Evil for Evil

6

Ziani had, of course, lied to the Duke. He'd written out the list of things and people he needed a long time ago; just after he'd first met the salt-dealer's widow, in fact. The four closely written sides of charter paper curled into a roll and hidden in the sleeve of the gown hanging up behind his bedroom door was in fact the third revision of that particular document. Accordingly, he was in no particular hurry as he left the Duke's tower. He walked slowly down the stairs into the east cloister, and sat down on a bench opposite the arch that led to the mews. After a minute or so, he stood up again and retraced his steps as far as the rather splendid marble memorial to Valentius IV, Valens' great-grandfather. Needless to say, the seventeenth duke was commemorated with a fine equestrian statue, about two-thirds lifesize, showing him in the act of leveling his spear against an enormous boar. Ziani knelt down beside the boar's flank and coughed politely.

"Breathing," he said.

Slowly, a man uncoiled himself from the small nook between the boar and the horse's legs.

"I could hear you from right over there," Ziani explained. "Worse than my uncle Ziepe's snoring."

The man stood up straight and scowled at him. "Right," he said. "I'll know better next time."

Ziani shook his head. "There won't be a next time," he said.

"Because if I see you skulking about after me again, I'll assume you're an assassin hired by the Republic to kill me. I'll feel really bad when I find out you were actually one of the Duke's men, but that won't help you very much. Or I may never find out," he added with a mild grin. "I don't suppose the Duke'll be in any hurry to admit he set one of his men to spy on a guest under his roof."

The man took a step back, but the marble flank of Valentius' horse was blocking his retreat. "Just doing my job," he said.

"Of course." Ziani nodded. "You carry on. Just stay in plain sight, where I can see you. Understood?"

"Understood." The man looked at him, then turned his head away. "No problem," he said.

"Splendid." Ziani smiled. "Now," he went on, "I'm just going to sit here peacefully for a while. I promise I won't wander off or do anything treasonable. And since I'll be staying put for a bit, it seems to me you might well want to take this opportunity to get something to eat or take a leak. Come back in half an hour and I'll know it's you, not a Mezentine spy."

The man hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked quickly away. Ziani watched him leave the cloister by the west door, then marched briskly to the arch that led to the mews. Instead of carrying on as far as the mews green, however, he turned right down the tiny snicket that led to the steps that came out on top of the inner keep wall. His luck was in: no sentry, so he was able to slip into the guardhouse and use its staircase to come out in the far corner of the middle keep yard, next to the back door of the kennels. For a man with a generally poor sense of direction, he told himself, he'd got the geography of the place pretty well fixed in his mind.

From the middle keep to the guest wing, where his room was, piece of cake. He ran up the last staircase two steps at a time, wondering how long it would take his shadow to figure out where he'd gone and resume his miserable task. He was, therefore, more than a little disconcerted when he opened his bedroom door and found someone sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace.

It wasn't his shadow, however. Instead, it was a thin man, with a flat face and a slightly pointed head, like an onion.

"You again," Ziani said.

The thin man smiled. "Yes indeed," he said.

"How the hell did you get in here?"

The thin man's smile didn't fade at all. "I told the porter I had an appointment to see you, and it was secret government business. He didn't believe me to begin with," the man added with a frown, "but when I showed him this, he changed his tune pretty quickly."

This was a plain wooden box, slightly larger than a man's head. "Oh," Ziani said. "You made it, then."

"Of course. And I knew you'd want to see it right away; hence my rather unorthodox approach to getting an appointment with you."

Ziani smiled. "It's a good approach," he said. "I use it myself." He sat down on the bed, breathed in slowly and out again. "All right," he said, "let's see it."

The thin man rose and put the box down beside him, rather in the manner of a midwife introducing a mother to her newborn child. "The box is lemonwood," he said, "with brass hinges and a six-lever lock."

Ziani knew that tone of voice. "All made by you, of course."

"I'd finished the main job and I had some time on my hands," the thin man replied, wearing his modesty as a knight wears full plate armor. "Did I mention that cabinet-making-"

"Yes." Ziani held out his hand for the key. He had to admit, it was a beautiful piece of work in itself; stoned and buffed to a deep gloss, and decorated with neatly filed curlicues. He opened the box, trying to remember what it was he'd set the thin man to make for him.

"A small portable winch," the thin man said, right on cue. "To be suspended from a hook in a rafter, capable of lifting heavy sections of material, operated by the pressure of two fingers on the reciprocating crank here."

Ziani reached into the box and lifted it out. For a moment, he was confused; stunned, even. He'd spent his life making machines, designing them to do the jobs they were meant for as efficiently as possible. He understood function as well as a human being can understand anything. Beauty, however, tended to unsettle him. It was something he could recognize; he could even create it, if he had to. But he'd never understood it, maybe because he'd never been quite sure how it worked, and he'd never been able to bring himself to trust it, except once.

The machine he took out of the box was beautiful. That was an absolute fact, not a matter of opinion or taste. The struts that held together the top and bottom plates of the frame had been turned to the most graceful contours imaginable. Each component was immaculately finished and decorated with restrained, elegant file-carving or shallow-relief engraving. The whole thing had been fire-colored a deep sea blue, from which a few twists of perfectly chaste gold inlay shone like watch-fires in the dark. Almost afraid to touch it, Ziani rested a finger on the crank and pressed, until he heard the smooth, soft, crisp click of the sear engaging the ratchet.

"You made this?" he said.

"Yes."

He closed his eyes and opened them again; it was still there. "Does it work?"

"Yes."

He didn't know what to do with it. The heads of the screws and pins, he noticed, were engraved with floral designs, alternating roses and cardoons, each pin-hole and slot surrounded by a border of acanthus-and-scroll work. He didn't want to let go of it, not until he'd examined every component, figured out how it had been made and what it did, but somehow touching it made his flesh crawl. "You made this," he repeated.

"Most certainly," he heard the thin man's voice say. "With respect, it's not the sort of thing I could simply have bought in the market; not even in Mezentia. And you specified the work yourself, so it can't be something I bought somewhere else a long time ago. I also took the precaution of having a notary watch me file the ratchet teeth; I have a duly signed and sworn deposition to that effect here, which of course you are most welcome to have authenticated."

He couldn't resist it; he had to lift it up to the light, so he could see the detail of the spindle bushes. "All right," he said. "So where did you find a lathe in this godforsaken place?"

"I didn't. So I made one."

"You made one. And the milling?"

"No milling. All hand work."

"All-" Ziani had to think how to breathe for a moment. "What, the flats on the spindles and everything? The dividing of the teeth on the main gear?"

"Well…" The thin man sounded as though he was making a shameful confession. "I had to build a jig for that; a simple pair of centers, with a handle. But the flat work was just done by eye, checked against a square. I hadn't got a square, so I-"

"Made one." It was as though he'd turned a corner in a busy street in broad daylight and met a unicorn, or a basilisk or a chimera, some mythical animal that quite definitely didn't exist. He could just about believe that work like this-hand work, for crying out loud-was theoretically possible. But that this strange, bizarre clown could have made it…

"I don't know what you want from me, then," he said. "I couldn't do anything like this."

"I know." The thin man's voice cut him like a jagged edge. "But," he went on, his voice reverting to its usual tone, "when all is said and done, it's just drilling and filing, primitive stuff. The Perpetual Republic knows better ways of doing things that make hand work irrelevant; better techniques, secrets." He made the word sound obscene. "That's what you can teach me; and in return, if my poor services…" He paused, obviously waiting for some expected reply. Ziani wasn't in the mood.

"All right," he said; and as soon as he'd said it, he felt the little spurt of anger that comes with knowing you've walked into an obvious trap or fallen for the oldest trick in the book. But the machine in his hands was perfect.

"Thank you," the thin man said. "I promise you, you won't regret it. Anything I can do for you, anything at all."

"Fine," Ziani snapped. Talking to him was like stroking the fine hairs on the legs of a spider. "As it happens, I can use someone like you. I still can't really see what you expect to get out of it, but if you really want a job, I can give you one." He hesitated; the thin man either wasn't listening, or else he wasn't interested, to the extent that what he was saying was glancing off him, like arrows off fluted armor. "Obviously we need to discuss money-"

"With respect." The thin man cut him off. "As I think I may have mentioned at our first meeting, I have my own resources, and my position is tolerably comfortable. What I want…" He'd raised his voice, and immediately regretted it. "If and when you have the time to consider it," he continued smoothly, "I'd be most grateful for any advice you may care to give me about a small project of my own. However," he added quickly, "there is absolutely no hurry in that regard, it can wait for as long as necessary, until it's entirely convenient."

"Really?" Ziani pulled a face. "You may have a pretty long wait, in that case, because the job the Duke's given me is going to take up all my time; yours too, if you're serious about wanting to work for me. If you've got a project of your own and the money to develop it with, you'd be far better off just getting on with it yourself. Still, it's up to you. Don't say I didn't warn you."

If that was supposed to get rid of the thin man, it had failed. He was still there, tense and eager as a dog watching its master, so that Ziani felt an overpowering urge to throw a stick for him to fetch. He made an effort and resolved not to worry about him anymore. If he wanted to work for nothing, that was his problem.

"Your first assignment," Ziani said briskly, as he stood up and crossed to the door, where his coat hung from the coathook. He felt in the sleeve and pulled out a roll of paper. "This is a list of everything I think we'll need to recruit and train fifty exiled Eremian craftsmen to do work to an acceptable standard. I want you to read it through, let me know if you think there's anything I've missed out, then copy it out neatly and give it to the Duke's secretary after dinner tonight." He paused. "Where do you live?"

"I have rooms in the ropewalk," the thin man replied instantly. "A workshop; I sleep and eat there as well. I can be ready to move in less than an hour, if-"

"No, that's fine, I just need to know where to find you."

For some reason, the thin man frowned. "The best way is to leave a message for me with the innkeeper at the Patient Virtue. I have an arrangement with him," he added awkwardly. "Any message you leave there will reach me within minutes."

"All right." Ziani shrugged. "Meet me here in the morning, two hours after dawn."

"Certainly. I can get here earlier if you wish."

Ziani couldn't be bothered to reply to that.

The attack came during the salad course, and it took Valens completely by surprise. Thinking about it later, he could only assume it was because he was still preoccupied with what Vaatzes had said to him earlier. That didn't make it any better.

"Oh for crying out loud," he complained hopelessly. "We've been into all this already."

"With respect." There was no respect at all in Chancellor Carausius' face; fear, yes, because all the high officers of state were afraid of him, with good reason. "We haven't actually discussed the matter properly, as you well know. Not," he added with feeling, "for want of trying. But you either change the subject or lose your temper; your prerogative, it goes without saying, but no substitute for a rational discussion." Carausius paused and wiped butter off his chin. "If you have a good, reasoned argument against it, naturally I'll be delighted to hear it."

Valens sighed. "Well," he said, "for one thing, this is hardly the time. We're at war with the Mezentines, we're about to evacuate the city and go lumbering round the countryside in wagons, we're going to collapse all the silver mines, so we won't have any money at all for the foreseeable future. Be reasonable, will you? This really isn't the best moment to be thinking about weddings."

Carausius shook his head slowly, and the napkin tucked into his collar billowed a little as he moved. "On the contrary," he said. "At a time of national emergency such as this, what could possibly be more important than the succession? I mean it," he added, with a faint quaver in his voice that caught Valens' attention. "Face the facts. As you say, we're at war. You have no heir. If you die, if you're killed in the fighting or-I don't know, if you're swept away while crossing a river with the wagons, or if you fall off your horse when you're out hunting and break your stubborn neck, nobody knows who's to be the next duke. You don't need to be told why this is an unacceptable state of affairs."

Valens looked at him. It wasn't like Carausius to be brave unless he was in severe danger of being found out about something, and for once he had every right to a clear conscience. The only explanation, therefore, was that he was sincere. "All right," he said gently, "maybe you've got a point. But you know the reason as well as I do. There's no suitable candidates. I can't just go marrying some girl with a nice smile. We've got to find someone who's got something we need. Right now, that's either money or high-quality heavy infantry. If you can give me three names right now, I promise I'll listen."

A split second of silence, and Valens knew he'd walked into a snare.

"Not three," Carausius said; he'd taken the risk and won, and he was enjoying the moment. "Just one, I'm afraid. But, given the urgency…"

Valens put down his knife and folded his arms. "I'm listening," he said.

Carausius composed himself. "Her name," he said, then he smiled. It wasn't something he did very often, sensibly enough. "Actually," he said, "I can't pronounce her name. However, I understand that it translates as White Falcon Soaring."

Just as well Valens had put his knife down, or he'd have stabbed himself in the knee. "You're joking," he said. "No, really, you can't be serious."

"I think it's a charming name."

"You know perfectly well…" Valens breathed out slowly. He was determined he wouldn't play the straight man to Garausius, even if he had walked into a painfully obvious trap. "A name like that's obviously Cure Hardy," he said. "Presumably this female of yours is something to do with the delegation we're meeting. And no, not even if it means we win the war and conquer Mezentia and ascend bodily to heaven on the backs of eagles. Not Cure Hardy."

Carausius took a moment to butter a scone. "In your own words," he said, "money or soldiers. The Cure Hardy have both."

"I said heavy infantry," Valens pointed out. It was a bit like trying to sink a warship with a slingshot, but he was determined to fight to the last. "And the Cure Hardy don't even use money."

"They have gold and silver, which amounts to the same thing. Also, I don't agree that we necessarily need heavy infantry. Light cavalry, which is the Cure Hardy's traditional strength-"

"We've got the best cavalry in the world."

"Acknowledged," Carausius said through his scone. "Heavy cavalry, and not nearly enough. The Cure Hardy are faster, more mobile, better suited for informal and irregular campaigning; most of all," he added, "they're one thing our men most certainly aren't. They're expendable."

Valens sighed. What he really wanted to do was run away. "For pity's sake," he said peevishly. "They don't even live in proper houses. Do you really see me with a wife who insists on camping out in a tent in the pear orchard?"

Another smile. Carausius was indulging himself. "The princess-her name, I believe, begins with an A-has spent the last four years being educated in Tannasep; I believe she's been studying music, astronomy, poetry, needlework and constitutional and civil law. Presumably while she was there, she slept in a bed and learned how to use a knife and spoon. I gather she's also interested in-"

"I couldn't care less what the bloody woman does in her spare time," Valens snapped. "I don't want to get married, and I most definitely don't want to get married to a savage, thank you all the same. Maybe when the war's over, or at least once we're settled somewhere…"

Carausius teased his napkin out of his collar and folded it precisely. "Logically," he said, "given our immediate plans, a wife who's used to living under canvas has to be a most suitable choice."

Valens closed his eyes. When Carausius started making jokes, it was time to assert his authority. "Thank you for raising the issue with me," he said, "and I shall give it careful thought. Meanwhile, if that's the only reason why these Cure Hardy are coming here, maybe it'd be better if you saw them instead of me. I'm sure you can handle the diplomatic stuff, and I have rather a lot of work to do."

"That would be unfortunate," Carausius said smugly. "Perhaps I forgot to mention it, but among the gifts they're bringing with them are four hundred mounted archers. Not a loan," he added firmly. "To keep, for our very own. Just for meeting you. I imagine that if they're fobbed off with a substitute, they may think better of their generosity."

Valens opened his eyes wide. "They're serious, then," he said.

"I believe so." Carausius had had his moment of revenge. His voice was back to normal, soft, businesslike and anxious to please. "My understanding is that they're very keen indeed to make an alliance with a settled nation. Their chieftain is something of a visionary. He believes that the nomadic life is all very well, but it's time his people bettered themselves. In the long term, I imagine he wants to cross the desert and settle on this side; the tragic fate of the Eremians means that there's now empty land for the taking. Naturally he needs an ally, but his choices are clearly limited. Not the Mezentines, for obvious reasons; similarly, not the Eremians. That means the Cure Doce-but they're too far away from the land he's got his eye on-or us. If you care to consider what that could mean to us: a powerful, friendly neighbor with practically unlimited manpower…"

Valens nodded. "All right," he said. "And thank you, you've done well. But all the same; marrying one…"

"It's their principal means of securing alliances," Garausius said firmly. "Without a marriage, as far as they're concerned it's not a proper treaty; once it's done, it means we can rely on them absolutely. They take it very seriously. It's not like the political alliances we're used to. I'm not sure they even have politics where they come from, or at least not in any sense we'd understand." He leaned forward a little, lowered his voice. "They aren't complete barbarians," he went on, "they understand that strategic and dynastic marriages aren't necessarily the perfect union of heart and mind. If you hate the girl that much, you won't have to see her more than absolutely necessary, she'll understand that. If that's the reason-"

Valens frowned. "I hope you know me better than that," he said. "I understand how things are. I'm just a bit concerned about ending up with a wife who dresses in animal bones and feathers. Which," he added quickly, before Carausius could say anything, "I'd be perfectly prepared to do if I was sure it'd help the war or put our economy straight. But I'm not; so either come up with some better arguments or drop the whole thing."

Carausius looked at him. He knows me too well, Valens reflected. "There's something else," Carausius said.

"Yes."

"I see." Carausius frowned. "Can I ask what it is?"

"No." As soon as he said the word, he knew he'd lost. "But I will meet these savages of yours, and yes, I'll be civil to them, so don't nag." He shrugged, rather more floridly than usual. "Four hundred cavalry, just for being hospitable. I think I can handle that. Tell me, did the offer come from them, or did you have to haggle?"

"Their idea," Carausius said. "I don't think the Cure Hardy understand bargaining in quite the same way as we do. I don't know if it's true, but someone told me once that their word for trade literally means 'to steal by purchase.' I gather they're a fascinating people, once you get to know them."

"I'm sure," Valens said. "Now, by rights I ought to threaten you with awful retribution if you ever ambush me with something like that again. But I don't need to do that, do I?"

"Certainly not."

"Splendid. I'm a strong supporter of the old tradition that every dog's allowed one bite. I hope it was worth it."

For the rest of the meal they talked about barrel-staves, canvas, salt and rope. Carausius said he was sure they'd be able to get what they needed for the evacuation from the merchants; he'd sounded out the likeliest suppliers, in very general terms so as not to raise suspicions, and the consensus was that it was a buyers' market at the moment; supply wouldn't be a problem, and an acceptable price could easily be agreed as soon as they were in a position to discuss firm orders. "Which means," Carausius went on, "they don't yet know where to lay their hands on what we want, in the quantities we want it in, but they're happy to go away and find out. Luckily, none of the supplies we're after has ever been a Mezentine monopoly, so we should be all right." He paused, just for a moment, then went on, "Have you decided on a date yet? Or are we still working on the basis of six to nine weeks?"

Valens pulled a face. "If you'd asked me that question this time yesterday, I'd have given you a definite answer," he said. "Six weeks, I'd have said, and no messing. Unfortunately, it's not going' to be quite as straightforward as I thought, so you'll have to leave it with me."

"Longer than nine weeks?"

"No." The second time in one evening that he'd been backed into saying that. "Work on that assumption, if you like. You won't be far out."

There was music after dinner. Harp, rebec, flute, oboe, pipes, guitar and a singer. It went without saying that they'd been practicing day and night for weeks to be ready for their big chance, playing to the Duke and his court. Everywhere he went, in everything he did, he saw people doing their best, because it was him. He left before the music started.

There was a meeting of Necessary Evil that night. The defense committee had taken to gathering at strange hours-eleven at night or four in the morning-and nobody seemed to know why, though most people assumed it was something to do with their legendary and indefinable flair. The agenda had arrived on his desk shortly after noon; he'd read it through a dozen times, but all his political skill and experience couldn't tease a single shred of significance out of it.

1. Minutes of previous meeting

2. Chairman's report

3. Any other business

Psellus raised his eyebrows, rolled up the paper and slotted it neatly back into the thin brass tube it had come in. All committee correspondence came in message tubes these days, sealed at both ends, never the same seal twice. If he didn't know better, he could well believe that someone on the committee had a sense of humor.

The same messenger had brought him the latest dispatches from Eremia. Two rolls, one brass and one silver; the brass tube was for the official report, the silver one was the truth. He opened the silver one first, which said something about him. He was pretty sure he was the only man on Necessary Evil who read dispatches in that order.

Not good, apparently. There had been successes: villages burned, six; isolated farms and crofts burned, twenty-seven; civilians confirmed killed, a hundred and nine; material seized, various, to include thirteen mail shirts, nine bascinets, three sallets with bevor, five sallets without bevor, nine leg harnesses (nine; an odd number. Had they managed to kill a one-legged man, maybe?), four spears, nine swords, two bows, thirty-two arrows, eight knives, fourteen lengths of wood capable of being used as bludgeons…

(Psellus smiled, as an image drifted into his mind of soldiers sent into the forest to cut poles in order to bulk out the captured-material schedule. He wouldn't put it past them, assuming anybody on the expeditionary staff had that much imagination.)

There had also been failures. Dead, forty-six; wounded and unfit for duty in the medium to long term, thirty-eight; horses killed, seven; horses lost, nineteen; wagons lost or damaged beyond repair, eight; issued equipment lost or damaged, see separate schedule. The most serious reverse was an ambush by insurgents at some place he hadn't heard of. While attempting to pursue a small body of insurgent cavalry apparently in retreat, Fifteenth Squadron had come under attack from insurgent archers concealed in a spinney. Casualties…

Psellus marked the place with his finger and looked back up the page. That explained where they'd got the thirty-two enemy arrows from. Whether pulling them out of the bodies of the dead counted as capturing, he wasn't sure.

Not that it mattered. There were plenty of men, both in and outside Necessary Evil, who stoutly maintained that every soldier lost was a mercenary who wouldn't need to be paid. Psellus felt there was a flaw in that line of reasoning; nevertheless, reports from the recruiting stations back in the old country assured him that they were still queuing up for a chance to sign on. What bothered him more was the double column of figures at the bottom of the page, the monthly payment and expenditure account. He glanced down at the total and winced.

The news in the brass tube was much better. The forces of the Republic had destroyed six major rebel strongholds, raided a further twenty-seven installations, and killed over a hundred rebel fighters, as well as recovering a substantial quantity of weapons. Losses remained within acceptable parameters, and the war was coming in under budget. In his monthly briefing, Field Marshal Megastreuthes stressed that-

He rolled up both versions and stuffed them back in their tubes. None of it really mattered, not even the ruinous cost. According to the figures, all the exporting Guilds had stepped up both production and sales to meet the demands of the war budget. Prices had necessarily been lowered to ensure that strategically important markets were retained in the face of local competition, but the losses thereby incurred were amply covered by the increased volume. He paused, and looked at the finance report. It had come, he noticed, in a brass tube.

It still didn't matter. The Perpetual Republic could keep on waging war on this scale forever. The key had been lowering prices. Demand in the export markets had been wavering for some time, simply because Mezentine goods had gradually come to cost more than the locals could afford. Gutting prices, however, had been seen as an unacceptable loss of face, a move that would give the buyers more leverage than was good for them and lead inevitably to lower standards, debased specifications, ruin, abomination and death. The war had been the excuse the Republic needed, and the increase in volume had fully justified Necessary Evil's hard-line stand on the issue. Politically, more production meant a slight shift in the balance of power between the leading Guilds. War work had given the Foundrymen a temporary edge over their rivals; now, the need for export sales meant that the Weavers and Drapers were clawing ahead, with the Potters and Cutlers coming up close behind. The Cutlers were still unaligned, though their traditional allegiance had always been to the Foundrymen; the Potters were making a show of resisting the Weavers' attempts to negotiate a rapprochement, but it was generally believed that they were simply holding out for a better deal, which would inevitably involve the fall of Dandola Phrantzes, chairman of the Joint Transport Executive…

The war, Psellus realized, was like a tree. Its branches grew and were lopped, but it drew its life from its roots, widespread, tangled and hidden. The plain fact was that what happened in Eremia didn't matter very much. Men died, buildings were burned, endless columns of wagons stirred up the dust as they carried thousands of tons of freight into the deserted mountains, but the real battle was being fought here, a close grapple in the dark between politicians, for whom victory and defeat had very little to do with the deaths of soldiers. That was something he could accept; ever since he was old enough to understand how things worked, he'd known that in Mezentia, nothing mattered except politics, and everything was political. The part he couldn't make out, however, was how he fitted into it; in particular, how he'd come to be co-opted into Necessary Evil in the first place. Until he got to the bottom of that, he was effectively blind, deaf and dumb.

He heard a footstep in the passage outside; somebody who didn't feel he had to knock or announce his presence. A colleague, in that case. He frowned. He wasn't in the mood for the society of his own kind.

It turned out to be as bad as he'd thought: Maris Boioannes himself, condescending to visit him. Such a display of solidarity had to mean complications, at the very least.

"There you are," Boioannes said, dropping easily into the other chair and steepling his fingers. He'd had his hair cut, Psellus noticed. "Have you got a moment?"

Fatuous question. On the desk between them, half a dozen messenger tubes, a few sheets of blank paper, the inkwell. "Always," Psellus replied with a mild smile. "What can I do for you?"

"It's nothing too serious." Boioannes was looking at the wall behind his head, and Psellus suddenly couldn't remember if there was anything on that wall: a picture, a chart, a map of the war. He very much hoped there wasn't anything. The fewer insights into his mind that he conceded to any of his colleagues, the better. "It's just something that's been itching away for a while now, and I was wondering if you could possibly shed some light."

"If I can."

"Splendid." Boioannes frowned slightly, concentrating his mind the way anybody else would sharpen a pen. "As you know, we only managed to take Civitas Eremiae because a traitor opened the gates for us." He paused and smiled bleakly. "Thinking about it, I really feel that traitor is far too small a word for Ziani Vaatzes. It's like calling a continent an island."

"He seems to be quite an interesting man," Psellus said.

"Putting it mildly." Boioannes moved his head slightly to one side, scratched the bridge of his nose lightly, and put his head back exactly where it had been. "First he betrays core military secrets to the enemy. Then he betrays the enemy to us." He shrugged, precisely and elegantly. "He causes the war, then ends it-well, not quite, but let's not let a few trivial details get in the way of symmetry. It's tempting to dismiss his motivations as irrelevant, but he's still at large-our best intelligence puts him at the court of Duke Valens, so he's still very much in the center of the action-and I find it irksome not being able to understand him." Boioannes bent forward very slightly from the waist, bringing his formidable head a few inches closer to Psellus. "When you were investigating him at Compliance, I imagine you found out pretty much everything there is to know about the man. I'd value your opinion."

A tiny gleam of light broke through in Psellus' mind, and he answered almost eagerly. "Yes, I conducted an investigation," he said, "and I believe I have most of the pertinent facts. As to whether I've got enough information to base a valid opinion on, I really couldn't say. I'm sure I must have missed something, because it doesn't really make any sense, but I don't know where to look for the missing clue, because I don't know what it is I'm looking for. Quite possibly I have the data but I haven't figured out its significance yet. On the other hand, I could be like a sailor trailing along an established trade-route, oblivious to the fact that just over the horizon there's an undiscovered country. I don't know." He raised his eyebrows. "That's not much help, is it?"

Boioannes pursed his lips. Most of his gestures seemed to constitute self-sharpening, in one form or another. "He's only a human being," he said, "not a paradox of algebra; you should be able to do the equations and solve him, if you try." He leaned back a little. He had the rare knack of looking comfortable on other people's furniture. "Let's start with the obvious. Why do you think he told us how to get into Civitas Eremiae?"

Psellus nodded. "There's the obvious motives," he said. "Remorse: he saw the horrific consequences of his betrayal of military secrets, and felt he had to make amends."

"Discounting that," Boioannes prompted.

"Hope," Psellus continued. "He hopes that, since he gave us Civitas Eremiae, we might be persuaded to pardon him and let him come home. Or, if he's a realist, he understands that we have his wife and daughter."

Boioannes shook his head. "Only a fool would carry out his side of the bargain before negotiating the terms. And he knows we're not savages. We don't take out our anger on innocent women and children."

"Indeed." Psellus twitched; nerves, probably. "It could be some subsequent development we don't know about. For instance, he may have fallen out very badly with the Eremians while he was there, and betrayed them to get his revenge."

"Possible." Boioannes dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Doesn't feel right, though. Oh, it could well be the right explanation, but in order to find it convincing, we'd have to presuppose that his mind had been affected: paranoia, psychotic tendencies. Does he seem to you to be that sort of man?"

"No," Psellus admitted. "But after what he's been through…"

"Let's assume it's not that. What else?"

That was as far as Psellus had got in his own speculations. "The other extreme," he said. "He's a desperate man, we can agree on that. We aren't the Eremians' only enemies. Bear in mind that he's now with the Vadani, and they were at war with Eremia for a long time before the Sirupati Truce. He realizes that the Eremians are likely to lose the war sooner or later, so he does a deal with the Vadani; he betrays the Eremians to us in return for asylum in Civitas Vadanis."

The Boioannes thoughtful smile; a rare commodity, flattering but dangerous. "I could believe that," he said, "were it not for the fact that Duke Valens made a last-minute attempt to relieve the siege, and in so doing effectively declared war on us. If your theory's correct, you'll have to make some fairly large assumptions about Valens' motives, too."

Psellus clicked his tongue. "And that, of course," he said, "is the other great mystery: why did Valens attack us, at the precise moment when he had the least to gain from so doing? I can't help thinking that where you have two great mysteries in the space of one transaction, logic suggests that they're probably linked. But, of course, I'm not our leading expert on Duke Valens."

"You're not." The Boioannes smile darkened a little. "I am. And there aren't two mysteries, there're three. Why did Orsea dismiss and imprison his chief adviser-the only competent man in his government-just when he needed him most?" He shook his head. "Two enigmas might be a coincidence. Three… But now it's getting unrealistic, isn't it? What on earth could connect Orsea, Valens and our erstwhile Foreman of Ordnance? At the risk of overburdening the equation, I think that counts as a fourth enigma." He sighed; it sounded almost like genuine frustration. "It's ridiculous," he said. "We have sixty-five thousand men in arms and complete materiel superiority. The motivations of three individuals should be totally irrelevant. But apparently they matter, so we have to do something about them."

Psellus nodded. He should have seen it coming; but if he had, what could he have done? "You want me to investigate?"

This time, Boioannes grinned from the heart. "Why not? It's not as though you've got anything else to do."

"Quite." Pause; the question had to be asked, and Boioannes would be expecting it. "In return, would you tell me something?"

"Perhaps."

"What am I doing on this committee?"

Boioannes' grin opened as if for laughter, but there was no sound, just a showing of teeth. "There are various reasons," he said. "First, we need your expertise, wisdom and lively intellect. Second, we needed someone who would do as he was told and not make trouble. Third, there was a vacancy and we already had as many intelligent men as we could accommodate; a committee needs men like you, just as music needs rests or mosaics need blank tiles. Would you like me to continue?"

"Yes. I'd like the real reason, please."

"Very well." Boioannes frowned. "In fact, it's quite complicated and not in the least profound. We wanted…" He smiled. "I wanted someone inert and pragmatic who would stay peacefully in his office until he was given something to do. Naturally, the Foundrymen on the committee wanted another Foundryman. The other Guilds, in particular the Joiners, were prepared to allow another Foundryman only on the understanding that he was-excuse me-a nonentity. Staurachus felt that taking you out of Compliance would create a vacancy that could usefully be filled by a Tailor or a Draper; since Compliance was likely to be taking the main force of the fallout from the Vaatzes scandal, he felt that the Foundrymen should reduce their representation there and pass the poisoned cup, so to speak, to their natural enemies. If you want my opinion, your name came up because half the obvious candidates for the vacancy were too stupid, and the other half were too intelligent. You were-again, excuse me-a name more or less chosen at random from a shortlist of available Foundrymen. Nobody outside the Guild or Compliance had ever heard of you, but the Foundrymen believed you'd be safe, sensible and properly timid. Finally, it was you who got us into this war. There were other reasons-scraps of reasons-but most of them have slipped my mind."

Psellus dipped his head gracefully. "Thank you," he said. "I'd been wondering."

"Understandably."

"It was kind of you to set my mind at rest. I can stop fretting about that and concentrate on this job you've given me."

"Excellent." Boioannes stood up. "As I understand it, you've already…" He frowned again. "Immersed yourself in Ziani Vaatzes, so you have the relevant data. His books, for example." The way in which he reached out and picked the book off the shelf told Psellus that he already knew exactly where to find it. "A sensible place to start. Why should a machine shop foreman go to all the trouble of making himself a book out of scrounged materials, and then fill it with low-grade, homemade love poetry?" He opened the book, stared at the pages as if they were an apple he'd bitten into and found a wormhole, shut it with a snap and put it back. "You may find this an interesting comparison," he went on, taking a familiar-looking brass tube from his sleeve. "This is a copy of a letter from Duke Valens to the wife of Duke Orsea, written two months before Orsea's ill-fated attack on the Republic. Fortuitously, it was sent by the hand of a merchant who does business with us, and who had the wit to make a copy before passing it on. There's no poetry in it, apart from a few quotations, but there are distinct parallels which you may find illuminating." He dropped the tube on the desk. It rolled, and came to rest against the inkwell. "Thank you for your time, Commissioner. I look forward to seeing what you come up with."

After he'd gone, Psellus realized that he was shaking slightly. This surprised him. He hoped it hadn't been visible enough for Boioannes to notice.

He got up, with a vague idea of going down to the buttery and getting something strong to drink, but once he was on his feet the idea ceased to appeal. He went back carefully over the interview, assessing it in the way a judge at a fencing match awards points to the contestants, and came to the surprising conclusion that it had either been a draw or else he'd come out of it with a very slight lead. True, Boioannes had beaten him up pretty conclusively, but he hadn't heard anything about his own shortcomings that he hadn't already known for some time. On the positive side, he'd finally been given something to do, which made a pleasant change, and he'd forced Boioannes to tell him an unplanned and largely unprepared lie. A lie, he'd learned long ago, is often the mirror image of the truth; by examining it carefully, you can reconstruct the fact that lie was designed to conceal. That was a step forward, but not necessarily one he'd been anxious to take…

(He sat down again. He'd seen a lion once, in a cage in a traveling circus. He'd watched it with a mixture of awe and compassion, as it roared and lashed its tail; absolute ruler of five paces.)

Because the step Boioannes had practically shoved him into taking led to a question that he had no way of answering, but which had quietly tormented him ever since he first read Vaatzes' dossier. Previously he'd assumed that the answer wasn't worth finding because Vaatzes' motivation, soul and very essence didn't really matter very much to the future well-being of the Republic. Now, however, it appeared that Maris Boioannes himself felt that it might have some deeper significance. In which case, he had no option. Until he'd made some kind of headway with the problem, he couldn't get anywhere; it was a locked gate he had to get through, or over.

So. (He tilted the small jug on his desk, just in case an invisible goodwill fairy had refilled it in the last ten minutes.)

Ziani Vaatzes was condemned for abomination because he'd made a clockwork toy for his daughter that contained forbidden mechanical innovations and modifications. Fair enough; but how on earth had he been found out in the first place?

Like a donkey turning a grindstone, he followed the familiar, weary circle. By its very nature, the abomination, the toy, was a private thing, not something liable even to be seen by strangers, let alone dismantled and examined with calipers. Neither the wife nor the daughter could have known about the transgression, since they didn't have the mechanical knowledge to recognize it. Surely Vaatzes hadn't talked about it to his fellow workers, or left notes and drawings lying about. Unlikely that he'd made himself conspicuous by stealing or scrounging materials liable to betray his illicit intentions; as shop foreman, he could requisition pretty much anything without exciting suspicion; besides, none of the materials used had been rare or unusual. An unexpected visitor, calling at the house late one evening and seeing components carelessly left lying about on the kitchen table; no, because the deviations from Specification wouldn't have been obvious out of context, and even if the visitor somehow knew they were meant for use in a clockwork toy, he'd have needed calipers to detect the irregularity. It was, in essence, the perfect crime.

The answer should, of course, have been right there in the dossier, in the investigators' report. But it wasn't. No account of the course of the investigation, because Vaatzes had immediately pleaded guilty.

Not that it mattered, because all he had to do was ask the men who'd brought the prosecution in the first place. Which was exactly what he'd done. He'd written to Sphrantzes, the prosecutor, and Manin, the investigating officer. No reply from either of them; he'd written again, and also to their immediate superiors, their departmental supervisors, their heads of department and the permanent secretaries of their division. He'd had plenty of replies from the upper echelons, all promising to look into the matter and get him his answer. Before giving up and resolving to forget about the whole thing, Psellus had even tried to find the two men and talk to them personally. He'd planned it all like an explorer seeking a lost city in the desert: he'd obtained floor plans of the east wing with Sphrantzes' and Manin's offices clearly marked in red, he'd contrived to get hold of copies of their work schedules so he'd be reasonably certain of finding them at home when he called. In the event, he found their offices empty; neighbors had told him in both cases that they'd been relocated to new offices in the north wing extension, but the corridor and staircase coordinates they gave him turned out not to have been built yet. None of that was particularly sinister. The geography of the Guildhall was a notoriously imprecise science, and every new arrival was treated to the ancient stories of men who nipped out of their offices for a drink of water, never to be seen again until their shriveled carcasses were found somewhere in the attics or the archive stacks. The likeliest explanation was that the internal mail service couldn't find them either, which was why none of Psellus' letters had ever been answered. Manin and Sphrantzes, he knew, were both very much alive and active. They wrote and delivered reports, addressed subcommittees, gave evidence at tribunals and courts corporate and mercantile. Psellus was sure he'd seen Sphrantzes not so very long ago, crossing the main quadrangle one afternoon. The truth was that he'd been glad of an excuse to let the matter lie.

Now, apparently, that excuse had been taken from him. In which case, since he was an officer of the War Commission and therefore a person of consequence and standing (he couldn't help grinning as he thought that), he might as well use his seniority and make sure he got an answer. He flipped up the lid of his inkwell, dipped the tip of his pen and wrote a memo. To: Maris Boioannes From: Lucao Psellus I need to speak to Investigator Manin of Internal Intelligence, and Prosecutor Sphrantzes of the judicial office. I've written to them myself, and to their superiors, but so far I have not received a reply. There's bound to be a rational explanation for this. However, it would be very helpful to me in carrying out the request you made of me today if I could meet both of these men as soon as conveniently possible. Do you think you could ask one of your people to see to it? I'm sorry to bother you with such a tiresome business, but I know how efficient your staff is.

He blotted the page and smiled. He was fairly sure his memo wasn't going to flush Manin and Sphrantzes out of their lairs, but the outcome, whatever it turned out to be, would almost certainly leave him better informed than he had been before; and if he had to have someone like Boioannes in his life, he might as well make use of him. If he'd got nothing else out of the war, it had taught him one thing. Spears and arrows and siege engines and field artillery are all very well in their way, but people are the best weapons.

He walked to the window and looked out. In the courtyard, the scale of the great bronze water-clock ordained that it was a quarter to seven; four hours to go before the meeting started. It was a well-kept secret, which he'd been let into only once he'd joined Necessary Evil, that the water-clock, on which all time throughout the Republic was ultimately based, was running slow. Tiny traces of limescale in the water were gradually furring up the outlet pipes-it was something to do with mining works in the Suivance Hills, which meant the river that supplied the aqueduct that brought the water that fed the conduit that filled the clock was beginning to cut into the limestone bedrock of the hills, hardening the water supply ever so slightly-which meant that the clock's outflow rate was down from nine gallons a day to eight-point-nine-nine-seven-something. Far too small to notice, of course (unless you were the sort of man who carried calipers in your pocket when you paid social calls on your friends); but the plain fact was that time throughout the Republic was gradually slowing down. Every hour was a tenth of a second longer this year than it had been last year; in ten years' time, given the exponential rate of the distortion, an hour would last an hour and five seconds. Eventually, on that basis, there would finally come an hour that would never end. Of course, the problem could be solved in a couple of minutes by a careful apprentice with a bow-drill and a fine bit, but that could only happen if the existence of the problem could be admitted. No chance whatsoever of that.

On his desk lay the messenger tube Boioannes had brought for him; something to do with Duke Valens, he remembered, and somebody else's wife. He picked it up with the tips of his index fingers, one at each end. People are the best weapons. He pushed in gently at one end, and the roll of paper slid out, like an animal flushed from cover.