by K. J. Parker
“Excuse me.”
He hesitated, then carried on, walking a little faster. “Excuse me,” the voice said again; then a shadow fell across his face, and someone was standing in front of him, blocking his path.
Not the strangest-looking human being Ziani had ever seen, but not far off it. He was absurdly tall, not much under seven feet, and his sleeveless jerkin and plain hose did nothing to disguise how extraordinarily thin he was. Probably not starvation, because the clothes themselves looked new and fairly expensive, and he didn’t have the concave cheeks and sunken eyes of a starving man. Instead, his face was almost perfectly flat — minute stump for a nose, stupid little slit for a mouth, and tiny ears — though the rest of his head was round and slightly pointed, like an onion. He had a little crest of black hair on the very top (at first glance Ziani had taken it for a cap) and small, round eyes. The best guess Ziani could make at his age was somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.
“Sorry if I startled you,” he said. “Are you Ziani Vaatzes, the Mezentine?”
“That’s me,” Ziani replied. “Who’re you?”
The thin man smiled, and his face changed completely. He looked like an allegorical representation of Joy, painted by an enthusiastic but half-trained apprentice. “My name is Gace Raimbaut Elemosyn Daurenja,” he replied. “May I say what a pleasure and an honor it is to meet you.”
Oh, Ziani thought. He made a sort of half-polite grunting noise.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the thin man went on, and Ziani noticed that there were dark red scars on both his earlobes. “Like yourself I am an engineer and student of natural philosophy and the physical world. I have been an admirer of your work for some time, and feel that there’s a great deal I could learn from you.”
He’s learned that speech by heart, Ziani thought; but why bother? “I see,” he said. “Well, that’s very …” He ran out of words, and couldn’t be bothered to look for any more.
The thin man shifted a little, and Ziani could just about have squeezed through the gap between him and the wall without committing an assault. But he stayed where he was.
“I must apologize for accosting you like this,” the thin man went on. “It is, of course, a deplorable breach of good manners, and not the sort of thing I would normally dream of doing. However …” He hesitated, but Ziani was fairly sure the pause was part of the script. Stage direction; look thoughtful. “We move in rather different social circles,” the thin man went on, and Ziani wished he knew a little bit more about Vadani accents. He was fairly sure the man had one, but he couldn’t place it well enough to grasp its significance. “You enjoy the well-deserved favor of the Duke. I am only a poor student. It’s hardly likely our paths would have crossed in the normal course of events.”
“Student,” Ziani said, repeating the only word in the speech he’d been able to get any sort of grip on. “At a university, you mean?”
“Indeed.” The thin man’s smile widened like sunrise on the open plains. “I have honors degrees in philosophy, music, literature, astronomy, law, medicine and architecture. I have also completed apprenticeships in many crafts and trades, including carpentry, gold, silver, copper, foundry and blacksmith work, building and masonry, coopering, tanning, farriery and charcoal-burning. I am qualified to act as a public scrivener and notary in four jurisdictions, and I can play the lute, the rebec and the recorder. People have asked me from time to time if there’s anything I can’t do; usually I answer that only time will tell.” The smile was beginning to slop over into a smirk; he restrained it and pulled it back into a look of modest pride. “I was wondering,” he went on, “if you would care to give me a job.”
Ziani’s imagination had been busy while the thin man was talking, but even so he hadn’t been expecting that. “A job,” he repeated.
“That’s right. Terms and conditions fully negotiable.”
Ziani made an effort and pulled himself together. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t have any jobs that need doing.”
A tiny wisp of a frown floated across the thin man’s face, but not for long. “Please don’t get the idea that I’m too delicate and refined for hard manual labor,” he went on. “Quite the contrary. At various times I’ve worked in the fields and the mines. I can dig ditches and lay a straight hedge. I can also cook, sew and clean; in fact, I was for five months senior footman to the Diomenes house in Eremia.”
Try as he might, Ziani couldn’t think of anything to say to that; so he said, “I see. So why did you leave?”
Every trace of expression drained out of the thin man’s face. “There was a misunderstanding,” he said. “However, we parted on good terms in the end, and I have references.”
Ziani almost had to shake himself to break the spell. “Look,” he said, “that’s all very impressive, but I’m not hiring right now, and if I did give you a job, I couldn’t pay you. I’m just …” He ran out of words again. “I’m just a guest here, not much better than a refugee. God only knows why the Duke lets me hang around, but he does. I’m very sorry, and it’s very flattering to be asked, but I haven’t got anything for you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” the thin man said. “Very sorry indeed. I’m afraid I’d allowed myself to hope.” He seemed to fold inwards, then almost immediately reflated. “If you’d like to see my certificates and references, I have them here, in this bag.” He pulled a small goatskin satchel off his shoulder and began undoing the buckles. “Some of them may be a little creased, but —”
“No,” Ziani said, rather more forcefully than he’d intended. “Thank you,” he added. “But there’s no need, really. I don’t need any workers, and that’s all there is to it.”
“A private secretary,” the thin man said. “I can take dictation and copy letters in formal, cursive and demotic script …”
Ziani took a step forward. The thin man didn’t move. Ziani stopped. “No,” he said.
“A valet, maybe,” the thin man said. “As a gentleman of the court —”
Because he was so thin, he’d be no problem to push aside. But Ziani felt an overwhelming reluctance to touch him, the sort of instinctive loathing he’d had for spiders when he was a boy. He retraced the step he’d just taken and folded his arms. “I’m not a courtier,” he said, “and I haven’t got any money, and I’m not hiring. You don’t seem able to understand that.”
“Payment wouldn’t be essential.” The thin man was watching him closely, as if inspecting him for cracks and flaws. “At least, not until something presented itself in which I might be of use. I have …” This time the hesitation was genuine. “I have certain resources,” the thin man said warily, “enough to provide for my needs, for a while. In the meantime, perhaps you might care to set me some task, by way of a trial. It would be foolish of me to expect you to take me on trust without a demonstration of my abilities.”
Too easy, Ziani thought. It must be some kind of trap. On the other hand … “All right,” he said. “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you a test-piece to make, and if it’s up to scratch, if ever I do need anybody, I’ll bear you in mind. Will that do?”
The thin man nodded, prompt and responsive as a mechanism. “What more could I ask?” he said.
Ziani nodded, and applied his mind. To be sure of getting rid of him it’d have to be something unusual in these parts, not something he could just go out and buy, or get someone to make for him and then pass off as his own. “Fine,” he said. “Do you know what a ratchet is?”
The thin man’s eyebrows rose. “Of course.”
“All right, then,” Ziani said. “At the factory where I used to work, we had a small portable winch for lifting heavy sections of steel bar, things like that. It hung by a chain off a hook bolted into a rafter, and you could lift a quarter-ton with it, just working the handle backward and forward with two fingers. Do you think you could make me something like that?”
“I guarantee it,” the thin man said. “Will six weeks be soon enough?”
>
Ziani grinned. “Take as long as you like,” he said.
“Six weeks.” The thin man nodded decisively. “As soon as it’s finished, I’ll send word to you at the Duke’s palace. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
Ziani nodded; then he asked, “All those degrees and things you mentioned. Where did you say they were from?”
“The city university at Lonazep,” the thin man replied. “I have the charters right here …”
“No, that’s fine.” Was there a university at Lonazep? Now he came to think of it, he had a feeling there was, unless he was thinking of some other place beginning with L. Not that it mattered in the slightest. “Well, I’ll be hearing from you, then.”
“You most certainly will.” The thin man beamed at him again, bowed, then started to walk away backward up the hill. “And thank you, very much indeed, for your time. I absolutely guarantee that you won’t be disappointed.”
Whatever other gifts and skills the thin man had, he could walk backward without looking or bumping into things. Just when Ziani was convinced he was going to keep on bowing and smiling all the way up to the citadel, he backed round a corner and vanished. Ziani counted to ten under his breath, then headed back down the hill toward the town, making an effort not to break into a run.
Back where he’d started from, more or less. This time, he walked past the smithy and down an alleyway he’d noticed in passing a day or so earlier. It looked just like all the others, but he’d recognized the name painted on the blue tile: Seventeenth Street. Past the Temperance and Tolerance, he recalled, second door on the left. He found it — a plain wooden door, weathered gray, with a wooden latch. You’ll have to knock quite hard, they’d told him, she’s rather deaf.
He knocked, counted fifty under his breath, and knocked again. Nothing doing. He shrugged and was about to walk away when the latch rattled, the door opened and an enormously fat woman in a faded red dress came out into the street.
“Was that you making all the noise?” she said.
“Sorry.” Ziani frowned. “Are you Henida Zeuxis?”
“That’s right.”
He wanted to ask, Are you sure?, but he managed not to. “My name’s Ziani Vaatzes. I’d like to talk to you for a moment, if you can spare the time.”
“Been expecting you,” the fat woman replied. “Marcellinus at the Poverty said you’d been asking round after me.” She looked at him as if she was thinking of buying him, then added, “Come in if you want.”
He followed her through the door into a small paved courtyard. There was a porch on one side, its timbers bowed under the weight of an enormous overgrown vine, in front of which stood two plain wooden chairs and a round table, with two cups and a wine bottle on it.
“Drink,” she said; not a suggestion or an offer, just a statement of fact. She tilted the bottle, pushed one cup across the table at him, and sat down.
“Thanks,” he said, leaving the cup where it was. “Did — what did you say his name was?”
“Marcellinus. And no, he didn’t say what you wanted to see me about. I can guess, though.”
Vaatzes nodded. “Go on, then,” he said.
“You’re an engineer, aren’t you?” she said, wiping her mouth on her left forefinger. “Blacksmith, metalworker, whatever. You need materials. Someone told you I used to be in business, trading east with the Cure Doce.” She shook her head. “Whoever told you that’s way behind the times. I retired. Bad knee,” she added, squeezing her right kneecap. “So, sorry, can’t help you.”
“Actually,” Vaatzes smiled, “the man at the Poverty and Justice did tell me you’d retired, but it wasn’t business I wanted to talk to you about. At least,” he added, “not directly.”
“Oh.” She looked at him as though he’d just slithered out of check and taken her queen. “Well, in that case, what can I do for you?”
Vaatzes edged a little closer. “Your late husband,” he said.
“Oh. Him.”
“Yes.” He picked up the wine cup but didn’t drink anything. “I understand that he used to lead a mule-train out along the southern border occasionally. Is that right?”
She pulled a face, as though trying to remember something unimportant from a long time ago. It was a reasonable performance, but she held it just a fraction too long. “Salt,” she said. “There’s some place in the desert where they dig it out of the ground. A couple of times he went down there to the market, where they take the stuff to sell it off. Thought he could make a profit but the margins were too tight. Mind you,” she added, “that’s got to be, what, twenty years ago, and we weren’t living here then, it was while we were still in Chora. Lost a fair bit of money, one way and another.”
Vaatzes nodded. “That’s more or less what I’d heard,” he said.
She looked up at him. “Why?” she asked. “You thinking of going into the salt business?”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“Forget it.” She waved her hand, as though swatting a fat, blind fly. “The salt trade’s all tied up, has been for years. Your lot, mostly, the Mezentines. They run everything now.”
“But not twenty years ago,” Vaatzes said quietly, and that made her look at him again. “And besides, even now they mostly buy through intermediaries. Cure Doce, as I understand.”
“Could be.” She yawned, revealing an unexpectedly pristine set of teeth. “I never got into that particular venture very much. Knew from the outset it was a dead end. If he’d listened to me, maybe things’d be very different now.” She tilted the bottle over her cup, but Vaatzes could see it was already three-quarters full. “When we were living in Chora —”
“I expect you had something to do with it,” he said mildly. “Presumably you were buying the stock he took with him to trade for the salt.”
“Could be. Can’t remember.” She yawned again, but she was picking at a loose thread on her sleeve. “That was my side of the business back then, yes. I’d buy the stuff in Chora, he’d take it out to wherever he was trading that year. Never worked out. Any margin I managed to make at home, he’d blow it all out in the wilderness somewhere. That’s what made me throw him out, eventually.”
“I can see it must’ve been frustrating for you,” Vaatzes said. “But to get back to the salt. Can you remember who it was he used to buy it from? The miners, I mean, the people who dug it out of the ground.”
She looked at him, and she most certainly wasn’t drunk or rambling. “I don’t think he ever mentioned it,” she said. “Just salt-miners, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?” Vaatzes raised his eyebrows. “I’d have thought that if you were trading with them, you’d have known a bit about them. So as to know what they’d be likely to want, in exchange for the salt.”
“You’d have thought.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s how come we lost so much money.”
Vaatzes smiled. “I see,” he said. “Well, that explains that. It’s a shame, though.”
He leaned back in his chair and sipped a little of the wine. It was actually quite good. She waited for rather a long time, then scowled.
“Are you really thinking about going into the salt business?”
He nodded. “And of course,” he went on, “I wouldn’t expect an experienced businesswoman to go around giving valuable trade secrets away for nothing.” She nodded, very slightly. He went on, “Unfortunately, until I’ve got finance of my own, backers, I haven’t got anything to offer up front, in exchange for valuable information.”
“Ah.”
“But.” He waited for a moment, then continued. “It occurred to me, however, that you might be interested in a partnership. Of sorts,” he added quickly, as she looked up at him sharply. “I’m sure you know far more about this sort of thing than I do; but the way I see it is, I can’t get any serious funding for the idea unless I’ve got something hard to convince a potential backer with. Once I’ve got the money, of course …”
“I see,” she said, with a sour li
ttle smile. “I tell you what I know, you take that and get your funding with it, and we settle up afterward, when the business is up and running.” She sighed. “No disrespect, but what are you bringing to the deal?”
He smiled. “Energy,” he said. “Youth. Boundless enthusiasm. And the information isn’t doing you any good as it is,” he added. “It’s just cluttering up your mind, like inherited furniture.”
Her scowl deepened. “There’d have to be a contract,” she said.
“Of course,” Vaatzes said, smiling. “All properly written up and sealed and everything.”
“Ten percent.”
“Five.”
She made a vague grunting noise, shook her head. “Fair enough,” she said. “It’s a waste of your time and effort, mind, there never was a margin in it.”
“Times have changed,” Vaaztes said. “The war, for one thing.”
“What’s the war got to do with it?”
He gave her a fancy-you-not-guessing look. “All those soldiers,” he said, “on both sides, living off field rations. You know the sort of thing: salt beef, salt pork, bacon …”
She blinked. “That’s true,” she said. She hesitated, then added, “The Mezentines always used to buy off the Cure Doce, at Mundus Vergens. Don’t suppose the Cure Doce go there much anymore, what with the guerrillas and all.” She scratched her nose; the first unselfconscious gesture he’d seen her make. “I wonder how they’re getting salt nowadays,” she said.
“From Lonazep,” Vaatzes said briskly. “I have done a little bit of research, you see. It’s coming in there from somewhere, but nobody’s sure where. But it’s rock salt; Valens’ men have found enough of it in the ration bags of dead Mezentines to know that. So it must ultimately be coming from the desert; and no army can keep going without salt, not if they’re far from home, at the long end of their supply line. So if someone could find the producers and buy up the entire supply — well, that’d be a worthwhile contribution to the war effort, in my opinion. What do you think?”
She was scowling at him again. “I should’ve known you’d be political,” she said.
