Devices and Desires (66 page)

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” he said.

She closed her eyes, because she wanted to scream. “Fine,” she said. “Just suppose we do the wrong thing, for once in our
lives. Well, that’d be awful, wouldn’t it? We might get into trouble for it, something bad might happen to us. Something worse
than getting killed by the Mezentines.”

She was losing control of herself, she could feel it, and he’d never seen her do that before. Of course not. He hadn’t been
there, the second time her father had sent her away, and they had had to drag her out of the house. She’d clung to the doors
and the newel-post of the stairs with both hands; her nurse had had to prise her locked fingers apart.

“Where could we go?” he said, in a tiny voice, strained through bewilderment, horror and disgust. “There isn’t anywhere. Nobody’d
have us.”

“They don’t have to know it’s us,” she spat at him. “Come on, who the hell is going to recognize you and me? We could go…”
She hesitated. “We could go to the Vadani. It’s the last place anybody would think to look for us. I could get a red dress.”

He grinned feebly. “You’re too young to be a trader.”

“My sister’s a bloody trader,” she said, far more forcefully than made sense. “She’s over there now. She’ll help us, she’s
got pots of money. Maybe even the Duke, Valens.” A tiny hesitation, as though she had to think before she remembered his name.
“I don’t know, maybe it’d be expedient for him to shelter us. Doesn’t matter. I’d rather sleep in doorways than be dead, wouldn’t
you?”

In the fairy tale, the young huntsman had loved his exotic bride very much; but when her lovely face melted and stretched
and shrunk into the wolf’s mask, he’d grabbed his falchion from the wall and cut off her head with one swift stroke. It had
never occurred to him that he might be able to live with the wolf, who probably (on balance) loved him very much. That possibility
hadn’t occurred to her when she first heard the story; probably to nobody else who’d ever been told it. Not enough room in
one cottage for two predators.

“Actually,” he said, “no.”

“Orsea!” (And she wanted to laugh, because she realized she sounded just like her mother.) “That’s just posturing. Besides,”
she went on, trying to pull back out of the muzzle and the long ears and the round black eyes, “if you really want to do what’s
best for your people, you’ve got to stay alive. Once the Mezentines have gone away, they’ll need you more than ever.”

“The few that’re left.”

“Yes, that’s right, the few that manage to hide or run away; but you can help them, you can’t help the rest of them, they’ll
be dead.” Her head was splitting; she could hardly hear herself think. And she wasn’t putting the argument across terribly
well. It had come too late, like cavalry returning from looting the enemy camp to find that the battle’s been lost while they
were away. “If you love me,” she said.

He looked at her. He wasn’t at bay anymore, he’d just given up. Sometimes an animal does that, according to King Fashion;
he stands and looks at you, and that’s the time to jump in and kill him. A heartbeat or so before she asked the question,
the answer would have been yes (shouted so loud, with such furious intensity, they could’ve heard it in Mezentia). Now, because
of the question, the answer would be, on balance, no.

“Fine,” she said, and walked out.

Boiled down to productivity figures, which was how he liked it, things were going very well. Workforce increased by forty
percent, productivity up sixty percent; they were actually turning out finished scorpions faster than the ordnance factory
at home. Not that it could last, because pretty soon they’d run out of timber and quarter plate and spring steel and three-eighths
rod — by his most recent calculations, ten days before the city fell — but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though he was
planning on building a career here.

With three day shifts and two night shifts, the place was never quiet. That was something he missed, the peace and solitude
of his room at the top of the tower, when everybody had gone home and he had the place to himself. There was a different kind
of solitude now, but it had no nutritional value. Still, it wouldn’t be for long.

Instead of the tower room (too many people knew to look for him there) he’d taken to hiding in the small charcoal store. Which
was ludicrous; he was in charge of the place, it was his factory, he had no business hiding anywhere from anybody. But there
were times when he needed to think, work out figures, deal with small modifications to the design, improvements or fixes.
Also, he was sick to death of Eremians (so pale, so stupid).

After several false starts he’d contrived to smuggle a chair down there. He was working on a plan to get a table to go with
it, and maybe even a better lamp, but it was still in its early stages. For now, he had the chair to sit in, and the wan light
of a reed wick floating in thrice-reused tallow. Strip off the garbage, and what more could a man ask?

He knew the answer to that, and he was working on it (but all in good time). The immediate concern was the wire-drawing plates,
which were going to have to be either refurbished or replaced within the next three days. It was a ridiculous, fatuous thing
to have to think about. In the real world, in the City, all he’d need to do was send a requisition down to the stores for
two eighteen-by-tens of inch plate. But there was no such thing as inch plate in Civitas Eremiae. Instead, he’d have to take
six men off the forge and set them to bashing down a bloom of iron by hand. Six man-days wasted, and that was before they
started trying to punch the holes.

If only we weren’t at war with the Mezentines, we could send out for inch plate from the Foundrymen’s; and in the City, when
they said inch, they meant inch, not inch-and-a-thirty-second-in-places-and-twenty-nine-thirty-seconds-in-others. Really,
he was doing the world a service, because a nation that can’t read a simple caliper isn’t fit to survive.

But… He scowled into the darkness. A wide tolerance, a whole sixteenth of an inch of abomination didn’t actually matter in
this case, because a wire-plate is just a primitive chunk of iron with a hole in it (he wanted it to matter, but it didn’t).
Even so, six man-days lost would cost the defenders a scorpion. One scorpion could loose twelve bolts a minute, seven hundred
bolts an hour. At an estimated thirty percent efficiency rating, the wire-plates would save the lives of two hundred and thirty
Mezentines —

He heard a boot scrape on the stairs, and looked up. Just when he’d thought he was safe, but apparently not. “I’m in here,”
he called out, “did you want me for something?” It seemed they didn’t, because there was no reply. That was all right, then.

He tried to go back to his calculation, seven hundred divided by three, but he’d lost the thread. The lamp guttered. He pulled
out his penknife and set off to trim the wick, crunching and staggering awkwardly on the piles of charcoal underfoot.

The wick was fine; must just have been a waft of air from somewhere. He straightened up, and heard another soft crunch, just
like the ones he’d been making himself as he clambered over the charcoal heaps.

Of course, he had no time to shape a plan or design a mechanism. Instead, he stooped, grabbed the lamp and threw it as hard
as he could. For a very short moment it was a tiny comet in the darkness, then a little ball of fire, then nothing. He heard
the tinkle of the lamp breaking, and another noise, a soft grunt.

He had his penknife, one thin inch of export-grade Mezentine steel; and he had the darkness, and the sound of crushed charcoal.
It wasn’t much, but it would have to be everything.

If he moved, the hunter would hear him; and the other way round, of course, but the hunter presumably had fearsome weapons
and great skill. He tried to think his way into the enemy’s mind. He would have to be quick, both to hear and to act. He waited.

As soon as he heard the soft grinding, squashing noise of charcoal underfoot, he took a step — sideways, to the right, a random
choice, but unpredictability was his best ally against the hunter’s approach, which would be methodical and progressive. He
reached out as far as he could with his left hand, keeping his right close to his body. Each time the hunter moved, he took
a step of his own. The hardest part was controlling his breathing. Fear made him want to pant; instead he drew in air as smoothly
as a good workman turning the lathe carriage handle to keep the cut fine, and let it go at precisely the same rate. That actually
helped a little; the fog in his head started to clear, and he could see his thoughts, big and slow as a ship drifting in moonlight.

Now he could begin to work out the logical pattern. Someone must’ve told the hunter where to find him, so it was reasonable
to assume the hunter knew the shape of the room. He recalled the dimensions, twenty feet by ten, with one door in the southwest
corner. The pattern would therefore be from side to side. A man zigzagging down the length of the room with his arms outstretched
would have a fair chance of touching another man in the dark, even if the prey was flat to the wall. Logical behavior for
the prey would be to crouch and become as small as possible; logical meant predictable, and so that was what he couldn’t do.
Instead, his best course of action —

He’d moved too far, two steps to his enemy’s one, because his own crunch wasn’t echoed. He cringed at his own stupidity, caused
by a failure to concentrate. Instinct yelled at him to make a charge, either to find and kill or to escape. He made an effort
and wrestled the instinct down.

His best course of action was to become the hunter instead of the prey (because the first question the assassin would ask
his inside source would be,
is he likely to be armed?
and the answer would’ve been
no
). It was unfortunate that he knew absolutely nothing about fighting; the last time he’d fought, he’d been nine, and he’d
lost conclusively. Mezentines didn’t fight. Of course, he wasn’t a Mezentine anymore.

But he had the darkness on his side; also the fact that the last charcoal delivery had been late, and two night shifts had
had to take their fuel from the reserve store. Obviously, they’d have loaded from nearest the door; but if they shoveled in
a straight line, as reasonable men might be assumed to do, would there not be a clear, therefore silent path a shovel’s breadth
up the line of the southern wall? The enemy was between him and the door, there was no real chance of slipping by except by
fluke, but if he could walk unheard…

Time was running low; he made a fair estimate of how long the pattern would take to execute, based on an average length of
stride and his own progress. By now, both of them had to be fairly close to the middle of the room, but if he could make it
across to the south wall, he’d have a little advantage, which would be all he’d need.

He moved with the crunch, and as his foot came down he heard another grunt. But it was in the wrong place, too far back. There
were two of them.

Well, of course, there would be. The Perpetual Republic were no cheapskates, they wouldn’t send only one man, like a lone
hero charged with slaying a dragon. That made the south wall essential to his chances of survival, because the man on the
door would be stationary; King Fashion would’ve called him the stop, while his colleague would be the beater. The crunch came
and he moved with it, but his foot made no sound. He reached out with his right hand, a desperate risk but forced by necessity,
and felt stone.

Now he had to stay still. If, by sheer bad luck, the hunter’s pattern happened to bring him here, all he could hope for was
the random advantage of the encounter. He wondered how perceptive the hunter was; would he notice the absence of the double
footfall, and would he interpret it correctly? On balance, Vaatzes hoped his enemy was clever but not brilliant.

He heard two more steps, then a long pause. The missing sound had been noticed and was being duly considered. Because he was
standing still, at last he could use his enemy’s sound to place him. Excellent; he was nearer to the middle than the south
wall, so the pattern should take him clear away, northeast or northwest didn’t matter. Very carefully, as though he was scribing
a line, Vaatzes began to edge down the south wall toward the door.

Tactically, of course, he was taking a substantial risk, now that he was in the middle between his two enemies. If he couldn’t
get through or past the stop quickly enough, the beater would be on him from the flank or the rear. He’d never read any military
manuals so he was working from first principles, but he could see all too clearly how a clever plan badly or unluckily carried
out must be worse than simple, stolid standing and fighting. Too late to be sensible now, though.

Four more crabbed paces, by his calculations; then he stooped, careful of his balance, and groped for a fair-sized chunk of
charcoal. He found one and tossed it high in the air. The noise it made when it landed was all wrong, of course — it sounded
like a lump of charcoal landing on a charcoal-covered floor — but all he needed to achieve was a moment’s bewilderment.

A moment, of course, was all he had. He allowed enough time for the stop to turn and face the noise; that’d be instinct, and
now he knew fairly well how his enemy would be standing, the direction his head and shoulders would be facing in. He took
a long stride forward and another to the left, crunching his foot down hard in the murrain of charcoal beside the cleared
path. Then he brought his right arm across in a wide, fast arc.

He felt an impact, and something hot and wet splashed in his face. It was all he could do not to shout in triumph, because
he’d plotted it all out so precisely, inch-perfect, making the target turn so his neck-vein would be presented at the optimum
angle to his sweeping cut, and here was his enemy’s blood on his face to prove he’d got it right. No time for that now; with
his left hand he reached out, grabbed, felt his fingers close on empty air, quickly recalculated allowing for the dying man
falling to the ground, grabbed again and felt his fingertips snag in loose cloth. All the dying man’s weight was pulling on
his fingers, mechanical advantage was against him, but he managed to find the brute strength to haul the mass across and behind
him. The knife was no good to him now. He opened his fingers and let it fall as his right hand groped for the door. He found
the bar handle just as loud crunches behind him told him that the beater was coming for him. Now it was just running, something
he’d never been any great shakes at.