Devices and Desires (82 page)

“And here’s me sitting idle all day,” Miel said reproachfully. “I’d love to come and help you, even if it was just carrying
your tools for you, only I don’t think they’d let me.”

“No.” Vaatzes let his head loll forward onto his chest for a moment, then lifted it again. “I’ll come to the point,” he said.
“Frankly, I’m too tired to dress it up, even if I wanted to. The fact is, I suppose I’m here to say I’m sorry.”

Miel looked at him. “Sorry? What for?”

“For this.” Vaatzes made a vague encircling gesture. “For being responsible for you ending up here. I suppose you could call
it betrayal.”

Strange feeling; like walking into a tree, or putting your foot in a rabbit hole. “You?” Miel said stupidly.

“Me.” Vaatzes nodded. “I got hold of Duke Valens’ letter to the Duchess and I gave it to Duke Orsea. And I told him where
it came from.”

“Oh.” Miel was too amazed to be angry. He thought about getting up, but found he couldn’t. “Why?”

“Long story.”

Miel frowned. “Was it because I told Orsea I thought you were a spy, back when we found you?”

“No, certainly not,” Vaatzes said. “Though in a way, I suppose, that was partly the cause of all your troubles. It showed
you had good instincts.” He grinned, like some kind of predator. “Your master is a dangerous fool, but you’ve always made
up for that. And he trusted you far more than he trusted himself. Would you like me to tell you the long story, or at least
the part of it that concerns you?”

“I suppose so,” Miel said.

“Fine.” Vaatzes yawned again. “Please excuse me,” he said, “I’m dreadfully tired. We’ve been working on patching up the defenses
for — what, seventy-two hours without a break. When I decided to make myself indispensable around here, I didn’t realize how
much hard work I’d be letting myself in for. Can I push my luck just a little further and beg a mouthful of whatever you’ve
got in that jug?”

Miel smiled bleakly. “Help yourself,” he said. “It’s a rather pleasant sweet white wine from my estate in the Northfold.”

“Very good,” Vaatzes said, after he’d swallowed a cupful. “Though I have to say, I’ve got no taste in wine. We drink beer
and cider in Mezentia, or water. Now then, I’m not quite sure where to start. There’s a lot of background stuff that doesn’t
concern you, and it’s quite personal, but you probably won’t be able to follow the logic of the story unless I tell it to
you.”

Miel shrugged.

“Right,” Vaatzes said. He poured out half a cup of wine and put it down on the floor by his feet. “You know why I was condemned
to death back home?”

Miel pulled a face. “Sort of,” he said. “Something about making changes to a design.”

“Essentially, yes. It was a stupid thing to do. I knew it was wrong, but I thought I could get away with it. I didn’t; someone
betrayed me. I have no idea who it was, but it doesn’t really matter. I committed a terrible crime, for which I should have
been punished. Instead, I killed some innocent men and ran away —”

“Hang on,” Miel interrupted — he was still feeling completely numb and vague from the astonishment Vaatzes’ announcement had
caused; he could hear himself talking calmly and pleasantly to this man, and he wondered why. Probably, he decided, because
he didn’t really believe him. “You make it sound like you — well, like you approve of what they were planning to do to you.”

“You could put it like that.”

“Fine. So why did you escape?”

Vaatzes smiled. “For a very basic, stupid reason. I’m in love with my wife, you see. If I die, I’ll never see her again. So
I had to stay alive. It’s that simple.”

Miel frowned. “But — sorry if I’m being a bit blunt — running away, coming here, and then building all the war engines so
we could beat off the invasion. There’s no way you’ll ever be able to go home.”

“We’ll see about that,” Vaatzes said mildly. “I rather believe I will, some day. But we’re drifting away from the point. When
I came here, it didn’t take me long to realize how this country works. Basically, it’s all rather haphazard. The people who
rule this place aren’t chosen because they’re wise or talented, it goes entirely by what I believe is called the accident
of birth. To make up for that, you noblemen are trained from birth to do the jobs you’re born to; and you grow up having a
code of duty and honor drilled into you, to the point where you aren’t really in charge of your own actions. You do the right
thing, instinctively.” Vaatzes shrugged. “There are worse ways of running things,” he said. “But I saw, straight away, that
you’re the man who the Duke listens to. And that’s because he knows he’s a bad leader and you’re a better one; he’s a fool,
but clever enough to recognize a better man and let him run things. That’s why I had to get rid of you; part of it, anyway,
but the rest of it’s a bit complicated. Anyway; I asked questions. I was sure that you must have a weak spot somewhere, a
point where you’d be vulnerable, and it didn’t take me long to find it. It’s common knowledge that you were always supposed
to marry Duchess Veatriz, because that was the best possible match for both of you, politically and socially. Also, you were
more or less in love with her — not that it mattered, since the whole thing was a foregone conclusion.”

Miel shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

“Well,” Vaatzes went on, “as soon as love came into it, I knew I’d found the weak point, something I could hammer a wedge
into. Love’s always the most dangerous thing; so much of the unhappiness and quite a lot of the evil in the world comes directly
out of it. I guessed that you’d played the good loser, ever since Orsea married her, and that there’d never actually been
anything between you and her after he won and you lost. Also, I reckoned it was extremely likely that, deep inside somewhere,
Orsea would never really believe that she loves him and not you. Logical enough; he’s a fool and you’re a good man, everything
he wishes he could be but can’t. That was perfect, as far as I was concerned. Because you’re innocent, you never had anything
to hide, you never imagined you’d be vulnerable to attack on that front. All I had to do was find something wrong that I could
involve the two of you in — you and her.”

He paused and sipped his cup of wine. He looked so weary that Miel felt sorry for him, because he knew how it felt to be that
tired.

“Instinct, I guess you could call it,” Vaatzes went on. “Everything I heard about the Duchess led me to believe that she couldn’t
survive in a marriage with someone like Orsea unless she had an escape mechanism; a way of making up for everything he couldn’t
give her. I was pretty sure it wasn’t just sex or anything as basic as that; I wasn’t looking for torrid affairs with grooms
and footmen. I was sure that somewhere the Duchess had — well, a friend. I talked to servants who’d known her family. She
was always reading books when she was a child; alone most of the time, and then sent away to be a hostage, which must have
been really horrible. But she survived; and she hadn’t gone off the tracks and had affairs or anything like that. So she must
have that escape mechanism somewhere, something or someone she could turn to when she desperately needed to be herself. I
took the chance that there’d be something of the kind, and I set myself the job of finding out what it was.”

“You seem to have a remarkable grasp of human nature,” Miel said, “for an engineer.”

Vaatzes shrugged. “I use the tools and materials available to me,” he said. “If I can’t use steel, I have to use flesh instead.
Not what I’d have chosen, but you do your best with what you’ve got. People are easy enough to figure out, if you make an
effort.”

Miel shook his head but said nothing. Vaatzes went on: “The next step was to find out as much about her as I could. Servants
were the obvious source, and one of her maids told me that she often spent time alone writing. That suggested either a diary
or letters, but none of the servants had seen a diary, and it’s the kind of thing they’d notice, or know about. Letters, then;
and if so, who would she write to? Her sisters; well, that seemed reasonable enough, except I rather got the impression that
there was something furtive, guilty even, about the way she went about writing these letters. Also, none of the servants could
remember her making arrangements for letters to be sent or carried — well, a few, but not nearly enough to account for the
time she spent writing them. Now that was significant, you see. If she writes more letters than get sent, it seems likely
that she’s carrying on a correspondence she doesn’t want anybody to know about, and that the important letters are being carried
secretly.”

“What a clever man you are,” Miel said quietly.

“I’m an engineer,” Vaatzes said. “I study and understand mechanisms. This was purely a mechanical problem; more letters written
than sent, so where are they going? I thought about who might be likely to carry these secret letters, and fairly soon I decided
it must be the female merchants. They come and go freely, and they call on the Duchess regularly. She buys all sorts of stuff
from them, the servants told me, but never wears any of it. In fact, most of what she buys is hideous rubbish, which struck
the servants as odd because she’s got such good taste.”

“I never thought of that,” Miel said.

“Why should you? You weren’t actively looking for a mystery.” Vaatzes shrugged. “By this point I’d set up my factory, and
I had some dealings with the merchant women myself. I gambled on my theory being right and did a bit of gossiping with the
ladies in red, making it sound like I knew what was going on, with the merchants carrying the Duchess’ letters, and wasn’t
it an amusing little gobbet of scandal? I got some very odd looks until finally I was fortunate enough to find one who knew
what I was talking about. She assumed I was in on the secret, that I was a courier in the secret correspondence myself. That
was perfect. I found out who the letters were going to; and as soon as I knew that, everything slotted neatly into place.
It was as though some kind friend had done half my work for me. Or you could say it was a gift from heaven, if you believe
in a benign providence.”

Vaatzes paused for a moment. Telling the story had made him rather more animated, but he still looked haggard and weak, a
pitiful object.

“After that, it was a question of patient fieldwork. I arranged for servants to report the comings and goings of merchants
to me; I worked out a pattern, the usual interval between incoming letters — from Valens — and her replies. Quite by chance
— and this was almost enough to make me start believing in that benign providence — I also discovered that the merchants were
carrying information back to agents of the Republic. Which was only to be expected, of course, but it made it delightfully
easy for me to complete the circle, so to speak, and get you involved.”

“I see,” Miel said, and it was as though he’d just had a conjuring trick explained to him, or seen his opponent complete a
complex gambit at chess. “It was you who informed on that merchant, the one we arrested for spying.”

Vaatzes nodded. “The one who was carrying his letter,” he said. “Which meant it came into your hands. And I knew exactly what
you’d do. I felt sorry for you, torn between conflicting duties of terrible and equal force: your duty to Veatriz, your duty
to Orsea. I knew you’d keep the letter and try to hide it. After that, it was a simple matter to find out where your own special
hiding-place was; the one you thought only you knew about, but of course the servants had known about it for years. I had
to pay a lot of money for it, the price of a good farm —”

“Oh,” Miel said, and for the first time he felt angry. “So that’s where she got the money from.”

“Your housekeeper. She didn’t realize the harm she was doing,” Vaatzes said. “I made it sound like some trivial thing, a joke
some friends wanted to play on you. There was no malice on her part.”

“No,” Miel said softly, “I don’t suppose there was. So, it was all to destroy me, so you could deprive Orsea of my advice
and bring down the city. I suppose I’m flattered.”

“You can see it as a tribute to all your hard work for the people of Eremia.”

“Yes,” Miel said, “but it doesn’t make any sense. I can see why you’d want to bring us down. If you could prove to your people
that you’d helped win the war for them, maybe they’d forgive you and let you go home. But that’s not what you’ve been doing.
Exactly the opposite. You made it possible for
us
to win the war. You built the engines for us. Thanks to them, we killed thousands and thousands of the enemy’s soldiers and
drove them back; there’s no way they can win now, they simply haven’t got the manpower. And it’s so totally obvious that it
was you — nobody else could’ve built the scorpions — it must mean that you’re the most evil man in the world, as far as they’re
concerned. They must hate you more than ever. You’ll never be able to go home now.”

Vaatzes shrugged. “That’s another part of the mechanism,” he said, “and I’m tired, and I haven’t got the strength to go into
it tonight. I think I’ll go to bed now. I need to get some sleep; tomorrow’s going to be a very hectic day, and it’ll be an
early start. Goodnight.” He stood up. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You’ve been very kind to me, ever since we first encountered
each other. I wish I’d had the time to figure out another mechanism that didn’t involve hurting so many people. Regrettably
—”

“I ought to kill you,” Miel said. “For ruining my life, and hers, and Orsea’s. I ought to break your neck right now.”

But Vaatzes shook his head, as though they were discussing some abstraction, and he respectfully disagreed on some point.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “After all, I haven’t really done anything wrong, as far as you’re concerned. I didn’t betray
Orsea; you did that. All I did was find out about it and tell him.” He yawned again, mumbling an apology as he did so. “If
you’d done the right thing and taken the letter to Orsea straight away, as soon as you got hold of it, you wouldn’t be here
now and my schemes would’ve failed. No, I’m sorry, you can’t offload the blame on me. It was your decision. You chose her
over him.”