K Parker - Evil for Evil

"Of course." Valens squinted. "Let me guess," he said. "Milo Calceus and Naeus Faber are blacksmiths, right?"

"He's been to see all the blacksmiths in the city," Macer replied. "Most of them before I started making the list."

"Figures. Hello." Valens' frown deepened. "Some familiar names here."

"Quite. And before you ask, he met with them outside the castle, on their own time. Of course, he could just have been finding out about protocol and etiquette and so forth; which knife to use for which course, and who you're supposed to stand up for when they walk into a room."

"That's possible, certainly." Valens stopped. "This one here," he said. "You sure?"

"Yes," Macer said, his tone of voice perfectly neutral. "Actually, that's why I started keeping the list."

Valens put the paper down. "It says here he's met her several times."

"That's right. First time was in the street, about six weeks ago; he walked with her across town, apparently showing her the way to a draper's shop. After that, twice in the castle, the other time in the park."

"You thought I ought to know about that?"

"Yes."

Valens sighed. "Macer," he said, "you're a clever man. Also very brave."

"Do you want me to pour you another drink?"

"Actually, that's the last thing I want. Does Orsea know?"

"I don't think so, no."

"Try and see to it that it stays that way." He scowled. "Is there anything in it?"

"My opinion?" Macer shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "I think she's bored and he's an interesting man. She seems to like the company of interesting people."

Valens looked at him in silence for a long time. "I think that's everything for now," he said.

Ziani had, of course, lied to the Duke. He'd written out the list of things and people he needed a long time ago; just after he'd first met the salt-dealer's widow, in fact. The four closely written sides of charter paper curled into a roll and hidden in the sleeve of the gown hanging up behind his bedroom door was in fact the third revision of that particular document. Accordingly, he was in no particular hurry as he left the Duke's tower. He walked slowly down the stairs into the east cloister, and sat down on a bench opposite the arch that led to the mews. After a minute or so, he stood up again and retraced his steps as far as the rather splendid marble memorial to Valentius IV, Valens' great-grandfather. Needless to say, the seventeenth duke was commemorated with a fine equestrian statue, about two-thirds lifesize, showing him in the act of leveling his spear against an enormous boar. Ziani knelt down beside the boar's flank and coughed politely.

"Breathing," he said.

Slowly, a man uncoiled himself from the small nook between the boar and the horse's legs.

"I could hear you from right over there," Ziani explained. "Worse than my uncle Ziepe's snoring."

The man stood up straight and scowled at him. "Right," he said. "I'll know better next time."

Ziani shook his head. "There won't be a next time," he said.

"Because if I see you skulking about after me again, I'll assume you're an assassin hired by the Republic to kill me. I'll feel really bad when I find out you were actually one of the Duke's men, but that won't help you very much. Or I may never find out," he added with a mild grin. "I don't suppose the Duke'll be in any hurry to admit he set one of his men to spy on a guest under his roof."

The man took a step back, but the marble flank of Valentius' horse was blocking his retreat. "Just doing my job," he said.

"Of course." Ziani nodded. "You carry on. Just stay in plain sight, where I can see you. Understood?"

"Understood." The man looked at him, then turned his head away. "No problem," he said.

"Splendid." Ziani smiled. "Now," he went on, "I'm just going to sit here peacefully for a while. I promise I won't wander off or do anything treasonable. And since I'll be staying put for a bit, it seems to me you might well want to take this opportunity to get something to eat or take a leak. Come back in half an hour and I'll know it's you, not a Mezentine spy."

The man hesitated for a moment, then turned and walked quickly away. Ziani watched him leave the cloister by the west door, then marched briskly to the arch that led to the mews. Instead of carrying on as far as the mews green, however, he turned right down the tiny snicket that led to the steps that came out on top of the inner keep wall. His luck was in: no sentry, so he was able to slip into the guardhouse and use its staircase to come out in the far corner of the middle keep yard, next to the back door of the kennels. For a man with a generally poor sense of direction, he told himself, he'd got the geography of the place pretty well fixed in his mind.

From the middle keep to the guest wing, where his room was, piece of cake. He ran up the last staircase two steps at a time, wondering how long it would take his shadow to figure out where he'd gone and resume his miserable task. He was, therefore, more than a little disconcerted when he opened his bedroom door and found someone sitting in the chair in front of the fireplace.

It wasn't his shadow, however. Instead, it was a thin man, with a flat face and a slightly pointed head, like an onion.

"You again," Ziani said.

The thin man smiled. "Yes indeed," he said.

"How the hell did you get in here?"

The thin man's smile didn't fade at all. "I told the porter I had an appointment to see you, and it was secret government business. He didn't believe me to begin with," the man added with a frown, "but when I showed him this, he changed his tune pretty quickly."

This was a plain wooden box, slightly larger than a man's head. "Oh," Ziani said. "You made it, then."

"Of course. And I knew you'd want to see it right away; hence my rather unorthodox approach to getting an appointment with you."

Ziani smiled. "It's a good approach," he said. "I use it myself." He sat down on the bed, breathed in slowly and out again. "All right," he said, "let's see it."

The thin man rose and put the box down beside him, rather in the manner of a midwife introducing a mother to her newborn child. "The box is lemonwood," he said, "with brass hinges and a six-lever lock."

Ziani knew that tone of voice. "All made by you, of course."

"I'd finished the main job and I had some time on my hands," the thin man replied, wearing his modesty as a knight wears full plate armor. "Did I mention that cabinet-making-"

"Yes." Ziani held out his hand for the key. He had to admit, it was a beautiful piece of work in itself; stoned and buffed to a deep gloss, and decorated with neatly filed curlicues. He opened the box, trying to remember what it was he'd set the thin man to make for him.

"A small portable winch," the thin man said, right on cue. "To be suspended from a hook in a rafter, capable of lifting heavy sections of material, operated by the pressure of two fingers on the reciprocating crank here."

Ziani reached into the box and lifted it out. For a moment, he was confused; stunned, even. He'd spent his life making machines, designing them to do the jobs they were meant for as efficiently as possible. He understood function as well as a human being can understand anything. Beauty, however, tended to unsettle him. It was something he could recognize; he could even create it, if he had to. But he'd never understood it, maybe because he'd never been quite sure how it worked, and he'd never been able to bring himself to trust it, except once.

The machine he took out of the box was beautiful. That was an absolute fact, not a matter of opinion or taste. The struts that held together the top and bottom plates of the frame had been turned to the most graceful contours imaginable. Each component was immaculately finished and decorated with restrained, elegant file-carving or shallow-relief engraving. The whole thing had been fire-colored a deep sea blue, from which a few twists of perfectly chaste gold inlay shone like watch-fires in the dark. Almost afraid to touch it, Ziani rested a finger on the crank and pressed, until he heard the smooth, soft, crisp click of the sear engaging the ratchet.