Evil for Evil (7 page)

She sighed. “You’re the Ducas,” she said. “You can’t help being valuable, to someone or other. Finding you was like finding
someone else’s purse in the street. We aren’t thieves, but we do need the money.” She turned, finally, and looked at him.
Exasperation? Maybe. “It’d be easier if you weren’t so damned accommodating. Aristocratic good manners, I suppose.” She shrugged.
“And for pity’s sake stop fiddling with that stuff. You’re no good at it, and the Ducas isn’t supposed to be able to work
for his living. Leave it. One of the men can do it tonight, when they get back.”

She walked away and left him; nothing decided, and he wasn’t even allowed to try and make himself useful. He thought: she
doesn’t love her husband, or not particularly, but that’s not an important issue in her life. It’s probably a good thing to
be beyond the reach of love. And then he thought of Ziani Vaatzes, and the things he’d done for love, and the things he’d
done with love, and with lovers. Ziani Vaatzes could mend chainmail, and nobody would think twice about it; he could probably
sew, too. He could certainly bring down cities, and ruin the lives of other people; and all for love, and with it, using it
as a tool, as was fitting for a skilled artisan.

Use or be used, he thought. These people can use me, as Ziani used me; it’s the Ducas’ function in society to be useful. (He
wondered: if Vaatzes were standing in front of me right now, would I try to kill him? Answer, yes; instinctively, without
thinking, like a dog with a bird.)

Nobody likes being bored, especially when their life is also hanging in the balance. But the Ducas learns boredom, just as
he learns the rapier, the lute and the management of horse, hound and falcon. Miel leaned back against the wall and put his
hands behind his head.

Partly because he was bored and had nothing better to do, Ziani Vaatzes crossed the yard, left the castle by the middle gate,
and walked slowly down the slight hill toward the huddle of buildings that snuggled against the outside of the curtain wall
like chicks under the wings of a broody hen. He was looking for smoke; not just the wisps of an ordinary household fire, but
the intermittent gusts of gray cloud from a well-worked bellows. Once he’d found what he was looking for, he followed it until
he heard the ring of a hammer, and then he followed that.

Inevitably, there was a small crowd in the doorway of the smithy. There always is: a customer waiting for his job to be finished,
poor and frugal types who’d rather keep warm by someone else’s fire, old men wanting to be listened to, chancers waiting for
a good moment to ask a favor. One of the old men was talking when he got there. Nobody could hear a word he said over the
sound of the hammer, but he didn’t seem to care, or to have noticed. One or two heads turned to look as Ziani joined the back
of the group. A month or so ago they’d all have stared at him, but the Duke’s pet black-faced Mezentine had stopped being
news some time back. Now he was just one more straggler from the castle, an aristocrat by association, a somebody but nobody
important. They probably all knew that he was an engineer, which would in itself explain why he was hanging round the forge;
an assumption, and perfectly true.

He watched the smith drawing down a round bar into a tapered square section, and allowed his mind to drift; the chime of the
hammer and the rasping breath of the bellows soothed him like the most expensive music, and the warmth of the fire made him
yawn. None of these people would have heard the news yet; they didn’t know about the plan to abandon the city and strike out
into the plains. Probably just as well, or there’d be panic, anger, moaning, reluctance. Valens wouldn’t break the news until
all the arrangements for the evacuation had been made, right down to what each of them would be allowed to take with him and
which cart it’d be stowed in. There’d be an announcement, and just enough time for the evacuation to be carried out smoothly
and efficiently, not enough time for anybody to have a chance to think about it. The Vadani didn’t strike him as the sort
of people who worried too much about the decisions their duke made on their behalf, such as abandoning their home, or starting
a war with the Perpetual Republic. He wondered about that. You could evacuate Mezentia in a day; everybody would do as he
was told, because that was what they’d been brought up to do. The Vadani would do it because they believed that Valens knew
best. In this case, of course, he did. The policy was irreproachably sensible and practical. Ziani smiled at the thought,
as a god might smile at the enlightened self-interest of his creation.

The smith paused to quench the top half of his work and swill down a mug of water before leaning into the bellows handle.
The old man was still talking. Someone else cut across him to ask the smith a question, which was answered with a shrug and
a shake of the head. Reasonable enough; why bother with words when you know nobody can ever hear what you say. The bellows
wheezed like a giant snoring, as though the old man’s interminable droning had put it to sleep.

He’s working the steel too cold, Ziani thought; but of course it wasn’t his place to say so, not in someone else’s shop, when
his opinion hadn’t been asked for. The slovenliness annoyed him a little, just enough to spoil the pleasure of watching metal
being worked. As unobtrusively as possible, he disengaged and left the forge. I must find myself some work to do, he told
himself, I need to be busy. I wash my hands three times a day here, but they never get dirty.

Back through the gate in the curtain wall; as he walked through it, he felt someone following him. He frowned. Duke Valens
was far too well-mannered to have his guests shadowed, and far too sensible to waste an employee’s time on such a pointless
exercise. He quickened his step a little. There were plenty of people about, no reason to be concerned.

“Excuse me.”

He hesitated, then carried on, walking a little faster. “Excuse me,” the voice said again; then a shadow fell across his face,
and someone was standing in front of him, blocking his path.

Not the strangest-looking human being Ziani had ever seen, but not far off it. He was absurdly tall, not much under seven
feet, and his sleeveless jerkin and plain hose did nothing to disguise how extraordinarily thin he was. Probably not starvation,
because the clothes themselves looked new and fairly expensive, and he didn’t have the concave cheeks and sunken eyes of a
starving man. Instead, his face was almost perfectly flat — minute stump for a nose, stupid little slit for a mouth, and tiny
ears — though the rest of his head was round and slightly pointed, like an onion. He had a little crest of black hair on the
very top (at first glance Ziani had taken it for a cap) and small, round eyes. The best guess Ziani could make at his age
was somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.

“Sorry if I startled you,” he said. “Are you Ziani Vaatzes, the Mezentine?”

“That’s me,” Ziani replied. “Who’re you?”

The thin man smiled, and his face changed completely. He looked like an allegorical representation of Joy, painted by an enthusiastic
but half-trained apprentice. “My name is Gace Raimbaut Elemosyn Daurenja,” he replied. “May I say what a pleasure and an honor
it is to meet you.”

Oh, Ziani thought. He made a sort of half-polite grunting noise.

“Allow me to introduce myself,” the thin man went on, and Ziani noticed that there were dark red scars on both his earlobes.
“Like yourself I am an engineer and student of natural philosophy and the physical world. I have been an admirer of your work
for some time, and feel that there’s a great deal I could learn from you.”

He’s learned that speech by heart, Ziani thought; but why bother? “I see,” he said. “Well, that’s very …” He ran out of words,
and couldn’t be bothered to look for any more.

The thin man shifted a little, and Ziani could just about have squeezed through the gap between him and the wall without committing
an assault. But he stayed where he was.

“I must apologize for accosting you like this,” the thin man went on. “It is, of course, a deplorable breach of good manners,
and not the sort of thing I would normally dream of doing. However …” He hesitated, but Ziani was fairly sure the pause was
part of the script. Stage direction; look thoughtful. “We move in rather different social circles,” the thin man went on,
and Ziani wished he knew a little bit more about Vadani accents. He was fairly sure the man had one, but he couldn’t place
it well enough to grasp its significance. “You enjoy the well-deserved favor of the Duke. I am only a poor student. It’s hardly
likely our paths would have crossed in the normal course of events.”

“Student,” Ziani said, repeating the only word in the speech he’d been able to get any sort of grip on. “At a university,
you mean?”

“Indeed.” The thin man’s smile widened like sunrise on the open plains. “I have honors degrees in philosophy, music, literature,
astronomy, law, medicine and architecture. I have also completed apprenticeships in many crafts and trades, including carpentry,
gold, silver, copper, foundry and blacksmith work, building and masonry, coopering, tanning, farriery and charcoal-burning.
I am qualified to act as a public scrivener and notary in four jurisdictions, and I can play the lute, the rebec and the recorder.
People have asked me from time to time if there’s anything I can’t do; usually I answer that only time will tell.” The smile
was beginning to slop over into a smirk; he restrained it and pulled it back into a look of modest pride. “I was wondering,”
he went on, “if you would care to give me a job.”

Ziani’s imagination had been busy while the thin man was talking, but even so he hadn’t been expecting that. “A job,” he repeated.

“That’s right. Terms and conditions fully negotiable.”

Ziani made an effort and pulled himself together. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t have any jobs that need doing.”

A tiny wisp of a frown floated across the thin man’s face, but not for long. “Please don’t get the idea that I’m too delicate
and refined for hard manual labor,” he went on. “Quite the contrary. At various times I’ve worked in the fields and the mines.
I can dig ditches and lay a straight hedge. I can also cook, sew and clean; in fact, I was for five months senior footman
to the Diomenes house in Eremia.”

Try as he might, Ziani couldn’t think of anything to say to that; so he said, “I see. So why did you leave?”

Every trace of expression drained out of the thin man’s face. “There was a misunderstanding,” he said. “However, we parted
on good terms in the end, and I have references.”

Ziani almost had to shake himself to break the spell. “Look,” he said, “that’s all very impressive, but I’m not hiring right
now, and if I did give you a job, I couldn’t pay you. I’m just …” He ran out of words again. “I’m just a guest here, not much
better than a refugee. God only knows why the Duke lets me hang around, but he does. I’m very sorry, and it’s very flattering
to be asked, but I haven’t got anything for you.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” the thin man said. “Very sorry indeed. I’m afraid I’d allowed myself to hope.” He seemed to fold
inwards, then almost immediately reflated. “If you’d like to see my certificates and references, I have them here, in this
bag.” He pulled a small goatskin satchel off his shoulder and began undoing the buckles. “Some of them may be a little creased,
but —”

“No,” Ziani said, rather more forcefully than he’d intended. “Thank you,” he added. “But there’s no need, really. I don’t
need any workers, and that’s all there is to it.”

“A private secretary,” the thin man said. “I can take dictation and copy letters in formal, cursive and demotic script …”

Ziani took a step forward. The thin man didn’t move. Ziani stopped. “No,” he said.

“A valet, maybe,” the thin man said. “As a gentleman of the court —”

Because he was so thin, he’d be no problem to push aside. But Ziani felt an overwhelming reluctance to touch him, the sort
of instinctive loathing he’d had for spiders when he was a boy. He retraced the step he’d just taken and folded his arms.
“I’m not a courtier,” he said, “and I haven’t got any money, and I’m not hiring. You don’t seem able to understand that.”

“Payment wouldn’t be essential.” The thin man was watching him closely, as if inspecting him for cracks and flaws. “At least,
not until something presented itself in which I might be of use. I have …” This time the hesitation was genuine. “I have certain
resources,” the thin man said warily, “enough to provide for my needs, for a while. In the meantime, perhaps you might care
to set me some task, by way of a trial. It would be foolish of me to expect you to take me on trust without a demonstration
of my abilities.”

Too easy, Ziani thought. It must be some kind of trap. On the other hand … “All right,” he said. “Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll
give you a test-piece to make, and if it’s up to scratch, if ever I do need anybody, I’ll bear you in mind. Will that do?”

The thin man nodded, prompt and responsive as a mechanism. “What more could I ask?” he said.

Ziani nodded, and applied his mind. To be sure of getting rid of him it’d have to be something unusual in these parts, not
something he could just go out and buy, or get someone to make for him and then pass off as his own. “Fine,” he said. “Do
you know what a ratchet is?”

The thin man’s eyebrows rose. “Of course.”

“All right, then,” Ziani said. “At the factory where I used to work, we had a small portable winch for lifting heavy sections
of steel bar, things like that. It hung by a chain off a hook bolted into a rafter, and you could lift a quarter-ton with
it, just working the handle backward and forward with two fingers. Do you think you could make me something like that?”

“I guarantee it,” the thin man said. “Will six weeks be soon enough?”

Ziani grinned. “Take as long as you like,” he said.

“Six weeks.” The thin man nodded decisively. “As soon as it’s finished, I’ll send word to you at the Duke’s palace. I promise
you won’t be disappointed.”