Evil for Evil

9

The first thing he saw was smoke. It rose in the air like a feather stuck in the ground, a black plume fraying at the edges, a marker pointing down at the exact spot. Ziani had grown up with smoke, of course. In Mezentia, every morning at six sharp, fifteen thousand fires were laid in and lit in forges, furnaces, kilns, ovens, mills and factories in every street in the city; by half past six, the sky was a gray canopy and the alleys and yards stank of charcoal and ash. Every sill and step had its own soft blanket of black dust, every well and sewer had a gray skin, and everybody spat and sneezed black silt. The smell of smoke was something he'd missed without even realizing.

There had to be a river, of course. He saw it eventually, a thin green line dividing the mountains from the flat brown plain. A little further on, he could make out towers, which were probably no more than planked-in scaffolding, and the spoil heaps. He'd never seen a mine before in his life.

Before long, he began to see tree stumps; hundreds of them, thousands. A few wore sad garlands of coppice shoots, their leaves grimy with black dust. Others had died long ago, and were smothered in grotesque balls and shelves of bloated white fungus. Deprived of the shelter of the canopy of branches, the leaf mold that had once carpeted the floor of the lost forest had dried out into powdery dust, which the wind was diligently scouring away. Soon it would be down to bare rock, like a carpenter stripping off old varnish. Nothing much seemed able to take root in it, apart from a few wisps of yellow-white grass and the occasional sprawl of bramble.

"All this was cleared years ago." Carnufex, the man Valens had sent along to look after him, had obviously noticed him gawping at the tree stumps and figured out his train of thought. "I can't remember offhand exactly how much charcoal they get through every day, but it's a lot. Something of a problem, actually. We aren't marvelously well off for trees in this country at the best of times. In the old days, of course, they could supply all the charcoal we needed just from coppicing, but when Valens' father made us double our production, the only way we could keep up with our quotas was clear-felling. I think they're carting the stuff in from Framea now-which is also a problem, since it's only a few hours from the Eremian border, and if the Mezentines wanted to come and cause trouble…" He shrugged. "Not that it matters much anymore," he added.

"All I was thinking," Ziani lied, "was where we're going to get our timber from; for building the frames, and the firewood for burning out the props."

"Ah." Carnufex nodded. "All taken care of. It'll be along in a day or so; twelve cartloads, and there's more if you need it. The only problem was getting hold of a dozen carts. Anything with wheels on is a problem right now, for obvious reasons."

Considering what he was and who'd sent him, Carnufex could have been a lot worse. He was a short, stocky man, about fifty-five years old, with a great beak of a nose, a soft and cultured voice, small bright eyes and snow-white hair. He was never tired, hungry, frightened or angry (come to think of it, during their three-day journey Ziani had never once noticed him fall out of line for a piss, or take a drink of water from his canteen). Most of the time he hung back with the escort cavalrymen (he had been a soldier himself before he was transferred to the mines) and kept up an unremitting torrent of the filthiest jokes Ziani had ever heard, including some he couldn't begin to understand, even with an engineer's instinct for intricate mechanisms. He was, of course, there to watch Ziani as much as to help him, but that was understandable enough.

"We won't need that much in the way of lumber," Ziani replied. "How about the steel I asked for? I know that's likely to be difficult."

Carnufex smiled. "Not likely. By a strange coincidence, my wife's kid brother's the superintendent of the steel depot at Colla Silvestris. At least," he added innocently, "he is now; used to be a clerk in the procurement office, but he got a surprise promotion about two hours after I got this commission. A buffoon, but he does as he's told. With any luck, your steel should be there waiting for you when we arrive."

Ziani was impressed. When he'd talked to the previous superintendent, he'd been told there wasn't that much steel in the whole duchy. "That's handy," he said.

"I always knew young Phormio'd come in useful for something eventually," Carnufex replied. "I could never begin to imagine what it might be, but I had the feeling. Oh, while I think of it," he added, "you were asking about skilled carpenters. I've found you some."

"That's wonderful," Ziani said. "How did you manage that?"

The smile again. "I had a dozen seconded from the Office of Works, thanks to the new chief clerk there. My brother-in-law, actually."

Ziani nodded. "Your wife has a large family."

"Bloody enormous."

An hour later, Ziani could see gray patches standing out against the sandy brown of the mountain; also he could hear faint tapping noises, like an army of thrushes knocking snail-shells against stones. The closer to the mountain they came, the louder the noise grew, and before long he could see them, hundreds of tiny moving dots swarming up and down the side of the slope. "How many men work here?" he asked.

"Between eight and nine hundred, usually," Carnufex replied. "Just over two hundred underground, the rest breaking up, cleaning and smelting ore, maintenance, supply, that sort of thing. In fact, we're short-handed, we could do with half as many again. It's a pity nobody pointed out to Valens' father that if you want to double output, it might be a good idea to take on a few extra hands. But there," he added, with a mildly stoical shrug, "we have a curious idea in this country that anything can be achieved provided you shout loud enough at the man in charge."

"I see," Ziani said. "Does it work?"

"Oddly enough, yes."

The tapping was getting steadily louder. It seemed to be coming from every direction (the sound, Ziani rationalized, was echoing off the mountainside) and he wondered if it was like that all the time. "What are those big timber frames?" he asked, pointing.

"They're the drop-hammers," Carnufex replied. "You see where the streams come down off the mountain? They're banked up into races, and they turn those big waterwheels you can just see there, behind those sheds. The wheel trips a cam which lifts and drops a bloody great beam with an iron shoe on the end, which smashes the ore up into bits; then it gets carried down onto the flat-you can see the big heaps of the stuff there, look-and it gets broken up even finer by a lot of men with big hammers. Then it's got to be washed, of course, so it's carted back up the hillside and shoveled into the strakes-look, do you see the lines of conduits coming down the slope? They're open-topped, made of planks, and they carry the millstreams downhill to turn the wheels and eventually join up with the river. You can see they're dammed up at various stages; the dams are called strakes, and as the ore's washed down by the stream, each one filters out different grades of rubbish, so that when it reaches the bottom it's mostly clean enough to go in the furnace. That's the trouble with this seam; there's plenty of it, but it's full of all kinds of shit that's got to be cleaned out. Biggest part of the operation, in fact, preparing the ore." He grinned. "I expect this all looks a bit primitive to you, after what you're used to."

Ziani shrugged. "We don't do anything like this where I come from," he said. "The materials I used to use came in rounds or square bars or flat sections, we didn't mess about breaking up rocks. This could be the state of the art for all I know."

Carnufex looked mildly disappointed. "Ah well," he said. "I was hoping you could give us a pointer or two about improving the way we go about things before you show us how to pull it all down."

Closer still, and the tapping was starting to get on Ziani's nerves. He was accustomed to noise, of course; but this was different from the thumps and clangs of the ordnance factory, where the trip-hammers pecked incessantly and the strikers hammered hot iron into swages. It was sharper, more brittle, a constant shrill chipping, and he doubted whether it was something he could get used to and stop hearing after a while. The men swinging hammers stopped work to stare at the newcomers; the leather sleeves and leggings they wore to protect them from flying splinters of rock were caked with dust, their hair was gray with it and their eyes peered out from matt white masks, so that they looked like actors playing demons in a miracle play. Eventually someone yelled something and they went back to work, bashing on the chunks of rock as if they hated them. No, Ziani thought, this isn't like the factory at all. There's no grace here, no patient striving with tolerances in the quiet war against error. This is a violent place.

"The actual workings are over there a bit," Carnufex was saying, as calm and matter-of-fact as if he was showing someone round his garden. "I don't suppose you'll need to bother with anything above ground. I mean, no point sabotaging it; anybody who wanted to could replace the whole lot from scratch in a month or so."

Ziani nodded. He didn't want to open his mouth here if he could help it.

"You can see where the shaft runs underground by the line of wheels," Carnufex went on. He was pointing at a row of wooden towers, each one directly under a branch of the millrace, which gushed in a carefully directed jet to turn the blades of a tall overshot waterwheel. Each wheel's spindle turned a toothed pulley which drew a chain up out of what looked like a well. Piles of ore were heaped up beside each well-head; men were loading it into wheelbarrows and carrying it away to be smashed. As well as the clacking of the wheel and the ticking of the chain, he could hear a wheezing noise, like an overweight giant climbing stairs. "Bellows," Carnufex explained, "inside the tower, they're powered by cams run off the wheel-shaft. They suck the bad air out of the galleries and blow clean air back in."

Bellows, Ziani thought; they'll come in handy. He nodded, careful not to exhibit undue interest or enthusiasm. "Where's the actual entrance?" he asked.

"This way. We might as well dismount and walk from here," Carnufex added. "It can be a bit tricksy underfoot, what with all this rubble and stuff."

The entrance was just a hole in the hillside, five feet or so high and wide, with heavy oak trunks for pillars and lintel. There were steps down, and a lantern on either side, flickering in the draft that Ziani guessed came from the constant pumping of the bellows. Their light showed him two plank-lined walls vanishing into a dark hole. He let Carnufex lead the way.

For what seemed like a very long time, the shaft ran straight and gently downhill. Carnufex had taken down one of the lanterns, but all Ziani could see by it was his own feet and the back of Carnufex's head, his white hair positively glowing in the pale yellow light. To his surprise it was cool and airy, delightfully quiet after the hammering outside. Even the smell-wet timber and something sweet he couldn't identify-was mildly pleasant. But his neck and back ached from walking in a low crouch; he felt like a spring under tension.

"This is the main gallery." Carnufex's voice boomed as it echoed back at him. "Spurs run off it to the faces, where the ore's dug out. We're always having to open up new ones, of course."

"What's holding the roof up?" Ziani asked, trying not to sound more than mildly curious.

"Props," Carnufex answered crisply. "Thousands and thousands of them; it's a real problem getting enough straight, uniform-thickness timber. Without them, of course, this whole lot'd be round your ears in a flash."

"Right." Ziani knew that already. "So if it's the props that keep it from collapsing, how do you dig the tunnels to start off with; before you have a chance to put the props in, I mean?"

"Slowly," Carnufex replied, "and very, very carefully. Ah," he added, stopping short, so that Ziani nearly trod on his heels. "We've reached the first spur. Do you want to go and have a look?"

"No thanks," Ziani replied quickly. "I think I've seen enough to be going on with, thanks."

"Really?" Carnufex sounded disappointed, like a musician who hasn't been asked for an encore. "Suit yourself. Do you want to go back now?"

Yes, Ziani thought, very much. "Not yet," he said. "I need to take measurements first."

With Carnufex holding the end of the tape for him, he measured the height and width of the shaft at ten-inch intervals, starting at the point where the spur joined the gallery and going back about a dozen feet toward the entrance. As Carnufex called them out, he jotted down each set of figures with a nail on a wax tablet, unable to see what he was writing in the vague light from the lantern. "All done," he said, when they'd taken the last measurement. "Now can we go back, please?"

As they headed back the way they'd come, Ziani asked Carnufex how long it'd take to dig out the gallery, if it collapsed.

"Not sure," Carnufex replied. "Let's see: ten feet a day, double that for two shifts, so let's say a month. No big deal, if we can get timber for the props."

Ziani nodded, not that the other man could see him do it. "And the ventilation shafts?"

"Trickier. They're lined with brick, you see."

"That's all right," Ziani replied. "With luck I should be able to brace them the same way I'm planning on doing the gallery." Of course, he reflected, that would mean they'd have to be measured too; someone would have to go down each shaft, presumably lowered down in the ore bucket. All in all, not a job he wanted to do himself; but it would have to be done properly, by someone who knew how to take an accurate measurement. Fortunately, though, he knew just the man for the job.

"Certainly." His face hadn't changed at all.

Ziani looked at him, but the dead-fish eyes simply looked back, expressionless except for the permanent, faintly hungry look that made Ziani think uncomfortably of a patient predator.

"You sure?" he asked. "It won't be much fun hanging down there in a bucket."

Gace Daurenja, his absurdly thin, ludicrously tall, appallingly flat-faced self-appointed apprentice and general assistant, shrugged. "I've done worse things in my time," he said. "And confined spaces don't bother me, if that's what you were thinking. I was a chimney-sweep for a time, and a chargehand in a furnace. And this won't be the first time I've worked in a mine, either."

Ziani tried not to frown. He believed him; ever since he'd turned up in Ziani's room with the marvelous winch he'd made to his order, he was prepared to believe anything the thin man told him, though he wasn't quite sure why. Possibly, he'd thought, it was because it was such a huge leap of faith to believe that this extraordinary creature could exist at all. If you could accept that, anything else was easy in comparison.

"Fine," Ziani said. He reached out and pulled a sheet of paper across the table. Immediately, Daurenja's attention was focused on it, to the exclusion of everything else. "Here's the general idea; it's the same for the vent shafts as well as the gallery."

Daurenja nodded slowly. His expression showed that the diagram was the most wonderful thing he'd ever seen in his entire life.

"Steel girders," Ziani said, trying not to let Daurenja's manner bother him. "Really, it's just a steel cage. We build it where we want the cave-in to stop, if you follow me-"

"Perfectly."

Ziani ignored the interruption. "So we stuff the shaft with trash wood, charcoal, old rags soaked in lamp oil, set light to it-those bellows are a stroke of luck, we can get a nice burn going with a bit of air-and that'll burn out the timber props but leave the steel cage intact; it'll look like we've caved in the whole lot, of course, and then when the war's over, they'll only have to dig out as far as the cages; beyond that, the props should be unharmed. Quite simple, really, assuming it works."

"Brilliant."

Ziani ignored that, too. "The problems I can foresee are with what the heat might do to the cage. If it gets too hot we could warp the girders or even melt them, so we'll have to be careful not to get carried away. I'm hoping, though, that as soon as the props are charred halfway or three parts through they'll give way, and the falling rock'll snuff out the fire, or at the very least act as a heat-sink. The cage in the gallery ought to be straightforward enough, but I haven't made up my mind yet how best to anchor them in the vent shafts. They'll have a huge weight bearing directly on them from overhead, even if they're only ten feet or so down the shafts. We'll have to drive pins into the brickwork to take the weight; that'll be a fun job, swinging a sledge in such a tight place."

"I'll have a go if you like," Daurenja said immediately. "Back when I was working in the slate quarries-"

"They're miners," Ziani said, "let them do it. I'll want you with me in the fabrication shop, setting rivets. Not the most exciting job in the world, but it'll have to be done right. Then more riveting, of course, once we've got the bloody things into position."

"Not a problem," Daurenja said, as full of confidence as a lion roaring. "I did a great deal of riveting when I was working in the foundry, and-"

When Ziani had eventually managed to get rid of him, he put on his coat, drew a scarf over his face to filter out the worst of the dust, and went for a walk. He had pictured this place in his mind as long ago as his conversation with Miel Ducas, back in the Butter Pass, but back then it had been nothing but a geometrical design of wheels and levers. It was the ferocity of it that bothered him, the sheer brutality of falling iron-shod beams pounding rock into rubble. He wondered; he'd never seen a flour mill, even. He could feel the cracking and grinding and splintering in his bones, every time the cams tripped and the beams fell. It reminded him too much of things he'd only considered so far in the abstract, rather than in practice. Even the slaughter of the Mezentines, shot down in their thousands by the scorpion-bolts he'd made, hadn't affected him as much as this place did. There was a ruthlessness about it that he was reluctant to come to terms with. On the other hand, he was very close to resolving a number of issues that had been bothering him for some time, areas he'd left blank in the design, knowing they were possible but lacking the precise knowledge of detailed procedure and method. Not a comfortable place, but enlightening.

Daurenja, he thought, and he could feel his skin crawl. With any luck, the rope might break while he was dangling down a vent shaft in a bucket, and that'd be one fewer set of calculations to bother about. He tasted dust in his mouth, in spite of the scarf, and spat.

He walked toward the mine entrance, pausing to look up at one of the wheel towers. Crude, compared to a Mezentine waterwheel. There were no bearings to ease the turning of the spindle, and a significant amount of the water slopped past or over the blades, wasted. But he was here to sabotage the mines, not improve them. He shrugged. Fine by him.

A miner passed him, struggling with a wheelbarrow loaded with too much ore. As he went by he must've caught a glimpse of Ziani's face; he hesitated, the barrow wobbled and ran off line, making him stop. Ziani made an effort not to grin. He was getting used to being stared at, the only dark-skinned Mezentine in the duchy. It usually saved him the bother of having to explain who he was; everybody knew that already.

"Hang on a second," he called after the miner. "Can I ask you something?"

The man let go of the barrow handles and straightened up. "You're him, right?" he said. "The Mezentine."

Something else he was getting used to. Curious, to be known only for a quality he was no longer authorized to have, the thing that still defined him but had been taken away. "That's me," he said. "Ziani Vaatzes. Who're you?" he added.

The miner frowned, as if dubious about answering. "Corvus Vasa," he said. "I'm not anybody," he added quickly.

Ziani smiled. "It's all right," he said. "I just wanted to ask something, if you're not too busy."

Vasa shrugged. "Go ahead."

Ziani sat on the edge of the barrow. "I was talking to Superintendent Carnufex," he said, stressing the name and rank only very slightly, "and he was saying a man can dig ten feet of tunnel a day, average. Is that right?"

"Dig and prop, yes. I mean, usually there's at least four of you to a face, two digging and two propping, and four blokes'll usually do twenty foot a shift, two shifts a day, forty foot. So we say ten foot a man a day, as a rule of thumb, like. That's in earth," he added, "a bit less in clay. Plus, of course, you've got another two blokes coming up behind you to load the spoil, and another bloke to carry it. Teams of seven's the rule."

Ziani nodded. "Fine," he said. "What if you're cutting through rock?"

Vasa grinned sourly. "We don't," he said, "not if we can help it. You hit rock, best thing you can do is go back and work round it. Plus, you give the surveyor a right bollocking afterward."

"All right," Ziani said, "but supposing there's no way round and you've just got to cut through. That happens sometimes, doesn't it?"

Vasa nodded. "Sometimes," he said. "And it's a bastard. Then it's a man on the drill and another man to strike for him, cutting slots to fit wedges in. Two or three foot a day, depending on what sort of rock it is."

Aiani clicked his tongue. "What about granite?"

"Wouldn't know," Vasa replied, "never had to find out, luckily. I heard tell once that you can shift hard rock by lighting a bloody great big fire, get it really hot, then chuck water on it to split it." He grinned. "Sounds fine when you say it, but I wouldn't like doing it myself."

"I bet." Ziani smiled. "No granite in these parts, then."

"Never come across any. What d'you want to know about that stuff for, anyhow?"

"Oh, just another job I've got to do, sooner or later. Thanks, you've been a great help."

Vasa hesitated for a moment, then said, "They're saying you're here to block up the mine, because of the war. Is that right?"

"Afraid so. Means you'll be out of a job for a while, but think about it. If the Mezentines got hold of the mine intact they'd be wanting men to work it for them, and I don't suppose they'd be planning on paying any wages."

He could see the point sinking in, like water soaking away into peat. Then Vasa shrugged. "Let's hope the war's over soon, then," he said. "It's not a bucket of fun, this job, but it pays good money. I'd rather be here than on wall-building, like my brother-in-law. That's bloody hard work, and the money's a joke."

Ziani dipped his head in acknowledgment. "Vasa, did you say your name was?"

"Corvus Vasa. And there's my brother Bous, he works down on the faces, if ever you're looking for men for this other job of yours."

"I might well be, later on," Ziani said. "So if your brother works on the faces, he must know a thing or two about cutting rock."

"Him? Yeah, I should think so. I mean, that stuff's not hard like granite, but you don't just scoop it out with a spoon."

"Thanks," Ziani said, smiling. "I'll bear you both in mind."

"No problem." Vasa picked up his wheelbarrow, nodded over his shoulder and went on his way.

(And why not? Ziani thought. I will be needing skilled miners, when the time comes. Assuming I can figure out the last details… He shook his head, like a wet dog drying itself.)

Two days, and he was so sick of the place he'd have given anything just to walk away. Simply staying was like trying to hold his breath, an intolerable pressure inside him. Two days did nothing to acclimatize him to the noise and the dust; if anything, their effect was cumulative, so that he noticed them more, not less.

Unfortunately, the job wasn't going well. The steel turned up exactly on time, as Carnufex had guaranteed, but not the anvils, the tools or the ten Eremian blacksmiths he'd been promised faithfully before he left Civitas Vadanis. Even Carnufex had no luck trying to track them down, and without them, nothing could be done. On the evening of the second day, Carnufex told him the adjutant would be arriving tomorrow and maybe he'd be able to get it sorted out; he seemed uncharacteristically vague and tentative, which Ziani reckoned was a very bad sign.

There'd been some progress, however; mostly due, it had to be said, to Gace Daurenja. He'd taken measurements in nine of the twelve ventilation shafts, hanging out of the winch bucket with a lantern gripped in his teeth, with seventy feet of sheer drop waiting to catch him if he happened to slip. Ziani could hardly bear to think about it, but Daurenja didn't seem bothered in the least, while the plans he produced (working on them at night after an eighteen-hour day in the bucket) were masterpieces of clear, elegant draftsmanship, and annotated in the most beautiful lettering Ziani had ever seen (when he asked about that, Daurenja attributed it to the time he'd spent copying manuscripts for a society bookseller). The only thing he seemed bothered about was how long the job was taking him, and Ziani had to tell him to stop apologizing for being so slow.

He'd drawn up the plans for the cages himself, taking his time for want of anything else to do. Carnufex had let him use his office as a drawing room; he could still hear the noise, and the dust managed to get in somehow, in spite of shutters on the windows and curtains on the doors, but at least it was tolerable, and the slow, familiar work helped take his mind off the misery of it all. If he tried really hard, he could almost fool himself into thinking that he was back in the city at the ordnance factory, and that the hammering was the slow, constant heartbeat of the trip-hammers, and the dust was foundry soot, and the men who came when he shouted were his own kind, not barbarians.

On the third day he decided he'd had enough. The adjutant had arrived and spent a thoroughly unpleasant evening being quietly shouted at by Carnufex, but there was still no clue as to the whereabouts of the anvils or the tools, let alone the blacksmiths. That, as far as Ziani was concerned, wasn't good enough. He called Daurenja and gave him a letter.

"I want you to ride back to the city," he said, "and give this to Duke Valens personally. Wait for a reply."

Daurenja nodded sharply, a picture of grim determination. "Right away," he said. "Leave it to me." He was out of the office before Ziani had a chance to tell him where to find a horse or collect his conduct letters, which he'd have to produce before he'd be allowed past the sentries at the palace gate. Presumably he didn't feel the need, or thought that that'd be cheating; Ziani pictured him scaling the palace wall with a grappling hook and crawling down a chimney into the Duke's bedroom. Wouldn't put it past him, at that.

He'd finished the last of the plans, and cramp made going outside an unpleasant necessity. This time he walked up to the sluices where the ore was washed. He wasn't particularly interested in that stage of the operation, but he'd already looked at everything else. The foreman seemed happy enough to explain the procedures to him.

"That other bloke was up here yesterday, asking," the foreman added, after a long and rather confusing account of how the crushed ore was washed through the strakes. "But I don't think he was taking much of it in. Kept interrupting and asking questions; didn't make much sense to me."

"The other bloke?" Ziani asked.

"The long, thin bloke. You know, him who's been measuring the vents."

"Oh," Ziani said, "him. What did he want to know?"

The foreman shook his head. "Not sure. I was telling him how we get all the shit out, calamine and pyrites and sulfur. But I think he must've lost the thread, because he kept asking what we did with the stuff we took out; and I told him, it's just washed away, it's garbage, we don't want it. He got a bit excited about that, like I was doing something wrong; then he said thank you for your time, all stiff and uptight, and went storming off in a right old state." The foreman shrugged, expressing a broad but reluctant tolerance of lunatics. "I told him, if the stuff's any good to him he's welcome to it, if he can figure out a way of collecting it, but I think he thought I was trying to be funny."

Ziani scowled. "Calamine," he said.

"And pyrites, sulfur, red lead, all that shit. I suppose there's people who can find a use for anything."

"I'll ask him when he gets back," Ziani replied. "But that won't be for at least a week."

Wrong. Daurenja came back two days later, in a thunderstorm, riding on the box of a large, broad-wheeled cart. There were four other carts behind him, carrying crates covered with tarpaulins, anvils sticking out from under heavy waxed covers, and half a dozen wet, bemused-looking men who proved to be the first installment of the promised blacksmiths.

"They didn't want to let me in to see the Duke," Daurenja said, standing bare-headed in the yard with the rain running down his spiked hair like millraces and puddling around his feet. "They said I needed a pass or a certificate or something. But I got through all right. I'm afraid I'm rather used to getting my own way."

Ziani pulled his collar round his ears. He was having to shout to make himself heard above the splashing. "How did you manage that?" he said.

Daurenja frowned. "To be honest, I lost my temper a little; and one of the guards shoved me-at least, he was just about to, but I beat him to it. There was a bit of a scuffle, and that brought the duty officer out, and I said I had an urgent message for the Duke, from you. The adjutant had the common sense to take me straight to the Duke. He was just sitting down to dinner, but he agreed to see me right away. I gave him the letter, and I could see he was absolutely livid. He sent for the Chancellor and gave him quite a talking-to, with me standing right next to him able to hear every word. The poor man went bright red in the face, and then a footman or something of the sort took me to one of the guest rooms. Everything was ready by dawn the next day, all signed for and loaded on the carts. We were on the road by mid-morning, and well, here we are."

Ziani frowned. "And he was all right, was he? About you hitting one of the guards?"

"He didn't mention it," Daurenja said, and Ziani couldn't tell whether he was lying or telling the truth. "There's some sort of diplomatic thing going on, important foreign guests. I think the Duke's planning to get married or something. Anyhow, as soon as he realized I was there on your behalf, he dropped everything and saw to it that we got our supplies straightaway. That's a good sign, isn't it?"

Ziani shrugged. "Business before pleasure," he replied, "though from what I've seen of Valens, I don't suppose state receptions are his idea of fun. Maybe he was just glad of an excuse to get away from all the socializing. Look, can we get in out of this bloody rain, please?"

The storms faded away as quickly as they'd come; in the morning it was bright and dry, perfect conditions for open-air iron-working. As well as the things Ziani had asked for in his list, the carts had brought a genuine Mezentine-made reciprocating saw, complete with a drive belt and spare pulleys; Ziani had told the Duke in passing how helpful such a thing would be for cutting the iron bar-stock to length, but he'd never imagined he'd ever see one again. He had no idea where Valens or his agents had contrived to get it from, but that didn't matter. It was like meeting an old friend in the middle of the desert, and he'd had it carried over to one of the wheel towers and connected up to the spindle while the rest of the carts were still being unloaded.

"You're in love," Carnufex said, as Ziani put in the drive and watched the flywheel spin. Ziani shook his head.

"This is better than love," he said. "This is home."

Carnufex laughed. "I can't figure you out," he said. "Ever since I've known you, all you've done is witter on about how wonderful everything Mezentine is, and how much better they do things there. If I'd been shafted by my country as badly as you have, I'd snarl like a wolf every time somebody mentioned the place. I certainly wouldn't keep telling everybody how splendid it all is. Or is it just the people in charge you don't like?"

Ziani straightened up. The power feed was running perfectly. "Would you really?" he said. "Hate your country, I mean, if you had to leave it?"

"Of course not," Carnufex said. "But if they tried to put me to death for something I didn't do-"

"Oh, I did it." Ziani smiled.

"But it was stupid. You made some kind of clockwork doll for your kid."

"That's right."

Carnufex thought for a moment. "Fine," he said. "Apparently, you seem to think that making kids toys ought to be a capital offense. I don't quite see how you can believe that, but never mind. If you thought it was wrong, really, really bad, why the hell did you do it?"

Ziani looked at him as though he thought the answer might be hidden somewhere in his face. "That," he said, "is a very good question. Because I thought I could get away with it, I suppose. Why does anybody ever do something wicked?"

"You're strange," Carnufex said.

"Not in the least," Ziani replied. "It's no different from robbing people in the street. You know it's wrong. It's against the law, if you get caught, you'll be punished. You know it's wrong; you wouldn't like it if someone did it to you. But people still do it, because they need money, because they're just lazy and greedy. In my case, I suppose it must have been arrogance."

"You suppose. You don't know."

Ziani furrowed his brow. "No, actually, I don't, now you come to mention it. At least, I haven't thought about it very much since. Maybe I ought to, I don't know."

Carnufex looked as though he wanted to end the conversation and walk away before he was moved to say something undiplomatic, but after a moment's indecision he took a step closer. "Maybe you should," he said. "It might help you figure out where your loyalties lie, right now."

"Oh, no question about that," Ziani said. "And in case you're having doubts, you might care to consider what I did for the Eremians. If you could've seen what the scorpions I made did to the Mezentines, I don't think you'd be worrying about whose side I'm on." He shook his head. "You can love someone and want to hurt them as much as possible," he said, "that's perfectly normal behavior."

"Normal," Carnufex repeated. "All right, but that's not what we were talking about. You were saying you did this thing, making the clockwork doll, that you knew was wicked and bad, but you can't remember offhand why you did it. That's…" He shrugged, as if to say there weren't any words for what that was.

"You're right," Ziani said, "it's strange. I'll have to think about that. Meanwhile, perhaps we ought to be getting some work done. Have you seen Daurenja this morning?"

"Daurenja." Carnufex scowled. "I meant to have a word with you about him. He's been annoying my foremen."

"Annoying?"

"Wasting their time. Getting under their feet. Asking them all sorts of bloody stupid questions and then insulting them when they say they don't know the answer. Look, I know he reports directly to you, but can't you talk to him? If he carries on like that, someone's going to lose their temper and damage him; presumably he's useful to you, so it'd be as well if you spoke to him about it."

"He's…" Ziani shrugged. "Fine, yes, I'll deal with it. Now, I want the long steel sections fetched over here so we can start cutting, and I want the anvils carried over to the small ore furnace, we can use it as a forge without any major modifications. Can you get the ore shed cleared out? I want to set up the small portable forges there for riveting."

Carnufex had the grace to know when he was beaten. He nodded submissively as Ziani reeled off his list of jobs to be done, and withdrew in good order, leaving his opponent in possession of the field. Nevertheless, it wasn't a victory as far as Ziani was concerned; he'd been forced into a lie, which he resented, especially since it was essentially self-deception.

On the other hand, the mechanical saw made up for a lot. He watched it gliding through six-inch square section bar, smoke curling up out of the cut as one of the men dribbled oil into it, a drop at a time. The sheer joy of seeing something done properly, after so long among the savages…

"Is that what I think it is?" Daurenja, peering over his shoulder; he wanted to shudder and pull away, as though a spider had run across his face. "Mezentine?"

"I never realized they exported them," Ziani replied, and there was a hint of doubt in his voice. Surely it was wrong to sell something like this to the barbarians, in case they tried to copy it for themselves. A right-thinking man, a patriot, might feel betrayed. "Apparently they do. Well, it's the basic model."

"It'll do," Daurenja said, with a degree of relish verging on hunger. Stupid, Ziani thought, he's making me feel jealous. "This ought to save us two days' work, easily."

"Not far off that." Ziani looked away. Somehow, Daurenja had spoiled the moment. "I guess Valens wants this job done quickly. I'll write and thank him tonight, when I've got a moment."

"Good idea. While you're at it, you could ask if he could send us a trip-hammer."

The next stage, punching the rivet-holes, was long, tedious and difficult. Each newly cut section had to be heated red in the forge and held over the hardy-hole on the back of the anvil while one of the six blacksmiths hammered a half-inch punch through it. If the hole was an eighth of an inch out of true, the section wouldn't line up with the others and would therefore be useless, and there wasn't exactly a wealth of spare material left over to make replacements from. The work went painfully slowly, even after both Ziani and Daurenja each took an anvil and joined in.

Even so; it was better to be working again. Ziani was shocked by the sense of release he felt as he rested the punch on the mark and swung his hammer. He was at a loss to explain it, but it refused to be denied. It made him think of the frantic pace of work in the weeks before the assault on Civitas Eremiae; how, for a short while, he'd managed to give himself the slip as he plunged into the endless, sprawling, choking detail of building the scorpions. He thought about them, too. If he'd been classified as an artist, like a painter or a sculptor, they would have been acclaimed as his finest creation, the masterpiece he'd achieved at the height of his powers. That would be wrong, of course. Judged objectively, as though by a panel of his fellow engineers, the best thing he'd ever done had been the mechanical toy he'd made for his daughter, a long time ago in a place he was forbidden to go back to.

(What had become of it, he wondered; had it been completely destroyed, smashed up and melted down, the metal once cool buried or sunk to the bottom of the sea; or did it still exist somewhere, locked away in a warehouse, or the cellars under the Guildhall? He could picture it still in his mind's eye; every detail, every brazed joint and polished keyway, every departure from Specification. He grinned; when they came to inspect it, they hadn't found all his modifications. Some of his best, variations too subtle and delicate for the naked eye, or even gauges and calipers, hadn't been mentioned in the list of charges read out at his trial. There were tiny but significant alterations to the pitch of the threads that fed the worm-drive. On the inside of the crank-case, he'd replaced a flush-set rivet with a setscrew. The teeth of the middle cog in the main gear train were beveled on top rather than plain. If the mechanism still existed somewhere, it bristled with unpurged abominations, which only he knew about and which they'd been too careless to notice. It was a slight victory, but an important one.)

The punching took a day. When it was finally finished (Ziani had insisted on working into the night; that hadn't made him popular), all he wanted to do was crawl away to his lodgings and go to sleep. He'd walked half the distance when he realized that Daurenja was still with him, talking at him, like a long, thin, yapping dog.

"It'd mean cutting the slot with a chisel," Daurenja was saying, "because you couldn't get in there with a milling cutter, not even a long-series end-mill, but if you went at it nice and slow, and finished it up afterward with a four-square file… After all, the dimensions wouldn't be critical, it's just got to guide the slider into the mortice…"

Ziani blinked, as if he'd just woken up. "Fine," he said. "You do it that way."

"You sound like you think there'd be a problem."

"What? No, really. I think it'd work. In fact, I'm certain of it."

"Excellent." Daurenja was beaming at him. Even though his back was to him, Ziani could feel the glare from his smile on the back of his neck. "Which really only leaves the question of how to make the receiver head. And what I was thinking was, how about making it in two parts? Dovetailed together, then brazed or even soft-soldered, it's not a load-bearing component…"

Ziani sighed, and stopped in his tracks. "Would it be all right if we talked about this tomorrow?" he said. "Only it's been a long day, I can't really think straight."

"Oh." Disappointment; the yapping dog finding out it wasn't being taken for a walk after all. "Of course, I understand. But if you're at a loose end and you felt like turning it over in your mind, I'm sure you could figure out a much better way of doing it."

"I'll see what I can do. Meanwhile-"

"Yes, right. Thanks, and see you tomorrow. We're making a start on assembling the frames on site, are we? Or are we going to do a trial run first, just to make sure everything fits before we lug the whole lot underground?"

Ziani hadn't thought of that, and it was a valid point. It'd be a nightmare if they dragged the components down the tunnels only to find that they wouldn't fit together. "Well of course," he snapped. "I'm not stupid, you know."

"Sorry. I didn't mean-"

"That's all right." Ziani drew on his last scratchings of patience and stamina. "Yes, we'll do a dry run up here first thing, and if all goes well we can shift the bits and pieces down the mine say around mid-morning. See to it that everybody's there on time, will you?"

"Of course." Ziani was struck by the total absence of fatigue in Daurenja's voice. They'd both done more than a full day's work, but Daurenja sounded as fresh and insufferably bouncy as ever. "Well, if you don't need me for anything else tonight, I'll turn in. I can get a couple of hours' work done on my designs." Short pause. "It's very good of you to agree to take a look at them. I really appreciate that."

"No problem," Ziani yawned. He had no recollection whatsoever of agreeing to anything, but presumably he'd made some kind of grunting noise while Daurenja had been yapping at him and he hadn't been listening. In any event, too late now to go back on his word. Sliders, he thought, and hadn't there been something about a two-piece receiver head? He thought for a moment, but he couldn't begin to imagine what Daurenja's pet project could possibly be. "See you tomorrow."

"Later today, actually," Daurenja chirped. "It's past midnight already. Time flies, doesn't it?"

No, Ziani thought, and went to bed.

Needless to say, he was by this point far too tired to sleep. Instead, he lay on his back with his hands behind his head, his eyes shut, contemplating a design of his own. He'd reached the point now when it was there every time he closed his eyes, like the afterburn of looking directly at the sun. Too weary to think constructively, he contented himself with tracing the main lines, ignoring the details: the beginning, parts already made, fitted and in operation, beginning with his escape from the Guildhall, his infiltration of the Eremian court, the making of the scorpions, the betrayal and sack of Civitas Eremiae, the dual use he'd made of Duchess Veatriz. In his mind's eye, those parts of the design were dull gray, the remaining mechanisms in that section that had already been built but which weren't yet in service standing out in black or red. He considered them, as he'd done so many times before, and conceded that they were satisfactory. Next he contemplated the middle: not much gray here, plenty of black and red, and a few hazy clusters of dotted lines here and there where he knew a sub-rnechanism was needed but where he hadn't yet attended to the details of their design. As always, he picked up one or two slight errors, minor infringements of tolerance, parts that had moved or distorted slightly under load. There was Miel Ducas, for example; also the salt-trader's widow, Duke Valens, possibly the Mezentines. Fortunately the divergences were slight and he could take up the play easily by tightening the jibs.

As for the final section: thinking about it for too long was uncomfortable, because it was so hard to see past the tangles of dotted lines to the firm, strong black and red beyond. In particular, there was the huge gap just before the end. Having talked to the miners, he knew that the expedient he'd been relying on to plug that gap wasn't going to be up to the job; but as yet he hadn't been able to think of anything to take its place. There was something, he knew; he remembered hearing something, or reading it, a very long time ago, but he'd taken no notice at the time. Now, for some reason, whenever he contemplated the deficiency, his thoughts had a strange tendency to turn to Daurenja, as though he could possibly have something to do with it. But that was unlikely. When he'd outlined the final part of the movement, he hadn't even known that Daurenja existed.

Thinking about him made his head ache. The trouble was, he was infuriatingly useful; competent, more than competent, at anything he was asked to do. The more Ziani used him, however, the less comfortable he felt. What was it that Carnufex had been complaining about? Hanging round while people were working, asking strange and irritating questions. Well, that sounded plausible enough. Something about calamine, or pyrites, wasn't it? What the hell would any rational man want with garbage like that?

I could get rid of him, he thought, and then I wouldn't find myself relying on him anymore, and that'd be a good thing in itself. He felt the tug of that idea, but fought it. Appalling enough that he'd reached the point where he could comfortably think in disgraceful euphemisms: get rid of or send to his death. The simple truth was, he didn't like Daurenja, a man who apparently worshipped him as some kind of god of engineering, and who was working like a slave day and night to help him. Was that the difference, he wondered; because he'd liked Miel Ducas and Duke Orsea, and Duchess Veatriz and Cantacusene the blacksmith's wife; Duke Valens had started teaching him how to fence; come to that, he didn't even mind Carnufex the mine superintendent. All of them he'd taken to, as human beings; all of them he'd used, slotting them into the mechanism where they could do a job or two. Daurenja rubbed him up the wrong way, but he wasn't useful, not yet, to anything like the same extent. It'd be wrong to make him a sacrificial component; it'd be a waste of material, and murder.

Maybe, he thought, I shouldn't be doing this.

He sat up, suddenly wide awake. Before, whenever that thought had come to call, he'd summoned up the faces of his wife and daughter, like setting the dogs on a trespasser. Now, he could only see her hair, the curl as it touched her shoulder, the faint redness of its shine under lamplight. Her face had turned away into shadow, as though she couldn't bear to look at the thing he was making on her behalf, the abomination…

On her behalf.

His chest felt tight, and there was cold sweat on his forehead and neck. She hadn't asked him to build this machine; not this one.

Something Carnufex had said. The design faded from his mind like a reflection in water shattered into broken rings by a stone. Something he'd said in passing, and I told him I'd have to think about it; but he was getting on my nerves, pressing on them like an arrowhead broken off and healed over, and I made the thought go away. He made me tell a lie, to him and myself.

He scowled into the darkness, following the red and black lines of the thought; and then, as suddenly as the flash of inspiration that comes to a genius once in his life, the connection was made. The doll, the mechanical toy, the modifications he'd made that weren't on the list of charges at his trial.

It was like putting something in his mouth and finding it was too hot to swallow; just having the connection inside his head was an unbearable burning, a torment of dotted lines. Somebody else, he felt (the thought burned itself in, like heating the tang of a file to make it fit into a handle), there was somebody else involved. He fought, resisting the sudden understanding like a woman trying to stop herself giving birth. This changes everything.

No; it was a conscious decision. Changes nothing. Not as long as it's just intuition. Besides, it's probably just some stupid stuff-guilt, frustration, a long, hard day, the sort of horrible self-tormenting shit that keeps you awake in the early hours of the morning. And even if there's something there and it's true, it still doesn't change anything. Just one more bit to be fixed, at the very end of the job.

That didn't help him sleep. He'd never felt more wide awake in his whole life.

It didn't bloody well fit. It was hopeless. It was never going to fit. The holes were all in the wrong places, and drilling them out two whole sizes wouldn't be enough to cure it. Neither would any amount of bashing with hammers, bending, drawing out, pissing around…

"All right," he heard someone say, "try it now."

He put his weight on the bar, knowing it wouldn't line up enough for the rivet to go through. It was all hopelessly screwed up, and would have to be done again…

"There. Perfect. Piece of cake."

He looked down, stunned. The rivet was in the hole. He relaxed, gradually letting the bar go. It flexed a small amount, then stopped. It was in fitted.

In which case, the whole ridiculous contraption fitted together, and they'd won, however unlikely that seemed. He could feel his face drawing into a huge, stupid grin.

"Good," he said, very low-key and matter-of-fact, though his heart was bursting with relief and joy. "Now get that last rivet set and we can all go home."