by K. J. Parker
In the end, he found Vaatzes standing at a bench, cutting a slot in a steel plate with a file. He tapped him on the shoulder; Vaatzes turned, hesitated for a moment and put the file down, saying something Valens couldn’t hear.
“Is there somewhere we can hear ourselves think?” Valens shouted.
Vaatzes nodded and led the way, down the aisle to what looked like a square hole in the floor, with the top rungs of a ladder sticking up out of it. “Down here,” Vaatzes yelled, and vanished down the hole before Valens could object.
Strange place for the Duke of the Vadani to be; certainly somewhere he’d never been before. After a moment’s thought he decided it was probably the market’s old meat cellar, somewhere cool to keep the unsold stock overnight. It had the feel of a tomb about it, a stone-faced chamber carefully designed for storing dead flesh. There was a plain, cheap table in the middle of it, on which stood a single lamp, a sheaf of papers and an inkwell.
“My office,” Vaatzes explained. “The real one, where I actually do some work. About the only place in this town you can hear yourself think.”
True enough; no distant thumping of hammers, even the squeal of files was missing. “Excellent,” Valens said. “I might just commandeer it for myself, until all this is over.”
Flat joke; so flat you could have played bowls on it. “You wanted to see me,” Vaatzes said. “I could have come to the palace.”
Valens waved that aside. “You’re busier than I am,” he said, “your time’s worth more. And I was curious, I wanted to take a look for myself. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Vaatzes gestured toward the single chair. Valens raised his palm in polite refusal. “It’s not a pretty sight, I’m afraid,” Vaatzes said. “If you want to see the real thing, go and visit the ordnance factory, or any of the Guild shops in the city. The best you can say for this lot is, we’re getting the job done, more or less.”
“Not up to the standard you’re used to?”
Vaatzes laughed. “Not really.”
“Pity,” Valens replied. “I’d have liked to think you were making yourself at home. Or at least, as close to home as you can make it. I get the feeling you aren’t comfortable out of your proper surroundings.”
“Curious thing to say,” Vaatzes replied. “I can’t say I’d thought of it like that before. You think I’m trying to turn all the places I go to into little replicas of the city, just because I’m homesick.”
Valens shrugged. “Something like that. Not that it bothers me if you are. We need your help, simple as that. None of our people could’ve set up something like this.”
“True,” Vaatzes said. “It’s just as well we aren’t trying anything ambitious. It was different in Eremia. Yes, they were primitive by Mezentine standards, but in the event it didn’t take long to get the local artisans up to speed. Here …” He pulled a sad face. “You’ve got no real tradition of making things,” he said. “Understandable, no need, when you could buy anything you wanted in trade. But we’re coping. This time tomorrow, it should all be finished.”
“Really?”
Vaatzes nodded. “It may look like a shambles, but actually it’s going well. The only problem I’m anticipating is getting the finished carts out of the way, once they’ve been armored.”
“I’ve got someone taking care of all that,” Valens replied. “Anyhow, I’m relieved to hear you say we’ll be ready more or less on time, because I’ve decided to bring the evacuation forward by two days. If we leave early, people won’t have time for their last-minute packing, they’ll have to grab what they can and run. That way, we can keep the wagons from getting laden down with unnecessary junk.” He hesitated. He was finding it hard to concentrate. A conclusion was trying to form in his mind, but as yet he couldn’t find the shape of it. “Anyway, that’s all I wanted to ask you. I’ll let you get back to work.”
But Vaatzes was looking at him. “You came a long way just to get a progress report. You could’ve sent someone.”
That was true, but it hadn’t occurred to Valens to send a messenger. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to you,” he said, “not since the attack.” He frowned. “I guess I ought to thank you, for raising the alarm.”
“Self-interest,” Vaatzes replied shortly.
“Maybe, but if you hadn’t …” The conclusion? Only the leading edge of it. “I’ll admit,” he said, “it scared me. I don’t think I’d realized just how close they are.”
“Hence the hurry to get the evacuation under way?”
“Partly.” No, he realized. It’s not the Mezentines that frighten me. “That man of yours, Daurenja. Where did you get him from? He came in handy.”
A slight reaction, as though he’d grazed a sore place. “He just turned up one day, wanting a job,” Vaatzes replied. “To be honest with you, I don’t know what to make of him either. But he works hard, and he’s been very useful.”
They were just making conversation; acquaintances spinning out a tenuous discussion to plaster over a silence. “Let me know as soon as the last cart’s been done,” Valens said briskly. “And I’m obliged to you. It can’t have been easy, but you’ve done a good job.”
The praise seemed to glance off, like a file off hardened steel; hardly what you’d expect from a refugee artisan praised by his noble patron. I don’t matter particularly to him, Valens realized; and maybe that’s the conclusion, or another of its projections. “I’ll let you get on now.”
“There’s one other thing.” The tone of Vaatzes’ voice stopped him in his tracks.
“Go on.”
Vaatzes was looking straight at him, as though aiming. “Did you ever find out what the object of the attack was?”
“Fairly obvious, surely.”
“To get you, you mean?”
It had seemed obvious, not so long ago. “You don’t think so.”
“I was wondering,” Vaatzes said, “if it was me they were after.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, this whole war’s about me, more or less.” He said it as though it was something so generally accepted as to be trite and not worth emphasizing. “They invaded Eremia because I was there. Now I’m here. Maybe, if they haven’t got the stomach for another full-scale war, they reckoned they could get out of it by going straight to the heart of the problem, so to speak.”
Valens decided his other commitments could wait. “I’m not sure I agree,” he said. “They’re upset with me because I made an unprovoked attack on them, at Civitas Eremiae. Can’t say I blame them for that.”
“Maybe.” Vaatzes was still looking straight at him. “But suppose I’m right. Suppose it’s me they really want, and that’s what the attack was all about. If you thought that, what would you do?”
“That’s easy,” Valens said quietly. “I’d let them have you.”
“Of course. Has the thought crossed your mind at all?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t intended to say that. “I consider all the options. I decided against it.”
Vaatzes nodded, a mute acknowledgment. “Why?” he asked.
“I don’t believe it’d get them off my back,” Valens said. “And you’re very useful to me. And I don’t think the war’s about you, or at least, not anymore. It’s all about Mezentine internal politics now. Sending you back might get me a truce, but they’d be back again before too long.”
“My fault again.” Vaatzes smiled. “If I hadn’t built the scorpions for Duke Orsea, they’d have had a quick, easy victory in Eremia. Instead they were humiliated, and they’ve got to get their self-respect back. They need me for that.”
“You make it sound like you want to be sent back. Do you like yourself as a martyr or something?”
“Of course not. I just want to know where I stand.”
“Reasonable enough.” Valens wanted to look away, but that wouldn’t be a good idea. “You’ve got nothing to worry about on that score,” he said. “It’s against my nature to give up anything I
can use as a weapon, when my enemies are breathing down my neck. If they’d asked me politely, at the beginning …” He paused, and shook his head. “I wouldn’t have trusted them, even then. If the war’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine. I attacked them, it’s very straightforward.”
(Later, it occurred to Valens that Vaatzes didn’t ask him why he’d taken his cavalry to Civitas Eremiae. Perhaps it was diffidence, or simple politeness.)
“Well, that’s all right then,” Vaatzes said, and Valens felt as though he’d been released, on bail. “You’ll excuse me for asking, but you’ll understand my concern. Especially after the attack.”
After he’d shown the Duke out, Vaatzes came back to his cellar and sat down at his table. For a while he didn’t move, almost as though he was bracing himself for something unpleasant. Eventually, he reached for a sheaf of drawings, picked them up and put them neatly on one side. Under them was a small sheet of parchment, marked by fold-lines.
I enclose a notarized copy of the marriage certificate. You know as well as I do that a Mezentine notary wouldn’t falsify a certificate …
He frowned. Notaries; he’d never given them much thought before, but now their code of professional ethics had suddenly become the most important issue in the world. He cast his mind back, trying to remember everything he could about notaries.
… a Mezentine notary wouldn’t falsify a certificate for anybody, not even the Guilds in supreme convocation. But if that’s not good enough for you, ask for whatever proof you need and I’ll try and get it for you.
He had, of course, already sent his reply.
But so what; so what if the certificate was genuine, and she really had married Falier? It didn’t necessarily mean anything. If they’d told her he was dead … She had their daughter to think of; maybe they’d told her he was dead and they were going to throw her out of the house, she’d need somewhere to go, someone to look after them both. Falier had been taking care of them, he’d have felt the obligation. If she thought he was dead, marrying Falier would be the practical, sensible thing to do; and on his part, no more than the logical extension of his duty to care for his friend’s wife and child. There was a raid on the Vadani capital, they’d have told them; we sent a squadron of cavalry to kill him, and we succeeded. Oh, the savages won’t admit it, they’ll probably make out he’s still alive; but you can believe it, he’s dead, he’s not coming back. So she married Falier; why not? She’s got to take care of herself, of them both.
Think about what you’ve already lost, permanently and beyond hope of recovery, and what you may still be able to salvage from the wreckage.
He smiled at that. Where everybody went wrong was in assuming that he was some kind of complex, unfathomable creature, full of deep, subtle motives and enigmatic desires, when all the time he was the simplest man who ever lived.
But supposing … He winced at the thought. Supposing she really had married Falier, and that with him she’d found some sort of quiet, comfortable resolution. Wife of the foreman of the ordnance factory … All he wanted to do was get back what had been lost; for her, for himself, for the three of them. Supposing she’d already done that (believing he was dead, of course) — quietly, without needing to slaughter tens of thousands, throw down cities, rearrange the whole world just to put back one small piece where it belonged. Suppose, just suppose, that the mechanism was complete, functional, all except for one component that suddenly was no longer necessary to its operation …
Just suppose.
He picked the letter up. It would, surely, be the height of stupidity not to accept the mechanism simply because it no longer needed him. If she was all right; if she didn’t need him anymore; to have married Falier — the symmetry couldn’t be mere coincidence, could it? And if he carried on with the design, wasn’t there the danger of wrecking the whole machine just to accommodate the bit left over at the end, after it’d all been put back together? He laughed, because that was an old joke among engineers.
The question was simple enough. When he’d escaped from the Guildhall, as soon as he was outside the walls and free again, he’d known what he had to do. It had been quite obvious, no ambiguities, compromises, no choices at all. Now the question arose: who was he making the mechanism for? Up till now, that had been the most obvious part of it: for us, because the three of them were inseparable — the assumption being, she couldn’t survive without him, just as he couldn’t exist without her. But that was an equation, the variables susceptible to revaluation; if she could survive without him — no great effort to calculate — his existence wasn’t necessary anymore. He could simply drop out, and then both sides would balance.
Drop out. He stood up and listened; the sound of the files was faint and far away. If there was something he could gain for her by ending the war, that would be justification enough for having started it. Give them what they wanted — the Vadani, himself — any bargain would be a good one, since what he had to give them had no value other than what it might buy her. He smiled at the thought: promote Falier to superintendent of works, and I’ll betray Valens to you and give myself up. It doesn’t matter how much you pay, if the money’s what you’ve stolen from the buyer in the first place. It would be a relief, as well, if nobody else had to die or have their lives ruined to serve the mechanism. All in all, it was unfortunate that it had proved so demanding, in terms of effort and materials; it had taken on a life of its own, the way great enterprises do. Being rid of it would be no bad thing, in itself.
Assuming she believed that he was dead.
But there were too many assumptions: that one, and the assumption that the certificate was genuine, that she really had married Falier. Maybe, when the Mezentine got here, he could ask to see Falier, hear it straight from him. Could this Psellus arrange that? he wondered. But that could be a mistake, since presumably Falier too believed he was dead, or he’d never have married her. Assuming he had. Assuming.
Bad practice; making the components before you make the frame. How soon could Psellus get here? Nothing quite as frustrating as waiting for parts to arrive from the contractor, before you can get on.
Slowly he pulled open the drawer under his table, and took out a plain rosewood box. It wasn’t even his. Daurenja had lent it to him, when he’d been moaning to nobody in particular about not having a decent set of measuring and marking-out instruments. He flicked the two brass hooks that held it shut and leaned back the lid. Inside, the gleam of steel, burnished and mirror-polished, astonished him, as it always had. Silver’s too pale; gold and brass distort the light with their sentimental yellow glow. But steel — filed, ground, rubbed patiently on a stone until the last toolmark and burr has vanished, rubbed again for hours on end with a scrap of leather soaked in oilstone slurry, finally buffed on a wheel charged with a soap of the finest pumice dust — shines with a depth and clarity that stuns and shatters, like the sun on still water in winter. The reflection is deep enough to drown in, the image perfect, free from all distortion. A scriber, a square, dividers, straight and dog-leg calipers, a rule, thread gauges, gapping shims, transfer punches, and a three-sided blade, six inches long, tapering to a needle point, for reaming off burrs from the edges of newly drilled holes.
He lifted out the burr reamer and tested its point against the ball of his thumb.
Think three times before cutting once; they’d told him that on his first day. The wisdom of the ages — taking metal off is easy, putting it back is fraught with difficulty, sometimes impossible, and even more so, of course, with blood. A sharp point placed against an artery, gentle but firm pressure to punch a small, neat hole; any fool of a junior apprentice on his first day in the workshop could be trusted to do it. Even a Vadani.
He thought for a moment about the thing he’d built, which would survive him. Too late now, of course, to do anything about it. He’d brought war down on the Eremians, decimated them, moved on to the Vadani, marked them out for cutting, set the feed and speed, engaged the worm-drive and started the
spindle running; if he dropped out now, who would he spare? The Cure Hardy — well, who gave a damn about them? — and the Mezentines, of course. A little gentle pressure on the handle of the burr reamer would save the lives of tens of thousands of his fellow Guildsmen, turn away the siege engines and the sappers from the city walls; so much could still be saved, even at this late stage, if he only saw fit to modify the design a little, just enough to take out one process, the evolution that restored one small component to its original place. Surely, if there was a cheaper, quicker, easier way of getting the job done, even if it meant sacrificing one function, it would be good design and good practice.
He grinned. Been here before. If he’d learned one lesson, it was not to try and improve on the specified design. There was a good old-fashioned Mezentine word for that, and only a complete idiot makes the same mistake twice.
He saw his face in the shimmering flat of the burr reamer, with the Mezentine maker’s stamp neatly in the middle of his forehead. He wasn’t a great one for omens in the usual course of things, but he wasn’t completely blind to serendipitous hints. With all proper respect he put the reamer back in the box, straightened the tools so the lid would shut and flipped the catches back. Wait for Psellus, check the assumptions, consider the implications, and then cut.
They sent someone to call him, and he climbed up out of the cellar into extraordinary silence. No screech of files or pounding of triphammers, nobody shouting to make themselves heard, no clatter of chains or grinding of winches, and the man they’d sent to fetch him wanted him to be quick, because everybody was waiting. As he hurried through the workshop he saw men standing beside their benches, arms folded or by their sides, nobody working. Outside in the crisp, cold air people stood about in groups, turning to look at him as he passed, as though he was the guest of honor. A cluster of men he didn’t know were waiting for him at the gate, like runners in a relay race. They led him through the city to the yard, which was jammed with men and carts; and each cart had a square plate of sheet iron bolted to one side, supported by a frame of wooden battens, loads shifted to the other side to counterbalance the weight. “Is there a problem?” he asked several times, but maybe they were too far ahead of him to hear. They were walking fast, and he had to make an effort to keep up.
