Devices and Desires (40 page)

“Fifty-two,” the plumed man replied. “That’s the first squadron. We staggered it, so you’d be able to cope. The remaining
squadron will be arriving over the next six days.”

The harbormaster’s clerk was counting on his fingers; sixty-four times six. Nobody else was bothered about the exact number.

“I think there may have been a misunderstanding,” the harbormaster said. “All those ships — and your men, too. I mean, arrangements
will have to be made…”

The plumed man dipped his head very slightly. “You’d better go away and make them,” he said.

Shortly after noon, when the rope boats had made their last crossing, and the town square was crammed to bursting with plumed
men, the wagons started to arrive. The road was solid with them, the horses’ noses snuffling in the back of the cart in front,
and none of them could turn until they got off the causeway through the marshes. It was impossible to imagine how the mess
would ever be sorted out; the town stuffed with men, the road paved with carts, and the men’s food was in the carts, and the
men were getting hungry. The harbormaster, who hadn’t known anything about it but whose fault it all apparently was, made
an excuse and vanished into the customs house, where he proved impossible to find. Responsibility accordingly devolved on
the clerk.

The remaining fifty-two ships arrived in mid-afternoon.

Their arrival prompted the leader of the plumed men to take charge. He sent the clerk scuttling away in fear of his life,
then started shouting orders in a language the townspeople couldn’t understand. The effect was remarkable. Carts were picked
up, ten men a side, lifted up and carried off the road, plundered of their loads and turned round to face the other way; human
chains passed the jars of flour and barrels of salt pork and cheese back down the road into the town square, where men formed
orderly queues. Meanwhile, the strangers chased away the Lonazep pilots and brought the fifty-two ships in themselves. There
was room, just about. A line of boats roped together formed floating gangplanks linking each ship to the shore, and thousands
more plumed men swarmed along them; officers and NCOs formed them up and marched them off, fitting each company neatly into
the available space in the square, like pieces in a wooden puzzle. Carts were still arriving, but plumed men had laid a makeshift
causeway of uprooted fenceposts and joists from dismantled roofs across the salt flats, so that the emptied, departing carts
bypassed the start of the jam, and the lifting-plundering-turning-around details worked in precisely timed shifts to process
each new arrival. The plumed men’s leader organized the whole operation from the little watch-tower on the roof of the customs
house, with relays of runners pounding up and down the narrow spiral stone staircase, taking turns to go up and down since
there wasn’t room for two people to pass.

At dawn, the harbormaster emerged from his hiding place, in time to see the empty ships sailing out of the harbor to make
room for the next squadron. The carts were all gone; instead, the road was solid with an unbroken column of marching men,
each one with his heavy pack covered by his gray wool cloak, his two spears sloped over his shoulder, his helmet-plume nodding
in time to the quick march, so that from a distance the whole line of plumes, as far as the eye could see, all swayed together,
forward and back.

Since everything seemed to be under control, the harbormaster risked climbing the tower. There was something he needed to
know, and his curiosity had finally got the better of his bewilderment and terror.

“Excuse me,” he said to the plumed leader, who turned his head and looked at him. “But who are you?”

The plumed man looked at him some more and turned back to the battlement without answering, and the harbormaster went away
again without repeating the question.

At noon on the fourth day, the advance guard marched into the City, having made better time than anticipated. In Mezentia
itself, however, arrangements had been made. Barracks were waiting for them — the Foundrymen and Machinists, the Clothiers,
the Carpenters and Joiners, and the Stonemasons had each emptied a warehouse, so there was plenty of room; the staff officers,
of course, were directed to the Guildhall, where Necessary Evil had laid on private quarters, hot baths and a reception with
a buffet lunch and musicians in the Old Cloister; they’d taken a gamble that it wouldn’t rain, but in all other respects nothing
had been left to chance.

“Allow me to present Colonel Dezenansa,” Staurachus said. “Colonel, this is my colleague Lucao Psellus, formerly of the compliance
directorate.”

The foreigner had taken off his plumed helmet but he was still wearing his gray cloak and under it his fish-scale armor, steel
plates the size of beech leaves and painted black. They clinked slightly every time he moved;
if I had to wear something like that and it made that noise all the time,
Psellus thought,
I’d go mad.
“Pleased to meet you,” he said; he started to extend his hand but the foreigner didn’t move. “Commissioner Psellus,” the
foreigner said.

“The Colonel is in charge of the first six squadrons,” Staurachus went on, “comprising sixteen thousand men. Their job will
be to enter Eremian territory and secure the road known as the Butter Pass. This will enable the main army, under General
Dejauzida —”

“The Butter Pass,” Psellus interrupted. “But surely that’s the long way round. And it leads you very close to the Vadani border.
Surely —”

“Quite right,” Staurachus said, with a little scowl. “Apparently Boioannes believes that there’s a risk the Vadani may misinterpret
our intentions and get drawn into the war, unless we neutralize them at the outset with a suitable show of strength. Accordingly,
the Colonel will position a thousand men at the Silvergate crossroads, thereby effectively blocking the road the Vadani would
have to take if they wanted to reach Civitas Eremiae before our army. There will, of course, be a slight loss of time in reaching
Civitas, but that hardly matters, we’ll be setting a siege when we get there, and the hold-up won’t be long enough for the
Eremians to bring in any appreciable quantities of supplies. After all,” he added with a smile, “where would they bring them
in from?”

It took Psellus an hour to get away from the reception without being too obvious about it. He went straight to the Clock Court,
where Maniacis’ office was.

“Who the hell are all these men in armor,” he demanded, “and what are they doing here?”

His friend looked up from his counting frame and grinned. “You should know,” he said. “You’re the warrior, I’m just an accountant.”

Psellus breathed in sharply; Maniacis raised his hands in supplication.

“They’re your new army,” he said. “From the old country, across the water. Jazyges, mostly, with some Bretavians and a couple
of divisions of Solatz sappers and engineers. They cost twice as much as Cure Doce, that’s without transport costs, but apparently
your old friend Boioannes reckons they’re worth it. We, of course, have to find the extra money without appearing to break
into Contingency funds. We thought we might announce a little pretend earthquake somewhere, and siphon it out through Disaster
Relief.”

“Boioannes,” Psellus repeated. “What’s he got to do with it? He’s a diplomat.”

Maniacis raised both eyebrows. “Either you’ve been cutting briefings or they’re keeping things from you,” he said. “Boioannes
is now Necessary Evil. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, he’s running the show. Don’t ask me why,” he preempted,
“there’s some things even I don’t know. In fact,” he added with a smirk, “I was going to ask you.”

Psellus sat down. “I give up,” he said. “Ever since I joined this ludicrous department I’ve been kicking my heels waiting
to be given something to do, and meanwhile they’ve imported an army from the old country and they’re planning to take it up
the Butter Pass. I might as well go home and stay there till it’s all over.”

“The Butter Pass,” Maniacis said. “You’re kidding.”

Psellus shrugged. “That’s what Staurachus just told me, him and the colonel-in-chief or whatever he was. I didn’t catch his
name —”

“Colonel Dezenansa,” Maniacis said promptly. “Quite a distinguished service record, we were lucky to get him. More an administrator
than a front-line fighter, but — I’m sorry, you were saying.”

“Perhaps,” Psellus said wearily, “you could fill me in on what you know about all this.”

Maniacis laughed. “I just did,” he said. “That’s about it. Boioannes has been maneuvering and pulling strings for months to
get his hands on Necessary Evil; all these arrangements were made for the invasion — you know, when the Eremians were invading
us, rather than the other way round — but some fool of a soldier went and cut him out by sending the scorpions. They massacred
the Eremians in about ten minutes flat, leaving Boioannes without a war to fight. He was livid, naturally; and then this abominator
of yours conveniently escapes, and the war’s back on again. Fortuitous, wouldn’t you say? Hardly interfered with the original
timetable at all.”

Psellus thought about that a lot over the next few days. He had little else to do; he’d retreated into his office (like the
Eremians, he told himself, taking refuge behind the walls of their fortified mountaintop) and was waiting for the war to come
to him. The war, however, was busy with other things and couldn’t be bothered with him. Two or three times a day, a memo came
round. It was always the same memo, very slightly amended:

Owing to unforeseen operational and administrative factors, the initial advance into Eremian territory has been rescheduled.
There will be a delay. You will be informed as soon as a new schedule has been agreed.

Sometimes the memo said “further delay” or “once again been rescheduled”; sometimes not. The name at the top was usually Boioannes,
though sometimes it was Staurachus, just occasionally Ostin Tropaeas (Psellus had never heard of him). Once it started off,
“By order of Colonel Dezenansa,” but the variation wasn’t repeated. Psellus wondered if such a divergence from the approved
text constituted an abomination.

His duty as a member of Necessary Evil was to stay in his office till called for, so that was what he did, with all his might.
To help pass the time, he read; and since there were only two books on his shelf (
Approved Specifications of the Guild of Foundrymen and Machinists
and
Collected Poetical Works of Arnaut Pegilannes
) he went back over his files on the Vaatzes case; in particular the documents in the abominator’s own handwriting, recovered
by the investigating officers from his desk in the ordnance factory. There was no point in doing this, but he did it anyway,
because he was bored.

Mostly they were technical stuff: tables of screw thread pitches, tapping drill sizes, major and minor diameters of the standard
ordnance coarse and fine threads, material codes, tables of feeds and speeds for each class of lathe and mill. Every qualified
Guildsman was expected to have his own copy, taken with infinite care from the master copy on the wall of the Guild chapterhouse.
Just for fun, Psellus dug out his own copy and compared it with Ziani’s; there were only two differences, and when he went
down to chapter he checked them and found that he was the one who’d made the mistakes, twenty-odd years ago.

There was also a small book; homemade out of offcuts of paper (crate lining, possibly) stitched together with thick waxed
thread and glued down the spine to a leather hinge that joined two covers, cut out of scrap wooden veneer. It was a neat job,
but why bother; why go to the trouble of making such a thing when you could buy a proper one from a stationer’s stall in the
market for a quarter thaler? Psellus checked himself; quite possibly, Ziani hadn’t had a quarter thaler to spare.

He opened it. The same handwriting, precisely laid out on the unruled page — on a whim he measured the spaces between the
lines with a pair of calipers, and was impressed to find that they never varied by more than thirty thousandths of an inch;
close tolerances, for a man writing freehand; writing
poetry
…

Psellus frowned. Poetry.

He read a few lines, to see if it was just something Ziani had copied out. He didn’t recognize it, and he was fairly sure
it was as homemade as the book it was written in. It was
bad
poetry. It scanned pretty well, as you’d expect from an engineer, and the rhymes were close enough for export, as the saying
went, but it was unmistakably drivel. Psellus smiled.

Her cheek is as soft as a rose’s petal

Her eyes are as dark as night

Her smile is as bright as polished metal

She is a lovely sight.

Which explained, he thought, why Ziani never quit the day job. He imagined him, sitting in his office in the old bell-tower
(he’d been to see it during the initial investigation; he’d taken this book from the desk drawer himself, and slipped it into
his pocket) on a slow day, nothing much happening; he saw him slide open the drawer and take out the book; a quick glance
round to make sure he’s alone, a dip in the ink, a furrowing of the brow; then he starts writing, beautifully even lines through
invincible force of habit; secretly, deep down, everybody on earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members
of the Poets’ Guild, who know they can’t. He hesitates, running down the alphabet for a rhyme for night (blight, cite, fight,
height), and when he reaches S a smile spreads over his face, as the finished line forms in his mind like an egg inside a
chicken.

Psellus rested the book on his desk. So what? Right across the known world, in every country with some degree of literacy,
there are millions of otherwise sane, normal, harmless people who are guilty of poetry. Maybe Vaatzes thought he was good
at it (if those long-haired layabouts can do it, it can’t be so very hard), maybe he thought he could make money at it, easier
than cutting and measuring metal all day; maybe there was a voice in his head, bees making honey in his throat, and he had
no choice but to write it down before he burst. Maybe it was a code, and really it was all secret messages from Eremian intelligence.