Devices and Desires

Chapter Twelve

'This,' the foreman said, 'is the main transmission house. Power for the whole machine shop comes from this one flywheel, which is driven by direct gearing from the big overshot waterwheel out back. This here is the main takeoff-he pointed with his stick-'and that's the gear train that supplies the overhead shafts in the long gallery, where all the heavy lathes and mills are.'

Falier Zenonis nodded and muttered, 'Ah' for the twentieth time that morning. He knew it all already, of course, though he'd never actually seen it. But he'd spent a week laboriously working through the notes poor Ziani had made; notes, drawings, sketches, detail sketches, you couldn't fault Ziani on his thoroughness when it came to mechanisms. As a result, he knew his way round the machine shop better than his guide; like a blind man who's lived in the same house all his life. But even if Ziani's notes were strictly legal (which he doubted) he didn't want to draw attention to the fact that he'd read them, or known Ziani at all. So, 'What does that thing there do?' he asked, though he knew perfectly well.

'That?' The foreman pointed. 'That's clever. You just knock back the handle-there, look-and that disengages the main drive. It's a safety thing, mostly; someone gets his arm caught in a belt, you call up to the transmission house and they throw this lever, and the whole lot stops dead.'

'I see,' Falier replied, remembering to sound suitably impressed. 'Do we get a lot of accidents?'

'Not really,' the foreman replied. 'Not when you consider how many people work here, and how much machinery we've got running. Obviously, from time to time someone's going to get careless, there's nothing anybody can do to stop it happening. But you can cut down the risk with the right shift rotations, so nobody's working the dangerous machines long enough to get tired, and only properly trained men use the really big, heavy stuff. That sort of thing's going to be a large part of your job: duty rosters, choosing the right men for each machine, all that stuff.'

Before his disgrace, Ziani had written out frameworks for duty rosters for the next eighteen months; all Falier would need to do would be to fill in the names and copy them out in his own handwriting. Involuntarily, he wondered where Ziani was at that precise moment, and what he was doing.

'Tell me about the man who used to do this,' he said, as casually as he could. 'Didn't he get into some kind of trouble?'

'You could say that,' the foreman replied with a grin. 'You must've heard, it was really big news, just before the Eremian invasion.'

'Hold on,' Falier said. 'That's right, I-remember now. Abomination, wasn't it?'

The foreman scowled as he nodded. 'We were stunned, I can tell you. Gutted. I mean, he always came across as, you know, an ordinary kind of bloke. A bit keen, maybe, inclined to shave the rules a bit to get on top of a schedule; but sometimes you've got to be like that to get things done around here. Within reason,' he added quickly. 'I mean, what he did, there's no excuse for that.'

No excuse. Well. A picture of Ziani as he'd last seen him flooded uninvited into Falier's mind; dazed, he'd seemed, wondering what was going on, in the prison cell in the Guildhall basement, clutching trustingly to the tiny fragment of hope Falier had given him-not for himself, but for his wife and daughter. No excuse; reading the notes and the rosters, page after page covered in neat, ugly, small writing-Ziani always wrote quickly, but he'd never mastered the art of joined-up letters, so he'd invented a method all his own (which was also an abomination, strictly speaking), he remembered the times he'd borrowed Ziani's notes for revision in school, because he'd lost his own, or he'd been playing truant that day. You looked at the page and you thought it was illegible scrawl, but when you looked closer it was as easy to follow as the best clerk's copy-hand.

'It's always the quiet ones,' he heard himself say.

The foreman nodded briskly. 'He was that all right,' he said. 'Always kept himself to himself. I mean, he talked to the lads, but he was never one of them, if you see what I mean. Standoffish, I guess you could call it-not like he thought he was better than us, just sort of like he didn't want to join in. Like his mind was always somewhere else. And now,' he added grimly, 'we know all about it, don't we?'

'Well, I'm not like that,' Falier said, and he gave him one of his trust-me smiles. 'I expect I'm going to have to rely on all of you quite a lot, till I'm up to speed.'

The foreman shrugged his concerns away. 'Place more or less runs itself,' he said, thereby damning himself for ever in Falier's judgement. 'Let the lads get on with it, they know what to do. I mean, you've got the Specifications, what else do you need?'

Down the iron spiral stairs into the main shop; a huge place, bare walls like horizons enclosing a vast stone-flagged plain, on which stood rows and rows of machines. Falier had never seen an orchard, though he'd seen pictures and heard descriptions, and had imagined the straight, bare rides between the rows of trees. There was something like that about the shop floor, the same sense of order firmly imposed. There was far more than he could take in; the noise, an amalgam of dozens of different sounds forming a buzzing, intrusive composite; the smell of cutting oil, sheep's grease, steel filings, sweat and hot metal; the crunch of swarf under his feet, the taste in his mouth of thick, wet air and carborundum powder. He knew that Ziani had loved it here, that there was only one place on earth he'd rather be. Himself, he found it too hot, too noisy and too crowded. It had cost him a great deal of effort to get here, but he wasn't planning on staying any longer than he had to.

'This,' the foreman was saying, 'is your standard production centre lathe; it's what we use for general turning, dressing up castings, turning down diameters, facing off, all that. Driven off the overhead shaft by a two-inch leather belt; four speeds on the box plus two sizes of flywheel, so you've got eight running speeds straight away, before you need to start adding changewheels. Spindle bore diameter one and a half inches; centre height above the bed twelve inches; length between centres…'

Falier smiled appreciatively. It was just a machine. He'd seen loads of them, spent hours standing beside them turning the little wheels, reading off the scribed lines of the dials, dodging the vicious, sharp, hot blue spirals of swarf flying out from the axis of rotation like poisoned arrows. Ziani, now, he'd loved the big machines, the way a rider loves his horse or a falconer his falcons. To him, backlash in the lead-screw was a tragedy, like a child with a terminal illness; a snapped tap or a badly ground parting tool was the remorseless savagery of the world directed at him personally. There was a certain manic quality about the way Ziani had loved his work which Falier had always found vaguely disturbing. A Guildsman should be a part of his machine-the bit on the end of the handle that turned it a specified number of turns. Passion had no part in it. Looking back, you could see he was likely to come to a bad end.

'And over here,' the foreman went on, 'you've got your millers; verticals that side, horizontals this side. Tool racks here; you can see they're all arranged in size order, slot drills on the top row, end-mills next row down, bull-noses and dovetail cutters, flycutters, side-and-face, gang-mills, slotting saws. Collets and tee-nuts here, look, vee-blocks, couple of rotary tables…' Falier kept himself from yawning; a lesser man would've given in, because the foreman wasn't looking at him. He felt like a prospective son-in-law meeting the whole family, right down to the last seven-year-old third cousin.

'Anyhow,' the foreman said, 'that's about it, the grand tour. If there's anything I can help you with, anything you want to know, just ask.'

'Thanks,' Falier said-his mouth had almost forgotten how to shape words during the long, slow circuit. 'It's going to be a pleasure working here.'

The foreman smirked. Falier decided he loathed him, and that he'd need to be got rid of, sooner rather than later. No big deal. 'That just leaves your office,' the foreman said. 'This way, up the stairs.'

The ordnance factory was an old building-ever since Falier could remember they'd been on the point of pulling it down and rebuilding it from scratch, but the moment never quite came. Before the Reformation it had been a religious building of some kind, a temple or a monastery. It had been gutted two centuries earlier, all the internal walls demolished to make the long, high halls and galleries for the rows of machines, but four towers still remained, one at each corner.

Bell-towers, Falier had heard them called. Three of them housed cranes and winches, for lifting oversized sections of material. The fourth one was the senior foreman's office. Falier had been here once, to see Ziani. It was empty now, apart from a single chair and a bare table (not the ones that had been there the last time he'd seen it; every last trace of Ziani had been purged). There was no door; you looked out and down on to the factory floor, spread out in front of you like a vast, complex mechanism.

The foreman went away, leaving Falier sitting in the chair looking at the table. He was wondering what he was supposed to do next when a boy, about twelve years old, appeared in the archway and asked if there was anything he wanted.

Falier frowned. 'Who are you?'

'Bosc,' the boy replied.

'Right. What do you do around here?'

The boy thought for a moment. 'What I'm told.'

'Good. In that case, get me fifty sheets of writing paper, a bottle of ink and a pen.'

That was all it took, apparently; Bosc came back in a surprisingly short time with everything he'd asked for. 'Thanks,' Falier said. 'How do I find you when I need you for something?'

'Yell,' said Bosc, and went away.

Fine, Falier thought. He spread out a sheet of paper, and began writing down the things he knew he'd need to remember, before they slipped his mind. He'd covered three sheets and was crowding the foot of a fourth when a shadow cut out his light. He looked up. Bosc was back.

'Letter for you,' he said, and he brandished a small, folded square of parchment, presumably in case Falier wasn't inclined to believe him without tangible proof.

'Thanks,' Falier said. 'You can go.'

Bosc went. There was nothing written on the outside, so he unfolded it. He saw writing, and folded it back up again. He yelled.

Bosc came back, almost instantaneously. Presumably he sat on the stairs when not in use, like an end-mill on its rack.

'Who brought this?' Falier asked.

'Woman,' Bosc replied. 'Odd-looking.'

Falier felt muscles tighten in his stomach and chest. 'Odd-looking how?'

'She was big and old and fat, her face was sort of pale pink, and she was wearing a big red dress like a tent,' Bosc said. 'She talked funny.'

'Thanks,' Falier said. 'Go away.'

He counted up to twenty before unfolding the letter again. That handwriting; at first sight, you thought you'd never be able to read it. Falier-

The woman I've given this to reckons she can get it to you discreetly. Apparently, they're good at it, years of practice. For your sake, I hope it's true.

In case she's lying or overconfident: to whom it may concern. Be it known that I, Ziani Vaatzes, am writing to Falier Zenonis for the first time since my escape from the Guildhall. He has not been in touch with me since he visited me in prison, and he had nothing to do with my escape or subsequent defection. I'm writing to him because he's my oldest friend in the world, and about the only person in Mezentia who might just read this, rather than throw it straight on the nearest fire. I have information that will prove of great value to the Republic, but what good is it if nobody'll listen to me?

There; I hope that'll help, if they intercept this. If not, I'm very sorry for getting you into trouble. I don't suppose you'll be able to forgive me if that's happened, but you're the only one I could think of If you've read this far, thanks, Falier.

I'm a realist. I know I can't buy my way back home, not after what's happened. I know that even if what I've found out turns out to be as useful as I know it is, and the Republic's saved huge quantities of money and lives, it won't do me any good. But just because I'm here and I did what I did to stay alive, that doesn't change everything about me. I still believe in the important things: the Republic, the Guild, all the really big stuff. Also, I'm hoping there's still a chance that if I can do something for the Republic, it might make things easier for Ariessa and Moritsa. If there's anything I can do, that way, it's worth it, no matter what. And if that's out of the question, Falier, maybe you could use it to do yourself a bit of good; you couldn't let on you'd got it from me, of course, but I'm sure you can think of something. You always were a smart lad.

Falier, I don't know how much you know about diplomacy and foreign affairs and stuff, but it looks like there's going to be a war soon between Eremia Montis (that's where I am now) and the Republic. Naturally, the Republic will win. But the problem will be storming the capital city. City; it's more like a gigantic castle right on top of a mountain, really hard to get to at-the best of times. Trying to attack this place head on would cost millions of thalers and thousands of lives, and it'd take years; but I know a better way, quick, easy and cheap. Piece of cake. It's like this…

Falier read the rest of the letter slowly, trying to visualise what Ziani was talking about. He wasn't very good at that sort of thing; he preferred it all down on paper, diagrams and charts and plans, with someone to talk him through them and explain what he couldn't understand. The general principle was simple enough, though, and someone who knew about this sort of thing would be able to follow it. His instincts told him that Ziani's system would work, considered as a piece of engineering; assuming, of course, that the whole thing wasn't false-a trap, a mechanism designed to inflict harm at long range, a weapon. He was, of course, the only man in Mezentia who knew Ziani well enough to form an opinion about that.

There was no fireplace in the office. To burn the letter, he'd have to go down the stairs (past Bosc, presumably) and walk into the west gallery, where the forges were. He'd have to go up close to one of the forge hearths-only authorised personnel allowed within ten feet-and lean across and drop it into the flames, with the smith and his hammermen watching. Or he could take it home with him (that'd mean either hiding it somewhere, or carrying it around in his pocket all the rest of the day) and burn it there. Or he could keep it.

He looked down at the folded paper in his hands, just in case it had all been a hallucination; but it was still there.

The woman; big and old and fat, her face was sort of pale pink. He knew enough to guess that she must've been a merchant, Eremian or Vadani. If she'd opened the letter and read it (no seal, of course, to tell if she had or not; that'd have been too much to hope for)-even if she was discreet, suppose she was caught and questioned. It'd all come out, and if he burned the letter it'd probably be worse, because he'd have disposed of Ziani's pathetic attempt to protect him-pretty well worthless, of course, but better than nothing, perhaps. Or Bosc; had he read it? Could he read? Fucking Ziani, might as well have stuck a knife in his neck. Or maybe, just maybe, this wodge of paper was a magic carpet that could carry him to places he'd never even dreamed of reaching.

That was the cruellest part; not the despair, but the hope.

No door on his office. Cursing, he sat down and pulled off his left boot, trying to keep his movements slow and casual. In this place, people must be forever getting swarf and filings in their boots, having to take them off and put them on again. He slipped the letter into it and replaced it, lacing it up a little tighter than usual. If ever I see Ziani again, he promised himself, I'll make him wish Compliance had caught up with him first; even if it's power and wealth and glory, I'll skin him alive.

He stood up. He would have to spend the rest of the day walking round with the sharp corners of the letter digging into the sole of his foot, not daring to limp or wince. He felt like a dead man; heir to an incredible fortune, maybe, but too dead to enjoy it. Screw Ziani for trying to do the right thing. No surer recipe for a killer of men and sacker of cities than a subtle blend of altruism and stupidity.

All day, he felt as if people were staring at him. Which of course they were, since he was the new boss, and he was stalking round the place as though his knee-joints had been soldered up.

The first dozen ships docked at Lonazep early on a cold, grey morning, before the sea-frets had cleared. Nobody was expecting them; they were early, or the memo had got lost on someone's desk. They slid into existence out of the wet mist and cast anchor. Only a few old-timers had seen anything like them before.

For one thing, they weren't built of wood, like the honest fishing boats and merchantmen of Lonazep. Instead, they looked to have been contrived out of long strips of thick yellow rope, twisted out of straw and stitched together. They shifted, stretched and sagged like living things with every movement of the water. It was hard to see how they stayed afloat at all.

Furthermore, they were enormous. An ordinary trading coaster could have sailed under the prow of any one of them without fouling its mast-head. They were so tall that nobody on the quay could see beyond the chunky rope rails, and this gave the impression that there might not be anybody on board them at all; that they were ghost ships, or curious sea-monsters pretending to be ships in order to get close enough to attack.

After an unusually long time, they started lowering boats, which were crammed dangerously full of men. They were all wearing round steel helmets painted black, with tall horsehair plumes that nodded and swayed, grossly exaggerating the movements of the heads inside them. The boats were twice the size of the Lonazep herring and tuna boats, not much shorter than the whalers, and substantially broader in the beam; they too were made of rope, but they were powered by oars rather than sails, and they moved across the water alarmingly fast, like spiders climbing a wall.

A group of men bustled out of the customs house, trotting down the cob so as to get there before the first boat landed. In front was the harbourmaster, followed by his inspectors and clerks, with four anxious-looking guards in no great hurry to keep up. As he scuttled, the harbourmaster kept glancing down at a sheet of paper in his hand, as if he was on his way to an exam. He made it to the top of the steps with seconds to spare, as the first horsehair plume came up to meet him.

The face under the helmet was the same brown colour as the Mezentines', but it was bearded, long and thin. The top of the harbourmaster's head came up to its chin.

The harbourmaster was apologising (communications breakdown, wasn't expecting you for another fortnight, please forgive the apparent lack of respect) but the man in the plumed helmet didn't seem to be paying much attention. He was looking about him, at the square stone buildings and the beached ships, as if to say that this wasn't up to the standard he'd come to expect.

'We're the advance party,' he said, in good Mezentine. 'We caught the morning breeze. The rest'll be along later today'

The rest… The harbourmaster's face sagged, as though his jaw had just melted. The dozen rope ships all but filled the available space. 'The rest,' he repeated. 'Excuse me, how many would that-'

'Fifty-two,' the plumed man replied. 'That's the first squadron. We staggered it, so you'd be able to cope. The remaining squadron will be arriving over the next six days.'

The harbourmaster's clerk was counting on his fingers; sixty-four times six. Nobody else was bothered about the exact number.

'I think there may have been a misunderstanding,' the harbourmaster said. 'All those ships-and your men, too. I mean, arrangements will have to be made…'

The plumed man dipped his head very slightly. 'You'd better go away and make them,' he said.

Shortly after noon, when the rope boats had made their last crossing, and the town square was crammed to bursting with plumed men, the wagons started to arrive.The road was solid with them, the horses' noses snuffling in the back of the cart in front, and none of them could turn until they got off the causeway through the marshes. It was impossible to imagine how the mess would ever be sorted out; the town stuffed with men, the road paved with carts, and the men's food was in the carts, and the men were getting hungry. The harbourmaster, who hadn't known anything about it but whose fault it all apparently was, made an excuse and vanished into the customs house, where he proved impossible to find. Responsibility accordingly devolved on the clerk.

The remaining fifty-two ships arrived in mid-afternoon.

Their arrival prompted the leader of the plumed men to take charge. He sent the clerk scuttling away in fear of his life, then started shouting orders in a language the townspeople couldn't understand. The effect was remarkable. Carts were picked up, ten men a side, lifted up and carried off the road, plundered of their loads and turned round to face the other way; human chains passed the jars of flour and barrels of salt pork and cheese back down the road into the town square, where men formed orderly queues. Meanwhile, the strangers chased away the Lonazep pilots and brought the fifty-two ships in themselves. There was room, just about. A line of boats roped together formed floating gangplanks linking each ship to the shore, and thousands more plumed men swarmed along them; officers and NCOs formed them up and marched them off, fitting each company neatly into the available space in the square, like pieces in a wooden puzzle. Carts were still arriving, but plumed men had laid a makeshift causeway of uprooted fenceposts and joists from dismantled roofs across the salt flats, so that the emptied, departing carts bypassed the start of the jam, and the lifting-plundering-turning-around details worked in precisely timed shifts to process each new arrival. The plumed men's leader organised the whole operation from the little watch-tower on the roof of the customs house, with relays of runners pounding up and down the narrow spiral stone staircase, taking turns to go up and down since there wasn't room for two people to pass.

At dawn, the harbourmaster emerged from his hiding place, in time to see the empty ships sailing out of the harbour to make room for the next squadron. The carts were all gone; instead, the road was solid with an unbroken column of marching men, each one with his heavy pack covered by his grey wool cloak, his two spears sloped over his shoulder, his helmet-plume nodding in time to the quick march, so that from a distance the whole line of plumes, as far as the eye could see, all swayed together, forward and back.

Since everything seemed to be under control, the harbourmaster risked climbing the tower. There was something he needed to know, and his curiosity had finally got the better of his bewilderment and terror.

'Excuse me,' he said to the plumed leader, who turned his head and looked at him. 'But who are you?'

The plumed man looked at him some more and turned back to the battlement without answering, and the harbourmaster went away again without repeating the question.

At noon on the fourth day, the advance guard marched into the City, having made better time than anticipated. In Mezentia itself, however, arrangements had been made. Barracks were waiting for them-the Foundrymen and Machinists, the Clothiers, the Carpenters and Joiners, and the Stonemasons had each emptied a warehouse, so there was plenty of room; the staff officers, of course, were directed to the Guildhall, where Necessary Evil had laid on private quarters, hot baths and a reception with a buffet lunch and musicians in the Old Cloister; they'd taken a gamble that it wouldn't rain, but in all other respects nothing had been left to chance.

'Allow me to present Colonel Dezenansa,' Staurachus said. 'Colonel, this is my colleague Lucao Psellus, formerly of the compliance directorate.'

The foreigner had taken off his plumed helmet but he was still wearing his grey cloak and under it his fish-scale armour, steel plates the size of beech leaves and painted black. They clinked slightly every time he moved; if I had to wear something like that and it made that noise all the time, Psellus thought, I'd go mad. 'Pleased to meet you,' he said; he started to extend his hand but the foreigner didn't move. 'Commissioner Psellus,' the foreigner said.

'The Colonel is in charge of the first six squadrons,' Staurachus went on, 'comprising sixteen thousand men. Their job will be to enter Eremian territory and secure the road known as the Butter Pass. This will enable the main army, under General Dejauzida-'

'The Butter Pass,' Psellus interrupted. 'But surely that's the long way round. And it leads you very close to the Vadani border. Surely-'

'Quite right,' Staurachus said, with a little scowl. 'Apparently Boioannes believes that there's a risk the Vadani may misinterpret our intentions and get drawn into the war, unless we neutralise them at the outset with a suitable show of strength. Accordingly, the Colonel will position a thousand men at the Silvergate crossroads, thereby effectively blocking the road the Vadani would have to take if they wanted to reach Civitas Eremiae before our army. There will, of course, be a slight loss of time in reaching Civitas, but that hardly matters, we'll be setting a siege when we get there, and the hold-up won't be long enough for the Eremians to bring in any appreciable quantities of supplies. After all,' he added with a smile, 'where would they bring them in from?'

It took Psellus an hour to get away from the reception without being too obvious about it. He went straight to the Clock Court, where Maniacis' office was.

'Who the hell are all these men in armour,' he demanded, 'and what are they doing here?'

His friend looked up from his counting frame and grinned. 'You should know,' he said. 'You're the warrior, I'm just an accountant.'

Psellus breathed in sharply; Maniacis raised his hands in supplication.

'They're your new army,' he said. 'From the old country, across the water. Jazyges, mostly, with some Bretavians and a couple of divisions of Solatz sappers and engineers. They cost twice as much as Cure Doce, that's without transport costs, but apparently your old friend Boioannes reckons they're worth it. We, of course, have to find the extra money without appearing to break into Contingency funds. We thought we might announce a little pretend earthquake somewhere, and siphon it out through Disaster Relief.'

'Boioannes,' Psellus repeated. 'What's he got to do with it? He's a diplomat.'

Maniacis raised both eyebrows. 'Either you've been cutting briefings or they're keeping things from you,' he said. 'Boioannes is now Necessary Evil. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he's running the show. Don't ask me why,' he pre-empted, 'there's some things even I don't know. In fact,' he added with a smirk, 'I was going to ask you.'

Psellus sat down. 'I give up,' he said. 'Ever since I joined this ludicrous department I've been kicking my heels waiting to be given something to do, and meanwhile they've imported an army from the old country and they're planning to take it up the Butter Pass. I might as well go home and stay there till it's all over.'

'The Butter Pass,' Maniacis said. 'You're kidding.'

Psellus shrugged. 'That's what Staurachus just told me, him and the colonel-in-chief or whatever he was. I didn't catch his name-'

'Colonel Dezenansa,' Maniacis said promptly. 'Quite a distinguished service record, we were lucky to get him. More an administrator than a front-line fighter, but-I'm sorry, you were saying.'

'Perhaps,' Psellus said wearily, 'you could fill me in on what you know about all this.'

Maniacis laughed. 'I just did,' he said. 'That's about it. Boioannes has been manoeuvring and pulling strings for months to get his hands on Necessary Evil; all these arrangements were made for the invasion-you know, when the Eremians were invading us, rather than the other way round-but some fool of a soldier went and cut him out by sending the scorpions. They massacred the Eremians in about ten minutes flat, leaving Boioannes without a war to fight. He was livid, naturally; and then this abominator of yours conveniently escapes, and the war's back on again. Fortuitous, wouldn't you say? Hardly interfered with the original timetable at all.'

Psellus thought about that a lot over the next few days. He had little else to do; he'd retreated into his office (like the Eremians, he told himself, taking refuge behind the walls of their fortified mountaintop) and was waiting for the war to come to him. The war, however, was busy with other things and couldn't be bothered with him. Two or three times a day, a memo came round. It was always the same memo, very slightly amended: Owing to unforeseen operational and administrative factors, the initial advance into Eremian territory has been rescheduled. There will be a delay. You will be informed as soon as a new schedule has been agreed.

Sometimes the memo said 'further delay' or 'once again been rescheduled'; sometimes not. The name at the top was usually Boioannes, though sometimes it was Staurachus, just occasionally Ostin Tropaeas (Psellus had never heard of him). Once it started off, 'By order of Colonel Dezenansa', but the variation wasn't repeated. Psellus wondered if such a divergence from the approved text constituted an abomination.

His duty as a member of Necessary Evil was to stay in his office till called for, so that was what he did, with all his might. To help pass the time, he read; and since there were only two books on his shelf (Approved Specifications of the Guild of Foundrymen and Machinists and Collected Poetical Works of Arnaut Pegilannes) he went back over his files on the Vaatzes case; in particular the documents in the abominator's own handwriting, recovered by the investigating officers from his desk in the ordnance factory. There was no point in doing this, but he did it anyway, because he was bored.

Mostly they were technical stuff: tables of screw thread pitches, tapping drill sizes, major and minor diameters of the standard ordnance coarse and fine threads, material codes, tables of feeds and speeds for each class of lathe and mill. Every qualified Guildsman was expected to have his own copy, taken with infinite care from the master copy on the wall of the Guild chapterhouse. Just for fun, Psellus dug out his own copy and compared it with Ziani's; there were only two differences, and when he went down to chapter he checked them and found that he was the one who'd made the mistakes, twenty-odd years ago.

There was also a small book; home-made out of offcuts of paper (crate lining, possibly) stitched together with thick waxed thread and glued down the spine to a leather hinge that joined two covers, cut out of scrap wooden veneer. It was a neat job, but why bother; why go to the trouble of making such a thing when you could buy a proper one from a stationer's stall in the market for a quarter thaler? Psellus checked himself; quite possibly, Ziani hadn't had a quarter thaler to spare.

He opened it. The same handwriting, precisely laid out on the unruled page-on a whim he measured the spaces between the lines with a pair of callipers, and was impressed to find that they never varied by more than thirty thousandths of an inch; close tolerances, for a man writing freehand; writing poetry…

Psellus frowned. Poetry.

He read a few lines, to see if it was just something Ziani had copied out. He didn't recognise it, and he was fairly sure it was as home-made as the book it was written in. It was bad poetry. It scanned pretty well, as you'd expect from an engineer, and the rhymes were close enough for export, as the saying went, but it was unmistakably drivel. Psellus smiled. Her cheek is as soft as a rose's petal Her eyes are as dark as night Her smile is as bright as polished metal She is a lovely sight.

Which explained, he thought, why Ziani never quit the day job. He imagined him, sitting in his office in the old bell-tower (he'd been to see it during the initial investigation; he'd taken this book from the desk drawer himself, and slipped it into his pocket) on a slow day, nothing much happening; he saw him slide open the drawer and take out the book; a quick glance round to make sure he's alone, a dip in the ink, a furrowing of the brow; then he starts writing, beautifully even lines through invincible force of habit; secretly, deep down, everybody on earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members of the Poets' Guild, who know they can't. He hesitates, running down the alphabet for a rhyme for night (blight, cite, fight, height), and when he reaches S a smile spreads over his face, as the finished line forms in his mind like an egg inside a chicken.

Psellus rested the book on his desk. So what? Right across the known world, in every country with some degree of literacy, there are millions of otherwise sane, normal, harmless people who are guilty of poetry. Maybe Vaatzes thought he was good at it (if those long-haired layabouts can do it, it can't be so very hard), maybe he thought he could make money at it, easier than cutting and measuring metal all day; maybe there was a voice in his head, bees making honey in his throat, and he had no choice but to write it down before he burst. Maybe it was a code, and really it was all secret messages from Eremian intelligence.

He opened the book again and read on. It didn't get better; if anything, Ziani had put his best stuff at the front, like a woman running a fruit stall. It ran in loops; the same rhymes repeated over and over (he'd been particularly taken with cold/gold and heart/apart; sometimes he stacked them in a different order-apart/heart-but that was the limit of his avant-garde tendencies), the same bland sentiments stuffed into the same trite conceits, like sliced meat into flat bread; if original thinking had been Ziani's besetting sin, there wasn't much sign of it in his poetry: My love is like the nightingale Who sings her soft and tender tale My love is like the hyacinth That blossoms on its marble plinth

He frowned again. Would it be useful, he wondered, if he knew who this terrible stuff was addressed to? Anybody in particular? A sort of picture emerged from internal evidence; she had a soft face and wavy hair, and Ziani seemed to think she was nice-looking. That wasn't much help in narrowing down the list of candidates. Maybe her name didn't rhyme with anything. Maybe-anything's possible-the lady in question was his wife.

(What was her name again? Ariessa. Ariessa, confessor, dresser, guesser…)

Well, Psellus thought, the world is full of strange things, and an engineer who writes bad poetry isn't the strangest. He closed the book again, tagging it in his mind as a piquant and mildly amusing curiosity. On a spurt of inspiration, he opened it again and read down the first letters of each line. Gibberish; no acrostics. What you see is all there is. Sad, in a way. Certainly, there was a bittersweet irony in the fact that the man who would soon be bringing annihilation on the Eremian people was someone who thought prove was a legitimate rhyme for love.

Query: was there any more of this stuff among the papers found at the house, or was this a vice he only indulged while he was at work? Further query: now that Eremia was going to be destroyed and the whole question of Ziani Vaatzes' crime was thus redundant, could he really be bothered to go down to the file archive and look? Answer to both: probably not.

With an effort, he evicted Ziani's poetry from his mind and turned his thoughts to Boioannes, and various issues to do with timing. It did rather look as though Boioannes had contrived the war, just so that he could sidestep the ladder of dead men's shoes (he paused at that particular image; Ziani, he felt, would've reckoned it was really good) and gratify his ambition to join and lead Necessary Evil. Sure, Boioannes would be capable of it, but was that what had actually happened? He could probably ascertain the truth by working out timetables, cross-referencing, looking in the files, assuming he was allowed access at that security level. Did it matter? No. It mattered even less than Ziani Vaatzes' poetry. The simple fact was that the Eremian Duke (Orseus? Orseo? Whatever) had been right-them or us-but the scorpions had done for him. The strongest always wins, and who on earth was stronger than the Perpetual Republic?

Going round in little circles, like a mouse in a box. Psellus yawned, and put the Vaatzes papers away where he wouldn't have to look at them. If Boioannes was responsible for the wiping out of Eremia, Vaatzes was only a pretext, of little importance; if Vaatzes wasn't really to blame, neither was Lucao Psellus. He didn't smile at that thought, because things had moved beyond smiling, but he felt a little happier with himself; like a drunk carter who runs someone over in the dark, and then finds he was already dead.

He stood up. True, he was supposed to wait there until he was sent for. On the other hand, he was bored stiff and his back hurt from too much sitting. He wanted to get out of his office and go somewhere. He left the tower, and the Guildhall campus.

Psellus had lived in the City all his life, but there were huge parts of it he'd never been to (like a good archer, who only uses a very small part of the target). He didn't even know where Sixty-Seventh Street was, so he stopped at the Guildhall lodge and asked the duty porter, who explained that Sixty-Seventh Street was between Sixty-Sixth Street and Sixty-Eighth Street. Psellus thanked him and started to walk.

It took him the best part of an hour to find the building; a seven-storey block, what the people who lived in this part of town called an island. According to the file, the Vaatzes family lived on the sixth floor, west side. They had four rooms, as befitted their status as supervisory grade. As an act of extreme clemency, Ariessa Vaatzes had been allowed to stay there after her husband's disgrace, at least until' the child came of age; her rent was paid out of the Benevolent Fund, and she received half the standard widow's pension.

Psellus climbed the stairs. Islands weren't like the Guildhall, which was a pre-Reformation building, beautiful and impractical. Island Seventeen, Sixty-Seventh Street, was built of yellow mud brick; it was ugly but the stairs were straight and wide, and hadn't yet been worn glass-smooth by generations of boot-soles. The stairwell was lit by tall, thin, unglazed windows blocked in by iron bars. There was a smell of damp, and various other smells he couldn't quite identify.

Apartment Twenty-Seven had a plain plank door with external flat hinges. He knocked and waited. Nothing. He knocked again. Across the landing, the door of number twenty-nine opened a crack and a head poked out; an old man with deep eye-sockets and a big, round-ended nose.

'Excuse me,' Psellus said. 'I'm looking for the Vaatzes family. Have I got the right place?'

The man looked at him. 'Gone away,' he said.

Psellus frowned. 'Are you sure?' he said. 'The Guild register says they're still here.'

The man shook his head. 'Been gone three weeks now,' he said. 'Her and the little girl. He went on before them, of course.'

'I see,' Psellus said. 'Would you happen to know where they went? The wife and the daughter, I mean.'

'Couldn't say,' the old man said. 'Men came by to shift the furniture-wasn't a lot of it left, mind, the soldiers took on most of it when they came for Him. Wasn't anything good, anyhow,' the man added sourly, 'just a few chairs and tables, and some boxes, and the beds. She had her clothes, in a bag. Place is empty now. Don't reckon they're in any hurry to move a new lot in. People don't like living where something bad happened.'

Psellus hesitated; then he said, 'Do you think it'd be all right if I went in and had a look? I'm from the Guild, there were some things-'

'Nothing to do with me,' the old man said. 'You do what you like.'

Psellus tried the door, pressing down the plain tongue latch. Of course, he noticed, there's no outside lock; just bolts on the inside, probably. 'Thanks,' he said. The old man stepped back and closed the door, then opened it again, just a crack.

He'd been right; someone had stripped the place bare, even wrenched out the nails where pictures had hung on the wall. The windows were shuttered but the shutters had been left open; a few stray leaves had been blown in by the wind, and in places the floor was spattered with white bird droppings. In the main room a floorboard had been levered up and not replaced. Maybe that's where Vaatzes used to hide his poetry, Psellus thought.

Plain walls, washed with off-white pipeclay distemper; clean and unmarked, which would've been impossible if people had been living there. Someone had seen the need to whitewash the place since the family left. From the bedroom window you could see the roof of the ordnance factory.

So, Psellus thought, why would Ariessa Vaatzes move out, after so much mercy had been expended to let her stay here? Several possibilities. Unhappy memories, that'd do it; hostility from the neighbours; she'd gone back to live with her father now she was on her own. Fine; but regardless of what'd happened to her, she was obliged to register her address with the Guild, same as everybody else, and the address in the file was this one. Another possibility: she was dead, and the old man across the way was lying about having seen her take her clothes away in a bag. But if she'd died lawfully, that'd be registered on her file; and who would want to murder her?

Not that it mattered. Sheer idle curiosity was all that had brought him here; he'd wanted to look at her again, to see if she was the sort of woman who'd inspire a-man to rhyme love and prove in a home-made book. What if an important memo arrived while he was out of the office?

He shut the apartment door behind him. The old man wasn't the Vaatzes' only neighbour. There was bound to be a perfectly simple explanation for her absence, and once he'd found it out he could go back and stare at his wall some more.

Nobody at home at number twenty-eight, but the woman at number thirty seemed positively delighted to talk to him.

No, he wouldn't come in, thanks all the same; she was short, almost circular, with long hair and a bald patch on top, neatly dressed in a faded, carefully pressed blue dress and sandals that looked like they'd belonged to her mother. Ariessa Vaatzes; yes, she went on three weeks ago, took all her things. Three men came to help her, they took all the furniture that was left. A youngish man, and two middle-aged ones; the young man gave orders and the other two did as they were told. They were quick about it, like they were in a hurry. No, no idea where she'd gone. Always kept themselves to themselves, and the little girl was such a sweetheart, it's always the kids that suffer most when bad things happen.

'Did you see the little girl leave?' Psellus asked.

'Oh yes,' she told him. 'Went on with her mother. She didn't seem upset or anything, of course they don't realise at that age, bless them.'

'Did Ariessa Vaatzes seem upset at all?'

'Not really' she replied. 'A bit on edge, that's all. Didn't say anything to the men, but she left with them. But she never did say much. Quiet little thing, she was. Must've been dreadful for her, him turning out like he did.'

Psellus thought for a moment. 'Did you talk to him much?' he asked.

'Him?' She looked at him as though he'd insulted her. 'No, hardly at all. Oh, he wasn't rude or anything, just never had anything to say. Always the quiet ones, isn't it?'

'Did they have any friends in the island? Anybody they got on particularly well with?'

Apparently not. 'They did have a few callers, though,' she added, 'from time to time. Friends of his from work, I think, and her family, once or twice. Never met any of them to talk to, though, so I can't tell you much about them. There was a very tall man with grey hair, and a young woman with a baby who came round in the daytime.'

He thanked her and left, walking fast to get back to the office, just in case. No memo; apparently, the war didn't need him just yet. When was it, he asked himself, that I stopped doing work that was actually of any use to anybody? Was it round about the time I was given a degree of power and authority over my fellow citizens? In the filtered light of his office he wasn't even sure what time of day it was; time passed unevenly there, dragging or flying depending on how close he was able to come to a state of mental detachment. Had he only just got back from his trip to the outside world, or had he been sitting staring at the wall for hours? Not that it mattered. Like all good Guildsmen, he lived only to serve the Republic. If it could afford to leave him idle for a while, it wasn't his place to complain, just as he would have no right to object if it required him to work three days and nights without food or sleep. When was it that I stopped believing that?

Some time later, a memo arrived. A tall, thin boy brought it; he knocked at the door, pushed it at him and walked away. Psellus scraped the seal off with his thumbnail. From Maris Boioannes:

In consequence of various matters, it has been decided to postpone the proposed military action against Eremia Montis for the time being. A document will be issued in due course. Personnel should resume their ordinary duties until further notice. You are required to refrain from discussing any aspect of the proposed military action with unauthorised personnel. Members of the Viability Effects subcommittee will meet in the lesser chapterhouse at noon tomorrow to consider various issues arising from the above. None of the above affects the status of the mercenary troops currently billeted in the Crescent district of the city, who will be remaining until further notice. Commissioner Lucao Psellus is required to consult with the compliance directorate as soon as possible regarding the detention or elimination of the abominator Ziani Vaatzes, who is still at large.

By order c.