he'd intended. "Thank you," he added. "But there's no need, really. I don't need any workers, and that's all there is to it."

"A private secretary," the thin man said. "I can take dictation and copy letters in formal, cursive and demotic script…"

Ziani took a step forward. The thin man didn't move. Ziani stopped. "No," he said.

"A valet, maybe," the thin man said. "As a gentleman of the court-"

Because he was so thin, he'd be no problem to push aside. But Ziani felt an overwhelming reluctance to touch him, the sort of instinctive loathing he'd had for spiders when he was a boy. He retraced the step he'd just taken and folded his arms. "I'm not a courtier," he said, "and I haven't got any money, and I'm not hiring. You don't seem able to understand that."

"Payment wouldn't be essential." The thin man was watching him closely, as if inspecting him for cracks and flaws. "At least, not until something presented itself in which I might be of use. I have…" This time the hesitation was genuine. "I have certain resources," the thin man said warily, "enough to provide for my needs, for a while. In the meantime, perhaps you might care to set me some task, by way of a trial. It would be foolish of me to expect you to take me on trust without a demonstration of my abilities."

Too easy, Ziani thought. It must be some kind of trap. On the other hand… "All right," he said. "Here's what I'll do. I'll give you a test-piece to make, and if it's up to scratch, if ever I do need anybody, I'll bear you in mind. Will that do?"

The thin man nodded, prompt and responsive as a mechanism. "What more could I ask?" he said.

Ziani nodded, and applied his mind. To be sure of getting rid of him it'd have to be something unusual in these parts, not something he could just go out and buy, or get someone to make for him and then pass off as his own. "Fine," he said. "Do you know what a ratchet is?"

The thin man's eyebrows rose. "Of course."

"All right, then," Ziani said. "At the factory where I used to work, we had a small portable winch for lifting heavy sections of steel bar, things like that. It hung by a chain off a hook bolted into a rafter, and you could lift a quarter-ton with it, just working the handle backward and forward with two fingers. Do you think you could make me something like that?"

"I guarantee it," the thin man said. "Will six weeks be soon enough?"

Ziani grinned. "Take as long as you like," he said.

"Six weeks." The thin man nodded decisively. "As soon as it's finished, I'll send word to you at the Duke's palace. I promise you won't be disappointed."

Ziani nodded; then he asked, "All those degrees and things you mentioned. Where did you say they were from?"

"The city university at Lonazep," the thin man replied. "I have the charters right here…"

"No, that's fine." Was there a university at Lonazep? Now he came to think of it, he had a feeling there was, unless he was thinking of some other place beginning with L. Not that it mattered in the slightest. "Well, I'll be hearing from you, then."

"You most certainly will." The thin man beamed at him again, bowed, then started to walk away backward up the hill. "And thank you, very much indeed, for your time. I absolutely guarantee that you won't be disappointed."

Whatever other gifts and skills the thin man had, he could walk backward without looking or bumping into things. Just when Ziani was convinced he was going to keep on bowing and smiling all the way up to the citadel, he backed round a corner and vanished. Ziani counted to ten under his breath, then headed back down the hill toward the town, making an effort not to break into a run.

Back where he'd started from, more or less. This time, he walked past the smithy and down an alleyway he'd noticed in passing a day or so earlier. It looked just like all the others, but he'd recognized the name painted on the blue tile: Seventeenth Street. Past the Temperance and Tolerance, he recalled, second door on the left. He found it-a plain wooden door, weathered gray, with a wooden latch. You'll have to knock quite hard, they'd told him, she's rather deaf.

He knocked, counted fifty under his breath, and knocked again. Nothing doing. He shrugged and was about to walk away when the latch rattled, the door opened and an enormously fat woman in a faded red dress came out into the street.

"Was that you making all the noise?" she said.

"Sorry." Ziani frowned. "Are you Henida Zeuxis?"

"That's right."

He wanted to ask, Are you sure? but he managed not to. "My name's Ziani Vaatzes. I'd like to talk to you for a moment, if you can spare the time."

"Been expecting you," the fat woman replied. "Marcellinus at the Poverty said you'd been asking round after me." She looked at him as if she was thinking of buying him, then added, "Come in if you want."

He followed her through the door into a small paved courtyard. There was a porch on one side, its timbers bowed under the weight of an enormous overgrown vine, in front of which stood two plain wooden chairs and a round table, with two cups and a wine bottle on it.

"Drink," she said; not a suggestion or an offer, just a statement of fact. She tilted the bottle, pushed one cup across the table at him, and sat down.

"Thanks," he said, leaving the cup where it was. "Did-what did you say his name was?"

"Marcellinus. And no, he didn't say what you wanted to see me about. I can guess, though."

Vaatzes nodded. "Go on, then," he said.

"You're an engineer, aren't you?" she said, wiping her mouth on her left forefinger. "Blacksmith, metalworker, whatever. You need materials. Someone told you I used to be in business, trading east with the Cure Doce." She shook her head. "Whoever told you that's way behind the times. I retired. Bad knee," she added, squeezing her right kneecap. "So, sorry, can't help you."

"Actually," Vaatzes smiled, "the man at the Poverty and Justice did tell me you'd retired, but it wasn't business I wanted to talk to you about. At least," he added, "not directly."

"Oh." She looked at him as though he'd just slithered out of check and taken her queen. "Well, in that case, what can I do for you?"

Vaatzes edged a little closer. "Your late husband," he said.

"Oh. Him."

"Yes." He picked up the wine cup but didn't drink anything. "I understand that he used to lead a mule-train out along the southern border occasionally. Is that right?"

She pulled a face, as though trying to remember something unimportant from a long time ago. It was a reasonable performance, but she held it just a fraction too long. "Salt," she said. "There's some place in the desert where they dig it out of the ground. A couple of times he went down there to the market, where they take the stuff to sell it off. Thought he could make a profit but the margins were too tight. Mind you," she added, "that's got to be, what, twenty years ago, and we weren't living here then, it was while we were still in Chora. Lost a fair bit of money, one way and another."

Vaatzes nodded. "That's more or less what I'd heard," he said.

She looked up at him. "Why?" she asked. "You thinking of going into the salt business?"

"It had crossed my mind."

"Forget it." She waved her hand, as though swatting a fat, blind fly. "The salt trade's all tied up, has been for years. Your lot, mostly, the Mezentines. They run everything now."

"But not twenty years ago," Vaatzes said quietly, and that made her look at him again. "And besides, even now they mostly buy through intermediaries. Cure Doce, as I understand."

"Could be." She yawned, revealing an unexpectedly pristine set of teeth. "I never got into that particular venture very much. Knew from the outset it was a dead end. If he'd listened to me, maybe things'd be very different now." She tilted the bottle over her cup, but Vaatzes could see it was already three-quarters full. "When we were living in Chora-"

"I expect you had something to do with it," he said mildly. "Presumably you were buying the stock he took with him to trade for the salt."

"Could be. Can't remember." She yawned again, but she was picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. "That was my side of the business back then, yes. I'd buy the stuff in Chora, he'd take it out to wherever he was trading that year. Never worked out. Any margin I managed to make at home, he'd blow it all out in the wilderness somewhere. That's what made me throw him out, eventually."

"I can see it must've been frustrating for you," Vaatzes said. "But to get back to the salt. Can you remember who it was he used to buy it from? The miners, I mean, the people who dug it out of the ground."

She looked at him, and she most certainly wasn't drunk or rambling. "I don't think he ever mentioned it," she said. "Just salt-miners, that's all."

"Are you sure?" Vaatzes raised his eyebrows. "I'd have thought that if you were trading with them, you'd have known a bit about them. So as to know what they'd be likely to want, in exchange for the salt."

"You'd have thought." She shrugged. "I guess that's how come we lost so much money."

Vaatzes smiled. "I see," he said. "Well, that explains that. It's a shame, though."

He leaned back in his chair and sipped a little of the wine. It was actually quite good. She waited for rather a long time, then scowled.

"Are you really thinking about going into the salt business?"

He nodded. "And of course," he went on, "I wouldn't expect an experienced businesswoman to go around giving valuable trade secrets away for nothing." She nodded, very slightly. He went on, "Unfortunately, until I've got finance of my own, backers, I haven't got anything to offer up front, in exchange for valuable information."

"Ah."

"But." He waited for a moment, then continued. "It occurred to me, however, that you might be interested in a partnership. Of sorts," he added quickly, as she looked up at him sharply. "I'm sure you know far more about this sort of thing than I do; but the way I see it is, I can't get any serious funding for the idea unless I've got something hard to convince a potential backer with. Once I've got the money, of course…"

"I see," she said, with a sour little smile. "I tell you what I know, you take that and get your funding with it, and we settle up afterward, when the business is up and running." She sighed. "No disrespect, but what are you bringing to the deal?"

He smiled. "Energy," he said. "Youth. Boundless enthusiasm. And the information isn't doing you any good as it is," he added. "It's just cluttering up your mind, like inherited furniture."

Her scowl deepened. "There'd have to be a contract," she said.

"Of course," Vaatzes said, smiling. "All properly written up and sealed and everything."

"Ten percent."

"Five."

She made a vague grunting noise, shook her head. "Fair enough," she said. "It's a waste of your time and effort, mind, there never was a margin in it."

"Times have changed," Vaatzes said. "The war, for one thing."

"What's the war got to do with it?"

He gave her a fancy-you-not-guessing look. "All those soldiers," he said, "on both sides, living off field rations. You know the sort of thing: salt beef, salt pork, bacon…"

She blinked. "That's true," she said. She hesitated, then added, "The Mezentines always used to buy off the Cure Doce, at Mundus Vergens. Don't suppose the Cure Doce go there much anymore, what with the guerrillas and all." She scratched her nose; the first unselfconscious gesture he'd seen her make. "I wonder how they're getting salt nowadays," she said.

"From Lonazep," Vaatzes said briskly. "I have done a little bit of research, you see. It's coming in there from somewhere, but nobody's sure where. But it's rock salt; Valens' men have found enough of it in the ration bags of dead Mezentines to know that. So it must ultimately be coming from the desert; and no army can keep going without salt, not if they're far from home, at the long end of their supply line. So if someone could find the producers and buy up the entire supply-well, that'd be a worthwhile contribution to the war effort, in my opinion. What do you think?"

She was scowling at him again. "I should've known you'd be political," she said.

"Me?" He shook his head. "Not in my nature. But I think that if I had solid information to go on, I could get some money out of the Duke. I've got a living to earn, after all. It looks like I'm going to be stuck here for a long time, maybe the rest of my life. It's about time I settled down and got a job."

She breathed out slowly. "Like I said," she replied, "there'd have to be a written agreement. You come back with that and I might have something for you."

Vaatzes tried not to be too obvious about taking a breath. "A map?"

"Who said anything about a map?"

"The Duke would want there to be a map," Vaatzes said. "A genuine one," he added sternly, "not one that smudges as soon as he opens it."

"There might be one," she said slowly. "I'd have to look. There's loads of his old junk up in the roof. Maybe not a map, but there could be a journal. Bearings, number of days traveled, names of places and people. Better than a map, really."

Vaatzes dipped his head. "As you say." He stood up. "If you happen to come across it, don't throw it away."

She looked up at him, like a dog at table. "You'll see about a contract?"

"Straightaway."

She thought for a moment, then smiled. It wasn't much, but it was the only smile she had. "Sorry if I came across as a bit distant," she said. "But you've got to be careful."

"Of course. Thank you for the wine."

She looked at his cup. "You hardly touched it."

"I don't drink."

He left her without looking round and closed the door behind him. As he walked up the hill, he tried to think about money. He didn't have any, of course, and he had no way of getting any, except by asking for it. Were he to do so, assuming he asked the right people, he was sure he could have as much as he wanted; but that would be missing the point. Obviously Valens was the one man he couldn't ask (later, of course; but not now); that still left him a wide range of choices. Better, though, if he could get money from somewhere else. Under other circumstances, that wouldn't be a problem. But with time pressing…

He stopped. He hadn't seen her (hadn't been expecting to see her, so hadn't been on his guard) and now they were face to face, only a yard or so apart. She was coming out of a linen-draper's shop, flanked on either side by a maid and an equerry. She'd seen him, and there was no chance of her not recognizing him, or taking him for someone else.

"Hello," she said.

He couldn't think what to say. For one thing, there was the horrendous business of protocol and the proper form of address. How do you reply to a greeting from the duchess of a duchy that no longer exists (but whose destruction has not been officially recognized by the regime whose hospitality you are enjoying)? There was probably a page and a half on the subject in one of Duke Valens' comprehensive books of manners, but so far he hadn't managed to stay awake long enough to get past the prefaces and dedications. Other protocols, too: how do you address the wife of a man you betrayed by telling him half the truth about his wife and his best friend? How do you respond to a friendly greeting from someone whose city gates you opened to the enemy? There was bound to be a proper formula, and if only he knew it there wouldn't be any awkwardness or embarrassment at this meeting. As it was, he was going to have to figure something out for himself, from first principles.

"Hello," he replied, and bowed; a small, clumsy, comic nod, faulty in execution but clear enough in its meaning. Cheating, of course.

"I haven't seen you for a long time," she said. "How are you settling in here?"

He smiled. "It's one of the advantages of being an exile," he said. "Everywhere you go is strange to you, so getting used to somewhere new isn't such a problem."

She frowned very slightly. There were people behind her in the shop, wanting to leave but too polite to push past her, her ladies-in-waiting and her armed guard. "In that case, it ought to be like that for me too, surely."

He shook his head. "Not really," he said. "You're not an exile, you're a refugee."

"Same thing, surely."

"No." Should he have qualified that, or toned it down? No, my lady? "There's quite a difference. You left because your country was taken away from you. I left because my country wanted rid of me. I suppose it's like the difference between a widow and someone whose husband leaves her for somebody else." He shrugged. "It's not so much of a difference after all, really. Are you going back to the palace?"

She pulled a face. "I've only just managed to escape," she replied. "It's a wonderful building and everybody's very kind, but…" She nodded at the basket one of the maids was carrying. "Embroidery silk. Vitally important that I choose it for myself."

"I can see that," Vaatzes replied. "Hence the cavalry escort. Which way are you going?"

She thought for a moment. "Downhill," she said. "So far I haven't managed to get more than six hundred yards from the palace gates, but I'm taking it slowly, by degrees."

The shopkeeper was standing behind her, looking respectfully tense, with her bottled-up customers shifting from foot to foot all round her. "In that case," Vaatzes said, "might I recommend the fabric stall in the little square off Twenty-Ninth Street? I seem to remember seeing a couple of rolls of genuine Mezentine silk brocade which might interest you."

She raised an eyebrow. "Twenty-Ninth Street?"

"At the bottom of Eighth Street and turn left. I know," he added, "I tried to work it out too. I tried prime numbers, square roots and dividing by Conselher's Constant, but I still can't make any sense of how the numbers run."

"And you an engineer," she said. "I'd have thought you'd have worked it out by now."

"Too deep for me. There must be a logical sequence, though. You'll have to ask Duke Valens. He must know, if anyone does."

"I'm sure." Not the slightest flicker of an eyelid, and the voice perfectly controlled, like a guardsman's horse in a parade. "I gather it's just the sort of thing that would interest him."

She nodded very slightly to the maid on her left, and she and her escort began to move at precisely the same moment, down the hill, toward the Eighth Street gate. At a guess, the little square off Twenty-Ninth Street was a good eight hundred and fifty yards from the palace. It reminded him of the section in King Fashion, the unspeakably dull hunting manual that everybody was so keen on in these parts, about the early stages of training a falcon; how much further you let it fly each day, when you're training it to come back to the lure.

They didn't speak to each other all the way down Eighth Street; but at the narrow turning off the main thoroughfare she looked at him and asked, "So what are you doing? Are you managing to keep yourself occupied?"

As he answered her (he was politely and unobtrusively evasive, and told her nothing), he thought: between any other two people, this could easily sound like flirtation, or at the very least a preliminary engagement of skirmishers as two armies converge. But I don't suppose she's ever flirted in her life, and (he had to make an effort not to smile) of course, I'm the Mezentine, so different I'm not quite human. Flirting with me would be like trying to burn water; couldn't be done even if anyone wanted to. I think she's got nobody to talk to; nobody at all.

"You should set up in business," she was saying. "I'm sure you'd do very well. After all, you got that factory going in Eremia very quickly, and if it hadn't been for the war…"

"The thought had crossed my mind," he replied gravely. "But I get the feeling that manufacturing isn't the Vadani's strongest suit, and I haven't got the patience to spend a year training anybody to saw a straight line. Besides, I quite like a change of direction. I was thinking about setting up as a trader."

She laughed. "You think you'd look good in red?"

"I forgot," he said, as lightly as he could manage. "Your sister's a Merchant Adventurer, isn't she?"

"That's right." Just a trace of chill in her voice.

"I wonder if she'd be prepared to help me," he said, increasing the level of enthusiasm but not piling it on too thick. "A bit of advice, really. I imagine she knows pretty well everybody in the trade. It seems like a fairly small world, after all."

"You want to meet her so she can teach you how to be her business rival? I'm not sure it works like that."

An adversarial side to her nature he hadn't noticed or appreciated before. She liked verbal fencing. He hadn't thought it was in her nature; perhaps she'd picked the habit up somewhere, from someone. "I was thinking more in terms of a partnership," he said.

"Oh." She blinked. Arch didn't suit her. "And what would you bring to it, I wonder?"

"I heard about a business opportunity the other day," he replied. "It sounds promising, but I'm not a trader."

She nodded. "Well," she said, "I owe you a favor, don't I?" She paused. Something about her body language put her maids and equerries on notice that they'd suddenly been struck blind and dumb. Impressive how she could do that. "I haven't had a chance to thank you," she went on, somewhat awkwardly.

"What for?"

She frowned. "For getting me out of Civitas Eremiae alive," she said.

He nodded. "What you mean is, why did I do that?"

"I had wondered."

He looked away. It could quite easily have been embarrassment, the logical reaction of a reticent man faced with unexpected gratitude. "Chance," he said. "Pure chance. Oh, I knew who you were, of course. But I happened to run into you as I was making my own escape. It was just instinct, really."

"I see." She was frowning. "So if you'd happened to run into someone else first…"

"I didn't, though," he said. "So that's all right."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I think I made it sound like I was afraid-I don't know, that you were calling in a debt or something."

"It's all right," he said. "Let's talk about something else."

"Fine." She lifted her head, like a horse sniffing for rain. "Such as?"

"Oh, I don't know. How are you settling in?"

"What?"

"Well, you asked me."

She hesitated, then shrugged. "There are days when I forget where I am," she said. "I wake up, and it's a sunny morning, and I sit in the window-seat and pick up my embroidery; and the view from the window is different, and I remember, we're not in Eremia, we're in Civitas Vadanis. So I guess you could say I've settled in quite well. I mean," she added, "one place is very much like another when you stay in your room embroidering cushion covers. It's a very nice room," she went on. "They always have been. I suppose I've been very lucky, all my life."

The unfair question would be, So you enjoy embroidery, then? If he asked it, either she'd have to lie to him, or else put herself in his power, forever. "What are you making at the moment?" he asked.

"A saddle-cloth," she answered brightly. "For Orsea, for special occasions. You see, all the other things I made for him, everything I ever made…" She stopped. Burned in the sack of Civitas Eremiae, or else looted by the Mezentines, rejected as inferior, amateur work, and dumped. He thought of a piece of tapestry he'd seen in Orsea's palace before it was destroyed; he had no idea whether she'd made it, or some other noblewoman with time to fill. It hardly mattered; ten to one, her work was no better and no worse. The difference between her and me, Vaatzes thought, is that she's not a particularly good artisan. I don't suppose they'd let her work in Mezentia.

"It must take hours to do something like that," he said.

She looked past him. "Yes," she said.

"Let me guess." (He didn't want to be cruel, but it was necessary.) "Hunting scenes."

She actually laughed. "Well, of course. Falconry on the left, deer-hunting on the right. I've been trying really hard to make the huntsman look like Orsea, but I don't know; all the men in my embroideries always end up looking exactly the same. Sort of square-faced, with straight mouths. And my horses are always walking forward, with their front near leg raised."

He nodded. "You could take up music instead."

"Certainly not." She gave him a mock scowl. "Stringed instruments chafe the fingers, and no gentlewoman would ever play something she had to blow down. Which just leaves the triangle, and-"

"Quite." He looked up. "Here we are," he said. "Twenty-Ninth Street. The square's just under that archway there."

She nodded. "Thank you for showing me the way," she said.

"I hope you find what you're looking for."

"Vermilion," she replied. "And some very pale green, for doing light-and-shade effects on grass and leaves."

"Best of luck, then." He stood aside to let her pass.

"I expect I'll see you at the palace," she said. "And yes, I'll write to my sister."

He shook his head. "Don't go to any trouble."

"I won't. But I write to her once a week anyway."

She walked on, and he lost sight of her behind the shoulders of her maids. Once she was out of sight, he leaned against the wall and breathed out, as though he'd just been doing something strenuous and delicate. There goes a very dangerous woman, he thought. She could be just what I need, or she could spoil everything. I'll have to think quite carefully about using her again.

Money. He straightened up. A few heads were turning (what's the matter? Never seen a Mezentine before? Probably they hadn't). Almost certainly, some of the people who'd passed them by on the way here would have recognized the exiled Eremian duchess, and of course he himself was unmistakable. Just by walking down the hill with her, he'd made a good start.

He started to walk west, parallel to the curtain wall. Obviously she's not stupid, he thought, or naive. Either she's got an agenda of her own-I don't know; making Valens jealous, maybe? — or else she simply doesn't care anymore. In either case, not an instrument of precision. A hammer, rather than a milling cutter or a fine drill-bit. The biggest headache, though, is still getting the timing right. It'd be so much easier if I had enough money.

A thought occurred to him, and he stopped in his tracks. The strange, weird, crazy man; him with all those funny names. What was it he'd said? I have certain resources, enough to provide for my needs, for a while. Well, he'd asked to be taken on as an apprentice, and in most places outside the Republic, it was traditional for an apprentice to pay a premium for his indentures.

He shook the thought away, as though it was a wisp of straw on his sleeve. Money or not, he didn't need freaks like that getting under his feet. For one thing, how could anyone possibly predict what someone like that would be likely to do at any given moment?

Embroidery, he thought; the women of the Mezentine Clothiers' Guild made the best tapestries in the world; all exactly the same, down to the last stitch. A lot of their work was hunting scenes, and it didn't matter at all that none of them had ever seen a deer or a boar, or a heron dragged down by a goshawk.

He smiled. Hunting made him think of Jarnac Ducas, who'd never had a chance to pay him for the fine set of boiled leather hunting armor he'd made. Of course that armor was now ashes, or spoils of war (much more valuable than the Duchess' cushions and samplers); but Jarnac had struck him as the sort of nobleman who took pride in paying all his bills promptly and without question. Where was Jarnac Ducas at the moment? Now he came to think of it, he hadn't seen his barrel chest or broad, annoying smile about the palace for what, days, weeks. The important question, of course, was whether he had any money. No, forget that. He was a nobleman; they always had money, their own or someone else's. They had the knack of finding it without even looking, like a tree's blind roots groping in the earth for water. With luck, though it wasn't of the essence, he'd run into Jarnac well before the city was packed up on carts and moved into the wilderness; in which case he'd be able to establish his foothold in the salt business, and everything would lead on neatly from that. Besides, he reflected, it would be appropriate to build Jarnac into the design at this stage; good engineering practice, economy of materials and moving parts.

He sighed. Time to get back to the palace for another of those interminable meals. Why they couldn't just eat their food and be done with it, he couldn't begin to guess. It wouldn't be so bad if the food was anything special, but it wasn't: nauseating quantities of roast meat, nearly always game of some description, garnished with heaps of boiled cabbage, turnips and carrots. They were going to have to do better than that if they were planning on seducing him from his purpose with decadence and rich living.

Jarnac Ducas, though. He smiled, though there was an element of self-reproach as well. So ideally suited for the purpose; he remembered a glimpse of him on the night when the Eremian capital was stormed, a huge man flailing down his enemies with a long-handled poleaxe, an enthralling display of skill, grace and brute strength. A good man to have on your side in a tight spot. Well, yes.

(Another thing, he asked himself as he climbed the steps to the palace yard gate; why so many courses? Soup first, then an entree: minced meat, main meat, cold meat, preserved meat in a paste on biscuits, fiddly dried raw meat in little thin strips, followed by the grand finale, seven different kinds of dead bird stuffed up inside each other in ascending order of size. There were times when he'd have traded all his rights and entitlements in the future for four slices of rye bread and a chunk of Mezentine white cheese.)

They were ringing a bell, which meant you had to go and change your clothes. Another thing they had in excess. He'd counted fifteen tailors' shops in the lower town that day, but nobody in the whole city knew how to make a kettle. He thought about the Vadani, instinctively comparing them with his own people and finding them wanting on pretty well every score. Their deaths would be no great loss. When their culture and society had been wiped out and forgotten, the world would be poorer by a few idiosyncratic methods of trapping and killing animals and a fairly commonplace recipe for applesauce. Of course, that didn't make it right.