Evil for Evil e-2

by K. J. Parker

  He'd learned how to punch in the ordnance factory; not a scientific philosophy of personal combat, like the rapier fencing Duke Valens had tried to teach him, more a sense of timing refined by desperation into an instinct. You don't have to teach a dog or a bull how to fight; it comes by light of nature and works out through practice. He jabbed his fist into Daurenja's solar plexus, making him fold like a hinge; as his head came down, he let go with his left hand and bashed him on the side of the jaw. It felt hard and thin, like hammering on a closed door. Daurenja staggered sideways, and as his balance faltered, Ziani kicked him hard on the left kneecap, dropping him on the ground in a heap.

  "Get up," he said. "Oh come on," he added, "you're a fighting man, you held off the entire Mezentine army the other day, armed with nothing but a bit of stick."

  Daurenja struggled to his knees; Ziani kicked him in the ribs and put his foot on his throat.

  "Fine," he said. "Don't fight if you don't want to. I'll break your ribs one at a time."

  There was something about the way he lay there; it took Ziani a moment to recognize what it was. Practice, because this wasn't the first time, not by a long way. He was enduring the beating the way a chronic invalid endures some painful but necessary treatment he's been subjected to many times, holding still so as not to inconvenience the doctor as he goes about his work, tilting his head sideways or holding out his arm when he's told to. To test the hypothesis, Ziani lifted his foot off Daurenja's throat and swung it back for a kick; sure enough, Daurenja moved his head a little to the side, anticipating the attack, not trying to avoid it but seeking to minimize the damage it would cause without being too obvious about it. Ziani stepped back. "Stand up," he said. "Beating's over."

  He held out his hand, caught hold of Daurenja's bony wrist and pulled him to his feet; Daurenja swayed a little and rested his back against the bench. He hadn't even tried to ask what the attack had been for.

  "Now we've got that out of the way," Ziani said pleasantly, "maybe you could tell me what it is you want."

  "I don't-"

  Ziani frowned, and punched him on the side of the head, just above the ear. His skull was just as bony as he'd imagined it would be. "Yes you do," he said. "You understand perfectly well. You want something from me, something really valuable and important, and there's nobody else you can get it from." He took a step back, a unilateral declaration of ceasefire. "I'm not saying you can't have it," he said, reasonably. "I just want to know what it is, that's all."

  Daurenja looked at him. "Do you mind if I sit down?"

  "Be my guest."

  "Thanks." Daurenja slid one buttock onto the top of the bench; he seemed to hang as well as perch.

  "Something," Ziani hazarded, "to do with sulfur."

  "In a way." Daurenja sighed. It was, Ziani realized, the first indication of weariness he'd ever seen from him. "I'd better begin at the beginning, hadn't I?"

  Ziani shrugged. "If it's a long story."

  "It is." Daurenja paused for a moment, as if composing himself before giving a performance. "Some years ago," he said, "I met a man who was trying to set up a pottery business. He'd found a seam of a special kind of clay, the sort you need to make the fine wares that people pay a lot of money for. It's always been a Mezentine monopoly, and everybody's always believed they controlled the only sources of this special clay. Well, he convinced me, and it turned out he was right. The stuff he'd got hold of was the right sort of clay, or at least it turned out the same way when you fired it. We thought we'd got it made. After all, making pottery's no big deal, peasants do it in villages. All we needed to do was find out how you decorate it-make the pretty colors you get on the genuine article. We thought that'd be the easy bit."

  "But it wasn't."

  Daurenja nodded slowly. "We could produce colors all right, reds and greens and blues. You can find out how to do that from books, anybody can do it. But they weren't quite the right colors-very close, but not quite. It was pretty frustrating, you can see that. We worked at it for a long time, experimenting, fine-tuning the mixes, trying everything we could think of, but we could never quite get there. Anyhow, I'll skip all that, it's not relevant. One day, I was messing about with some of the ingredients, grinding some stuff up together in a mortar, and there was an accident." He rolled up his sleeve to reveal a scar, a handspan of smooth, melted skin. "That's where this comes from," he said, with a wry grin. "There's another one like it right across my chest. Burns. The stuff I was mixing suddenly caught fire and went up; it was like when you let a drop of water fall onto molten metal. The mortar I was using-big stone thing the size of a bucket-smashed into a dozen pieces, and the heat was amazing, just like leaning over a forge at welding temperature. All from a few spoonfuls of this stuff I was grinding."

  Ziani realized he'd forgotten to breathe for a while. "What stuff would that be?" he asked.

  Maybe Daurenja hadn't heard him. "Obviously," he said, "that got me thinking. As soon as I was on my feet again-I told my partner I'd tripped and fallen into the furnace, and that's how I got all burned up; I don't think he believed me, but that couldn't be helped-I set about trying to do it again, on purpose, as it were. It took me a while. Where I went wrong to start with was assuming that it was the pounding that set it off. In fact, it must've been a spark or something, that first time. What actually gets it going is plain ordinary fire; a taper or a spill. Once I'd figured that out, it was just a matter of getting the proportions right. And keeping it to myself, of course."

  "You didn't want your partner to find out."

  "Well, of course not." Daurenja frowned. "I'd come to realize he wasn't to be trusted. All my life people have cheated me, taken advantage. Once I'd worked out the proportions of the mix, I left him; I didn't need his workshop anymore, and in any case, he was getting on my nerves. I think he believed I'd found the formula for the colors we'd been looking for, and I was keeping it to myself. There were other problems too, but I won't bore you with them. Personal stuff."

  He was silent for a moment. "So you left," Ziani prompted.

  Daurenja nodded. "I set up a little workshop of my own," he said. "I had money, so it wasn't a problem. What you've got to understand about the mixture I discovered," he went on, "is the extraordinary power it produces when it flares up. The first time it happened, one chunk of the stone mortar was driven an inch deep into a cob wall. It's like a volcano; a little volcano you can set off whenever you want, and if you could only contain it…" He stopped; his voice had risen, and his hands were clenched. "If you could contain it," he said, "in a pot, or a bell, so that all the force went in one direction only…" He looked up; his eyes seemed very wide and round. "You worked in the ordnance factory," he said, "you know about the scorpions and mangonels and torsion engines that can throw a five-hundredweight stone a quarter-mile. If only I could contain this-this thing that happens when the mixture flares up; if I could build a sort of portable volcano, something you could carry about and point at a wall or a tower, it'd make all your Mezentine engines seem like toys. You could crack open cities like walnuts."

  Ziani breathed out long and slow. "You've tried, of course," he said.

  Daurenja laughed, like a dog barking. "I've tried all right," he said. "I tried stone mortars, but they shatter like glass. I tried casting a mortar shape, only in metal. I used brass first, then bronze, then iron. I think the problem is something to do with the way the metal cools down." His words were coming out in a rush now, a fast, smooth flow like lava. "Because it's got to be thick, to contain the force, I think that by the time the metal on the outside has taken the cold, the inside's still hot, and this causes little flaws and fractures; either that, or there's air bubbles, I don't know. All I do know is that I've tried everything, and every time it either cracks or shatters. I've lost count of how many times it's nearly killed me. In the end, I reached the point where I couldn't think what to do next. Everything I know about casting in metal, everything I could find out, none of it was any good. I trie
d casting a solid trunk and boring out a hole in the middle; I built a lathe ten feet long, with a three-inch cutting bar. Still no good. I nearly gave up."

  He looked away. It was as though he'd just said, I died.

  "And then you heard of me," Ziani said.

  "Yes." Suddenly Daurenja stood up; and Ziani wondered what on earth had possessed him to attack this man, because he was as full of strength and speed and anger as a wolf or a boar. "I heard about you: a Mezentine, foreman of the ordnance factory-if anybody knew how to do it, you would. It was like a miracle, like something out of a story, when the gods came down from heaven. I knew I had to have you." He stopped. "I knew I had to have you help me, because the Mezentines do the most amazing castings, great big bells and statues, the frames of machines; you've got ways of blowing a furnace so you can pour iron as easy as bronze. I'd even thought of going to the Guilds myself, except I knew they'd take it away from me and make it their own, and I can't have that. But I can trust you; you're an outsider too, like me, you've been thrown out of your home and persecuted."

  (He didn't say, Just like I was; he didn't have to.)

  "I'm sorry," he went on-Ziani could see the effort that went into calming himself down. "I thought, first I'd prove to you that I'm not just some lunatic who thinks he's figured out how to do magic. I'd prove that I'm what I say I am, an engineer, a craftsman, so you'd take me seriously. I heard all about what you did in the defense of Civitas Eremiae; how you built the scorpions, practically from nothing. I knew you'd need an assistant, someone you could rely on-an apprentice, really. And then, when we'd come to know and trust one another…"

  Ziani looked at him. For a moment, he was afraid that it would be like looking into a mirror.

  "I know," Daurenja went on. "I'm good with brass and iron, but I've never got the hang of dealing with people. I never seem to be able to make them understand me, and then problems develop. I suppose it's been the same with you, and these people here. I thought when I saved that woman, during the hunt, when the Mezentines attacked… It seemed like such a wonderful opportunity, to get the Duke on my side; and then, when we need to ask him for help-money and materials; and he's got a war to fight, it couldn't be better from that point of view. I don't know; if I'd told you earlier, maybe. But I wanted to make sure."

  Ziani was quiet for a long time. He knew Daurenja was hiding something, and that no amount of violence or manipulation would get it out of him; the question was whether it was important, or whether it was just slag on the top of the melt. He wondered too about the serendipity of it all. To crack open cities like walnuts; he already knew how to do that, even if this strange and unpleasant man could show him a more efficient way. He was a refinement, an improvement, but an unnecessary one-a departure from Specification, and in orthodox doctrine, wasn't an unnecessary improvement inevitably an abomination?

  On the other hand, he needed a good foreman.

  "Casting's not the answer," he said eventually. "All castings are brittle, you'll never get round that." In the corner of the shop, he caught sight of the slack-tub; just an old stave barrel, half full of black, oily water. "You don't want a mortar," he said, "or a bell. You want a barrel."

  16

  "It was a success, I grant you," Boioannes was saying, in that loud, carrying voice of his. "Twenty-seven confirmed dead, including the Chancellor. I concede that it was well planned and efficiently executed. What I'm asking, however, is whether it was a good idea or a bad one."

  The meeting had already overrun by an hour. By the look of it, someone else had booked the cloister garden for a meeting or a reception; Psellus had seen a man's head bobbing round a pillar with a look of desperate impatience on his face-the establishments clerk, probably, too timid to dare interrupt Necessary Evil, but petrified that he'd be blamed for double-booking. The Republic's bureaucracy ran on the principle of symmetry; for every blunder, one responsible official. He sympathized, but found it hard to spare much compassion for someone else. Never wise to be too liberal with a scarce commodity you may well need for yourself.

  "In order to assess success or failure," Boioannes went on, "it's always helpful to know what the object of the exercise actually was. Fortuitous incidental benefits are all very well, but it's my experience that every time you stoop to pick up a quarter in the street, a thaler falls out of your pocket. Bearing in mind what we stand to lose by this action, I feel we have a right to know what the precise objective was. If the intention was to assassinate Duke Valens, for example, we failed."

  "That wasn't the primary target," someone said; Psellus couldn't see who, because Steuthes, the loaf-headed director of resources, was blocking his view. "The purpose of the mission was to kill the abominator, Vaatzes."

  Boioannes hesitated, just for a moment. It was like watching a waterfall freeze for a split second. "Now we're getting somewhere," he went on. "And did we get him?"

  "The reports are inconclusive." Whoever the speaker was, he didn't sound in the least intimidated by the full force of Boioannes' personality. Probably he could juggle white-hot ingots with his bare hands, too. "We're investigating, naturally, but our lines of communication are necessarily quite fragile, it doesn't do to push too hard. As soon as we get an answer, I promise you'll be the first to know."

  Psellus frowned. He knew for a fact that that hadn't been the reason for the cavalry raid, because he'd been told about it, well in advance. It was inconceivable that he knew something Maris Boioannes didn't. And if he did, then why? The answer to that, he was sure, wouldn't be anything good.

  "In any event," the hidden speaker continued, "as you said yourself just now, the exercise has fully justified the expenditure of resources. Just as we're about to launch a major offensive, the Vadani are confused, terrified, practically leaderless. They know we can strike them at will, in the very heart of their territory. They know that they have no friends. Thanks to their own acts of sabotage, they've lost their principal source of funding. The fact is, we're poised to win a victory that will end this war, quickly, cheaply, ostentatiously. Caviling over details is a pretty sterile exercise, in the circumstances."

  Smelling politics, Psellus allowed his attention to drift. Had they really managed to kill Ziani Vaatzes? He doubted it, somehow. Something told him that if Vaatzes was dead, he'd have felt it by now. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking; because, he realized, he didn't want Vaatzes to die in a distant country, with all the answers to all the questions locked inside his head.

  The thought made him want to smile, though long practice froze the muscles of his face. Here in the middle of the great affairs of the Republic-war, peace, increased prosperity or ruinous expense-all he was concerned about was scratching his own intellectual itches; and all because he was superfluous, a makeweight in Necessary Evil of whom nothing was demanded or expected. If I dropped dead tomorrow, he thought, it wouldn't make any difference to anybody. Which, in a very real sense, is true freedom.

  "Assuming Vaatzes is still alive…" The phrase snagged his attention like a fisherman's lure, but he was too late to catch the rest of the sentence. Someone else's voice, but nobody he knew. Nearly a year now as a member of this committee, and still he only knew a handful of the members by sight. Each time he attended a meeting, most of the people were strangers.

  "It's quite true to say that Vaatzes was the cause of the war," yet another unknown voice was saying; Psellus managed to locate its source, an improbably old man with thin, wispy white hair. "To say that he is still the reason for it, or even a significant factor, would be hopelessly oversimplistic. The war has moved on, as all living, growing things do. What's it about now? Well, the answer to that is: many things. It's about regaining the prestige and respect we squandered when our forces were slaughtered at Civitas Eremiae. It's about the silver deposits in Vadani territory; it's about finding some sort of exit from the miserable, draining occupation of Eremia; it's about the delicate balance between outgoings from Consolidated Fund and increased income for the Fo
undrymen and the other Guilds engaged in war work, as against those struggling to maintain productivity and output in general commerce. I put it to you that the main effect of this war is to exalt the Foundrymen at the expense of all the other Guilds, regardless of the overall effect on the well-being of the Republic; and unless this short-sighted, selfish agenda is abandoned at the earliest possible…"

  More politics. It was almost disconcerting to listen to so much truth presented with so little conviction. Extraordinary, when you stopped to think about it. All these people knew the truth about the war; but, instead of trying to find some way to reverse or at least mitigate the disaster, they were cheerfully serving it, like keepers put in charge of some captive wild animal. There were good reasons for that, of course. To abandon the war, or even suggest that it should be abandoned, would be political suicide-because everybody in politics had to maintain at all costs the notion that the Republic was invincible, its resources inexhaustible, its doctrines irreproachable, even though they all knew (everybody knew) that none of these was true. It was a bit like the doctrine of Specification itself; the denial of any possibility of improvement, even though everybody knew that any design, however good, can always be bettered; even though the Guilds themselves made an explicit exception where armaments were concerned. What a wonderful magic politics is, Psellus thought; it can recognize the truth and still override it, providing you can get consensus among the people who matter.

  Lofty stuff; way above his head. Instead, he went back to thinking about Falier, the foreman of the ordnance factory. The new foreman; except that he wasn't all that new anymore. By now, he'd be married to Vaatzes' wife. Would it advance the war effort, he wondered, to write to Ziani and let him know? By all accounts, by the evidence of the homemade book, Vaatzes had loved her very much. They had so few weapons that could reach him; love was one they hadn't tried yet, but it would be relatively easy, relatively cheap. Why send a squadron of cavalry if you can send a letter instead? For a moment, he pictured a tightly folded square of parchment being loaded onto the slider of a scorpion and aimed at the walls of Civitas Vadanis.