by K. J. Parker
“Daurenja.” She was staring at him. “That…”
“Yes.”
“But that’s obscene.” She spat the word out at him. “It’s crazy. He’s not a soldier.”
“He’s an engineer,” Valens said quietly. “Second-best engineer we’ve got.” He shifted a little, trying to lift his back off the bed, but the weight of his own body was more than he could cope with. “Whose idea was that, anyway?”
Ziani looked down at him and said, “Mine.”
She was about to yell at him, but caught sight of Valens’ face and subsided at once, like a pan of boiling milk lifted off the hob. Then Valens smiled. That must hurt, Ziani thought.
“I don’t understand,” Valens said. “Why would you do something like that?”
A cue, obviously. “All sorts of reasons,” Ziani said. “Clearly someone’s got to be in charge while you’re out of action. It can’t be a Vadani. With the best will in the world, whoever they chose would belong to one of the main factions; you’d have civil war on your hands. The Eremians are all lightweights, even the Ducas, an Eremian’d have no authority. Obviously not an Aram Chantat. Daurenja’s an outsider; for some reason, the Aram Chantat approve of him, and they can see you need an engineer to fight a siege. I can vouch for his intelligence, resourcefulness, determination – say what you like about him, he gets the job done.” He paused, because Valens was looking straight at him out of that appalling face.
“Apart from all that,” Valens said.
“Quite simple, really,” Ziani replied. “If you’ve got to be replaced for a time, I reckoned it was a good idea to choose someone that nobody could want to have doing the job full time. Whether he succeeds or not, they’ll all be counting the days till you’re fit to take over again.” He paused again, then added, “And he’s up to the job, I’m sure of it. It’s the best of both worlds, really. He can do it, I believe he’ll do it well, but there’s no chance at all of him replacing you permanently. Personally, I reckon it’s a rather elegant solution to an awkward problem.”
Valens laughed suddenly, and Ziani knew what his laughter meant: I don’t believe you, but what you say is true. “That amazing weapon of his,” Valens said. “What happened?”
“We made it,” Ziani replied. “But he hasn’t tested it yet. I’m not sure why. My guess is, he’s convinced it’ll work, and he wants it to come as a complete surprise to the Mezentines. If he tests it, no matter how hard we try and keep it quiet, they’re bound to find out. As it is, only you, me and him know what it’s for. Even the men who helped build it weren’t told, and it’s not something you can figure out from first principles.”
Valens sighed. “I’m tired,” he said. “You’d better go. Come back in the morning.”
He was very glad to get out of there. To soothe his nerves, he went back to the factory and spent four hours realigning the tailstock of the genuine Mezentine lathe, after some Vadani had tried to adjust it.
Ziani Vaatzes to Lucao Psellus, greetings.
Boioannes is here. I’m letting you know partly so you won’t tear the City apart looking for him, partly as a token of good faith.
He made us an interesting offer: to betray the City, in return for a key role in a provisional government. I turned him down. At the moment he’s in the cells, no doubt feeling very much ill-used and sorry for himself. He gave me to understand that he has sympathisers in a position to open the gates to us as and when he says the word. I’m not inclined to take this at face value – in fact, I wouldn’t believe him if we were standing under the big clock in the Guildhall and he told me the time – but I think it’s safe to assume there’s a grain or two of truth in it. You may want to investigate further.
Why should you believe me? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve told you the truth. I gave you Civitas Eremiae. I gave you Valens’ wedding party – it’s not my fault that it all went wrong; you should have sent a bigger task force. I tried to give you the Vadani when they were crossing the desert. All before your time, I know; but you can read the files. You already have, so you know I’m telling the truth.
In return, there’s one little thing I want you to do for me…
Psellus read the letter again, and again, and again, until he could recite it by heart with his eyes shut. Then he folded it lengthways and held it in the flame of his lamp. It curled, went brown, caught fire. When the flames touched his fingertips, he let go, and it fell to the floor. He covered the ashes with his foot.
Half an hour later, he sent for his private secretary and ordered him to cancel all his appointments for the rest of the day. Then he opened his desk and took out a flat rosewood box. It had belonged to Boioannes, and the wretched inconsiderate man had taken the key with him when he escaped; they’d had to break it open, and now its perfection was spoiled by cracked wood and twisted brass. Nevertheless, he opened it, and took out an ink bottle, a pen, a sand-shaker and a sheet of parchment. The ink bottle was solid gold, profusely engraved with vine-leaf and acanthus patterns. The pen was silver, with a gold nib. The sand-shaker, a tiny pot like a salt-cellar, was gold, engraved to match the ink bottle. All three were very old and exquisitely beautiful, conforming to no type, bearing no Guild hallmark. As such, they were illegal to own; he soothed his conscience by telling himself they were evidence, which he was preserving for Boioannes’ trial. He hadn’t dared use them, of course; but this letter seemed to call for them (and he remembered the home-made book in which Vaatzes had written poems for his wife). He unscrewed the ink bottle and peered inside, expecting to find that the ink had dried up into sticky black mud. But the threads of the lid must be airtight (more than could be said of any Mezentine-made inkwell). With extreme care, he nudged the tip of the nib into the ink, drew the sheet of finest-quality parchment across the desk until it was squarely in front of him, and wrote:
Psellus to Vaatzes, greetings.
He froze. He’d had his opening paragraph all ready in his head, but now that he was ready to start making irrevocable marks on the parchment, he wasn’t sure of it at all. He reached to the side, picked up the top sheet of the minutes of some meeting, turned it over and quickly scribbled:
So you’ve got Boioannes. Fine. You can have him. It’d have been a nightmare bringing him to trial, we’d have been facing civil war. If you cut his throat, you’ll be doing us a favour.
Talking of favours…
Quite wrong, of course. He drew a line through it, and tried again.
Thank you for letting me know that you have Secretary Boioannes. We have, of course, been looking for him. I assume you have interrogated him and learned everything he knows about the defences of the City. I should warn you, however, that any such information is probably completely out of date by now. May I remind you of your duty to keep him safe and well. Please also regard this letter as formal application for extradition.
Wrong again. He crossed it out, turned the page sideways to make space, and wrote:
How pleasant to hear from you again. First: Ariessa and Moritsa are both well. Thank you for letting me know about Boioannes. I confess I have no idea what his motives were for coming to you, beyond his obvious need to get out of the City before we caught him. I suppose I ought to ask you to send him back to us, but I know you can’t do that. Personally speaking, if I never set eyes on the wretched man ever again, I shall be only too pleased. We don’t actually need him for anything; he can be tried in his absence, which is fine because it means I won’t have to listen to his insufferably pompous voice.
Turning to your request…
He paused, and laid the pen down carefully on the edge of the desk, so any dribbles of ink would land on the floor rather than the desktop.
His request.
He remembered, a long time ago: he was sixteen and she (what was her name? Well, perhaps it would come back to him some day) was fifteen, and they weren’t even supposed to know each other. Her family were factory people, his were clerks, and so he met her by accident every day on
his way home from school. Sometimes she wanted actual money, other times it was just food or clothes. Her father drank, apparently; so did her brothers, and her mother. There was never anything to eat or put on the fire. Sometimes, she and her sister cried themselves to sleep because it hurt so much being hungry. He wasn’t inclined to believe her, because surely someone who was starving would be very thin, but that, like the bruises on her arms and neck, was none of his business. When it was money, that was all right; it was never more than a few coppers, which he could steal from his father’s dressing table without him even noticing. Clothes were fairly straightforward, too, since anything a little bit old or faded went in the charity box and was promptly forgotten. Food was another matter, though. His mother was one of those women who planned out the month’s meals in advance; she wrote it all down with a nail on a slate fixed to the kitchen wall – three columns: date, meals, ingredients required. If an egg or a dried apricot went missing, she knew about it, and once the crime had been discovered, the list of suspects was extremely short.
So that time he’d told her, “No. I can’t. I’m sorry, but she’ll know, and then I’ll be in trouble again.”
Silence. No words. She never said anything when she was displeased.
“Look,” he said, “why don’t I just give you the money, and you can buy it yourself? It’s not dear. Fivepence a quarter. I can get you fivepence by the day after tomorrow.”
Still no words. He didn’t like her voice much anyhow. It always troubled him that someone so beautiful spoke in such a harsh, common voice, flat vowels and sloppy, elided consonants. In the daydreams, where he rescued her from her nightmare of poverty and they got married and lived happily ever after, the first thing he always did after he’d got her home was have her taught to speak properly.
“It’s getting really hard,” he pleaded. “She’s starting to wonder what I want all this stuff for. I mean, if it was cakes or biscuits or fruit, she’d just think it was me stuffing my face, but flour and bacon and things like that…”
She said: “I see.” That was all. Anything more he could have resented and resisted. His mother always said far too much when she was accusing him of something, so his anger was able to get the better of his guilt. His father, on the rare occasions when he was dragged into mere domestic bickering, never said anything at all. But “I see”, in just that tone of voice, was unbearable, because the voice in his own head said all the rest for her: you don’t really love me, you’re just using me, if you cared at all about me you’d do this one stupid little thing…
“Fine,” he replied, and he knew he sounded ridiculous, a sullen little boy. “Day after tomorrow. She’s doing that lamb and pearl barley thing then. It’s disgusting,” he added, “looks like puke and tastes like goo. Anyhow, I’ll be able to get it for you then. Maybe,” he said without hope, “she won’t notice this time.”
She didn’t say anything; and when she kissed him, it was like the scary stories his grandmother used to tell, about the foxes who could turn into women and who stole men’s souls through their mouths. And he remembered thinking at that moment: this is what love is, it’s the constant demands (give me money, give me food, give me happiness, keep me alive) and the incessant taking, taking and taking away until there’s nothing left, but you keep on because there’s no alternative; because you have no choice.
His request. Now, if he’d asked for money; nothing easier. If he’d asked for the City; well, that could be arranged, he felt sure. Surrender the City to me, and I’ll keep the savages from slaughtering everybody, I’ll be their military governor, I’ll double the taxes to pay their tribute, we’ll double production to compensate and everything will be fine. If he’d asked for revenge; what could be simpler than to sign a sheaf of death warrants, every official who’d been involved in his accusation, arrest, trial and punishment. Instead…
He could write, Regarding your request, I’m sorry, but it’s not possible. No more than the truth; but in his mind’s eye he saw her face and heard her say (in that unpleasant voice), “I see”, and knew he couldn’t do it.
(And why? He knew why. And it was absurd. All he’d done was investigate a mystery with his typical bureaucratic thoroughness. But in doing so he’d taken himself into every part of the man’s life, to the point where he knew him better than anyone else he’d ever met, to the point where he was beginning to understand him, the way he’d never understood or been understood by anybody else. The City, he forced himself to admit, was neither here nor there. Ziani wanted this, the same way that girl whose name had slipped his mind had wanted money, clothes and food, and so he had no choice.)
As for your request, he wrote, I’ll see what I can do. Then he took the piece of scrap paper, screwed it up and threw it on the fire. He watched it turn black and disintegrate. There were savages, he’d heard, who wrote prayers to their gods on bits of paper and burnt them, believing that fire took the words direct to the divine ear.
He thought about the other letter he’d burned. In return, there’s one little thing I want you to do for me. I need to talk to Falier. I promise you can have him back afterwards; or if necessary, I’ll come to the City. I know I can trust you if you guarantee my safety.
(Well, yes. He could do that. But…)
And I need to see her, as well.
Which was impossible; because one way or another, it would break his heart, and that was something Psellus couldn’t allow. For entirely valid reasons of state: Vaatzes heartbroken and in despair would take no further part in the war, couldn’t care less what happened to anybody, and Vaatzes was the City’s only hope. And for the real reason.
He got up and went to the doorway. Just one clerk in the outer office at this time of day.
“Get me Falier,” he said. “Straight away.” The clerk stood up – they always looked so scared of him; they’d never been that scared of Boioannes. Why was that? – and headed for the door. He called him back.
“And when you’ve done that,” he said, “arrest Falier’s wife and have her put in the cells. Send a whole platoon of guards. I want her frightened out of her wits.”
He sat down again, feeling sick. It was high time, he decided, that he got to the bottom of all this. Quite apart from everything else, it was the only way to save the City. What was preying on his mind, however, was nothing to do with the fate of the Perpetual Republic (a matter far too grand and romantic for a little clerk like Lucao Psellus). It was simply that lately, whenever he’d thought about the girl whose name had slipped his mind, the face he saw was that of Ariessa Falier, and the face reflected in her eyes was Ziani Vaatzes.
12
The announcement that Major Gace Daurenja had been appointed supreme allied commander was greeted with stunned amazement, rapidly followed by the special blend of loathing and respect unique to the military. As one career officer on the Vadani staff remarked, the bugger was everywhere. He never slept; according to his staff, he sat up all night, sweeping through paperwork like a scythe through corn. When reveille sounded (an innovation of his own; hitherto, the military day had begun with a slouch and a crawl rather than the blare of trumpets), he held court in his tent, parcelling out the day’s meticulously detailed assignments, all written in his own spiky, legible hand; in the morning he went through the camp like a ferret in a warren, suddenly appearing and asking the most difficult questions imaginable, ferociously well-informed, his disapproval oppressive but never voiced, his suggestions and recommendations admirably, infuriatingly sensible. At noon precisely he ate a basic infantry ration – bread, bacon, beans – while the heads of department reported to him. In the afternoon, five in-depth meetings of exactly one hour. The evening ration. Two hours kept free for matters arising. Three hours of briefings, policy debates, disciplinary and commissariat business. Then everyone else went to bed, leaving him alone to do the real work of the day, as he liked to call it. His final chore, meticulously observed, was the composition of a detailed report for Duke Valens, sent off
at dawn each day by duke’s messenger, with a dozen cavalry troopers as escort: and another, similar but even longer and more detailed, for the Aram Chantat liaison.
“We must admit,” the liaison told him one evening, after an exhaustive discussion of the problems and practicalities of large-scale military laundry, “that had Engineer Vaatzes not recommended you for this post, we would not have considered you for it. True, we were greatly impressed with your skill and enterprise in the matter of the fortress on the Lonazep road. But we believed that you lacked military experience. Clearly that was not the case.”
Daurenja smiled. “I’m fortunate,” he said. “I’ve done a bit of nearly everything in my time. My rule is, always learn a new skill if you can, it’ll come in useful sooner or later.”
The liaison nodded gently. “You would appear to have had ample opportunity,” he said. “We have been making enquiries about you.” He paused, face expressionless. “An interesting life, so far.”
“Yes,” Daurenja said.
A slight movement of the head. “It’s not for us to pass judgement,” the liaison went on, “particularly as regards crimes – alleged crimes – committed by foreigners against foreigners outside our jurisdiction, long before this alliance was formed. They do not concern us, except insofar as they provide insights into the nature and character of the man accused of them. Any future misconduct, however…” (He paused: one, two seconds.) “… will be regarded as very much our business. In such matters, we are not tolerant people. There is almost no crime in our society. Murder, rape, theft are things we know about only by report; we find them impossible to understand, because we have no experience of them. You will ensure that from now on, your behaviour conforms to our standards and expectations.”
Daurenja lowered his head; like a dog, the liaison thought, recognising the authority of the pack leader. “Of course,” he said. “You have my word.”