by K. J. Parker
"Very good, Captain," said the other man (shorter than the chairman, somewhere between thirty and forty-five, oddly dressed but otherwise completely unmemorable). "Carry on."
Instinctively, Abazes saluted, but neither the unmemorable man nor the chairman were watching. They were walking away from him, chatting in low, comfortable voices; old friends, he could tell. Well, he thought, obviously the other man had to be something to do with the military; at least, he sounded right, and he'd known what to say. Cuno Abazes muttered a silent prayer, and went back to doing his imitation of a statue, or one of those lifesize mechanical people that used to be in fashion, many years ago.
"You've got them saluting already," Ziani said. "I'm impressed."
Psellus shrugged. "Did he do it right? I don't know about these things."
"He wouldn't have gone down well with a Vadani drill sergeant," Ziani replied. "Slouching, gut sticking out, hand wobbling around like he was trying to swat flies. You'd never have made soldiers out of them, not if the war had dragged on for twenty years. It's not in our nature."
"I'm delighted to hear you say so," Psellus said. "War is neither a craft nor a trade, and I'm pleased we have an excuse not to meddle with it any more. By all means let's leave it to your precious Vadani. Let them get from it what pleasure they can."
Ziani laughed. "You still don't understand them," he said. "Not that there's any reason why you should. There's rather more to them than you think, but compared to us they're still just savages."
They walked on together in silence as far as the foot of the grand staircase; and Psellus thought: I've come here every day for as long as I can remember, but I've never seen it before, there's always been too many people in the way-my colleagues, my fellow clerks, hurtling up and down the stairs with files and ledgers. It's almost as though they were there to distract attention from the building itself; because we didn't build it, did we? The people who came before us did that, the people who made the padlock. And then he thought: I saved the Republic, but I don't want it any more; even looking at it makes me feel sick. And then he said: "You're really a patriot, aren't you, Ziani?"
Ziani nodded. "Always have been," he said.
"A true believer?"
"Always."
Psellus accepted the statement with a slight movement of head and shoulders. "You never intended to destroy us," he said.
"Of course not." Ziani wasn't looking at him. He was gazing at the staircase, the vaulted ceiling, the carved balustrades, the allegorical frescoes on the walls (Perfection illuminating the assembled crafts and trades; Perfection being a tall, big-bosomed woman in flowing red robes, and each craft and trade represented by a grey-haired man carrying the archetypal tool or instrument of his calling; but why, he couldn't help wondering, had they all been painted with white skins, like they were savages?). "Only a lunatic would burn down his own house; he'd have nothing to come home to."
"And that's really all it was," Psellus said, hesitating, as though he couldn't set foot on the first tread of the stair until he'd had an answer. "You just wanted to come home."
"Of course." Ziani traced the edge of a carved border with the tip of his finger; it was smooth, the sharp edge worn down by a million clerks brushing against it as they made way for each other on the stairs. "If I'd wanted to be rich and powerful, I'd have gone far away, the Old Country or somewhere like that; I'd have settled down and started a factory. Probably I'd have founded a new Mezentia, just like this one only better. That's what big men do, heroic types, idealists, rebels." He shook his head. "I just did what I had to, to put things right. No choice, really."
Psellus climbed the first step. "The death toll…"
"I can't help that," Ziani said briskly. "I can't be held responsible. Nor can you." He turned his face, and Psellus couldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know all the ins and outs of administrative procedure, but if you were chief clerk of Compliance, it was you who gave the order that started the war. Yes?"
"Yes."
"Not me," Ziani said. "Sure, I planned the whole thing. I worked out every step, while I was dying of thirst out on the plain, before Duke Orsea's people found me. By the time they picked me up, I'd planned as far as turning the scorpions on the Aram Chantat-I didn't know they were called that, of course, I just knew there were millions of savages out there beyond the desert, and they were the only force on earth that could bring down the Republic; so of course they were part of the plan from the beginning; like a mainspring, if you like. Orsea and Valens were the gear train-I was lucky there, I admit it. I knew that if I could persuade the Eremian duke to let me build a factory, the Republic would have to declare war. I wanted to bring in the Vadani, to keep the war going, and I knew I'd have to find some mechanism to get the Vadani to bring in the savages beyond the desert. That was quite easy, once I found out the Vadani duke was unmarried, and the stupid courtly-love triangle with Orsea, Valens and the duchess gave me that whole assembly practically complete, I just had to make a few connections. The chain of oases across the desert was a stroke of luck, but I was pretty well sure there had to be something like that once I heard about the raiding parties. If I hadn't had those strokes of luck, I'd have had to manufacture something myself to do the job; it'd have taken longer and needed a lot more effort, but I'd have got there in the end. The real luck was finding Daurenja."
"Oh." Psellus raised his eyebrows. "You surprise me. I'd have thought he was more of an unforeseen difficulty."
"He was, at times." Ziani smiled. "But I knew from quite early on that I'd make him the commander-in-chief of the Alliance. I assumed I'd have to find a way of disgracing him when the moment came, to get him out of the way when it was time for me to take command. But he blew himself up instead, which was far better."
"You knew his weapon wouldn't work?"
"Not at all." Ziani shook his head. "It works perfectly, if you make a tube without a flaw in the weld. But there was a cold spot-I actually did try and warn him about it, but only because I knew he wouldn't listen. And then I saw it all quite clearly, in my mind, exactly the way it eventually happened."
They paused on the landing, and Ziani looked down over the banister at the entrance hall below. "My father always wished he'd been a clerk," he said. "He thought it must be the grandest thing, to work with clean hands all day, in a place like this. Of course, he never saw the inside of this place, but he'd heard stories. He used to tell me about it; got it completely wrong, of course. He said there were gold statues, twice lifesize…"
"There were, once," Psellus said. "About a hundred years ago. But they moved them into the main chapterhouse one time when the roof cracked and the rain got in. They should have gone back after the repairs were completed, but nobody ever got around to it. Actually, I think the council rather liked having them all to themselves."
Ziani nodded. "Get them put back," he said. "Dad would've liked that."
"Very well."
Ziani said: "I'd appreciate that." And then: "I gather you're taking orders from me. I wasn't quite sure where we stood."
Psellus shrugged. "It's my impression that you still command the allied army. And the gates of the City are open, as you insisted. If you want the furniture moved about, I'm hardly going to argue."
Ziani smiled. "Very soon, though," he said, "the army's going to go away, escorting the savages to the border. Then what?"
Psellus walked on, and Ziani took a long stride to keep up with him. "The question doesn't arise," he said. "You don't want to give orders or rule the City. You just wanted to come home. And here you are."
"That's right," Ziani said. "But will you let me?"
"No," Psellus said gently. "After everything you've done, naturally you can't stay here. In due course you'll be declared a public enemy and sentenced to death-in your absence, I sincerely hope; but by then you'll be far away where we can't reach you. I think you mentioned the Old Country just now; I think that would be a very good idea. After what happened in the war, I don't suppose
we'll be very popular over there for a great many years. Your idea of starting a factory sounds eminently sensible. You do seem to have a flair for it. And perhaps," he added, with a faint smile, "you'll find another Daurenja to help you. I don't really believe you'll ever be complete without someone like that at your side."
Ziani was silent for a moment. "What exactly do you think of me?" he said.
"Now there's a question." Psellus stopped, frowned, thought for a long time. "I believe you were the victim of the most atrocious cruelty," he said, "from the person you loved most in all the world. I believe the City you love treated you shamefully, that you suffered a monstrous injustice, and that the system that so abused you is worthless, being founded on a lie."
Ziani shook his head, but said, "Go on."
"When I was investigating your case," Psellus continued, "I asked myself from time to time, what would I have done in your position? And the answer, of which I am ashamed, was that I'd have submitted to my fate, furiously angry but far too weak to resist. But you resisted; and since then I've watched you with a sort of horrified fascination, because what you've done has been evil-there's a word whose meaning I don't know any more-and it's what I'd have done if I'd had the strength."
"Would you?" Ziani grinned. "I don't think so."
"Curiously, I do. You gave back evil for evil; well, perhaps. Your callous indifference to the deaths of thousands; that must be evil, surely. Or perhaps you simply used the fundamental evil inside all of us to achieve something that nobody could reasonably object to: the setting right of an injustice, the overthrow of a bad system of government, the breaking of a lie." He sighed, as though he was disappointed with himself. "I can't find it in myself to blame you for anything you've done to the Republic," he said. "I imagine the Eremians and the Vadani would see things differently; but they've been fighting each other for generations, and the peace between them was founded on that poor, weak man Duke Orsea. I don't imagine it'd have lasted very long after Duke Valens' death, or even until then. And then they'd have brought themselves to more or less the state they're in now, or worse. As for the savages, they came here to take the entire country for themselves; they'd have wiped us out, and presumably the Vadani and the Eremians as well, in due course. No," he went on, his voice firmer, "you didn't make the evil, you only used it, and your motives and objectives were understandable, good even; which leads me to the unpleasant conclusion that there is no such thing as good or evil, or else that they're mixed together so completely that you can't have one without the other-like an alloy, I suppose you could say, like bronze is copper and tin, but in order to extract the tin you have to destroy the bronze. I think that what you've done is so horrible that I can't really get my mind around the true scope of it, and it'd have been far better for the world if you'd never been born. But I can't blame you for it."
Ziani shrugged. "Most of that's too deep for me," he said. "And I'm not proud of what I did. But the Republic took my life away and I had to get it back; I did it as little harm as I could to get what I needed; and as for the others, the Eremians and the rest of them, they're only savages anyway; like you said, they'd have slaughtered each other sooner or later, so no harm done."
For some reason, Psellus laughed. "You know," he said, "the way you put it makes my gorge rise, but it's not very different from what I just said. I suppose that proves my point. No, the difference is basically the difference between you and Daurenja."
"Daurenja? What's he got to do with it?"
"Only that he was an evil man who kept trying to do good things, and you were a good man doing evil. As I understand it, Duke Orsea spent his life trying to do the right thing, and by any objective criteria he caused just as much harm as you did. And Duke Valens; I see him as a man made up equally of good and evil who chose the good side believing that you can part copper and tin and still have bronze; and so he did more damage than anybody, in the end. And as for myself… Well," he said, "I can't have you arrested and put to death as long as your army's camped outside the City, which spares me from forcing myself to acknowledge that I wouldn't want to do it if I could. There are times when it's a great relief not to be able to do the right thing, or your duty, or whatever you want to call it."
Ziani was silent for a while. Then he said: "That was a good speech, for something you just made up on the spur of the moment."
Psellus smiled. "I used to read a lot of books," he said, "on days when work was quiet and there wasn't a lot to do. Dizanes on forensic and political oratory. Six fat volumes, I found them wedged under the legs of a wobbly table in the Coopers' library." He stopped; they were standing outside a door. "You think that just because I made it into a speech, I can't really mean it."
"If it was what you really thought, you wouldn't have needed to dress it up."
They were standing outside a door.
"What I think doesn't matter," Psellus said abruptly. "I'm not important. We're here."
Ziani nodded; then he said: "I can't stay here, then?"
"No."
"That's a pity, considering what I've been through to get back here."
"Yes," Psellus said. "But if you really want to stay, you'll have to kill us all. I believe you'd be capable of it, but there'd be no point; it wouldn't be your home any more. And besides, it's not what you really want, is it?"
"I want it to be how it was," Ziani replied angrily. "What the hell is so difficult about that?"
"Accept the compromise," Psellus said gently. "You had to come this far to get it; you could never have trusted any deal we made with you, especially while Boioannes was still in power. Take what you came for and go, while you still can."
Ziani breathed out; it was as though he'd been holding that breath for a very long time. "No choice, then," he said.
"No."
"Oh well, then," Ziani said, and he put his hand to the latch. She said: "So what are you going to do now?"
Valens leaned back in his chair, as though he was melting into it. "I'd like to go home," he said, "to Civitas Vadanis. I'd like to look after my people, try to be a good duke. I'd like to hunt twice a week in the season, business and weather permitting. I'd like to be a good father to our child. I'd like to spend as much time as I can with my wife, though I don't suppose it'll ever be enough." He closed his eyes. "Is that really so unrealistic?"
She looked at him. The wound was healing fast, in spite of what Daurenja had done, though there'd always be the second scar; and the third, on the inside. "Do you love me?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied. "As much as I always have, ever since I first saw you. I've never stopped loving you, and I've never loved anyone else." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Is that enough?"
"It's all anyone could ask," she replied.
He nodded. "When did I lose you?" he asked.
She hesitated, then said, "When you let that man beat you."
"Oh." He thought about that for a moment, then said: "Was that all? You can't love a man unless he always wins?"
But she shook her head. "It's not that," she said. "I loved Orsea, and he never won anything."
"I see." Valens was massaging the swollen place under the scar. It had become a habit; he probably didn't know he was doing it. "So you can't love me unless I always win, is that it?"
She sighed. "It's a very stupid reason," she said.
"I don't know," he replied. "I don't think there's good or bad reasons for loving someone, or stopping loving them. But it's a little bit hard to understand."
She stood up, turned her back on him. "I think it's because…" She didn't speak for a while. "I think it's because my life kept going wrong, and each time you came and rescued me. From Civitas Eremiae; and before that, when I was stuck in that awful excuse for a life with Orsea, and your letters gave it some kind of meaning." She kept her voice level; it took some doing. "I loved the man who wrote the letters. I loved the man who rode into the battle, just for me, even though it meant the end of everything he cared about. I
loved the man who fought the Mezentines to save his people. The thing is, though," she added, "I think that man's only one part of you, and I think Daurenja killed him. The man who's left is the awkward boy who kept staring at me when I was sixteen, and I never really loved him. Not like I loved Orsea."
Valens nodded. "And if I'd won the duel and killed Daurenja? Then it'd all have been all right."
"I did try and stop you, remember."
He grinned. "I thought it was because you were afraid he'd kill me."
"That's right." She couldn't help letting just a little bit of the bitterness through. "One way or another, I thought he'd kill you, and I was right. If you'd listened to me, if you'd put me first instead of doing the right bloody thing, there'd have been no fight and you'd still be…" She shook her head. "You can't expect me to explain something I don't understand myself."
"Oh, I understand," he replied gently. "The man you thought you loved never really existed. I wrote him, like a character in a book; I made him up when I wrote you those letters. It was so hard, it took me a whole day to write one. I guess I always knew you'd never love the man I really am. He'd never have ridden to Civitas Eremiae, and screwed up everything for his people, just to save one woman. I had to invent him, too; just like I invented my father's perfect son, who never really existed. There was a real Valens Valentinianus once; he was a stroppy boy who hated hunting and fencing and hated his father, and loved a girl he saw once. When my father died he had to go, because there was a country to be governed; and I suppose I must've thought, if I can't be me, I might as well be someone perfect-the good duke, the world's best huntsman, the ideal of pure courtly love; and after that, the great leader in adversity, and then the avenger, though I was never really comfortable with him." He laughed again, and went on: "The strange thing is, I've been the imaginary man so long, I don't know how to be anything else. And, as you say, Daurenja killed him, just because he was better at swordfighting. It's a hell of a thing, for your entire conception of good and evil to depend on the outcome of a fencing match. If I won, my ideas of right and wrong are vindicated. If I lose, I must've been wrong all along. And I lost." He closed his eyes again. "So what are you planning to do now?"
