K Parker - Evil for Evil

Back through the gate in the curtain wall; as he walked through it, he felt someone following him. He frowned. Duke Valens was far too well-mannered to have his guests shadowed, and far too sensible to waste an employee's time on such a pointless exercise. He quickened his step a little. There were plenty of people about, no reason to be concerned.

"Excuse me."

He hesitated, then carried on, walking a little faster. "Excuse me," the voice said again; then a shadow fell across his face, and someone was standing in front of him, blocking his path.

Not the strangest-looking human being Ziani had ever seen, but not far off it. He was absurdly tall, not much under seven feet, and his sleeveless jerkin and plain hose did nothing to disguise how extraordinarily thin he was. Probably not starvation, because the clothes themselves looked new and fairly expensive, and he didn't have the concave cheeks and sunken eyes of a starving man. Instead, his face was almost perfectly flat-minute stump for a nose, stupid little slit for a mouth, and tiny ears-though the rest of his head was round and slightly pointed, like an onion. He had a little crest of black hair on the very top (at first glance Ziani had taken it for a cap) and small, round eyes. The best guess Ziani could make at his age was somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.

"Sorry if I startled you," he said. "Are you Ziani Vaatzes, the Mezentine?"

"That's me," Ziani replied. "Who're you?"

The thin man smiled, and his face changed completely. He looked like an allegorical representation of Joy, painted by an enthusiastic but half-trained apprentice. "My name is Gace Raimbaut Elemosyn Daurenja," he replied. "May I say what a pleasure and an honor it is to meet you."

Oh, Ziani thought. He made a sort of half-polite grunting noise.

"Allow me to introduce myself," the thin man went on, and Ziani noticed that there were dark red scars on both his earlobes. "Like yourself I am an engineer and student of natural philosophy and the physical world. I have been an admirer of your work for some time, and feel that there's a great deal I could learn from you."

He's learned that speech by heart, Ziani thought; but why bother? "I see," he said. "Well, that's very…" He ran out of words, and couldn't be bothered to look for any more.

The thin man shifted a little, and Ziani could just about have squeezed through the gap between him and the wall without committing an assault. But he stayed where he was.

"I must apologize for accosting you like this," the thin man went on. "It is, of course, a deplorable breach of good manners, and not the sort of thing I would normally dream of doing. However…" He hesitated, but Ziani was fairly sure the pause was part of the script. Stage direction; look thoughtful. "We move in rather different social circles," the thin man went on, and Ziani wished he knew a little bit more about Vadani accents. He was fairly sure the man had one, but he couldn't place it well enough to grasp its significance. "You enjoy the well-deserved favor of the Duke. I am only a poor student. It's hardly likely our paths would have crossed in the normal course of events."

"Student," Ziani said, repeating the only word in the speech he'd been able to get any sort of grip on. "At a university, you. mean?"

"Indeed." The thin man's smile widened like sunrise on the open plains. "I have honors degrees in philosophy, music, literature, astronomy, law, medicine and architecture. I have also completed apprenticeships in many crafts and trades, including carpentry, gold, silver, copper, foundry and blacksmith work, building and masonry, coopering, tanning, farriery and charcoal-burning. I am qualified to act as a public scrivener and notary in four jurisdictions, and I can play the lute, the rebec and the recorder. People have asked me from time to time if there's anything I can't do; usually I answer that only time will tell." The smile was beginning to slop over into a smirk; he restrained it and pulled it back into a look of modest pride. "I was wondering," he went on, "if you would care to give me a job."

Ziani's imagination had been busy while the thin man was talking, but even so he hadn't been expecting that. "A job," he repeated.

"That's right. Terms and conditions fully negotiable."

Ziani made an effort and pulled himself together. "Sorry," he said. "I don't have any jobs that need doing."

A tiny wisp of a frown floated across the thin man's face, but not for long. "Please don't get the idea that I'm too delicate and refined for hard manual labor," he went on. "Quite the contrary. At various times I've worked in the fields and the mines. I can dig ditches and lay a straight hedge. I can also cook, sew and clean; in fact, I was for five months senior footman to the Diomenes house in Eremia."

Try as he might, Ziani couldn't think of anything to say to that; so he said, "I see. So why did you leave?"

Every trace of expression drained out of the thin man's face. "There was a misunderstanding," he said. "However, we parted on good terms in the end, and I have references."

Ziani almost had to shake himself to break the spell. "Look," he said, "that's all very impressive, but I'm not hiring right now, and if I did give you a job, I couldn't pay you. I'm just…" He ran out of words again. "I'm just a guest here, not much better than a refugee. God only knows why the Duke lets me hang around, but he does. I'm very sorry, and it's very flattering to be asked, but I haven't got anything for you."

"I'm sorry to hear that," the thin man said. "Very sorry indeed. I'm afraid I'd allowed myself to hope." He seemed to fold inwards, then almost immediately reflated. "If you'd like to see my certificates and references, I have them here, in this bag." He pulled a small goatskin satchel off his shoulder and began undoing the buckles. "Some of them may be a little creased, but-"

"No," Ziani said, rather more forcefully than he'd intended. "Thank you," he added. "But there's no need, really. I don't need any workers, and that's all there is to it."

"A private secretary," the thin man said. "I can take dictation and copy letters in formal, cursive and demotic script…"

Ziani took a step forward. The thin man didn't move. Ziani stopped. "No," he said.

"A valet, maybe," the thin man said. "As a gentleman of the court-"

Because he was so thin, he'd be no problem to push aside. But Ziani felt an overwhelming reluctance to touch him, the sort of instinctive loathing he'd had for spiders when he was a boy. He retraced the step he'd just taken and folded his arms. "I'm not a courtier," he said, "and I haven't got any money, and I'm not hiring. You don't seem able to understand that."

"Payment wouldn't be essential." The thin man was watching him closely, as if inspecting him for cracks and flaws. "At least, not until something presented itself in which I might be of use. I have…" This time the hesitation was genuine. "I have certain resources," the thin man said warily, "enough to provide for my needs, for a while. In the meantime, perhaps you might care to set me some task, by way of a trial. It would be foolish of me to expect you to take me on trust without a demonstration of my abilities."

Too easy, Ziani thought. It must be some kind of trap. On the other hand… "All right," he said. "Here's what I'll do. I'll give you a test-piece to make, and if it's up to scratch, if ever I do need anybody, I'll bear you in mind. Will that do?"

The thin man nodded, prompt and responsive as a mechanism. "What more could I ask?" he said.

Ziani nodded, and applied his mind. To be sure of getting rid of him it'd have to be something unusual in these parts, not something he could just go out and buy, or get someone to make for him and then pass off as his own. "Fine," he said. "Do you know what a ratchet is?"