Evil for Evil

12

"I had a letter from my man at the silver mine," Valens said, making a point of not looking Ziani in the eye. "He says they're finished there now, all sealed up. He says the men have been told the mine's been put out of commission for good. I hope he was lying."

Ziani didn't say anything, and Valens didn't look at him.

"Anyhow," Valens went on, "the idea is, the first thing the Mezentines are likely to do is round up as many of the mineworkers as they can. Our people will tell them the mine's useless, and with luck they'll believe it and give up. Meanwhile, I've sent the men you trained to do the same at the smaller workings. Do you think they'll be able to manage?"

"I expect so," Ziani said. "They seemed perfectly competent."

Valens shrugged; he was fairly sure that Ziani was watching him. "Doesn't matter," he said. "By our calculations, it won't make business sense for the Republic to work the smaller mines, what with the overheads they'd be facing. One good thing about fighting a war against businessmen, we can do the same sums they do, which means we can more or less read their minds."

"The Republic won't bother with them if they can't make a profit," Ziani said.

"Which means the government won't be able to kid the opposition into a full-scale occupation purely on commercial grounds," Valens said. "I believe that surviving this war is very much about not fighting it, if that can be arranged. If there's nothing here for them-no city to sack, no mines to take over, no people around to kill-where'd be the point? Of course," he added, "that's just my guess at how they think. I imagine Guild politics is a bit more complicated than I'm making out."

"I wouldn't know," Ziani said.

Valens leaned forward, planting his elbows on the desk. "You're too modest, I'm sure."

"Really." Out of the corner of his eye, Valens saw Ziani turn his head away. "I believe what you and the others have been telling me about factions among the Guilds and so on, but most of it's news to me. That sort of thing doesn't tend to trickle down to the shop floor."

"Oh." Valens rubbed his eyes. He was tired, and these days he found talking to the Mezentine rather trying. "Well, it's the best intelligence we've got, so let's hope it's accurate. Now then. Moving on; literally, as well as figuratively. My wedding's been brought forward a month, now that the mines have been sorted out. I want to be in a position to start the evacuation as soon as possible after that. You told me you had some ideas on the subject, but you were all coy and secretive about it." Now he turned his head and looked Ziani in the eye. "If it's going to need preparation and materials, I'd better know about it now."

"Fine," Ziani said. His face was blank, and he didn't move at all. "The thing is this. I'm no strategist, but as I understand it, your idea is to keep your people on the move, out of the way of the Mezentine soldiers."

"That's right."

Ziani nodded slowly. "I can quite see the thinking behind it. Show them a clean pair of heels, they'll soon get tired of chasing after you, spending money, with no victories to write dispatches home about. The opposition-that's the term you were using, wasn't it? — they'll make capital out of the fact that nothing much seems to be happening and the bills keep rolling in, and either they'll overthrow the people who are running the war or else force them to back down."

"You're skeptical about that," Valens said.

Ziani smiled. "You've been teaching me things about how my country is run that I never knew before," he said, "so who am I to tell you anything? But while I was involved with the defense of Civitas Eremiae, I did learn a bit about the Mezentine military. Bear in mind: the soldiers and the men commanding them aren't my people. They're foreigners, recruited a long way away across the sea. We have the same color skin, and my people originally came from there, but they're nothing like us at all. They're the ones who are in charge of running the war out here; they report to my people, who pay them, or decide to stop paying them."

"I see," Valens replied. "But it's still not their decision, ultimately."

Ziani shrugged. "If I was the commander of the army," he said, "I'd want to get results, as quickly as possible, to justify my employment and make sure I got paid. I'm not a lawyer, but I bet you the mercenaries' contracts aren't just straightforward. There'll be performance-related bonuses, or targets that have to be met, or financial penalties. We have them in all our other contracts with foreigners, all designed to keep them on their toes and make sure they do their best for us. I imagine it's the same with the soldiers."

"No doubt," Valens said. "What's this got to do with the evacuation?"

"Simple," Ziani replied. "Don't underestimate them; they're motivated by the hope of making a lot of money and the fear of not getting paid. And they have a lot of cavalry."

Valens nodded slowly. "You're saying they'll come after us."

"And a cavalry division can move a hell of a lot faster than a convoy of wagons," Ziani said. "Don't imagine you can lose them in the mountains; they'll track you, or they'll get hold of stragglers or people who decided to take their chances and stay behind, and get what they want to know out of them. They'll find out where you are, and their cavalry will come after you. Now," he went on, frowning, "I know that your cavalry is very good indeed."

"Thank you," Valens replied without expression.

"It's also a fact," Ziani went on, "or at least I believe it is, that there aren't all that many of them. Now I'm sure every Vadani is worth ten Mezentines in a fight, but that's not the point. You're outnumbered; your cavalry can be drawn off by diversions while they attack the wagons. If they do that, they'll have their quick, cheap victory, and you…" He shrugged. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be melodramatic. I'm sure this thought has crossed your mind too."

Valens' turn not to say anything.

"This," Ziani said, and he seemed to grow a little, "is where I think I can help. My people will assume that if they can get past your cavalry, they can dig in to a soft target."

"They'd be right," Valens said.

Ziani smiled. "I borrowed a book from your library," he said, "I hope you don't mind. It was called The Art of War or something like that; actually, I think there was a mirror in the title. All the books in your library are called the mirror of something or other. I suppose it's a convention. Anyway, not important. The book said, always attack your enemy's strengths and invite him to attack your weaknesses. I reckoned that sounded pretty stupid until I thought about it. Really, it's just simple common sense. He won't expect you to attack where he's strong, so you attack on your terms. Likewise, if you know where he's going to attack you, because you've drawn him into it, you can be ready for him, with a few surprises. Now I come to think of it, that's how the Ducas defended Civitas Eremiae."

The name made Valens look up. "Really?" he said.

"Absolutely. Their strength was their artillery; we attacked their artillery with ours. Our weakness was being pinned down in one place, where they could use their machines against us; we let them come right up to the city, exactly what they wanted to do. I still believe we'd have beaten them if someone hadn't betrayed us. We'd beaten them where they were strong, you see; we'd let them do exactly what they wanted, and then turned round and slaughtered them."

Valens looked at him for a moment. "You know," he said, "I'm sure I must have read that book, but obviously I didn't get nearly as much out of it as you did. What's your idea?"

Ziani straightened his face until it was completely at rest. "What they'll want to do is attack your wagons. I say, let them. Don't be obvious about it, of course. Send out your cavalry, have them do everything they can to keep my people away from the wagons. But expect them to fail."

Valens breathed out slowly through his nose. "With you so far," he said. "Then what?"

Ziani was getting visibly more animated; Valens could have sworn he was swelling, like a bullfrog. "Ask yourself: if my people were in your position, what would they do? Facing the danger of being engaged out in the open by enemy cavalry?"

"I imagine they'd dream up some ingenious machine or other."

"Exactly. Which is what I've done." Ziani was smiling, pleased with himself. "Not machines as such, because anything too complex would take too long to build, and we haven't got enough plant and machinery, or enough skilled people. No, what I had in mind was this." He reached in his pocket. "Here're some sketches that ought to give you the general idea. Of course they aren't to scale or anything."

Valens frowned, and looked at them. "Carts," he said.

"Ordinary carts, yes. That's an important point, because of the time pressure. We need to be able to modify what we've already got, rather than building from scratch."

"Carts with…" Valens paused, looking at the sketches. "This is all a bit far-fetched, isn't it?"

The flicker of annoyance on Ziani's face came and went very quickly. "I don't think so," he said. "What do you do if you want to protect a man from weapons? You put him in armor. Sixteen-gauge wrought-iron sheet; that's about a sixteenth of an inch. You know what level of protection you can expect from it, that's what your helmet and your breastplate and all that are made out of. It'll turn arrows at anything but short range, it'll stop cuts from swords and axes. It's not exactly light, but when you're wearing your armor it's not so heavy you can't move almost as easily as you can without it. Look, we can't carry stone ramparts around with us, or palisades of tree trunks; what we can do is use the wagons themselves as walls. Each wagon has an iron sheet bolted to one side; half of them on the left, the other half on the right. Think of it as each wagon carrying a shield. When the enemy attacks, they do what infantry do: line up, form a shield wall. Instant fortifications. Your cavalry opponents lose all their advantages of mobility and impetus; suddenly they're reduced to being foot soldiers trying to storm a fortress, except they haven't got any siege equipment-no battering rams or scaling ladders or pavises. They can run up and try and climb over, if they're keen enough, but I don't suppose they'll be stupid enough to try it twice. Then, once you've driven them off, you span the horses in again and carry on with your journey as though nothing had happened."

Valens sat and stared at the sketches for a long time. "We're talking about every cart in the duchy," he said at last. "There's not enough sheet iron in the whole world."

Ziani laughed. "Please," he said, "trust me to understand about material procurement. I used to run a factory, remember. That's the real beauty of the whole scheme. Sheet iron is just iron you heat up and bash until it's spread out flat and thin. You don't need trained smiths or engineers, just a lot of strong men with hammers."

"The miners," Valens murmured.

"Strong men used to hammering." Ziani nodded. "And badly in need of something to do. As for iron; well, even simple rustic folk like yourselves use iron for practically everything. You build a dozen big furnaces, say-bricks and clay, nothing complex or time-consuming-and you cook up all the iron tools and furniture and fittings and stuff you don't actually need to take with you on the journey-all the things you were planning on abandoning for the Mezentines to loot, basically; you melt it and pour it into great big puddles, what we call blooms, and then your ex-miners and your soldiers and anybody who can swing a hammer bashes it out into sheets. I'll need a few competent men to cut the sheets and fit them, of course, but that's about it as far as skilled tradesmen go. As for how long it'll take; that'll depend on how many people we can get on it."

Valens said nothing for a long time. "Fuel," he said at last. "You'll need a hell of a lot of coal or charcoal or whatever it is you use."

"All of which you've got," Ziani pointed out, with more than a touch of smugness. "Stockpiled, at the mines. I've taken the liberty of having an inventory made of the supplies you've got available. I think there'll be plenty. Even if the whole idea is a complete failure, at the very least that's one more resource the Mezentines won't be able to load up and take home with them."

That made Valens smile. "Business thinking," he said.

"I'm a Mezentine," Ziani replied. "Cost out everything before you start, know where your supplies are coming from so you aren't taken short halfway through the job, and try not to waste anything. Oddly enough, there's nothing about that sort of thing in your art-of-war book. Maybe that's because you really do think of it as an art, rather than a trade; you expect it to be financed by wealthy amateur patrons, instead of running to a budget."

Valens laughed. As he did so, he realized that the man he was facing was essentially a stranger, someone he hadn't talked to before. Maybe, he thought, it's simply the confidence of an expert in his element; but that wasn't all of it, by any means. The other thing the Mezentines were famous for, he remembered: they were reckoned to be born salesmen.

"All right," he said. "We'll give it a go. Now, you see, I've been learning from you as well. Build me some prototypes, so I can see, for myself if any of this'll work. Build me a shielded wagon, and a scrap-iron furnace. If I give you full cooperation, how long will you need?"

Ziani took a deep breath, as if this was the moment he hadn't been looking forward to. "I'll need to build the furnace in order to make the material for the wagon," he said. "Ten days?"

"You're serious? Ten days?"

"We don't have much time before the evacuation, you said," Ziani replied. "While I'm making these prototypes, I can be training the men who'll be my foremen once we're doing it for real. Yes, ten days."

"Fine," Valens said, frowning. "Ten days. You'll be wanting to start right away, so don't let me keep you. I'll have Carausius write you a general commission; that'll authorize you to make all the requisitions you want, men and supplies. Good luck."

"Thank you." Ziani stood up to leave. Valens let him get as far as the door, then said, "One other thing."

"Yes."

"I had a rather strange conversation with Jarnac Ducas a while ago," Valens said. "You know, Miel Ducas' cousin. Presumably you came across him at Civitas Eremiae."

"I know who you mean," Ziani said.

"Thought you might." Valens paused for a moment, leaving Ziani standing in the doorway, his hand on the latch. "Anyway, Jarnac Ducas told me a rather curious story about you." He smiled. "I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding hopelessly melodramatic. The gist of it was, you're supposed to have cooked up some kind of plot to get Miel Ducas disgraced. Something to do with the Duchess, and a letter."

"Oh, that." Ziani looked at him; it was the way the feeding deer looks up at a slight noise from the hunter; not fear, but more than curiosity. "Well, I can't blame the Ducas for being angry about it, but he only had himself to blame. A man in his position…" He shrugged. "What exactly did he say I'd done?"

"I can't remember, to be honest with you," Valens said smoothly. "I prefer not to listen to personal quarrels, unless they're getting in the way. But I'd be interested to hear what it was actually all about."

Ziani's face closed like a door. "The Duchess lost one of your letters," he said, "or it was intercepted, or something like that. The Ducas got hold of it, and kept it instead of taking it to Duke Orsea. I assume he was going to blackmail her with it, or else he had some scheme going on for getting rid of Orsea and taking the throne. I think he was always a bit resentful about Orsea marrying the Sirupati heiress; that's the impression I got from what people were saying, anyhow. They were more or less engaged at one time, I understand."

"I see," Valens replied. "And so when you found out about the letter…"

"I wish I hadn't," Ziani said. "The plain fact is, Miel Ducas was a much more competent soldier than Orsea, he'd have made a much better duke. But it wasn't my choice to make; I wasn't even an Eremian citizen, I was Orsea's guest. When I found evidence that pointed to the Ducas plotting against him, I didn't really have any option. Of course," he went on, "there's no hard evidence to prove that the Ducas had anything to do with the city being betrayed to the Mezentines, it's all circumstantial. On the other hand…"

"You think the Ducas handed over the city to your people?"

Ziani shook his head. "Really, it's none of my business. Yes, the Ducas seems to be the only man with a strong motive who was actually in a position to do it. That's evidence, but it's not proof. So, if you're asking me if I blame myself for the betrayal of Civitas Eremiae, I'd have to say no. I may have influenced matters to a degree, but at the end of the day I know it wasn't my fault. Why, how do you see it?"

Valens smiled wryly. "Well," he said, "naturally I don't like the thought that the man who opened the gates of Civitas Eremiae could be here, in my city, prepared to do the same again or something similar if he feels his personal agenda requires it. Do you think I ought to do something about Miel Ducas?"

"He's not here, though," Ziani replied. "Isn't he still in Eremia, leading the resistance?"

"So he is. Mind you, the resistance has more or less run out of steam now. I've stopped supplying them, they're not a good investment. So, presumably, Miel Ducas will be coming here sooner or later. What do you think I should do with him when he arrives?"

Ziani shook his head. "Not up to me, I'm delighted to say," he said. "I don't think I could do that; make decisions about other people's lives, I mean. You'd have to be so very sure you were doing the right thing, or else how could you live with yourself?"

"Oh, you manage," Valens said casually. "After a while, you get the knack of being able to forget they're people, and you start seeing them as pieces in a game, or components in a machine. I'm not saying it's something to be proud of, but you can train yourself to do it easily enough."

"I'll take your word for it," Ziani said. "It's not something I'd like to find out by experience."

Ziani left the Duke's tower and walked quickly across the yard, as though he was afraid someone would come after him. Valens, he decided, reminded him of what his old supervisor used to say about the vertical mill. The most useful machine in the shop is usually also the most dangerous.

Ten days; had he really said that? Crazy. Even so; if Valens had brought the wedding date forward, as he'd just said, ten days was about all the time he had.

He went back to his room. There was a letter waiting for him; an invitation from the Lord Chamberlain to attend the royal wedding. He read it quickly, looking for the important part. There was a timetable; early morning reception, the wedding itself, then the wedding breakfast, another reception, followed by an afternoon's falconry, in honor of the bride and her guests. By implication he was invited to that, too. He smiled.

Enough of that. Just enough time, before collecting his commission from the Chancery, to see to the other chores. He put on his coat and hurried out of the castle, into town.

"I was beginning to wonder about you," the woman said, as he walked through the door into the back room of the Selfless Devotion. "We're supposed to be partners; and then you vanish up to the castle for weeks on end, and I don't hear a word out of you."

"Been busy," Ziani replied, trying not to stare. The dress she was wearing this time was the worst yet; a gushing, flowing mess of crimson velvet that made her look as though she was drowning in blood. "I've got the money," he went on, "or at least, I'll have it for you this evening, without fail."

"That's a big or at least," she grumbled, but he knew he was safe. "Cash?"

"Draft," Ziani replied. "Royal draft," he added, as her face tightened, "drawn direct on the Chancery, and no questions asked. My man'll bring it down to you before the ink's dry."

"Whatever." She was doing her best not to be impressed; on balance, succeeding. "That'll save me a trip, then. When he brings me the money, I'll give him the map."

"Fine." Ziani dropped into a chair, trying to look casual, his legs suddenly weak. "Now, let's talk about quantities."

"Thought you'd say that." She grinned at him, pleased to have read his mind so easily. "Obviously, given the overheads on each caravan, each consignment's got to be big enough to give us our margin; say a minimum of seven tons a time."

"Oh," Ziani said. "I was thinking a minimum often."

She gave him a pitying look. "You got any idea how many mules it takes to shift ten tons of salt?"

"Mules," Ziani repeated. "Why mules? Why not carts?"

She sighed. "It's not just the run from here to the border," she said. "You'll see when you get the map. You avoid the desert, sure, but you've still got to get across the mountains before you reach the salt pans. Which means carts are out; it's all got to go on mules."

Ziani nodded. "I appreciate that," he said. "But you can take a train of carts up as far as the foothills, can't you?"

"Well, yes. But what good's that?"

Panic over; Ziani breathed out slowly. "Well, couldn't you take the stuff down the mountain on mules and then load it onto carts once you're back on the flat?"

She laughed, making her many chins dance. "Shows how much you know about the haulage business. Do that and you'll have to hire one team for the mule-train and another team for the wagons. Double your wage bill for an extra three tons. Not worth it."

"I see," Ziani said, "I hadn't thought of that."

"Obviously. Just as well you've got me to hold your hand for you. No, seven tons is your maximum, each trip. The idea is to get in as many trips as possible while the weather's good. By late autumn you've got the rains in the mountains, the rivers flood, can't be crossed, you're screwed. Ideally you want two mule-teams, one going and one coming back, all the time. But then you run into production difficulties, meaning the bloody idle savages in the mines. Oh, they'll promise you fifteen tons on the nail, swear blind they'll deliver bang on time; but when you get there, it's nine tons if you're lucky, and if you're not, you're stuck out there in the desert waiting for them to get around to doing some work. Honest truth, they don't understand the meaning of time like we do. Today means tomorrow or three weeks or three months, and if you lose your rag and start yelling at them they stare at you like they can't understand what all the fuss is about. Doing business with people like that…" She made a wide gesture with her hands, half compassion, half contempt. "And then people whine about salt being expensive. Bloody hard way to earn a living, if you ask me."

Ziani grinned. "You'd better not let the Duke catch you talking like that about his future in-laws," he said.

"Out of his tiny mind," the woman replied sadly. "If he knew those people like I do, he'd steer well clear of them, and I don't care what promises they're making. The thought of one of them as duchess; it's just as well his father's not alive to see it, it'd break his heart."

"Really? I'd sort of got the impression he didn't have one."

She scowled at him. "That's his son you're thinking of," she said. "Actually, it's her I feel sorry for; the savage woman. Of course, I don't believe all the stuff you hear about him not being the marrying kind, if you follow me, but even so…"

Back up the hill, as soon as he could get away. The commission was ready for him, the ink still glistening, the seal still warm.

"That," Carausius said, as he handed it over, "makes you the second most powerful man in the duchy."

Ziani frowned. "I hadn't looked at it in that light," he said.

"Of course," Carausius went on, "you'll be keeping detailed accounts."

"Naturally," Ziani replied, without looking up from the document.

"I strongly suggest you take great care over them," Carausius said. "The Duke instructs me that you're accountable directly to him, which means he'll be going over them himself. In other words, you'll have an auditor who can have your head cut off and stuck up on a pike just by giving the order. You may care to reflect on that before you start writing out drafts."

Ziani looked up and smiled pleasantly. "The sad thing is," he said, "that's the least of my worries."

Daurenja was waiting for him when he reached the room he'd been assigned as an office. The day before, it had been a long-disused tack room, and it still reeked of saddle-soap, wet blankets and mold. "Get this place cleaned up, will you?" he snapped without thinking. Daurenja nodded and said, "Of course."

"Fine." Ziani made himself calm down; he didn't like losing his cool while Daurenja was around. "Now, I want you to take a letter for me to a merchant in the town. She'll give you a letter to bring back. It's essential that you don't leave without it. I don't trust her as far as I can spit; so, polite but firm. All right?"

He wrote out the draft. Carausius had given him the appropriate seal, and ten sticks of the special green wax that was reserved for government business. He thought about what the Chancellor had said; second most powerful man in the duchy. Looked at from that perspective, he'd come a long way from the shop floor of the Mezentine ordnance factory. A reasonable man would consider that a great achievement in itself. "When you get back," he said, shaking sand on the address, "we need to talk about materials."

"You persuaded him, then?"

Ziani nodded. "Worse luck, yes. We've got ten days to build prototypes. The cart and the foundry."

Daurenja's mouth dropped open. "Ten days? He's out of his mind."

"My suggestion," Ziani replied. "We need to get moving. We can't start full-scale work until we've got approval on the prototypes; ten days is as long as I can spare. What are you still doing here, by the way? I asked you to do something for me."

Daurenja seemed to vanish instantaneously; not even a blur. Ziani took a deep breath, as though he'd just woken up from an unsettling dream, and reached for a sheet of paper and his calipers. By the time Daurenja came back, he'd finished the design for the drop-valve cupola.

"Did you get it?"

Daurenja nodded. "She wasn't any bother," he said, handing over a fat square of parchment, heavily folded and sealed. "She told me to tell you, she's thought about what you were saying about scheduling, and-"

"Forget about that," Ziani said. "I want you to look at this." He turned the sketch round and pushed it across the table. "I'm concerned about the gate," he said. "It's got to be simple, nice broad tolerances. We can't expect these people to do fine work."

Daurenja bent his implausibly long back and studied the drawing for a while. "You could replace that cam with a simple bolt," he said. "Not as smooth, obviously, but it'd be a forging rather than a machined component. Their forge work isn't so bad."

Ziani was looking at the map: a diagram, a different sort of plan; lines drawn on paper, on which everything now depended. "A bolt's no good," he muttered without looking up, "it'll expand in the heat and jam in its socket."

"Of course." He could hear how angry Daurenja was with himself. "I should have thought of that, I'm sorry."

"You were thinking aloud, it's all right. If we had time, we could make up templates so they could forge the cams, but we haven't, so that's that. I've noticed with these people: give them a model, a bit of carved wood, and they can copy it pretty well, but they can't seem to work from drawings." Ziani traced a line on the map with his finger. Of course, it meant nothing to him; places he'd never been to, mountains conveyed by a few squiggles, a double line for a river. He tried to picture a landscape in his mind, but found he couldn't. He forced his mind back into the present, like a stockman driving an unruly animal into a pen. "Here's a job for you," he said. "Get me a full list of all the competent metalworkers we've got on file, and get the Duke's people to organize the call-up. I want them here, this time tomorrow, with basic tools and six days' rations. You'll have to sort out money with the paymaster's office, and billeting as well. I imagine someone's got a list of the inns somewhere. Can I leave all that to you, while I get on with the drawings?"

"Of course." The answer came back like an echo.

"Fine. When you've done that, get back here, I should be ready to give you a materials list, so you can get on with procurement. It'll save time if you go through the Merchant Adventurers' association; they'll rip us off unmercifully but so what, it's not our money."

"Understood."

"And then…" Ziani paused for a protest, but of course none came. "Then I want you to get a requisition made out for all the carts and wagons in the country. I think Valens' people have been quietly making a register for some time, so it shouldn't be a problem finding them. They can sort out compensation and so forth. Oh, and bricklayers. That's another job for the Duke's people. Get me two dozen, any more'll just get under our feet. Got all that?"

"Yes," Daurenja said. "Metalworkers, payment and billeting; materials, and the Merchant Adventurers; carts, and bricklayers. You can leave all that to me."

"Splendid." Ziani was still staring at the map. Just lines on paper; a plan; a plan of action. "You'll need to take the commission with you. Actually, we could do with some more copies. I expect the Chancery clerks can handle that."

When Daurenja had gone (like breath evaporating off glass), Ziani laid the map down and frowned into space. He hadn't felt afraid of anybody for a long time, not since he'd been in the cells under the Guildhall, because the worst anybody could do to him after that was kill him, and in the eyes of the Republic he was already supposed to be dead. Dying would, of course, be an easy way out, practically a let-off, as though the supervisor had told him he could go home early and leave the work to someone else to finish off. Since his escape, the work had been the only thing, far more important than he could ever be. He'd served it, as he'd served the Republic, tirelessly and without any thought for himself. The pain was simply the weight of being in charge, carrying the responsibility of the whole thing being in his mind alone. Now, somehow, here was Daurenja: a man who wanted something, but he didn't know what; a man who served the work with the same single-minded ferocity as he did, but who didn't even know what it was. He was exceptionally competent, exactly what Ziani needed, a safe pair of hands, utterly reliable, a godsend and a lifesaver…

(I could ask Valens to have him killed, or deported, or thrown in jail; I expect he'd do it, if I made up some story. It'd be the right thing to do, but he's so useful…

It doesn't matter, though. If he doesn't know what the work is-and how could he? — he can't damage it. In which case, whatever it is he wants, he can have; his business. But perhaps it would be wise to share these fears with the Duke, so that when Daurenja finally does turn savage, I can be rid of him without any blame rubbing off on me and the work. Perhaps; when the moment arises.)

He covered up the map with a sheet of paper, to stop himself staring at it.

A proper fire is always a good place to start. He'd requisitioned a disused drill-square behind the cavalry barracks, four hundred yards each side, flat and level, with sheds in one corner. The carpenters had already built a scaffold and plank lean-to in the middle, to shelter the fire-pit for the forge. They'd found him the biggest anvil in Civitas Vadanis; it had come out of a chain-maker's shop, and it had suffered a long, hard life, to judge by the scarred face and rounded edges. Haifa dozen smaller anvils were grouped round it, placed so that all of them had easy access to the fire. Simple oak trunks had to do for rollers, to slide the blooms to and from the anvils. The smiths, all there against their will, stood about in small groups, muttering and resentful, while the general laborers lifted and strained on ropes and levers, shifting carts full of baskets of charcoal, limestone, iron scrap. In the far corner of the improvised shed, the nail-makers were already busy, with their own forge, slack-tub, swages, wire plates and blocks. They were slightly happier, since at least they knew what they were supposed to be doing, and could get on with it straightaway. Ziani dismissed them from his mind.

The furnace was a compromise, forced on him by time and lack of materials. The previous day, the bricklayers had built a simple hollow tower, ten feet high and four feet square. In each face, about a foot off the ground, was a hole into which fitted the nozzle of a double-action bellows; above each of these was another hole, shrouded with sheet iron, to serve as an air intake. Through one side, at the very bottom, protruded a thick-walled clay pipe with a four-inch bore, stopped with a clay bung on a length of wire, draining onto a flat bed of sand. They'd lit a fire inside the tower before he arrived; it had caught nicely, fanned by slow, easy strokes of the four bellows, each blowing in turn. The laborers were tipping in bucketfuls of charcoal mixed with limestone rubble. When the tower was half full, Ziani gave the order and the men started loading the iron scrap, smashed up into lumps no bigger than a man's hand. There was only enough room in the prototype for about five hundredweight of iron-Daurenja had had trouble finding that much at a day's notice-before the topping of limestone chunks was tipped in, leaving the chamber about three-quarters full. Ziani told everyone apart from the bellows-workers to stand back, and gave the order to start blowing.

"How's the mortar?" he asked Daurenja, who was standing beside him (no need to look round to see if he was there). "It's only had twelve hours to stand, it must still be pretty soft."

"It's dried out quite well since they lit the fire," Daurenja reassured him. "It'll probably crack up when the furnace cools down, of course, but that's all right. This is just a trial run, after all."

"I hope you're right," Ziani muttered. "It's not going to look too good if the whole lot collapses in on itself when the Duke's watching." He looked round. "Shouldn't he be here by now? When did you tell him…?"

"I said noon," Daurenja replied. "It'll take till then before we're ready to pour. He won't want to be standing round with nothing to see, and if he misses it-well, he can still watch the bloom being hammered out. That ought to be spectacular enough, with all the sparks flying."

The bellows gasped, like a man in a seizure, and puffed, like a fat man running upstairs. Flames were starting to lick the top edge of the tower; still blue. When they turned yellow, the metal would be melted and ready to pour.

"I don't like the steam coming off the brickwork," Ziani said. "That's the damp mortar. The last thing we need is any moisture getting through to the melt, the whole thing could blow up."

"Unlikely," Daurenja said, and Ziani was pleased to allow himself to believe him. "The heat's going outwards, after all."

Ziani shrugged. He knew that, of course, but he wanted to have something to worry about. "How long do you reckon? Ten minutes?"

"With those bellows? About that."

They'd have better bellows for the real thing, of course. Ziani had already designed them: true double-actions, with valves on the Mezentine pattern, that blew on both the up and the down stroke. It was essential that the metal be brought up to heat as quickly as possible, to keep it clean. The melted limestone would flux out most of the garbage, of course, but he had no great faith in the quality of Vadani iron. He was saving the Mezentine scrap to sweeten the full-weight batches later on. There were boys on hand to keep the bellows-workers supplied with wet cloths to wrap round their faces and arms; without them, they'd be scorched raw in minutes.

(There's so much anger in heat, Ziani thought; you can contain it, or protect yourself against it if you're careful, but all the useful work is being done by anger, a furious resentment of all solid things, that'd reduce me to ash if I stood just a little too close to it; and a single drop of water on the hot brick or the molten iron would do more damage in a second than a hundred men with hammers in a year. The forces I have under my control are unimaginable. I've got to keep them that way; just me…)

The Duke had arrived, quietly, while Ziani was looking the other way. He looked tired, thinner and slighter than normal. (I thought he was taller and broader across the shoulders; and he's younger than he seems when you're talking to him. If he understood exactly what's going on inside that brick tower, would he be thinking the same as me?) Ziani went over and greeted him. The small knot of courtiers stepped back to let him through.

"How's it going?" Valens asked. "Any setbacks?"

Ziani shook his head. "This is everyday stuff," he said. "That square box there is stuffed with iron and fuel, a bit of sand to stop it chilling and some lime for flux. We've cooked up a good fire, which'll melt the iron; we'll know when it's ready because the flames change color; should be any minute now, I think. Then all we do is nip the plug out of that bit of pipe there, and the liquid iron'll run out onto the sand. It'll be a moment or so before it takes the cold enough to be moved, and then we roll it over those logs, grab it with big tongs, lift it up onto the anvil and start bashing it flat with big hammers. The trick'll be to work it down to the right thickness before all the heat goes out of it. In case we don't, and it's a fair bet we won't manage it all in one pass, we'll have to get it hot again on that forge over there. It's awkward because the blooms are heavy; we've got the rollers to make it a bit easier, but it's still a fair amount of heavy work." He realized he was chattering, and fell silent. Valens nodded, and said nothing. He seemed preoccupied, and he was too far away to feel the heat.

The flames turned yellow. Daurenja was the first to notice. He pointed and yelled, as though he'd seen a miracle-for the Duke's benefit, perhaps. Ziani nodded. It would be as well to let the melt sweat for a while.

"What's that man jumping up and down for?" Valens asked.

"He's letting me know the flames have changed color. That's my assistant, the man we were talking about a while ago."

"Oh, him." Valens frowned. "Excitable sort, isn't he?"

Ziani hesitated. "He's a first-rate craftsman," he replied, "and he certainly knows how to make himself useful."

"Fine. Didn't you say the change in color means it's ready?"

"I'll give it a little longer," Ziani said. "It needs a chance to sweat out the rubbish. If it's not clean, you can get brittle spots that'll crack when you hammer it, and that's a whole plate wasted. Well, that's not strictly true, you can heat it up and weld it, but that's more time and effort." Telling him far more than he wanted to know; a sign of nerves, or maybe he felt an urge to impress, because the Duke was standing so still and quiet. "Right, that's long enough," he said, though it wasn't. "Let's have the gate open and see what we've got."

Someone tugged on the wire, and the clay bung popped out. Half a heartbeat later, a dribble as bright as the sun nuzzled its way out of the pipe, like the nose of a sniffing mouse; it hesitated, then came on with a rush; stopped as if wary, then began to gush. It was impossible to see because of the dazzling white light-like looking at an angel, Ziani thought suddenly, or how he'd heard some people describe the onset of death, when they'd been on the verge of it. Valens winced and looked away.

"There we go," Ziani said.

The sand it flooded out onto crackled and popped, and a thin cloud of steam lifted and hung over it like a canopy. Ziani fancied he could see the heat in it moving about, vague dark flickers inside the searing brightness. It had the oily sheen of the melt. Someone approached it with a long stick, presumably to see if it had started to set cold. Ziani yelled at him to stay away.

"When it's this hot it'll take all the skin off your face if you get too close," he explained. "A puddle that size ought to stay white hot for a good long while."

Valens nodded. "Well, your furnace seems to work," he said. "What happens now?"

"Nothing, for a minute or two. Soon as it's cooled down enough to be moved, the real work starts. Talking of which," he added, and turned round to give the signal to the smiths to light the forge fire. "Shouldn't be long now," he said, and he realized he was making it sound as though the delay was somehow his own fault.

The laborers and most of the smiths were closing in, picking up tools. Daurenja, swathed in wet cloth, sidled forward like a nervous fencer and prodded the shining mass with a long poker.

"Ready," he shouted.

"Here goes," Ziani said, and the laborers stepped forward. They had long poles with hooks on, like boathooks. "They've got to drag the bloom-that's the puddle of hot iron-onto the logs. The awkward part is lifting it off the logs onto the anvil. That thing weighs over three hundred pounds, even after all the waste's been fluxed out in the furnace."

As soon as the bloom hit the rollers they began to smoke, as the dried bark of the logs caught fire. They did their job well enough, nevertheless, and it wasn't long before the bloom lay at the base of the big anvil, glowing like a captive star. Three men on one side drove steel bars under it and levered it up on its edge; three more men laid the ends of longer, heavier bars under it, then stepped back smartly as the levers were drawn out and the process was repeated on the other side. That done, men crowded round to pick up the bars and lift the bloom, like pallbearers raising a coffin. Four smiths with long hooks teased it carefully onto the anvil and jumped out of the way as their colleagues stepped in with sledgehammers.

The first blow shot out a cloud of white sparks-drops of still-molten metal, Ziani explained, scattered by the force of the hammer. A dozen smiths were striking in turn, timing their blows so that there was no gap between them. The sound was like the pattering of rain, the chiming of bells, the crash of weapons on armor. To begin with, it seemed as though they were having no effect at all. As Valens watched, however, the bloom gradually began to squeeze out at the edges, gradual as the minute-hand of a clock but constantly moving, like the flow of a very thick liquid. With each strike, the target area dimmed a little. The blinding white was starting to stain yellow, like snow made dirty, and the smiths were straining to strike harder. They were working in a spiral, starting at the edges and working inward to the center, then back out again, the same pattern in reverse. Each blow slightly overlapped each other, and as the hammer lifted, a vague blur of shadow appeared in the metal and faded, like a frown. Occasionally there was a crack and a sizzle, as sweat from someone's forehead landed on the surface. All twelve of the smiths were wringing wet, as though they'd been out in the rain.

"We're losing the heat," Ziani said, raising his voice over the incessant pecking clang of the hammers. "Once it drops from orange to red it's not safe to work it. That means it's got to go in the other fire."

Valens was frowning. "You're really going to bash it down to a sixteenth of an inch?" he said.

Ziani nodded, noticing that although Valens had hardly raised his voice at all, he could hear him quite clearly through the hammering. "As it spreads out, we can support the edges on the smaller anvils and work it on them," he shouted. "It'll be awkward, though, keeping the thickness consistent. We'll need to keep shifting it around so the bit we're working on stays directly over the anvil face. At the ordnance factory we had rollers and jigs and derricks to handle the weight, but of course we haven't got the time or the facilities for a setup like that."

Valens yawned. "But it's all going to plan, is it?" he asked. "You're pleased with how it's working out?"

He's had enough, Ziani thought, he wants to go away and do something else. "All fine so far," he said.

"Splendid," Valens said, and yawned again. "In that case, I guess you've proved your point. I'll want to see your accounts, of course, but in principle, yes, you carry on. Let me know from time to time how you're doing; if you need anything, see Carausius. I've told him this project's got priority." He fell silent and stared at the gradually flattening bloom for a moment. "You've done well," he said at last. "I've got no idea whether this'll help us fight off the Mezentines, but you seem to me to be making a good job of it. Sorry, but I've got to go now. That racket's giving me a headache."

That racket, Ziani thought; that racket's the sound of the trial you asked for, the miracle you want me to achieve for you. But it didn't matter. "Thank you for-" he started to say, but Valens nodded, smiled tightly, and walked quickly away, the courtiers scrambling behind him like chicks following a broody hen.

It was dark by the time the first full sheet was finished. It was horrible, no other word for it. Ziani didn't need his calipers to know that the thickness varied wildly, from a sixteenth up to a full eighth in places. But three such sheets, riveted to a frame or simply nailed to boards, would protect a wagon against fire, axes and arrows. Left unsupported at the top, it'd be too flexible to climb over or bear the weight of a ladder. Against cavalry, it'd be as effective as a stone wall. It was an affront to everything he believed in, but it was good enough; and besides, the others would be better. This was simply a demonstration, put on for the benefit of a man who hadn't even stayed to see it, because the ringing of the hammers made his head hurt. That didn't matter either.

"We did it, then." Daurenja's voice in his ear; he didn't bother to look round. There were times when he wondered whether Daurenja was actually there at all, or whether there was just a voice he could hear. "I trust the Duke was impressed."

"Impressed enough," Ziani replied (it was a word he was coming to hate). He took a deep breath, as though about to confess a mortal sin. "Thanks to you, mostly," he said. "You've been a great help."

"Me?" Genuine surprise. "I just did as you told me."

"Yes." Trying to find words to talk to him was getting harder all the time. "Just what I needed. I owe you a favor."

"Please, think nothing of it."

There were stories he'd heard when he was a boy, about the demons who tempted fools. Apparently they were the spirits of foxes-Ziani had never seen a fox until he ran away from Mezentia-who possessed human bodies, and they attached themselves to weak, ambitious men and gave them anything they wanted, in return for some unspecified future favor, which turned out to be the victim's body. When the process was complete, the fox simply drove the poor fool out of his own head and left him to die, like a snail out of its shell.

Ziani turned round sharply. One or two of the men lifted their heads to look. "No, I insist," he said, and his voice wasn't friendly. "You've done all this stuff for me, hard work, tedious chasing around that'd have driven me crazy. There's got to be something you want in return, but so far you haven't told me what it is. I think it's about time I found out what I'm letting myself in for."

Daurenja's face had gone completely blank; it reminded Ziani of dead bodies laid out for a wake, their faces nudged and prodded and molded by skillful fingers into a total lack of expression. "Not at all," he said. "It's a pleasure and an education to work for you. I've learned so much from this project."

"You're lying," Ziani said.

The bewildered look on Daurenja's face was completely false. "I promise you, I'm not. Besides," he went on, with an equally false simper, "even if I have got some weird ulterior motive that you don't approve of, it wouldn't affect you. All you'd have to do is say no."

Ziani breathed out slowly, hoping it would calm him down. It didn't. "That's right," he said. "That's all I'd have to do."

Daurenja smiled. It could have been a beautiful expression; friendly, open, reassuring. "In any case," he said, "you're far too smart to let anybody take advantage of you. Quite the reverse."

Ziani felt something twist in his stomach. "You reckon."

"Absolutely. Anybody who could manipulate Duke Orsea and Duke Valens so adroitly with nothing but a simple letter…" He shrugged. "And the salt merchant," he added. "A stroke of genius. Tell me: did you know about the secret road before you met her?"

After such a long time being in charge, making plans, carrying them out, bearing so much weight, it was almost a relief to be paralyzed. "What do you want?" Ziani said.

"Nothing," Daurenja said. "Trust me."