Evil for Evil (29 page)

Two days, and he was so sick of the place he'd have given anything just to walk away. Simply staying was like trying to hold his breath, an intolerable pressure inside him. Two days did nothing to acclimatize him to the noise and the dust; if anything, their effect was cumulative, so that he noticed them more, not less. Unfortunately, the job wasn't going well. The steel turned up exactly on time, as Carnufex had guaranteed, but not the anvils, the tools or the ten Eremian blacksmiths he'd been promised faithfully before he left Civitas Vadanis. Even Carnufex had no luck trying to track them down, and without them, nothing could be done. On the evening of the second day, Carnufex told him the adjutant would be arriving tomorrow and maybe he'd be able to get it sorted out; he seemed uncharacteristically vague and tentative, which Ziani reckoned was a very bad sign.

There'd been some progress, however; mostly due, it had to be said, to Gace Daurenja. He'd taken measurements in nine of the twelve ventilation shafts, hanging out of the winch bucket with a lantern gripped in his teeth, with seventy feet of sheer drop waiting to catch him if he happened to slip. Ziani could hardly bear to think about it, but Daurenja didn't seem bothered in the least, while the plans he produced (working on them at night after an eighteen-hour day in the bucket) were masterpieces of clear, elegant draftsmanship, and annotated in the most beautiful lettering Ziani had ever seen (when he asked about that, Daurenja attributed it to the time he'd spent copying manuscripts for a society bookseller). The only thing he seemed bothered about was how long the job was taking him, and Ziani had to tell him to stop apologizing for being so slow.

He'd drawn up the plans for the cages himself, taking his time for want of anything else to do. Carnufex had let him use his office as a drawing room; he could still hear the noise, and the dust managed to get in somehow, in spite of shutters on the windows and curtains on the doors, but at least it was tolerable, and the slow, familiar work helped take his mind off the misery of it all. If he tried really hard, he could almost fool himself into thinking that he was back in the city at the ordnance factory, and that the hammering was the slow, constant heartbeat of the trip-hammers, and the dust was foundry soot, and the men who came when he shouted were his own kind, not barbarians.

On the third day he decided he'd had enough. The adjutant had arrived and spent a thoroughly unpleasant evening being quietly shouted at by Carnufex, but there was still no clue as to the whereabouts of the anvils or the tools, let alone the blacksmiths. That, as far as Ziani was concerned, wasn't good enough. He called Daurenja and gave him a letter.

"I want you to ride back to the city," he said, "and give this to Duke Valens personally. Wait for a reply."

Daurenja nodded sharply, a picture of grim determination. "Right away," he said.

"Leave it to me." He was out of the office before Ziani had a chance to tell him where to find a horse or collect his conduct letters, which he'd have to produce before he'd be allowed past the sentries at the palace gate. Presumably he didn't feel the need, or thought that that'd be cheating; Ziani pictured him scaling the palace wall with a grappling hook and crawling down a chimney into the Duke's bedroom. Wouldn't put it past him, at that.

He'd finished the last of the plans, and cramp made going outside an unpleasant necessity. This time he walked up to the sluices where the ore was washed. He wasn't particularly interested in that stage of the operation, but he'd already looked at everything else. The foreman seemed happy enough to explain the procedures to him.

"That other bloke was up here yesterday, asking," the foreman added, after a long and rather confusing account of how the crushed ore was washed through the strakes. "But I don't think he was taking much of it in. Kept interrupting and asking questions; didn't make much sense to me."

"The other bloke?" Ziani asked.

"The long, thin bloke. You know, him who's been measuring the vents."

"Oh," Ziani said, "him. What did he want to know?" The foreman shook his head. "Not sure. I was telling him how we get all the shit out, calamine and pyrites and sulfur. But I think he must've lost the thread, because he kept asking what we did with the stuff we took out; and I told him, it's just washed away, it's garbage, we don't want it. He got a bit excited about that, like I was doing something wrong; then he said
thank you for your time
, all stiff and uptight, and went storming off in a right old state." The foreman shrugged, expressing a broad but reluctant tolerance of lunatics. "I told him, if the stuff's any good to him he's welcome to it, if he can figure out a way of collecting it, but I think he thought I was trying to be funny."

Ziani scowled. "Calamine," he said.

"And pyrites, sulfur, red lead, all that shit. I suppose there's people who can find a use for anything."

"I'll ask him when he gets back," Ziani replied. "But that won't be for at least a week."

Wrong. Daurenja came back two days later, in a thunderstorm, riding on the box of a large, broad-wheeled cart. There were four other carts behind him, carrying crates covered with tarpaulins, anvils sticking out from under heavy waxed covers, and half a dozen wet, bemused-looking men who proved to be the first installment of the promised blacksmiths.

"They didn't want to let me in to see the Duke," Daurenja said, standing bare-headed in the yard with the rain running down his spiked hair like millraces and puddling around his feet. "They said I needed a pass or a certificate or something. But I got through all right. I'm afraid I'm rather used to getting my own way." Ziani pulled his collar round his ears. He was having to shout to make himself heard above the splashing. "How did you manage that?" he said. Daurenja frowned. "To be honest, I lost my temper a little; and one of the guards shoved me—at least, he was just about to, but I beat him to it. There was a bit of a scuffle, and that brought the duty officer out, and I said I had an urgent message for the Duke, from you. The adjutant had the common sense to take me straight to the Duke. He was just sitting down to dinner, but he agreed to see me right away. I gave him the letter, and I could see he was absolutely livid. He sent for the Chancellor and gave him quite a talking-to, with me standing right next to him able to hear every word. The poor man went bright red in the face, and then a footman or something of the sort took me to one of the guest rooms. Everything was ready by dawn the next day, all signed for and loaded on the carts. We were on the road by mid-morning, and well, here we are."

Ziani frowned. "And he was all right, was he? About you hitting one of the guards?"

"He didn't mention it," Daurenja said, and Ziani couldn't tell whether he was lying or telling the truth. "There's some sort of diplomatic thing going on, important foreign guests. I think the Duke's planning to get married or something. Anyhow, as soon as he realized I was there on your behalf, he dropped everything and saw to it that we got our supplies straightaway. That's a good sign, isn't it?" Ziani shrugged. "Business before pleasure," he replied, "though from what I've seen of Valens, I don't suppose state receptions are his idea of fun. Maybe he was just glad of an excuse to get away from all the socializing. Look, can we get in out of this bloody rain, please?"

The storms faded away as quickly as they'd come; in the morning it was bright and dry, perfect conditions for open-air iron-working. As well as the things Ziani had asked for in his list, the carts had brought a genuine Mezentine-made reciprocating saw, complete with a drive belt and spare pulleys; Ziani had told the Duke in passing how helpful such a thing would be for cutting the iron bar-stock to length, but he'd never imagined he'd ever see one again. He had no idea where Valens or his agents had contrived to get it from, but that didn't matter. It was like meeting an old friend in the middle of the desert, and he'd had it carried over to one of the wheel towers and connected up to the spindle while the rest of the carts were still being unloaded.

"You're in love," Carnufex said, as Ziani put in the drive and watched the flywheel spin. Ziani shook his head.

"This is better than love," he said. "This is home." Carnufex laughed. "I can't figure you out," he said. "Ever since I've known you, all you've done is witter on about how wonderful everything Mezentine is, and how much better they do things there. If I'd been shafted by my country as badly as you have, I'd snarl like a wolf every time somebody mentioned the place. I certainly wouldn't keep telling everybody how splendid it all is. Or is it just the people in charge you don't like?"

Ziani straightened up. The power feed was running perfectly. "Would you really?" he said. "Hate your country, I mean, if you had to leave it?"

"Of course not," Carnufex said. "But if they tried to put me to death for something I didn't do—"

"Oh, I did it." Ziani smiled.

"But it was stupid. You made some kind of clockwork doll for your kid."

"That's right."

Carnufex thought for a moment. "Fine," he said. "Apparently, you seem to think that making kids toys ought to be a capital offense. I don't quite see how you can believe that, but never mind. If you thought it was wrong, really, really bad, why the hell did you do it?"

Ziani looked at him as though he thought the answer might be hidden somewhere in his face. "That," he said, "is a very good question. Because I thought I could get away with it, I suppose. Why does anybody ever do something wicked?"

"You're strange," Carnufex said.

"Not in the least," Ziani replied. "It's no different from robbing people in the street. You know it's wrong. It's against the law, if you get caught, you'll be punished. You know it's wrong; you wouldn't like it if someone did it to you. But people still do it, because they need money, because they're just lazy and greedy. In my case, I suppose it must have been arrogance."

"You suppose. You don't know."

Ziani furrowed his brow. "No, actually, I don't, now you come to mention it. At least, I haven't thought about it very much since. Maybe I ought to, I don't know." Carnufex looked as though he wanted to end the conversation and walk away before he was moved to say something undiplomatic, but after a moment's indecision he took a step closer. "Maybe you should," he said. "It might help you figure out where your loyalties lie, right now."

"Oh, no question about that," Ziani said. "And in case you're having doubts, you might care to consider what I did for the Eremians. If you could've seen what the scorpions I made did to the Mezentines, I don't think you'd be worrying about whose side I'm on." He shook his head. "You can love someone and want to hurt them as much as possible," he said, "that's perfectly normal behavior."

"Normal," Carnufex repeated. "All right, but that's not what we were talking about. You were saying you did this thing, making the clockwork doll, that you knew was wicked and bad, but you can't remember offhand why you did it. That's…" He shrugged, as if to say there weren't any words for what that was.

"You're right," Ziani said, "it's strange. I'll have to think about that. Meanwhile, perhaps we ought to be getting some work done. Have you seen Daurenja this morning?"

"Daurenja." Carnufex scowled. "I meant to have a word with you about him. He's been annoying my foremen."

"Annoying?"

"Wasting their time. Getting under their feet. Asking them all sorts of bloody stupid questions and then insulting them when they say they don't know the answer. Look, I know he reports directly to you, but can't you talk to him? If he carries on like that, someone's going to lose their temper and damage him; presumably he's useful to you, so it'd be as well if you spoke to him about it."

"He's…" Ziani shrugged. "Fine, yes, I'll deal with it. Now, I want the long steel sections fetched over here so we can start cutting, and I want the anvils carried over to the small ore furnace, we can use it as a forge without any major modifications. Can you get the ore shed cleared out? I want to set up the small portable forges there for riveting."

Carnufex had the grace to know when he was beaten. He nodded submissively as Ziani reeled off his list of jobs to be done, and withdrew in good order, leaving his opponent in possession of the field. Nevertheless, it wasn't a victory as far as Ziani was concerned; he'd been forced into a lie, which he resented, especially since it was essentially self-deception.

On the other hand, the mechanical saw made up for a lot. He watched it gliding through six-inch square section bar, smoke curling up out of the cut as one of the men dribbled oil into it, a drop at a time. The sheer joy of seeing something done properly, after so long among the savages…

"Is that what I think it is?" Daurenja, peering over his shoulder; he wanted to shudder and pull away, as though a spider had run across his face. "Mezentine?"

"I never realized they exported them," Ziani replied, and there was a hint of doubt in his voice. Surely it was wrong to sell something like this to the barbarians, in case they tried to copy it for themselves. A right-thinking man, a patriot, might feel betrayed. "Apparently they do. Well, it's the basic model."