by K. J. Parker
Miel looked at him. “Sorry? What for?”
“For this.” Vaatzes made a vague encircling gesture. “For being responsible for you ending up here. I suppose you could call it betrayal.”
Strange feeling; like walking into a tree, or putting your foot in a rabbit hole. “You?” Miel said stupidly.
“Me.” Vaatzes nodded. “I got hold of Duke Valens’ letter to the Duchess and I gave it to Duke Orsea. And I told him where it came from.”
“Oh.” Miel was too amazed to be angry. He thought about getting up, but found he couldn’t. “Why?”
“Long story.”
Miel frowned. “Was it because I told Orsea I thought you were a spy, back when we found you?”
“No, certainly not,” Vaatzes said. “Though in a way, I suppose, that was partly the cause of all your troubles. It showed you had good instincts.” He grinned, like some kind of predator. “Your master is a dangerous fool, but you’ve always made up for that. And he trusted you far more than he trusted himself. Would you like me to tell you the long story, or at least the part of it that concerns you?”
“I suppose so,” Miel said.
“Fine.” Vaatzes yawned again. “Please excuse me,” he said, “I’m dreadfully tired. We’ve been working on patching up the defenses for — what, seventy-two hours without a break. When I decided to make myself indispensable around here, I didn’t realize how much hard work I’d be letting myself in for. Can I push my luck just a little further and beg a mouthful of whatever you’ve got in that jug?”
Miel smiled bleakly. “Help yourself,” he said. “It’s a rather pleasant sweet white wine from my estate in the Northfold.”
“Very good,” Vaatzes said, after he’d swallowed a cupful. “Though I have to say, I’ve got no taste in wine. We drink beer and cider in Mezentia, or water. Now then, I’m not quite sure where to start. There’s a lot of background stuff that doesn’t concern you, and it’s quite personal, but you probably won’t be able to follow the logic of the story unless I tell it to you.”
Miel shrugged.
“Right,” Vaatzes said. He poured out half a cup of wine and put it down on the floor by his feet. “You know why I was condemned to death back home?”
Miel pulled a face. “Sort of,” he said. “Something about making changes to a design.”
“Essentially, yes. It was a stupid thing to do. I knew it was wrong, but I thought I could get away with it. I didn’t; someone betrayed me. I have no idea who it was, but it doesn’t really matter. I committed a terrible crime, for which I should have been punished. Instead, I killed some innocent men and ran away —”
“Hang on,” Miel interrupted — he was still feeling completely numb and vague from the astonishment Vaatzes’ announcement had caused; he could hear himself talking calmly and pleasantly to this man, and he wondered why. Probably, he decided, because he didn’t really believe him. “You make it sound like you — well, like you approve of what they were planning to do to you.”
“You could put it like that.”
“Fine. So why did you escape?”
Vaatzes smiled. “For a very basic, stupid reason. I’m in love with my wife, you see. If I die, I’ll never see her again. So I had to stay alive. It’s that simple.”
Miel frowned. “But — sorry if I’m being a bit blunt — running away, coming here, and then building all the war engines so we could beat off the invasion. There’s no way you’ll ever be able to go home.”
“We’ll see about that,” Vaatzes said mildly. “I rather believe I will, some day. But we’re drifting away from the point. When I came here, it didn’t take me long to realize how this country works. Basically, it’s all rather haphazard. The people who rule this place aren’t chosen because they’re wise or talented, it goes entirely by what I believe is called the accident of birth. To make up for that, you noblemen are trained from birth to do the jobs you’re born to; and you grow up having a code of duty and honor drilled into you, to the point where you aren’t really in charge of your own actions. You do the right thing, instinctively.” Vaatzes shrugged. “There are worse ways of running things,” he said. “But I saw, straight away, that you’re the man who the Duke listens to. And that’s because he knows he’s a bad leader and you’re a better one; he’s a fool, but clever enough to recognize a better man and let him run things. That’s why I had to get rid of you; part of it, anyway, but the rest of it’s a bit complicated. Anyway; I asked questions. I was sure that you must have a weak spot somewhere, a point where you’d be vulnerable, and it didn’t take me long to find it. It’s common knowledge that you were always supposed to marry Duchess Veatriz, because that was the best possible match for both of you, politically and socially. Also, you were more or less in love with her — not that it mattered, since the whole thing was a foregone conclusion.”
Miel shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.
“Well,” Vaatzes went on, “as soon as love came into it, I knew I’d found the weak point, something I could hammer a wedge into. Love’s always the most dangerous thing; so much of the unhappiness and quite a lot of the evil in the world comes directly out of it. I guessed that you’d played the good loser, ever since Orsea married her, and that there’d never actually been anything between you and her after he won and you lost. Also, I reckoned it was extremely likely that, deep inside somewhere, Orsea would never really believe that she loves him and not you. Logical enough; he’s a fool and you’re a good man, everything he wishes he could be but can’t. That was perfect, as far as I was concerned. Because you’re innocent, you never had anything to hide, you never imagined you’d be vulnerable to attack on that front. All I had to do was find something wrong that I could involve the two of you in — you and her.”
He paused and sipped his cup of wine. He looked so weary that Miel felt sorry for him, because he knew how it felt to be that tired.
“Instinct, I guess you could call it,” Vaatzes went on. “Everything I heard about the Duchess led me to believe that she couldn’t survive in a marriage with someone like Orsea unless she had an escape mechanism; a way of making up for everything he couldn’t give her. I was pretty sure it wasn’t just sex or anything as basic as that; I wasn’t looking for torrid affairs with grooms and footmen. I was sure that somewhere the Duchess had — well, a friend. I talked to servants who’d known her family. She was always reading books when she was a child; alone most of the time, and then sent away to be a hostage, which must have been really horrible. But she survived; and she hadn’t gone off the tracks and had affairs or anything like that. So she must have that escape mechanism somewhere, something or someone she could turn to when she desperately needed to be herself. I took the chance that there’d be something of the kind, and I set myself the job of finding out what it was.”
“You seem to have a remarkable grasp of human nature,” Miel said, “for an engineer.”
Vaatzes shrugged. “I use the tools and materials available to me,” he said. “If I can’t use steel, I have to use flesh instead. Not what I’d have chosen, but you do your best with what you’ve got. People are easy enough to figure out, if you make an effort.”
Miel shook his head but said nothing. Vaatzes went on: “The next step was to find out as much about her as I could. Servants were the obvious source, and one of her maids told me that she often spent time alone writing. That suggested either a diary or letters, but none of the servants had seen a diary, and it’s the kind of thing they’d notice, or know about. Letters, then; and if so, who would she write to? Her sisters; well, that seemed reasonable enough, except I rather got the impression that there was something furtive, guilty even, about the way she went about writing these letters. Also, none of the servants could remember her making arrangements for letters to be sent or carried — well, a few, but not nearly enough to account for the time she spent writing them. Now that was significant, you see. If she writes more letters than get sent, it seems likely that she’s carrying on a c
orrespondence she doesn’t want anybody to know about, and that the important letters are being carried secretly.”
“What a clever man you are,” Miel said quietly.
“I’m an engineer,” Vaatzes said. “I study and understand mechanisms. This was purely a mechanical problem; more letters written than sent, so where are they going? I thought about who might be likely to carry these secret letters, and fairly soon I decided it must be the female merchants. They come and go freely, and they call on the Duchess regularly. She buys all sorts of stuff from them, the servants told me, but never wears any of it. In fact, most of what she buys is hideous rubbish, which struck the servants as odd because she’s got such good taste.”
“I never thought of that,” Miel said.
“Why should you? You weren’t actively looking for a mystery.” Vaatzes shrugged. “By this point I’d set up my factory, and I had some dealings with the merchant women myself. I gambled on my theory being right and did a bit of gossiping with the ladies in red, making it sound like I knew what was going on, with the merchants carrying the Duchess’ letters, and wasn’t it an amusing little gobbet of scandal? I got some very odd looks until finally I was fortunate enough to find one who knew what I was talking about. She assumed I was in on the secret, that I was a courier in the secret correspondence myself. That was perfect. I found out who the letters were going to; and as soon as I knew that, everything slotted neatly into place. It was as though some kind friend had done half my work for me. Or you could say it was a gift from heaven, if you believe in a benign providence.”
Vaatzes paused for a moment. Telling the story had made him rather more animated, but he still looked haggard and weak, a pitiful object.
“After that, it was a question of patient fieldwork. I arranged for servants to report the comings and goings of merchants to me; I worked out a pattern, the usual interval between incoming letters — from Valens — and her replies. Quite by chance — and this was almost enough to make me start believing in that benign providence — I also discovered that the merchants were carrying information back to agents of the Republic. Which was only to be expected, of course, but it made it delightfully easy for me to complete the circle, so to speak, and get you involved.”
“I see,” Miel said, and it was as though he’d just had a conjuring trick explained to him, or seen his opponent complete a complex gambit at chess. “It was you who informed on that merchant, the one we arrested for spying.”
Vaatzes nodded. “The one who was carrying his letter,” he said. “Which meant it came into your hands. And I knew exactly what you’d do. I felt sorry for you, torn between conflicting duties of terrible and equal force: your duty to Veatriz, your duty to Orsea. I knew you’d keep the letter and try to hide it. After that, it was a simple matter to find out where your own special hiding-place was; the one you thought only you knew about, but of course the servants had known about it for years. I had to pay a lot of money for it, the price of a good farm —”
“Oh,” Miel said, and for the first time he felt angry. “So that’s where she got the money from.”
“Your housekeeper. She didn’t realize the harm she was doing,” Vaatzes said. “I made it sound like some trivial thing, a joke some friends wanted to play on you. There was no malice on her part.”
“No,” Miel said softly, “I don’t suppose there was. So, it was all to destroy me, so you could deprive Orsea of my advice and bring down the city. I suppose I’m flattered.”
“You can see it as a tribute to all your hard work for the people of Eremia.”
“Yes,” Miel said, “but it doesn’t make any sense. I can see why you’d want to bring us down. If you could prove to your people that you’d helped win the war for them, maybe they’d forgive you and let you go home. But that’s not what you’ve been doing. Exactly the opposite. You made it possible for us to win the war. You built the engines for us. Thanks to them, we killed thousands and thousands of the enemy’s soldiers and drove them back; there’s no way they can win now, they simply haven’t got the manpower. And it’s so totally obvious that it was you — nobody else could’ve built the scorpions — it must mean that you’re the most evil man in the world, as far as they’re concerned. They must hate you more than ever. You’ll never be able to go home now.”
Vaatzes shrugged. “That’s another part of the mechanism,” he said, “and I’m tired, and I haven’t got the strength to go into it tonight. I think I’ll go to bed now. I need to get some sleep; tomorrow’s going to be a very hectic day, and it’ll be an early start. Goodnight.” He stood up. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You’ve been very kind to me, ever since we first encountered each other. I wish I’d had the time to figure out another mechanism that didn’t involve hurting so many people. Regrettably —”
“I ought to kill you,” Miel said. “For ruining my life, and hers, and Orsea’s. I ought to break your neck right now.”
But Vaatzes shook his head, as though they were discussing some abstraction, and he respectfully disagreed on some point. “I don’t think so,” he said. “After all, I haven’t really done anything wrong, as far as you’re concerned. I didn’t betray Orsea; you did that. All I did was find out about it and tell him.” He yawned again, mumbling an apology as he did so. “If you’d done the right thing and taken the letter to Orsea straight away, as soon as you got hold of it, you wouldn’t be here now and my schemes would’ve failed. No, I’m sorry, you can’t offload the blame on me. It was your decision. You chose her over him.”
It was Miel’s turn to shake his head. “I wasn’t talking about that,” he said. “I ought to kill you for what you did to her. And to Orsea, my best friend.”
Vaatzes considered that. “You’d have a stronger case on those grounds, certainly,” he said. “But that wouldn’t be the real reason, just an excuse. No,” he went on, getting painfully to his feet, “you won’t do anything to me. For all sorts of reasons. Saving my life, for instance. That took some arranging, by the way.”
Miel had thought he was beyond surprise by now. “Arranging?”
Vaatzes smiled and nodded. “On reflection,” he said, “it was worth the effort. It got me into your house for an extended stay, which meant I was able to make contact with your housekeeper and various other members of the household. It was hard work, though; hours and hours reading those ridiculous books — King Fashion and the Mirror; and teaching myself to shoot a bow and arrow. All that, just so I could talk to a few domestic servants without making them suspicious.”
“I don’t understand,” Miel said weakly.
“What? Oh, right.” Vaatzes leaned against the doorframe. “I read in one of the books, King Fashion, I think, about the dangers of boar-hunting. It said that a boar who’s been shot in the back leg with an arrow is particularly dangerous; it can’t run away, which is what its instincts tell it to, but it can still use its front legs to drag itself along and get at you, so you can pretty well guarantee it’ll attack. So I made myself a bow and I practiced until I could hit a target the size of a boar’s back leg every time. I knew there’d be no guarantee that the perfect opportunity would arise, but it was worth going along just in case it did. And I got lucky; and it all worked out perfectly after all. That benign providence again, I suppose. On balance, I’d have preferred it if you’d shown up about five seconds earlier; I’d have got away with some nasty cuts and bruises, and I could’ve faked broken bones and internal injuries instead of having to put up with the real things. But, like I said, it all came out just right. I got into your house like I wanted; also, because of your personal code of chivalry, it turned me into one of your responsibilities, someone you had to help and look out for thereafter. Naturally, that made my life much easier, by putting me above suspicion.” He smiled slowly. “I won’t deny I’ve had one or two really big slices of luck, but at least I’ve made the most out of them. A bit like a man killing a pig; nothing goes to waste, it all turns out to be useful.”
Miel looked at him. “Get out,” he said. “And if I ever set eyes on you again, I will kill you. For the reasons stated.”
Vaatzes nodded, thanked him for the wine and left. He’d have liked to stay longer and explain further, but as always he was racing a deadline. Soon — he wasn’t sure when, of course, he was basing all his timings on estimates, little more than guesses — soon the Mezentines would be creeping up through the maintenance tunnels, heading for the gate. That would be a problem, of course; when he’d sent his letters to Falier, the first of them months ago, with the instructions enclosed, he hadn’t foreseen the destruction and walling up of the gateway. It remained to be seen what effect it would have on the overall working out of the design; from here on, for a while, it was all out of his hands. He felt a degree of apprehension about that, quite naturally, and also a certain relief. He was far more tired than he’d anticipated he would be at this point, and that in itself was a reason to feel apprehensive.
Now, at least, he didn’t have anything in particular to do. He daren’t go back to his room at the factory and fall asleep; the factory was too near the gate, for one thing, and he would need to be fairly close to the palace. He didn’t relish the prospect of wandering aimlessly about for an hour, or three hours, however long it was going to be. The sensible thing to do would be to find somewhere light and sheltered, and read the book he’d brought with him.
(Ludicrous, he thought; who else but me would remember to bring a book to read while waiting for a massacre to start? But, he reflected, all his life he’d had a peculiar horror of being bored, and he’d been saving this particular book for when he needed to take his mind off something. So; it was just a perfectly reasonable act of preparation.)
He wandered out into the courtyard, just below the tower. Since he was already inside the restricted area, and the guards knew who he was and why he was here, nobody was likely to bother him. They kept torches burning all night here — visibility was important, prisoners can escape better in the dark — and there was a bench he could sit on. Light to read by, and it wasn’t uncomfortably cold, just fresh enough to help him stay awake. He sat down, curled his coat tails round his knees, and opened his book.
