Evil for Evil

19

A tolerably civilized chaise as far as the Lonazep turnpike. A basic but acceptable mail coach from there to the edge of the plain. A night on a plank bed in a rather sparse post-house. A military stage, overcrowded with junior officers, very rudimentary suspension, all day, all night and the next morning with only half a dozen stops up the Butter Pass to the camp in the ruins of Civitas Eremiae. A ride with the quartermaster's clerk on a solid-chassis supply cart as far as the frontier post at Limes Vadanis. Four days away from the Guildhall, Psellus staggered off the box of the cart and stood in a dusty, rutted road under a disturbingly broad sky, staring apprehensively at mountains. If this was the world he'd heard so much about when he was growing up in the suburbs of the city, they could stuff it.

"I don't know," the garrison captain said in reply to his urgent question. "I got a letter this morning to say you were coming, but that's all. Didn't say who you are or what we're supposed to do for you. Always happy to oblige the central administration," this said with a confidence-diminishing grin, "but you can see for yourself, we're just a border post, not a diplomatic mission." He paused, thought, frowned. "I suppose you might be able to hitch a ride with a trader," he suggested. "Strictly speaking it's a closed border, but we turn a blind eye if it's just ordinary commercial traffic. You may have to wait a week or so, but I expect you could find a corner of the guardhouse to crash in."

It's all right, Psellus urged himself, I'm equipped to handle this. I have the magic letter. He took it from his pocket, observing that it was rather more dog-eared and crumpled than it had been four days ago. Still, what mattered was the blob of red wax at the bottom, into which was impressed the great corporate seal of Necessary Evil. He smoothed the letter out and handed it to the captain.

"If you'd just care to read that," he said.

The captain glanced at it. "Like I told you," he said, "we aren't set up here to do escorts for civilians."

Psellus clicked his tongue; supposed to be authoritative verging on majestic, came out petulant. "You'll notice," he said, "that it's signed personally by Commissioner Boioannes."

"Who?"

In the event, they were quite kind to him; they fed him on bean porridge with bacon and lentils, which was what they ate themselves, and gave him a fairly clean blanket and a reserved-for-officers-only pillow. The guardhouse floor wasn't actually any harder than the bed in the inn at the post-house. He was, he reminded himself, right out on the very edge of the world. If he got up in the night for a pee and wandered a yard too far, he'd be across the frontier and in enemy territory, an accidental one-man invasion. The thought made him cross his legs until morning.

Breakfast-bean porridge with bacon and lentils-and a stroll round the compound. Six troopers in disconcertingly full armor failed to notice him, presumably for some valid military reason. He found an upturned packing case in the shade of the wall, and sat on it for an hour or so, his back resolutely turned on the view. Too many mountains, not enough tall buildings. My beautiful office, he said to himself, my beautiful small office.

"Good news." The garrison captain had somehow materialized next to him while he wasn't looking. "Actually, it's something I'd clean forgotten about, until you made me think of it. I've got orders to send a survey team to map the road between here and…" He hesitated, scowling. "Some river," he said, "can't remember the name of it offhand. But if you want to go with them, they'll take you most of the way to where you want to go. It means walking, of course-they measure distances by counting footsteps, apparently-but at least you won't be on your own. Mind you, there's always the risk that a party of our lot wandering about in Vadani territory's going to attract unwelcome attention from the locals; you may feel you'd stand a better chance of sneaking in unnoticed on your own."

So that's good news, is it? "Can I think about it?" Psellus asked.

"Sure." The captain smiled. "No rush, they won't be leaving till this evening. Best to cover the first twenty miles under cover of darkness. Just in case."

Psellus agonized over his decision for a full five seconds. "You said something about traders," he ventured.

Another night on the cold, hard floor; but the thought that he could be spending it scampering along mountain tracks in the dark with a company of military surveyors made the stones a little softer. Breakfast next day was a pleasant treat: bean porridge with bacon and lentils. A man could get to like life in a frontier post; as opposed to, say, death a few hundred yards beyond it. The morning passed. Early in the afternoon, one of the soldiers actually spoke to him. Evening ebbed in, trailing its hem across the mountains like a weary child dragging his heels. They hadn't told him what dinner would be, but he was prepared to hazard a guess.

"You're the Mezentine." A woman's voice, somewhere in the shadow of the guardhouse tower. He looked round sharply, but all he could see was a slightly denser patch of darkness. The voice itself was middle-aged, provincial and coarse.

"That's right," he said. "Who…?"

"Lucao Psellus?"

"Yes."

She stepped forward into the torchlight ring; a tall, stout woman, fishbelly-white face, Eremian or Vadani, dyed copper-beech hair heaped up on top of her head like a lava flow, clashing horribly with her loudly crimson dress. Her bare forearms were both fat and muscular, the muscle quite possibly built up by the effort of lifting so much monolithic gold jewelry.

"Well?" she said.

"I'm sorry," Psellus said cautiously. "I don't think I know you."

"Quite right, you don't." She made it sound as though only sheer all-conquering magnanimity was keeping her from holding it against him. "You wanted a ride into Vadani territory."

Merchants; of course. Among the savages, it was quite usual for women to be merchants. "That's right, yes," he said quickly.

She looked at him, as though she'd bought him sight unseen and was regretting it. "I'm headed for Civitas Vadanis, more or less direct," she said. "Are you carrying diplomatic credentials?"

Psellus smiled. "I've got a letter…"

"Let's see."

After a moment's hesitation he took it out and handed it to her; she rubbed her hands on her thighs before taking it. "Boioannes himself," she said, "impressive. So why isn't the military giving you an escort?"

Well, why not? "I've been asking myself that," he said.

She grinned; sympathy and contempt. "Don't take it to heart," she said. "If they weren't completely clueless, they wouldn't have pulled garrison duty. Anyway, isn't the whole big deal about Necessary Evil how shadowy and secret it is? Hardly surprising they've never heard of Boioannes."

"You have," he pointed out.

"Yes, but I've got a living to earn. I don't wait for briefings, I find things out before I need to know them. Talking of which: sixty thalers."

Psellus blinked. "Excuse me?"

"My fee," she explained. "For getting you across the border and all. Practically cost," she added, with a practiced sigh. "Meaning, the donkey you'll be riding could be carrying merchandise that'd earn me that much. Plus extra food and water to keep you alive, taking up more space. Say yes quickly, before I put it up to a hundred."

"A donkey."

"Yes. Well, what do you expect, a carriage and four?"

Psellus looked at her. "I've never ridden a donkey before."

"Easy. You just sit. If you can ride a horse, you can ride a donkey."

"I've never ridden a horse."

"Look, if you're just going to make difficulties…" But then she paused, made an effort, got the grin working again. "Put it this way," she said. "You're a Mezentine, right? The superior race, masters of the known world? Well, then. If a poor benighted savage like me can do it, so can you."

Now I understand, Psellus said to himself: she's been sent-and paid-to collect me. If she goes back without me, she'll have to refund the fee. Otherwise, by now she'd have written me off as more trouble than I'm worth and told me to get lost. "A wagon," he said, "or no deal."

She scowled horribly. "Out of the question. The way we go, you can't take wagons. It's a donkey or walk."

He shrugged. There'd been a hint of panic in her voice, implying that as far as wagons were concerned she was telling the truth. "Fair enough," he said. "Sixty thalers; half now, half when we get there. When are you leaving?"

Later, when he thought about that journey, Psellus found it hard to remember it clearly: the sequence of events, the constant terror, the agonizing pain in his backside and thighs. It was, he supposed, the same mental defense mechanism that caused him to forget his worst nightmares as soon as he woke up. The only impressions that lingered were the smell of drenched wool and the sight of the rocks that littered the ground on either side of the miserable tracks they followed, rocks on which he was convinced he would fall and split his head open like a water jug. One thing he knew he would never forget, however, was the first sight of Civitas Vadanis, glimpsed for a moment through a canopy of birch branches as they scrambled up a scree-sided hill. Really, it was nothing more than a gray blur, too big and regular-shaped to be yet another rocky outcrop. To Psellus, however, the mere fact that it was man-made lent it a beauty that no mountain, hillside, combe, gorge or valley could ever aspire to. Buildings; houses; people. It didn't matter that the people were hostile savages, as likely as not to kill him and eat him on sight, and to hell with the fact that he carried universally recognized diplomatic credentials. Two days and a night of spine-jarring across bleak, empty rocks had left him with an overpowering need for human contact, even if it took the form of a lethal assault.

"That's it all right," the woman in red assured him. "Not much to look at from this distance, but when you get up close it's a bit of a dump, really. You'd never think the Vadani were rich as buggery just from looking at their architecture."

Psellus didn't reply. Even from three miles away, he'd noticed something that set his teeth on edge.

"No smoke," he said.

It took her a moment to figure out what he'd meant by that. "There never is," she replied. "Not by your standards, anyhow. I gather your city looks like it's in permanent fog, because of all the forges and kilns and whatever."

He shrugged. "That's all right, then," he said.

But it wasn't. There was more to it than that, and as they got closer the apprehension grew. There should have been specks on the road, carts carrying things to and from the city, riders, people walking; even savages needed to eat, so there should have been constant traffic bringing food to town. On the other hand, plague was a possibility, but surely they'd have heard rumors. Plague aside, how else could a city be empty? The answer was that it couldn't be, and his impressions were false. But the city looked all wrong; it looked dead, like the still, flat corpse of an animal beside the road. While he'd been marooned in the frontier station, had the war come here, been and gone, without anybody bothering to tell him? Possible, he had to acknowledge. After all, he was always the last to know everything.

A mile out, even the woman in red fell silent and looked worried. They were on the main turnpike now, a straight metaled road that looked down at the city like an archer's eye sighting along an arrow, but they had it entirely to themselves. Furthermore, there was no sign of livestock in the small, bare fields, divided up neatly into squares by low, crude dry-stone walls. Plague wouldn't have killed off all the sheep and cows as well as the people; or if it had, surely there'd be bodies lying about, bookmarked by mobs of crows. Eventually, after not saying a word for nearly half an hour, the woman cleared her throat and said, "This is odd."

"There's nobody here," Psellus replied.

She appeared not to have heard him. "I heard your lot sent a cavalry raid not long back," she said. "My guess is, they've cleared everybody out of the outlying villages and farms and barricaded themselves inside the city, to be on the safe side." She made it sound as though Psellus had planned and led the raid himself, and therefore this desolation was all entirely his fault. "Could make it tricky for us getting in. We'll have to play it by ear, that's all."

It turned into something of a farce. The woman in red insisted on acting inconspicuous, even when it was obvious that there was nobody to see. Her idea of inconspicuous shared several key elements with Psellus' definition of low pantomime-talking in a loud voice about deals she was planning, deals she'd recently made; stopping every fifty yards or so to check the loads on the donkeys; bawling out each muleteer in turn for imaginary offenses; retreating demurely behind every third bush for a mimed pee. The city, meanwhile, grew nearer in total silence and deathly stillness. She was giving the performance of her life in an empty theater.

A quarter of a mile from the main gate, Psellus lost his patience.

"Do me a favor," he said, slithering awkwardly off the donkey and wincing as he landed on a stone. "Wait here."

She scowled hideously at him. "Out in the open?" she hissed. "You can't be serious. We'll all be arrested."

"Thank you so much for your help," he said politely, without looking back, and limped painfully on his wrenched ankle up the road to the main gate.

A hundred yards away, he saw that it was open, which finally put paid to her theory about the Vadani barricading themselves inside the city for fear of a repeat of the cavalry raid. Gate open, no guards; but a single chicken pecked busily in the foregate. It scuttled a yard or so as he approached, then carried on feeding.

Through the shadow of the gatehouse, out into the light on the other side. He walked a few yards, then stopped. He had no idea what he was supposed to do next. He will meet you, the instructions had said, and Psellus had been too preoccupied with the other prospective horrors of the journey to think too closely about that part of it. Subconsciously, he'd never had much faith in his chances of getting this far, so there hadn't seemed much point.

But now he was here, by the looks of it the only living creature in Civitas Vadanis, apart from the chicken. He drew in a breath to call out "hello" with, but the sheer scale of the silence overawed him and he breathed out again.

Cities don't just empty themselves, like barrels with leaky seams. Either everybody was dead, or there'd been an evacuation. Either way, it looked as though he'd wasted his time. He was struggling to come to terms with that when he saw something move, in an alley on the other side of the square. At first he was convinced it was just a stray dog; but when it came out of the shadows he saw it was a man; a dark-skinned man, like himself.

Well, then, he thought. This must be Ziani Vaatzes.

Shameful to have to admit it to himself, but he was shaking; not with fear, because his city's worst living enemy was striding toward him in an empty place. The last time he'd shaken this way was when he was seventeen, and the girl who'd agreed to come with him to the apprentices' dance had stepped out of the porch of her father's house into the lamplight, and the rush of mingled joy and fear had crippled his knees and crushed his chest.

"Lucao Pselius?"

The voice startled him. He'd been expecting a deep, powerful sound, something like the first low roll of thunder before the first crack of lightning. The voice that called out his name was high, rather tentative; and the embodiment of complicated evil shouldn't have a whining downtown accent.

"That's me," he heard himself say. "Are you Ziani Vaatzes?"

A slight nod. He came to a halt about three yards away; about average height for a Mezentine, stocky, square; thin wrists and small hands, unusual in an engineer; a weaker chin than he'd expected, a rounded nose, hair just starting to thin on the top of his head. Such an ordinary man; the only way to make him stand out was to empty the city. Painfully hard to believe that this was the man who'd caused the war, slaughtered the mercenaries, betrayed Civitas Eremiae, written the atrocious poetry. Had he really come all this way to meet such an ordinary little man?

"Where is everybody?" Pselius asked.

Slight grin. Just a tuck in the corner of the mouth, but quite suddenly Vaatzes' face changed. He said, "There was a general evacuation." The grin said, I sent them away. Pselius realized that he had no choice but to believe the grin.

"Why's that?" he asked.

Vaatzes shrugged. "I think it might have something to do with the war," he said. "Anyhow, you can be the first to pass on the news. That on its own ought to be worth a promotion." He adjusted the grin into a small smile. "I'm forgetting my manners," he said. "You've been traveling, I expect you'd like to sit down, have something to eat."

Thanks to a donkey with a backbone like a thin oak pole, the last thing Pselius wanted to do was sit down, ever again. "Thank you," he said, with a formal nod.

"I'm sort of camping out in the gatehouse," Vaatzes said. He raised his hand, and Pselius noticed for the first time that he was carrying a basket, the sort women bring shopping home from market in. "I've been scavenging," he went on. "All the bread's gone stale, of course, but I found some apples and a bit of cheese, stuff like that. There's water inside, and a bottle of the local rotgut."

So many years in politics; Psellus was used to the airy politeness of enemies. Vaatzes, he realized, was talking slightly past him; hadn't looked at him once since the first encounter. That was faintly disturbing. Is he going to kill me, Psellus wondered; is that why he won't meet my eye?

Back into the dark shade of the gatehouse; through a doorway into a bleak stone cell of a room; a plain plank table and two benches; on the table, an earthenware jug, a bottle and two horn cups. With a whole city to plunder, this was the best he could do? Not a man, then, who cared too much about creature comforts. He waited for Psellus to sit down, then slid onto the bench opposite and started cutting the pitch off the neck of the bottle.

"Not for me," Psellus said.

Vaatzes nodded and put the bottle down. "Probably better if we both keep a clear head," he said. "The water's a bit murky and brown, but harmless." He tilted the jug, filled one cup and pushed it across the table before filling the other. Realizing how thirsty he was, Psellus left it where it was.

"The proof," Vaatzes said.

It took Psellus a moment to figure out what he was talking about. "Of course," he said, and reached inside his coat for the tightly sewn parchment packet. "You'll find it's all there," he said. "There's a notarized copy of the register, plus the original applications for dispensation to remarry. I'm sure you'll recognize her handwriting, and your friend Falier's."

Vaatzes looked up sharply, then went back to scowling at the packet. Understandable if he didn't want to open it. "If you'd rather read it in private," Psellus went on, "I'll step outside for a few minutes." So considerate; such manners.

"No, that's fine." Vaatzes put the packet, unopened, on the table. "I don't need to read them, do I?" he said. "I'll take your word everything's in order."

"As you like." Psellus forced himself not to frown. He noticed he'd picked up the horn cup and drunk the water without realizing he'd done it. "I'm supposed to ask you to let me have the applications back," he said. "Because they're the originals, you see, not copies, and strictly speaking I shouldn't have taken them out of the archive."

"I'll keep them, if it's all the same to you."

Psellus nodded. "That won't be a problem." He breathed in; now he was afraid. "I've got something else you might want to have," he said, laying the homemade poetry book gently on the table.

He watched Vaatzes look at it; for several seconds he sat perfectly still. "Thanks," he said eventually. "I assume you've read it."

"In the course of my investigations, yes."

No word or movement, but for a moment Psellus could feel the heat of his anger. "Not up to much," Vaatzes said. "Not my line, I'm afraid." He picked the book up, and it was as though he wasn't sure what to do with it; he held it in his hand, a gentle but firm grip, soft enough not to crush it but secure enough that it wouldn't fall and shatter. "Has anybody else read it?"

Apart from the entire Guild assembly? "No," Psellus said. The lie was sloppy work. He felt ashamed of it.

Vaatzes nodded, unconvinced. "Well, then," he said, and put the book clumsily in his pocket. "We might as well get down to business, don't you think?"

Business. Something scuttled on the floor, making Psellus jump out of his skin. How long had it been since the evacuation, and already the rats and mice were getting bold, or hungry and desperate. No guards in the gatehouse meant no crumbs. Business, he'd said, as if they were there to broker shipments of dried fish and roofing nails. Business.

(It occurred to him that Vaatzes might have poisoned the water; some of which Psellus had drunk, while Vaatzes' horn cup had remained empty. Too late to worry about it now, of course. Besides, why bother to be sophisticated, in an empty city, against a slow, fat clerk?)

"I expect you already know," Vaatzes was saying to the wall behind his head, "that I gave you Civitas Eremiae. I sent a message telling you how and where to break into the tunnels that serviced the underground cisterns. You know about that?"

Psellus nodded.

"I assumed you knew. And about the cavalry raid, here."

Psellus looked up. "Yes," he said. "Some of it."

Vaatzes nodded. "I sent a letter to your committee," he said, "telling them about Duke Valens' wedding, and the grand celebratory bird hunt; I said that practically the whole Vadani establishment would be riding about in open country, unescorted. I gave them as much notice as I possibly could, so they could get a raiding party up here and in position." He paused. "I'd just like to point out," he went on, "that on both occasions I asked nothing in return, and on both occasions I put myself at risk. True, the second time I was able to plan things a little better. I sort of gatecrashed my way on to the guest list for the hunting party, as an alibi; I was with them when they set off, and then I turned back almost immediately-just as well I'm who I am, really; I'm an embarrassment, they feel uncomfortable around me, so they didn't really notice that I wasn't there. I went straight back and raised the alarm; so far, I don't think anybody's thought about that, me raising the alarm before the attack had actually happened." He paused, smiled thinly. "I think I scheduled it pretty well, time for your men to slaughter the Vadani but not enough time for them to get away. Of course, they only did half a job, but even you must admit that wasn't my fault."

He paused, expecting some comment or reply. Psellus couldn't think of anything intelligent to say.

"Why?" he said.

Vaatzes frowned. "Why did I do it, you mean?"

Psellus nodded. "The first time, I can understand," he said, "I think. My guess was, you were sickened at the slaughter of our army, frightened when you realized we'd never give up; we could never forgive a defeat, we both know that. You thought: if I die in the assault, so what? If I escape, I've given them earnest of good faith; when I make them an offer a second time, they'll know I'm serious. We were expecting you to bargain. Instead…"

Vaatzes nodded, as though acknowledging an admission of an elementary mistake. "Instead, I give you the Vadani government, free of charge. You're confused. One free sample is the custom of the trade; two is simply eccentric." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Let me guess for a change," he said. "You had a meeting, to discuss the contingency. Yes?"

Psellus nodded.

"It was agreed," Vaatzes went on, "that if I sent an offer, to give you the Vadani, you'd agree. You'd negotiate, make a good show of striking a hard bargain; in the end, you'd give me what I really want-a pardon, permission to come home, my old job back. When you'd got me back to the city, there'd be a show trial, followed by an execution. The moral being: nobody forces a compromise out of the Perpetual Republic, no matter what." He smiled. "Is that what the meeting decided?"

"Yes," Psellus said, "more or less."

"I thought so." Vaatzes leaned back in his chair, laid his hands on the table. They were perfectly still. "Now I'm going to have to extrapolate from pretty thin data," he said. "I'm guessing that there's a great deal of resentment among the committee about the fact that I armed the Eremians, made it possible for them to kill so many of your troops-I keep wanting to say our troops; if I forget, please just take it as a slip of the tongue-just so as to raise my own value, if I can put it like that; to get myself into a position where I could bargain with you from a position of strength. Is that right?"

Psellus frowned. "Actually," he said, "that's not how we interpret it. We feel that when you first escaped from the city, you went to our most prominent enemy because it was the only place you felt safe; the Eremians would never hand you over to us, on principle. Particularly not after you'd shown them you could give them the same weapons that had wiped out their army. We assumed you hadn't thought it through; that giving them the scorpions would make it inevitable that we'd invade and wipe out the Eremians." He paused. "We underestimated you."

Vaatzes smiled. "The way you say it," he said, "I take it you didn't share the majority opinion."

It was like the moment when the girl you love but know you'll never dare talk to comes across and asks you to dance. "I had my doubts," Psellus said. "That's why…" All his courage. "That's what led me to talk to people who knew you. Your work colleagues. Your wife."

Vaatzes didn't move, not even a flicker.

"It began as little more than idle curiosity," Psellus went on, trying to keep his voice from cracking. "I was intrigued to know what motivated you; the great abominator, and so on. Then, after a while, I got the reputation of being the leading Vaatzes expert. I moved from Compliance to Necessary Evil as a result. That's what set me thinking."

"Go on," Vaatzes said.

"Well." Now that the moment of moments had come, Psellus found he'd lost the ability to think of words. "It seemed to me," he said, "that there were two explanations for why I'd been promoted like that. The obvious one was that they were expecting you'd be important in the scheme of things, sooner or later; they were expecting that you'd make us an offer, and so they needed to have an expert on you on the staff, so to speak."

"Reasonable," Vaatzes said quietly.

"I thought so," Psellus replied, "until I realized that they'd misunderstood you, the way we were talking about just now. They hadn't realized, or they didn't believe, that you'd got your plan of action more or less worked out from the start. That what you wanted-all you wanted-was to come home." He paused, aware that he'd been talking too fast, tripping over words. "That didn't make sense, of course," he went on. "That view of your motivations didn't fit with the idea that you'd be important, possibly the key to winning the war. Something as crucial as what you actually wanted…" He shook his head, and during the pause remarked to himself on the dead silence; here, at the main gate of a capital city. An abomination, if ever there was one. "If they believed you were just a runaway, scared for your own skin, only interested in staying safe, what did they need a Vaatzes expert for? They didn't. So, that explanation didn't work."

Vaatzes nodded slowly; a little genuine respect. As though she'd looked up at you and smiled.

"Which left the alternative," Psellus went on. "Namely, that they promoted me from Compliance up to Necessary Evil simply in order to keep me under control. Which is something I should've figured out long ago," he went on, "after I'd been sitting alone in my office with nothing to do for weeks on end; completely out of the loop, isolated-I might as well have been locked up in a cell somewhere. It was because there was something about you they didn't want me to find out. I was blundering about, talking to your wife, the people at the factory. Sheer aimless curiosity; but they didn't want me doing it. I knew something was funny when I tried to contact the men who'd investigated the case, the prosecutor, the advocate; and for one reason and another, all quite reasonable, I couldn't. They didn't answer my letters, they weren't available, they'd been reassigned. As far as I know, none of them've died or disappeared, but perhaps that's only because I stopped poking around. I wondered why they hadn't just got rid of me; I think that was when I started worrying about what the whole business was doing to me. But it's hard, when you're cooped up in an office all day long with absolutely nothing at all to do."

He stopped. Vaatzes was looking at him.

"Which is all I can tell you, really," he said. "And it's just a theory, I can't prove anything. I believe that there's some unpleasant secret, something about the circumstances of your-" He was about to say offense. "Of what you did. I'm more or less certain that you weren't aware of it; at least, not at the time. But now I've reached the dead end, as far as what I can find out on my own, back home. Basically, if I'm going to solve this puzzle, the only one who might be able to tell me anything useful is the source himself: you. And…" Deep breath. "And I thought," he went on, his voice shaking just a little in spite of everything, "it also occurred to me that you'd probably be interested in any conclusion I might reach. Which is why I'm here," he added feebly.

Silence; not even rats or chickens. Just the two of them.

"One thing," Vaatzes said, eventually, in a voice so tense it hurt Psellus to listen to it. "Is it true? Really? About…?"

"The wedding?" Psellus nodded. "And no, it's nothing to do with me, not something we arranged. Probably I was the only one in Necessary Evil who even knew about it."

"You told them?"

"Yes. By then I was starting to have my suspicions, about why I was there. On reflection, it didn't seem wise to advertise the fact that I was still-well, taking an interest."

"I think it matters," Vaatzes said. "I think it's really important; if any of them knew, before you told them. Do you agree?"

One expert consulting another. Psellus nodded. "I'm not sure how I can find out," he added. "Obviously. But I'll try."

"Thank you."

Two words that mean so much. "That's all right," Psellus said. "I feel-"

Vaatzes interrupted him. "This is getting strange," he said, with a slight grin. "Not what I expected. I hadn't anticipated you having anything to offer that I might actually want."

"You think I'd come all this way with nothing to sell?" The words came out before Psellus was ready; but they were gone now, too late to worry about it. "I would like to ask you some questions," he said. "But maybe not straightaway. I want…" He nerved himself. "I want you to be able to trust me. So I'd like to get the other stuff out of the way. The stuff I was sent to do. If I bring it up afterward, you might think…"

"I understand." Vaatzes' eyes were cold, but not hostile. "I take it there's an offer."

"Yes."

"I'd be interested in hearing it."

So Psellus told him. The Vadani, in return for immunity in exile.

"I see," Vaatzes replied, after a long moment. "Is that the opening bid, or the final offer?"

This was the boundary; he could cross it, or hold back. "They feel it's important that you trust them," he said. "They know that you'd be suspicious if they offered you a chance to come home, but that's what they want you to hold out for. My mission isn't supposed to succeed. I'm supposed to make you an offer they know you'll reject. Accordingly, immunity in exile is all I'm authorized to offer you."

"I see."

"Which is where the marriage was useful," Psellus said (bad choice of words; he cringed). "I was supposed to tell you about it-well, it was my idea, they agreed-so you'd realize there's nothing left for you back home; you might as well accept exile, settle down, find a nice girl, get a job. I was supposed to believe there was a good chance you'd see the sense in that and accept."

Vaatzes grinned. "They underestimated you."

"Something I'd have said was impossible," Psellus replied, "but apparently they managed it. So, there's the offer. Take it or leave it."

They looked at each other across the table; two Mezentines in a strange, empty city.

"I accept," Vaatzes said.

After Psellus had asked his questions and Ziani had answered them, they discussed the implications for a while. Then Ziani said, "I think I understand now."

"It's only a theory," Psellus said nervously. "I couldn't prove…"

Ziani shook his head. "You don't have to," he said. "Not for my benefit. After all, it's not as though it changes anything."

It amused him to see Psellus shocked. "It doesn't?"

"Not now." To make his point, he rested his hand lightly on the packet of documents lying on the table. "That's changed everything, you see. You do understand, don't you?"

"Yes." No, of course he didn't.

"Are you married?" Ziani asked.

"What? Oh, yes." Psellus frowned. "Well, after a fashion. We're separated. Have been for years. Most of our married life, actually." He said it lightly.

"Why?" Ziani asked.

"We can't stand living in the same house," Psellus replied. "As I recall, it took us a whole month to realize. I haven't set eyes on her for…" He frowned.

"As long as that." Ziani nodded. "Why didn't you simply get a divorce?"

"Not an option," Psellus replied, looking away. "I guess you could call it a political marriage. To be honest with you, I can't actually remember the details; it was pretty complicated, and of course everything's changed since then, the whole balance of power between the Guilds. I suppose I could get rid of her now, but where'd be the point? I'm far too set in my ways to bother about such things."

Ziani nodded, as if to say he understood. He didn't, of course. It was as though Psellus had said he was too old and cranky to be interested in breathing. "That's your business," he said, trying to keep the disapproval out of his voice. "It seems a bit of a waste of a life, though."

"The least of my worries," Psellus said.

Strange, Ziani thought. Such a very different attitude to the business of being human. But he said, "I suppose you're lucky, being without love."

Psellus looked uncomfortable. "You know what they say," he replied. "What you've never had…"

"I suppose so. I can't pretend I've had any luck with it myself. After all," he added with a humorless chuckle, "if it wasn't for love, I'd still be working in the factory, and the Eremians would still have their city." He decided not to go there. "But that's like saying the cure for death is not being born. I still believe in it, you know. Love."

Just hearing him say the word seemed to embarrass Psellus. "Do you? I'd have thought…"

"Yes?"

"In your shoes," Psellus said slowly, "I'd look on it as an escape. Like a runaway slave."

Ziani thought for a moment. "There's a bit of poetry I heard once," he said. "About falling out of love. It's not just escaping from the game, it's taking the dice with you. I used to wonder what that meant."

Psellus pursed his lips. "You mean it, then? About not wanting to come home anymore."

"What is there for me to come home to?"

"Doesn't that mean…?" Psellus was looking at him. "Well, it's admitting that you've lost, isn't it?"

Ziani couldn't help laughing at that. "Who cares?" he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's as if they'd both died. Nothing left to go home to. I might as well find something to do with the rest of my life." He smiled. "One thing's for sure, I've found out a lot of things about myself I'd never have dreamed of before. The things I've achieved…" He paused. "I could make a great deal of money," he said. "I could be a nobleman, a great lord, like all these ridiculous Eremians and Vadani I've been spending so much time with. Great big houses, country estates; I could go hawking and hunting. I could marry a nobleman's beautiful, accomplished daughter, have a whole brood of aristocratic children who'd never have to work for a living. Well? Can you see any reason why not? I've proved what I can do, more or less without trying. If I could make my peace with the Guilds, so I wouldn't have to be looking over my shoulder all the time for a Compliance assassin, there's no reason at all why I shouldn't. And…" He shrugged. "It's not as though I've got anything better to do." He raised an eyebrow. "Or are you going to tell me about my duty to my country; my duty not to steal her secrets and hand them over to the savages?"

Psellus shifted in his seat. "None of my business," he said. "I'm not in Compliance anymore."

Ziani laughed. "Nicely put," he said. "Tell me, why did you come here?"

"To negotiate with you."

"Nonsense. You've as good as told me that the Guilds have no intention of honoring any agreement we may make."

"True." Psellus' shoulders slumped a little. "To ask you questions," he said.

"To see if they'd confirm your theory?"

"I guess so, yes."

"Because that'd explain why you were transferred from Compliance to Defense."

"I suppose so."

"Well, then." Ziani yawned. "Did you know that Duke Valens' closest adviser is spying for the Republic?"

Awkward silence. "No," Psellus said, "I didn't know that."

"His name's Mezentius and he reports back directly to Councillor Boioannes," Ziani said. "I take it he hasn't been sharing what he's learned with the rest of the committee."

Psellus didn't answer that. "How do you know?" he asked.

Ziani shrugged. "Luck," he replied. "As you know, I use the women traders to carry messages for me, find things out, that sort of thing. I was talking to one of them a while back, and I must have said something that gave her the impression that I was in on the secret, maybe part of the setup. She told me things that left me in no doubt." He paused to marshal his thoughts before continuing. "You can see why it concerns me," he said. "To put it simply, if Boioannes already has a pet traitor, someone much better placed than me, he doesn't need me as well. He can get this Mezentius to give him the Vadani. So, obviously, any deal he offers me is bound to be a trap." He smiled. "I can also see how it affects you. If Boioannes could have the Vadani any time he wanted, why's the war still going on? He must be up to something, and his plan must turn on the war carrying on. Well, if he likes the war so much, maybe it's a fair guess that he was the one who started it."

Psellus nodded. "By using you."

"Flattering, I suppose, though I could have done without the honor. Anyway," he added, "something for you to think about on your long ride home. Consider it a thank-you from me." He tapped the packet of papers on the table. "In return for this."

Psellus appeared to think for quite a while. "Do you mean it?" he said, avoiding Ziani's eyes. "About not wanting to come home anymore."

"Of course. Like I've been telling you, there wouldn't be any point."

"Where can you go? To start your new life, I mean."

"Oh, anywhere." He was pretty sure Psellus hadn't been taken in by that. "The Cure Doce seem a reasonable bet. I never realized how huge their territory is. In fact…" He stopped and clicked his tongue. "A year ago I'd never heard of them, except as a name. If you'd have asked me then, I wouldn't have been able to tell you if they were real, or something out of a fairy tale."

"You wouldn't like it there," Psellus said. "They're primitives."

"Worse than these people?" Ziani laughed. "And even if they are, they won't be for long, if I go there. I could go right the other side of their country, off the edge of the Guild maps, and in six months I'd be building my first factory. It seems I've got a talent for it. It turns out that the world's a fairly big place, and no matter where they live or what color their skin is or what language they speak, they're going to want nails, plowshares and cheap tin buckets. It's a law of nature."

Psellus nodded slowly. "I'm glad I'm not in Compliance anymore," he said, with feeling. "You're exactly what we used to have nightmares about: the monster…"

"If I'm the monster, you made me into it," Ziani replied casually. "But of course, it all depends on this deal you've come here to arrange."

"Oh," Psellus said. "That."

"Yes. Here's my offer." Ziani paused for a moment. The silence bothered him, as silence always did. Twenty years in machine shops, tenement houses, the streets of the city; he needed noise just as much as air. "Arrange it so that…" He'd almost said my wife. "So that she'll be all right, so that they won't take it out on her, and Moritsa. In return, I'll go away, and nobody will ever hear my name again. They can say I'm dead; that they've seen my body, hung up on a hook. You can be the witness; they'll trust you, because you're too small to lie. That'll solve their political crisis for them. Oh, and I'll throw in the Vadani, for good measure, if that's what Boioannes really wants. I'll deliver them just like I did with the Eremians; I know how to do it, incidentally. I've arranged it so it'll be a piece of cake. Yes, I know," he added, turning away. "The Guilds don't negotiate with abominators, and any deal they strike won't be binding on them. But I'm lucky; I've got you to sell it to them. You can explain. Will it really matter if I'm dead or not, so long as I'm officially dead, and everybody believes it? We can manufacture some proof. We could get a head, smash its face in so nobody could recognize it; they can nail it to a gateway somewhere, and have a public holiday. If I'm officially dead, and the Vadani have been wiped out, then the Republic has prevailed, the way it always does. Boioannes can stage his discreet coup and be god-on-earth for a bit, until someone gets rid of him. Everything will be all right; and you'll be right on top, of course, because you'll tell them it was all your idea, the result of your incredibly skillful and delicate negotiations, your painstaking research that gave you the insights you needed into the mind of the abominator. Well? Isn't it perfect?"

As he finished his speech-definitely a speech, he admitted to himself, faintly ashamed-he was watching Psellus as though he was some complex mechanism (too complex; overengineered, built arse-about-face, not something he'd ever be proud to admit to, but functional, he hoped). It would be interesting to see whether he'd assessed this contemptible little man accurately, or whether he'd underestimated him, as others had.

"No," Psellus said. "They'll pretend to agree, but they won't let you go."

"You reckon?"

"I know," Psellus replied. "You see, there's nothing in it they couldn't make for themselves. They could fake your death, and dismiss any reports of you as rumors and lies. And if you're right about Boioannes having a spy already, they don't need you to give them the Vadani. There'd have to be something else; and what else have you got to offer?"

Ziani smiled. Nice to be right. "As it happens," he said, "I do have something else. I can give them the silver mines."