Evil for Evil

by K. J. Parker

  It was a while before she could nerve herself to start. She hadn’t written anything for years now. Did he know she even could? The question had never arisen. Probably he assumed she couldn’t; it wasn’t a highly valued accomplishment among women of their class. She smiled, remembering Ziani’s stupid book, which he’d left lying about in his study because he had no idea she could read it. Not that it had been worth reading.

  Slowly and carefully she wrote the address. Important not to get ink on her fingers; you had to pumice them to the bone before you could get rid of the stain, and he wouldn’t believe her if she said it was soot. She winced at the unfamiliar pressure of the quill against the side of her knuckle. People who did a lot of writing got used to it, presumably, as an uncomfortable tool to use.

  My husband says …

  A clumsy way to start; still, she’d written it now.

  My husband says Psellus is going to be the new head of necessary evil …

  (Should that have been capital N and capital E? Not that it mattered.)

  … and I’m worried. Is it true? If he starts asking questions again, what should I tell him? If he’s going to be in charge of everything, sooner or later he’s going to find out something bad. You promised at the start nothing bad was going to happen to me. You never come and see me anymore …

  She lifted her hand away so she could read the last few words. Shouldn’t have written that. It was what they all said, sooner or later; the women she’d always pitied, promising herself she’d never be one of them. She thought for a moment; inspiration struck.

  … so I can’t ask you face to face what’s going on. It scares me, not knowing, I’m afraid I’ll get something wrong. I don’t want to make things bad for either of us. I know you can’t come and see me any time soon, because of what’s happened, but you must have friends who could bring a message. I …

  She stopped just in time. She’d been about to write I miss you or I want you. That was the trouble with writing; so easy to get carried away and put down something without thinking.

  I know what a difficult time this must be for you and how hard it’ll be to find someone to bring me a letter, but please try. For both our sakes. You know I wouldn’t pester you like this if I wasn’t really scared.

  Best to leave it at that. She laid the quill carefully on the side of the table, the nib hanging over the edge so as not to stain the wood, then put the lid back on the inkwell. She didn’t have any sand to blot with, and she wasn’t sure if you could use flour instead; better to leave it to dry off in its own time. That, of course, meant waiting around, since she couldn’t very well leave it lying there while she put the inkwell back in his study. She considered replacing the quill as well as the inkwell, since they cost good money, but it wasn’t worth the risk. She picked it up carefully, just in case there was still ink on it, and flipped it into the fire, her nose crawling at the foul smell of burning feather. While the ink was drying she put some beans in water to soak overnight and scrubbed out tonight’s pan with a thorn twig.

  Once she was sure the letter wouldn’t smudge, she folded it; once lengthways in the middle, then three times sideways. A drop of tallow from the candle was all she had to seal it with; and while the tallow blob was still soft, she pressed the letter A into it with her fingernail. Then she got the long-necked stone bottle she collected the beer in and wedged it in the top, with just a corner sticking out. To be on the safe side, she put the bottle away in the cupboard and closed the door. The last chore was finding a jar to store the cardamoms whose packet she’d cut up.

  He was asleep when she climbed the ladder to the upstairs room; lying on his side. She sighed quietly. When he slept on his back he snored, so he made an effort to lie sideways, but clearly he hadn’t got the hang of it yet; his left arm was trapped under his body, which meant he’d wake up with pins and needles in the morning and make a fuss. As she climbed in next to him, he grunted and twitched away. It wasn’t like she hated him or anything, but there were times she wished she hadn’t had to marry him. It had made sense at the time, of course, when he’d explained it to her.

  For various reasons she didn’t sleep well; and, as is so often the case, when she finally did fall asleep, it was only an hour or so before dawn, which meant she woke up late, after he’d already left for work. Infuriating; she had to dress in a hurry (she hated leaving the house with her hair in a mess) and dash down to the market with the beer bottle so as to hand the letter over in time. The courier (she didn’t even know his name) leered at her annoyingly as he stooped to pick up the scrap of paper she’d apparently let fall from her pocket. His hand brushed hers as he mimed handing the paper back, which made her feel slightly sick. It wasn’t a deliberate try-on, she knew that; probably he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. She hated men, sometimes.

  Once he was safely out of sight, she sat down on one of the stone ledges beside the market-house wall. Her hands were aching, and when she looked down she realized the knuckles were white. Deliberately she relaxed; hands, then arms and shoulders, then her back and legs. It made her wonder how people who lied for a living managed it. Presumably they got used to it, like slaughtermen or butchers, or soldiers after their first few battles.

  With a click of her tongue she got up again. She hated running late. She’d have to rush to get Moritsa to school (was today the spinning test, or was it tomorrow?), and after that, all the usual chores to cram in before he came home again. Some days she had no idea where the time went.

  The door was open when she got back. She was cursing herself for not shutting it properly on her way out when she realized there was someone in the house: two men in military uniform, light armor but no weapons. She felt all the energy drain out of her.

  “Ariessa Falier?”

  She nodded. “You didn’t have to bash the door down,” she said. “You could’ve waited outside till I got home. I was only gone a few minutes.”

  The soldier looked past her at the door, which wasn’t the least bit bashed in (they had little wire hooks, she remembered, for lifting latches from the outside). “Very sorry,” he said, “orders. While we’re on the subject, where have you been? You don’t usually leave the house till it’s time for the kid to go to school.”

  If she hadn’t had so much practice with people like him, that would’ve thrown her. Instead, there was no perceptible delay before she answered, “I went to get the beer for this evening. There’s a special sort Falier likes, but you’ve got to get there early or it’s all sold.”

  The soldier nodded very slightly, as if complimenting her on her facility. It helped, of course, that it was true about the beer. Did the soldier know about Falier’s exacting taste? She wouldn’t be at all surprised.

  “The bottle’s empty,” he said quietly.

  “I didn’t get there early enough.”

  This time he smiled. “Wasted trip, then.”

  “Yes. Looks like it’s going to be one of those days.”

  He stared at her face for a second or two, then said: “It’d be appreciated if you could spare the time to come up to the Guildhall. There’s a few questions …”

  “I can’t. I’ve got to take Moritsa to school.”

  “Already been done.” The smile sharpened into a slight grin. “We’ll collect her as well, if you’re not back in time. She can come and wait at the guard lodge until you’ve finished.”

  For a moment she wished she was a man. She’d have liked to have been Ziani, killing the two guards in the stable, the day he escaped from the Guildhall. Instead she had to stay still and quiet and wait to hear what was coming next.

  “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 curren
t 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.”

  “What 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.”