Evil for Evil (18 page)

He rolled up both versions and stuffed them back in their tubes. None of it really mattered, not even the ruinous cost. According
to the figures, all the exporting Guilds had stepped up both production and sales to meet the demands of the war budget. Prices
had necessarily been lowered to ensure that strategically important markets were retained in the face of local competition,
but the losses thereby incurred were amply covered by the increased volume. He paused, and looked at the finance report. It
had come, he noticed, in a brass tube.

It still didn’t matter. The Perpetual Republic could keep on waging war on this scale forever. The key had been lowering prices.
Demand in the export markets had been wavering for some time, simply because Mezentine goods had gradually come to cost more
than the locals could afford. Cutting prices, however, had been seen as an unacceptable loss of face, a move that would give
the buyers more leverage than was good for them and lead inevitably to lower standards, debased specifications, ruin, abomination
and death. The war had been the excuse the Republic needed, and the increase in volume had fully justified Necessary Evil’s
hard-line stand on the issue. Politically, more production meant a slight shift in the balance of power between the leading
Guilds. War work had given the Foundrymen a temporary edge over their rivals; now, the need for export sales meant that the
Weavers and Drapers were clawing ahead, with the Potters and Cutlers coming up close behind. The Cutlers were still unaligned,
though their traditional allegiance had always been to the Foundrymen; the Potters were making a show of resisting the Weavers’
attempts to negotiate a rapprochement, but it was generally believed that they were simply holding out for a better deal,
which would inevitably involve the fall of Dandola Phrantzes, chairman of the Joint Transport Executive …

The war, Psellus realized, was like a tree. Its branches grew and were lopped, but it drew its life from its roots, widespread,
tangled and hidden. The plain fact was that what happened in Eremia didn’t matter very much. Men died, buildings were burned,endless
columns of wagons stirred up the dust as they carried thousands of tons of freight into the deserted mountains, but the real
battle was being fought here, a close grapple in the dark between politicians, for whom victory and defeat had very little
to do with the deaths of soldiers. That was something he could accept; ever since he was old enough to understand how things
worked, he’d known that in Mezentia, nothing mattered except politics, and everything was political. The part he couldn’t
make out, however, was how he fitted into it; in particular, how he’d come to be co-opted into Necessary Evil in the first
place. Until he got to the bottom of that, he was effectively blind, deaf and dumb.

He heard a footstep in the passage outside; somebody who didn’t feel he had to knock or announce his presence. A colleague,
in that case. He frowned. He wasn’t in the mood for the society of his own kind.

It turned out to be as bad as he’d thought: Maris Boioannes himself, condescending to visit him. Such a display of solidarity
had to mean complications, at the very least.

“There you are,” Boioannes said, dropping easily into the other chair and steepling his fingers. He’d had his hair cut, Psellus
noticed. “Have you got a moment?”

Fatuous question. On the desk between them, half a dozen messenger tubes, a few sheets of blank paper, the inkwell. “Always,”
Psellus replied with a mild smile. “What can I do for you?”

“It’s nothing too serious.” Boioannes was looking at the wall behind his head, and Psellus suddenly couldn’t remember if there
was anything on that wall: a picture, a chart, a map of the war. He very much hoped there wasn’t anything. The fewer insights
into his mind that he conceded to any of his colleagues, the better. “It’s just something that’s been itching away for a while
now, and I was wondering if you could possibly shed some light.”

“If I can.”

“Splendid.” Boioannes frowned slightly, concentrating his mind the way anybody else would sharpen a pen. “As you know, we
only managed to take Civitas Eremiae because a traitor opened the gates for us.” He paused and smiled bleakly. “Thinking about
it, I really feel that
traitor
is far too small a word for Ziani Vaatzes. It’s like calling a continent an island.”

“He seems to be quite an interesting man,” Psellus said.

“Putting it mildly.” Boioannes moved his head slightly to one side, scratched the bridge of his nose lightly, and put his
head back exactly where it had been. “First he betrays core military secrets to the enemy. Then he betrays the enemy to us.”
He shrugged, precisely and elegantly. “He causes the war, then ends it — well, not quite, but let’s not let a few trivial
details get in the way of symmetry. It’s tempting to dismiss his motivations as irrelevant, but he’s still at large — our
best intelligence puts him at the court of Duke Valens, so he’s still very much in the center of the action — and I find it
irksome not being able to understand him.” Boioannes bent forward very slightly from the waist, bringing his formidable head
a few inches closer to Psellus. “When you were investigating him at Compliance, I imagine you found out pretty much everything
there is to know about the man. I’d value your opinion.”

A tiny gleam of light broke through in Psellus’ mind, and he answered almost eagerly. “Yes, I conducted an investigation,”
he said, “and I believe I have most of the pertinent facts. As to whether I’ve got enough information to base a valid opinion
on, I really couldn’t say. I’m sure I must have missed something, because it doesn’t really make any sense, but I don’t know
where to look for the missing clue, because I don’t know what it is I’m looking for. Quite possibly I have the data but I
haven’t figured out its significance yet. On the other hand, I could be like a sailor trailing along an established trade-route,
oblivious to the fact that just over the horizon there’s an undiscovered country. I don’t know.” He raised his eyebrows. “That’s
not much help, is it?”

Boioannes pursed his lips. Most of his gestures seemed to constitute self-sharpening, in one form or another. “He’s only a
human being,” he said, “not a paradox of algebra; you should be able to do the equations and solve him, if you try.” He leaned
back a little. He had the rare knack of looking comfortable on other people’s furniture. “Let’s start with the obvious. Why
do you think he told us how to get into Civitas Eremiae?”

Psellus nodded. “There’s the obvious motives,” he said. “Remorse: he saw the horrific consequences of his betrayal of military
secrets, and felt he had to make amends.”

“Discounting that,” Boioannes prompted.

“Hope,” Psellus continued. “He hopes that, since he gave us Civitas Eremiae, we might be persuaded to pardon him and let him
come home. Or, if he’s a realist, he understands that we have his wife and daughter.”

Boioannes shook his head. “Only a fool would carry out his side of the bargain before negotiating the terms. And he knows
we’re not savages. We don’t take out our anger on innocent women and children.”

“Indeed.” Psellus twitched; nerves, probably. “It could be some subsequent development we don’t know about. For instance,
he may have fallen out very badly with the Eremians while he was there, and betrayed them to get his revenge.”

“Possible.” Boioannes dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Doesn’t feel right, though. Oh, it could well be the right explanation,
but in order to find it convincing, we’d have to presuppose that his mind had been affected: paranoia, psychotic tendencies.
Does he seem to you to be that sort of man?”

“No,” Psellus admitted. “But after what he’s been through …”

“Let’s assume it’s not that. What else?”

That was as far as Psellus had got in his own speculations. “The other extreme,” he said. “He’s a desperate man, we can agree
on that. We aren’t the Eremians’ only enemies. Bear in mind that he’s now with the Vadani, and they were at war with Eremia
for a long time before the Sirupati Truce. He realizes that the Eremians are likely to lose the war sooner or later, so he
does a deal with the Vadani; he betrays the Eremians to us in return for asylum in Civitas Vadanis.”

The Boioannes thoughtful smile; a rare commodity, flattering but dangerous. “I could believe that,” he said, “were it not
for the fact that Duke Valens made a last-minute attempt to relieve the siege, and in so doing effectively declared war on
us. If your theory’s correct, you’ll have to make some fairly large assumptions about Valens’ motives, too.”

Psellus clicked his tongue. “And that, of course,” he said, “is the other great mystery: why did Valens attack us, at the
precise moment when he had the least to gain from so doing? I can’t help thinking that where you have two great mysteries
in the space of one transaction, logic suggests that they’re probably linked. But, of course, I’m not our leading expert on
Duke Valens.”

“You’re not.” The Boioannes smile darkened a little. “I am. And there aren’t two mysteries, there’re three. Why did Orsea
dismiss and imprison his chief adviser — the only competent man in his government — just when he needed him most?” He shook
his head. “Two enigmas might be a coincidence. Three … But now it’s getting unrealistic, isn’t it? What on earth could connect
Orsea, Valens and our erstwhile Foreman of Ordnance? At the risk of overburdening the equation, I think that counts as a fourth
enigma.” He sighed; it sounded almost like genuine frustration. “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “We have sixty-five thousand men
in arms and complete materiel superiority. The motivations of three individuals should be totally irrelevant. But apparently
they matter, so we have to do something about them.”

Psellus nodded. He should have seen it coming; but if he had, what could he have done? “You want me to investigate?”

This time, Boioannes grinned from the heart. “Why not? It’s not as though you’ve got anything else to do.”

“Quite.” Pause; the question had to be asked, and Boioannes would be expecting it. “In return, would you tell me something?”

“Perhaps.”

“What am I doing on this committee?”

Boioannes’ grin opened as if for laughter, but there was no sound, just a showing of teeth. “There are various reasons,” he
said. “First, we need your expertise, wisdom and lively intellect. Second, we needed someone who would do as he was told and
not make trouble. Third, there was a vacancy and we already had as many intelligent men as we could accommodate; a committee
needs men like you, just as music needs rests or mosaics need blank tiles. Would you like me to continue?”

“Yes. I’d like the real reason, please.”

“Very well.” Boioannes frowned. “In fact, it’s quite complicated and not in the least profound. We wanted …” He smiled. “
I
wanted someone inert and pragmatic who would stay peacefully in his office until he was given something to do. Naturally,
the Foundrymen on the committee wanted another Foundryman. The other Guilds, in particular the Joiners, were prepared to allow
another Foundryman only on the understanding that he was — excuse me — a nonentity. Staurachus felt that taking you out of
Compliance would create a vacancy that could usefully be filled by a Tailor or a Draper; since Compliance was likely to be
taking the main force of the fallout from the Vaatzes scandal, he felt that the Foundrymen should reduce their representation
there and pass the poisoned cup, so to speak, to their natural enemies. If you want my opinion, your name came up because
half the obvious candidates for the vacancy were too stupid, and the other half were too intelligent. You were — again, excuse
me — a name more or less chosen at random from a shortlist of available Foundrymen. Nobody outside the Guild or Compliance
had ever heard of you, but the Foundrymen believed you’d be safe, sensible and properly timid. Finally, it was you who got
us into this war. There were other reasons — scraps of reasons — but most of them have slipped my mind.”

Psellus dipped his head gracefully. “Thank you,” he said. “I’d been wondering.”

“Understandably.”

“It was kind of you to set my mind at rest. I can stop fretting about that and concentrate on this job you’ve given me.”

“Excellent.” Boioannes stood up. “As I understand it, you’ve already …” He frowned again. “
Immersed
yourself in Ziani Vaatzes, so you have the relevant data. His books, for example.” The way in which he reached out and picked
the book off the shelf told Psellus that he already knew exactly where to find it. “A sensible place to start. Why should
a machine shop foreman go to all the trouble of making himself a book out of scrounged materials, and then fill it with low-grade,
homemade love poetry?” He opened the book, stared at the pages as if they were an apple he’d bitten into and found a wormhole,
shut it with a snap and put it back. “You may find this an interesting comparison,” he went on, taking a familiar-looking
brass tube from his sleeve. “This is a copy of a letter from Duke Valens to the wife of Duke Orsea, written two months before
Orsea’s ill-fated attack on the Republic. Fortuitously, it was sent by the hand of a merchant who does business with us, and
who had the wit to make a copy before passing it on. There’s no poetry in it, apart from a few quotations, but there are distinct
parallels which you may find illuminating.” He dropped the tube on the desk. It rolled, and came to rest against the inkwell.
“Thank you for your time, Commissioner. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”

After he’d gone, Psellus realized that he was shaking slightly. This surprised him. He hoped it hadn’t been visible enough
for Boioannes to notice.

He got up, with a vague idea of going down to the buttery and getting something strong to drink, but once he was on his feet
the idea ceased to appeal. He went back carefully over the interview, assessing it in the way a judge at a fencing match awards
points to the contestants, and came to the surprising conclusion that it had either been a draw or else he’d come out of it
with a very slight lead. True, Boioannes had beaten him up pretty conclusively, but he hadn’t heard anything about his own
shortcomings that he hadn’t already known for some time. On the positive side, he’d finally been given something to do, which
made a pleasant change, and he’d forced Boioannes to tell him an unplanned and largely unprepared lie. A lie, he’d learned
long ago, is often the mirror image of the truth; by examining it carefully, you can reconstruct the fact that lie was designed
to conceal. That was a step forward, but not necessarily one he’d been anxious to take …