Evil for Evil (29 page)

Ziani sighed, and stopped in his tracks. “Would it be all right if we talked about this tomorrow?” he said. “Only it’s been
a long day, I can’t really think straight.”

“Oh.” Disappointment; the yapping dog finding out it wasn’t being taken for a walk after all. “Of course, I understand. But
if you’re at a loose end and you felt like turning it over in your mind, I’m sure you could figure out a much better way of
doing it.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Meanwhile —”

“Yes, right. Thanks, and see you tomorrow. We’re making a start on assembling the frames on site, are we? Or are we going
to do a trial run first, just to make sure everything fits before we lug the whole lot underground?”

Ziani hadn’t thought of that, and it was a valid point. It’d be a nightmare if they dragged the components down the tunnels
only to find that they wouldn’t fit together. “Well of course,” he snapped. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean —”

“That’s all right.” Ziani drew on his last scratchings of patience and stamina. “Yes, we’ll do a dry run up here first thing,
and if all goes well we can shift the bits and pieces down the mine say around mid-morning. See to it that everybody’s there
on time, will you?”

“Of course.” Ziani was struck by the total absence of fatigue in Daurenja’s voice. They’d both done more than a full day’s
work, but Daurenja sounded as fresh and insufferably bouncy as ever. “Well, if you don’t need me for anything else tonight,
I’ll turn in. I can get a couple of hours’ work done on my designs.” Short pause. “It’s very good of you to agree to take
a look at them. I really appreciate that.”

“No problem,” Ziani yawned. He had no recollection whatsoever of agreeing to anything, but presumably he’d made some kind
of grunting noise while Daurenja had been yapping at him and he hadn’t been listening. In any event, too late now to go back
on his word. Sliders, he thought, and hadn’t there been something about a two-piece receiver head? He thought for a moment,
but he couldn’t begin to imagine what Daurenja’s pet project could possibly be. “See you tomorrow.”

“Later today, actually,” Daurenja chirped. “It’s past midnight already. Time flies, doesn’t it?”

No, Ziani thought, and went to bed.

Needless to say, he was by this point far too tired to sleep. Instead, he lay on his back with his hands behind his head,
his eyes shut, contemplating a design of his own. He’d reached the point now when it was there every time he closed his eyes,
like the afterburn of looking directly at the sun. Too weary to think constructively, he contented himself with tracing the
main lines, ignoring the details: the beginning, parts already made, fitted and in operation, beginning with his escape from
the Guildhall, his infiltration of the Eremian court, the making of the scorpions, the betrayal and sack of Civitas Eremiae,
the dual use he’d made of Duchess Veatriz. In his mind’s eye, those parts of the design were dull gray, the remaining mechanisms
in that section that had already been built but which weren’t yet in service standing out in black or red. He considered them,
as he’d done so many times before, and conceded that they were satisfactory. Next he contemplated the middle: not much gray
here, plenty of black and red, and a few hazy clusters of dotted lines here and there where he knew a sub-mechanism was needed
but where he hadn’t yet attended to the details of their design. As always, he picked up one or two slight errors, minor infringements
of tolerance, parts that had moved or distorted slightly under load. There was Miel Ducas, for example; also the salt-trader’s
widow, Duke Valens, possibly the Mezentines. Fortunately the divergences were slight and he could take up the play easily
by tightening the jibs.

As for the final section: thinking about it for too long was uncomfortable, because it was so hard to see past the tangles
of dotted lines to the firm, strong black and red beyond. In particular, there was the huge gap just before the end. Having
talked to the miners, he knew that the expedient he’d been relying on to plug that gap wasn’t going to be up to the job; but
as yet he hadn’t been able to think of anything to take its place. There was something, he knew; he remembered hearing something,
or reading it, a very long time ago, but he’d taken no notice at the time. Now, for some reason, whenever he contemplated
the deficiency, his thoughts had a strange tendency to turn to Daurenja, as though he could possibly have something to do
with it. But that was unlikely. When he’d outlined the final part of the movement, he hadn’t even known that Daurenja existed.

Thinking about him made his head ache. The trouble was, he was infuriatingly useful; competent, more than competent, at anything
he was asked to do. The more Ziani used him, however, the less comfortable he felt. What was it that Carnufex had been complaining
about? Hanging round while people were working, asking strange and irritating questions. Well, that sounded plausible enough.
Something about calamine, or pyrites, wasn’t it? What the hell would any rational man want with garbage like that?

I could get rid of him, he thought, and then I wouldn’t find myself relying on him anymore, and that’d be a good thing in
itself. He felt the tug of that idea, but fought it. Appalling enough that he’d reached the point where he could comfortably
think in disgraceful euphemisms:
get rid of
for
send to his death.
The simple truth was, he didn’t like Daurenja, a man who apparently worshipped him as some kind of god of engineering, and
who was working like a slave day and night to help him. Was that the difference, he wondered; because he’d liked Miel Ducas
and Duke Orsea, and Duchess Veatriz and Cantacusene the blacksmith’s wife; Duke Valens had started teaching him how to fence;
come to that, he didn’t even mind Carnufex the mine superintendent. All of them he’d taken to, as human beings; all of them
he’d used, slotting them into the mechanism where they could do a job or two. Daurenja rubbed him up the wrong way, but he
wasn’t useful, not yet, to anything like the same extent. It’d be wrong to make him a sacrificial component; it’d be a waste
of material, and murder.

Maybe, he thought, I shouldn’t be doing this.

He sat up, suddenly wide awake. Before, whenever that thought had come to call, he’d summoned up the faces of his wife and
daughter, like setting the dogs on a trespasser. Now, he could only see her hair, the curl as it touched her shoulder, the
faint redness of its shine under lamplight. Her face had turned away into shadow, as though she couldn’t bear to look at the
thing he was making on her behalf, the abomination …

On her behalf.

His chest felt tight, and there was cold sweat on his forehead and neck. She hadn’t asked him to build this machine; not this
one.

Something Carnufex had said. The design faded from his mind like a reflection in water shattered into broken rings by a stone.
Something he’d said in passing, and I told him I’d have to think about it; but he was getting on my nerves, pressing on them
like an arrowhead broken off and healed over, and I made the thought go away. He made me tell a lie, to him and myself.

He scowled into the darkness, following the red and black lines of the thought; and then, as suddenly as the flash of inspiration
that comes to a genius once in his life, the connection was made. The doll, the mechanical toy, the modifications he’d made
that weren’t on the list of charges at his trial.

It was like putting something in his mouth and finding it was too hot to swallow; just having the connection inside his head
was an unbearable burning, a torment of dotted lines. Somebody else, he felt (the thought burned itself in, like heating the
tang of a file to make it fit into a handle), there was somebody else involved. He fought, resisting the sudden understanding
like a woman trying to stop herself giving birth. This changes everything.

No; it was a conscious decision. Changes nothing. Not as long as it’s just intuition. Besides, it’s probably just some stupid
stuff — guilt, frustration, a long, hard day, the sort of horrible self-tormenting shit that keeps you awake in the early
hours of the morning. And even if there’s something there and it’s true, it still doesn’t change anything. Just one more bit
to be fixed, at the very end of the job.

That didn’t help him sleep. He’d never felt more wide awake in his whole life.

It didn’t bloody well fit. It was hopeless. It was never going to fit. The holes were all in the wrong places, and drilling
them out two whole sizes wouldn’t be enough to cure it. Neither would any amount of bashing with hammers, bending, drawing
out, pissing around …

“All right,” he heard someone say, “try it now.”

He put his weight on the bar, knowing it wouldn’t line up enough for the rivet to go through. It was all hopelessly screwed
up, and would have to be done again …

“There. Perfect. Piece of cake.”

He looked down, stunned. The rivet was in the hole. He relaxed, gradually letting the bar go. It flexed a small amount, then
stopped. It was in. It
fitted.

In which case, the whole ridiculous contraption fitted together, and they’d won, however unlikely that seemed. He could feel
his face drawing into a huge, stupid grin.

“Good,” he said, very low-key and matter-of-fact, though his heart was bursting with relief and joy. “Now get that last rivet
set and we can all go home.”

“Sulfur,” Valens said with a scowl, dropping the paper on his desk and watching it roll itself back up into a scroll. “He’ll
be lucky. Where the hell am I supposed to get sulfur from in the middle of a war?”

Carausius didn’t reply, which was sensible of him, and Valens took his silence in the spirit in which it was intended, as
a mild and respectful rebuke. He made an effort and took a long, deep breath. “If by some miracle you can find a few barrels,”
he said, “get them shipped off, with my compliments. After all, we’re stabbing the poor sod in the back, cutting off aid to
the resistance. The least we can do is give him a nice retirement present.”

“Sulfur,” Carausius repeated, his voice carefully neutral. “I wonder if the salt woman might know where to find some. You
know,” he added, “the merchant Ziani Vaatzes teamed up with a while back.”

Valens held still and quiet for a moment. Rather a leap, he thought, from salt to sulfur; not the sort of connection he’d
have made himself. But someone who knew rather more about the salt woman’s business affairs than he’d disclosed to his duke
might be in a position to make that connection. He noted the possibility in his mind and moved on.

“Bad timing, really,” Carausius was saying. “A week or so back, he could’ve had the stuff by the cartload; it’s one of the
by-products of the silver mines. But now Vaatzes has shut them all down, I guess he’s out of luck.”

The subject, Valens gathered, had been officially changed. “He’s all done, is he?”

Carausius nodded. “The last shaft was sealed up two days ago, apparently, so that’s that part of the job done. Whether the
other part’s come out all right we won’t know till we try and open them up again.”

Valens pulled a face. “Quite,” he said. “Still, on balance I’d rather be remembered as the idiot who trashed his own mines
for no reason than the idiot who let them fall into enemy hands. Ziani’s on his way home again, presumably.”

“Last I heard,” Carausius confirmed. “Of course, it’ll take him a while, with all that salvaged plant and equipment he’s bringing
back with him. Practically looted the place before he left, according to Superintendent Carnufex.” He smiled. “Are you worried
he won’t get back in time for the wedding?”

“Absolutely,” Valens said. “It wouldn’t feel right, getting married without my senior engineering adviser there at my side.
Actually, I was thinking about the move. It’s not long now before we have to get that under way, and I’ve got some ideas which
I think he might be able to help with. Don’t look so sad,” he added, “you haven’t missed anything, they’re just ideas, quite
probably completely impractical. If anything comes of them, you’ll be the first to know.”

“No doubt.” Carausius didn’t want to talk about the move. “While we’re on the subject of the wedding …”

Valens made a helpless gesture. “Now what, for crying out loud? Anybody’d think you’re my mother.”

“Fine, if you’re determined not to take an interest. In which case, I’d be grateful if you’ll refrain from yelling at me if
it doesn’t turn out the way you want.”

Valens half rose from his chair, then sat down again. “I’m sure you’re doing a marvelous job,” he said, “and I wouldn’t dream
of interfering. Just let me know where I’ve got to be and when. If you could possibly arrange for it to be in the morning,
that’d be good, because then I’d have the afternoon free to take the hawks out. Joke,” he added quickly. “Honest.”

With the baffled air of a predator cheated of its prey, Carausius gathered up his bits of paper and went away. After he’d
gone, Valens sat perfectly still for a minute or so; then he opened the ivory casket on his desk and took out a small square
of tightly folded parchment.

Well, he thought.

Holding it with the tips of his fingers, he turned it over a couple of times. Duke Orsea’s seal, but not his handwriting.
He took a closer look. Orsea’s seal was a running stag glancing back over its shoulder. This impression had a small bump on
the stag’s neck, made by a tiny chip in the seal-stone. That bump was the only way you could tell Orsea’s second-best seal,
the one he used for private correspondence, from the official one he used for state business. Somehow, both of them had survived
the fall of Civitas Eremiae; but it was the slightly chipped one that lived in Orsea’s own writing desk, which he kept in
his private chambers, unlocked. He’d seen that little bump many times before.

Courage was one of those virtues that Valens had but set little store by. As far as he was concerned, he was brave in the
same way he was right-handed. By the same token, he treated fear like indigestion or a headache, just another annoyance that
had to be overcome. He slid his finger under the flap and pressed gently upwards, until the wax cracked, splitting off the
stag’s head and crumbling its neck into fine red powder, like blood.