Evil for Evil (64 page)

But now he was here, by the looks of it the only living creature in Civitas Vadanis, apart from the chicken. He drew in a breath to call out "hello" with, but the sheer scale of the silence overawed him and he breathed out again.

Cities don't just empty themselves, like barrels with leaky seams. Either everybody was dead, or there'd been an evacuation. Either way, it looked as though he'd wasted his time. He was struggling to come to terms with that when he saw something move, in an alley on the other side of the square. At first he was convinced it was just a stray dog; but when it came out of the shadows he saw it was a man; a dark-skinned man, like himself.

Well, then, he thought. This must be Ziani Vaatzes.

Shameful to have to admit it to himself, but he was shaking; not with fear, because his city's worst living enemy was striding toward him in an empty place. The last time he'd shaken this way was when he was seventeen, and the girl who'd agreed to come with him to the apprentices' dance had stepped out of the porch of her father's house into the lamplight, and the rush of mingled joy and fear had crippled his knees and crushed his chest.

"Lucao Pselius?"

The voice startled him. He'd been expecting a deep, powerful sound, something like the first low roll of thunder before the first crack of lightning. The voice that called out his name was high, rather tentative; and the embodiment of complicated evil shouldn't have a whining downtown accent.

"That's me," he heard himself say. "Are you Ziani Vaatzes?" A slight nod. He came to a halt about three yards away; about average height for a Mezentine, stocky, square; thin wrists and small hands, unusual in an engineer; a weaker chin than he'd expected, a rounded nose, hair just starting to thin on the top of his head. Such an ordinary man; the only way to make him stand out was to empty the city. Painfully hard to believe that this was the man who'd caused the war, slaughtered the mercenaries, betrayed Civitas Eremiae, written the atrocious poetry. Had he really come all this way to meet such an ordinary little man?

"Where is everybody?" Pselius asked.

Slight grin. Just a tuck in the corner of the mouth, but quite suddenly Vaatzes'

face changed. He said, "There was a general evacuation." The grin said,
I
sent them
away
. Pselius realized that he had no choice but to believe the grin.

"Why's that?" he asked.

Vaatzes shrugged. "I think it might have something to do with the war," he said.

"Anyhow, you can be the first to pass on the news. That on its own ought to be worth a promotion." He adjusted the grin into a small smile. "I'm forgetting my manners," he said. "You've been traveling, I expect you'd like to sit down, have something to eat."

Thanks to a donkey with a backbone like a thin oak pole, the last thing Pselius wanted to do was sit down, ever again. "Thank you," he said, with a formal nod.

"I'm sort of camping out in the gatehouse," Vaatzes said. He raised his hand, and Pselius noticed for the first time that he was carrying a basket, the sort women bring shopping home from market in. "I've been scavenging," he went on. "All the bread's gone stale, of course, but I found some apples and a bit of cheese, stuff like that. There's water inside, and a bottle of the local rotgut."

So many years in politics; Psellus was used to the airy politeness of enemies. Vaatzes, he realized, was talking slightly past him; hadn't looked at him once since the first encounter. That was faintly disturbing. Is he going to kill me, Psellus wondered; is that why he won't meet my eye?

Back into the dark shade of the gatehouse; through a doorway into a bleak stone cell of a room; a plain plank table and two benches; on the table, an earthenware jug, a bottle and two horn cups. With a whole city to plunder, this was the best he could do? Not a man, then, who cared too much about creature comforts. He waited for Psellus to sit down, then slid onto the bench opposite and started cutting the pitch off the neck of the bottle.

"Not for me," Psellus said.

Vaatzes nodded and put the bottle down. "Probably better if we both keep a clear head," he said. "The water's a bit murky and brown, but harmless." He tilted the jug, filled one cup and pushed it across the table before filling the other. Realizing how thirsty he was, Psellus left it where it was.

"The proof," Vaatzes said.

It took Psellus a moment to figure out what he was talking about. "Of course," he said, and reached inside his coat for the tightly sewn parchment packet. "You'll find it's all there," he said. "There's a notarized copy of the register, plus the original applications for dispensation to remarry. I'm sure you'll recognize her handwriting, and your friend Falier's."

Vaatzes looked up sharply, then went back to scowling at the packet. Understandable if he didn't want to open it. "If you'd rather read it in private," Psellus went on, "I'll step outside for a few minutes." So considerate; such manners.

"No, that's fine." Vaatzes put the packet, unopened, on the table. "I don't need to read them, do I?" he said. "I'll take your word everything's in order."

"As you like." Psellus forced himself not to frown. He noticed he'd picked up the horn cup and drunk the water without realizing he'd done it. "I'm supposed to ask you to let me have the applications back," he said. "Because they're the originals, you see, not copies, and strictly speaking I shouldn't have taken them out of the archive."

"I'll keep them, if it's all the same to you."

Psellus nodded. "That won't be a problem." He breathed in; now he was afraid.

"I've got something else you might want to have," he said, laying the homemade poetry book gently on the table.

He watched Vaatzes look at it; for several seconds he sat perfectly still.

"Thanks," he said eventually. "I assume you've read it."

"In the course of my investigations, yes."

No word or movement, but for a moment Psellus could feel the heat of his anger.

"Not up to much," Vaatzes said. "Not my line, I'm afraid." He picked the book up, and it was as though he wasn't sure what to do with it; he held it in his hand, a gentle but firm grip, soft enough not to crush it but secure enough that it wouldn't fall and shatter. "Has anybody else read it?"

Apart from the entire Guild assembly? "No," Psellus said. The lie was sloppy work. He felt ashamed of it.

Vaatzes nodded, unconvinced. "Well, then," he said, and put the book clumsily in his pocket. "We might as well get down to business, don't you think?" Business. Something scuttled on the floor, making Psellus jump out of his skin. How long had it been since the evacuation, and already the rats and mice were getting bold, or hungry and desperate. No guards in the gatehouse meant no crumbs. Business, he'd said, as if they were there to broker shipments of dried fish and roofing nails. Business.

(It occurred to him that Vaatzes might have poisoned the water; some of which Psellus had drunk, while Vaatzes' horn cup had remained empty. Too late to worry about it now, of course. Besides, why bother to be sophisticated, in an empty city, against a slow, fat clerk?)

"I expect you already know," Vaatzes was saying to the wall behind his head,

"that I gave you Civitas Eremiae. I sent a message telling you how and where to break into the tunnels that serviced the underground cisterns. You know about that?" Psellus nodded.

"I assumed you knew. And about the cavalry raid, here."

Psellus looked up. "Yes," he said. "Some of it." Vaatzes nodded. "I sent a letter to your committee," he said, "telling them about Duke Valens' wedding, and the grand celebratory bird hunt; I said that practically the whole Vadani establishment would be riding about in open country, unescorted. I gave them as much notice as I possibly could, so they could get a raiding party up here and in position." He paused. "I'd just like to point out," he went on, "that on both occasions I asked nothing in return, and on both occasions I put myself at risk. True, the second time I was able to plan things a little better. I sort of gatecrashed my way on to the guest list for the hunting party, as an alibi; I was with them when they set off, and then I turned back almost immediately—just as well I'm who I am, really; I'm an embarrassment, they feel uncomfortable around me, so they didn't really notice that I wasn't there. I went straight back and raised the alarm; so far, I don't think anybody's thought about that, me raising the alarm before the attack had actually happened." He paused, smiled thinly. "I think I scheduled it pretty well, time for your men to slaughter the Vadani but not enough time for them to get away. Of course, they only did half a job, but even you must admit that wasn't my fault." He paused, expecting some comment or reply. Psellus couldn't think of anything intelligent to say.

"Why?" he said.

Vaatzes frowned. "Why did I do it, you mean?"

Psellus nodded. "The first time, I can understand," he said, "I think. My guess was, you were sickened at the slaughter of our army, frightened when you realized we'd never give up; we could never forgive a defeat, we both know that. You thought: if I die in the assault, so what? If I escape, I've given them earnest of good faith; when I make them an offer a second time, they'll know I'm serious. We were expecting you to bargain. Instead…"

Vaatzes nodded, as though acknowledging an admission of an elementary mistake. "Instead, I give you the Vadani government, free of charge. You're confused. One free sample is the custom of the trade; two is simply eccentric." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "Let me guess for a change," he said. "You had a meeting, to discuss the contingency. Yes?"

Psellus nodded.

"It was agreed," Vaatzes went on, "that if I sent an offer, to give you the Vadani, you'd agree. You'd negotiate, make a good show of striking a hard bargain; in the end, you'd give me what I really want—a pardon, permission to come home, my old job back. When you'd got me back to the city, there'd be a show trial, followed by an execution. The moral being: nobody forces a compromise out of the Perpetual Republic, no matter what." He smiled. "Is that what the meeting decided?"

"Yes," Psellus said, "more or less."

"I thought so." Vaatzes leaned back in his chair, laid his hands on the table. They were perfectly still. "Now I'm going to have to extrapolate from pretty thin data," he said. "I'm guessing that there's a great deal of resentment among the committee about the fact that I armed the Eremians, made it possible for them to kill so many of your troops—I keep wanting to say
our
troops; if I forget, please just take it as a slip of the tongue—just so as to raise my own value, if I can put it like that; to get myself into a position where I could bargain with you from a position of strength. Is that right?"

Psellus frowned. "Actually," he said, "that's not how we interpret it. We feel that when you first escaped from the city, you went to our most prominent enemy because it was the only place you felt safe; the Eremians would never hand you over to us, on principle. Particularly not after you'd shown them you could give them the same weapons that had wiped out their army. We assumed you hadn't thought it through; that giving them the scorpions would make it inevitable that we'd invade and wipe out the Eremians." He paused. "We underestimated you." Vaatzes smiled. "The way you say it," he said, "I take it you didn't share the majority opinion."

It was like the moment when the girl you love but know you'll never dare talk to comes across and asks you to dance. "I had my doubts," Psellus said. "That's why…" All his courage. "That's what led me to talk to people who knew you. Your work colleagues. Your wife."

Vaatzes didn't move, not even a flicker.

"It began as little more than idle curiosity," Psellus went on, trying to keep his voice from cracking. "I was intrigued to know what motivated you; the great abominator, and so on. Then, after a while, I got the reputation of being the leading Vaatzes expert. I moved from Compliance to Necessary Evil as a result. That's what set me thinking."

"Go on," Vaatzes said.

"Well." Now that the moment of moments had come, Psellus found he'd lost the ability to think of words. "It seemed to me," he said, "that there were two explanations for why I'd been promoted like that. The obvious one was that they were expecting you'd be important in the scheme of things, sooner or later; they were expecting that you'd make us an offer, and so they needed to have an expert on you on the staff, so to speak."

"Reasonable," Vaatzes said quietly.

"I thought so," Psellus replied, "until I realized that they'd misunderstood you, the way we were talking about just now. They hadn't realized, or they didn't believe, that you'd got your plan of action more or less worked out from the start. That what you wanted—all you wanted—was to come home." He paused, aware that he'd been talking too fast, tripping over words. "That didn't make sense, of course," he went on. "That view of your motivations didn't fit with the idea that you'd be important, possibly the key to winning the war. Something as crucial as what you actually wanted…" He shook his head, and during the pause remarked to himself on the dead silence; here, at the main gate of a capital city. An abomination, if ever there was one.