by K. J. Parker
“No, really.” Falier practically spat the words out. “Anything I can do, obviously. Please, sit down.”
There was, of course, only the one chair, and he was standing directly in front of it. Given the size of the office, he’d have to leave the room to give Psellus enough space to squeeze in behind the desk, and then come back in again. Psellus stayed where he was and pretended not to have heard him. It was a moment of great tact, but Falier couldn’t really appreciate it. He felt as though he was sharing his office with a tiger.
“If you can spare me a few minutes,” Psellus went on, “before the start of the first shift, there are a few questions I’d like to ask you.”
Was he asking permission? Would it actually be possible for Falier to say, No, go away? Not really. “Yes please,” he heard himself say.
“About a personal matter, really.”
That didn’t make much sense. “Yes?”
“About your wife.”
Oh, he thought; and instead of mere panic, he felt fear. “What can I… ?”
“Perhaps we can talk outside, on the landing,” Psellus said. “It’s a little cramped in here for two people.”
Falier wasn’t quite sure he could walk. His legs felt weak, and the joints seemed frail under his weight. He had to lean on the desk with his hand to get as far as the door.
“Splendid work you’re doing here, by the way,” Psellus said, sounding like he meant it. “I realise it must be terribly difficult, with the demands we’re making on you and the problems with supply.”
“Oh, it’s…” Falier suddenly couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Materials must be specially frustrating,” Psellus went on, looking straight ahead, along the gallery towards the frames of the five giant drop-hammers they used for drawing down armour plate. “All my fault, of course. I’ve given priority to food shipments, so there just aren’t the ships or the carts to carry iron or fuel. It’s a wretched business, but I don’t really have any choice in the matter. Our food reserves are deplorably low, and there’s no telling how long we’ve got before the enemy arrive and cut us off from Lonazep. In fact, I’m surprised they haven’t done so already. If there’s anything I can do about getting materials, of course, you only have to ask.”
Oh well, Falier thought, and said, “Charcoal.”
“Yes?”
“We’re getting very low.” He spoke as though he’d just been running; the words were too big for his throat. “I don’t actually know where it comes from…”
“There’s a syndicate,” Psellus answered crisply. “They have a long-standing contract with the charcoal-burners of the Hobec – don’t ask me where that is because I haven’t a clue. Actually, I asked the Cure Doce ambassador only the other day, and I don’t think he knew either. But it’s quite some way away. The convoys take six weeks to get here, longer if there’s heavy rain. The impression I get is that we buy everything they produce; there simply aren’t enough of them to make any more, and if there were, they don’t have any more carts. The syndicate asked them quite some time ago if they could increase production, but they didn’t sound very keen on the idea. Why bother, was their attitude; why take on more men and build more carts when we’re quite happy as we are?” He shook his head with mildly exaggerated sadness. “That’s foreigners for you,” he said, “they simply don’t think like us. Imagine putting happiness before expansion. But anyway, even if we could induce them to change their whole way of life, it’d be months before we saw the benefit; and quite possibly, if we asked them, they’d take bitter offence and refuse to deal with us at all.”
He stopped talking, and Falier groped for something to fill the silence. “I see” was the best he could do.
“Meanwhile,” Psellus went on, “I’ve been making enquiries. You know, I do find it odd that nobody ever seems to have considered this before. Even if there wasn’t a war, it strikes me as… well, curious, that we’ve been quite happy all this time to rely on a single limited source of supply for something as essential as charcoal. Anyway, it seems that they used to burn charcoal in northern Eremia, decent quantities, enough for their own use, and they could have produced more if they’d had any call for it. But that’s no good to us, obviously. I’m told there are colliers in the old country, and they have wholesalers there with their own ships, for making bulk deliveries up and down the coast. If we can get in touch with them, we’ll make them a better offer. But as to when all this might start happening…” He shrugged. “The tiresome thing is, we’re having to do so many new things, we’re making it all up as we go along, and there’s really no time…” He stopped, and sighed; he’d been thinking aloud, Falier realised. “But that’s not your problem,” he said. “Nobody can expect you to work steel without fuel. All I can ask of you is that you do the best you can with what you’ve got, and it seems to me you’re doing just that. For which,” he added with a smile, “thank you.”
Falier found that as disconcerting as a punch in the mouth. “That’s all right,” he said. “What I mean is—”
“Now then.” No change in the pitch of his voice. “About your wife.”
Later, when he’d recovered a little, Falier understood. The unannounced visit, the praise, the frankness and sympathetic reassurance about the charcoal situation, had all been to put him at his ease, let him know he was dealing with a man who was both intelligent and reasonable, before he closed in for the kill.
He told him everything, of course.
“We were in love,” he said. “We just wanted to get married and be together. And Ziani…” It crossed his mind that he could lie at this point, but he realised it wouldn’t be possible to make Commissioner Psellus believe something that wasn’t true. “Ziani was in the way. So we had to get rid of him.”
He waited for a reaction. Nothing.
“I don’t mean murder him, or anything like that,” Falier added quickly, appalled by what he’d just said and how it must sound. “We didn’t want to hurt him, either of us. But the way things were was just – well, impossible.”
A slight movement of Psellus’ head told Falier he was about to speak. “She could simply have left Vaatzes and come to live with you,” he said. “That sort of thing has happened before, I believe.”
“Yes, but…” Falier began, then hesitated; because, now he thought about it, that would have been the obvious thing to do. But it hadn’t occurred to him at the time. Or she hadn’t let it occur to him. She’d insisted…
“But never mind that,” Psellus went on. “Vaatzes had to be disposed of. What happened then?”
Falier hesitated again. He wasn’t quite sure, now he considered it.
“Things happened quickly,” he said. “It turned out Ziani was making that stupid doll…”
Psellus’ eyes were on him now; they were pale and cold, like something dead. “How did you find out about that?”
“She told me.”
“That he was making the doll, or that it was… ?” A pause. “That it wasn’t quite right.”
Falier struggled to get the right words. “She told me he was making it,” he said. “And I suppose she said how he was spending hours over it, trying to solve problems about how to make it work. And I must have thought about that – at the back of my mind, you know, the way you do; and I suppose it struck me as odd, because if he was following Specification, there wouldn’t be any problems to figure out. I mean, you look at the diagrams and the dimensions, it’s all there. You don’t need to think about it.”
“And that led you to believe he was… ?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
“You suppose so.”
The fear, which Psellus had been to so much trouble to dissipate, came back so hard it made Falier catch his breath. “I don’t know,” he said weakly. “It’s hard to get it straight in my mind, somehow; what I figured out for myself and what other people told me…”
“What other people?”
“Well, she told me about how long he w
as spending on it, and…” He dried up. No other people. Just her. And how many times had she mentioned it to him? More than once. Quite a few times; almost as if… “Just her,” he said. “And I must have figured it out for myself.”
“All of it?”
“Well…” Falier struggled to clear his mind, as though he’d woken up suddenly. “She and I talked about it. I said how I couldn’t understand what could be so difficult about it, if he was following Specification. And she…”
“She reached the conclusion.”
A statement. “Yes,” Falier realised. “Yes, she did.”
Psellus nodded slowly. It was as though he was being told something he already knew, but the hunger with which he’d been asking the questions contradicted that. “She’s an intelligent woman,” he said. “I know, I’ve spoken to her myself, as you know. But even so, I find it hard to accept that she formed that particular conclusion from that particular evidence, if you follow me. But if you say it was her and not you…”
Falier nodded eagerly. “I’m sure it was her,” he said, “now you mention it.”
“I see.”
“Well, it seemed so convenient.” Again, his choice of words disturbed him. “Here we were, trying to find a way of getting him out of the picture, and suddenly this came along. It was…”
“A stroke of luck.”
“Yes.” Falier realised he was feeling painfully cold. “Just what we needed, at just the right time.”
“Indeed. So,” Psellus went on, “did you go straight to the authorities, or did you investigate further, to make sure the accusation was well founded?”
He wasn’t quite sure what to make of how Psellus had phrased that. “I didn’t ask Ziani about it, if that’s what you mean, or go poking about in his workshop to see if I could find anything wrong. I went to see the people at Compliance, and they told me I needed to talk to the Justice department.”
Psellus nodded. “I know about criminal procedure, thank you. But I find it strange: you decided to go straight to the authorities, just on the basis of a conclusion – a guess, really – instead of looking for solid evidence.”
Falier frowned. “I…”
“It wouldn’t have been very hard,” Psellus continued. “You were his friend, I assume you visited him at home often enough for your calling there not to seem unusual. His wife could have found some way of making sure he was out of the house for long enough for you to look in his workshop. You’re an engineer; you could have taken measurements, interpreted the specifications well enough to detect violations. But you didn’t do that.”
“No. It didn’t seem necessary.”
“She told you it wouldn’t be necessary.”
“Yes.”
Fear was thawing his mind now, instead of freezing it; and he couldn’t help feeling a desperate kind of admiration for this man who understood him better than he understood himself. Because until Psellus started asking his questions, it simply hadn’t occurred to him.
“She thought you had enough for an accusation,” Psellus said. “No evidence, just your suspicions.”
“That’s right.”
He nodded slowly. “And the clerks at Justice,” he said. “How did they react?”
“They listened to what I told them, and said they’d look into it.”
Psellus nodded firmly, as though Falier had gaven the right answer. “They didn’t ask if you had any kind of proof.”
“No.” Falier felt as if he was sliding on ice. “I assumed that that’s how they usually…” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I thought, at the time. It all seemed to happen so fast, and it meant we could be together; I suppose I didn’t want to think about it too deeply, because of what I’d done to Ziani.” He twisted, as though trying to get away from something. “And it was the right thing to do, wasn’t it? I mean, he was breaking the law.”
Psellus looked at him, and he wished he hadn’t said that. “Yes,” Psellus said. “He was breaking the law, so it must have been the right thing to do. And you sent him to his death, but you didn’t try and murder him.” Suddenly he grinned. “We did that.” Then the energy seemed to leak out of him, and he leaned against the gallery rail. “I met him, you know. I went all the way to Civitas Vadanis, and I met him. We plotted the death of an innocent man together. And he gave us Civitas Eremiae; we’d never have taken it without him, but we’d have wasted thousands of lives trying. He’s really a quite extraordinary man; he’s done almost as much to help this city as he has to harm it. I hope they’ll be able to say the same about me one day, when I’m gone.”
3
Next morning, Psellus met the architects. He was already tired when the meeting began; he’d been up most of the night reading. The book was on his desk in front of him when they arrived.
It was a long meeting. At first they said it couldn’t be done. Then they insisted it couldn’t be done in time. After that, they argued that it couldn’t be done with the manpower and resources available. For example, there simply weren’t that many picks and shovels in the City—
“True,” Psellus interrupted. “We’re forty thousand shovels short, but I’m seeing to that. By the time they’re needed, they’ll be ready. Let’s see, what else? Wicker baskets, for moving earth. I can lay my hands on ninety thousand, and I’ve got another twenty thousand on order; they won’t be ready in time, so we’re going to have to requisition. Watchmen going from house to house, ordering people to hand over their laundry baskets. Lumber; you’re about to tell me we need huge quantities of lumber for propping and shoring, and of course it’s in desperately short supply and we can’t spare the transport to bring any in, even if we could get hold of any at such short notice. That means we’ll have to scavenge what we can from shacks and sheds and fences; if needs be, we’ll pull the roofs off houses and take the rafters. Gentlemen, since we haven’t got everything we need, we’re going to have to do what the farmers do, use what we’ve got instead of what we wish we had. I’m sure you’ll cope. After all, you’re experts.”
After two hours they stopped arguing and started writing down what they’d been assigned to do. Somehow it was harder to cope with them once they’d stopped fighting him. A fight is a dialogue, once you’re used to it practically a conversation; he’d met married couples who had no other form of communication except fighting, and they seemed to get on pretty well. Silence broken only by the sound of his own voice was considerably more intimidating.
And, he reflected nervously when they’d all gone, everything’s based on the premise that what I’ve chosen to do is the right thing; and that’s crazy. I’ve just commissioned the biggest building and engineering programme in the history of the Republic, on the authority of a two-hundred-year-old book I found in the library, written by someone I know nothing about, whose only qualifications for advising me are the fact that he wrote a book, and that it’s survived two centuries without being cut up and used to mend shoes.
We can’t win this war by force of arms, or even by digging. Only one man can save this city, and he’s the enemy.
But Psellus didn’t have time to sit thinking about one man; he had to figure out how to convince half a million men to drop everything and start digging trenches. And after that; well, he had the book.
Under the piles of papers on his desk a single sheet lay hidden. He found it, made a space and laid it down. It was blank, apart from six words:
Lucao Psellus to Ziani Vaatzes, greetings.
He’d written that a month ago. Since then, whenever his mind was quiet for a moment, he found himself hunting for the words that should follow. He had constructed sentences and paragraphs in his mind, complex as the best Guild clockwork, phrases that were springs, cams, sears, pawls, hooks, lifters, escapements, pushrods and connecting rods, axles, bearings, flanges, shoulders, tumblers, flies and ratchets. He could see the shape of the letter when he closed his eyes, but when he came to assemble the components, he could find no way of fitting them together; because t
here was no standard, no specification for a letter like this. It wasn’t a diplomatic communication, a commercial negotiation, a legal pleading, a dispatch from a spy or a note to a friend, a love letter or a challenge to a duel. There could be no precedent, because the circumstances were unique.
Even so… He stood up and crossed the room to his small shelf of books – not the splendid and comprehensive personal library of the Commissioner of War, but his books, which he’d bought with his own money. He thought of them as his toolchest: tables of weights, measures and equivalents, epitomes of regulations and manuals of procedures, almanacs, forms and precedents of all manner of legal and official documents, mathematical tables, indices, bibliographies and prosopographies, the complete Specification (in nine volumes), and a shabby, home-made book that had once belonged to Ziani Vaatzes, the famous abominator. His hand lingered over that one, but he passed on and picked out a thin, red-bound book, patched on the spine with salvaged parchment. It was the first book he’d ever bought.
The Scrivener’s mirror, being the complete art and practice of all correspondence formal and private, by an officer of the Scriveners’ Guild of the Republic of Mezentia; restricted.
He opened it and smiled. It was more than a book; it was a whole living. The book, a pen, ink and some decent paper, Pattern Seven or better, your Guild ticket, and you need never think again.
He turned to the back, for the list of contents:
* From the directors of a company to a creditor, seeking indulgence
* From the directors of a company to a debtor, refusing indulgence
** From a bank to the holder of an equitable mortgage on copyholds
From a father to his son at the university, politely refusing money
From a student to his father, passionately requesting money
** From a resident alien to the residency commissioners, seeking leave to renew domiciliary status
From a woman to a man of equal status, declining marriage
From a woman to a man of superior status, declining marriage
