Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

  “I don’t understand,” Eiconodoulus said. “I thought you’re on their side.”

  “I am,” Vaatzes replied, “for the moment. But listen, you’ve got to get the message to Falier. It won’t be any good unless he gets it, so don’t go telling it to your superior officer or the commander in chief or the Guild Assembly; it’d just be meaningless drivel to them, and they’d think you’re up to something or loose in the head. It’s only valuable if Falier gets it, do you understand?”

  Eiconodoulus nodded, because it wasn’t really a lie if he didn’t actually say the word. “What’s the message?” he asked.

  He thought about it a lot, after Vaatzes had gone away, and later, on the long cart-ride back to Mezentia, but it made no sense at all. Several times he made up his mind that he wouldn’t deliver it — why should he, after all? It was bound to be a trick or a trap, but so crude that the Mezentines would never fall for it. He’d only make a fool of himself; maybe the whole thing was Vaatzes’ idea of a joke. It was unthinkable that the same man who’d betrayed the Republic by defecting to its worst enemy and building them war engines that could wipe out seven thousand men could also give away the key to breaching the unassailable walls of Civitas Eremiae. It made no sense. You’d have to be born stupid to fall for something like that.

  The Mezentines were very considerate, in their way. After he’d been debriefed and questioned, by his own people and the Mezentine authorities and representatives from their war cabinet, he was sent to the Coppersmiths’ Hall, where he was measured in two dozen places with tapes and rules and calipers. They showed him an example of what they were planning to make for him, and sure enough, it had a cunning little mechanism to lock it when you put your weight on it, just as Vaatzes had said. For some reason (he couldn’t detect any logic to it), that was what made him decide to pass on Vaatzes’ message to Falier after all. He asked one of the false-leg people to do it for him; apparently, the man knew someone who knew someone else who was an off-relation of Falier’s new wife. Once he’d done that, he put it out of his mind. After all, it was meaningless, and he had other matters to think about now.

  19

  The worst defeat in the history of the Perpetual Republic was properly debated and acknowledged by an extraordinary general meeting of the Guilds in the great chapterhouse. After the defense committee had made their report, a motion proposed by the Wool, Cotton and Allied Trades that it was not, in fact, the worst ever defeat was rejected on the grounds that, although sixty-two more men were lost at the battle of Curoneia, eighty-seven years earlier, the loss of the war engines was far more significant than the human cost, comprised in both cases only of mercenaries. On the motion of the Foundrymen and Machinists, an emergency subcommittee of the general assembly with full powers was appointed to consider the immediate future conduct of the war, in concert with the defense committee, and the ordnance factory was given an unlimited budget and ordered to move to maximum productivity of scorpions. Inventory revealed a stock of five hundred and seventy-three completed scorpions standing at the factory, and these were appropriated to the use of Colonel Polydama Cersebleptes, who was confirmed as commander in chief of the expeditionary army. Colonel Cersebleptes then addressed the meeting, stating his opinion that with the forces at his disposal and the five hundred and seventy-three scorpions, he was confident of taking Civitas Eremiae within six weeks. Votes of confidence were then taken in favor of the Colonel, the defense committee and the Guiding Committee itself. A motion of thanks to Captain Beltista Eiconodoulus was proposed by the Silversmiths, but rejected.

  After a long day on the walls, Miel Ducas came home and yelled for a bath. He knew he was being inconsiderate — a bath in the Ducas house required the services of twelve people to carry water and fuel, and disrupted the work of the kitchens and the housekeeper’s room for an hour — but he didn’t care. He was exhausted and his back ached from lifting (he’d led by example, which had seemed like a good idea at the time). He’d stayed until the last scorpion was installed, aligned and bolted down. He’d made Orsea go home two hours before the finish, since it wasn’t good for the men to see their Duke making stupid mistakes out of fatigue; besides, he’d been in the way, and Miel’s patience had worn thin.

  Even in the Ducas house, water takes its time coming to the boil. He undressed, struggled into a bathrobe, and sat on the window-seat of the butler’s pantry waiting for the hot water to be carried in. It was a breach of decorum for the Ducas’ naked feet to be seen by the chambermaids, so he put on a pair of boots which he guessed belonged to the boilerman.

  He spent a minute or so looking at his hands. The rope burns were healing, thanks to the foul-smelling mess (of Vadani origin, he’d heard somewhere) that the doctors had smeared all over them, and the edges of the torn blisters were hardening into opaque parchment. They were his souvenirs of the battle, his glorious and honorable scars. King Fashion had a certain amount to say about the proper presentation of scars honorably won in the hunt, and one could safely assume that the rules applied just as well to war. Ostentation was to be avoided; one should not, for example, order new shirts and doublets cut low so as to display scars to neck and shoulder, or shorten one’s sleeves to reveal cut and gashes to the forearms. Where scars were visible in normal dress, however, it was permissible to choose lighter colors so that the scars stood out by contrast, and where a hat would otherwise be worn but would obscure a scar, it could be dispensed with. Miel smiled at the thought. He doubted whether King Fashion had ever been rope-burned or blistered his hands in his life, unless you counted the little pinches between the fingertips that came from archery without a glove or a tab. Blisters and burns aside, he had nothing on the outside to show for the victory, unless you counted the scorpions themselves. They were, of course, the great trophies of the hunt, and they’d been displayed to the best possible advantage, where you couldn’t help seeing them. He ought to feel proud, he supposed; the ambush had been his idea, and he’d commanded the army, at Orsea’s insistence, because his friend felt he wasn’t competent to carry out such a desperately important mission. He’d been right about that, of course, which only made it worse.

  He thought about that, too. The plain fact was that Orsea wasn’t up to this job, leading the people in a war to the death. He was too obsessed by fear of failure, of the consequences of a mistake on his part; he insisted that Miel should do everything, and at the same time resented him murderously for it. That made Miel feel guilty, because it was completely unfair, and the guilt led to further resentment. There was absolutely nothing he could do about that; but Veatriz had started to hate him now, because he was making Orsea so unhappy. She never even looked at him when they happened to meet, and if he spoke to her she snarled at him.

  Thinking about that made him think of the letter. It had never been far from his thoughts, ever since he’d first intercepted and hidden it. He could feel it, like an arrowhead too deeply embedded to be cut out; his only act of treachery in a lifetime of dutiful service. Well, you could put it like that; but at the moment it was one burden on his mind too many. Just as they brought in the first jugs of hot water, he made up his mind to get rid of it for good. If he burned it, at least he’d be rid of the dilemma.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said to the chambermaids, who stared at him as if he was some kind of wild animal, then curtsied and fled.

  The final hiding place he’d chosen for the lethal packet of parchment was, he couldn’t help thinking, magnificently apt. A small crack between two stones in the wall in the upper solar, out of sight behind the extravagant tapestry (the unicorn hunt; three hundred years old, a late masterpiece of the last decadent phase of the primitive-realist school; absolutely priceless because only three other examples existed, all of them preserved here in the Ducas house since the day they’d been made); nobody ever came in here apart from the servants, who were absolutely forbidden to touch the tapestry. He’d only found out about the crack himself because he’d played in this room a
s a boy; he’d hidden behind the tapestry from Jarnac and the bigger boys, when he’d been the roebuck and they’d been the hounds. They’d found him, of course, by his faint tracks in the dust on the floor, but even they had never dared lift the tapestry to drag him out. He’d been safe there, because only the Ducas and his heir apparent would dare lay a fingertip on the unicorn tapestry. Now even he felt nervous to the point of trembling as he gently moved the heavy fabric away from the wall and stepped behind it.

  Three paces in, collarbone height; his fingers traced the courses of stone until they found the narrow slot.

  The letter wasn’t there.

  “You’ve got no idea,” the woman said, “how hard it was getting it.”

  Vaatzes shrugged. “Couldn’t have been that difficult,” he said, “or you wouldn’t have managed.”

  She didn’t like that, but he didn’t care. He knew she was just trying to justify the asking price, to which he’d already agreed without protest. It was a vast sum of money — seventy gold thalers, enough to buy a good house and three hundred acres of pasture complete with all live and dead stock. It was his share of the profit on sixty scorpions. He’d cheerfully have paid three times as much.

  “The money,” she said.

  He reached in his desk drawer and pulled out the bag, dropping it on the desktop with a loud thump and resting his left hand on it. “You can count it,” he said.

  “I trust you,” she replied disdainfully.

  He shrugged. “Up to you,” he said. “Let’s see it, then.”

  She knelt down, lifted her basket up onto the desk, and started to empty it. Cabbage stalks, bean pods, pea helm, artichoke peel, carrot tops and a small square of parchment. He took it from her and carefully unfolded it. “Have you read it?” he said.

  She shook her head. “Just what’s on the outside,” she said. She was lying, of course, but that didn’t matter. He folded his arms on the desktop and leaned forward to decipher the tiny, awkward handwriting.

  Valens Valentinianus to Veatriz Sirupati, greetings.

  He lifted his head and looked at her. “If this is a fake,” he said, “I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, as though threats were a familiar part of her daily routine. Fleetingly, he wondered about her life, but it was none of his business.

  “Thanks,” he said, and lifted his hand off the money-bag.

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” she said. The bag was too big for her to lift one-handed (she had small, plump paws, like a frog). “What do you want with it, anyhow?” she added.

  “Do you really want me to tell you?”

  She didn’t answer. It was obvious she hated him, for a wide variety of reasons. “Don’t you go making trouble for the master,” she said. “He’s a proper gentleman, the Ducas.”

  Vaatzes sighed. “Fine,” he said. “In that case, you take it back and I’ll have the money.”

  She scowled at him and took a step backward toward the door. He smiled.

  “Go away,” he said.

  She hated him for another two seconds, then left the room. He heard her feet hammering on the spiral stone staircase, and a door slamming. He didn’t move. He sat, with just the tips of his fingers resting lightly on the edges of the parchment, which smelled powerfully of decaying vegetables. The urge to read it was painful, but he restrained himself, to prolong the pleasure. All his adult life he’d made weapons, in the service of the Perpetual Republic; the frames and arms and springs and mechanisms of mighty engines, whose mechanical advantage was capable of magnifying the strength of the human arm into a force impossible to defend against. He knew a good weapon when he saw one, or touched its working components. He also knew a little about love-letters, particularly those that the beloved never gets to read. He’d made the connection long ago, and knew that love is the most destructive weapon of all, the only problem being how to contain and channel it into something that can be spanned, aimed and loosed.

  With the tips of his forefingers, he lifted the letter off the desktop. It was faintly translucent, being old parchment, scraped several times. Like a butcher breaking the carcass of a bird, levering the breast up off the ribcage, he folded back the corners and opened it.

  My chess-playing mind tells me that what you need is something to take your mind off your troubles: a story, an observation, a discussion about silk-painting or the use of nature imagery in the elegaics of Haut Bessamoges. You want me to open a hidden door in the wall and show you a room where you can hide for a little while. Instead, my mind is busy with cunning schemes — how can the Vadani take the heat off Orsea of Eremia, given that the two nations hate each other like poison?

  Vaatzes smiled. A man after his own heart, Duke Valens, though he’d probably dislike him intensely if they ever met face to face. He both admired and resented the way he could put into words things that he himself could only feel. Presumably Cantacusene felt the same way when he’d been humiliated in his own workshop by a superior craftsman. He dismissed the resentment (after all, Valens was working for him now, just as Cantacusene was, and a good supervisor respects his valuable employees). It was most definitely a letter he couldn’t have written himself; cut from solid instead of painstakingly pinned, brazed, fabricated out of scrounged components. No wonder she was in love with him.

  (He closed his eyes and tried to recall the memory of her face, glimpsed briefly at the meet before the Duke’s boar-hunt. Not beautiful; pretty in an everyday sort of way. He loved her too, of course, but only because she was his best and most effective weapon. She was going to smash open the gates of Mezentia for him; he’d walk into the city on a siege-mound of corpses she’d raised for him. In the circumstances, the very least he could do was love her. Also, she reminded him of someone who was with him all the time.)

  He read the rest of the letter, folded it carefully and put it in his inside pocket. Until everything was ready and he needed it, it was only fitting that he should carry it next to his heart, as lovers are supposed to do.

  It was some time before Miel Ducas remembered that he was still in his bathrobe, and the hot water was going cold. Not that that mattered — he was the Ducas, and he could do what he liked in his own house — but the last thing he wanted to do was make a scene. The eccentricities of the nobility were valuable commodities in the town. The usual fabricated variety commanded a high enough price in alcohol, entertainment or sexual favors; he didn’t like to think about the market value of a genuine Ducas story. Needless to say, Orsea wouldn’t set any store by tavern gossip, but he was probably the only person in the duchy who didn’t.

  He opened the solar door slowly and carefully, and walked out into a corridor crammed with servants, all of them standing perfectly still and looking at him. It was worse than the scorpion bombardment, far worse than facing the wounded boar, because all his princely qualities of valor and dash were useless; he couldn’t grab a falchion off the wall and massacre the lot of them. All he could do was walk straight past them, pretending he hadn’t seen them. As soon as he turned the corner, he broke into a run.

  As he’d anticipated, his bathwater was cold. He lowered himself in, washed briskly, clambered out and scrubbed himself dry with the towel (he couldn’t remember having seen it before; it was a pale orange color with embroidered lilies and snowdrops, one of the most revolting things he’d ever seen. He remembered that the Duchess had recently sent him some linen as a thank-you present for arranging the hunt, but he couldn’t believe for an instant that she could deliberately have chosen to buy something like that. Thinking about Veatriz reminded him of the letter; he closed his eyes and shuddered, as though a surgeon was pulling an arrowhead out of his stomach).

  There had to be a perfectly rational explanation. He’d considered hiding it there, but had changed his mind or never got round to doing it. It had fallen out of the crack and was lying on the floor, hidden by the hem of the tapestry. He’d put it there, but changed his mind, moved it, and forgotten he’d done so. It had b
een completely devoured by moths.

  Or someone had found it and taken it. He noticed something strange, and experimented by holding his arm straight out in front of him. His hand was shaking.

  Should’ve burned it; should’ve given it to Orsea straight away; should have given it to her. But he hadn’t. He’d tethered it, it had slipped the hobbles and escaped, and now it was loose. He tried to think who might have taken it, but his mind couldn’t grip on the question, like cartwheels on thick ice. Nothing ever disappeared in the Ducas house, even though it was jammed and constipated with the accumulated valuable junk of generations. A light-fingered servant could steal a fortune in gold and silver plate, fabrics, ornaments, and be over the border free and clear before anybody noticed, but it had never happened in living memory; so why should anybody steal a small piece of parchment? Half the servants couldn’t even read (but if they’d been told what to look for, that didn’t signify). Maybe someone had taken it to light a fire (but why go looking for kindling behind the tapestry nobody was allowed to touch, when there was a cellar full of dried twigs and brush?). The truth had him at bay, and he had nowhere to run to. Someone had known what to look for and where to look. It was self-evident; but it was also impossible, because nobody else in the house knew about that place.

  He could burn the house down; but it stood to reason that the thief would’ve got rid of the loot as quickly as possible, so that wouldn’t achieve anything.

  Without knowing what he was doing, he dressed in the clothes laid out for him. The only sensible course of action would be to go to Orsea, straight away, and tell him the whole story. But if Orsea hadn’t been given the letter yet, he’d refuse to believe it; he’d fly into a rage and burst into tears, and everything would get worse. He should go to Veatriz (and what would he tell her? I intercepted your letter. Why did you do that, Miel?). He should leave Eremia tonight and defect to the Mezentines. It depressed him utterly to think that that was probably the best idea he’d had so far.