K Parker: Devices and Desires

Eight fours are thirty-two; half an hour later, the door opened again. Falier was back. He looked excited, and pleased with himself.

'All set up,' he said. 'The secretary wants to see you in his office.' He frowned. 'For crying out loud, Ziani, put your boots on.'

Ziani smiled. 'Are you coming too?' he said.

'No.' Falier knocked on the door. 'Best of luck, Ziani; but it should be all right. He was definitely intrigued. Have you got a list of good names?'

Ziani nodded. 'I'm not too well up in politics, mind,' he said. Any suggestions?'

Falier fired off a dozen or so names, all of whom Ziani had already thought of, as the sand dribbled through into the cup. 'That'll probably do,' he went on, 'but have half a dozen more up your sleeve just in case.' The door opened; different warders this time. 'Well, so long,' Falier said. 'It'll be all right, you'll see.'

Not all, Ziani thought; but he didn't want to sound ungrateful. 'So long,' he repeated, and the warders led him out into the corridor.

Three flights of winding stairs brought him to a narrow passage, with heavy oak doors at irregular intervals; quite like the cells, he thought. Outside one of these, the warders stopped and knocked. Someone called out, 'Yes, come in.' A warder went in first; Ziani followed, and the other warder came in behind him.

He didn't know the secretary's name, or his face; but he was looking at a broad, fat man with huge hands resting on top of a wide, well-polished desk. 'This him?' the man asked, and one of the warders nodded.

'Fine.' The warder pulled out a chair, and Ziani sat in it. 'All right,' the man went on, 'you two get out. Don't go far, though.'

It wasn't easy to make out the man's face; he was sitting with his back to a window, and Ziani had been out of the light for some time. He had a bushy moustache but no beard, and round his neck was a silver chain with a big Guild star hanging from it. 'Ziani Vaatzes,' he said. 'I know all about you. Seventeen years in the ordnance factory, foreman for six of them. Commendations for exceptional work.' He yawned. 'So, why does a solid type like you go to the bad?'

Ziani shrugged. 'I don't know what came over me,' he said.

'I do.' The man leaned forward a little. The sun edged his dark head with gold, like an icon that's hung too long in the candle smoke. 'Thinking you're better than everybody else, that's what did it. Thinking you're so bloody clever and good, the rules don't apply to you. I've seen your kind before.'

'I admit I'm guilty,' Ziani said. 'But that's not what you want to talk to me about. You want to know who else was involved.'

'Go on.'

Ziani said four names. The secretary, he noticed, had a wax writing-board next to him, but wasn't taking any notes. He tried another four. The secretary yawned.

'You're wasting my time,' he said. 'You don't even know these people, and you're asking me to believe they all came round to your house, these important men you've never met, to see this mechanical doll you were making for your kid.'

'I'm telling you the truth,' Ziani said.

'Balls.' The man wriggled himself comfortable in his chair. 'I don't believe you.'

'You agreed to see me.'

'So I did. Know why?'

Ziani shrugged. 'I'm prepared to sign a deposition,' he said. 'Or I'll testify in court, if you'd rather.'

'No chance. I know for a fact you wouldn't know these people if you met them in the street. You didn't have any accomplices, you were working alone. All I want from you is who put you up to this. Oh, your pal Falier Zenonis, sure; but he's nobody. Who else is in on it?'

Ziani sighed. There was nothing left inside him. 'Who would you like it to have been?'

'No.' The man shook his head. 'If I want to play that sort of game, I decide when and how. You're here because obviously some bugger's been underestimating me.'

'All I wanted,' Ziani said, 'was for my wife to get my pension. That's all that matters to me. I'll say whatever you like, so long as you give me that.'

'Not interested.' The man sounded bored, maybe a little bit annoyed. 'I think you thought the idea up for yourself, all on your own. Trying to be clever with men's lives. You can forget that.'

'I see,' Ziani said. 'So you won't do what I asked, about the pension?'

'No.'

'Fine.' Ziani jumped to his feet and threw his weight against the edge of the desk, forcing it back. The man tried to get up; the edge of the desk hit the front of his thighs before his legs were straight-a nicely judged piece of timing, though Ziani said it himself-and he staggered. Ziani shoved again, then hopped back to give himself room and scrambled on to the desktop. The man opened his mouth to yell, but Ziani reached out; not for the throat, as the man was expecting, and so Ziani was able to avoid his hands as he lifted them to defend himself. Instead, he grabbed the man's shoulders and pushed back sharply. It was more a folding manoeuvre than anything else. The man bent at the waist as he went down, and his head, thrown backwards, smashed against the stone sill of the window. It worked just as Ziani had seen it in his mind, the angles and the hinges and the moving parts. Seventeen years of looking at blueprints teaches you how to visualise.

He was only mildly stunned, of course, so there was still plenty to do. Ziani had been hoping for a weapon; a dagger slung fashionably at the waist, or something leaning handy in a corner. Nothing like that; but there was a solid-looking iron lampstand, five feet tall, with four branches and four legs at the base to keep it steady. Just the thing; he slid off the desk, caught hold of the lampstand more or less in the middle, and jabbed with it, as though it was a spear. One of the legs hit the man on the forehead, just above the junction of nose and eyebrows. It was the force behind it that got the job done.

The man slid on to the floor; dead or alive, didn't matter, he was no longer relevant. Three flights of stairs, and Ziani had counted the steps, made a fairly accurate assessment of the depth of tread. It would be a long way down from the window and he had no idea what he'd be dropping on to; but he was as good as dead anyway, so what the hell? At the moment when he jumped, entrusting himself to the air without looking at what was underneath, he couldn't stop himself wondering about Falier, who was supposed to be his friend.

It wasn't pavement, which was good; but it was a long way down.

For a moment he couldn't breathe and his legs were numb. I've broken my bloody neck, he thought; but then he felt pain, pretty much everywhere, which suggested the damage was rather less radical. Somewhere, not far away (not far enough), he heard shouts, excitement. It was a fair bet that he was the cause of it. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself on his feet and running. It hurt, but that was the least of his problems.

Because he'd never expected to survive the drop, he hadn't thought ahead any further than this. But here he was, running, in an unplanned and unspecified direction. That was no good. The pity of it was, he had no idea where he should be heading for. He was somewhere in the grounds of the Guildhall; but the grounds, like the building itself, were circular. There was a wall all the way round, he remembered, with two gates in it. The only way out was through a gate. If they were after him, which was pretty much inevitable, the first thing they'd do would be to send runners to the gatehouses.

Every breath and heartbeat is an act of prevarication, a prising open of options. It'd sounded good when the preacher had said it, but did it actually mean anything? Only one way to find out. The gardens were infuriatingly formal, straight lines of foot-high box hedge enclosing neat geometric patterns of flowers, nothing wild and bushy a man could hide in long enough to catch his breath, but there was a sort of trellis arch overgrown with flowery creeper, a bower or arbour or whatever the hell it was called. He headed for it, and collapsed inside just as his legs gave out.