The Devil You Know

by K. J. Parker

  “You’re right,” he said, stirring in a little plain yoghurt. “It’s really very good. We must come here again.”

  “Any time.”

  He frowned, a chunk of flatbread poised an inch from his mouth. “You’re being really helpful,” he said. “And considerate.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “You don’t have to choose nice clothes for me and point out nice places to eat. It doesn’t say you have to in the contract. It just says, you have to do what I tell you, within certain defined parameters.”

  I shrugged. “I try to make life pleasant for my customers,” I said. “For the short period of time at their disposal.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I like to.”

  He nodded. “There is no absolute right or wrong, good or evil, but there are good manners and common decency. Discuss.”

  “Have I got to?”

  He waved his hand. “Figure of speech,” he said with his mouth full. “Not a direct order. But I’d value your opinion, if you’d care to share it.”

  I thought for a moment. “There is no good or evil,” I said. “There are only sides; the side you’re on, and the other side.” I paused. “You taught me that.”

  “So I did.” He swallowed his chunk of bread. “I don’t think I ever believed that, but it was fun to argue and see if I could prove it. A lot of people think I did.”

  “Me included.”

  “Ah well.”

  “You’re on one side,” I said, “and I’m on another. At the moment, however, we aren’t in conflict. Quite the reverse, we’re in a contractual relationship, based on a mutual agreement, based on a shared wish to see a specific outcome. Therefore, at this stage, we’re on the same side. Therefore, why shouldn’t I be as helpful as I can?”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  I could see what he was getting at. “It’s easier,” I said. “It builds a smooth working relationship between us, making it easier for me to do my job.”

  “You don’t have to be thoughtful. Or kind. You don’t have to be good company.”

  I shrugged. “Most of my customers treat me with fear and loathing,” I said. “I try and put them at their ease, but usually it’s an uphill battle. You don’t seem to be afraid of me or particularly disgusted by what I am. Why is that?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” he said, “that’s an order. You see, I don’t think you understand the doctrine of sides one little bit. That, or you don’t believe in it, but you’re pretending you do, to flatter me.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “The doctrine of sides,” he went on, “states that there is no right or wrong, only different perspectives. From where I stand, such and such a thing looks like a tree; from where you stand, it looks like a rock. For tree and rock, read sin and virtue.”

  “Yes, I got that part.”

  “Fine. But you’re not judging me by the side I’m on. I’m the other side, but you’re treating me like I were yours. The good man helps his friends and hurts his enemies. You aren’t doing that. And the contract stuff is just sophistry. A contract’s like that form of trial by combat in Scheria, where the two fighters are linked at the wrist with a chain. You should be trying to do me down.”

  “Why should I? Time will do it for me.”

  He was silent, and ate an olive. “You’re making my allotted span as pleasant as possible so I won’t notice how quickly it passes, thereby cheating me of time.”

  “If you care to look at it that way. If you’d prefer me to be aloof and nasty, I can do that for you.”

  He sighed, and threw his napkin on the table. “Take me to the Great Library of Mezentia,” he said. “Philosophy section.”

  * * *

  He was in there for about nine hours.

  I offered to help him—fetch books, find places, look things up—but he gave me a rather hostile look and said he could manage just fine, so I left him to it and tried to find something to amuse myself with.

  In Mezentia, that’s not so easy. Essentially it’s a shoppers’ town. If you want to buy things, there are no finer things to buy anywhere, often at sensible prices. The great streets—the Chandlery, Sheepfair, Tallowmarket, Stoneyards—are lined with establishments as well or better furnished and decorated than many a nobleman’s house, in Aelia or the Republic. Insofar as there’s beauty in useful, portable artefacts, Mezentia is the gallery of the world. Glassware, fabrics, metalwork useful and ornamental, porcelain, silverware—but their public art, although spectacular in scale, I find rather unsatisfactory. They’re heavy on allegory, and the only patrons of the arts are the people who run the city, so you tend to get rather a lot of Mezentia Wedded to the Sea or The Goddess Prosperity Embraces the Pewterers’ Guild, in marble, stuck up high so you have to crane your neck to see it. Since they’re a proudly godless lot, the only religious art is strictly for export. They do excellent reproductions of all the great masterpieces; there are huge sheds down by the Wharf where hundreds of trained artisans crouch over benches, churning out the White Goddess of Beloisa all day every day. But it’s art to buy and own, not to look at. You know what it looks like already.

  You quickly become attuned to the customer. I felt him close his book and stand up, and sped back to the library steps, just as he was coming out. I smiled. “Useful session?”

  “Very,” he said. “Conjure me an army. I want to invade Mysia.”

  “I can do that for you,” I said. “Out of interest, why?”

  He didn’t answer; that was me told. “To invade Mysia,” I said, “the best starting point is the Butter Pass. Alternatively, you can follow the precedent of Calojan the Great and sail them up the Tonar on flat-bottomed barges. It takes longer, but you’re more likely to get the element of surprise.”

  He scowled at me. “Let’s do that, then.”

  * * *

  Mysia is a dreary place, all forests and mud huts, though they do wonderful things with seafood. That’s hardly a surprise, since the Tonar Delta has the finest oyster beds in the world, and the north coast is warmed by one of those big underwater currents. Mostly, though, people conquer Mysia because they’re afraid someone else will conquer it first. Beating the Mysians isn’t exactly difficult. The problem lies with recouping the cost of the invasion and occupation from an economy based on subsistence agriculture and nomadic livestock herding. Everybody who’s anybody has invaded, stayed a year or so, and then gone resentfully home, wondering whose bright idea that was. It has more historic battlefield sites per square mile than anywhere else on Earth, apart from the Mesoge. The farmers plough up bones and sell them to the millers, for bonemeal; widely used in the metal-finishing industry.

  We have our own armed forces, of course, but I assumed he wanted humans; so I enlisted the famous condottier, Alban of Bealfoir. I’d worked with him before; he’s a good man.

  “Of course I know Mysia,” he said, over sea bass and sweet white wine in a palm-leaf-roofed teashop on the coast. “I led the annexation, four years ago. Two weeks’ work, three in the rainy season. Have you got the money?”

  Saloninus looked at me and I said, “Absolutely. My principals are footing all the bills.”

  Alban nodded. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “Your word’s as good as cash in the bank.” He turned back to Saloninus and said, “When would you like to start?”

  “Immediately.”

  “That’s not a problem.” That’s what I like about Alban, that can-do attitude. “I’ll need seventy thousand nomismata up front, plus weekly instalments of forty thousand.” He paused, then said, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to conquer Mysia?”

  Saloninus sipped his wine, savouring the flowery aftertaste. “If you don’t want the job, we can go elsewhere.”

  Alban held up both hands. “Sorry, sorry. Once we’ve taken the place, do you want to leave garrisons?”

  Saloninus nodded. “I shall need a full army of occup
ation for at least forty years.”

  I frowned at that, but didn’t say anything; not in front of the help. “I can arrange that,” Alban said. “Obviously, you only need a fraction of the manpower for an occupation, unless you get an insurgency problem, which isn’t likely here. That said—”

  “They need to be paid, and the locals can’t afford it,” Saloninus interrupted. “Yes, I know that. We’ll pay them, naturally.”

  “Say—” Alban took a moment for the dreams of avarice. “Thirty thousand nomismata a year?”

  Well, it’s not my money, so I kept quiet. “Fine,” Saloninus said indifferently. “I’ll put a lump sum in escrow with the Knights, as a token of good faith; draw on it as you need it.”

  I think the poor man was seriously shaken. He’s straightforward enough for a man in his line of work, but I’m guessing that draw on it as you need it undermined the very core of his understanding of the world. All those years killing people and beating them up in order to get money, and instead, there are people out there who’ll just give it to you. “Suits me,” he said, in a quiet voice. “Right. First thing in the morning.” He paused. I surreptitiously conjured a small steel-reinforced chest under my right foot. “Here,” I said, and pushed it toward him under the table.

  He wouldn’t need to count it. He knew that. He rested his foot delicately on it, as if on a rose.

  * * *

  Same old same old for the villagers and nomads of Mysia. Out of the early morning mists emerged a column of armoured men, their footsteps barely audible on the thick leaf mould. King Carduan IV wasn’t at home when we called; he never is when people invade his kingdom. He has barges moored ready all the time, with the royal treasury stowed aboard. He’s not bothered about anybody stealing it. After so many wars and occupations, there’s not enough there to make it worth the effort. The royal guard stayed home, their wives busily weaving baskets to sell to the foreigners.

  Our forces occupied the Citadel. It’s an amazing thing, if you like military architecture (I must confess I do, though purely on an aesthetic level). It was built by the Eastern Empire, back when they were the invaders du jour. They chose a flat-topped mountain, actually a dormant volcano; there’s a rainwater lake up there on top, natural hot water. The defensive walls are built out of huge rectangular blocks of black lava; fifteen feet thick at the base. There’s a curtain wall, a boiling—seriously—moat, an outer wall, and an inner keep. There’s fifteen acres of storage sheds for food and equipment. The circumference of the curtain wall is three miles, but four hundred men could hold it indefinitely against the world, assuming they’ve laid in adequate supplies. It won’t come as a surprise to learn that the Citadel has never been taken, by storm, siege, or treachery. Come to that, it’s never been attacked. It’s been voluntarily evacuated and abandoned nine times, but that’s different.

  He got me to fill the barns with sacks of flour and barrels of salted bacon, while Alban’s sappers made a few minor repairs to the drawbridge. The Mysians don’t come near the place ever, except to loot the food stores when an invader leaves. They know it’s nothing to do with them. Also, I think they know it’s a volcano, a fact which appears nowhere in the military libraries of the surrounding nations.

  Alban kept trying to report to me for orders, even though he knew perfectly well who was in charge. He was trying to make himself believe this was a normal, businesslike military operation, and that he wasn’t working for a lunatic. “Do you anticipate any hostile activity from the King?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “Usually when there’s an invasion he goes and stays with his cousin the seed-merchant, just across the border,” I said. “I gather he prefers it there to here. The Mysians won’t bother you at all. Particularly if you buy their baskets.”

  He nodded. “What are we doing here?”

  “Don’t ask me.”

  The customer is always right; if we had a physical headquarters, that would be written up on the wall in golden letters. But you can’t help speculating. Why would a man want to invade a country? The primeval will to power, maybe, or perhaps he likes watching the way blood changes colour when it soaks away into the dust. A philosopher? He might want to observe the changes that absolute power made to his personality—does it corrupt absolutely, or can the philosopher-king control it and bend it to his will? An opportunity to create the perfect society; I considered and rejected that, because if that was what you had in mind, you wouldn’t try and do it in Mysia. Or perhaps he’d played with toy soldiers as a boy, or years ago a Mysian kicked sand in his face on a beach somewhere. You just don’t know, with humans. There is no wrong or right, except for the eternal, unchangeable rightness of the customer.

  Mine not to reason why. Not my place.

  “You’ve got to tell me,” I said to him. “It’s driving me crazy. What are we doing here?”

  He looked up from a huge scale plan of the Citadel. He’d been going over it for hours, making tiny notes in red and green ink; improvements in the defences. I’d peeked over his shoulder a few times. They were brilliant. He should’ve been a military engineer. Belay that; Mankind, thank your lucky stars he was never a military engineer.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You know exactly what I mean. Why did we invade this country? Why are we here?”

  “Oh, that.” He carefully dried the nib of his pen on a scrap of cotton waste before laying it down, so it wouldn’t splodge the plans. “I’d have thought you’d have figured that out for yourself by now.”

  He had the only chair. I sighed and sat down on the floor. “I’ve tried, believe me. But I can’t.”

  “Keep trying,” he said. “It’s dogged as does it.”

  I’m ashamed to say I jumped up and banged the desk with my fist. He gave me a pained look. “You want me to tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah well.” He leaned back in his chair. It had been the seat of twelve consecutive garrison commanders, and the arms were scarred by fingernails picking at the carved edges. “It’s a bit of a sideshow, really.”

  “Is it?”

  “Oh yes. It’s just that I want Mankind to be in a suitably receptive frame of mind, for when my great hypothesis is published. You may disagree, but my personal experience is that when you’re trying to concentrate on the higher metaphysical and ethical issues, things like hunger, poverty, and the constant threat of violent disruption really don’t help at all. Get rid of them, therefore, and they’ll be that much more willing to listen and easier to persuade.”

  I looked at him. “Get rid of them,” I repeated.

  “Yes, why not? And that’s what we’re doing here.” He winked at me. “That’s a hint,” he said. “A great big one. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m trying to get some work done.”

  Disturbing the customer’s concentration when he’s engaged in his chosen task is explicitly forbidden in the contract; so I didn’t talk to him again until he’d finished for the day, rolled up his plans, closed his books, and put his feet up on the desk. Only then did I take him in a light supper and a glass of white wine.

  “Here’s what I think,” I said. “Mysia is bordered by three powerful, militaristic nations. For centuries, all three have lived in terror of one of the others seizing Mysia and using it as a springboard for invasion. In consequence, they’ve spent a grossly large proportion of their national wealth on defence, anticipating what they see as the inevitable aggression; their kings have taxed their feudal barons to the point where all three countries are on the edge of economic collapse and revolution and civil war are a distinct possibility, but the foreign threat refuses to go away so long as Mysia remains independent and weak.”

  He gave me a faint smile, which I found patronising.

  “Your idea,” I went on, “is a Mysia that’s independent and strong. Once the three great nations come to understand that Mysia can no longer be conquered, they’ll realise that war isn’t inevitable. In fact, since any enemy would have to pass through Mysia
to get to them, and Mysia is strong and independent, war is actually impossible. So, with a vast sigh of relief, they stop bleeding themselves dry with defence spending; the people prosper, prosperity brings content, there’s no more talk of revolution, and everybody is happy and peaceful. Since the three nations dominate the civilised world, happiness and peace become general throughout Mankind.” I paused for breath. “You think you’re so clever.”

  “I am so clever.”

  “Yes.” I hesitated. Not my place. The customer, and so on. Even so. “It’s not going to work, you know.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Of course not. We’ve got a thousand years of case law on our side. If you sell us your soul in return for a chance to do good, it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever. A contract is a contract. The higher courts will not intervene.”

  He laughed. “I know that,” he said. “I’m not stupid.”

  I looked at him. Usually I’m so good at reading faces. “You’re up to something.”

  He lifted the lid off the plate I’d brought him; pan-fried liver in a cream and white wine sauce. “Whatever gives you that idea?” he said.

  * * *

  Bless his suspicious little heart.

  Consider mortality. Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and awareness of this crucial brevity tends to concentrate his mind. Immortals are under no such constraint. True, they have so much longer in which to acquire and assimilate data, but far less incentive to get on with the job of processing it, assessing and analysing, forming hypotheses, and reaching conclusions. They have infinite time in which to stop and smell the flowers; furthermore, for them there is nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Change and decay, however, is in all around we see, and this prompts us to think harder, faster, and more clearly. That’s my take on it, anyway. Maybe they’re just not as smart as we are.