K Parker: Devices and Desires

He paused and sipped his cup of wine. He looked so weary that Miel felt sorry for him, because he knew how it felt to be that tired.

'Instinct, I guess you could call it,' Vaatzes went on. 'Everything I heard about the Duchess led me to believe that she couldn't survive in a marriage with someone like Orsea unless she had an escape mechanism; a way of making up for everything he couldn't give her. I was pretty sure it wasn't just sex or anything as basic as that; I wasn't looking for torrid affairs with grooms and footmen. I was sure that somewhere the Duchess had-well, a friend. I talked to servants who'd known her family. She was always reading books when she was a child; alone most of the time, and then sent away to be a hostage, which must have been really horrible. But she survived; and she hadn't gone off the tracks and had affairs or anything like that. So she must have that escape mechanism somewhere, something or someone she could turn to when she desperately needed to be herself. I took the chance that there'd be something of the kind, and I set myself the job of finding out what it was.'

'You seem to have a remarkable grasp of human nature,' Miel said, 'for an engineer.'

Vaatzes shrugged. 'I use the tools and materials available to me,' he said. 'If I can't use steel, I have to use flesh instead. Not what I'd have chosen, but you do your best with what you've got. People are easy enough to figure out, if you make an effort.'

Miel shook his head but said nothing. Vaatzes went on: 'The next step was to find out as much about her as I could. Servants were the obvious source, and one of her maids told me that she often spent time alone writing. That suggested either a diary or letters, but none of the servants had seen a diary, and it's the kind of thing they'd notice, or know about. Letters, then; and if so, who would she write to? Her sisters; well, that seemed reasonable enough, except I rather got the impression that there was something furtive, guilty even, about the way she went about writing these letters. Also, none of the servants could remember her making arrangements for letters to be sent or carried-well, a few, but not nearly enough to account for the time she spent writing them. Now that was significant, you see. If she writes more letters than get sent, it seems likely that she's carrying on a correspondence she doesn't want anybody to know about, and that the important letters are being carried secretly.'

'What a clever man you are,' Miel said quietly.

'I'm an engineer,' Vaatzes said. 'I study and understand mechanisms. This was purely a mechanical problem; more letters written than sent, so where are they going? I thought about who might be likely to carry these secret letters, and fairly soon I decided it must be the female merchants. They come and go freely, and they call on the Duchess regularly. She buys all sorts of stuff from them, the servants told me, but never wears any of it. In fact, most of what she buys is hideous rubbish, which struck the servants as odd because she's got such good taste.'

'I never thought of that,' Miel said.

'Why should you? You weren't actively looking for a mystery' Vaatzes shrugged. 'By this point I'd set up my factory, and I had some dealings with the merchant women myself. I gambled on my theory being right and did a bit of gossiping with the ladies in red, making it sound like I knew what was going on, with the merchants carrying the Duchess' letters, and wasn't it an amusing little gobbet of scandal? I got some very odd looks until finally I was fortunate enough to find one who knew what I was talking about. She assumed I was in on the secret, that I was a courier in the secret correspondence myself. That was perfect. I found out who the letters were going to; and as soon as I knew that, everything slotted neatly into place. It was as though some kind friend had done half my work for me. Or you could say it was a gift from heaven, if you believe in a benign providence.'

Vaatzes paused for a moment. Telling the story had made him rather more animated, but he still looked haggard and weak, a pitiful object.

'After that, it was a question of patient fieldwork. I arranged for servants to report the comings and goings of merchants to me; I worked out a pattern, the usual interval between incoming letters-from Valens-and her replies. Quite by chance-and this was almost enough to make me start believing in that benign providence-I also discovered that the merchants were carrying information back to agents of the Republic. Which was only to be expected, of course, but it made it delightfully easy for me to complete the circle, so to speak, and get you involved.'

'I see,' Miel said, and it was as though he'd just had a conjuring trick explained to him, or seen his opponent complete a complex gambit at chess. 'It was you who informed on that merchant, the one we arrested for spying.'

Vaatzes nodded. 'The one who was carrying his letter,' he said. 'Which meant it came into your hands. And I knew exactly what you'd do. I felt sorry for you, torn between conflicting duties of terrible and equal force: your duty to Veatriz, your duty to Orsea. I knew you'd keep the letter and try to hide it. After that, it was a simple matter to find out where your own special hiding-place was; the one you thought only you knew about, but of course the servants had known about it for years. I had to pay a lot of money for it, the price of a good farm-'

'Oh,' Miel said, and for the first time he felt angry. 'So that's where she got the money from.'

'Your housekeeper. She didn't realise the harm she was doing,' Vaatzes said. 'I made it sound like some trivial thing, a joke some friends wanted to play on you. There was no malice on her part.'

'No,' Miel said softly, 'I don't suppose there was. So, it was all to destroy me, so you could deprive Orsea of my advice and bring down the city. I suppose I'm flattered.'

'You can see it as a tribute to all your hard work for the people of Eremia.'

'Yes,' Miel said, 'but it doesn't make any sense. I can see why you'd want to bring us down. If you could prove to your people that you'd helped win the war for them, maybe they'd forgive you and let you go home. But that's not what you've been doing. Exactly the opposite. You made it possible for us to win the war. You built the engines for us. Thanks to them, we killed thousands and thousands of the enemy's soldiers and drove them back; there's no way they can win now, they simply haven't got the manpower. And it's so totally obvious that it was you-nobody else could've built the scorpions-it must mean that you're the most evil man in the world, as far as they're concerned. They must hate you more than ever. You'll never be able to go home now.'

Vaatzes shrugged. 'That's another part of the mechanism,' he said, 'and I'm tired, and I haven't got the strength to go into it tonight. I think I'll go to bed now. I need to get some sleep; tomorrow's going to be a very hectic day, and it'll be an early start. Goodnight.' He stood up. 'For what it's worth, I'm sorry. You've been very kind to me, ever since we first encountered each other. I wish I'd had the time to figure out another mechanism that didn't involve hurting so many people. Regrettably-'

'I ought to kill you,' Miel said. 'For ruining my life, and hers, and Orsea's. I ought to break your neck right now.'

But Vaatzes shook his head, as though they were discussing some abstraction, and he respectfully disagreed on some point. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'After all, I haven't really done anything wrong, as far as you're concerned. I didn't betray Orsea; you did that. All I did was find out about it and tell him.' He yawned again, mumbling an apology as he did so. 'If you'd done the right thing and taken the letter to Orsea straight away, as soon as you got hold of it, you wouldn't be here now and my schemes would've failed. No, I'm sorry, you can't offload the blame on me. It was your decision. You chose her over him.'