Devices and Desires (30 page)

Here’s something I’ve just thought of. It’s not new, I’m afraid. I’ve been saving it up. Apparently — this is from one of
the merchant women, so believe it or not as you like — somewhere in the desert there’s an underground river. It’s a long way
down under the sand, and the only way they know it’s there is because there’s a certain kind of flower that puts down incredibly
long roots, and it can tap into the river and that’s how it survives. Apparently there was this man lost in the desert one
time, and he was wandering around convinced he was going to die, and suddenly he saw the most amazing thing: a long, straight
line of bright red flowers, like a fence beside a road. At first he thought it was some kind of vision, and if he followed
the flowers it’d lead him to Paradise; so, he thought, I might as well, just in case; and he followed the line, and just when
he couldn’t go a step further, he literally stepped into a pool of water and very nearly drowned. Anyway, he was all right
after that; the thing is (according to this merchant woman) that these flowers only bloom for one week a year, and then they
die off completely and shrink back into their roots, and you could tread on them and never know they were there.

Thinking about it, I’m pretty much positive it isn’t true; but it’s a bit more cheerful than me moaning on about how sad everything
is. You never know; tomorrow Orsea might tread on an unexpected flower, and we’ll find our way out of here.

Write soon.

Walking out of the castle felt strangely familiar. It took Ziani a moment or so to work out what it reminded him of; passing
under the gateway arch and into the narrow street, he remembered leaving the Guildhall in Mezentia. He tried to think how
long ago that had been, but he couldn’t. It was a notable failure in calibration. Perhaps he was losing his fine judgment.

There was one distinct difference from the last time. Then, he’d walked out alone and nobody had seen him. This time, there
was someone waiting for him.

A tall man in a long cloak had been leaning against the gatepost; he straightened up and hurried after Ziani. “Excuse me,”
he called out. Obviously Ziani didn’t recognize him, but the voice was easily classified; another feature of the nobility
is how similar they all sound. Since it was unlikely that an Eremian aristocrat would be acting as a paid assassin for the
Republic, Ziani allowed himself to breathe again.

Ziani stopped and waited for him.

“You’re the Mezentine,” the man said.

No point trying to deny it, even if he wanted to. “That’s right,” he said.

“Vaatzes,” the man said. He pronounced it slightly wrong; one long A instead of two short ones. “The Ducas told me about you.
My name is Sorit Calaphates.”

He paused, as if waiting for some reaction; then he realized he was talking to someone who couldn’t be expected to know who
he was. “Pleased to meet you,” Ziani said.

Calaphates seemed a little nervous, but most likely only because he was talking to someone he hadn’t been formally introduced
to. “I understand from the Ducas,” he went on, “that you may be considering setting up in business here in the city. Would
that be correct?”

“I’m not sure,” Ziani said. “I haven’t made up my mind, to be honest with you.”

Calaphates shifted a little; he didn’t seem happy standing still in public. “If you’ve got nothing better to do,” he said,
“I wonder if you’d care to come and share a glass of wine with me, and perhaps we could talk about that.”

Ziani considered him, as a commodity. He was somewhere between forty and sixty; a long man, thin arms and legs, a slight potbelly
and the makings of a spare chin under a patchy beard. He had very small hands, Ziani noticed, with short fingers. He didn’t
look like he was any use for anything, but Ziani knew you couldn’t judge the nobility by appearances. His shoes were badly
blocked and stitched, but they had heavy silver buckles.

“Thank you,” Ziani said.

Calaphates led him across the square to a small doorway in a bare, crumbling wall; he produced a large key and opened it.
“Follow me,” he said quietly (there was something rather comic about the way he said it).

The door opened into a garden. Apart from the Guildhall grounds and a few similar spaces in the cloisters of other Guild buildings,
there were no gardens in Mezentia. Ziani certainly hadn’t expected to find one here, not in a city perched on top of a mountain.
His knowledge of the subject was more or less exactly matched by his interest in it, but he knew gardens needed a lot of water,
and he still hadn’t quite figured out how the city’s water supply worked. It stood to reason that, however it got there, water
wasn’t something that could be wasted. But here was this garden; a lush green lawn, beautifully even, edged with terraced
beds blazing with extremes of color. There were green and brown and silver and purple trees, cut and restrained into unnaturally
symmetrical shapes. The beds were edged with low hedges of green and blue-gray shrubs — he recognized lavender by its smell,
though he’d never seen it growing; the whole place stank of flowers, like the soap factory in Mezentia. There were tall, smooth
stone pillars with flowering vines trained up them, and huge stone urns with still more flowers spilling over the edges, like
overfilled tankards. Ziani looked round but he couldn’t see anything he recognized as edible; the obvious conclusion was that
all this effort and ingenuity and expense was simply to look nice. Strange people, Ziani thought.

In the middle of the lawn was a round stone table, with two small throne-like chairs. Calaphates gestured to him to sit in
one of them, and took the other for himself. By the time he’d lowered himself into the thing (it was designed for appearance
rather than comfort) a woman had appeared from nowhere holding a silver tray with a jug and two silver cups. She poured him
a drink. It tasted horrible.

“Your good health,” Calaphates said.

Ziani smiled awkwardly at him. “What can I do for you?” he said.

Calaphates took a moment before answering. (Is he afraid of me in some way, Ziani wondered; or is it just diffidence, or embarrassment?)
“I should tell you,” he said, “that I’m a member of the Duke’s council. Yesterday we debated your offer —”

“Turned me down, yes,” Ziani interrupted.

“That was the Duke’s decision,” Calaphates said. “It’s not what I’d have chosen to do myself. However, the decision has been
taken, and, to put it bluntly, that leaves you at rather a loose end.”

Ziani nodded.

“If you intend to stay here and set up in business” — Ziani could feel the effort it was costing Calaphates to talk to him;
is it because I’m Mezentine, Ziani wondered, or just because he doesn’t know what to make of me? — “you will obviously need
capital; a workshop, tools, supplies. I won’t pretend I understand the technical aspects. But I flatter myself I know a good
investment when I see one.”

Ziani allowed himself to smile. “You want to invest in me?”

“Exactly.”

“Doing what?”

Calaphates shrugged. “That’s not for me to say,” he said. “All I know is that the Armorer Royal has given you the most extraordinary
endorsement. According to him — and I know the man well, of course — there’s practically nothing you can’t do, in the way
of making things. I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to make, because I don’t know the first thing about such matters. What
I’ve got in mind is a partnership. Quite straightforward.”

Ziani nodded. “Equal shares.”

Calaphates looked at him, and Ziani realized he’d have settled for rather less. Not that it mattered. “Quite,” he said. “All
profits split straight down the middle, and that way we both know exactly where we stand.”

“Fine,” Ziani said. “I’ll be quite happy with that.”

“Excellent.” He could feel a distinct release of tension; for some reason, Calaphates hadn’t been expecting things to go so
smoothly. No doubt he assumed all Mezentines were ruthless chiselers, cunning and subtle in matters of business. “Now, it’s
entirely up to you, of course, but as it happens I own a site here in the city that might suit you; it used to be a tanner’s
yard, but the man who used to rent it from me died — actually, he was killed in the war — and since he was relatively young,
he had no children or apprentices to carry on the business, so the place is standing empty, apart from his vats and some stock
in hand, which of course belongs to his family. Naturally, it’ll be up to you entirely, how you want the place done up. You
must do it properly, of course: forges and furnaces and sheds and anything else in the way of permanent fixtures.”

“It’ll be expensive,” Ziani said.

He caught a faint flicker in Calaphates’ eyes. “Well, I’m sure it’ll be worth it. The main thing is to get started as soon
as possible. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be ready.”

“It’ll take some time, I’m afraid,” Ziani replied. “Mostly I’m thinking about housing for the heavy machinery.”

“I…” Now the poor man was looking worried. “That’s your side of things,” he said.

“Yes,” Ziani went on, “but the point is, there are some pieces of equipment that I’ll have to build first before we can raise
the sheds to house them. A proper cupola foundry, for instance, for casting in iron; a machine shop, for the lathe and the
mill.”

Calaphates was being terribly brave. “Whatever it takes,” he said. “If you think the premises will be suitable — we’ll go
there right now so you can see for yourself — I’ll tell my overseer to take his orders direct from you, and you can get on
with it exactly as you wish. Don’t worry,” he added with a very slight effort, “about the money side. I’ll handle that.”

Ziani shrugged. “Good,” he said. “It’d be difficult for me to cost the whole thing out from scratch, because I don’t know
how much things cost here, or what’ll need to be brought in from outside and what I’ll have to build for myself. Also,” he
added, “I’ll need men. Otherwise, if I’ve got to do everything myself, it’ll take a lot longer.”

Calaphates looked at him. “Certainly,” he said. “Of course, there may be difficulty finding enough sufficiently skilled labor
—”

“I was thinking of your friend Cantacusene,” Ziani said. “I expect he could be persuaded. Really, what I need is people who’ll
do as they’re told and don’t need to be supervised all the time. And teaching apprentices the basics wouldn’t leave me much
time to do the more complicated work.”

(He’s wondering what the hell he’s got himself into, Ziani thought; but it’ll be all right. He’s strong enough to take the
load. I think I’ve got my second component.)

The tannery was in the lower city, out on the east side, where the prevailing wind could be relied on to carry the stench
away from the houses. “Handy for the gate,” Calaphates pointed out. “You won’t have so much trouble getting carts in and out
through the streets.”

Ziani had been wondering about that. In Mezentia, all the streets were the same width, everywhere; wide enough for two standard
wagons to pass axle to axle without touching. Civitas Eremiae wasn’t like that at all. A wide boulevard would pass under an
arch and suddenly dwindle into a narrow snicket, where the eaves of the houses on either side almost touched. A hundred yards
further down, there’d be a flight of narrow stairs, leading to a street as broad as a ropewalk; two hundred yards further
on, a wall and a sharp right-hand turn, and a maze of little winding alleys culminating in a dead end. Because of the gradient,
the buildings were often five stories high on one side and two on the other, and most of them sported a turret or a tower;
it was like being in an old, neglected forest where the trees are too close together and have grown up tall and spindly, fighting
to get at the light. In places, the thoroughfares jumped over the tangle of buildings on narrow, high-arched bridges, like
a deer leaping in dense cover. Every hundred yards or so there was an arch, a gateway, a covered portico, a cloister. The
people he saw in the streets had a knack of scuttling sideways like crabs, so as not to crash into each other with their shoulders
in the bottlenecks. It took a long time to get anywhere, what with steps up and steps down, waiting to let other people pass
(good manners would be essential in a place like this, if you didn’t want to spend your whole life fighting impromptu duels);
even when the way was relatively straight and flat, it wound backward and forward up the steep incline, so that a hundred
yards up the slope cost you a mile in actual distance covered. It would be a nightmare to get a steel-cart from the gate to
the castle square. You’d probably have to have a system of portages, like carrying barges round waterfalls — stop, unload
the cart, carry the stuff through the obstruction, load it on to another cart on the other side. No wonder these people had
rejected his offer. It amazed him that humans could live under such conditions.

“Something that’s been puzzling me,” he said to Calaphates, as they passed through a tunnel. “I’m sure you can tell me the
answer. What on earth do you do for water here?”

Calaphates smiled. “We manage,” he said. “In fact, we manage quite well. We’re rather proud of our arrangement, actually.
We have a network of underground cisterns, a long way down inside the mountain. Originally, I believe, they were natural caves.
Every roof and gutter and downpipe feeds into them, so basically not a single drop of rain that falls here is wasted. We get
quite ferocious storms in the late winter and early spring; it rains for days at a time, sometimes weeks. The cisterns fill
up, and we have our year’s supply. To draw it up again we have a large number of public wells — there’s one, look.” He pointed
at a door on the opposite side of the street. As far as Ziani could tell, it was just a small door in a long, blank wall;
you had to know where they were, presumably. “Anyone can go in, let down the bucket, take as much as he can carry home. We
don’t waste the stuff, obviously; it costs too much effort to carry it about. But there’s more than enough for everyone. In
fact, once every ten years or so the cisterns get so full we have to drain off the surplus.”