The Escapement

10

The man in the common room of the Sincerity and Trust at Darrhaep was telling a strange story. He claimed to be the last survivor of a company of free rangers patrolling (the men listening to him knew what he meant by that word) the Vadani border. They'd intercepted a Vadani messenger, he said, carrying a letter in the duke's own handwriting, in which he wrote that he was on his way back to the capital and that he'd be taking the border road. The company sergeant, being a great patriot, had realised that here was a chance to capture a prize of incalculable value and win the war for the Mezentines at a stroke. The man paused just long enough for his fascinated listeners to buy him more beer, and went on to tell how they'd set a carefully planned ambush for the duke, and how he'd obligingly ridden straight into it. But… (He paused again. More beer arrived.)

But the duke, he told them, wasn't alone. He was accompanied by a twenty-man escort, crack troops from the household cavalry. Instead of a simple ambush, the rangers faced a desperate battle against the finest mounted soldiers in the world. Did that deter them? Of course not. They knew their duty, and so forth.

As the rangers locked in desperate hand-to-hand combat with the dragoons (a moment ago they were household, a voice at the back interrupted, now they're dragoons; make your mind up, will you?), the duke spurred on like a madman, riding headlong into the rangers' cunning snare. That should have been the end of it. Unfortunately, things didn't go quite as planned. The sergeant, watching the duke hurrying towards the concealed net over the sights of his crossbow, accidentally squeezed too hard on the sear, tripping the tumbler and loosing a shot. The arrow hit the duke in the head. Running in to see if the duke was still alive, the sergeant came a trifle too close, and the duke, barely alive, cut him down before himself dropping dead. At that moment, the surviving members of the escort broke through the rangers' cordon, killing all but one of them, recovered the duke's body and carried it off, heading for Civitas Vadanis.

It was a fine tale and the survivor told it well. When he'd finished, a carter who'd been sitting at the back got up quietly and left the room. He went upstairs to the best bedroom and knocked on the door. A short, thin woman in a red dress scowled at him and asked him what the matter was.

The thin woman left the inn at first light the next morning, although she was supposed to meet a consortium of grain merchants there at noon to close a substantial deal. Instead, she drove her chaise rather too fast along the narrow back lanes of the Ashbrook valley, taking the dogleg route through the border country that was now the only safe way to Mezentia. When it grew dark she lit her lanterns and carried on, much to the distress of her driver and two porters. By mid-morning of the next day, she reached the customs house on the Mezentine border; abandoned, of course, but thankfully there were no allied patrols. She cleared the remaining miles over the flat at a pace that wrecked her cart's suspension and cracked two spokes, but the cart was a Mezentine Type Six and held together until she was a mile from the Westgate…

Which didn't seem to be there any more. In its place was a huge trench, with an enormous mound of earth behind it, its top fringed with a palisade of tall, sharpened tree-trunks. Baffled, she stood beside her trashed cart and stared, until a foreman from the earthworks hurried up to see who she was and what she wanted. The news that Valens was dead took everybody by surprise. It was, Secretary Psellus said later, rather like being told by all your friends and relations that it was your birthday, when you knew perfectly well it wasn't. He managed to keep his fellow councillors reasonably calm and under control by urging them to consider the means by which the news had reached them. A man cadging drinks in an inn might well be telling the truth, or at least some things that were true, but on the other hand he might not. It wasn't, he reminded them, the first time Valens had died. In fact, if memory served him, it was the fifth, or was it the sixth, and on each previous occasion the duke had made a full, practically instantaneous recovery. This time, he went on, it was entirely possible that the report was true. Men die, particularly in time of war, and if the duke had been so rash as to go galloping through disputed country with an inadequate escort, he could easily have come to harm. Nevertheless, he argued, it would be foolish to do anything significant on the strength of one informal, unsubstantiated report. If Valens was dead, he pointed out, he'd still be dead tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Meanwhile, it would probably be as well not to let the rumour spread through the City. For one thing, it wasn't immediately apparent what difference, if any, the death of this one man would make.

While Psellus was arguing these points in the chapterhouse, the woman in the red dress and her men were leaving the Guildhall. They weren't in the best of moods. Having repeated their news in full six times to six different officials, including the chief secretary himself (a pleasant enough man, the woman reckoned, though he struck her as a bit vague and woolly-minded for the ruler of the Perpetual Republic), they'd then been kept hanging about in various offices and waiting rooms until late afternoon. Eventually they'd been allowed in to see a senior clerk in the paymaster's office, but instead of hard cash for their reward and considerable expenses, they'd been given a paper draft, redeemable as credit against goods; the idea being that they'd take their payment in kettles, scissors, buckets, curtain rings, brooches, Type Seven travelling clocks and embroidery boxes rather than silver money. When they queried this arrangement, they were assured that Mezentine trade goods were in widespread demand all over the world (except in those countries currently at war), and they'd have no trouble disposing of the items at a considerable profit, assuming they could arrange transport to ship them out of the City; failing which, warehouse space could no doubt be arranged for them on reasonable terms. Silver money, on the other hand, was out of the question. There simply wasn't any. The government had spent it all, on food and iron for the war. So sorry.

The woman in red and her companions went to the nearest bar, where they pooled their actual cash money and found that they had rather less than they'd imagined: twelve Mezentine dollars, ninety Vadani quarters, sixteen Eremian doubles and twenty of the crumpled-looking brass discs-with-holes-in-the-middle that passed for money among the Cure Doce. Not good. Vadani silver was guaranteed ninety-six points pure and therefore ran at six quarters to the dollar, war or no war. The Eremian double was three points of silver to seven of copper, and the Cure Doce stuff was handy if you needed washers but otherwise useless. They asked the price of a room, and opted to sleep in the stable with the horses.

The next morning brought rather more cheerful news. Their cart had been repaired, the innkeeper told them, by special order of Secretary Psellus himself, and was waiting for them at the Westgate. However, if they intended to leave the City they should do so at once, since at noon precisely the dams would be broken and the outer ditch would be flooded, effectively cutting the City off from the world. The woman in red protested that that left them no time to buy any kettles, scissors, buckets, curtain rings, brooches and other junk with their precious credit notes, and if the City was about to be cut off for the duration of the war, she'd be left with a handful of worthless bits of paper. The innkeeper pointed out that it wasn't anything to do with him; then, after a significant pause, he offered to take the worthless paper off her hands for ten dollars cash. After a brief, bitter debate they settled on twelve dollars, one of which the innkeeper kept back to cover board, stabling and lodgings. They didn't part on the best of terms.

As they led the horses to the Westgate, they passed a shed in an alley. A tall Mezentine in very dirty clothes came out and called to them. He seemed nervous and walked as though there was something wrong with his legs, but the woman couldn't help noticing the quality of what was left of his coat, and the fashionably pointed toes of his boots.

"You're a merchant," he said. "Are you leaving town?" It was the way he spoke; she was reminded of the lofty clerks who'd been messing her about all day. There were very few beggars in Mezentia, and they didn't talk like that or wear the remains of silk brocade morning coats. Nevertheless, she told him to go away. "I want a ride out of the City," he said. "I've got money." Normally… But these weren't normal circumstances. True, the cart had been fixed, the horses had been fed, just about, and they'd earned eleven miserable dollars. On the other hand, they'd had a long, gruelling dash for nothing, and she'd almost certainly missed out on the grain deal. "How much?" she asked.

The man grinned at her and opened his clenched fist. The brooch resting on his grubby palm was gold filigree set with a cluster of star-cut first-water diamonds supporting a large solitaire ruby; a hundred City dollars for a quick sale anywhere.

"Fine," she said. "Sevio, give him your coat and hat. If anyone asks, we've hired you to load the cart. Please don't tell me who you are, I really don't want to know." She held out her hand for the brooch, but the man closed his fist again. Well, fair enough.

"I want to go to Erbafresc," the man said, shrugging off his coat. "It's a small town on the Vadani frontier. I imagine you know it."

"I know lots of places," the woman replied. "We're going back to the Cure Doce, where it's safe. Once we reach the border, you can go where the hell you like."

He didn't seem happy about that, but he put on the carter's coat and hat. She made him walk in the middle, flanked by her men, so his appearance wouldn't attract attention. She made him carry her bag, which was rather heavy. He didn't like that, either.

When they got there, they found the Westgate jammed with carts and men heading for the dam workings. They struggled their way through to the gatehouse, where they found their cart. She stopped to inspect the repairs, and was impressed: new springs and carriers, new bearings, the damaged spokes neatly mended with spliced-in patches, and they'd even replaced the worn front offside tyre; say what you like about the Mezentines, they did good work. Getting the horses hitched up in the cramped gatehouse with men jostling past all the time wasn't easy, but nobody seemed the slightest bit interested in their new companion. The traffic jam escorted them slowly as far as the palisade, where they crossed the ditch on a plank bridge.

"You're getting out just in time," someone said to them. "After we've cracked the dam, this whole ditch'll be flooded. That'll give those bastards something to think about."

As she crossed the bridge, the woman looked down. The ditch was deep enough, but shouldn't they have faced the inside wall with something to stop the water washing it away? None of her business. There was a column of carts backed up on the far side, waiting to cross into the city; they were cutting it fine if they were planning on getting out again. Presumably they believed it was safer inside the walls than outside. Somehow, she was inclined to doubt that, but then again, she'd never been too keen on confined spaces.

There were guards on the other side, making a half-hearted attempt to marshal the traffic. Guards; they had armour and helmets but that didn't make them soldiers. She could tell by the fact that they were clearly not used to standing still for hours at a time. All their equipment looked far too clean and new: breastplates still mirror-bright from the buffing wheel, without the scratches that came from being cleaned off in a sand-barrel, spear blades with the packing grease still on them. And their eyes were wrong: they kept looking towards the downs, to see if the enemy were coming. It made her grateful she was leaving.

"Any sign of them?" she asked one of the guards.

He shook his head. "Not since yesterday afternoon," he said. "And that was just a handful."

Fine; a dash across the flat, and they'd be at the border. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that if they did run into an allied patrol, having a Mezentine on the cart with them wouldn't look too good. "Best of luck," she said to the guard as the cart moved off. He said something in reply, but she didn't hear it.

As instructed, the passenger kept his head down and his mouth shut all the way to the frontier post. Once they were five hundred yards or so past the Cure Doce side, she told the driver to stop the cart.

"Get off," she told the Mezentine.

He scowled at her. "No," he said. "I want you to take me to Erbafresc. Otherwise you don't get paid."

She sighed and nodded. The nod wasn't for him. Behind him, Sevio the carter recognised the signal. He picked up a small hammer from the floor of the cart, and bashed the Mezentine hard on the side of the head. He slumped forward, and Sevio and one of the porters pitched him out of the cart on to the ground. She got down, knelt beside him and prised the brooch out of his clamped fingers, while Sevio took back his coat and hat, and the other two searched his pockets and tugged a couple of rings off his fingers.

"Give me those," she said. They were good pieces, though not as valuable as the brooch. "Leave him his boots," she added. "We aren't thieves."

One of the porters was looking at the brooch. "How much do you reckon that's worth, then?"

"Forty dollars."

The porter whistled. "We did all right, then."

She nodded. "How much did he have on him in cash?"

"Ten dollars and change." The porter frowned. "That's odd," he said. "He looks like a tramp. What's a tramp doing with that kind of money?"

"Who cares?" She climbed back on to the cart. "We never saw him, all right? Come on, let's get going. If we're lucky, we might just catch up with the grain people at the Sincerity."

Which, as it happened, she did. Furthermore, they gave her a hundred and eighty dollars for the brooch, and seventy more for the rings, which paid for the grain with twelve dollars over. She sold the grain to the Vadani at the camp for two thousand Vadani quarters cash; she could have had three thousand in letters of credit but, as she pointed out to the supply officer, what could she buy for three thousand quarters in Vadani territory that anybody could possibly want?

The supply officer conceded the point gracefully. "Any more where that came from?" he asked.

"There might be," she replied. "What sort of quantity are you looking for?"

"Unlimited." He didn't smile as he said it. There, she thought, stands a worried man.

"Cash," she said firmly, "no paper. I've had enough of paper recently. It may take a while. Are you staying here or moving on?"

He did grin at that. "You'll have no bother finding us," he replied. "Just look for the smoke."

She nodded. "I'll see what I can do," she said. "It's getting harder all the time."

"I know," the supply officer said. "That's what I hate about this job. You wear yourself down to the bone getting food for this lot, and then the ungrateful buggers eat it all. Still, what can you do?"

Jokes, she thought. When they start making jokes to strangers, it means things aren't going well. "You won't be here much longer, though, surely," she said. "Not after what's happened to the duke."

His face changed. "What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. They didn't know. Oh well. "I'd like to talk to the duty officer, please," she said. When he woke up, his head hurt. That made him panic, in case he'd suffered some kind of permanent injury. He reassured himself with a quick inventory of his faculties. Even so.

They'd taken the brooch, naturally; also his rings and the money in his pockets. He sat down and pulled off his boots, shaking them until the pieces of jewellery he'd stuffed in the conveniently pointed toes came loose and fell out on the ground. Not so bad, then. He thought of the disapproving looks his former colleagues in Necessary Evil had given him when he'd started dressing up in flashy brooches, rings, bracelets, fobs and buckles; vulgar ostentation, they'd said behind his back, all that finery, like some duke of the savages; looks like the great Maris Boioannes has finally lost his grip. On the contrary, he thought, and smiled. A man who may need to leave home in a hurry can never have too much jewellery.

Of course he only had the vaguest idea of where he was. Somewhere in the Cure Doce country; all very well in diplomatic theory, but he fancied that national boundaries wouldn't be much of a deterrent to a Vadani patrol who spotted someone with a brown face just over the line. Besides, he'd overheard the merchant's people chattering, something about Cure Doce rangers having attacked the Vadani duke. In which case, the border probably didn't mean anything any more, which was extremely inconvenient. People could be so thoughtless sometimes.

He put his boots back on and stood up. The middle of nowhere. For a two-hundred-dollar brooch, they might at least have left him a horse. Walking, in his opinion, was strictly for poor people (to which category, in all fairness, he now belonged). Working on the hopeful assumption that the road must eventually go somewhere, he started trudging. Something (a diamond, or an emerald, maybe) was chafing his big toe.

Well now, he thought, more to occupy his mind than anything, suppose the Vadani duke really is dead. Does that mean the end of the alliance with the savages, or merely a change in leadership? Pointless, of course, to speculate without hard facts. The real question was what the savages wanted out of the war. Revenge for their murdered princess; well, he could believe that savages thought like that, took honour and blood-vengeance and the like quite seriously, but enough to bring their entire army, not to mention their herds and families, all the way across the desert? It was infuriating that he only had snippets of overheard gossip to go on. Nevertheless, he was inclined to favour the other theory he'd heard about: pressure on the Aram Chantat from other, stronger tribes; a need to find new land and new grazing, or be wiped out. It only mattered because it had a bearing on how serious they were about taking the City; and that, of course, mattered a great deal. More immediately relevant was whether it was true that Duke Valens had been killed by the Cure Doce. If so, some form of punitive action, swift and massive, was inevitable. A full-scale invasion? He thought about that. If they had the manpower to blockade the City while they were about it, then most certainly, yes; it was the best possible pretext for looting and foraging, thereby getting hold of the vast quantities of food and supplies they'd need for a sustained siege of Mezentia. If he was right about their motivation, the savages wouldn't object; more territory, more land they could depopulate and use to graze their wasteful, inefficient flocks and herds. Duke Valens was, of course, far too shrewd to embark on war on two fronts unless he absolutely had to; but if he really was dead…

These and other reflections turned over and over in his mind, like a woman making butter, and the more he thought about them, the harder and more elusive they became. His course of action, needless to say, was obvious, dictated by circumstances. Really, he had no choice in the matter, if he wanted to stay alive and salvage something from the ruin of his fortunes. Valens' death (if he really was dead) made little difference, unless it marked the end of the Alliance and the war. Once again he found himself frustrated beyond measure by the lack of reliable information. Without it, he was a bird with a broken wing, flapping wildly, knowing perfectly well how to fly but unable to get off the ground.

He walked on, curling his feet inside his boots to take the weight off the blisters. There were people, so he'd heard, who walked for pleasure; bizarre thought. He tried to recompile the map in his mind. An inch along this road (he struggled to remember the map's scale; was it two or five miles to the inch?) there ought to be a well-used, clearly defined cart track that went directly to Erbafresc. Or would it be more sensible to carry on to the next turning, which would bring him to the river that led, eventually, to the allied camp? Tactically, Erbafresc would be better, and in theory a Mezentine face would be safer in Cure Doce territory than across the border. On the other hand, if they were still actively looking for him and had notified their Cure Doce allies to watch out for a stray Mezentine wandering about on his own, he'd be far safer on the Vadani side, and to hell with the finer points of strategy. It'd be better to announce his presence to the allies from neutral territory than simply to allow himself to be picked up by a patrol, but if, after the Valens incident (if it had happened at all), the Cure Doce were now regarded by the allies as outright enemies, a patrol finding him in Cure Doce country would be more likely to kill him on the spot rather than accept his surrender. The train of thought made him grin: you wanted choices, you've got them.

He found the Erbafresc road, exactly where the mapmaker had shown it. Decision time. In the end, he chose to go on and take the shorter route to the Vadani border simply because it meant less walking.

There was a customs post on the frontier; abandoned, needless to say. More than that, someone had been to the trouble of setting fire to it, though it looked as though they'd been in a hurry and hadn't bothered to wait and see if the fire caught properly. The inside was gutted and blackened, but the flames had barely touched the rafters, so the roof was intact. He looked up at the sky and guessed it would be dark in a couple of hours; might as well spend the night here, under a roof. He went inside and sat down on the floor, his back to a wall. He was worn out, his feet ached even after he'd taken his weight off them, and he was miserably hungry. He sat still and quiet, trying very hard not to think about food, dozing rather than sleeping, until dawn.

Vaatzes, he thought as he woke up; through a gap in the roof he saw a grey sky, the colour of weathered lead. He'd been fretting over nothing, because Vaatzes, not Valens, was the key. Foolish of him to have lost sight of that, though such a lapse was forgivable in the circumstances. But of course, it could only be Vaatzes (poor Ziani, as he tended to think of him, even now), because after all, he'd studied him, analysed him, trained him to a certain extent, moulded and shaped him, designed the whole huge, intricate mechanism around him. In comparison, the Vadani duke was a nobody-he didn't even know his name when the groundwork for the plan was laid, he only knew that the Vadani had a duke, well thought of in some quarters, just sufficiently intelligent and capable to be useful in some capacity. Vaatzes, on the other hand…

He sat up, suddenly awake. Voices, not far from the customs shed; too indistinct for him to be able to make out what they were saying, or what language they were saying it in. He had no idea what the Cure Hardy language sounded like. Frustrated, he crept to the window and looked out.

A dozen or so soldiers were riding past; weary men in rusty Mezentine armour (but everybody wore it) on big, strong-looking horses, too military to be Cure Doce, therefore either Eremians or Vadani. He had his doubts about Eremians, because of the destruction of their city and the massacres during the occupation. They might just kill anybody with a brown face on principle, whereas he'd heard the Vadani were relatively disciplined, for savages. No way of telling. But the alternative was struggling on alone, and he couldn't face that. His feet hurt, and he was so very hungry.

He limped to the doorway. By the time he got there, of course, the idiots had ridden past, not looking round. He shouted, "Over here!"-stupid thing to say, but for once his usual knack for the right turn of phrase eluded him.

Two of the riders turned their heads. They hadn't seen him. Frantically, he jumped up and down and waved.

As it turned out, they were Eremians. His fears, however, proved groundless. The leader, a tall, skinny man with a badly scarred face, clearly understood the significance of a Mezentine prisoner, especially one who gave himself up voluntarily and promised valuable information, though the way he grinned was disconcerting, as though he was smiling at some private joke.

"Don't let it bother you," the leader replied, when he asked what was so funny. "It's just that you're not the first tatty-looking Mezentine I've picked up on my travels. My name's Ducas, by the way. You may have heard…"

"No," he replied honestly; then a faint echo in his memory prompted him. "Just a moment," he said. "You were a leader in the Eremian resistance. And before that, you were arrested for treason, during the siege."

"Quite right." Ducas smiled, twisting the scar tissue on his cheek. "And if you've heard of me, it bears out what you said, about you being somebody important. As I understand it, only the high-ups in your government know anything about what goes on outside the city walls. Or is it all different in wartime?"

"You know a lot about the Republic, for an Eremian."

Huge grin, rather disconcerting. "A friend told me all about you people," he said. "But he left before the war started, so maybe what he told me's out of date by now." The grin faded into a mere smile. "What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't. But my name is Maris Boioannes."

Ducas' face froze; he nodded slowly. "You can't prove that, I suppose? No, of course you can't. Let's see, who could vouch for you? I don't imagine Ziani Vaatzes knows you by sight."

He shrugged. "He may do. But I doubt it. The leaders of the Republic don't stroll about scattering coins to the mob or anything like that."

"I don't suppose they do." Ducas thought for a moment, then said: "We haven't got a spare horse for you to ride, so either we commandeer the first one we find, or else I'll have to send a rider ahead to the nearest inn to hire one."

"That'd be better. I don't like walking."

This time, Ducas laughed out loud. "I'm convinced," he said. "You must be Boioannes, or one of that lot. As far as I'm concerned, your arrogance vouches for you better than any witness ever could."

Ducas sent a rider ahead to the Patience Rewarded at Chora Vadanis for a horse, and settled down in the customs shed with the rest of his troop to await his return. Quite by merciful chance, he found a travelling castles board and pieces among the rubbish in one corner of the room. It was damaged but complete apart from the red angel; he carved a makeshift replacement out of a carrot. The downside was that none of his troopers knew how to play castles. Worse still, the prisoner did.

"Maybe we should have something on the next game," Boioannes said with a smirk, as he tipped over Miel's sun for the sixth time. "Make it a bit more interesting."

Miel scowled. "I haven't got any money."

Boioannes laughed. "I have," he said. "Well, not cash. Better than that." He pulled off his boot and produced a chunky gold ring. Miel had no idea whether it was worth anything or not. "Bet you this against…" He frowned. "I don't know. Your armour, perhaps, or your horse."

Miel shook his head. "Not mine," he said. "Government property."

"Fair enough. So what have you got?"

For some reason, he wasn't quite sure why himself, Miel laughed. "How about a manor house? I own dozens. Or the Tellwater estate: two thousand acres of prime upland grazing, or so they tell me; never actually been there myself, inherited it from an uncle. Or what about Middle Room? That's a forest, about twelve hundred acres of mixed beech and chestnut coppice. Take your pick. I really do own them all, freehold in sergeantry from the Duke of Eremia, who might just possibly be me, by the way. Tell you what," he added, with a rather disturbing smile, "I'll bet you Tellwater and Middle Room against that ring of yours. We can toss for who starts, if you've got a coin."

Boioannes shrugged. "It's a bet," he said. "And you can go first. I don't find it makes all that much difference."

They played and, after a long and hard-fought game, Miel won. He was surprised but (for some reason) absurdly pleased. Boioannes handed over the ring quite cheerfully and congratulated him on his closing gambit. "I don't feel like playing any more, though," Boioannes said. "Where did you learn to play like that, by the way?"

"My father taught me," Miel replied. He was setting the pieces up again. "He loved the game but not many people used to play it in Eremia, so he didn't get many opportunities. So he taught me."

Boioannes nodded. "Did you beat him?"

"Once or twice." He picked up a starburst and turned it round slowly with his fingertips." I tried not to, though. Discreetly, of course."

"You played to lose."

"I suppose so, yes."

"Why?"

Miel thought for quite a long time before answering. "I guess I was afraid of how much I enjoyed beating him," he replied.

Boioannes understood what he meant by that, apparently; he nodded and said, "We used to play it at school. We had proper tournaments and everything. I won for five years in a row."

"Really." Miel smiled. "What happened in the sixth year?"

"I left the school."

Miel thought for a moment, then held out the hand with the ring in it across the board. "Not allowed to accept gifts from prisoners," he said with a smile. "Besides, winning is its own reward, as they say."

"Do they?" Boioannes took the ring from him. "Not where I come from. Winning is about what you get when you win."

"I see. Hence the bet."

"Exactly."

Miel yawned. At the back of his mind, he was reviewing his calculations about how long it'd take for the rider to reach Chora Vadanis. "You realise all that stuff I promised you is useless. Nobody'd give me a copper double for the lot with the Aram Chantat in possession."

Boioannes was looking away. "And if they decided to leave here and go home?"

"I'm not actually sure," Miel told him. "In theory, I suppose it'd all revert to me, but even if it did…" He shook his head. "I'll say this for you Mezentines, you have a pretty uncluttered way of looking at the world. But I imagine it's founded on you always being the winners. We see things differently, I guess. We find it hard to forget that we have to live with the same people, go on seeing them every day, which means that victory is sometimes a bit of a mixed blessing. We'd rather come to an understanding than win, if that makes any sense."

"I see what you're saying, but I don't agree with it." Boioannes slid the ring on to his finger. It was tight. "Fairly academic, though, isn't it?" he said pleasantly. "After all, you must realise that as a nation you're finished."

Miel frowned, as if reproving a small, slight breach of good manners. "I grant you, rebuilding Eremia once the war's over…"

"Not just Eremia. The Vadani too. The savages, the Aram Chantat, will swamp you. Within fifty years or so, you won't exist any more. All this country from the desert to the sea will fill up with them." He laughed abruptly. "Which is why I lost the game just now, when we started betting. I couldn't get into it, because you haven't got anything worth winning." The rider came back eventually, leading a sad-looking horse for Boioannes to ride. They didn't cover much ground the rest of that day, owing to Boioannes' lack of experience as a horseman. Although they kept the pace down to a brisk walk, he still contrived to fall off twice, though without suffering any injury. He was clearly terrified, and clung on to the pommel of the saddle with both hands.

It took them two full days to reach the Patience Rewarded. They arrived well after dark, and the night groom took their horses to the stable. He looked long and hard at Boioannes but didn't say anything.

The innkeeper was expecting them, and asked Miel if he was Major Ducas.

"There was a messenger here looking for you," he said. "Came in after your man there had gone back with the horse."

"Looking for me?"

The innkeeper nodded. "Duke's messenger," he said, "showed me his badge so I could tell you the message is genuine. I've seen enough of those badges over the years to know what they look like. He said you're to go back to Civitas Vadanis, soon as possible. Top priority, he told me, leave whatever you're doing and go straight there. Apparently there's riders out all over, looking for you."

Miel didn't know what to make of that. "Did he give any reasons?"

"Just said it was top secret and really important."

"I see." He shrugged. "Well, thank you. In that case, we'll be leaving early in the morning. Could you see to it that the horses get a good feed of oats and barley, and put up two days' rations for my men, so we don't have to stop on the way?"

The innkeeper nodded, then said: "About the prisoner. I've got some empty pigsties out back, but there's no bolt on the door or anything. You'll have to post a guard."

"Don't be stupid," Miel replied. "Give him a room. He's a very important man." He grinned. "If he hadn't been a bit careless moving a pawn he'd be one of the biggest landowners in Eremia. right now."

In the morning, a stroke of luck: just as they were about to leave, two women in red dresses arrived at the inn in a chaise, accompanied by five outriders and an empty cart. Miel told his sergeant to make sure they didn't go anywhere, then rode over to the mounting block, where Boioannes was gazing wretchedly at the horse he was just about to get up on.

"Good news," Miel said. "You don't have to climb that thing."

"Really?" Boioannes looked as though he'd been reprieved with the noose already around his neck.

"Really. Just give me that ring I won off you the other day." The women protested, of course; they said the chaise wasn't for sale because they needed it in their work, and even if they were prepared to sell it, the ring wasn't worth anything like enough. Miel replied that he wasn't buying it, he was requisitioning it in the name of Duke Valens, and the ring was just a polite way of saying thank you.

The women looked at him. "Duke Valens," one of them repeated. "Haven't you heard?" Valens dead: as he rode, his knees and spine aching, his head dizzy from the relentless swaying, he tried to make a calm, rational assessment of the implications-for the war, for the Alliance, for his people, for himself-but all he could think was, So she's a widow again. It was a stupid thought and he was properly ashamed of it, but…

Instead, he made himself think: the Aram Chantat came into the war because Valens married their princess, the old chieftain's only surviving heir. When the Mezentines killed her, the succession passed, under their law, to Valens, her husband. He tried to remember what someone had told him about Aram Chantat inheritance law-he hadn't been listening properly, of course, at the time it seemed such a pointless, abstruse thing to be talking about. Under Aram Chantat law, when a man dies childless and without brothers or their issue, his widow inherits. In which case, she was now the heir to the kingdom of the savages; extraordinary thought, the girl he'd grown up with as ruler of a million barbarian nomads. As far as he could remember, she couldn't be Duchess of Eremia, but any man she married would be the duke. As for the Vadani succession, he didn't have a clue. Presumably Valens had cousins; everybody had cousins.

(His horse was getting tired, he could feel it in its pace and hear the tightness of its breathing. Give it another hour, then stop, and the hell with orders.)

Yes, now he came to think of it, Valens did have a cousin; just one, a child, six or seven years old. In which case-they'd made him learn all this stuff years ago, constitutional law of neighbouring countries, an hour a week wedged in between formal dancing and astronomy-in which case, there'd be a regency, and the duchess (dowager duchess, use the proper terms) would rule the duchy until the boy came of age. Which meant that she…

They'd make her marry, of course. It would be essential, a first priority. The savages would want her to marry one of them; but inevitably they'd have their own internal politics, especially since they'd been living with their own hideously fragile succession problem for a long time: there'd be factions, each one terrified in case the other snatched the prize. In such cases, they'd all prefer to see the heiress marry an outsider-that was why she'd married Orsea in the first place, because of the rivalry between the Phocas and the Ducas. As for what the Vadani or the Eremians thought, that hardly mattered. The Aram Chantat would want a compromise candidate, preferably someone from the least threatening, least significant element of the Alliance. He grinned; that could only mean an Eremian. In which case…

When they stopped, Boioannes climbed out of the chaise and came marching over to him, brisk as a woman complaining about faulty merchandise. "This isn't the road to the camp," he said.

"You're right," Miel replied. "We're going to Civitas Vadanis instead."

It wasn't so much a reaction as the exact opposite, a slamming of the gate through which any indications of feeling might escape. "I see," he said. "Sorry to have-"

"You knew, didn't you?"

Boioannes was motionless, completely still, for about five heartbeats. "Yes," he said. "At least, I'd heard a rumour, which I assume from your question is true. Duke Valens is dead."

The way he said it made Miel feel angry, though he couldn't really accuse Boioannes of any offence. He'd stated it as a fact of politics and diplomacy; fair enough. "So I'm told," he said. "It's what the. merchant women back at the Patience were saying, and they're generally well informed."

"Indeed. I heard it from another merchant, in Mezentia."

You might have told me earlier, but why should he? It was just a rumour; and besides, with a mind like his, perhaps it might have given him an edge in some negotiation. He certainly wasn't the sort to go handing out information for free, and what did Miel have that he could possibly want to trade it for? "Well, I guess that's a sort of corroboration," he replied. "And it'd explain the sudden abrupt summons." He didn't say anything about her, naturally.

By the time they reached the hills above Civitas Vadanis, Boioannes was in a wretched state. He was convinced he'd caught some terrible disease, probably from drinking foul water. The Eremian cavalryman he explained his symptoms to just grinned.

"Dizzy," the cavalryman said, "headache, and you feel like you want to puke all the time. Is that about right?"

"Yes," Boioannes replied eagerly. "What is it? Mountain fever?"

The cavalryman shook his head. "Travel sickness," he said. "Let me guess. You haven't done much riding about in carriages before, right? Well, there you go, then. Don't worry, you'll be fine soon as we get there."

Boioannes scowled. Either the man hadn't been listening, or he was just plain stupid. "I'm sure it's the early stages of mountain fever," he repeated. "I need a doctor, right away. Where are we, exactly? We need to make for the nearest large town, where we can find a doctor. If I get sick and die just because you refused to help me, your government will hold you directly responsible."

"Travel sickness," the cavalryman said cheerfully. "Just stick your head out the window and have a good long puke. You'll be right as rain."

Civitas Vadanis. His first sight of it was a grey blur glimpsed through a dense veil of low cloud as they picked their way slowly down the long road from the top of the hills. When the midday sun finally burnt off the mist, the city proved to be disconcertingly small. Not a fortress perched in a superb defensive position on a moun-taintop, like Civitas Eremiae. Instead it slumped in a valley, spread out on either side of a slow, fat river like jam around the mouth of a messy child. The surrounding landscape-wide, thick-hedged pastures spattered with dozens of small clumps of woodland; unimproved marshes, drainable but undrained fen-clearly demonstrated that the rulers of this country had always been more concerned about hunting than profitability per acre. Just as well for them that they had the silver mines. On the other hand, meagre and ramshackle as it undoubtedly was, it must house at least one competent doctor…

The strange thing was, as soon as they slowed down and the carriage stopped swaying about, he began to feel better. Not that he minded that, of course, but he couldn't understand how mountain fever could clear up so rapidly. The reports he'd read clearly stated that, unless properly treated, the patient grew steadily worse for three days and usually died on the fourth.

He'd expected people to stare at him, and the fact that he was riding in a carriage, with the cavalry troop apparently his escort, made it considerably worse. Presumably they thought he was an ambassador, come to sue for peace. Mostly they cheered, though a few shouted, and a few stones whistled past, too high or wide to cause concern. He felt an urge to wave, but resisted it. All in all, it was a strange way to arrive at the capital city of the enemy, escorted by misunderstanding and comedy. As he looked about him, taking note of the poverty of the architecture, the narrow streets, low buildings, miserably rutted and filthy roadways, he was appalled at the thought that something so wretched, so low-class, must now inevitably prevail over the Republic he'd served so proudly all his life. Still, he reminded himself, it was necessary, and he had no choice.

The confusion as to his status continued. Ducas was collected and whisked away by a party of grave-looking men (mostly Aram Chantat, he observed), and presumably didn't have time to explain properly who the man in the carriage was. A guard officer, quite junior, was hurriedly assigned to take charge of him, but presumably he either wasn't told the true position or hadn't taken it in; accordingly, he must have resolved to play safe and treat this unexpected black man as an honoured guest rather than a prisoner. It was "If you'd care to step this way" rather than "You, follow me", and the room he eventually ended up in, after an extended forced march through courtyards, up and down stairs, along passageways and cloisters, was really quite good for such an unsophisticated society. There was furniture-mostly crude local copies of Mezentine types, but a couple of genuine pieces-and an adequate-looking bed; a water jug and basin, towels; the piss-pot was a quite respectable copy of a Type Seventeen, though one handle had been broken off and wired back on.

"If you wouldn't mind waiting here," the officer said. "Someone'll be along to see you directly."

Directly: a vague term, in his experience, anything between fifteen minutes and five days. Still, it was better than the dungeon he'd been expecting, and a great improvement on the disused stable he'd been calling home for so long. He nodded and introduced the subject of food. The officer promised to take care of it, then fled. Boioannes counted up to fifty, then opened the door a crack. There was a soldier standing outside the door. Well.

He sat down on the bed, remembering that he was ill. It had slipped his mind. Still, when the food came, he'd send for a doctor. If it really was mountain fever…

There was a knock at the door. The food: wheat bread, cheese, salt pork, an apple, better than he'd been used to recently. A terrified-looking woman brought it.

"I need a doctor," he said, slowly and clearly. "Fetch one immediately."

Her eyes widened; she dropped an awkward curtsey and scampered away. He sighed, and started to eat, faintly ashamed at himself for being so hungry. The salt pork made him thirsty, and the water in the jug tasted strange. Nothing particularly sinister in that, however. People who'd been abroad on diplomatic missions had told him that foreign water always took some getting used to.

Being a realist, he had his doubts about whether the woman was capable of fetching a doctor. He was therefore pleasantly surprised when, a mere ten minutes or so later, there was another knock on the door. He stood up and opened it, to find a most unexpected sight: a face the same colour as his own.

"Are you the doctor?" he asked.

The Mezentine grinned at him. "No," he said. "Why, are you ill?"

Not the doctor; in which case… "You're Ziani Vaatzes."

"Yes."

He stepped back to allow him in. Ziani Vaatzes, the abominator, the cause of the war, her husband. But he was nothing special: a stocky man, medium height, middle-aged, hair thick at the sides but just starting to thin on top; a blunt, coarse face; big hands poking out of the sleeves of a shabby coat in the local style-a Mezentine in Vadani clothes couldn't help but look faintly ludicrous. All told, not really what he'd expected of such an important man, upon whom his hopes and fortunes had rested for so long.

"You're Maris Boioannes," Vaatzes said, sitting down on a chair like he owned the place. "Actually, I've been expecting you. They brought you something to eat, then."

Boioannes nodded. "I wasn't expecting to see you," he said.

"Ah, well." Vaatzes shrugged. "There wasn't anybody else, so they sent me. Seems to be a bit of confusion about what you're doing here. A worried-looking junior lieutenant told me you're a prisoner captured by a patrol, but someone else said you arrived in a carriage and four with cavalry escort, so he assumed you're some kind of envoy. That's not the case, though, is it?"

"No."

Vaatzes smiled. "No, of course not. You're probably the second most wanted Mezentine in the world," he said, with a slight dip of his head, "after me, of course. You were deposed in the coup that brought Psellus to power, and you've been on the run ever since."

"That's right," Boioannes replied.

That seemed to please Vaatzes a little. "There you are, then. You're neither a prisoner of war nor a diplomat. You're a-what's the word?-defector." His smile sharpened a little. "Also like me. We have a lot in common, it seems. Strange, really. Before all this started, the chairman of Necessary Evil wouldn't have had a word to say to someone who worked in a factory."

If only you knew, Boioannes thought. "Everything's changed," he said. "That's why I'm here."

"Ah yes." Vaatzes nodded. "We'd better talk about that. I must say, though, you aren't quite what I'd been expecting." He frowned. "First things first, though. You said something about needing a doctor."

Boioannes had completely forgotten about that. "I think I may have mountain fever," he said.

"I doubt it. How long?"

"A couple of days." Actually, he couldn't remember exactly. "Two days, perhaps three."

"That's all right, then. If you'd got the fever, you'd be at death's door by now. Besides, it's very rare, they tell me, four or five cases a year. Was that all, or is there something else?"

Boioannes shook his head. "I expect I'm just feeling run down," he said. "Things haven't been going well for me lately, not since…"

"Quite." Vaatzes was grinning at him again. "Being condemned to death and having to leave home in a hurry can have that effect on a person, I know. Also, the change in the water can turn you up: vomiting, the running shits. The stupid thing is, the water here is a damn sight cleaner than back home. But we're used to drinking our own sewage, so clean water makes us ill. There's a paradox for you."

"Is it true that the duke is dead?"

He hadn't wanted to ask it so abruptly. Vaatzes looked at him for a moment or so before answering.

"No," he said. "He was ambushed by the Cure Doce and badly injured, but he's alive. Whether he'll make it, they can't say. But fancy you knowing," he added, with a frown. "They've been trying to keep it quiet, obviously. Is it common knowledge back home?"

Boioannes shook his head. "I don't think so. At least, it wasn't when I left. Actually, I think the rumour may have started with the merchant who helped me get out of the City." The tone of his own voice surprised him; but how should he talk to Ziani Vaatzes, the abominator and traitor, currently the only other Mezentine in Civitas Vadanis and, presumably, the man who held his life in his hands? A fascinatingly complex question for a protocol subcommittee. "I asked because I need to know who to talk to," he said, and realised he'd gone too far in the other direction. Vaatzes acknowledged that with a slight widening of his grin.

"Me," he said. "Like I said, everybody else is busy. It's complicated by the fact that the chief of staff was with the duke when he was ambushed, and he didn't make it. The Aram Chantat are getting hopelessly worked up, because of the succession business-you know all about that, of course. Nobody's giving any orders, the career military are all for cancelling the siege and going after the Cure Doce, the palace is crawling with junior officers wandering around with bits of paper in their hands, looking for someone to sign them, and on top of that, suddenly we've got a high-level enemy defector, presumably wanting to sell us something." He shook his head, mock-woebegone. "I should be in the factory fixing a broken headstock spindle, but they figured I'm the only man in the city who might have a clue about what you're here to offer. Also," he added pleasantly, "I've got to admit, I'm just a tiny bit curious. I never imagined I'd ever get to meet the man who completely screwed up my life. Not living, anyhow. I'd sort of resigned myself to being content with mutilating your corpse. It's all right," he added, as Boioannes tried to suppress a flinch, "that's just the way people like me think. We know we'll never have a chance to get even in real life, so we daydream. These days, I don't do that any more. I gave up revenge a long time ago."

That seemed a very curious thing for Ziani Vaatzes to say, but Boioannes let it pass. He wasn't sufficiently interested in the man to care. He cleared his mind. "So, you're authorised to negotiate on behalf of the Alliance?"

"Yes." He said it without pride or guilt, as though he'd just been asked his name. "Now, then. Tell me what you've got, and we'll see what we can do."

Boioannes took a deep breath. "I want to go home," he said. "I don't just mean returning to the City. I want my life back. I want to be who I was, before that insufferable little clerk…"

"Yes." Vaatzes was looking straight at him. "I understand how you feel, as it happens. But maybe it's just not possible."

"No." He hadn't meant to shout. Shouting was loss of control, therefore weakness. "I don't accept that," he said. "I simply can't. I've got to get it all back, everything I used to have. So, whatever it takes…"

Vaatzes was nodding slowly. "Whatever it takes, meaning that we take the City and then give it to you."

"Yes." Not a shout. He said the word loudly, but without anger, fear, anything like that. "Once your savages have looted the place, killed as many people as they need to kill to satisfy their honour; you'll need a reliable man to put in charge of a provisional government, someone who'll do as he's told without question, keep the people under control, make sure there's no stupid dissent, nobody with dreams of driving out the invaders. After all, you'll need us, the City; we make everything, every tool, every cup and plate; I know you won't let the savages burn it all down. It makes sense. You can see that, can't you?"

No expression on Vaatzes' face. "So it's all right if the savages kill ten thousand citizens. Twenty thousand. Stop me when the number gets too big. Fifty thousand, just so you can have your old office back. Isn't that just a bit too much, even for-"

"Be realistic." His voice sounded cold, but he knew no other way to say it. "The alternative is a siege, an assault. Psellus can't defend the City. Nobody can. We aren't soldiers. The City will fall, and fifty, a hundred thousand people are going to die. Maybe all of them. Maybe, if we don't do something, the savages will burn it down and kill everybody. But if we can avoid that, you and me together, for the good of the City…"

Vaatzes was nodding, as though listening to the most reasonable proposition in the world. "I agree," he said. "Here we are, two outcasts, condemned to death, and we're the only ones who can save the Republic. Perfect irony, don't you think? So," he went on, sitting up a little straighter, putting his business face on, "what do you have in mind?"

"Quite simple." Just a little bit further, he thought. "I know how to get an assault force inside the City. They can go in, open the gates, it'll be easy. Just like Civitas Eremiae." He risked a smile. "Just like what you did for us at Civitas Eremiae. And in return, I get what I want, and you can have anything you want. You can be the military governor, the king, anything at all, just so long as I can be the chairman of Necessary Evil, like I used to be. Isn't that what you really want, after all? Well?"

Vaatzes sat perfectly still for a moment. Then he said: "You can do that, can you?"

"Yes."

"I believe you." Boioannes caught his breath. "And it'd make sense. Everybody would get what they want-part of it, anyway-and we'd avoid the worst of the killing, and the City would at least survive, and we could both go home. It does seem," he said mildly, "like the perfect solution."

"It is. Well?"

Vaatzes stood up and walked quickly to the door. "I'm sorry," he said, his hand on the latch. "I'm sorry, but the answer is no." He beckoned to the guard, and said to him: "Take this man to the cells and lock him up where he can't talk to anybody. Make sure there's nothing in the cell he can use to harm himself. No visitors except me."

"Vaatzes." He howled the name; Vaatzes paused on the threshold and looked back at him, as the guard came into the room. "That's insane. It's stupid. Do you really want to see the City destroyed, just so you can have your revenge?"

But Vaatzes shook his head. "Believe me," he said, in a voice that was pitifully weary, "revenge is the last thing on my mind. I've never believed in it, and I don't want it. Oh, I nearly forgot," he added, suddenly sounding almost gentle. "Thank you. You've done me proud, but I've got no further use for you now. They'll feed you, and you'll be safe, and there's not many people can say that these days." The grin returned, just for a moment. "The first thing they taught me when I joined the factory was, always look after your tools. Words to live by."

For a moment it seemed as though Boioannes might try some futile gesture of violence; but then he glanced at the guard and thought better of it. He walked out of the room like a bullock through the slaughterhouse gate; a little flourish of quiet melodrama, which Ziani quite forgave him, as he trusted Boioannes would forgive him the little lie he'd just perpetrated.

He sat down again. Some time later, a clerk came looking for him. He was needed in the duke's apartments, he said. Ziani nodded.

"I'll be there in a minute," he said. "But could you just quickly fetch me some paper and ink? I need to write a letter."