K Parker - The Escapement

"No, really." Falier practically spat the words out. "Anything I can do, obviously. Please, sit down."

There was, of course, only the one chair, and he was standing directly in front of it. Given the size of the office, he'd have to leave the room to give Psellus enough space to squeeze in behind the desk, and then come back in again. Psellus stayed where he was and pretended not to have heard him. It was a moment of great tact, but Falier couldn't really appreciate it. He felt as though he was sharing his office with a tiger.

"If you can spare me a few minutes," Psellus went on, "before the start of the first shift, there are a few questions I'd like to ask you."

Was he asking permission? Would it actually be possible for Falier to say, No, go away? Not really. "Yes please," he heard himself say.

"About a personal matter, really."

That didn't make much sense. "Yes?"

"About your wife."

Oh, he thought; and instead of mere panic, he felt fear. "What can I…?"

"Perhaps we can talk outside, on the landing," Psellus said. "It's a little cramped in here for two people."

Falier wasn't quite sure he could walk. His legs felt weak, and the joints seemed frail under his weight. He had to lean on the desk with his hand to get as far as the door.

"Splendid work you're doing here, by the way," Psellus said, sounding like he meant it. "I realise it must be terribly difficult, with the demands we're making on you and the problems with supply."

"Oh, it's…" Falier suddenly couldn't think of anything to say.

"Materials must be specially frustrating," Psellus went on, looking straight ahead, along the gallery towards the frames of the five giant drop-hammers they used for drawing down armour plate. "All my fault, of course. I've given priority to food shipments, so there just aren't the ships or the carts to carry iron or fuel. It's a wretched business, but I don't really have any choice in the matter. Our food reserves are deplorably low, and there's no telling how long we've got before the enemy arrive and cut us off from Lonazep. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't done so already. If there's anything I can do about getting materials, of course, you only have to ask."

Oh well, Falier thought, and said, "Charcoal."

"Yes?"

"We're getting very low." He spoke as though he'd just been running; the words were too big for his throat. "I don't actually know where it comes from…"

"There's a syndicate," Psellus answered crisply. "They have a long-standing contract with the charcoal-burners of the Hobec-don't ask me where that is because I haven't a clue. Actually, I asked the Cure Doce ambassador only the other day, and I don't think he knew either. But it's quite some way away. The convoys take six weeks to get here, longer if there's heavy rain. The impression I get is that we buy everything they produce; there simply aren't enough of them to make any more, and if there were, they don't have any more carts. The syndicate asked them quite some time ago if they could increase production, but they didn't sound very keen on the idea. Why bother, was their attitude; why take on more men and build more carts when we're quite happy as we are?" He shook his head with mildly exaggerated sadness. "That's foreigners for you," he said, "they simply don't think like us. Imagine putting happiness before expansion. But anyway, even if we could induce them to change their whole way of life, it'd be months before we saw the benefit; and quite possibly, if we asked them, they'd take bitter offence and refuse to deal with us at all."

He stopped talking, and Falier groped for something to fill the silence. "I see" was the best he could do.

"Meanwhile," Psellus went on, "I've been making enquiries. You know, I do find it odd that nobody ever seems to have considered this before. Even if there wasn't a war, it strikes me as… well, curious, that we've been quite happy all this time to rely on a single limited source of supply for something as essential as charcoal. Anyway, it seems that they used to burn charcoal in northern Eremia, decent quantities, enough for their own use, and they could have produced more if they'd had any call for it. But that's no good to us, obviously. I'm told there are colliers in the old country, and they have wholesalers there with their own ships, for making bulk deliveries up and down the coast. If we can get in touch with them, we'll make them a better offer. But as to when all this might start happening…" He shrugged. "The tiresome thing is, we're having to do so many new things, we're making it all up as we go along, and there's really no time…" He stopped, and sighed; he'd been thinking aloud, Falier realised. "But that's not your problem," he said. "Nobody can expect you to work steel without fuel. All I can ask of you is that you do the best you can with what you've got, and it seems to me you're doing just that. For which," he added with a smile, "thank you."

Falier found that as disconcerting as a punch in the mouth. "That's all right," he said. "What I mean is-"

"Now then." No change in the pitch of his voice. "About your wife."

Later, when he'd recovered a little, Falier understood. The unannounced visit, the praise, the frankness and sympathetic reassurance about the charcoal situation, had all been to put him at his ease, let him know he was dealing with a man who was both intelligent and reasonable, before he closed in for the kill.

He told him everything, of course.

"We were in love," he said. "We just wanted to get married and be together. And Ziani…" It crossed his mind that he could lie at this point, but he realised it wouldn't be possible to make Commissioner Psellus believe something that wasn't true. "Ziani was in the way. So we had to get rid of him."

He waited for a reaction. Nothing.

"I don't mean murder him, or anything like that," Falier added quickly, appalled by what he'd just said and how it must sound. "We didn't want to hurt him, either of us. But the way things were was just-well, impossible."

A slight movement of Psellus' head told Falier he was about to speak. "She could simply have left Vaatzes and come to live with you," he said. "That sort of thing has happened before, I believe."

"Yes, but…" Falier began, then hesitated; because, now he thought about it, that would have been the obvious thing to do. But it hadn't occurred to him at the time. Or she hadn't let it occur to him. She'd insisted…

"But never mind that," Psellus went on. "Vaatzes had to be disposed of. What happened then?"

Falier hesitated again. He wasn't quite sure, now he considered it.

"Things happened quickly," he said. "It turned out Ziani was making that stupid doll…"

Psellus' eyes were on him now; they were pale and cold, like something dead. "How did you find out about that?"

"She told me."

"That he was making the doll, or that it was…?" A pause. "That it wasn't quite right."

Falier struggled to get the right words. "She told me he was making it," he said. "And I suppose she said how he was spending hours over it, trying to solve problems about how to make it work. And I must have thought about that-at the back of my mind, you know, the way you do; and I suppose it struck me as odd, because if he was following Specification, there wouldn't be any problems to figure out. I mean, you look at the diagrams and the dimensions, it's all there. You don't need to think about it."

"And that led you to believe he was…?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"You suppose so."

The fear, which Psellus had been to so much trouble to dissipate, came back so hard it made Falier catch his breath. "I don't know," he said weakly. "It's hard to get it straight in my mind, somehow; what I figured out for myself and what other people told me…"

"What other people?"