Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  She was losing control of herself, she could feel it, and he'd never seen her do that before. Of course not. He hadn't been there, the second time her father had sent her away, and they had had to drag her out of the house. She'd clung to the doors and the newel-post of the stairs with both hands; her nurse had had to prise her locked fingers apart.

  'Where could we go?' he said, in a tiny voice, strained through bewilderment, horror and disgust. 'There isn't anywhere. Nobody'd have us.'

  'They don't have to know it's us,' she spat at him. 'Come on, who the hell is going to recognise you and me? We could go…' She hesitated. 'We could go to the Vadani. It's the last place anybody would think to look for us. I could get a red dress.'

  He grinned feebly. 'You're too young to be a trader.'

  'My sister's a bloody trader,' she said, far more forcefully than made sense. 'She's over there now. She'll help us, she's got pots of money. Maybe even the Duke, Valens.' A tiny hesitation, as though she had to think before she remembered his name. 'I don't know, maybe it'd be expedient for him to shelter us. Doesn't matter. I'd rather sleep in doorways than be dead, wouldn't you?'

  In the fairy-tale, the young huntsman had loved his exotic bride very much; but when her lovely face melted and stretched and shrunk into the wolf's mask, he'd grabbed his falchion from the wall and cut off her head with one swift stroke. It had never occurred to him that he might be able to live with the wolf, who probably (on balance) loved him very much. That possibility hadn't occurred to her when she first heard the story; probably to nobody else who'd ever been told it. Not enough room in one cottage for two predators.

  'Actually,' he said, 'no.'

  'Orsea!' (And she wanted to laugh, because she realised she sounded just like her mother.) 'That's just posturing. Besides,' she went on, trying to pull back out of the muzzle and the long ears and the round black eyes, 'if you really want to do what's best for your people, you've got to stay alive. Once the Mezentines have gone away, they'll need you more than ever.'

  'The few that're left.'

  'Yes, that's right, the few that manage to hide or run away; but you can help them, you can't help the rest of them, they'll be dead.' Her head was splitting; she could hardly hear herself think. And she wasn't putting the argument across terribly well. It had come too late, like cavalry returning from looting the enemy camp to find that the battle's been lost while they were away. 'If you love me,' she said.

  He looked at her. He wasn't at bay any more, he'd just given up. Sometimes an animal does that, according to King Fashion; he stands and looks at you, and that's the time to jump in and kill him. A heartbeat or so before she asked the question, the answer would have been yes (shouted so loud, with such furious intensity, they could've heard it in Mezentia). Now, because of the question, the answer would be, on balance, no.

  'Fine,' she said, and walked out.

  Boiled down to productivity figures, which was how he liked it, things were going very well. Workforce increased by forty per cent, productivity up sixty per cent; they were actually turning out finished scorpions faster than the ordnance factory at home. Not that it could last, because pretty soon they'd run out of timber and quarter plate and spring steel and three-eighths rod-by his most recent calculations, ten days before the city fell-but that didn't matter. It wasn't as though he was planning on building a career here.

  With three day shifts and two night shifts, the place was never quiet. That was something he missed, the peace and solitude of his room at the top of the tower, when everybody had gone home and he had the place to himself. There was a different kind of solitude now, but it had no nutritional value. Still, it wouldn't be for long.

  Instead of the tower room (too many people knew to look for him there) he'd taken to hiding in the small charcoal store. Which was ludicrous; he was in charge of the place, it was his factory, he had no business hiding anywhere from anybody. But there were times when he needed to think, work out figures, deal with small modifications to the design, improvements or fixes. Also, he was sick to death of Eremians (so pale, so stupid).

  After several false starts he'd contrived to smuggle a chair down there. He was working on a plan to get a table to go with it, and maybe even a better lamp, but it was still in its early stages. For now, he had the chair to sit in, and the wan light of a reed wick floating in thrice-reused tallow. Strip off the garbage, and what more could a man ask?

  He knew the answer to that, and he was working on it (but all in good time). The immediate concern was the wire-drawing plates, which were going to have to be either refurbished or replaced within the next three days. It was a ridiculous, fatuous thing to have to think about. In the real world, in the City, all he'd need to do was send a requisition down to the stores for two eighteen-by-tens of inch plate. But there was no such thing as inch plate in Civitas Eremiae. Instead, he'd have to take six men off the forge and set them to bashing down a bloom of iron by hand. Six man-days wasted, and that was before they started trying to punch the holes.

  If only we weren't at war with the Mezentines, we could send out for inch plate from the Foundrymen's; and in the City, when they said inch, they meant inch, not inch-and-a-thirty-second-in-places-and-twenty -nine-thirty-seconds-in-others. Really, he was doing the world a service, because a nation that can't read a simple calliper isn't fit to survive.

  But… He scowled into the darkness. A wide tolerance, a whole sixteenth of an inch of abomination didn't actually matter in this case, because a wire-plate is just a primitive chunk of iron with a hole in it (he wanted it to matter, but it didn't). Even so, six man-days lost would cost the defenders a scorpion. One scorpion could loose twelve bolts a minute, seven hundred bolts an hour. At an estimated thirty per cent efficiency rating, the wire-plates would save the lives of two hundred and thirty Mezentines-

  He heard a boot scrape on the stairs, and looked up. Just when he'd thought he was safe, but apparently not. 'I'm in here,' he called out, 'did you want me for something?' It seemed they didn't, because there was no reply. That was all right, then.

  He tried to go back to his calculation, seven hundred divided by three, but he'd lost the thread. The lamp guttered. He pulled out his penknife and set off to trim the wick, crunching and staggering awkwardly on the piles of charcoal underfoot.

  The wick was fine; must just have been a waft of air from somewhere. He straightened up, and heard another soft crunch, just like the ones he'd been making himself as he clambered over the charcoal heaps.

  Of course, he had no time to shape a plan or design a mechanism. Instead, he stooped, grabbed the lamp and threw it as hard as he could. For a very short moment it was a tiny comet in the darkness, then a little ball of fire, then nothing. He heard the tinkle of the lamp breaking, and another noise, a soft grunt.

  He had his penknife, one thin inch of export-grade Mezentine steel; and he had the darkness, and the sound of crushed charcoal. It wasn't much, but it would have to be everything.

  If he moved, the hunter would hear him; and the other way round, of course, but the hunter presumably had fearsome weapons and great skill. He tried to think his way into the enemy's mind. He would have to be quick, both to hear and to act. He waited.

  As soon as he heard the soft grinding, squashing noise of charcoal underfoot, he took a step-sideways, to the right, a random choice, but unpredictability was his best ally against the hunter's approach, which would be methodical and progressive. He reached out as far as he could with his left hand, keeping his right close to his body. Each time the hunter moved, he took a step of his own. The hardest part was controlling his breathing. Fear made him want to pant; instead he drew in air as smoothly as a good workman turning the lathe carriage handle to keep the cut fine, and let it go at precisely the same rate. That actually helped a little; the fog in his head started to clear, and he could see his thoughts, big and slow as a ship drifting in moonlight.

  Now he could begin to work out the logical pattern. Someone must've told the hunter
where to find him, so it was reasonable to assume the hunter knew the shape of the room. He recalled the dimensions, twenty feet by ten, with one door in the south-west corner. The pattern would therefore be from side to side. A man zigzagging down the length of the room with his arms outstretched would have a fair chance of touching another man in the dark, even if the prey was flat to the wall. Logical behaviour for the prey would be to crouch and become as small as possible; logical meant predictable, and so that was what he couldn't do. Instead, his best course of action-

  He'd moved too far, two steps to his enemy's one, because his own crunch wasn't echoed. He cringed at his own stupidity, caused by a failure to concentrate. Instinct yelled at him to make a charge, either to find and kill or to escape. He made an effort and wrestled the instinct down.

  His best course of action was to become the hunter instead of the prey (because the first question the assassin would ask his inside source would be, is he likely to be armed? and the answer would've been no). It was unfortunate that he knew absolutely nothing about fighting; the last time he'd fought, he'd been nine, and he'd lost conclusively. Mezentines didn't fight. Of course, he wasn't a Mezentine any more.

  But he had the darkness on his side; also the fact that the last charcoal delivery had been late, and two night shifts had had to take their fuel from the reserve store. Obviously, they'd have loaded from nearest the door; but if they shovelled in a straight line, as reasonable men might be assumed to do, would there not be a clear, therefore silent path a shovel's breadth up the line of the southern wall? The enemy was between him and the door, there was no real chance of slipping by except by fluke, but if he could walk unheard…

  Time was running low; he made a fair estimate of how long the pattern would take to execute, based on an average length of stride and his own progress. By now, both of them had to be fairly close to the middle of the room, but if he could make it across to the south wall, he'd have a little advantage, which would be all he'd need.

  He moved with the crunch, and as his foot came down he heard another grunt. But it was in the wrong place, too far back. There were two of them.

  Well, of course, there would be. The Perpetual Republic were no cheapskates, they wouldn't send only one man, like a lone hero charged with slaying a dragon. That made the south wall essential to his chances of survival, because the man on the door would be stationary; King Fashion would've called him the stop, while his colleague would be the beater.

  The crunch came and he moved with it, but his foot made no sound. He reached out with his right hand, a desperate risk but forced by necessity, and felt stone.

  Now he had to stay still. If, by sheer bad luck, the hunter's pattern happened to bring him here, all he could hope for was the random advantage of the encounter. He wondered how perceptive the hunter was; would he notice the absence of the double footfall, and would he interpret it correctly? On balance, Vaatzes hoped his enemy was clever but not brilliant.

  He heard two more steps, then a long pause. The missing sound had been noticed and was being duly considered. Because he was standing still, at last he could use his enemy's sound to place him. Excellent; he was nearer to the middle than the south wall, so the pattern should take him clear away, north-east or north-west didn't matter. Very carefully, as though he was scribing a line, Vaatzes began to edge down the south wall toward the door.

  Tactically, of course, he was taking a substantial risk, now that he was in the middle between his two enemies. If he couldn't get through or past the stop quickly enough, the beater would be on him from the flank or the rear. He'd never read any military manuals so he was working from first principles, but he could see all too clearly how a clever plan badly or unluckily carried out must be worse than simple, stolid standing and fighting. Too late to be sensible now, though.

  Four more crabbed paces, by his calculations; then he stooped, careful of his balance, and groped for a fair-sized chunk of charcoal. He found one and tossed it high in the air. The noise it made when it landed was all wrong, of course-it sounded like a lump of charcoal landing on a charcoal-covered floor-but all he needed to achieve was a moment's bewilderment.

  A moment, of course, was all he had. He allowed enough time for the stop to turn and face the noise; that'd be instinct, and now he knew fairly well how his enemy would be standing, the direction his head and shoulders would be facing in. He took a long stride forward and another to the left, crunching his foot down hard in the murrain of charcoal beside the cleared path. Then he brought his right arm across in a wide, fast arc.

  He felt an impact, and something hot and wet splashed in his face. It was all he could do not to shout in triumph, because he'd plotted it all out so precisely, inch-perfect, making the target turn so his neck-vein would be presented at the optimum angle to his sweeping cut, and here was his enemy's blood on his face to prove he'd got it right. No time for that now; with his left hand he reached out, grabbed, felt his fingers close on empty air, quickly recalculated allowing for the dying man falling to the ground, grabbed again and felt his fingertips snag in loose cloth. All the dying man's weight was pulling on his fingers, mechanical advantage was against him, but he managed to find the brute strength to haul the mass across and behind him. The knife was no good to him now. He opened his fingers and let it fall as his right hand groped for the door. He found the bar handle just as loud crunches behind him told him that the beater was coming for him. Now it was just running, something he'd never been any great shakes at.

  As he wrenched the door open, the light burned him. The gap between door and frame was almost wide enough to give him clearance, but it wouldn't grow. He'd botched moving the body, and it was fouling the door. The urge was to glance over his shoulder and take a look at the beater's face but he hadn't got time. He crushed himself through the gap (like drifting a badly filed hole square with the big hammer), found the bottom step with his foot and pushed himself into a sprint. Breath was a problem, he'd squeezed too much of it out of himself getting through the doorway; his current plan was firmly based on yelling as loud as possible, so that people would come and rescue him before the beater could catch him. But the best he could manage was a soft woof, like a sleepy dog.

  Best estimate was that the beater was in the doorway, while he was only four steps up the stairs; there were twelve steps, and if the beater grabbed his ankle and pulled him down, it'd all have been a waste of effort and ingenuity. He heard the beater say something-just swearing, probably-which suggested that luck had given him a little more time. He cleared the top step, filled his lungs, and yelled.

  After the silence, where a soft crunch had been so loud, the echo of his voice in the stone stairwell made his head swim. But he felt fingertips brush the calf of his leg, gentle-as a tentative lover. Even as he lunged toward the open air he was calculating: assuming the hunter had arms of average length and taking on trust his estimate of the length of his lower leg, from heel to knee-joint, he was safe from a dagger of no more than twelve inches, but a riding-sword, falchion, hanger or hand-axe would be the death of him.

  He was in the courtyard; and here was where his plan foundered and crashed. He'd been working on the strict assumption that once he was clear of the stairwell he'd be safe, because the courtyard would be thronged with his stalwart employees, hurrying to answer his shout of distress. Accordingly, he hadn't troubled to plan beyond the threshold of the light. Foolish; here on the level, in the light, it was his ability to run against his enemy's. As if in confirmation, he felt a hand tighten on his shoulder like a clamp, drawing him back and slowing him down.

  He hadn't expected to feel anything else, because the knife or the short sword would be properly sharp, and he'd be dead before his body could register the pain. Wrong; instead, he felt the buttons of his shirt give way, and the lapel pulling back over the ball of his shoulder. He could have laughed out loud for joy if he'd had time and breath. It was only a moral victory, of course. The courtyard was empty; they were all hard at wo
rk at their anvils and benches, as of course they should be. He'd trained them too well.

  The next thing he registered mystified him. It was the paving-slabs of the courtyard floor rushing up to meet him, and the solid, painful contact of stone on his face. He'd fallen; he was lying face down on the ground. Not that it mattered, but…

  He heard grunting, then a yell of pain, swearing, shouts, another yell, and the bump of a dead weight falling fairly close. He pushed at the ground with the palms of his hands, bounced himself upright and swung round.

  He saw a face that was vaguely familiar, one of the carpenters, whose name there'd been no point using up memory on. The carpenter was kneeling on something; on a man's body, his knee was on the man's neck, and other men whose faces he couldn't see were bending or kneeling over the same body, trying to do something to it that called for effort and strength. 'Are you all right?' the carpenter asked; he looked shocked and bewildered, and his face was cut. Vaatzes widened the scope of his vision and saw a short sword (to be precise, a Mezentine naval hanger) lying about a foot from the body's outstretched hand. Strange; more than twelve inches, so he ought to be dead. But (it occurred to him, as a flood of fear and shock swept through him) he wasn't.

  'Don't kill him,' he heard himself say, 'I want him alive.' At the same time, he rebuked himself for melodrama; also, what did he want with a Mezentine Compliance assassin? Nothing; correction, he wanted the names of his inside men, the ones who'd told him about the charcoal cellar. It was very important not to let those names get away.

  One of the men whose faces he couldn't see mumbled an apology, and Vaatzes noticed that the assassin had stopped moving.

  'Is he dead?' he asked.

  'Fell on his own knife,' someone replied. Knife? He'd had a knife as well as the hanger; a whole new variable he'd omitted to consider. Negligent. Really, he didn't deserve to be alive.