Evil for Evil (27 page)

As they headed back the way they’d come, Ziani asked Carnufex how long it’d take to dig out the gallery, if it collapsed.

“Not sure,” Carnufex replied. “Let’s see: ten feet a day, double that for two shifts, so let’s say a month. No big deal, if
we can get timber for the props.”

Ziani nodded, not that the other man could see him do it. “And the ventilation shafts?”

“Trickier. They’re lined with brick, you see.”

“That’s all right,” Ziani replied. “With luck I should be able to brace them the same way I’m planning on doing the gallery.”
Of course, he reflected, that would mean they’d have to be measured too; someone would have to go down each shaft, presumably
lowered down in the ore bucket. All in all, not a job he wanted to do himself; but it would have to be done properly, by someone
who knew how to take an accurate measurement. Fortunately, though, he knew just the man for the job.

“Certainly.” His face hadn’t changed at all.

Ziani looked at him, but the dead-fish eyes simply looked back, expressionless except for the permanent, faintly hungry look
that made Ziani think uncomfortably of a patient predator.

“You sure?” he asked. “It won’t be much fun hanging down there in a bucket.”

Gace Daurenja, his absurdly thin, ludicrously tall, appallingly flat-faced self-appointed apprentice and general assistant,
shrugged. “I’ve done worse things in my time,” he said. “And confined spaces don’t bother me, if that’s what you were thinking.
I was a chimney-sweep for a time, and a chargehand in a furnace. And this won’t be the first time I’ve worked in a mine, either.”

Ziani tried not to frown. He believed him; ever since he’d turned up in Ziani’s room with the marvelous winch he’d made to
his order, he was prepared to believe anything the thin man told him, though he wasn’t quite sure why. Possibly, he’d thought,
it was because it was such a huge leap of faith to believe that this extraordinary creature could exist at all. If you could
accept that, anything else was easy in comparison.

“Fine,” Ziani said. He reached out and pulled a sheet of paper across the table. Immediately, Daurenja’s attention was focused
on it, to the exclusion of everything else. “Here’s the general idea; it’s the same for the vent shafts as well as the gallery.”

Daurenja nodded slowly. His expression showed that the diagram was the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen in his entire life.

“Steel girders,” Ziani said, trying not to let Daurenja’s manner bother him. “Really, it’s just a steel cage. We build it
where we want the cave-in to stop, if you follow me —”

“Perfectly.”

Ziani ignored the interruption. “So we stuff the shaft with trash wood, charcoal, old rags soaked in lamp oil, set light to
it — those bellows are a stroke of luck, we can get a nice burn going with a bit of air — and that’ll burn out the timber
props but leave the steel cage intact; it’ll look like we’ve caved in the whole lot, of course, and then when the war’s over,
they’ll only have to dig out as far as the cages; beyond that, the props should be unharmed. Quite simple, really, assuming
it works.”

“Brilliant.”

Ziani ignored that, too. “The problems I can foresee are with what the heat might do to the cage. If it gets too hot we could
warp the girders or even melt them, so we’ll have to be careful not to get carried away. I’m hoping, though, that as soon
as the props are charred halfway or three parts through they’ll give way, and the falling rock’ll snuff out the fire, or at
the very least act as a heat-sink. The cage in the gallery ought to be straightforward enough, but I haven’t made up my mind
yet how best to anchor them in the vent shafts. They’ll have a huge weight bearing directly on them from overhead, even if
they’re only ten feet or so down the shafts. We’ll have to drive pins into the brickwork to take the weight; that’ll be a
fun job, swinging a sledge in such a tight place.”

“I’ll have a go if you like,” Daurenja said immediately. “Back when I was working in the slate quarries —”

“They’re miners,” Ziani said, “let them do it. I’ll want you with me in the fabrication shop, setting rivets. Not the most
exciting job in the world, but it’ll have to be done right. Then more riveting, of course, once we’ve got the bloody things
into position.”

“Not a problem,” Daurenja said, as full of confidence as a lion roaring. “I did a great deal of riveting when I was working
in the foundry, and —”

When Ziani had eventually managed to get rid of him, he put on his coat, drew a scarf over his face to filter out the worst
of the dust, and went for a walk. He had pictured this place in his mind as long ago as his conversation with Miel Ducas,
back in the Butter Pass, but back then it had been nothing but a geometrical design of wheels and levers. It was the ferocity
of it that bothered him, the sheer brutality of falling iron-shod beams pounding rock into rubble. He wondered; he’d never
seen a flour mill, even. He could feel the cracking and grinding and splintering in his bones, every time the cams tripped
and the beams fell. It reminded him too much of things he’d only considered so far in the abstract, rather than in practice.
Even the slaughter of the Mezentines, shot down in their thousands by the scorpion-bolts he’d made, hadn’t affected him as
much as this place did. There was a ruthlessness about it that he was reluctant to come to terms with. On the other hand,
he was very close to resolving a number of issues that had been bothering him for some time, areas he’d left blank in the
design, knowing they were possible but lacking the precise knowledge of detailed procedure and method. Not a comfortable place,
but enlightening.

Daurenja, he thought, and he could feel his skin crawl. With any luck, the rope might break while he was dangling down a vent
shaft in a bucket, and that’d be one fewer set of calculations to bother about. He tasted dust in his mouth, in spite of the
scarf, and spat.

He walked toward the mine entrance, pausing to look up at one of the wheel towers. Crude, compared to a Mezentine waterwheel.
There were no bearings to ease the turning of the spindle, and a significant amount of the water slopped past or over the
blades, wasted. But he was here to sabotage the mines, not improve them. He shrugged. Fine by him.

A miner passed him, struggling with a wheelbarrow loaded with too much ore. As he went by he must’ve caught a glimpse of Ziani’s
face; he hesitated, the barrow wobbled and ran off line, making him stop. Ziani made an effort not to grin. He was getting
used to being stared at, the only dark-skinned Mezentine in the duchy. It usually saved him the bother of having to explain
who he was; everybody knew that already.

“Hang on a second,” he called after the miner. “Can I ask you something?”

The man let go of the barrow handles and straightened up. “You’re him, right?” he said. “The Mezentine.”

Something else he was getting used to. Curious, to be known only for a quality he was no longer authorized to have, the thing
that still defined him but had been taken away. “That’s me,” he said. “Ziani Vaatzes. Who’re you?” he added.

The miner frowned, as if dubious about answering. “Corvus Vasa,” he said. “I’m not anybody,” he added quickly.

Ziani smiled. “It’s all right,” he said. “I just wanted to ask something, if you’re not too busy.”

Vasa shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Ziani sat on the edge of the barrow. “I was talking to Superintendent Carnufex,” he said, stressing the name and rank only
very slightly, “and he was saying a man can dig ten feet of tunnel a day, average. Is that right?”

“Dig and prop, yes. I mean, usually there’s at least four of you to a face, two digging and two propping, and four blokes’ll
usually do twenty foot a shift, two shifts a day, forty foot. So we say ten foot a man a day, as a rule of thumb, like. That’s
in earth,” he added, “a bit less in clay. Plus, of course, you’ve got another two blokes coming up behind you to load the
spoil, and another bloke to carry it. Teams of seven’s the rule.”

Ziani nodded. “Fine,” he said. “What if you’re cutting through rock?”

Vasa grinned sourly. “We don’t,” he said, “not if we can help it. You hit rock, best thing you can do is go back and work
round it. Plus, you give the surveyor a right bollocking afterward.”

“All right,” Ziani said, “but supposing there’s no way round and you’ve just got to cut through. That happens sometimes, doesn’t
it?”

Vasa nodded. “Sometimes,” he said. “And it’s a bastard. Then it’s a man on the drill and another man to strike for him, cutting
slots to fit wedges in. Two or three foot a day, depending on what sort of rock it is.”

Ziani clicked his tongue. “What about granite?”

“Wouldn’t know,” Vasa replied, “never had to find out, luckily. I heard tell once that you can shift hard rock by lighting
a bloody great big fire, get it really hot, then chuck water on it to split it.” He grinned. “Sounds fine when you say it,
but I wouldn’t like doing it myself.”

“I bet.” Ziani smiled. “No granite in these parts, then.”

“Never come across any. What d’you want to know about that stuff for, anyhow?”

“Oh, just another job I’ve got to do, sooner or later. Thanks, you’ve been a great help.”

Vasa hesitated for a moment, then said, “They’re saying you’re here to block up the mine, because of the war. Is that right?”

“Afraid so. Means you’ll be out of a job for a while, but think about it. If the Mezentines got hold of the mine intact they’d
be wanting men to work it for them, and I don’t suppose they’d be planning on paying any wages.”

He could see the point sinking in, like water soaking away into peat. Then Vasa shrugged. “Let’s hope the war’s over soon,
then,” he said. “It’s not a bucket of fun, this job, but it pays good money. I’d rather be here than on wall-building, like
my brother-in-law. That’s bloody hard work, and the money’s a joke.”

Ziani dipped his head in acknowledgment. “Vasa, did you say your name was?”

“Corvus Vasa. And there’s my brother Bous, he works down on the faces, if ever you’re looking for men for this other job of
yours.”

“I might well be, later on,” Ziani said. “So if your brother works on the faces, he must know a thing or two about cutting
rock.”

“Him? Yeah, I should think so. I mean, that stuff ’s not hard like granite, but you don’t just scoop it out with a spoon.”

“Thanks,” Ziani said, smiling. “I’ll bear you both in mind.”

“No problem.” Vasa picked up his wheelbarrow, nodded over his shoulder and went on his way.

(And why not? Ziani thought. I will be needing skilled miners, when the time comes. Assuming I can figure out the last details
… He shook his head, like a wet dog drying itself.)

Two days, and he was so sick of the place he’d have given anything just to walk away. Simply staying was like trying to hold
his breath, an intolerable pressure inside him. Two days did nothing to acclimatize him to the noise and the dust; if anything,
their effect was cumulative, so that he noticed them more, not less.

Unfortunately, the job wasn’t going well. The steel turned up exactly on time, as Carnufex had guaranteed, but not the anvils,
the tools or the ten Eremian blacksmiths he’d been promised faithfully before he left Civitas Vadanis. Even Carnufex had no
luck trying to track them down, and without them, nothing could be done. On the evening of the second day, Carnufex told him
the adjutant would be arriving tomorrow and maybe he’d be able to get it sorted out; he seemed uncharacteristically vague
and tentative, which Ziani reckoned was a very bad sign.

There’d been some progress, however; mostly due, it had to be said, to Gace Daurenja. He’d taken measurements in nine of the
twelve ventilation shafts, hanging out of the winch bucket with a lantern gripped in his teeth, with seventy feet of sheer
drop waiting to catch him if he happened to slip. Ziani could hardly bear to think about it, but Daurenja didn’t seem bothered
in the least, while the plans he produced (working on them at night after an eighteen-hour day in the bucket) were masterpieces
of clear, elegant draftsmanship, and annotated in the most beautiful lettering Ziani had ever seen (when he asked about that,
Daurenja attributed it to the time he’d spent copying manuscripts for a society bookseller). The only thing he seemed bothered
about was how long the job was taking him, and Ziani had to tell him to stop apologizing for being so slow.

He’d drawn up the plans for the cages himself, taking his time for want of anything else to do. Carnufex had let him use his
office as a drawing room; he could still hear the noise, and the dust managed to get in somehow, in spite of shutters on the
windows and curtains on the doors, but at least it was tolerable, and the slow, familiar work helped take his mind off the
misery of it all. If he tried really hard, he could almost fool himself into thinking that he was back in the city at the
ordnance factory, and that the hammering was the slow, constant heartbeat of the trip-hammers, and the dust was foundry soot,
and the men who came when he shouted were his own kind, not barbarians.

On the third day he decided he’d had enough. The adjutant had arrived and spent a thoroughly unpleasant evening being quietly
shouted at by Carnufex, but there was still no clue as to the whereabouts of the anvils or the tools, let alone the blacksmiths.
That, as far as Ziani was concerned, wasn’t good enough. He called Daurenja and gave him a letter.

“I want you to ride back to the city,” he said, “and give this to Duke Valens personally. Wait for a reply.”

Daurenja nodded sharply, a picture of grim determination. “Right away,” he said. “Leave it to me.” He was out of the office
before Ziani had a chance to tell him where to find a horse or collect his conduct letters, which he’d have to produce before
he’d be allowed past the sentries at the palace gate. Presumably he didn’t feel the need, or thought that that’d be cheating;
Ziani pictured him scaling the palace wall with a grappling hook and crawling down a chimney into the Duke’s bedroom. Wouldn’t
put it past him, at that.