by K. J. Parker
(There, he thought; the camouflet sprung, the props burned out, the walls undermined.)
She looked at him for three heartbeats. “No,” she said, “I didn’t know that.”
“Perfectly true.” Psellus smiled. “Odd thing to do, don’t you think, given that he’d built the scorpions that slaughtered our army. Because of him, in fact, we were that close to giving up and going away. Then, after causing us all that trouble, he turns round and hands us the city. Would you care to suggest why he might’ve done that?”
“No idea.”
“Well.” Psellus ate the last of the biscuit, brushed crumbs off his chest. “He wrote a letter to a friend; the one man in Mezentia he reckoned he could still trust. I’m surprised, actually, that you don’t know. I’d have thought Falier might have told you.”
“What’s he got to do with it?”
“It was Falier he wrote to.”
She couldn’t stop her eyes widening; and it was like seeing a crack appearing in masonry. “He didn’t tell me, no. I suppose he was ordered not to.”
“Oh, quite so. But still; when you’re as much in love as he is …” He shrugged. “But that fits in with what we know about Falier; a very trustworthy man, reliable. Anyway, to go back to what we were saying. Why would Ziani have done such a thing, do you think?”
“Didn’t he say why? In the letter?”
Psellus smiled. “As a matter of fact, he did. He said it was because he was filled with remorse and wanted to make things right. Do you think that’s likely to be the real reason?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It occurred to me,” Psellus went on, “that he was hoping we might forgive him, and let him come home. Of course, that would be impossible.” She looked up when he said that. “Out of the question, naturally. First he creates a crisis, by arming the enemy with scorpions; then he hopes to get his free pardon by solving it. No, we wouldn’t do business under those conditions.” He paused, waited for a moment, then went on: “Actually, we would. In order to save face, after a disaster like the defeat the Eremians inflicted on us — if he’d come to us with an offer like that, we’d have listened, for sure. I think we’d probably have agreed. But he wasn’t to know that, of course; certainly, he’d have to be out of his mind to formulate a plan on the assumption that we’d give in to him. And anyway, he didn’t even try to negotiate. He simply gave us the information, with no conditions, no demands. Now that,” he said wearily, “is a puzzle. On its own, it’s enough to give you indigestion. Taken with the other puzzles …” He shrugged. “There now,” he said. “Did you realize you’re married to such an enigmatic character?”
Something was bothering her; he hadn’t had her full attention for the last moment or so. “Would you really have let him come home?” she said. “If he’d tried to do a deal?”
Psellus put on a serious face. “Hard to say,” he said. “If he’d been able to convince us beforehand that he could give us a way into the city, then I’d have to say yes. Or at least, that’s what we’d have told him. I don’t think the Guilds believe they’d be bound by a promise to a convicted abominator. But then,” he went on, “I’m not sure how he’d have got us to believe he was sincere; we’d have assumed it was a trap of some sort, leading us into an ambush. It’s crossed our minds, of course,” he continued, “that giving us Civitas Eremiae could’ve been by way of a free sample.” She looked up at him; now, apparently, she was interested in what he had to say. Quite a change. “What I mean is,” he said, “he betrayed the city to us just to prove that he could be trusted, so that next time —” He stopped, as though he’d shocked himself with the implications of what he was saying. “So that,” he went on, “if he sent us another message like that on another occasion — offering us Civitas Vadanis, say, but with conditions attached this time — we’d know that he meant it, and could deliver. Of course, that’d imply that he thinks a very long way ahead, and has complete confidence in his own ability to manipulate people. A bit far-fetched, now I come to think about it. Also, he’d have had to have some pretty surefire way out of Civitas Eremiae lined up before making us the offer. Otherwise he’d be running a terrible risk of either being recognized and arrested when the city fell, or getting himself killed in the wholesale massacre. Now, we know that he did in fact escape; but only because Duke Valens suddenly turned up at the last minute. Did he know about that? I wonder. Had he actually booked himself a ride with the Vadani before he approached us with the offer? No, impossible; because in order to do that, in order to tip Valens off to come to the rescue at precisely the right time, he’d have had to make it clear to them that he knew exactly when the city was going to fall, and that’d have made it obvious that he was the traitor. Even so,” he continued, after a pause for breath, “we’ve kept that option open by not letting the Vadani know that it was Ziani who sold out the Eremians; just in case he’s got it in mind to hand them to us on a plate as well. When I say we,” he added, “I mean my colleagues on the war commission. I voted to let Valens know straightaway, send him some hard evidence to back the claim up, so he’d have Ziani arrested and strung up. But the rest of the commission disagreed, and …” He shook his head. “By the way,” he added, “not a word about this to anybody. If Valens finds out what Ziani did and has him killed, it’ll be obvious that there’s been an unauthorized disclosure, and since I voted against keeping it a secret …” He smiled. “I’d make it a point of honor to see to it that my last official act before being thrown off the commission and charged with treason would be having you arrested for complicity in Ziani’s crimes. A friendly warning. Understood?”
She dipped her head. “I just want to forget he ever existed,” she said.
“Well.” Psellus suddenly felt very tired; he wondered if she did too. “You’ve listened very patiently, and it seems there’s not a great deal of light you can shed on any of my problems. I was hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction; but what you don’t know you can’t tell me, I guess. Pity, but there it is.”
He realized that she was looking straight at him. “Do you really think there’s a chance he might come home?” she said. “Any chance at all?”
Wonderful how she’d said that; no clue as to which answer she’d prefer to hear. Since he couldn’t glean it from context, Psellus decided, why not ask her straight out? “Do you want him back?” he said.
“Me? No, of course not. Not when I’m just about to marry someone else.”
“Ah yes, true love. It had slipped my mind for a moment. Well, I don’t think you need have any worries on that score. As I think I told you, he’s just finished helping Valens to decommission the Vadani silver mines, to keep us from getting them. That means Ziani isn’t the most popular man in the world, as far as the Guilds are concerned. They might just be prepared to overlook the deaths of five thousand or so mercenaries, but cheating them of the richest silver deposits in the world — I don’t see them deciding to forgive and forget that in a hurry.”
She was back to looking past him as though he wasn’t there. “Can I go now, please?” she said. Not quite a whine, but with the same level of urgency; like a child on a long journey asking Are we nearly there yet? Looking at her, Psellus could quite see how she’d been able to wind Ziani round her little finger. Not for the first time, he thanked providence that he’d never been in love himself.
“Yes, thank you,” he said, and she stood up immediately.
“The dispensation,” she said.
“What? Oh yes, of course. It’ll be issued straightaway. You ought to have it in, I don’t know, three weeks. Four at the very most.”
“Four weeks? Can’t you hurry it up a bit?”
You had to admire her. Single-minded as an arrow, self-centered as a gyroscope, and nice-looking into the bargain. Ziani would never have stood a chance; nor, apparently, Falier. “That depends,” he said. “If you happened to remember anything that might help me with my puzzles, any time over the next
five weeks …”
“You said four.”
He made a vague gesture. “You know what the clerks are like. They will insist on that big, flowing, joined-up writing, not to mention taking their time over illuminating all the capital letters. Taking pride in their work, you see, even when it’s nothing but a routine dispensation. All it takes is one spelling mistake, and they tear it up and start all over again. It’s a wonder anything ever gets done in this city, really.”
She was standing in the doorway, right up close to the door, like a goat on a chain straining for a mouthful of grass just out of reach. “We’ll just have to be patient, then,” she said, “because there isn’t anything else I can tell you.”
“Of course.” He nodded sharply. “Thank you for your time. You can go now.”
She went. It was all over in a flicker; door opened, door closed. Anybody who could move that efficiently, Psellus reckoned, must be an excellent dancer. Would there be dancing at the wedding, he wondered, when she married Supervisor Falier? Somehow, he was inclined to doubt it.
He lifted a stack of papers on his desk; under them was the dispensation. He flipped open the lid of his inkwell, dipped a pen and wrote his initials, just underneath the signature of the deputy chief registrar. Ziani, he decided, must’ve had his reasons, when he gave Civitas Eremiae to the Republic without bargaining first. Although he couldn’t understand what those reasons were, he’d come to respect his opponent enough to trust his tactical and strategic abilities. Imitating him, therefore, was probably a good way to proceed. He sprinkled the paper with a little sand, and rang the bell.
“What?” The borrowed clerk wasn’t nearly so obsequious now he was alone.
“Could you do me a favor and run this up to the dispatcher’s office?” Psellus asked.
“What’s your problem, cramp?”
“Bad knee,” Psellus said. “Rheumatism.”
The clerk frowned. “I’m going that way anyhow,” he said, moving forward and taking the paper.
“That’s lucky,” Psellus said. “Thanks. If they could see to it that it gets there as soon as …”
The clerk nodded, and left. Psellus sat back. With luck, it’d be there waiting for her by the time she got home; a pleasant surprise, he hoped, and totally disconcerting.
Left alone, Psellus took a book from his shelf, sat down, put his feet up on the desk and started to read. As a senior member of the executive, he had access to a much richer choice of literature than the ordinary Mezentine; instead, he’d chosen to read garbage. No other word for it. Lately, though, he’d found himself dipping into it over and over again, so that the inept similes and graceless phrases had seeped into his vocabulary, private quotations that served as part of his mental shorthand. Even as a physical object, the book was ludicrous, having been crudely made by an amateur out of scrounged materials — packing-case wood for the covers, sacking thread for the binding. Its fascination lay in the fact that it was a collection of love poetry written by Ziani Vaatzes to his wife; the small, pretty, rat-like woman he’d just been talking to.Throughout their conversation, it had been at the back of his mind to haul the book out and read bits to her — except that she wouldn’t have understood the significance, since he was quite certain Ziani had never shown or read her any of his painful compositions. It remained, therefore, a secret that he shared directly and exclusively with his opponent, the arch-abominator and the Republic’s deadliest enemy, who had once written:
I saw her walking down the street.
She has such small, such pretty feet.
And when she turns and smiles at me
I’m happy as a man can be.
A puzzle. He turned the page. Here was one he hadn’t seen before.
I know she loves me, but she just can’t say it.
It’s not the sort of thing we talk about.
No words or looks of hers can yet betray it
But still her love for me is not in doubt.
He winced. If Vaatzes had been only twice as good at engineering as he’d been at poetry, he’d never have had to leave the city.
Someone coughed. He looked up sharply, reflexively dragging his feet off the desk before he noticed that it was only another clerk. “Well?” he grunted.
“Message for you,” the clerk said, squinting sideways to read what was written on the spine of the book. Psellus closed it and dropped it in his lap. “Let’s have it, then.”
The clerk handed him a folded piece of paper and went away. It was an ordinary sheet of thin rag paper, universally used for internal memos, but it was folded twice and closed with the official seal of Necessary Evil. That made it important. He sat up to read it.
Boioannes to his colleagues, greetings.
The abominator Vaatzes has contacted the Guild. Herewith a transcript of a letter delivered through intermediaries; Commissioner Psellus to report to me at his earliest convenience to examine the original and verify the handwriting against other documents currently in his keeping.
Text as follows …
14
It had been, everybody agreed, an efficient wedding. The necessary steps had been taken in the proper manner, the prescribed forms of words had been used in the presence of the appropriate witnesses, the register had been signed and sealed by all the parties to the transaction, and the young couple were now thoroughly married, fixed together as tightly as a brazed joint.
Unfortunate, perhaps, that neither of them had seemed particularly happy about it. More unfortunate still that both of them had made so little effort to dissemble their feelings. The Vadani people were, on the whole, fond of their duke and didn’t like to see him looking miserable. Accordingly, there had been a rather strained, thoughtful atmosphere at the ceremony itself, and the scenes of public joy that greeted the departure from the chapel had been distinctly subdued. Never mind; the mortise doesn’t have to love the tenon, just so long as they fit snugly together and accept the dowel.
“It’s only politics, after all,” someone he didn’t know said to Orsea, as they filed in to the wedding breakfast. “Now that’s all over they can stay out of each other’s way and get on with their lives. Well, not entirely out of each other’s way, there’s the succession to think of. That aside, it’s a pretty civilized arrangement.”
Orsea smiled weakly. When he’d married the Countess Sirupati, heiress to the duchy of Eremia, he had only seen her two or three times, in crowds, at functions and the like. On his wedding day, he hadn’t recognized her at first — he’d known that he was going to be marrying the girl dressed in the big white gauzy tent thing, but when she lifted back the veil, it hadn’t been the face he’d been expecting to see. He’d got her confused in his mind with her second sister, Baute. A few days later, of course, he’d found himself more deeply in love than any man had ever been before or since …
“No reason why they shouldn’t get along quite amicably,” the man was saying. “By all accounts she likes the same sort of thing he does — hawking, hunting, the great outdoors. So long as she’s got the common sense not to disagree with him about which hawk to fly or whether to drive the long covert before lunch, they ought at least to be able to be friends; and that matters so much more than love, doesn’t it, in a marriage.”
Something to do with roads, Orsea thought; deputy commissioner of highways, or something of the kind. Whatever he was, the man was extremely annoying; but the line was tightly packed and slow-moving, and he had no hope of getting away from him without a severe breach of protocol. Even so …
“Do you think so?” he said, as mildly as he could manage. “I think love’s the only thing that matters in a marriage.”
“You’re a bachelor, then.”
“No.”
“Oh.” A shrug. “In that case, congratulations and I’m delighted for you. In my case …” The annoying man looked sad for a moment. “Pretty straightforward,” he said. “My father had the upland grazing but virtually no water, her father had the river valley but no summ
er pasture. At the time I was head over heels for the local notary’s daughter. Carried on seeing her for a bit after the wedding — wife didn’t make a fuss, pretended she didn’t know, though it was obvious she did really. I don’t know what happened after that. I just sort of realized that love is basically for teenagers, and when it comes to real life for grown-ups, you’re far better off with someone who’s moderately pleased to see you when you’re around, but who leaves you in peace when you’ve got things to do. When you’re trying to run a major estate as well as holding down an important government appointment, you simply haven’t got time to go for long hand-holding walks in the meadows or look sheepish for an hour while she yells at you for forgetting her aunt’s birthday. Nowadays we get on famously: I’ve got my work, she messes about with tapestries and flowers and stuff, and she’s got her own friends; we meet up once a day for breakfast and generally have a good old natter about things …”
They reached the table. Mercifully, the annoying man was sitting right down the other end. So, apparently, was Veatriz. He could see the top of her head over a short man’s shoulder.
“You’re Duke Orsea, aren’t you?” There was a female sitting on his left; a nondescript middle-aged woman in green, wearing a massive necklace of rubies.
“That’s right,” Orsea said, as though confessing to a misdemeanor. “I’m sorry, I —”
“Lollia Caustina,” the woman replied promptly. “My husband’s the colonel of the household cavalry. So, what did you think?”
About what? Orsea thought; then he realized she must mean the wedding. “Very nice,” he mumbled.
She started to laugh, then straightened her face immediately as a hand reached past her shoulder and put down a bowl of soup. “Game broth,” she said sadly. “I might have known. Something the Duke killed for us specially, I assume, but as far as I’m concerned he needn’t have bothered. I thought it was absolutely fascinating.”