Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  A voice was murmuring overhead. It was talking. It was talking to him. 'How are you feeling?' it said.

  He didn't know, of course. He took a moment to gather the necessary information, then he opened his eyes.

  The white man didn't seem to want an answer after all, because he went on, 'My name is Miel Ducas. What's yours?'

  Excellent question; don't know. He went to the very back of his mind and dragged it out. 'Captain Beltista Eiconodoulus,' he said. He shouldn't have told them that, of course.

  'You're going to be all right,' the man called Miel Ducas told him. 'I'm afraid they couldn't save the leg, though. I'm sorry.'

  Save the leg? What was he talking about? His leg was still hurting, of course, but what did it matter, since they were going to kill him? He felt confusion pressing on him like a pillow over his face.

  'As soon as you're fit to travel we're sending you back,' Miel Ducas went on. 'We'd like you to take a message to your commanding officer. We won't bother with that now. You get some sleep, if you can.'

  All the confusion welled up into a bubble, a blister; he tried to sit up, failed, and heard himself say, 'What happened?'

  Miel Ducas sort of grinned. 'You got ambushed,' he said. 'You very nearly didn't, mind. We had scouts out tracking you up the Butter Pass, but then you went diving off the road into the shale and they lost you completely. We only managed to pick you up later, when you lit some fires.'

  Fires. Ah yes, roasting the wild sheep. But we had no choice, we were starving.

  'Anyhow,' Miel Ducas went on, 'you were obliging enough to come to the lure in the end, and thank you very much for the scorpions. With those and what we've already got, we reckon we can defend this city against anything you can throw at us. We'd have liked a bit more in the way of ammunition, of course, but, well; gift horses' teeth, and all that.'

  He didn't understand what that meant, but he couldn't be bothered to ask. Instead, he took a moment to look at his surroundings. The bed he was lying on was in the middle of the floor of a circular room-where do you get those? In the turrets of castles. There was a straight-backed, carved oak chair, dark with age and assiduous polishing, and a door, and a narrow window. Miel Ducas looked at him for a moment, then went on: 'You've been out of it for a week, believe it or not. During that time we used your scorpions, with their sweet little carriages, to attack the main column you were supposed to meet up with. We ran out of bolts before we were able to get them all, but the latest reports say we cleared about seven thousand men, which isn't bad going for a race of backward mountain savages, don't you think? Anyhow, what's left of them have scuttled back down the pass; they took their wounded but left the scorpion bolts, which shows your people have no idea about priorities. Anyway,' he went on, leaning back in his chair a little, 'that's enough for now. You get some rest, and I'll be back to give you our message later on.'

  When Miel Ducas had gone, he stretched out full length and shut his eyes; he felt dizzy and uncomfortable, and his head was aching. Apparently he wasn't going to die after all. It should have been a moment of sheer joy but it wasn't. He was going to live; they were sending him back to Mezentia. They'd cut off his leg.

  Carefully he sat up. There was a blanket over him, which he twitched away; it fell on the floor, where he wouldn't be able to retrieve it. He hadn't realised before that he had no clothes on. He could see his thigh, down to the knee. It was wrapped in bandages, and there was nothing beyond it. Extraordinary.

  Instinctively, he tried to wiggle his toes. The left side worked fine. He frowned. It was like when he'd been lying awkwardly and woken up with his leg completely numb; unless he grabbed it with his hand, he couldn't move it. There was actually nothing there. It was a bizarre feeling, like something out of a dream.

  Now what? He tried to imagine what it was going to be like, but he couldn't. Soon his leg would stop being numb and he'd have a ferocious attack of pins and needles. He concentrated. Well, for one thing, he wouldn't be able to walk.

  Fear choked him like hands tight around his throat. He curled up in a ball and for a long time all he could do was try and fight off the waves of terror and despair. If only they'd killed him; he was ready for that, it would've been no big deal. This kind of mutilation, though, that was far worse. Better death than life as a cripple. (He was making gestures, striking poses; even while he raged and cringed against the horror of it, a calm voice in the back of his mind was making lists-things I can still do, things I can't-and figuring out ways of coping. Meanwhile, the rest of him relaxed into the comfort of despair: as soon as I'm out of here, I'll get hold of some poison, or I'll just refuse to eat. Thinking about killing himself helped him calm down, because it was one thing he knew he'd never do.)

  He was lost in these thoughts when the door opened again. He froze, suddenly aware that he hadn't got any clothes on. The newcomer came in and looked down at him. He wasn't white, like the others; his skin was the normal colour. An ambassador maybe, or someone who'd been sent to negotiate for his release, or supervise a prisoner exchange? Highly unlikely that he'd be here on his own; he'd be escorted, there'd be guards with him.

  'Who are you?' he heard himself say.

  The newcomer smiled. 'I'm Ziani Vaatzes,' he said.

  Eiconodoulus knew who he was. 'They told us you're dead,' he said.

  Vaatzes raised an eyebrow. 'Is that right?' he said. 'Well, I'm not. In fact, I'd be grateful if you would set the record straight when you go back to the City. I'm most definitely still alive. Furthermore, the scorpions that shot up your column were built by me. Maybe you'd be kind enough to emphasise that when you make your report.'

  'All right,' Eiconodoulus said.

  'Thank you.' Vaatzes dipped his head in mock courtesy. 'Was that one of my bolts?' he asked, nodding towards the bandaged stump.

  Eiconodoulus shook his head. 'My horse fell on me,' he said.

  'Really? What dreadful bad luck. Infection, I suppose. When you get back to the City, ask to be taken to the Coppersmiths' Guild. Don't ask me why, but the artificial limb-makers count as coppersmiths for the purposes of registration. Anyhow, they'll fix you up. It's amazing, the quality of their work. I wouldn't be surprised if they had you walking again, eventually. One model they make, for above-the-knee cases like yours, it's got a joint so it bends just like the real thing; and there's a really neat little spring-and-catch arrangement that locks the joint up when you put weight on it, and releases it when you take the weight off again. Once you've learned to sort of throw the false leg forward as you move, you can actually get along at close on normal walking speed, though I understand it can't be used on stairs or anything like that.'

  'I'll do that,' Eiconodoulus said. He nearly added, 'Thank you', but decided against it. Instead he asked, 'Is it true? What they told me, about the attack on the main column.'

  Vaatzes nodded. 'At least seven thousand killed,' he said. 'They ran out of bolts. Unfortunately, the ones I made don't work with the genuine article. But they're interchangeable the other way round-my scorpions can loose genuine ordnance bolts-so I'm changing the pattern a little. By the time you attack again, we'll have a good supply'

  Eiconodoulus frowned. 'Do you want me to tell them that too?'

  'You can if you like,' Vaatzes replied. 'But that's not why I'm here. I want you to take a message for me, a private message, for a friend of mine. He's bound to be in close contact with the main army, he's foreman of the ordnance factory, so someone'll take it to him. Falier, his name is.'

  'Falier,' Eiconodoulus repeated.

  'You've got it. And by the way, it'll be well worth your while, trust me. It'll make it possible for your side to win the war.'

  Eiconodoulus was sure he hadn't heard that right. 'What did you just say?'

  'This message,' Vaatzes said, 'to my friend Falier. It'll tell him how to get past our defences.' He grinned. 'It's called treachery,' he said. 'It's frowned on in some quarters, but it saves lives and gets results. Now, I want you to listen ve
ry carefully, because this is important.' He paused and furrowed his brow. 'You're looking at me strangely,' he said. 'You do want your side to win the war, don't you? I mean, it'll be good for you, not to mention getting your own back, for the leg and everything.'

  '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 callipers. 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.

  Chapter Nineteen

  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 defence 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 defence 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 favour of the Colonel, the defence committee and the Guiding Commitee 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 boiler-man.

  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 honourable scars. King Fashion had a certain amount to say about the proper presentation of scars honourably 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 cuts and gashes to the forearms. Where scars were visible in normal dress, however, it was permissible to choose lighter colours 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 f
rom 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 as 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.