Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

  Falier —

  The woman I’ve given this to reckons she can get it to you discreetly. Apparently, they’re good at it, years of practice. For your sake, I hope it’s true.

  In case she’s lying or overconfident: to whom it may concern. Be it known that I, Ziani Vaatzes, am writing to Falier Zenonis for the first time since my escape from the Guildhall. He has not been in touch with me since he visited me in prison, and he had nothing to do with my escape or subsequent defection. I’m writing to him because he’s my oldest friend in the world, and about the only person in Mezentia who might just read this, rather than throw it straight on the nearest fire. I have information that will prove of great value to the Republic, but what good is it if nobody’ll listen to me?

  There; I hope that’ll help, if they intercept this. If not, I’m very sorry for getting you into trouble. I don’t suppose you’ll be able to forgive me if that’s happened, but you’re the only one I could think of. If you’ve read this far, thanks, Falier.

  I’m a realist. I know I can’t buy my way back home, not after what’s happened. I know that even if what I’ve found out turns out to be as useful as I know it is, and the Republic’s saved huge quantities of money and lives, it won’t do me any good. But just because I’m here and I did what I did to stay alive, that doesn’t change everything about me. I still believe in the important things: the Republic, the Guild, all the really big stuff. Also, I’m hoping there’s still a chance that if I can do something for the Republic, it might make things easier for Ariessa and Moritsa. If there’s anything I can do, that way, it’s worth it, no matter what. And if that’s out of the question, Falier, maybe you could use it to do yourself a bit of good; you couldn’t let on you’d got it from me, of course, but I’m sure you can think of something. You always were a smart lad.

  Falier, I don’t know how much you know about diplomacy and foreign affairs and stuff, but it looks like there’s going to be a war soon between Eremia Montis (that’s where I am now) and the Republic. Naturally, the Republic will win. But the problem will be storming the capital city. City; it’s more like a gigantic castle right on top of a mountain, really hard to get to at the best of times. Trying to attack this place head on would cost millions of thalers and thousands of lives, and it’d take years; but I know a better way, quick, easy and cheap. Piece of cake. It’s like this…

  Falier read the rest of the letter slowly, trying to visualize what Ziani was talking about. He wasn’t very good at that sort of thing; he preferred it all down on paper, diagrams and charts and plans, with someone to talk him through them and explain what he couldn’t understand. The general principle was simple enough, though, and someone who knew about this sort of thing would be able to follow it. His instincts told him that Ziani’s system would work, considered as a piece of engineering; assuming, of course, that the whole thing wasn’t false — a trap, a mechanism designed to inflict harm at long range, a weapon. He was, of course, the only man in Mezentia who knew Ziani well enough to form an opinion about that.

  There was no fireplace in the office. To burn the letter, he’d have to go down the stairs (past Bosc, presumably) and walk into the west gallery, where the forges were. He’d have to go up close to one of the forge hearths — only authorized personnel allowed within ten feet — and lean across and drop it into the flames, with the smith and his hammermen watching. Or he could take it home with him (that’d mean either hiding it somewhere, or carrying it around in his pocket all the rest of the day) and burn it there. Or he could keep it.

  He looked down at the folded paper in his hands, just in case it had all been a hallucination; but it was still there.

  The woman; big and old and fat, her face was sort of pale pink. He knew enough to guess that she must’ve been a merchant, Eremian or Vadani. If she’d opened the letter and read it (no seal, of course, to tell if she had or not; that’d have been too much to hope for) — even if she was discreet, suppose she was caught and questioned. It’d all come out, and if he burned the letter it’d probably be worse, because he’d have disposed of Ziani’s pathetic attempt to protect him — pretty well worthless, of course, but better than nothing, perhaps. Or Bosc; had he read it? Could he read? Fucking Ziani, might as well have stuck a knife in his neck. Or maybe, just maybe, this wodge of paper was a magic carpet that could carry him to places he’d never even dreamed of reaching. That was the cruelest part; not the despair, but the hope.

  No door on his office. Cursing, he sat down and pulled off his left boot, trying to keep his movements slow and casual. In this place, people must be forever getting swarf and filings in their boots, having to take them off and put them on again. He slipped the letter into it and replaced it, lacing it up a little tighter than usual. If ever I see Ziani again, he promised himself, I’ll make him wish Compliance had caught up with him first; even if it’s power and wealth and glory, I’ll skin him alive.

  He stood up. He would have to spend the rest of the day walking round with the sharp corners of the letter digging into the sole of his foot, not daring to limp or wince. He felt like a dead man; heir to an incredible fortune, maybe, but too dead to enjoy it. Screw Ziani for trying to do the right thing. No surer recipe for a killer of men and sacker of cities than a subtle blend of altruism and stupidity.

  All day, he felt as if people were staring at him. Which of course they were, since he was the new boss, and he was stalking round the place as though his knee-joints had been soldered up.

  The first dozen ships docked at Lonazep early on a cold, gray morning, before the sea-frets had cleared. Nobody was expecting them; they were early, or the memo had got lost on someone’s desk. They slid into existence out of the wet mist and cast anchor. Only a few old-timers had seen anything like them before.

  For one thing, they weren’t built of wood, like the honest fishing boats and merchantmen of Lonazep. Instead, they looked to have been contrived out of long strips of thick yellow rope, twisted out of straw and stitched together. They shifted, stretched and sagged like living things with every movement of the water. It was hard to see how they stayed afloat at all.

  Furthermore, they were enormous. An ordinary trading coaster could have sailed under the prow of any one of them without fouling its mast-head. They were so tall that nobody on the quay could see beyond the chunky rope rails, and this gave the impression that there might not be anybody on board them at all; that they were ghost ships, or curious sea-monsters pretending to be ships in order to get close enough to attack.

  After an unusually long time, they started lowering boats, which were crammed dangerously full of men. They were all wearing round steel helmets painted black, with tall horsehair plumes that nodded and swayed, grossly exaggerating the movements of the heads inside them. The boats were twice the size of the Lonazep herring and tuna boats, not much shorter than the whalers, and substantially broader in the beam; they too were made of rope, but they were powered by oars rather than sails, and they moved across the water alarmingly fast, like spiders climbing a wall.

  A group of men bustled out of the customs house, trotting down the cob so as to get there before the first boat landed. In front was the harbormaster, followed by his inspectors and clerks, with four anxious-looking guards in no great hurry to keep up. As he scuttled, the harbormaster kept glancing down at a sheet of paper in his hand, as if he was on his way to an exam. He made it to the top of the steps with seconds to spare, as the first horsehair plume came up to meet him.

  The face under the helmet was the same brown color as the Mezentines’, but it was bearded, long and thin. The top of the harbormaster’s head came up to its chin.

  The harbormaster was apologizing (communications breakdown, wasn’t expecting you for another fortnight, please forgive the apparent lack of respect) but the man in the plumed helmet didn’t seem to be paying much attention. He was looking about him, at the square stone buildings and the beached ships, as if to say that this wasn’t up to the standard he’d come
to expect.

  “We’re the advance party,” he said, in good Mezentine. “We caught the morning breeze. The rest’ll be along later today.”

  The rest… The harbormaster’s face sagged, as though his jaw had just melted. The dozen rope ships all but filled the available space. “The rest,” he repeated. “Excuse me, how many would that —”

  “Fifty-two,” the plumed man replied. “That’s the first squadron. We staggered it, so you’d be able to cope. The remaining squadron will be arriving over the next six days.”

  The harbormaster’s clerk was counting on his fingers; sixty-four times six. Nobody else was bothered about the exact number.

  “I think there may have been a misunderstanding,” the harbormaster said. “All those ships — and your men, too. I mean, arrangements will have to be made…”

  The plumed man dipped his head very slightly. “You’d better go away and make them,” he said.

  Shortly after noon, when the rope boats had made their last crossing, and the town square was crammed to bursting with plumed men, the wagons started to arrive. The road was solid with them, the horses’ noses snuffling in the back of the cart in front, and none of them could turn until they got off the causeway through the marshes. It was impossible to imagine how the mess would ever be sorted out; the town stuffed with men, the road paved with carts, and the men’s food was in the carts, and the men were getting hungry. The harbormaster, who hadn’t known anything about it but whose fault it all apparently was, made an excuse and vanished into the customs house, where he proved impossible to find. Responsibility accordingly devolved on the clerk.

  The remaining fifty-two ships arrived in mid-afternoon.

  Their arrival prompted the leader of the plumed men to take charge. He sent the clerk scuttling away in fear of his life, then started shouting orders in a language the townspeople couldn’t understand. The effect was remarkable. Carts were picked up, ten men a side, lifted up and carried off the road, plundered of their loads and turned round to face the other way; human chains passed the jars of flour and barrels of salt pork and cheese back down the road into the town square, where men formed orderly queues. Meanwhile, the strangers chased away the Lonazep pilots and brought the fifty-two ships in themselves. There was room, just about. A line of boats roped together formed floating gangplanks linking each ship to the shore, and thousands more plumed men swarmed along them; officers and NCOs formed them up and marched them off, fitting each company neatly into the available space in the square, like pieces in a wooden puzzle. Carts were still arriving, but plumed men had laid a makeshift causeway of uprooted fenceposts and joists from dismantled roofs across the salt flats, so that the emptied, departing carts bypassed the start of the jam, and the lifting-plundering-turning-around details worked in precisely timed shifts to process each new arrival. The plumed men’s leader organized the whole operation from the little watch-tower on the roof of the customs house, with relays of runners pounding up and down the narrow spiral stone staircase, taking turns to go up and down since there wasn’t room for two people to pass.

  At dawn, the harbormaster emerged from his hiding place, in time to see the empty ships sailing out of the harbor to make room for the next squadron. The carts were all gone; instead, the road was solid with an unbroken column of marching men, each one with his heavy pack covered by his gray wool cloak, his two spears sloped over his shoulder, his helmet-plume nodding in time to the quick march, so that from a distance the whole line of plumes, as far as the eye could see, all swayed together, forward and back.

  Since everything seemed to be under control, the harbormaster risked climbing the tower. There was something he needed to know, and his curiosity had finally got the better of his bewilderment and terror.

  “Excuse me,” he said to the plumed leader, who turned his head and looked at him. “But who are you?”

  The plumed man looked at him some more and turned back to the battlement without answering, and the harbormaster went away again without repeating the question.

  At noon on the fourth day, the advance guard marched into the City, having made better time than anticipated. In Mezentia itself, however, arrangements had been made. Barracks were waiting for them — the Foundrymen and Machinists, the Clothiers, the Carpenters and Joiners, and the Stonemasons had each emptied a warehouse, so there was plenty of room; the staff officers, of course, were directed to the Guildhall, where Necessary Evil had laid on private quarters, hot baths and a reception with a buffet lunch and musicians in the Old Cloister; they’d taken a gamble that it wouldn’t rain, but in all other respects nothing had been left to chance.

  “Allow me to present Colonel Dezenansa,” Staurachus said. “Colonel, this is my colleague Lucao Psellus, formerly of the compliance directorate.”

  The foreigner had taken off his plumed helmet but he was still wearing his gray cloak and under it his fish-scale armor, steel plates the size of beech leaves and painted black. They clinked slightly every time he moved; if I had to wear something like that and it made that noise all the time, Psellus thought, I’d go mad. “Pleased to meet you,” he said; he started to extend his hand but the foreigner didn’t move. “Commissioner Psellus,” the foreigner said.

  “The Colonel is in charge of the first six squadrons,” Staurachus went on, “comprising sixteen thousand men. Their job will be to enter Eremian territory and secure the road known as the Butter Pass. This will enable the main army, under General Dejauzida —”

  “The Butter Pass,” Psellus interrupted. “But surely that’s the long way round. And it leads you very close to the Vadani border. Surely —”

  “Quite right,” Staurachus said, with a little scowl. “Apparently Boioannes believes that there’s a risk the Vadani may misinterpret our intentions and get drawn into the war, unless we neutralize them at the outset with a suitable show of strength. Accordingly, the Colonel will position a thousand men at the Silvergate crossroads, thereby effectively blocking the road the Vadani would have to take if they wanted to reach Civitas Eremiae before our army. There will, of course, be a slight loss of time in reaching Civitas, but that hardly matters, we’ll be setting a siege when we get there, and the hold-up won’t be long enough for the Eremians to bring in any appreciable quantities of supplies. After all,” he added with a smile, “where would they bring them in from?”

  It took Psellus an hour to get away from the reception without being too obvious about it. He went straight to the Clock Court, where Maniacis’ office was.

  “Who the hell are all these men in armor,” he demanded, “and what are they doing here?”

  His friend looked up from his counting frame and grinned. “You should know,” he said. “You’re the warrior, I’m just an accountant.”

  Psellus breathed in sharply; Maniacis raised his hands in supplication.

  “They’re your new army,” he said. “From the old country, across the water. Jazyges, mostly, with some Bretavians and a couple of divisions of Solatz sappers and engineers. They cost twice as much as Cure Doce, that’s without transport costs, but apparently your old friend Boioannes reckons they’re worth it. We, of course, have to find the extra money without appearing to break into Contingency funds. We thought we might announce a little pretend earthquake somewhere, and siphon it out through Disaster Relief.”

  “Boioannes,” Psellus repeated. “What’s he got to do with it? He’s a diplomat.”

  Maniacis raised both eyebrows. “Either you’ve been cutting briefings or they’re keeping things from you,” he said. “Boioannes is now Necessary Evil. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he’s running the show. Don’t ask me why,” he preempted, “there’s some things even I don’t know. In fact,” he added with a smirk, “I was going to ask you.”

  Psellus sat down. “I give up,” he said. “Ever since I joined this ludicrous department I’ve been kicking my heels waiting to be given something to do, and meanwhile they’ve imported an army from the old country and they
’re planning to take it up the Butter Pass. I might as well go home and stay there till it’s all over.”

  “The Butter Pass,” Maniacis said. “You’re kidding.”

  Psellus shrugged. “That’s what Staurachus just told me, him and the colonel-in-chief or whatever he was. I didn’t catch his name —”

  “Colonel Dezenansa,” Maniacis said promptly. “Quite a distinguished service record, we were lucky to get him. More an administrator than a front-line fighter, but — I’m sorry, you were saying.”

  “Perhaps,” Psellus said wearily, “you could fill me in on what you know about all this.”

  Maniacis laughed. “I just did,” he said. “That’s about it. Boioannes has been maneuvering and pulling strings for months to get his hands on Necessary Evil; all these arrangements were made for the invasion — you know, when the Eremians were invading us, rather than the other way round — but some fool of a soldier went and cut him out by sending the scorpions. They massacred the Eremians in about ten minutes flat, leaving Boioannes without a war to fight. He was livid, naturally; and then this abominator of yours conveniently escapes, and the war’s back on again. Fortuitous, wouldn’t you say? Hardly interfered with the original timetable at all.”

  Psellus thought about that a lot over the next few days. He had little else to do; he’d retreated into his office (like the Eremians, he told himself, taking refuge behind the walls of their fortified mountaintop) and was waiting for the war to come to him. The war, however, was busy with other things and couldn’t be bothered with him. Two or three times a day, a memo came round. It was always the same memo, very slightly amended:

  Owing to unforeseen operational and administrative factors, the initial advance into Eremian territory has been rescheduled. There will be a delay. You will be informed as soon as a new schedule has been agreed.

  Sometimes the memo said “further delay” or “once again been rescheduled”; sometimes not. The name at the top was usually Boioannes, though sometimes it was Staurachus, just occasionally Ostin Tropaeas (Psellus had never heard of him). Once it started off, “By order of Colonel Dezenansa,” but the variation wasn’t repeated. Psellus wondered if such a divergence from the approved text constituted an abomination.