Devices and Desires

Chapter Nineteen

The worst defeat in the history of the Perpetual Republic was properly debated and acknowledged by an extraordinary general meeting of the Guilds in the great chapterhouse. After the defence committee had made their report, a motion proposed by the Wool, Cotton and Allied Trades that it was not, in fact, the worst ever defeat was rejected on the grounds that, although sixty-two more men were lost at the battle of Curoneia, eighty-seven years earlier, the loss of the war engines was far more significant than the human cost, comprised in both cases only of mercenaries. On the motion of the Foundrymen and Machinists, an emergency subcommittee of the general assembly with full powers was appointed to consider the immediate future conduct of the war, in concert with the defence committee, and the ordnance factory was given an unlimited budget and ordered to move to maximum productivity of scorpions. Inventory revealed a stock of five hundred and seventy-three completed scorpions standing at the factory, and these were appropriated to the use of Colonel Polydama Cersebleptes, who was confirmed as commander in chief of the expeditionary army. Colonel Cersebleptes then addressed the meeting, stating his opinion that with the forces at his disposal and the five hundred and seventy-three scorpions, he was confident of taking Civitas Eremiae within six weeks. Votes of confidence were then taken in favour of the Colonel, the defence committee and the Guiding Commitee itself. A motion of thanks to Captain Beltista Eiconodoulus was proposed by the Silversmiths, but rejected.

After a long day on the walls, Miel Ducas came home and yelled for a bath. He knew he was being inconsiderate-a bath in the Ducas house required the services of twelve people to carry water and fuel, and disrupted the work of the kitchens and the housekeeper's room for an hour-but he didn't care. He was exhausted and his back ached from lifting (he'd led by example, which had seemed like a good idea at the time). He'd stayed until the last scorpion was installed, aligned and bolted down. He'd made Orsea go home two hours before the finish, since it wasn't good for the men to see their Duke making stupid mistakes out of fatigue; besides, he'd been in the way, and Miel's patience had worn thin.

Even in the Ducas house, water takes its time coming to the boil. He undressed, struggled into a bathrobe, and sat on the window-seat of the butler's pantry waiting for the hot water to be carried in. It was a breach of decorum for the Ducas' naked feet to be seen by the chambermaids, so he put on a pair of boots which he guessed belonged to the boiler-man.

He spent a minute or so looking at his hands. The rope burns were healing, thanks to the foul-smelling mess (of Vadani origin, he'd heard somewhere) that the doctors had smeared all over them, and the edges of the torn blisters were hardening into opaque parchment. They were his souvenirs of the battle, his glorious and honourable scars. King Fashion had a certain amount to say about the proper presentation of scars honourably won in the hunt, and one could safely assume that the rules applied just as well to war. Ostentation was to be avoided; one should not, for example, order new shirts and doublets cut low so as to display scars to neck and shoulder, or shorten one's sleeves to reveal cuts and gashes to the forearms. Where scars were visible in normal dress, however, it was permissible to choose lighter colours so that the scars stood out by contrast, and where a hat would otherwise be worn but would obscure a scar, it could be dispensed with. Miel smiled at the thought. He doubted whether King Fashion had ever been rope-burned or blistered his hands in his life, unless you counted the little pinches between the fingertips that came from archery without a glove or a tab. Blisters and burns aside, he had nothing on the outside to show for the victory, unless you counted the scorpions themselves. They were, of course, the great trophies of the hunt, and they'd been displayed to the best possible advantage, where you couldn't help seeing them. He ought to feel proud, he supposed; the ambush had been his idea, and he'd commanded the army, at Orsea's insistence, because his friend felt he wasn't competent to carry out such a desperately important mission. He'd been right about that, of course, which only made it worse.

He thought about that, too. The plain fact was that Orsea wasn't up to this job, leading the people in a war to the death. He was too obsessed by fear of failure, of the consequences of a mistake on his part; he insisted that Miel should do everything, and at the same time resented him murderously for it. That made Miel feel guilty, because it was completely unfair, and the guilt led to further resentment. There was absolutely nothing he could do about that; but Veatriz had started to hate him now, because he was making Orsea so unhappy. She never even looked at him when they happened to meet, and if he spoke to her she snarled at him.

Thinking about that made him think of the letter. It had never been far from his thoughts, ever since he'd first intercepted and hidden it. He could feel it, like an arrowhead too deeply embedded to be cut out; his only act of treachery in a lifetime of dutiful service. Well, you could put it like that; but at the moment it was one burden on his mind too many. Just as they brought in the first jugs of hot water, he made up his mind to get rid of it for good. If he burned it, at least he'd be rid of the dilemma.

'I'll be right back,' he said to the chambermaids, who stared at him as if he was some kind of wild animal, then curtsied and fled.

The final hiding place he'd chosen for the lethal packet of parchment was, he couldn't help thinking, magnificently apt. A small crack between two stones in the wall in the upper solar, out of sight behind the extravagant tapestry (the unicorn hunt; three hundred years old, a late masterpiece of the last decadent phase of the primitive-realist school; absolutely priceless because only three other examples existed, all of them preserved here in the Ducas house since the day they'd been made); nobody ever came in here apart from the servants, who were absolutely forbidden to touch the tapestry. He'd only found out about the crack himself because he'd played in this room as a boy; he'd hidden behind the tapestry from Jarnac and the bigger boys, when he'd been the roebuck and they'd been the hounds. They'd found him, of course, by his faint tracks in the dust on the floor, but even they had never dared lift the tapestry to drag him out. He'd been safe there, because only the Ducas and his heir apparent would dare lay a fingertip on the unicorn tapestry. Now even he felt nervous to the point of trembling as he gently moved the heavy fabric away from the wall and stepped behind it.

Three paces in, collarbone height; his fingers traced the courses of stone until they found the narrow slot.

The letter wasn't there.

'You've got no idea,' the woman said, 'how hard it was getting it.'

Vaatzes shrugged. 'Couldn't have been that difficult,' he said, 'or you wouldn't have managed.'

She didn't like that, but he didn't care. He knew she was just trying to justify the asking price, to which he'd already agreed without protest. It was a vast sum of money-seventy gold thalers, enough to buy a good house and three hundred acres of pasture complete with all live and dead stock. It was his share of the profit on sixty scorpions. He'd cheerfully have paid three times as much.

'The money,' she said.

He reached in his desk drawer and pulled out the bag, dropping it on the desktop with a loud thump and resting his left hand on it. 'You can count it,' he said.

'I trust you,' she replied disdainfully.

He shrugged. 'Up to you,' he said. 'Let's see it, then.'

She knelt down, lifted her basket up on to the desk, and started to empty it. Cabbage stalks, bean pods, pea helm, artichoke peel, carrot tops and a small square of parchment. He took it from her and carefully unfolded it. 'Have you read it?' he said.

She shook her head. 'Just what's on the outside,' she said. She was lying, of course, but that didn't matter. He folded his arms on the desktop and leaned forward to decipher the tiny, awkward handwriting. Valens Valentinianus to Veatriz Sirupati, greetings.

He lifted his head and looked at her. 'If this is a fake,' he said, 'I'll kill you. Do you understand?'

She nodded, as though threats were a familiar part of her daily routine. Fleetingly, he wondered about her life, but it was none of his business.

'Thanks,' he said, and lifted his hand off the money-bag.

'Pleasure's all mine,' she said. The bag was too big for her to lift one-handed (she had small, plump paws, like a frog). 'What do you want with it, anyhow?' she added.

'Do you really want me to tell you?'

She didn't answer. It was obvious she hated him, for a wide variety of reasons. 'Don't you go making trouble for the master,' she said. 'He's a proper gentleman, the Ducas.'

Vaatzes sighed. 'Fine,' he said. 'In that case, you take it back and I'll have the money'

She scowled at him and took a step backwards toward the door. He smiled.

'Go away,' he said.

She hated him for another two seconds, then left the room. He heard her feet hammering on the spiral stone staircase, and a door slamming. He didn't move. He sat, with just the tips of his fingers resting lightly on the edges of the parchment, which smelt powerfully of decaying vegetables. The urge to read it was painful, but he restrained himself, to prolong the pleasure. All his adult life he'd made weapons, in the service of the Perpetual Republic; the frames and arms and springs and mechanisms of mighty engines, whose mechanical advantage was capable of magnifying the strength of the human arm into a force impossible to defend against. He knew a good weapon when he saw one, or touched its working components. He also knew a little about love-letters, particularly those that the beloved never gets to read. He'd made the connection long ago, and knew that love is the most destructive weapon of all, the only problem being how to contain and channel it into something that can be spanned, aimed and loosed.

With the tips of his forefingers, he lifted the letter off the desktop. It was faintly translucent, being old parchment, scraped several times. Like a butcher breaking the carcass of a bird, levering the breast up off the ribcage, he folded back the corners and opened it. My chess-playing mind tells me that what you need is something to take your mind off your troubles: a story, an observation, a discussion about silk-painting or the use of nature imagery in the elegaics of Haut Bessamoges. You want me to open a hidden door in the wall and show you a room where you can hide for a little while. Instead, my mind is busy with cunning schemes-how can the Vadani take the heat off Orsea of Eremia, given that the two nations hate each other like poison?

Vaatzes smiled. A man after his own heart, Duke Valens, though he'd probably dislike him intensely if they ever met face to face. He both admired and resented the way he could put into words things that he himself could only feel. Presumably Cantacusene felt the same way when he'd been humiliated in his own workshop by a superior craftsman. He dismissed the resentment (after all, Valens was working for him now, just as Cantacusene was, and a good supervisor respects his valuable employees). It was most definitely a letter he couldn't have written himself; cut from solid instead of painstakingly pinned, brazed, fabricated out of scrounged components. No wonder she was in love with him.

(He closed his eyes and tried to recall the memory of her face, glimpsed briefly at the meet before the Duke's boar-hunt. Not beautiful; pretty in an everyday sort of way. He loved her too, of course, but only because she was his best and most effective weapon. She was going to smash open the gates of Mezentia for him; he'd walk into the city on a siege-mound of corpses she'd raised for him. In the circumstances, the very least he could do was love her. Also, she reminded him of someone who was with him all the time.)

He read the rest of the letter, folded it carefully and put it in his inside pocket. Until everything was ready and he needed it, it was only fitting that he should carry it next to his heart, as lovers are supposed to do.

It was some time before Miel Ducas remembered that he was still in his bathrobe, and the hot water was going cold. Not that that mattered-he was the Ducas, and he could do what he liked in his own house-but the last thing he wanted to do was make a scene. The eccentricities of the nobility were valuable commodities in the town. The usual fabricated variety commanded a high enough price in alcohol, entertainment or sexual favours; he didn't like to think about the market value of a genuine Ducas story. Needless to say, Orsea wouldn't set any store by tavern gossip, but he was probably the only person in the duchy who didn't.

He opened the solar door slowly and carefully, and walked out into a corridor crammed with servants, all of them standing perfectly still and looking at him. It was worse than the scorpion bombardment, far worse than facing the wounded boar, because all his princely qualities of valour and dash were useless; he couldn't grab a falchion off the wall and massacre the lot of them. All he could do was walk straight past them, pretending he hadn't seen them. As soon as he turned the corner, he broke into a run.

As he'd anticipated, his bathwater was cold. He lowered himself in, washed briskly, clambered out and scrubbed himself dry with the towel (he couldn't remember having seen it before; it was a pale orange colour with embroidered lilies and snowdrops, one of the most revolting things he'd ever seen. He remembered that the Duchess had recently sent him some linen as a thank-you present for arranging the hunt, but he couldn't believe for an instant that she could deliberately have chosen to buy something like that. Thinking about Veatriz reminded him of the letter; he closed his eyes and shuddered, as though a surgeon was pulling an arrow-head out of his stomach).

There had to be a perfectly rational explanation. He'd considered hiding it there, but had changed his mind or never got round to doing it. It had fallen out of the crack and was lying on the floor, hidden by the hem of the tapestry. He'd put it there, but changed his mind, moved it, and forgotten he'd done so. It had been completely devoured by moths.

Or someone had found it and taken it. He noticed something strange, and experimented by holding his arm straight out in front of him. His hand was shaking.

Should've burnt it; should've given it to Orsea straight away; should have given it to her. But he hadn't. He'd tethered it, it had slipped the hobbles and escaped, and now it was loose. He tried to think who might have taken it, but his mind couldn't grip on the question, like cartwheels on thick ice. Nothing ever disappeared in the Ducas house, even though it was jammed and constipated with the accumulated valuable junk of generations. A light-fingered servant could steal a fortune in gold and silver plate, fabrics, ornaments, and be over the border free and clear before anybody noticed, but it had never happened in living memory; so why should anybody steal a small piece of parchment? Half the servants couldn't even read (but if they'd been told what to look for, that didn't signify). Maybe someone had taken it to light a fire (but why go looking for kindling behind the tapestry nobody was allowed to touch, when there was a cellar full of dried twigs and brush?). The truth had him at bay, and he had nowhere to run to. Someone had known what to look for and where to look. It was self-evident; but it was also impossible, because nobody else in the house knew about that place.

He could burn the house down; but it stood to reason that the thief would've got rid of the loot as quickly as possible, so that wouldn't achieve anything.

Without knowing what he was doing, he dressed in the clothes laid out for him. The only sensible course of action would be to go to Orsea, straight away, and tell him the whole story. But if Orsea hadn't been given the letter yet, he'd refuse to believe it; he'd fly into a rage and burst into tears, and everything would get worse. He should go to Veatriz (and what would he tell her? I intercepted your letter. Why did you do that, Miel?). He should leave Eremia tonight and defect to the Mezentines. It depressed him utterly to think that that was probably the best idea he'd had so far.

He realised he was looking in a mirror. It was an old one, spattered with patches of dark grey tarnish, and in it all he could see was the face of an idiot. But that was all very well. It was also a reasonably lifelike portrait of the Ducas; and if it came to his word against somebody else's, who was Orsea going to believe?

He looked away; because on any other subject there could be no possibility of a doubt, but where Veatriz was concerned, he had to admit that he simply didn't know. Orsea had a memory too; he could remember when it was unthinkable that the Sirupati heiress would marry anybody except the Ducas, and wasn't it a bizarre but wonderfully convenient coincidence that the Ducas should be completely besotted with the girl? He knew Orsea better than anybody else, far better than she did. It was highly unlikely that a day passed when Orsea didn't remember that.

Or he could kill himself, and slide out of the problem that way. On balance, it'd be better than defecting to the enemy, but he didn't want to. Besides, what became of him really didn't matter; it wasn't nearly as simple as that. He couldn't think of escaping, by treachery or death or running away and joining a camel-train to the Cure Hardy, if it meant leaving her in mortal peril.

(Mortal peril; hero language again. He cursed himself for an idiot. Heroism wouldn't help here, because this wasn't a last-ditch battle against the forces of evil, it was a bloody stupid mess. You can't defeat messes with the sword, or by feats of horsemanship, endurance or strategy. You've got to slither your way out of them, and slithering simply wasn't part of his armoury of skills.)

Or I could simply wait and see what happens; and as and when the letter shows up, I can tell the truth.

He stared at that thought for a long time; it was also a mirror, in which he saw himself. I'm Miel Ducas. I tell the truth, because I'm too feckless to lie. He shook his head; that was too easy, and he didn't believe it. I can't lie in the same way a fish can't breathe air. I was bred to do the right thing, always.

The right thing would be to tell Orsea the truth, if the letter comes into his hands. But the right thing would mean that the disaster falls on Veatriz, who did the wrong thing, and that can't be allowed to happen. I did the right thing concealing the letter-it'd have been wrong to burn it straight away, because that would have been a betrayal of Orsea. Bloody shame I hid it where someone could find it, but that's simply incompetence, not a moral issue.

I'm Miel Ducas, and for the first time in my life I don't know what to do.

She found him in the cartulary, of all places. He was standing on a chair, tugging at a parchment roll that had got wedged between two heavy books. If he tugged any harder, she could see, half the shelf would come crashing down.

'Orsea,' she said.

He jumped, staggered and hopped sideways off the chair, which fell over. She wanted to laugh; he'd always had a sort of catlike grace-in-clumsiness, an ability to fall awkwardly off things and land on his feet. As he turned and saw her, he looked no older than sixteen.

'You startled me,' he said.

'Sorry' She smiled; he grinned. He'd never quite understood why she seemed to like him most when he did stupid things. He felt like a buffoon, nearly falling off a chair, but her smile was as warm as summer. 'What were you doing up there, anyway?'

He frowned. 'Your father had a map of the Cleito range,' he said. 'I remember him showing it to me once, years ago. I thought it might be in here somewhere.'

The Cleito; that was where Miel had ambushed the Mezentines. 'It wouldn't be here,' she replied. 'Have you looked in the small council room? He always used to keep his maps there.'

The expression on his face told her it hadn't occurred to him to do that. 'Thanks,' he said. 'That's where it'll be. Good job you told me, or I'd have pulled the place apart looking for it.'

That had come out sounding like an accusation rather than praise, but they both knew what he'd meant by it. She carried on smiling, but she was doing it deliberately now. 'Have you got a moment?' she asked.

'Of course.' As he looked at her his face was completely open; and she was planning on leading him-not into a trap exactly, but to a place he probably wouldn't want to go. For a brief moment she hated herself for it. 'Let's go into the garden,' he said, as she hesitated. 'I think it's stopped raining.'

He led the way down the single flight of stairs. He always scampered down stairs, there was no other word for it. A duke shouldn't scamper, of course. She smiled again, at the back of his head, without realising she was doing it.

The garden glistened after the rain, and she could smell wet leaves. That was almost enough to choke her.

'So?' he asked briskly. 'What's up?'

'Oh, nothing.' The answer came out in a rush, instinctive as a fish lunging at a baited hook. 'Only,' she went on, rallying her forces into a reserve, and paused for effect. 'Orsea, I'm worried. About the war.'

The look on his face was unbearable; it was guilt, because he'd let war and death come close enough to her to be felt. He was going to say, 'It's all right,' but he didn't, because he didn't tell lies.

'Me too,' he mumbled. 'That's why I was looking for that stupid map. General Vasilisca thinks-'

The hell with General Vasilisca. 'Orsea,' she said (she used his name like a rap across the knuckles). 'What's going to happen to us if they get past the scorpions?'

He took a deep breath, put on his serious face, which always annoyed her. 'In order to do that,' he said, slowly, looking away; he always looked so pompous doing that, 'they'd have to mount a direct assault, with artillery support. But our artillery would take out their artillery before they could neutralise the walls, which means their infantry would have to attack in the face of a scorpion bombardment. Basically, we'd be killing them until we ran out of bolts. It'd be thousands, maybe tens of thousands-' He stopped. He looked like he wanted to be sick. 'Their army wouldn't do it, for one thing. They're mercenaries, not fanatics. They'd simply refuse.'

'Orsea,' she said.

'And even if they were crazy enough to do it,' he went on, ignoring her, 'they'd still have to conduct a conventional assault-scaling ladders and siege towers, against a full garrison, and the best defensive position in the world. There's every likelihood that we'd beat them off, provided they don't have artillery control. It's simple arithmetic, actually, there's tables and formulas and stuff in the books; the proper ratio of attackers to defenders necessary for taking a defended city. I think it's five to one, at least. And of course, we've got much better archers than they have.'

'Orsea,' she said again, and the strength leaked out of him. 'What'd happen to us, if they won?'

He looked away, and she knew he was beaten already, in his mind. Part of her was furious at him for being so feeble, but she knew him too well. He didn't believe they could win, because he was in command. In a secret part of her mind, she offered thanks to Providence for Miel Ducas, who was twice the man Orsea was, and who (on balance) she'd never loved. 'I don't know,' he said. 'That's the really horrible thing about this war, I don't actually know why they're doing it. You'd think they might have the common good manners to let us know, but apparently not.'

(He knew why, of course. The huntsman doesn't send heralds or formal declarations of war to the wolf, the bear or the boar. Their relationship is so close, there's no need to explain.)

She came closer to him, but there was no tenderness in it. Instead, she felt like a predator. 'I want you to listen to me,' she said.

He looked bewildered. 'Sure,' he said.

'If the war goes badly,' she said, and stopped. Her mouth felt like it was full of something soft and disgusting. 'If things go wrong, I don't want to stay here and be killed. I don't. I was a hostage all those years, because Father had to play politics to keep us going when the Vadani were closing in all the time, and every day when I woke up and realised where I was, I knew that if something went wrong, I could be killed and that'd be that. I was just a child, Orsea, and I had to live with that all the time. I was frightened. I can't stand being frightened any more. It's not noble and strong to be brave when you can't fight and defend yourself. I was brave all those years, for Father and the Duchy, and I won't do it again. If the Mezentines are going to take the city, I don't want to be here. I want to run away, Orsea, do you understand? Me getting killed won't make anything better for anybody. I want to escape. Can you understand that?'

He was staring at her, and she thought of the old fairy-tale where the handsome young hunter marries a strange, wild girl from outside the village, and on the wedding night she turns out to be a wolf-spirit disguised as a human. 'You want to leave,' he said, very quietly. 'Fine.'

Most of all she wanted to hit him, for being so annoying. 'I want us to leave,' she shouted at him. 'You don't think I'd go without you? Don't be so stupid. I want us to get out of here before it's too late. Leave the Ducas and the Phocas and the great lords to defend the city, if they really feel they have to. I care about the people, of course I do, but there's nothing you or I can do to help them, and if we're killed, we're dead. That'd be pointless.' She took a deep breath, ignoring the look on his face. 'Orsea, I want you to care about us for once, for you and me. Two more dead bodies rotting in the sun won't make any difference to the world, but we could escape, go somewhere. I don't care about not being the Duchess any more. I don't care what I do. But staying here just because-'

'Because it's the right thing to do,' he said.

She closed her eyes, because she wanted to scream. Fine,' she said. 'Just suppose we do the wrong thing, for once in our lives. Well, that'd be awful, wouldn't it? We might get into trouble for it, something bad might happen to us. Something worse than getting killed by the Mezentines.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Actually,' he said, 'no.'

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

'The few that're left.'

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

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

'Fine,' she said, and walked out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Is he dead?' he asked.

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

'What the fuck was all that about?' someone asked.

Later, sitting in the window of the main gallery recovering from a horrific bout of shaking and nausea, Vaatzes decided there couldn't have been a knife, because he'd felt the hunter's left hand grabbing at him on the stairs. That helped the world make sense again. He sent someone to fetch the man who'd answered his question. While he was waiting for him to arrive, he called half a dozen men off the bloom anvil and told them to form a half-circle facing him, about five yards back.

When he saw the man again, he recognised him. He even knew his name-Fesia Manivola, second foreman in the grinding shop. A pity, because he was a good worker.

'You wanted to see me?' Manivola was relaxed, inquisitive, friendly.

Vaatzes nodded; it was the cue for the six bloom-hammerers to close in behind Manivola. 'You killed him, didn't you?' he said. 'He didn't fall on his own knife like you said. You stabbed him so he couldn't give you away'

Manivola denied it, twice, and then one of the bloom-workers broke his neck. They dragged his body out into the yard, laid it next to the two assassins to wait for the arrival of the examining magistrate, who was needed for various formalities. Once they were over, the magistrate asked him the question he'd been asking himself: why did you have him killed straight away? For all you know, there could've been more than one.

'I know,' he replied. 'But that was enough. If there's more, they'll know they're safe now, but it's too dangerous to try again.' He pulled a face. 'I've already lost one key worker and there's a war on. If I found out the foundry chief and the foreman of the tempering shop were in on it as well, I'd have to close down a shift.'

Either the magistrate saw the logic in that or he knew better than to argue with the man who made the scorpions that had won the great victory. He wrote things in his little book and went away. Shortly after dark a cart came for the bodies; according to the magistrate, they'd be tipped down a disused drain, and nobody need ever know.

In the middle of the first night shift, a messenger came to take him to see the Ducas. He'd been expecting that. He rode in a cart up to the shabby door of the Ducas house, and followed the messenger across courts, quadrangles and cloisters to a small room, by his calculations leading off the north-east corner of the great hall. He told Miel Ducas about Compliance, though he was fairly sure he knew the salient points already.

'The only surprise,' he went on, 'is that they waited so long. Usual procedure is to kill a defector as soon as possible.'

Miel Ducas nodded. 'How do you account for the delay?' he asked.

'Not sure,' Vaatzes replied truthfully. 'My guess is, once they heard about the scorpions we shot up the wagon train with and realised they were home made, they knew they needed to put me out of action. But that doesn't explain why they haven't tried before.'

The Ducas frowned. 'So that's it, then. It's a mystery.'

'Yes.' Vaatzes smiled grimly. 'And I'm not complaining. But I was very lucky indeed. I don't know anything about hand-to-hand combat, or any of that stuff.'

'Maybe you should learn,' the Ducas replied, as anticipated. Vaatzes acknowledged and moved on.

'We'll need guards now, obviously,' he said. 'It'll slow up loading and unloading, and it won't actually do any good. If they had Manivola helping them-'

'That's the accomplice?'

Vaatzes nodded. 'Wouldn't have thought it of him,' he said. 'But we'll have guards anyway, just for the hell of it.'

'All right. Do you want visitors searched for weapons?'

'In a factory?' Vaatzes laughed. 'He could pick a tool off any bench that'd serve as well as any weapon; hammer, saw, whatever. And it'd take too much time. No, I was thinking of a different approach.'

The Ducas waited, then said, 'Well?'

Vaatzes said: 'Normally, I'd make my own, but there isn't time. Do you happen to have such a thing as a brigandine coat?'

The Ducas dipped his head briskly. 'Several,' he said. About three dozen, actually. Mine wouldn't fit you, but I'm sure I had a short ancestor at some point in the last three centuries. Wonderful how much useless junk you inherit; and of course we never throw anything away, because everything we acquire is nothing but the best, far too good to part with. I'll have it sent round as soon as possible.'

'Thank you,' Vaatzes said. 'And nobody must know, of course, or there'd be no point.'

'Naturally. And you really should find time for some simple lessons: single sword, sword and buckler, bare hand and dagger. My cousin Jarnac's sergeant-at-arms is the man you need. I'll talk to Jarnac when I've got a moment.'

'That'd be kind of you,' Vaatzes replied. He was looking hard for some sign in the Ducas' face, but what he saw there, in the eyes and the line of the mouth, could have been simple stress and fatigue from running a country at war. 'You've been doing things for me ever since I came here. I'm grateful.'

The Ducas shrugged. 'It's thanks to you we've got a chance in this war,' he said. 'The scorpions…' He shook his head. 'A chance,' he repeated. 'I don't know.'

Vaatzes studied him for a moment, and saw a man in two minds. Half of him knew that Civitas Eremiae would inevitably fall; the other half couldn't see how it possibly could. Mostly, though, he saw a man who'd been tired for so long he was getting used to it. 'The Republic's never lost a war,' he said, 'but there's always a first time. I think our best hope are the Potters and the Drapers; and the Foundrymen, of course.'

It took the Ducas a moment to realise he was talking about Guilds. 'Go on,' he said.

'The Foundrymen are more or less in the ascendant at the moment,' Vaatzes explained, 'or at least they were when I left. There's never a deep underlying reason why one Guild gets to dominate. It's about personalities and political skill rather than fundamental issues; mostly, I think, because there's virtually nothing we don't all agree about. But the Foundrymen have been on top for longer than usual, and the Potters and Drapers have been trying to put them down for a while, and they're annoyed and upset because so far they've failed. The Foundrymen will have wanted this war because victory always makes the government popular, and we always win. But if we don't win, or at least not straight away, so it's costing lots of money and interfering with business, there's a good chance it'll bring down the Foundrymen. The Drapers and Potters will therefore want to make out that any major reverse is a genuine defeat-they'll say the Republic's been beaten for the first time in history, and it's all the Foundrymen's fault, and we should never have gone to war in the first place. Meanwhile the Foundrymen will be unhappy because they'll be taking men off civilian work to increase the production in the ordnance factory, so that'll be costing them money; they'll want to get rid of the present leadership and end the war so as to limit the damage before the Drapers and Potters have a chance to overthrow them. Also, the Drapers and Potters will have a fair degree of support, because most of the Guilds do a lot of export business with the old country, where the mercenaries come from. If thousands of mercenaries are killed in the war, it'll be very bad for their trade over there. It's possible to win this war, provided you can do as much damage as possible; kill as many men as you can, destroy as much equipment, cost them as much money as possible. As long as they want to fight you, they'll never give up; but if you can make them decide that the war isn't worth the cost and effort, you're in with a chance. It's not like your war with the Vadani, where you hated each other. Hate doesn't come into it with the Republic, that's the key as far as you're concerned. They make war for their own reasons. It's always all to do with them, not really anything about you. You're like the quarry in a hunt, rather than a mortal enemy; you don't hate the animals you hunt, you do it for the meat and the glory. When you're not worth hunting any more, when you're more trouble than it's worth, they'll call it a day and go home.'

Needless to say, the Ducas was as good as his word. The brigandine coat arrived the next morning, in a straw-filled barrel. The first thing Vaatzes looked for was a maker's mark, and he found it, in exactly the right place; the fifth rivet-head in from the armpit, right-hand side, second row down, was stamped with a tiny raised letter F, for Foundrymen. That meant it was Guild-made, and therefore complied exactly with the relevant specification.

The specification for a brigandine coat consists of two thousand, seven hundred and forty-six small, thin plates of best hardening steel, drawn to a spring temper. The plates are sandwiched, overlapping each other, between two layers of strong canvas, held in place by one-sixteenth-inch copper rivets; they're also wired and riveted to each other to make sure they move perfectly with every action of the wearer's body, so that at no time is it possible to drive the point of an ordinary sewing needle between the joints. The jacket is covered on the outside with middle-weight hard-wearing velvet, and lined inside with six layers of linen stuffed with lambs-wool and quilted into one-inch diamonds. The finished coat contains ten thousand, nine hundred and eighty-four rivets, weighs six pounds four ounces, will turn a cavalryman's lance or an arrow from a hundred and twenty pound bow, should be as comfortable as a well-cut gentleman's doublet and shouldn't be noticeable when worn under an ordinary day-jacket. The Linen Armourers' Guild produces a hundred and twelve of them a year, of which ninety-six go for export.

Vaatzes lifted it out of the barrel, brushed away the straw, and held it out at arm's length. He'd never actually seen one before, although he knew the specification by heart. It was strange, here in this barbarous and unsatisfactory place, finally to find himself in the presence of perfection; as though a prophet or visionary had spent his whole life searching in the wilderness for enlightenment, only to find it, having abandoned the search, in a grubby market town, sitting on a toilet.

He laid it flat on the workbench in front of him, and ran his fingertips over the velvet before slowly unfastening the seventeen brass buttons. For one horrible moment, as he drew it across his shoulders, he was afraid it wouldn't fit. Once he was inside it, however, it closed in around him like water engulfing a diver. He could just feel a slight weight on his shoulders and chest, and a very gentle hug as he buttoned it up; just enough to let him know that he was now as perfectly safe as it's possible to be in an imperfect world, his body's security guaranteed by the absolute wisdom and skill of the Perpetual Republic. He'd heard someone say once that a Guild coat would even turn a scorpion bolt; that was, of course, impossible, but there was a part of him deep down that was inclined to believe it. It wasn't the steel or the skill with which the rivets had been closed; it was the specification, the pattern that drew the thousands of plates together and made them move as one unbroken, unbreakable whole, like the City that had made them. The coat wouldn't protect him against scorpions, because even though the steel stayed unpierced, the shock would smash his bones to splinters and pulp his internal organs. That didn't matter, however, because it would be him that had failed rather than the coat. His own frailty in no way invalidated the consummate virtue of Specification; just as the death of one citizen doesn't kill a city.

He smiled. The irony was exact, precise, fitting as closely as the coat. His safety guaranteed by the City that was trying to kill him, he could now carry on unhindered with his design to bring that City to ruin, and all perfection with it. All he needed now was to be taught to kill by the Ducas family, and the symmetry would be complete.