Devices and Desires (24 page)

“We were talking about going out with the hawks just the other day. Is that a new brooch you’re wearing?”

“Do you like it?”

“Yes,” he lied. “Lonazep?”

She shook her head. “Vadani. I got it from a merchant. Fancy you noticing, though. Men aren’t supposed to notice jewelry and
things.”

She had a box on the bench beside her; a small, flat rosewood case. He recognized it as something he’d given her; a writing
set. Her wedding present from the Ducas. “I know,” he said. “That’s why I’ve trained myself in observation. Women think I’m
sensitive and considerate.”

She was looking at his face. “You look tired,” she said.

“Too many late nights,” he said. “And tomorrow I’ve got to take the Mezentine to see a blacksmith.”

“What?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He yawned again. “Do excuse me,” he said. “I’d better be getting on. Would you tell Orsea I’ve seen the
Severina woman? He knows what it’s about.”

“Severina. Do you mean the trader? I think I’ve met her.” She nodded. “Yes, all right. What did you need to see her about,
then?”

Miel grinned. “Sand.”

“Sand?”

He nodded. “Green sand, to be precise.”

“Serves me right for asking.”

As he climbed the stairs to the North Tower, he wondered why Veatriz would take her writing set with her when she went to
see the falcons. Not that it mattered. That was the trouble with noticing things; you got cluttered up, like a hedgehog in
dry leaves.

Meetings. He made a note in his day-book about Belha Severina, not that there was a great deal to say;
agreed to arrange inquiries through her sister; terms unspecified.
Was that all? He pondered for a while, but couldn’t think of anything else to add.

It was close; the shape, the structure. He could almost see it, but not quite.

Once, not long after he married Ariessa, he’d designed a clock. He had no idea why he’d done it; it was something he wanted
to do, because a clock is a challenge. There’s the problem of turning linear into rotary movement. There are issues of gearing,
timing, calibration. Anything that diverts or dissipates the energy transmitted from the power source to the components is
an open wound. Those in themselves were vast issues; but they’d been settled long ago by the Clockmakers’ Guild, and their
triumph was frozen forever in the Seventy-Third Specification. There’d be no point torturing himself, two hundred components
moving in his mind like maggots, unless he could add something, unless he could improve on the perfection the Specification
represented. He’d done it in the end; he’d redefined the concept of the escapement, leaping over perfection like a chessboard
knight; he’d reduced the friction on the bearing surfaces by a quarter, using lines and angles that only he could see. Slowly
and with infinite care, he’d drawn out his design, working late at night when there was no risk of being discovered, until
he had a complete set of working drawings, perfectly to scale and annotated with all the relevant data, from the gauge of
the brass plate from which the parts were to be cut, to the pitch and major and minor diameters of the screw-threads. When
it was complete, perfect, he’d laid the sheets of crisp, hard drawing paper out on the cellar floor and checked them through
thoroughly, just in case he’d missed something. Then he’d set light to them and watched them shrivel up into light-gray ash,
curled like the petals of a rose.

Now he was designing without pens, dividers, straight edge, square, calipers or books of tables. It would be his finest work,
even though the objective, the job this machine would be built to do, was so simple as to be utterly mundane. It was like
damming a river to run a flywheel to drive a gear-train to operate a camshaft to move a piston to power a reciprocating blade
to sharpen a pencil. Ridiculous, to go to such absurd lengths, needing such ingenuity, such a desperate and destructive use
of resources, for something he ought to be able to do empty-handed with his eyes shut. But he couldn’t. Misguided but powerful
men wouldn’t let him do it the easy way, and so he was forced to this ludicrously elaborate expedient. It was like having
to move the earth in order to slide the table close enough to reach a hairbrush, because he was forbidden to stand up and
walk across the room.

I didn’t start it,
he reminded himself.
They did that. All I can do is finish it.

He had no idea, even with the shape coming into existence in his mind, how many components the machine would have, in the
end: thousands, hundreds of thousands — someone probably had the resources to calculate the exact figure; he didn’t, but it
wasn’t necessary.

He stood up. It was taking him a long time to come to terms with this room. If it was a prison, it was pointlessly elegant.
Looking at the fit of the paneling, the depth of relief of the carved friezes, all he could see was the infinity of work and
care that had gone into making them. You wouldn’t waste that sort of time and effort on a prison cell. If it was a guest room
in a fine house, on the other hand, the door would open when he tried the handle, and there wouldn’t be guards on the other
side of it. The room chafed him like a tight shoe; every moment he spent in it was uncomfortable, because it wasn’t right.
It wasn’t suited to the purpose for which it was being used. That, surely, was an abomination.

I hate these people,
he thought.
They work by eye and feel, there’s no precision here.

Decisively, as though closing a big folio of drawings, he put the design away in the back of his mind, and turned his attention
to domestic trivia. There was water in the jug; it tasted odd, probably because it was pure, not like the partly filtered
sewage they drank at home. Not long ago they’d brought him food on a tray. He’d eaten it because he was hungry and he needed
to keep his strength up, but he missed the taste of grit. With every second that passed, it became more and more likely that
they’d let him live. At least he had that.

His elbow twinged. He rubbed it with the palm of his other hand until both patches of skin were warm. The elbow, the whole
arm were excellent machines, and so wickedly versatile; you could brush a cheek or swing a hammer or push in a knife, using
a wide redundancy of different approaches and techniques. So many different things a man can do…

I could stay here and make myself useful. I could teach these people, who are no better than children, how to improve themselves.
A man could be happy doing that. Instead…

There’s so many things I could have done, if I’d been allowed.

The door opened, and the man he’d started to get to know — names, names; Miel Ducas — came in. Ziani noticed he was looking
tired. Here’s someone who’s a great lord among these people, he thought, but he chases around running errands for his master
like a servant. Using the wrong tool for the job, he thought; they don’t know anything.

“How are you settling in?” Ducas said.

It was, of course, an absurd question.
Fine, except I’m not allowed to leave this horrible room.
“Fine,” Ziani said. “The room’s very comfortable.”

“Good.” Ducas looked guilty; he was thinking, we don’t know yet if this man’s a prisoner or a guest, so we’re hedging our
bets. No wonder the poor man was embarrassed. “I thought I’d better drop in, see how you’re getting on.”

Ziani nodded. “Has the Duke decided yet if he wants to accept my offer?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” Ducas hesitated before he sat down; maybe he’s wondering whether he ought to
ask me first, since if I’m a guest that would be the polite thing to do. “The thing is,” he went on, “we can’t really make
that decision, because none of us really understands what it’d mean. So we’d like you to explain a bit more, to one of our
experts. He’d be better placed to advise than me, for instance.”

“That’s fine by me,” Ziani replied. “I’m happy to cooperate, any way I can.”

“Thank you,” Ducas said. “That’ll be a great help. You see, this expert knows what we’re capable of, from a technical point
of view. He can tell me if we’d actually be able to make use of what you’ve got to offer, how much it’d cost, how long it’d
take; that sort of thing. You must appreciate, things are difficult for us right now, because of the war and everything. And
it’d be a huge step for us, obviously.”

“I quite understand,” Ziani said. “Actually, I’ve been thinking a lot about what would have to be done. It’d be a long haul,
no doubt about that, but I’m absolutely certain it’d be worth it in the end.”

Ducas looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible; clearly he didn’t want to get caught up in a discussion. He’s
a simple man, Ziani thought, and he’s had to learn to be versatile. Like using the back of a wrench as a hammer.

“Sorry we’ve had to leave you cooped up like this,” Ducas went on. “Only we’ve all been very busy, as you’ll appreciate. I
expect you could do with a bit of fresh air and exercise.”

No, not really. “Yes, that’d be good,” Ziani said. “But I don’t want to put you to any trouble on my account.”

“That’s all right,” Ducas said. “Anyway, I’d better be going. I’ll call for you tomorrow morning, and we’ll go and see the
expert.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Ziani said gravely, though he wanted to laugh. “Thank you for stopping by.”

Ducas went away, and Ziani sat down on the bed, frowning. This man Ducas; how versatile could he be? What was he exactly:
a spring, a gearwheel, a lever, a cam, a sear? It would be delightfully efficient if he could be made to be all of them, but
as yet he couldn’t be sure of the qualities of his material — tensile strength, shearing point, ductility, brittleness. How
much load could he bear, and how far could he distort before he broke? (But all these people are so fragile, he thought; even
I can’t do good work with rubbish.)

In the event, he slept reasonably well. Happiness, beauty, love, the usual bad dreams came to visit him, like dutiful children
paying their respects, but on this occasion there was no development, merely the same again — he was back home, it had all
been a dreadful mistake, he’d committed no crimes, killed nobody. After his favorite dinner and an hour beside the lamp with
an interesting book, he’d gone to bed, to sleep, and woken up to find his wife lying next to him, dead, shrunken, her skin
like coarse parchment, her hair white cobwebs, her fingernails curled and brittle, her body as light as rotten wood, her eyes
dried up into pebbles, her lips shriveled away from her teeth, one hand (the bones standing out through the skin like the
veins of a leaf) closed tenderly on his arm.

To his surprise, Valens was curious. He’d expected to feel scared, horrified or revolted, as though he was getting ready to
meet an embassy of goblins. Maybe I don’t scare so easily these days, he thought; but he knew he was missing the point.

“Well,” he said, “we’d better not keep them waiting.”

He nudged his horse forward; it started to move, its head still down, its mouth full of fat green spring grass. It was a singularly
graceless, slovenly animal, but it had a wonderful turn of speed.

“I’ve never met one before, what are they like?” Young Gabbaeus on his left, trying to look calm; Valens noticed that he was
wearing a heavy wool cloak over his armor, and the sleeves of a double-weight gambeson poked out from under the steel vambraces
on his forearms. Curious, since Gabbaeus had always insisted he despised the heat; then Valens realized he’d dressed up extra
warm to make sure he wouldn’t shiver.

“I don’t know,” Valens replied, “it’s hard to say, really. I guess the key word is different.”

“Different,” Gabbaeus repeated. “Different in what way?”

“Pretty much every way, I suppose,” Valens replied. “They don’t look anything like us. Their clothes are nothing like ours.
Their horses — either bloody great big things you’d happily plow with, or little thin ponies. Like everything; you expect
one thing, you get another. The difficulty is, there’s so many of them — different tribes and sects and splinter-groups and
all — you can’t generalize till you know exactly which lot you’re dealing with.”

“I see,” Gabbaeus said nervously. “So you can’t really know what to expect when they come at you.”

Valens grinned. “Trouble,” he said. “That’s a constant. It’s the details that vary.”

According to the herald, Skeddanlothi and his raiding party were waiting for them on the edge of the wood, where the river
vanished into the trees. Valens knew very little about the enemy leader; little more than what he’d learned from a couple
of stragglers his scouts had brought in the day before. According to them, Skeddanlothi was the second or third son of the
High King’s elder brother. He’d brought a raiding party into Vadani territory in order to get plunder; he wanted to marry,
apparently, and his half of the takings was to be the dowry. The men with him presumably had similar motives. If they were
offered enough money, they’d probably go away without the need for bloodshed.

“Beats me,” Gabbaeus went on, “how they got here at all. I thought it was impossible to get across the desert. No water.”

Valens nodded. “That’s the story,” he said. “And fortunately for us, most of the Cure Hardy believe it; with good reason,
because raiding parties go out every few years, and none of them ever come back. They assume, naturally enough, that the raiders
die in the desert.” He yawned; it was a habit of his when he was nervous. “But there is a way. Some clown of a trader found
it a few years ago. Being a trader, of course, she didn’t tell anybody, apart from the people in her company; then one of
their caravans got itself intercepted by one of the Cure Hardy sects.”

“Wonderful,” Gabbaeus said.

“Actually, not as bad as all that.” Valens yawned again. It was a mannerism he made no effort to rid himself of, since it
made him look fearless. “The Cure Hardy are worse than the traders for keeping secrets from each other. I think it was the
Lauzeta who first got hold of it; they’d rather be buried alive in anthills than share a good thing with the Auzeil or the
Flos Glaia. Even within a particular sect, they don’t talk to each other. Something like a safe way across the desert is an
opportunity for one faction to get rich and powerful at the expense of the others. Sooner or later, of course, the High King
or one of his loathsome relations will get hold of it, and then we’ll be in real trouble. Meanwhile, we have to deal with
minor infestations, like this one. It’s never much fun, but it could be worse; sort of like the difference between a wasps’
nest in the roof and a plague of locusts.”