Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  They'd bolted it, as they always did at night, but they hadn't locked it with the key. He shot the bolt, opened the door a crack and looked out. He could see people running, a bit of open space, and a big crowd on the north side, which presumably was the battle. Taking care to close the gate behind him, he slipped through.

  Nobody took any notice of him, unless they were running and he got in their way, in which case they dodged round him or shoved him aside. It was still too dark to make out anything more than silhouettes and moving shadows in the distance, over on the north side of the Horsefair, where the fighting appeared to be. He walked rather than ran-why run to your death? he asked himself, it'll probably still be there in a minute or two. For the first time in a long while he was fully alert and focused. He knew what his job was to save Orsea-and that it was most likely impossible, and that he'd die trying. Under other circumstances he'd be out of his mind with panic, but there didn't seem any call for that. As far as he could judge, the city was lost. Even if they managed to save it, his life as the Ducas was ruined, gone for ever. Orsea, his best friend and his Duke, hated him as a traitor. There didn't seem to be much point in a life where everything he was had been taken away from him. If he couldn't be Miel Ducas any more, he didn't want to play.

  As he got closer to the fighting, he could hear the usual noises: shouts, yells, screams, thumps, scrapes, clangs, the shearing noise of cut meat. Take fear away and it was just noise; he approached it slowly and calmly, like a farmer walking up to a bull.

  Something was going on directly in front of him; there was a commotion, and the movement seemed particularly intense. Remembering the silly gilded halberd he had in his hands, he quickened his pace a little. He had no idea where Orsea might be, assuming he was still alive, but here was as good a place to start as any.

  The commotion turned out to be his cousin Jarnac. By the look of it, he was trying to cut his way into a dense wedge of the enemy. There was a handful of Eremians with him, but they were hanging back-probably, Miel guessed, because they didn't want to get too close to Jarnac while he was swinging his poll-axe.

  It was an extraordinary sight. Every inch of Jarnac was on the move; as he dodged a spear-thrust, he pivoted, sidestepped, simultaneously jabbing, fending, hooking, hammering. There was a Mezentine right in front of him; he reversed the poll-axe and thrust the butt-spike into the man's stomach-there was eighteen-gauge steel plate in the way, but Jarnac's spike punched through it like tree-bark-then skipped side-and-back like a dancer to avoid another one; he jerked the spike out of the fallen man and tucked the hook inside the knee of his replacement; down that one went,

  Jarnac drove the spike through his helmet into his brain without bothering to look down, because his attention was fixed on another one, who got the axe-blade in his neck, in the gap between aventail and collar-bone; Jarnac had moved again, diagonally forward so as to step in for a thrust in time into the face of the next Mezentine; he converted the pull that freed the blade into a backward thrust, piercing the skull of the man who was trying to get behind him; then he pushed forward and swung the poll-axe in a circle round his head to strike with every scrap of his strength; Miel couldn't see the man who was on the wrong end of that, but he heard the ring, clear and sharp as a hammer on an anvil. Every movement of hand and arm was mirrored in a step, forward, sideways or back; each step was combined with a twist or a turn that tensioned the muscles for the next thrust or cut. The only reason the Mezentines stood in his way was because they were too closely jammed together to get away; it was like watching a man dance his way through a tangle of briars. What happened? Miel asked himself. What happened to turn my genial buffoon of a cousin into the angel of Death?

  As he watched, a Mezentine slipped past Jarnac on the left, got behind him and stabbed him in the back with a spear. Miel could feel his own heart suddenly stop, as though someone had reached down inside his chest and grabbed hold of it. Jarnac was dead; apparently not, because the spear didn't seem to want to go in. The attacker couldn't believe it. He froze, completely bewildered, and Jarnac spun on his heel and crushed his head with a monstrous overhand blow. Miel heard bone failing, and he remembered that when he'd met Jarnac in the passageway, he'd been climbing into a brigandine coat.

  The dance stopped abruptly. Jarnac had run out of Mezentines for the time being, and exhaustion had caught up with him. He staggered, steadied himself against the axe-shaft, and stood still.

  'Jarnac,' Miel shouted. Jarnac lifted his head and frowned. A red wash from the rising sun bathed the side of his face, glittering off the splashed blood that coated his cheeks.

  'Hello, Miel,' Jarnac said quietly, and he grinned. 'This is a fucking mess, isn't it?'

  'Where's Orsea?' Miel asked.

  Jarnac shook his head. 'Search me,' he said. 'I caught sight of him a minute or so back, but then this lot here'-he jabbed the butt-spike in the vague direction of a dead man-'bust through our line and I got distracted.' He frowned slightly. 'I wouldn't bother going and looking for him, if I were you.'

  Miel shrugged. 'I think I'd better have a go at it,' he said.

  'Bugger.' Jarnac sighed. 'Want me to come with you?'

  'Thanks,' Miel said, 'but you'd better stay here. Someone's got to…' He couldn't say what he wanted to say. 'You're needed,' he went on, 'I'm not. See you later.'

  'Take care,' Jarnac said; and then he was moving again, and Miel darted through a gap between two dazed-looking Mezentines into a clear space. He wished he'd got a brigandine coat like Jarnac's, or even just a mailshirt or a padded jack.

  A few steps brought him close enough to see what was happening. He saw the backs of a thin line of Eremians. They looked like they were walking backwards, but they were being pushed, and every now and then one of them would trip and fall and be walked over. That, Miel realised, was all that was left of Orsea's gallant charge, the entire palace garrison. It was like watching a chick break out of an egg; the thin wall cracking, crumpling and breaking up, as something inside it flexed its strength to force its way out.

  Never mind, Miel thought, and he lunged forward with his stupid halberd at some soldier or other who happened to be just inside his reach. The point slid off the man's gorget; he grabbed the shaft and pulled, ripping it out of Miel's hands, and threw it away. Miel let go and bundled sideways; collided awkwardly with someone he hadn't seen, tripped over his own feet and fell. His chin banged on the man's knee, jarring his neck and jaw. Too shocked to think, he dropped to the ground. A boot kicked his ribs-accident, not deliberate-and another slammed into the back of his head. Am I dead? he wondered, and then nothing.

  All she could see was vague movement, like a river, or the swaying branches of trees. That moving thing, she knew, was the enemy, and it was coming closer. The logical conclusion was that the battle had been lost.

  They wouldn't kill women though, would they? It stood to reason that Orsea was dead by now, but her mind was too preoccupied to consider the implications of that. They wouldn't kill women; why would they want to do a thing like that? She couldn't imagine a reason, but the same went for destroying a city. Why would anybody want to do such a thing?

  No point in watching any more. She turned and came in off the balcony, and saw someone standing and looking at her.

  'I know you,' she said. 'You're Ziani Vaatzes.'

  Vaatzes nodded. He looked pathetically weary, and was wearing a heavy coat with big, bulging pockets. 'We met at the hunt,' he said awkwardly. The formality of it made her smile; it'd never do to be massacred in the company of a man to whom she hadn't been introduced. 'What's happening?' he asked.

  'I don't know,' she said. 'Come and see for yourself if you like.'

  'No thank you.' He was frowning. 'I think it might be a good idea if you were to leave now,' he said.

  That made her laugh. 'Don't be silly,' she said, 'we can't leave. If we go out in the streets, we'll just get killed along with everybody else. There's no secret passages or anything like that.'

&
nbsp; 'Actually,' he said, and hesitated. 'Actually,' he repeated, 'there's a way that'll take us right outside the city. Same way as they got in,' he added.

  There was something significant about that remark, but she couldn't spare the energy to figure out what it was. 'No there isn't,' she said. 'I was born in this building, I know-'

  'The maintenance tunnels for the water system,' he interrupted. 'They came in through them, but they'll be long gone by now. They're all out there,' he said, pointing over her shoulder, 'fighting the battle.'

  It occurred to her that he was quite right. She felt as though she'd just walked into a wall in the dark. Just when she'd made up her mind she was going to die, along came this funny little man with a viable alternative. 'But I don't know how to get in to them,' she said, her voice suddenly creased with panic. 'I've lived here all these years and-'

  'I do,' Vaatzes said. 'You come with me and I'll show you. But I really think we should go now. It's quite a long way, and I'd rather we did the trip and got clear while the enemy's busy with other things, if you follow me.'

  She knew it was wrong even to think about escaping, deserting, when Orsea was lying out there dead and the city was about to fall. On the other hand, there was absolutely no reason why she should be killed, if it could be avoided. She nodded. 'Give me a moment to change my shoes,' she said. 'I can't go running down maintenance tunnels in these things.'

  As she followed him, it did occur to her to ask why he'd come to save her. Everybody else seemed to have forgotten about her-her maids, her ladies-in-waiting, the guards, the chamberlains, the flower of Eremian nobility, theoretically sworn to defend her to the last drop of blood. They'd gone to the battle, or run off to hide, or simply melted away as though they'd never actually existed in the first place. Only this strange little brown-skinned man had thought of her, and by some lucky chance, he was also the only person in the city who'd thought of escaping through the water tunnels. Only a foreigner would've seen the possibility, she supposed; or something along those lines.

  He'd already prised up a trapdoor in the little yard behind the cloister garden with the fountain. 'I knew there'd be one around here somewhere,' he said, with a faint smile. 'Fountain-water.'

  'Yes, of course,' she said. She'd never have thought of that.

  'I'll go first, if you like,' he said. He opened his coat and drew a sword. It looked ridiculous in his hand, somehow. 'Give me a moment or so, then follow me.'

  'All right,' she said. For some reason she trusted him completely. He took a deep breath, then walked down the steps, picking his way delicately like a still-wobbly foal. A few seconds later his head reappeared. 'Seems to be all right,' he said. He'd got a smear of cobweb in his hair, which made him look comical.

  She should have been prepared for the darkness, once she was down in the tunnel, but she wasn't. The dark, the silence and the cold put her in mind of a grave. She couldn't see, and all she could hear was the soft patter of Vaatzes' feet somewhere up ahead of her. This is ridiculous, she thought; I'm leaving my husband and my home and running out into the night in my third-best dinner gown; I've got no money and nothing to eat, and even if we survive and get outside the city, what the hell are we supposed to do then? Walk to-

  Walk to Civitas Vadani; the name slipped into her mind as neatly and unostentatiously as a cat jumping up on her lap on a winter evening. If Orsea was… She shied away from that; but if her old life was over, where else was there to go? Yes, she accused herself, but now that I have thought of it, I want to go; because-

  'Stop.' He'd said the word so softly she almost missed it, even in that dead silence. 'Stay there.'

  There was an edge in that quiet voice that frightened her. She froze, with a half-drawn breath. Vaatzes hadn't been afraid earlier, she remembered, but now apparently that had changed. She had a feeling that anything capable of scaring him was likely to be very bad news indeed.

  Then he was there, very close to her in the dark. 'We can't go this way,' he whispered intimately (she could feel his breath on her face). 'I didn't think there'd be any of them down here, but-' He stopped. 'I'm sorry,' he said, and the apology in his voice, the admission of failure, left her weak with fear. 'We'll have to go back and think of something else.'

  Of course; they'd go back, he'd think of something else. She still couldn't imagine why he'd apparently taken responsibility for her safety, but he had, and she still trusted him. 'Keep still,' he went on, 'I'll go past.' She felt him brush past her, a tiny contact with the back of her hand, the faintest brush of a sleeve against her cheek. Once he was past, she followed, until they were back where they'd started. The sun was nearly up now, and on the cloister lawn, grossly incongruous in that green, formal space, lay the dead body of a man.

  Vaatzes noticed it and frowned slightly, as if it was a loose bolt or a worn bearing. 'Looks like they've been through here,' he said. The dead man was an Eremian, a civilian; she didn't recognise him. 'I'm not sure,' Vaatzes continued. 'Probably our best bet would be to go down the hill-against the flow, so to speak. Less likely to bump into them if we go where they've already been.'

  That was stupid, though; they were too conspicuous-him because of his dark face, her because of her aristocratic gown. 'I don't think that'd be such a good idea,' she said. It came out sounding different from what she'd intended.

  'What did you have in mind?' he asked.

  'I don't know,' she mumbled. 'I wish I knew what was happening.'

  To her surprise, he reacted as though she'd just said something very profound. 'That's an idea,' he said. 'Probably best if we got up high-in one of the towers, maybe, except I'd rather not run into them on one of those narrow staircases. How about the Ducas house? Isn't there supposed to be a private entrance?'

  She nodded. 'But I don't know where it is.'

  'Forget that, then.' He was shifting restlessly, as though the floor was painfully hot. 'All I was thinking was, if we can get out into the Horsefair, and then straight down to the city gate; if the fighting's all done, there shouldn't be anybody much about right now. Or we could try hiding somewhere, if you can think of some place they wouldn't be likely to come looking.'

  Being offered a choice shocked her. It suggested that Vaatzes didn't have another plan to replace the one that had, apparently, failed; otherwise he'd simply have told her instead of asking her opinion.

  'Well,' she said, 'it's probably best if we don't stay here.'

  Vaatzes laughed at what she assumed was a private joke. 'That's true enough,' he said. 'All right, we'll make for the Horsefair and see if we can get as far as the city gate. We'll just have to take it slow and steady, that's all.'

  Slow and steady was a nightmare. As Vaatzes had predicted, the streets where the enemy had already been were deserted, unless dead people counted as population, in which case they were crowded. Once they were out of the palace grounds, most of the bodies were Eremian soldiers, but there were civilians too, women and children as well as men. 'They won't start setting fires till they've pulled out,' Vaatzes said at one point. She hadn't even considered that possibility.

  Very strange indeed to see the Horsefair so quiet. This time of day, it should've been packed-country people setting up stalls, staff from the big houses coming out to buy things for that evening's meal, horse-traders and merchants already doing business. She stepped over a man she knew slightly; she recognised him as a guardsman who often stood outside the palace gate. He'd been cut nearly in half by something, and the scowl on his face was pure anger.

  'There's still a chance,' Vaatzes was saying, 'that we could duck down into the water tunnels somewhere else. To be honest, if we're going to play hide-and-seek, we'd stand a better chance in the dark than up here in the open.'

  She was about to say that she didn't really like that idea when she noticed he'd stopped. He was looking at something in the distance, on the far side of the fair. She looked, and saw men running, but she couldn't make out who they were, Mezentines or Eremians.

 
; 'I wonder what's got them so worked up,' Vaatzes said.

  A moment later he got an answer to his mystery. Through the archway came a party of horsemen, moving fast. In front of them, Mezentines were scattering, like poultry in a run when the fox has broken in. She saw, she could just about make out, a horseman riding one of them down. The rider came up behind the runner at a slow, contained canter, and she saw the runner throw up his arms and drop to the ground. More horsemen were spilling out now, a great many of them; as if in response, a large number of Mezentines coalesced, like bees forming into a swarm, from the edges and the walls. They were trying to get into some sort of formation, but it seemed as though they'd misjudged something, or left it too late. The horsemen rode through them while they were still scrambling about, and once the cavalry line had gone by, there didn't look to be any of them still standing.

  'Who's that?' she heard herself ask. 'They can't be ours, all our horses are stabled on the west side.'

  Still more horsemen came in through the arch. A pattern was becoming visible. They were forming up to charge, in the direction of the palace. She looked round, and saw that Vaatzes was smiling, almost as though he'd been proved right about something.

  'Excellent,' he said. 'Thank God for romance.'

  That was a very strange thing to say, as the unidentified cavalry-several hundred of them by now-burst into a fast canter, followed by a gallop, heading very close to where they were both standing. Vaatzes swore and grabbed her arm, pulling her behind him as he turned and ran. It took her a moment to understand; whoever they were, standing in their way wouldn't be a good idea.