Evil for Evil

by K. J. Parker

  “We’re losing the heat,” Ziani said, raising his voice over the incessant pecking clang of the hammers. “Once it drops from orange to red it’s not safe to work it. That means it’s got to go in the other fire.”

  Valens was frowning. “You’re really going to bash it down to a sixteenth of an inch?” he said.

  Ziani nodded, noticing that although Valens had hardly raised his voice at all, he could hear him quite clearly through the hammering. “As it spreads out, we can support the edges on the smaller anvils and work it on them,” he shouted. “It’ll be awkward, though, keeping the thickness consistent. We’ll need to keep shifting it around so the bit we’re working on stays directly over the anvil face. At the ordnance factory we had rollers and jigs and derricks to handle the weight, but of course we haven’t got the time or the facilities for a setup like that.”

  Valens yawned. “But it’s all going to plan, is it?” he asked. “You’re pleased with how it’s working out?”

  He’s had enough, Ziani thought, he wants to go away and do something else. “All fine so far,” he said.

  “Splendid,” Valens said, and yawned again. “In that case, I guess you’ve proved your point. I’ll want to see your accounts, of course, but in principle, yes, you carry on. Let me know from time to time how you’re doing; if you need anything, see Carausius. I’ve told him this project’s got priority.” He fell silent and stared at the gradually flattening bloom for a moment. “You’ve done well,” he said at last. “I’ve got no idea whether this’ll help us fight off the Mezentines, but you seem to me to be making a good job of it. Sorry, but I’ve got to go now. That racket’s giving me a headache.”

  That racket, Ziani thought; that racket’s the sound of the trial you asked for, the miracle you want me to achieve for you. But it didn’t matter. “Thank you for —” he started to say, but Valens nodded, smiled tightly, and walked quickly away, the courtiers scrambling behind him like chicks following a broody hen.

  It was dark by the time the first full sheet was finished. It was horrible, no other word for it. Ziani didn’t need his calipers to know that the thickness varied wildly, from a sixteenth up to a full eighth in places. But three such sheets, riveted to a frame or simply nailed to boards, would protect a wagon against fire, axes and arrows. Left unsupported at the top, it’d be too flexible to climb over or bear the weight of a ladder. Against cavalry, it’d be as effective as a stone wall. It was an affront to everything he believed in, but it was good enough; and besides, the others would be better. This was simply a demonstration, put on for the benefit of a man who hadn’t even stayed to see it, because the ringing of the hammers made his head hurt. That didn’t matter either.

  “We did it, then.” Daurenja’s voice in his ear; he didn’t bother to look round. There were times when he wondered whether Daurenja was actually there at all, or whether there was just a voice he could hear. “I trust the Duke was impressed.”

  “Impressed enough,” Ziani replied (it was a word he was coming to hate). He took a deep breath, as though about to confess a mortal sin. “Thanks to you, mostly,” he said. “You’ve been a great help.”

  “Me?” Genuine surprise. “I just did as you told me.”

  “Yes.” Trying to find words to talk to him was getting harder all the time. “Just what I needed. I owe you a favor.”

  “Please, think nothing of it.”

  There were stories he’d heard when he was a boy, about the demons who tempted fools. Apparently they were the spirits of foxes — Ziani had never seen a fox until he ran away from Mezentia — who possessed human bodies, and they attached themselves to weak, ambitious men and gave them anything they wanted, in return for some unspecified future favor, which turned out to be the victim’s body. When the process was complete, the fox simply drove the poor fool out of his own head and left him to die, like a snail out of its shell.

  Ziani turned round sharply. One or two of the men lifted their heads to look. “No, I insist,” he said, and his voice wasn’t friendly. “You’ve done all this stuff for me, hard work, tedious chasing around that’d have driven me crazy. There’s got to be something you want in return, but so far you haven’t told me what it is. I think it’s about time I found out what I’m letting myself in for.”

  Daurenja’s face had gone completely blank; it reminded Ziani of dead bodies laid out for a wake, their faces nudged and prodded and molded by skillful fingers into a total lack of expression. “Not at all,” he said. “It’s a pleasure and an education to work for you. I’ve learned so much from this project.”

  “You’re lying,” Ziani said.

  The bewildered look on Daurenja’s face was completely false. “I promise you, I’m not. Besides,” he went on, with an equally false simper, “even if I have got some weird ulterior motive that you don’t approve of, it wouldn’t affect you. All you’d have to do is say no.”

  Ziani breathed out slowly, hoping it would calm him down. It didn’t. “That’s right,” he said. “That’s all I’d have to do.”

  Daurenja smiled. It could have been a beautiful expression; friendly, open, reassuring. “In any case,” he said, “you’re far too smart to let anybody take advantage of you. Quite the reverse.”

  Ziani felt something twist in his stomach. “You reckon.”

  “Absolutely. Anybody who could manipulate Duke Orsea and Duke Valens so adroitly with nothing but a simple letter …” He shrugged. “And the salt merchant,” he added. “A stroke of genius. Tell me: did you know about the secret road before you met her?”

  After such a long time being in charge, making plans, carrying them out, bearing so much weight, it was almost a relief to be paralyzed. “What do you want?” Ziani said.

  “Nothing,” Daurenja said. “Trust me.”

  13

  “You again,” she said.

  Psellus nodded, and sat down in the chair across the table from her. Politeness, he told himself. In the face of a resentful, angry witness, good manners are a shield. “Thank you for coming in,” he said. “I hope it’s not too inconvenient.”

  Her eyes were bright, and completely out of place in her mild, beautiful, insipid face. “It’s not as though I had any choice,” she said. “Soldiers on my doorstep at five in the morning …”

  “They weren’t soldiers,” Psellus said pleasantly. “Guild security officers. I thought you might appreciate a lift, instead of having to walk.”

  She folded her thin arms across her chest. “I like walking,” she said.

  He copied her gesture, except that he kept his back straight in his chair. “That’s fortunate,” he said, “now that you live so far out of the center of town. Your old house was much more convenient.”

  She shrugged. She seemed to be trying to look behind her left shoulder. “There’s nothing I need to go into town for,” she said. “I can get all my shopping in the Eastgate market, and it’s cheaper.”

  Psellus nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “Personally, though, I don’t think I’d like living in the suburbs. I’ve lived my whole life in the center of the city.”

  It was intended as a rest, an empty moment. She kept still and let it pass.

  “Do you like your new house?” Psellus asked.

  “It’s all right.”

  “Just all right?” He smiled indulgently, like a kind old uncle. “It seems a lot of trouble to go to, all the aggravation of moving, if the new place isn’t any better than all right.”

  “I hated living in the old house,” she said coldly. “After everything that happened there.”

  “I can understand that,” Psellus said soothingly. “A lot of painful memories, I’m sure.”

  She turned her head a little. A small chin, rounded, but not weak. “I didn’t like living there by grace and favor, either,” she said.

  “You were allowed to stay there for as long as you needed to,” Psellus reminded her. “True, it was a dispensation rather than a right —”

  “Grace and
favor,” she repeated.

  “I understand. And how’s your daughter liking her new home? Settling in? Making new friends?”

  She shrugged, as though she wasn’t really interested.

  “It must help,” Psellus went on, “that she’s living in a different neighborhood, where the other children don’t necessarily know about what her father did. It must have been very hard on her, at the old house.”

  “Not really.” She was, he conceded, superb in defense, using every aspect of her weakness to the full. Sympathy glided off her, like arrows off the best proof armor. “We never mixed much with the neighbors anyway.”

  “Apart from your own family, of course.” No response to that. “It must be hard on you, living so far from them.”

  “It’s not all that far,” she corrected him, almost scornfully. “Half an hour’s walk.”

  “Indeed.” Big smile. “Half an hour’s walk is a very long way for me, but I’m old and fat.” Pause; in his head, he counted to four. “All in all, then, things are working out well for you.”

  “I suppose so, yes.”

  “You suppose so.” He raised an eyebrow, but she wasn’t looking at him. “I’d say you’ve been quite fortunate — no, that’s not quite the word, it does rather imply that you don’t really deserve your good fortune. In your case, it’s more like a just reward, or compensation at the very least.”

  That made her look at him. “What?”

  He smiled broadly. “Finding true love,” he said. “And in such difficult circumstances.”

  Her look should have punctured him like a bubble, but he’d been ready for it; invited it, like a fencer tempting his opponent with a feigned weakness. “That’s right,” she said.

  “Actually, that’s why I asked you here,” he went on, as smoothly as he could in the presence of such brittleness. “Your application for a dispensation to remarry, even though your husband is still alive.”

  “Oh,” she said. The same maneuver, mirrored; a feigned relaxation of her guard. “Is there a problem?”

  He shook his head. “No, I’m pleased to be able to tell you, we’ve considered all the facts and, in view of the circumstances —”

  “I mean,” she interrupted, “he’s as good as dead, isn’t he? In the eyes of the law he’s dead, because he was condemned to death. For all anybody knows, he is dead. So —”

  A cue; deliberate, or fortuitous? “As a matter of fact,” he said quietly, “Ziani Vaatzes is still very much alive. We have intelligence that places him at the court of Duke Valens of the Vadani. He’s just completed the sabotage of the Vadani silver mines; a very neat piece of work, I should add, thanks to him the mines will be completely useless to us once we’ve conquered the country.”

  She shrugged. “He’s still making a nuisance of himself, then.”

  Psellus had read the reports. Dry, needless to say, and doing their best to gloss over the things that had caught his imagination. In his mind’s eye, nevertheless, he’d seen them: thousands of dead men, killed as they advanced in perfect formation, without even the time to break rank and start to run. Making a nuisance of himself. “That’s none of your concern now,” he said. “Just in case you’ve been worrying, nobody holds you in any way responsible for his actions, either before his escape or since. The findings of the board of inquiry were absolutely explicit on that point.”

  The words board of inquiry made her flinch, as well they might. No bad thing to remind her of how close she’d come to sharing her husband’s disaster.

  “So that’s all right, then,” she said. “Falier and I can get married.”

  “Indeed you can, I’m delighted to say.” None of that delight seemed to be reflected in her face. “You’ll be able to get on with the arrangements, let your family know the date and so forth. I’m sure there’ll be a great deal to do.”

  “We’re keeping it quiet and simple,” she said. “We don’t want lots of fuss. And besides, we can’t afford a big do.”

  “Really.” Careful frown. “Now that your fiancé’s the foreman of the ordnance factory, I wouldn’t have thought money would be a problem.”

  “We’ve got better things to spend our money on.”

  “I’m sure.” She was trying to shake him off, like something nasty stuck to the sole of her shoe. That was a flaw in her guard. He leaned back a little in his chair.

  “Is that it, then?” she said. “Can I go now?”

  “In just a few minutes,” he said firmly. “It’s been a while since we had an opportunity to talk.”

  “What do you need to talk to me about?” she said. “I thought you said you’re giving us permission …”

  Psellus congratulated himself on his timing. Letting her think she was almost free, giving her a sight of the door, so to speak; now she was in a hurry to get away, which meant that the longer he kept her there, the stronger his advantage would be. “Would you like something to eat or drink?” he said. “I usually have a glass of something and a biscuit around now.”

  “No thank you.”

  He shrugged. “If you change your mind later on, just say so.” He rang the little silver bell that stood just by his elbow. He’d had all sorts of trouble getting hold of one, but it looked as though the effort would be justified. The door opened, and the clerk (on loan for the day from the records office) nodded a polite little bow, as though he’d been a footman all his life. “Mulled wine with honey and nutmeg for me, and one of those delightful cinnamon cakes,” he said. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”

  “Have I done something wrong?”

  Psellus raised both eyebrows. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “If I haven’t done anything wrong, why can’t I go home?”

  “Of course you can go home, as soon as we’ve finished.”

  Her scowl only lasted a very short time, a tiny sliver of a second, before her face reverted to dull, wary vacancy. Psellus picked up a sheet of paper — minutes of some meeting, to which he hadn’t been asked — and reflected that, however close the play and however smoothly the participants work together,anticipating each other’s thoughts, sharing an intimacy otherwise experienced only by lovers, there must always be a gulf between predator and prey; because if the predator loses, he stays hungry for a day, whereas the prey loses forever. Such a disparity gives the advantage in motivation to the defense, provided it’s backed up by sufficient skill. The predator, by contrast, must be more outgoing, more extreme.

  The clerk arrived, with a cup and a plate. Psellus took a sip — water, as he’d specified — and nibbled the rim of the biscuit, like a mouse.

  “Is that why you’re keeping me here,” she asked, “to watch you eat?”

  He laughed, as though she’d made a good joke. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I missed breakfast. Well now,” he went on, settling himself comfortably in his chair, “there’re just one or two points I’d like to clear up, while you’re here.”

  “About my husband.”

  “Of course. Why else could anybody possibly be interested in you?”

  Her eyes widened, just a little, then closed down again. “Go on, then.”

  Psellus stroked his chin thoughtfully. “As you know,” he said, “I used to be attached to the commission that investigated the circumstances of your husband’s offense. That investigation is now complete, overtaken by events, somewhat; the file’s closed, to all intents and purposes, I’ve moved on, and so have you. But in spite of that, I can’t help worrying away at loose ends, it’s in my nature. The more I try not to think about something, the more it weighs on my mind. When it got to the stage where it was getting in the way of the work I’m supposed to be doing, I decided I’d better deal with it once and for all. For that, I need your help.”

  He paused and looked at her. Nobody there. Fine.

  “Your husband,” he went on, making his voice low and even, “built the mechanical doll. So far, we’ve concentrated — reasonably enough — on how he built it. Nobody seems to hav
e stopped to consider why he built it. I think that’s where my problem lies. It seems,” he added with a smile, “such a curious thing for anybody to do.”

  She shrugged. “He made it for our daughter,” she said.

  “Quite so, yes. That much was admitted from the outset.” Psellus nodded gravely. “That doesn’t answer the question. Why a mechanical doll?”

  Another shrug. “No idea.”

  “That’s curious too. Did your daughter tell him she wanted one, very much? Had she seen one somewhere and admired it especially?”

  “She could have done, I don’t know.”

  “Well, why should you?” Psellus smiled. “Perhaps your daughter told him, but not you. Perhaps it was their secret. Daughters are often closer to their fathers than their mothers, in some respects. Isn’t that right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, that’s what people keep telling me,” Psellus said pleasantly. “I’m not a family man myself. But anyway; he decided to build her the doll, for whatever reason. Now we come to another mystery. Your husband …” He paused again. “He’s not by nature the rebellious type, is he?”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Psellus dipped his head. “Some people,” he said, “have a problem with authority. Breaking rules, to them, is almost an end in itself; doesn’t matter what the rule happens to be, the fact that it’s a rule makes it fair game, if you follow me. It’s a sort of independence of spirit, usually combined with high self-esteem and a low opinion of the system and society in general. But Ziani wasn’t like that, was he?”

  She shrugged.

  “I don’t think he was,” Psellus said. “I think he understood the merits of the system pretty well. He was ambitious, of course; but his ambition was entirely orthodox, if you see what I mean. He wanted to succeed in the proper manner, by climbing the ladder of promotion. That was what gave success its value, I guess. He’d want to win, but cheating would spoil it for him. He assessed his own value in conventional terms.”