Evil for Evil e-2

by K. J. Parker

  "Of course," the soldier continued smoothly, "you don't have to come if you don't want to. But I'm sure you do really. Your civic duty, and all that."

  She lowered her head slightly. "So, is it true, then, what they were saying? Psellus has got Boioannes' old job."

  She'd managed to surprise him there, at least. "You're pretty well up in current affairs, aren't you?"

  "My husband was talking about it last night."

  He nodded. "Most women wouldn't even have heard of Commissioner Boioannes. Commissioner as was, of course. He's a wanted man now."

  "And Psellus is the new boss?"

  He shrugged. "They don't bother telling me stuff like that. They just tell me to go and pick up women." Leer; all men do it. "I prefer it that way," he said. "Never did understand politics."

  It was a pity, she decided as she drove through the streets on the way to the Guildhall, that the only times she got to ride in a carriage were when she was under arrest. Under other circumstances there'd be a great deal of pleasure in looking down on the tops of the heads of people she passed, watching familiar landmarks whirl by at an unnatural pace. As it was, she couldn't enjoy it. Everything good gets spoiled, sooner or later.

  Round the side of the Guildhall rather than in through the front door this time; none of the usual waiting on benches in corridors, but straight through into the sort of room she hadn't believed existed. The walls were paneled with dark wood, almost black, deeply and rather crudely carved with leaves, flowers, birds and vines tumbling with fruit. The floors were tiled; not the austere black and white checkerboard you'd expect to find, but red clay tiles glazed in warm, bright colors. Everything was old and ornate; and the plaster ceiling was painted with an extraordinary scene which she simply couldn't make out. For a start, all the people were naked, but it wasn't that kind of painting at all. The men were excessively muscular, the women were rounded and plump, and-no two ways about it-their skins were pink, like the savages. The obvious conclusion was that this wasn't the work of the Painters' and Sculptors' Guild. The pink skins, together with the feeling of extreme age, meant that all this stuff dated back to before the Mezentines came here from the old country, and the painting, the carving and the floor tiles were all the work of the savages, the ancestors of the Eremians and the Vadani, who'd lived here before the Republic was founded.

  She wasn't the least bit interested in history, let alone art; but since she had nothing else to occupy her mind with except fear, she wondered about it. Why hadn't all this stuff been torn down years ago, and replaced with proper decorations, neatly done, in accordance with the appropriate specification? Right here, in the Guildhall itself, you'd think they'd know better. It couldn't be because they liked this primitive stuff better than genuine Guild work. Maybe it was there to remind them of how close they were to the savages, in both space and time. Or maybe they meant to get rid of it but hadn't got around to it yet. From what she knew of the Guilds, that was the likeliest explanation. Somewhere there must be a Redecoration Committee, still striving to iron out a compromise between the agendas of the different factions: the conservatives, who favored plain beech panels and whitewash, versus the radicals, hell-bent on sweet chestnut flooring and hessian wall-hangings.

  The door opened, and someone she didn't know came in. The fact that it wasn't Psellus disconcerted her, but the man himself looked harmless enough; a short, round, balding pudding of a man in his early thirties, with little fat fingers tipped with almost circular nails. He sat down on one side of a long, thick-topped black table, and waved her to a chair on the other side. At least her chair was recognizably Mezentine: the Pattern 56, straight-backed with plain turned legs and no armrest. Her cousin Lano made the seats for them at the furniture factory down by the river.

  "My name is Dandilo Zeuxis," the human pudding said, in exactly the sort of high voice she'd have expected from him. "I'm Commissioner Psellus' deputy private secretary. The Commissioner can't be here himself, unfortunately."

  "Is it true?" she interrupted. "Is he the new boss now?"

  Maybe he was deaf. "The Commissioner has instructed me to ask you if you can shed any light on the whereabouts of your previous husband's toolbox. Apparently, although it was listed in the inventory of house contents compiled by the original investigating officers, there's no record that it was ever impounded for evidence or removed from the premises at the time of his arrest. Curiously, there's no mention of it in the later inventory taken before the trial itself. Since the box appears to have gone missing at some point between Foreman Vaatzes' arrest and his trial-during which time, of course, Foreman Vaatzes himself wouldn't have had access to it-we were wondering if you or a member of your family removed it."

  She glanced at him for a moment, but it was like looking into a mirror. "Have you checked the factory?" she said.

  He glanced down at some papers on the table in front of him; the way he leaned forward suggested he was a bit short-sighted. "Yes," he said. "All areas of the factory to which Foreman Vaatzes had access have been thoroughly searched."

  "Oh." She shrugged. "I thought maybe one of the people he worked with might've borrowed it. Needed a special tool for a job or something."

  He seemed to be thinking for a few seconds; then he checked his papers again. "Unlikely," he said. "I have here the list of items contained in the box at the time of the original search. Would you care to see it?"

  She gave him a big smile. "Sorry," she said, "I can't read. Also, it wouldn't make any sense to me even if I could. I don't know anything about tools and stuff."

  He nodded. "Well," he said, "looking at this list it all seems to be fairly straightforward, ordinary hand tools, nothing that wouldn't be on the open racks at the factory. It would appear that Foreman Vaatzes kept all his specialist tools at work. On the list there's just a hand-drill, various files, a hacksaw and an assortment of blades, that sort of thing. Nothing you'd expect anyone to go out of his way to borrow."

  "I see," she said. "So, if it's all just ordinary stuff, why are you so interested in it?"

  He laughed; and then the shape of his face reverted straightaway to its previous setting. "You can't remember anything about it, then?" he said. "Can you tell me where it was usually kept?"

  "Of course. Under the bench in his study."

  "You don't remember if you happened to move it anywhere? When you were cleaning, perhaps, or tidying up."

  She shook her head. "He didn't like me going in there," she said.

  "Yes, but after he'd gone. Maybe you took the opportunity to give the study a thorough tidying."

  "I don't think so," she said firmly. "I had other things on my mind apart from spring-cleaning."

  He seemed to play with that thought for a moment, like a dog chewing on an old shoe. "Many women would use housework as a way of taking their mind off something like that," he said. "Familiar routine work is quite therapeutic under such circumstances, so I'm given to understand."

  He was like one of those burrs you catch on your sleeve and can't seem to get rid of. "Not me," she said. "Maybe I'd be able to help better if I knew what it was you're looking for."

  Gone deaf again. "When your husband was making things at home," he went on, "did he stay in the study or did he use other parts of the house? The kitchen table, maybe."

  "No. He was very considerate like that."

  "Indeed." She must have said something that puzzled him, or else failed to say something he'd been expecting to hear. He rubbed the tip of his small, round nose against the heel of his hand. "Apart from the toolbox and the rack on the study wall, was there anywhere else in the house where he regularly stored tools?"

  "No. At least, not that I knew about."

  "Do you know if he was in the habit of bringing tools home with him and then taking them back when he'd finished with them?"

  She shook her head. "Wouldn't have thought so," she said. "There weren't any pockets big enough in his work clothes to carry anything much."

  "Wha
t about friends, neighbors? Did he borrow tools from them?"

  "Usually it was more the other way round. People would borrow his things and then forget to give them back." She scowled at him. "You still haven't told me what all this has got to do with defending the city from the savages."

  "Was there anybody you can think of who borrowed something shortly before he was arrested?"

  "No."

  "You can't remember who it was, or there wasn't anybody?"

  "Both."

  "Your husband, Falier. Did he borrow tools from Foreman Vaatzes?"

  She thought for a moment. "Yes," she said, "now and again. Not very often."

  "Does he bring tools home from work?"

  "No. He doesn't work at home like Ziani used to."

  He narrowed his eyes into a frown; then a fit of coughing (which reminded her of a small dog barking) monopolized him for quite a while. Shaking like a building in an earthquake, he groped for the water jug and a plain earthenware beaker, but the fit was so ferocious that he couldn't keep steady enough to pour. She thought about doing it for him, but decided not to. When he'd finally stopped trying to tear himself apart from the inside, and had drunk three cupfuls of water in quick succession, he blinked at her like a fish out of water, and nodded. "Thank you," he whispered. "You've been very helpful."

  "Is that it? Can I go?"

  He frowned. "If you wouldn't mind sparing us a little more of your time. Please wait here." He stood up, one chubby paw pressed to his chest. "Someone will be along to see you very soon."

  He left, and the paneled, heavily molded and studded door closed behind him with the softest and firmest of clicks. She sat still and quiet for a minute or so; five, ten, and then she lost track. The windows were behind her, and for some reason she felt reluctant to get out of her chair and move, even for something as innocuous as looking out of the window to see where the sun was in the sky. After what felt like an hour, her back started to hurt. She wriggled, but it didn't help. She turned round as far as she could without actually getting up, but the window was just beyond the edge of her vision.

  They must know something, she thought. But they can't know about the letter. They were at the house when I came back from handing it over. They couldn't have known I was going to write it, because I didn't know I was going to until Falier told me about… She shivered. There was still plenty of time before Moritsa needed to be fetched from school, but she couldn't help worrying. She told herself to calm down. She'd been in worse situations before, and without the letter there wasn't anything they could prove.

  Had that man's coughing fit been genuine? Hard to believe it wasn't; in which case, maybe the delay was simply because he'd gone somewhere to lie down and drink honey and hot water until he felt better. As for all that stuff about a toolbox, she couldn't make head or tail of it. They must've known she wouldn't know anything about tools, so why had they asked her?

  Didn't matter. No need to understand, so long as she kept up a solid defense, kept her head and didn't contradict herself. The good thing about the toolbox questions was that she could tell the truth; so much less effort than making things up.

  The door opened, and a soldier (armor but no weapons) came in. He glowered at her as though she was making the place look untidy, and said, "If you'll follow me." Her legs were stiff and wobbly from sitting still for so long.

  He led her up a huge, wide stone staircase, along a broad, high-ceilinged corridor that seemed to go on forever, up another staircase, along some smaller corridors to a dead end with a small door in it. He knocked and waited before opening it and beckoning her in. Once she was inside, he shut it behind her. She listened, but couldn't hear the sound of his boot-heels clumping away across the tiles.

  This room was much smaller, about the size of her kitchen. There was a plain board table, and one four-square Type 19 chair, which she sat on. Nothing else. The light came in through a skylight, what there was of it. No fireplace; she felt cold. The man who'd designed the room had done his job well. You couldn't sit in it on your own for more than a minute or so without realizing that you were in a lot of trouble, which presumably was the intention. She'd heard somewhere that architects design buildings with all sorts of mathematical calculations; ratios of height to width, that sort of thing. Was there a special sum you could do to figure out the most depressing possible dimensions for a room? If so, there'd be a specification somewhere in the Guilds' books, like there was for everything else. All in all, this place made it very hard to believe in the existence of a concept such as love, even though almost certainly that was what had got her here. A room like this could kill love, like the clever jars the silk-makers use for killing silkworms; seal love in the jar and it quickly, painlessly suffocates, leaving the valuable remains undamaged.

  When the door opened again, it startled her. She sat up, and saw a tall, slim, rather beautiful young man, her own age or maybe a year younger. He smiled at her and said, "If you'd care to follow me."

  "What's going on?" she asked, but he didn't seem to have heard her. He was holding the door open for her, the smile still completely incongruous on his face, like a scorpion in the salad bowl. She got up, and he led the way; along different corridors, down different stairs, through an enormous, deserted hall, out into a cloister surrounding a garden.

  "We'll take the short cut," the young man said, with a conspiratorial smile, and led her across the lawn, past a fountain and a small arbor of flowering cherries to a little, low door in a massive wall, so high she couldn't see the top of it. The young man searched in his pocket and found a key; it was stiff in the lock and he had to have several goes at it before he got it open.

  "Thank you for your time," he said.

  On the other side of the gate she could see a street. In fact, she recognized it: Drapers' Way, leading to the long row of warehouses beside the mill-leet for the brass foundry. She hesitated.

  "Can I go?" she said.

  He smiled again. "Of course."

  There was something scary about the gate; she could feel herself shying at it, like a nervous horse. The nice young man simply stood there, no trace of impatience, as though he was some kind of mechanical door-opening device cunningly made in the shape of a human being. If I close my eyes, she thought; if I close my eyes and run…

  "Excuse me," the nice young man said.

  "Yes?"

  He looked more than a little shy. "I know I shouldn't ask this," he said, "but is it true? Are you really the ex-wife of Vaatzes the abominator?"

  "Yes. Didn't you know that?"

  He looked at her for a long time; like an engineer who sees a rival's secret prototype, and tries to memorize every detail of it, so he can go away and build a copy. "Thank you for your time," he said.

  Later, she picked Moritsa up from school. She was in a sulk because she hadn't done well in her spinning test.

  "Your own fault. You should've practiced, like I told you to."

  "I hate practicing. It's boring."

  She made Falier's dinner. There was the leftover mutton in the meat safe; she'd been saving it for the end of the week, but it didn't look like it'd keep till then. Leeks, barley and a few beans to go with it. The bread wasn't quite stale yet. When he got home, she asked him if anything had happened at work. He looked at her and said, "No, should it have?" He was in one of his moods.

  When he'd gone to bed, she sat in front of the fire, watching it burn down.

  28

  At least the Aram Chantat weren't vegetarians, as the late Duke Orsea had believed. On the contrary, if it moved (but not fast enough to escape) they ate it. Sand-grouse and quail weren't too bad, but the funny little birds they served up spit-roasted on arrow shafts just tasted of gristle and grit. She reckoned they were thrushes, but he inclined to the view that they were too small for that. Some kind of starling, was his guess.

  And a wonderful improvement on nothing at all, no question about that. To begin with, the gratitude was so thick in the air, walking t
hrough the camp was like swimming in mud. There was so much to be grateful for: the Aram Chantat had saved them from the Mezentines, fed them, given them warm blankets for the freezing-cold nights, brought up ox-carts for them to ride in so they wouldn't have to walk the rest of the way across the desert; they'd bound up and dressed their wounds, cured their heatstroke and dysentery with revolting little drinks in tiny clay beakers, even buried the dead in an efficient and respectful manner. The one thing they didn't do was talk, if it could possibly be avoided; but nobody seemed to mind that, at least to start with.

  They made an exception in Valens' case. When the convoy reached the edge of the desert (at least, they assumed that was what it was, because of the arrow-straight, deeply rutted road they came to, and the fact that the stunted thorn bushes were slightly closer together), they were met by a coach; an extraordinarily, breathtakingly ornate coach, that looked as though it was on fire until you got close enough to see that every square inch of it was covered in gold leaf. Looking at it hurt the eyes, so instead you gazed at the eight immaculately perfect milk-white horses, or the twenty escort riders, covered like their horses from head to foot in gilded scale armor, apparently unaware of the murderous heat. Out of the burning carriage came a prodigiously tall young man in a pure white robe and gold slippers. He approached the head of the column and snapped at the captain of the Aram Chantat escort, who murmured something back in a voice so soft that none of the Vadani could make out what he'd said. But the vision in white must've understood enough, because he walked slowly and directly to Valens, ignoring the existence of everybody else, and dipped his head in the slightest of bows.

  "Duke Valens," he said, in a perfect received-Mezentine accent. "Perhaps you would care to come with me."

  It would have been a monstrous sin to deny this perfect creature anything. For some reason, none of the Vadani showed any inclination to go with him. Painfully aware of his filthy clothes and unshaven face, Valens nodded and followed, heading toward the glowing, blinding coach. When he was five yards away from it, two little girls in white smocks scuttled forward from the shadow of the wheels and unrolled a magnificent purple carpet, which the godlike man in white stepped on without looking down. A folding step evolved out of the side of the carriage; simultaneously, a cloth-of-gold awning leaned silently out over the coach door.