Devices and Desires (57 page)

Not bad, Ziani thought, though he was a little concerned that the oil in the quenching tubes was running a bit too hot. He
watched a man pause to wipe his face on his sleeve, dragging a white furrow through the smear of wet soot. Sweating near the
lead-bath was asking for trouble; a spot of water on the molten lead would make it spit, enough to blind you if your luck
was out. They were learning quickly, which was what he needed. Another man was coughing through the quench-smoke. One of the
bellows had a slight leak, and whistled as it drew. It wasn’t the ordnance factory, of course; it resembled the real thing
like a child’s drawing. But all he needed was two hundred and fifty scorpions by the time the Mezentines arrived. That was
all. Anything else would be mere finish and ornament. They were going to make it; which meant that the design had moved on
from here, and now everything depended on his colleague and dear friend Falier back in Mezentia; so far away, so hard to control
at such distance, so fragile and governed by so tenuous a connection. But he knew Falier, in ways he could never know the
Eremians; he trusted him to do the job he’d given him. After that, the weight of the design would pull everything into shape,
just as it is its own weight that brings down a felled tree, and all the woodsmen do with their ropes and wedges is guide
the lie.

He left the forge and headed for the fitting room, to see the fitting of the lockplates into the frames. So he was dead, was
he? If only. He thought of the boar, dragging the dogs along with it. He remembered Miel Ducas stooping in mid-leap to slash
a hinge in its spine with his falchion. It had been, he recognized, a moment of glorious, extraordinary grace, forced on an
unwilling and unlikely man by honor, fear, courage and duty. That was Ducas’ problem: his life was too complicated, and all
his actions were stained with a contradictory mixture of motives. If only he’d had a simple job to do, he could’ve been a
productive and efficient man, for an Eremian. As it was, he’d be useful, and that was all that mattered. Ziani considered
for a moment the slender connecting rod that joined the Ducas and Falier and Duke Orsea and his Duchess and all the other
little parts of the mechanism, and smiled to think that so many disparate people had something so vital in common. Almost
he wished he could tell them; but that, of course…

When he had time, after he’d done his rounds and made sure everything was running smoothly, he took a quarter of an hour to
do a few calculations, see how close his estimate would be. The variables were, of course, only rough reckonings, in some
cases little more than guesses; nevertheless, he felt reasonably sure that by the time the Mezentines arrived to assault the
city, he should have enough scorpions available to allow them to be placed at sixteen-yard intervals right along the city
wall; that meant he could put just under twenty thousand bolts in the air every hour (ordinary fence-palings and vine-props
with a folded sheet-iron tip; all in hand). Only a third of what the Eremians had faced in the battle, but precisely the right
number for his purposes.

He smiled to himself, and thought of Falier.

He’d had to buy two tablecloths, two sets of matching napkins, two dozen pillowcases embroidered with songbirds, a dozen tapestry
cushions and a rug. He hated them all at first sight, and as soon as she’d gone, he sent for his chamberlain and ordered him
to take them away.

“Give them to somebody,” he said.

“Very good,” the chamberlain replied. “Who?”

Valens considered. “Who don’t you like?”

“Sir?”

“Think of somebody you hate very much.”

The chamberlain’s turn to consider. “My wife’s mother’s sister,” he said. “She’s got a small white dog she’s trained to walk
on its hind legs. It’s got its own little silver drinking bowl and everything.”

“Perfect,” Valens said, with grim satisfaction. “Tell her they’re from me, and hint I may be coming to dinner.”

He’d never seen his chamberlain grin before. Well, it was good to make somebody happy.

It was nearly mid-morning. The sun had burned the last of the dew off the grass, but the wind was rising. It would’ve been
a good day to fly the goshawks, or try for duck on the long lake. He had something else to do, however, and he wanted to make
the most of it.

Each time he opened a letter from her, he was afraid, in case it was the last.
I can’t write to you anymore
— he’d seen those words in his mind’s eye a thousand times, he knew the shape of the letters by heart. When the day came
and he saw them traced for real on parchment, it’d be like coming back to a familiar place; a runaway slave recaptured and
dragged home, a criminal brought to the town gallows. This time he was stiff with fear, because it’d been so long since she’d
written, because she’d missed a letter. Staring at the small, squat packet in the exact center of his reading table, he felt
like he was walking up to a wounded boar in dense briars, waiting for it to charge. He thought of all the risks he chose to
take, in the hunt, in war, knowing that the worst that could happen was that he’d be killed. There are circumstances where
staying alive could be worse than that.

With the tips of his forefingers, he prised apart the fold until the seal split neatly down the middle. A few crumbs of broken
wax fell away as he bent the stiff parchment back on itself (like the unmaking of the quarry, he thought). Her handwriting
was even smaller than usual, and for a moment he wasn’t sure he’d be able to read it — now that would be a devilish refinement
of torture, worthy of the stories of the punishments reserved for damned souls in hell, to have a letter from her and not
to be able to make out what it said.

Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.

Well, he’d found; the wolf, the bear, the boar were here, ready for him. It’d be churlish to keep them waiting.

You never replied to my last letter.

He frowned. “Yes I did,” he said aloud. “You’re the one who didn’t write back.”

I suppose there could be several different reasons. I offended you; I was putting pressure on you, breaking the rules of our
friendship; I brought Orsea into it, when this has always been just you and me. Or perhaps you’re just tired of me and bored
by my letters. If it’s any one of those, I’d understand.

For a moment he felt as if he’d lost his balance and was about to fall. Then he realized: fear had made him stupid, and it
was perfectly obvious what had happened. His letter to her, or her reply, had gone astray. Somebody, some fat woman in a red
dress, had lost it or forgotten about it or used it to start a fire or pad a shoe where it rubbed her heel. For a moment he
wanted to do something about that; send his guard to arrest every woman in a red dress in the country and have them all thrown
in a snake-pit, to teach them respect.
But I haven’t got a snake-pit,
he reminded himself,
and it’d take too long to build one and collect enough snakes to fill it.

He read the rest of the letter. It felt cold, because it was all based on error. It irritated him, as though he’d corrected
her mistake but she carried on regardless, missing the point, refusing to listen to him. That was wrong; in fact, she was
saying things he’d never thought she’d ever say, things that changed the world forever, but he found it very difficult to
get past the frustration. He made an effort and cleared his mind of it; but the damage had been done. A letter from her had
been wasted because of a misunderstanding, and all the things she could have said in it would have to wait till next time,
or the time after that. He felt cheated, and had to remind himself that it wasn’t her fault.

Someone was standing in the doorway. “Go away,” he snapped, then pulled a face. “No,” he said, “it’s all right, take no notice.
What is it?”

Stellachus, his chief of intelligence. “You sent for me,” he said apologetically.

“Did I? Yes, I did. Come in and close the door.”

Valens put his hand over the letter. If Stellachus noticed, he didn’t show it.

“The Mezentine defector,” Valens said. “The one who went to Eremia. Apparently he’s dead.”

Stellachus frowned. “I see,” he said. “May I ask… ?”

Valens told him about the austringer’s report of what he’d heard in the inn. “Find out if it’s true,” Valens went on. “It
sounds a bit unlikely, but I expect there’s something behind it. Also, I don’t seem to have seen anything recently about what’s
going on in Mezentia. Last I heard, they’d got a bloody great big army sitting around doing nothing, and that’s not the way
they like to do business. If you can get me accurate numbers, that’d be very good; also, they must be feeding them on something,
and I want to know where all those supplies are coming from. And when you’ve done that,” he added with a grin, “I’d better
see the chiefs of staff. Get someone to round them up for mid-afternoon, all right?”

Stellachus bowed formally and went away, leaving him with the letter. His mind was clogged up with distractions (troop movements,
supply routes, frontiers and lines on maps) and he felt as though the field had gone on ahead and left him behind. The world
was tightening around him, he could feel it; it was a bad time not to be able to concentrate.

He straightened his mind. He had the rest of the morning and the first half of the afternoon to reply to her letter — not
long enough, but the first priority was to get a reply on its way as soon as possible, to make sure she wasn’t fretting.
It’s all right; my previous letter didn’t reach you
would probably be enough, but he couldn’t quite leave it at that, though perhaps he should. Then he’d need to think hard
about the Mezentines — he’d let that slip, worrying about not having heard from her — but he needed the intelligence reports
first, so it could wait a little while. Then there were other considerations, basic housekeeping: money, for one thing, and
stocks of flour and oil and honey and the like, duty rosters and mobilization times, musters and resources. It’d be nice if
he didn’t have to see to every last detail himself…

Rain again, and he couldn’t help smiling as he remembered what she’d written.

For some reason, summer rain falling on oak leaves always makes me think of you. I have no idea why, since the one time I
saw you (that I can remember), we were both indoors and it was quite unbearably hot. Maybe I went out with the hunt one time,
and we sheltered from the rain under an oak tree, but if so, I can’t remember that, either. To put this observation in context,
the sound of horses on a hot day puts me in mind of my father, and I can’t smell onions without thinking of my mother. The
last example can have no possible significance whatsoever. My mother hated onions, except when cooked for a long time in a
stew.

There was going to be a war, and she was going to be caught up in it. The realization made him stop dead, as though he’d walked
into a wall. If the Mezentines laid siege to Civitas Eremiae there’d be no more women in red dresses bringing him letters;
and she… He scowled. The Mezentines were strange, cold people but they weren’t savages. They didn’t butcher civilians, or
sell them into slavery. Nevertheless, there was going to be a war, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. What he
could do (had to do) was keep the war from seeping through into his own territory, because it was a simple fact of life that
nobody ever beat the Mezentines at anything. If half of what he’d heard about the army mustering outside Mezentia was true,
this was more than a punitive expedition or a judicious redefining of buffer zones and frontiers. The one aspect of the matter
he wasn’t quite clear about was the reason behind it; but the Mezentines were under no obligation to explain to anybody, before
or after the fact.

Even so…

Predictably, Stellachus was in the old library. He’d annexed the two small rooms at the back — nobody could remember what
they’d been built for, and Valens’ father had used them to store and display his collection of hoods and jesses — and he spent
most of his time there, when he wasn’t out trying to look busy. He glanced up in surprise as Valens walked in, and just possibly
(his reactions were quick, as befitted a fencer) he pushed a small book he’d been reading under a sheaf of worthy-looking
papers.

“Sorry to barge in,” Valens said, with a slight grin. “Just a quick thought, before the meeting. You passed the word round,
I take it.”

Stellachus nodded twice. “They’re all on notice to attend,” he said.

“Splendid.” Valens sat down, reached across the table, lifted the papers.
The Garden of Love in Idleness,
according to the small book’s spine. He covered it up again. “The Mezentines,” he said. “We both know that army’s headed
for Eremia. What’s bothering me rather is why.”

Stellachus did his best to look wise. “Retribution, presumably. Duke Orsea’s unprovoked attack.”

Valens shrugged. “Hardly necessary,” he said. “It was a massacre, and if the Mezentines lost any men, I haven’t heard about
it. That army they’ve put together must be costing them a fortune. They don’t spend money for fun.”

“To make sure nothing of the sort ever happens again,” Stellachus said. “Last time, the Mezentines won an easy victory because
of their war machines. They had plenty of time to deploy them, and the machines came as a complete surprise to Orsea and his
people. Next time, they won’t walk so obligingly into the trap.”

“Possibly,” Valens said, rubbing his palms together slowly. “And from their point of view, the Eremians are irrational, stupid;
it’s only been five minutes since they got out of that crippling war with us, and what do they do? They pick on the most powerful
nation in the world. People that stupid are capable of anything, and next time they might get incredibly lucky.” He frowned.
“They might be thinking that way if they were us,” he said. “I mean, if they had a king or a duke who could make decisions
on a whim. But they aren’t like that. Everything’s got to be debated in committees and sub-committees and special assemblies
and general assemblies. For which we should be eternally grateful, since it means they move slowly and cautiously. Everything’s
political with them, unless it goes right down deep under the politics to something really fundamental. If it was just a good-idea-at-the-time
thing, it’d never get through. One party’d be in favor, all the other parties would be against, and you’d be able to hear
them debating it from halfway across the desert.” He shrugged. “Don’t you agree?”