Devices and Desires (49 page)

Elements of Chess,
by Galazo Vaatzes.

It was an ancient, tatty book, perhaps as much as thirty years old. The lettering on the spine wasn’t Guild cursive or italic,
and the binding was rough and uneven: pitched canvas stuck onto thin wood (packing-crate lath, maybe) with rabbitskin size,
the sort they used in the plaster works. A homemade book, rather like one he’d seen recently. It fell open at the flyleaf:
Elements of Chess: being a memorial of various innovations and strategies collected or invented by Me, Galazo Vaatzes; herein
recorded for the benefit of my son Ziani, on the occasion of his fourth birthday.
Followed by a date; he’d been out by a year. The book was thirty-one years old.

Back in his office he laid the two books on his desk, side by side: two acts of love, one by a father to his son, the other
(he assumed) by a husband to his wife. Between them they were trying to tell him something (the purpose of a book is to communicate)
but he wasn’t quite sure what it was.

One of them, the abominator’s awkward and labored love poetry, had a nice, clean provenance, but how had the other one got
here? Someone had brought it in, on its own or together with other books, and sold it. His first thought was the liquidator
of confiscated assets; but there had been a specific order against confiscation in the Vaatzes case (why was that?), and all
the chattels at the Vaatzes house had reverted to the wife as her unencumbered property. So; maybe Ziani Vaatzes had sold
it himself at some point, when he needed money, as so many people did from time to time. Entirely plausible, but he doubted
it (unless Ziani hadn’t got on with his father, and therefore had no qualms about getting rid of the book). He could have
given it to a friend as a present, and the friend disposed of it.

He looked again. The younger Vaatzes was a better craftsman than his father, but at least the old man hadn’t purported to
write poetry. Just for curiosity’s sake, he played out one or two of Galazo Vaatzes’ gambits in his mind (memories of playing
chess with his own father, who never managed to grasp the simple fact that children need to win occasionally) and found them
unexpectedly ingenious. After the first four or so, they became too complicated for him to follow without a board and a set
of pieces in front of him, but he was prepared to take their merits on trust. The seventh gambit was annotated, in handwriting
he knew. At some point, Ziani had found a flaw in his father’s strategy and made a note of it to remind himself.

Do engineers usually make good chess-players? He thought about that. He could think of one or two — his father, his uncle
— but he’d never been any great shakes at the game himself; the data was inconclusive. The effort involved in making the book;
there was something in that, he felt sure. Was it a family tradition, the making of books out of scrounged and liberated materials?
Interesting if it was (and had the person who sold this one also disposed of further generations of the tradition; only one
shop in Mezentia, but perhaps all the rest had already been bought by the time he got there). He found himself back at that
strange moment of disposal. Who had sold the book, and why?

Wherever I go, he thought, he follows me; like a ghost haunting me, trying to tell me something. As to why he would choose
me to confide in; mystifying, but perhaps simply because there’s nobody else with the inclination — and, of course, the leisure
— to listen. He closed his eyes, and found himself watching a chess game, father against son; father winning, unable to defy
his principles and lose on purpose, angry that his son is such a weak opponent; he wants his son to beat him, but refuses
to give anything away. The father is, of course, Matao Psellus, and the son is poor disappointing Lucao, who never really
liked the game anyway (and so he applied himself to a different but similar game, whose gambits and ploys have brought him
here).

Matao Psellus never wrote a book for his son. It would never have occurred to him to do anything of the sort. Yet here were
two books, two acts of stifled love, like water bursting through a cracked pipe and soaking away into the dirt. As he studied
them, Psellus felt sure he could sense the presence of a third, whereby the chess-book had come into his hands, but he couldn’t
quite make it out — he could see the end result, but not the workings of the mechanism by which that result was achieved.

Ariessa Vaatzes; she needed money, and she knows he’s never coming back. Even so, he thought, even so. She might have sold
his clothes, which were replaceable, or the furniture, or anything else. What would she have got for it? He’d paid two doubles
and a turner, the price of three spring cabbages; suppose she’d got half of that, or a third. You can eat cabbages but not
a book, said a small, starved voice in his mind. It had a point, he was prepared to concede, but he was sure there was more
to it than that.

It was all beside the point, since Vaatzes would be dead soon, along with all the Eremians and quite a few of those invisible
soldiers he wasn’t allowed to see. He put one book away, opened the other, put his feet up on the desk (holiday, remember)
and tried to visualize a chessboard.

“Lucao.” The voice came from above and behind. “I’m glad to see we’re not working you to death.”

He sat up sharply, dragging his feet off the desk. The book shot onto the floor, and the spine burst. “Zanipulo,” he said.
“There you are at last. I’ve been trying to talk to you for ages.”

“Quite,” Staurachus replied. “Well, here I am. Meeting in ten minutes, in the cloister. Perhaps you didn’t get the memo.”

“Memo?” Psellus looked up at him stupidly, as though he’d never heard the expression before. “No, I haven’t seen any memos.”
As he said it, he caught sight of a piece of paper on the desk that hadn’t been there when he left to go shopping. It said
MEMORANDUM at the top in big square letters. “Sorry, I —”

“Just as well I checked,” Staurachus said, and left.

Psellus snatched at the paper; his sleeve fanned up a breeze that wafted it just beyond the reach of his fingers, off the
desk onto the floor. He sighed, stooped and retrieved it.

The war had woken up, apparently. No explanation, just as there’d been none when it was canceled, or adjourned. He read the
memo again, just in case he’d missed something. Ten minutes; he could just about reach the cloister if he ran.

“Splendid,” said Jarnac Ducas. A big smile split his handsome, suntanned face, curling the ends of his mustache down over
the corners of his mouth. He tapped the lower plate of a gorget with his knuckle; it sounded like someone knocking at a door.

“There’s still two sets of cuisses to do,” Ziani said, watching him, “but they’ll be ready in plenty of time. I’ll bring them
with me on the day, shall I?”

Just the faintest of frowns, until Jarnac remembered that Ziani was invited to the hunt. “Yes, why not? That’ll be fine. Excellent
work. You must let me know how much I owe you.”

Behind him, Cantacusene was standing awkwardly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, as though being in the presence
of a scion of the Ducas was more honor than he could endure. Extraordinary, the attitude of these people. What puzzled Ziani
was the fact that he himself had never shown the slightest degree of deference or respect to any of them, not even Miel Ducas
or the Duke, and nobody had seemed to notice. Because he was a foreigner, presumably.

“I’ve been reading the books you lent me,” Ziani went on — another slight frown; Jarnac had forgotten he’d sent round copies
of
King Fashion
and the
Mirror.
“Fascinating stuff. I’m looking forward to it.”

“Splendid.” Jarnac’s smile widened. It was entirely possible that he genuinely enjoyed giving pleasure to others less fortunate
than himself, provided it was one of his own pleasures, and he wouldn’t have to go without in order to do so. “So we may make
a huntsman of you yet, then.” He looked away, back at the sets of newly buffed and polished armor laid out on the long table.
He really did seem pleased (why am I surprised? Ziani thought).

“I’ll have it sent round this evening, if that’s convenient,” he said. “Obviously there may need to be a few adjustments for
fit and so forth.”

Jarnac nodded; probably he wasn’t listening. It was difficult being in the presence of somebody this large. He wasn’t just
taller and broader than anyone Ziani had ever seen before; it was as though he used space in a different way, as though he
was used to a much bigger world and hadn’t quite adjusted to living among midgets. “Excellent work,” he said, “first rate.
And I’ll be seeing you on the day, of course. Can’t promise anything — you never can, in hunting — but I’ve been setting aside
the beeches up above the long lake, we haven’t been in there with the lymers or the wolfhounds, and the farmers reckon there’s
been at least one big boar rootling about round there. I’ll be sending someone up to feed the outer covers, see if we can’t
draw a hog or two out from the thick stuff in the middle. They won’t stick around during the day, of course, but at least
there’ll be a trail for the dogs to follow.”

Ziani smiled pleasantly. He had an idea that Jarnac talked mostly to himself, through the medium of his listeners. It would
be nice, however, if he could make him go away, so he could get on with his work. “Would you like to see round the factory?”
he said. “We’ve just finished putting in a new treadle saw; I believe it’s the only one of its kind outside Mezentia.”

Infallible. It’s a curious fact that boring people seem to have a mortal fear of being bored by others. Jarnac thanked and
congratulated him once again, reminded him to send in his bill as soon as possible, and strode away, ducking to avoid the
beams and the doorframe.

“Pleasant enough man,” Ziani observed. “But I prefer his cousin, the other Ducas. Doesn’t talk quite so much.”

Cantacusene looked at him. “He’s the cadet branch,” he said. “Jarnac Ducas, I mean.”

“Ah,” Ziani said. “Is that a good thing? I don’t understand about nobility.”

“Means Jarnac won’t ever be in line to be head of the family, not unless all the other branch get wiped out before he does.”

“I see. So really, Jarnac isn’t anyone special.”

A look of disgust and horror flitted across Cantacusene’s face, and Ziani realized he’d committed yet another abomination.
He wasn’t all that interested, anyway. He wanted to get the last few bits of leather cut out, so he could go and look at the
scorpion locks. Cantacusene walked away, clearly not trusting himself to speak.

In the main shop, they were cutting quarter-inch plate on the big shear. It was, if anything, worse than the leather shear
he’d been using himself. It wasn’t even Mezentine-made, and the handle was a broken-off stub with a length of bent iron pipe
peened over it. Luckily, the tolerances for the lock plates were broad. He didn’t recognize any of the faces around him, but
they’d all know who he was, the only brown-skinned man in Eremia. Some of them looked up, others looked in the opposite direction.
All in all, he’d met with far less resentment and hatred than he’d expected, given that his people had only recently massacred
the flower of the Eremian army. An Eremian wouldn’t last a day in the ordnance factory at home.

He left them to it and wandered over to the filing bench, where two men were cutting teeth into gear-wheels. They were better
at it than he’d expected. They were standing right, weight on both feet equally, square to the bench, holding the file level
and true. He’d marked out the pattern piece himself; all they had to do was scribe round it onto each wheel, then follow the
scribed lines as closely as they could. Back home, of course, a machine would be doing this job, a hundred times faster and
much more accurately.

One of the men was old. His thin, wiry forearms ended in broad, clenched hands with huge knuckles, and he bent close over
his work to be able to see the scratched line. Ziani saw that he’d rubbed the piece over with candle-soot mixed with spit,
to make the line show up better. At home they used a special dark blue paste.

“How’s it going?” he asked. He noticed that he was speaking a bit louder than usual; either because he assumed the old man
must be deaf, or because subconsciously he was imitating Jarnac Ducas.

The man didn’t look up. “This file’s no good,” he said. “Blunt.”

“Chalk it,” Ziani said.

“Done that,” the old man said. “And carded it. No good. It’s not clogged, it’s blunt.”

“Let me see,” Ziani said. It was a Mezentine three-square file, with a Guild mark; the letter next to the stamped lion’s head
told him it was no more than a year old. He ran the pad of his forefinger over the teeth. “You’re right,” he said. “Funny.
Have you been cutting hardening steel with it?”

The old man shook his head. “My best file,” he said. “Only ever used it for brass and latten.”

For some reason, Ziani couldn’t help taking it personally; his Guild had made the file, to Specification, so it ought to be
perfect; but it had failed before its time, and that was wrong. The foreman of the tool works ought to be on charges for something
like that. “I’ll get you a new one,” Ziani said and went to go, but the old man grabbed his arm.

“Where are you going with my file?” he said.

“But it’s no good,” Ziani said. “You said so yourself.”

“It’s my file. Give it back.”

Ziani put it down on the bench, went to the tool chest in the corner and found a three-square file, brand new, still in its
grease. “Here,” he said to the old man. “Yours to keep.”

The old man scowled at it, took it, rubbed his fingertip over the base of the tang, where the Guild marks were. “Needs a handle,”
he said.

Ziani picked a file at random off the bench, knocked the handle off against the bench-leg and handed it to him. He tapped
it into place, then put the file carefully away in his apron pocket.

“Fine,” Ziani said. “Apart from the blunt file, how’s it going?”

The old man shrugged. “Foreman said file out the notches in these wheels, so that’s what I’m doing. Don’t ask me what they’re
for, I don’t know.”