K Parker - Devices and Desires

'That's his handwriting?' he said.

Falier nodded. 'I can guarantee it,' he said.

'You think he's telling the truth?'

'Yes,' Falier said.

Melancton thought for a long time. 'If he's lying,' he said, 'what would it achieve? At best, he'd have lured a couple of dozen of our men into a trap. Big deal, he's already killed seventeen thousand-' He broke off and grinned. 'Hadn't you heard? That's the number, as far as we can make out. That's what your friend's got to answer for.'

'I didn't know,' Falier said quietly.

'Don't take it to heart.' Melancton shrugged. 'It's not like it's your fault. Doesn't make any odds, though. Whether or not the Guilds do as he asks and let the family go is political, nothing to do with me.' He paused and frowned. 'I believe him,' he said. 'Mostly because there's nothing to be gained by lying, in the position he's in. Tell me, you know him; is he screwed up enough to do something like this?'

Falier hesitated. 'Yes,' he said.

'Splendid.' Melancton sighed, and let his head sink back on to the pillow. 'It seems like he caused the mess and now he's going to put it right for us. Nobody need ever know, of course. As far as the folks back home are concerned, we found it out for ourselves. What about the family, by the way? What happened to them?'

'Nothing,' Falier said. 'The Republic doesn't do things like that, taking it out on innocent women and children. They're fine.'

'Well then, that's all right,' Melancton said bitterly. 'He gets what he wants, and so do we. I may even be able to salvage my career from this godawful mess. Wouldn't that be nice? We'll give it a try; things can't get any worse if it doesn't work.' He paused, scowling. 'There's one thing, though. He talks about opening the gate, but that's out of the question. We smashed the gate in, and they've blocked the gateway up with rubble. Even if we get men inside, there's nothing much they can do.'

Evidently Falier hadn't thought of that. 'No,' he said, 'I see your point.'

'It's a strange mistake to make,' Melancton said. 'He must know about the gate; I don't understand. But…' He closed his eyes. 'I suppose that if we sent in, say, three dozen men, they might be able to make a breach before they're cut down. They must have beams and so forth shoring the blockage up from the inside; someone told me it's just bricks and rubble, they haven't had time to do a proper job. It's not as though I've got anything to lose, and what's three dozen men more or less?' He laughed out loud, for some reason. 'Fine,' he said. 'Do me a favour, go and find my general staff, and we'll see what we can do about this. I wish I could see the point of this gate business, but there's always something. The bizarrely inexplicable is generally a factor in great events of world history-you know, the bridge unaccountably left unbroken, the sentry not posted because someone thought it was someone else's job.' He yawned. 'I'm rambling. I've had enough of this war.'

Falier was glad to get out of the tent. He had the impression that whoever it was that the general had been talking to, it hadn't been him.

Find the general staff, he'd said. Of course, Falier had no idea how to go about something like that so he stopped the first officer he came across and told him to do it. The officer looked startled and bolted away like a rabbit.

Seventeen thousand, Falier thought. Of course, it didn't really matter, since they were only mercenaries, and there were proverbially plenty more where they'd come from. Nevertheless. He'd done exactly what Ziani had told him to do in his covering letter; it came naturally, doing what Ziani said, and he hadn't really thought about what the consequences might be. If he'd taken the letter to someone in authority straight away, as soon as he'd received it, things would be very different now. Before, he'd seen the situation only in terms of inevitabilities; it was inevitable that Civitas Eremiae would fall and that the Republic would prevail, that Ziani would be killed, and that he would be promoted to chief supervisor of the ordnance factory, in recognition of the part he'd played in bringing the war to a successful conclusion. He'd seen it all as one complex mechanism, designed by someone with a clearer eye than his, as complete and remote as a Guild Specification. Accordingly, he hadn't interfered (to alter Specification is an act of abomination, after all) and had relied instead on faith, as a good engineer should. In which case, his conscience was clear. Besides, they were all only foreigners.

He went back to his tent. Until yesterday he'd had to share it with an artillery captain, a loathsome man who snored, smelt of onions and stole things from his trunk. Now, however, he had it all to himself. His immediate reaction when they'd told him had been joy at the prospect of getting a good night's sleep; that wasn't good, he knew, but he really couldn't help it. There was, of course, a vast divide between failing to mourn the death of a nuisance and doing the sort of things Ziani had done, but even a vast divide is made up of small subdivisions of space, which add up to the whole.

They hadn't come for the artilleryman's things yet. Understandable; they were busy. The clutter of dirty clothes and boots was still there, but now at least he could brush them out of his way without any risk of being shouted at or hit. He cleared a space on the top of his trunk, opened it and took out his writing-set. The artilleryman had plundered six of his nine sheets of parchment; if he'd lived, he'd probably have had the other three before too long, so maybe everything had turned out for the best. He flipped the lid of the inkwell, dribbled in a few drops of water, stirred, and thought about what he was going to say. My darling

Words on paper had never come easily to him. I miss you, it's terrible being here without you, I don't know how much longer I can go on; all perfectly true, but if he wrote that and sent it to her, she'd think he was cracking up, and he wasn't. He was unhappy, and being separated from her had a lot to do with that, but it wasn't the only thing. This horrible war… Would they censor that? He didn't want to attract further attention to himself, given his links to the traitor, and the part he'd played in passing on his message. He knew what he wanted to say, but words were always difficult (he thought of Ziani, and his dreadful bad poetry; what had she made of it? he wondered. She'd never struck him as the poetic sort, somehow). My darling, I wish I was back home with you instead of stuck here in this miserable place. I can't really say too much in a letter about how the war's going, but at present there's no real way of knowing how long it's likely to take.

He scowled. If the artilleryman hadn't been so free with his paper, he'd have screwed the sheet up and started again. He was, he knew, at a disadvantage in a situation like this, because he loved her so much more than she loved him. It was something he'd come to terms with, but it made him feel uncomfortably vulnerable when it came to expressing how he felt. Unfortunate; but there's no accounting for love. If all goes well [he could say that; he wasn't specifying how things might go well] I may be home again fairly soon; I just don't know. You mustn't worry about money or anything like that, I've taken care of everything. If anything happens to me, I've seen to it you'll be all right. Not that I'm in any danger, I hasten to add. I'm just an engineer, after all, not a soldier.

When I get home, I've got a surprise for you. I won't spoil it, but I think you'll like it.

Anyway, that'll have to do for now, they're keeping me pretty busy. All my love, Falier. Being used to a fairly active life, Miel Ducas found it hard to get to sleep after a day spent sitting around. Previously, before his arrest, his main problem had been staying awake; now he tended to spend the night lying on his back staring at the shadows cast on the ceiling by a single flickering candle. That was another recent development. He'd never been afraid of the dark when he was young, but lately-it wasn't fear, as such, but he felt uncomfortable unless there was light in the room. Maybe it was just the noise; his bedroom at home was perfectly, superbly quiet, but the wind sighed round the tower he was confined in, and he found it very hard not to notice it. The intrusion was worse in the dark, somehow; it made him feel as though people were whispering somewhere nearby, but he couldn't make out what they were saying.