Devices and Desires

by K. J. Parker

  There seems to be a recurring theme in your work of a single warrior taking on a whole group of attackers at one go. Are you a secret martial arts film fan?

  Martial arts films, no. Ever since I was too young to play with dangerous sharp objects, I’ve studied combat and war, in roughly the same way a doctor studies a disease she’d one day like to cure. In the course of my researches, I’ve learned the basics of the European medieval and Renaissance martial arts (which, I guiltily confess, was a whole lot of fun) as well as read every authentic account of duels and personal combats that I’ve been able to lay my paws on (most of my fight sequences are rehashes of accounts of genuine duels or encounters, at least as far as the moves are concerned; I believe that nothing gives that authentic feel quite as much as the genuine article with the serial numbers filed off ). The overwhelming leitmotif that comes through all such accounts is that fights are lost through misjudgment, incompetence, or sheer bad luck rather than won by courage, skill, or Secret Ninja Combat Arts, and I hope this comes through in my descriptions.

  How extensively do you plot your novels before you start writing them? Do you plot the entire trilogy/series before you start writing or do you prefer to let the story roam where it will?

  I try to have the whole thing plotted out in some detail before I start. Sometimes the characters take over and lead me astray — in fact, they’d be pretty poor characters if they didn’t — but usually a judicious combination of carrots and sticks gets them back in line before things get out of hand.

  Some authors talk of their characters “surprising” them by their actions. Is this something that has happened to you?

  Not really, because I try to map out their actions well in advance. The interesting bit, in which they often surprise me, is their reactions to the unpleasant experiences I put them through. Gorgas Loredan, for instance, completely won me over by the end of the Fencer books, and I must admit I can’t wait to see how Valens handles the truly horrible stuff I have lined up for him in book two.

  Do you see any particular trends in recent fantasy?

  I confess I don’t follow the genre closely enough to make an informed comment (and I’d like my pontifications in reply to the question below to be interpreted accordingly). This is because of the chameleon effect: if I admire a writer’s work, subconsciously I’m tempted to indulge in the sincerest form of flattery.

  Do you have any particular favorite authors who have influenced your work?

  I have favorite authors, and I have authors who’ve influenced my work. For example, I don’t much enjoy reading Iain M. Banks, simply because his worldview and mine don’t coincide much, but I’ve learned an enormous amount from his masterful use of structure and language. Ditto J. K. Rowling, and her exquisite skill in developing an extended story line and designing characters who can go the distance.

  Devices and Desiresis the beginning of your third fantasy trilogy. Have you ever been tempted to write a longer series, George R. R. Martin– or Robert Jordan– style?

  Temptation is always with us, but as a friend of mine is fond of saying, the difference between luck and a Land Rover is that luck doesn’t work better if you push it. I’d like one day to acquire sufficient technical skill to write, say, a seven-part series. I’d also like to be president of the United States, but that’s equally unlikely.

  Finally, do you have a personal theory on why fantasy is so popular these days?

  Evelyn Waugh said of P. G. Wodehouse (who was also, in his way, a writer of fantasy), “He has made a world for us to live in and delight in. He will continue to release future generations from a captivity that may be more irksome than our own.” (Quoted from memory — something to that effect.) That’s a large part of it, I guess. Because modern Western society is such a mess, we have a longing for simpler, better worlds — not necessarily places where everything is perfect, like in Tolkien’s Shire, but places where the problems we have to confront in our daily lives are at least soluble by, for example, defeating an evil overlord or throwing a ring into a volcano. The solution may be horrendously dangerous and strenuous, but it’s straightforward; we can at least understand it, whereas real life in the twenty-first century is largely incomprehensible, and we feel powerless to do anything about it. In fantasy, we can believe in good and evil, whereas in real life both those concepts are increasingly nebulous.

  By these criteria, of course, I don’t write fantasy.… I prefer to create imaginary analogies to the bewildering, inescapable forces that govern real life, as a way of examining the ways in which we try and cope with them. Likewise I don’t have heroes and villains for the same reason I don’t have dragons and goblins; I believe that all four species are equally mythical. Which brings me kicking and screaming back to the question, I guess. Fantasy is popular because, since heroes and villains don’t exist, it’s absolutely necessary to our survival as a species to invent them.

  introducing

  If you enjoyed

  DEVICES AND DESIRES,

  look out for

  EVIL FOR EVIL

  Book Two of the Engineer Trilogy

  by K. J. Parker

  “The way to a man’s heart,” Valens quoted, drawing the rapier from its scabbard, “is proverbially through his stomach, but if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye socket.”

  He moved his right arm into the third guard, concentrated for a moment on the small gold ring that hung by a thread from the center rafter of the stable, frowned, and relaxed. Lifting the sword again, he tapped the ring gently on its side, setting it swinging like a pendulum. As it reached the upper limit of its swing and hung for a fraction of a second in the air, he moved fluently into the lunge. The tip of the rapier passed exactly through the middle of the ring without touching the sides. Valens grinned and stepped back. Not bad, he congratulated himself, after seven years of not practicing, and his poor ignorant student wasn’t to know that he’d cheated.

  “There you go,” he said, handing Vaatzes the rapier. “Now you try.” Vaatzes wasn’t to know it was cheating, but Valens knew. The exercise he’d just demonstrated wasn’t the one he’d so grudgingly learned, in this same stable, as a boy of fifteen. The correct form was piercing the stationary ring, passing the sword through the middle without making it move. He’d never been able to get it right, for all the sullen effort he’d lavished on it, so he’d cheated by turning it into a moving target, and he was cheating again now. The fact that he’d subverted the exercise by making it harder was beside the point.

  “You made it look easy,” Vaatzes said mildly. “It’s not, is it?”

  Valens smiled. “No,” he said.

  Vaatzes wrapped his hand around the sword hilt, precisely as he’d been shown — a quick study, evidently. It had taken Valens a month to master the grip when he was learning. The difference was, he reflected, that Vaatzes wanted to learn. That, he realized, was what was so very strange about the Mezentine. He wanted to learn everything.

  “Is that right?”

  “More or less,” Valens replied. “Go on.”

  Vaatzes lifted the rapier and tapped the ring to set it swinging. He watched as it swung backward and forward, then made his lunge. He missed only by a hair, and the ring tinkled as the sword point grazed it on the outside.

  “Not bad,” Valens said. “And again.”

  Even closer this time; the point hit the edge of the ring, making it jump wildly on its thread. Vaatzes was scowling, though. “What’m I doing wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing, really. It’s just a matter of practice,” Valens replied. “Try again.”

  But Vaatzes didn’t move; he was thinking. He looked stupid when he thought, like a peasant trying to do mental arithmetic. It was fortunate that Valens knew better than to go by appearances.

  “Mind if I try something?” Vaatzes said.

  Valens shrugged. “Go ahead.”

  Vaatzes stepped forward, reached up with his left hand, and steadied the ring until it was comple
tely motionless. He stepped back, slipped into third guard like a man putting on his favorite jacket, and lunged. The rapier point passed exactly through the middle of the ring, which didn’t move.

  “Very good,” Valens said.

  “Yes.” Vaatzes shrugged. “But it’s not what you told me to do.”

  “No.”

  “I was thinking,” Vaatzes said, “if I practice that for a bit, I can gradually work up to the moving target. Would that be all right?”

  Valens had stopped smiling. “You do what you like,” he said, “if you think it’d help.”

  For six days now it had rained; a heavy shower just before dawn, followed by weak sunshine mixed with drizzle, followed by a downpour at midmorning and usually another at noon. No earthly point trying to fly the hawks in this weather, even though it was the start of the season, and Valens had spent all winter looking forward to it. Today was supposed to be a hunting day; he’d cleared his schedule for it weeks in advance, spent hours deciding which drives to work, considering the countless variables likely to affect the outcome — the wind direction, the falcons’ fitness at the start of the season, the quality of the grass in the upland meadows, which would draw the hares up and out of the newly mown valley. Carefully and logically, he’d worked through all the facts and possibilities and reached a decision, and it was raining. Bored and frustrated to the point of cold fury, Valens had remembered his offhand promise to the funny little Mezentine refugee who, for reasons Valens couldn’t begin to fathom, seemed to want to learn how to fence.

  “I think that’s enough for today,” Vaatzes said, laying the rapier carefully down on the bench, stopping it with his hands before it rolled off. “The meeting’s in an hour, isn’t it? I don’t want to make you late.”

  Valens nodded. “Same time tomorrow,” he said, “if it’s still raining.”

  “Thank you,” Vaatzes said. “It’s very kind of you. Really, I never expected that you — ”

  Valens shrugged. “I offered,” he said. “I don’t say things unless I mean them.” He yawned and slid the rapier back into its scabbard. “See you at the meeting, then. You know where it is?”

  Vaatzes grinned. “No,” he said. “You did tell me, but…”

  “I know,” Valens said. “This place is a bugger to find your way around unless you’ve lived here twenty years. Just ask someone. They’ll show you.”

  After Vaatzes had gone, Valens drew the rapier once again and studied the ring for a long time. Then he lunged, and the soft jangle it made as the sword grazed it made him wince. He caught it in his left hand, pulled gently until the thread snapped, and put it back on his finger. All my life, he thought, I’ve cheated by making things harder. It’s a habit I need to get out of, before I do some real damage. He glanced out the window; still raining. He could see pockmarks of rain in the flat puddles in the stable yard and slanting two-dimensional lines of motion made visible against the dark backdrop of the yard gate. He’d loved rain in late spring when he was a boy, partly because he’d loathed hunting when he was young, and rain meant his father wouldn’t force him to go out with the hounds or the hawks, partly because the smell of it was so clean and sweet. Now, seven years after his father’s death, he was probably the most ardent and skillful huntsman in the world, but the smell of rain was still a wonderful thing, almost too beautiful to bear. He put on his coat and pulled the collar up round his ears.

  From the stable yard to the side door of the long hall was hardly any distance at all, but he was soaked to the skin by the time he shut the door behind him, and the smell was now the rich, heavy stench of wet cloth. Well, it was his meeting, so they’d have to wait for him. He climbed the narrow spiral staircase to the top of the middle tower. Clothes. Not something that interested him particularly. Perhaps that explained why he was so good at them. Slipping off the wet coat, shirt, and trousers, he swung open the chest and chose a dark blue brocade gown suitable for formal occasions. He took a minute or so to towel the worst of the damp out of his hair, couldn’t be bothered to look in a mirror. One more glance through the window. Still raining. But he’d be dry, and everybody else at the meeting would be wet and uncomfortable, which would be to his advantage. That thought made him frown. Why was he allowing himself to think of his own advisers as the enemy?

  He sighed. Today should have been a hunting day; or, if it was raining, it should’ve been a day for writing her a letter, or revising a first or second draft, or doing research for the reply to the next letter he received from her. But there weren’t any letters anymore; she was here now, under the same roof as him, with her husband. On a whim he changed his shoes, substituting courtly long-toed poulaines for comfortable but sodden riding shoes. He hesitated, then looked in the mirror after all. It showed him a pale, thin young man expertly disguised as the Duke of the Vadani; a disguise so perfect, in fact, that only his father would’ve been able to see through it. Oh well, he thought, and went downstairs to face his loyal councillors.

  As he ran down the stairs, he put words together in his mind — the question he’d have asked her in a letter, if they’d still been able to write letters to each other. Force of habit, but it was a habit he’d been dependent on for a very long time, until he’d reached the point where it was hard to think without it. Suppose there was a conjuror, a professional sleight-of-hand artist, who hurt his wrist and couldn’t do tricks anymore. Suppose he learned how to make things disappear and pull rabbits out of hats by using real magic. Would that be cheating?

  As he’d anticipated, the councillors were all wet and acting ashamed, as though getting rained on was a wicked and deliberate act. They stood up as he came in. Even now, it still rather surprised him when people did that.

  He gave them a moment or so to settle down, looking round to see if anybody was missing. They seemed nervous, which he found faintly amusing. He counted to five under his breath and stood up. “First,” he said, “my apologies for dragging you all up here in this foul weather. I’ll try not to keep you any longer than necessary. We all know what the issues are, and I daresay we’ve all got our own opinions about what we should do. However,” he went on, shifting his weight onto both feet like a fencer taking up a middle guard, “I’ve already reached my decision, so, really, it’s not a case of what we’re going to do so much as how we’re going to do it.”

  He paused, looking for reactions, but they knew him well enough not to give anything away. He took a little breath and continued. “I’ve decided,” he said, “to evacuate Civitas Vadanis. For what they’re worth, you may as well hear my reasons. First, the war isn’t going well. The latest reports I’ve seen — Varro, you may have better figures than me on this — put the Mezentine army at not far off thirty thousand men, not counting engineers, sappers and the baggage train. Now, we can match them for numbers, but we’d be kidding ourselves if we said we stood any sort of a chance in a pitched battle. So far we’ve avoided anything more than a few skirmishes; basically, we’ve been able to annoy them with cavalry raids and routine harassment, and that’s all. It’s fair to say we’ve got the better of them in cavalry and archers, but when it comes to the quality of heavy infantry needed to win a pitched battle, we’re not in the same league, and that’s not taking any account of their field artillery, which we all know is their greatest asset.”

  He paused to glance at Orsea and saw that the man was looking down at his feet, too ashamed to lift his head. As well he might be. Someone else who had trouble thinking straight. He wondered, before they were married, had Orsea ever written her a letter? He doubted it.

  “That rules out a decisive battle in the open field,” Valens went on. “By the same token, I don’t like the idea of staying here and trying to sit out either an assault or a siege. We still don’t really know what happened at Civitas Eremiae” — here he looked quickly across at Vaatzes, but as usual there was nothing to see in his face — “and I know some of you reckon it must have been treachery rather than any stroke of tactical or engineeri
ng genius on the Mezentines’ part. The fact remains that the Mezentines won that round, and Eremia was supposed to be the best-defended city in the world. We haven’t got anything like the position or the defenses that Orsea’s people had, so the only way we could hope to win would be through overwhelming superiority in artillery. At Eremia, Vaatzes here had to work miracles just to give Orsea parity. I imagine I’m right in assuming you couldn’t do the same for us.”

  Vaatzes considered for a moment before answering.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “With respect, there’s nothing here for me to work with. There were just about enough smiths and armorers and carpenters at Eremia to give me a pool of competent skilled workers to draw on; all I had to do was train them, improvise the plant and machinery, and teach them how to build the existing designs. You simply don’t have enough skilled men here; you don’t have the materials or the tools. You’ve got plenty of money to buy them with, of course, but there’s not enough time. Also, it’s a safe bet that the Mezentines have been busy improving all their artillery designs since the siege of Eremia. I’m a clever man, but I can’t hope to match the joint expertise of the Mezentine ordnance factory. Anything I could build for you would already be obsolete before the first bolt was loosed.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I don’t think I can be much help to you.”