Devices and Desires (41 page)

He opened the book again and read on. It didn’t get better; if anything, Ziani had put his best stuff at the front, like a
woman running a fruit stall. It ran in loops; the same rhymes repeated over and over (he’d been particularly taken with
cold/gold
and
heart/apart;
sometimes he stacked them in a different order —
apart/heart
— but that was the limit of his avant-garde tendencies), the same bland sentiments stuffed into the same trite conceits,
like sliced meat into flat bread; if original thinking had been Ziani’s besetting sin, there wasn’t much sign of it in his
poetry:

My love is like the nightingale

Who sings her soft and tender tale

My love is like the hyacinth

That blossoms on its marble plinth

He frowned again. Would it be useful, he wondered, if he knew who this terrible stuff was addressed to? Anybody in particular?
A sort of picture emerged from internal evidence; she had a soft face and wavy hair, and Ziani seemed to think she was nice-looking.
That wasn’t much help in narrowing down the list of candidates. Maybe her name didn’t rhyme with anything. Maybe — anything’s
possible — the lady in question was his wife.

(What was her name again? Ariessa. Ariessa, confessor, dresser, guesser…)

Well, Psellus thought, the world is full of strange things, and an engineer who writes bad poetry isn’t the strangest. He
closed the book again, tagging it in his mind as a piquant and mildly amusing curiosity. On a spurt of inspiration, he opened
it again and read down the first letters of each line. Gibberish; no acrostics. What you see is all there is. Sad, in a way.
Certainly, there was a bittersweet irony in the fact that the man who would soon be bringing annihilation on the Eremian people
was someone who thought
prove
was a legitimate rhyme for
love.

Query: was there any more of this stuff among the papers found at the house, or was this a vice he only indulged while he
was at work? Further query: now that Eremia was going to be destroyed and the whole question of Ziani Vaatzes’ crime was thus
redundant, could he really be bothered to go down to the file archive and look? Answer to both: probably not.

With an effort, he evicted Ziani’s poetry from his mind and turned his thoughts to Boioannes, and various issues to do with
timing. It did rather look as though Boioannes had contrived the war, just so that he could sidestep the ladder of dead men’s
shoes (he paused at that particular image; Ziani, he felt, would’ve reckoned it was really good) and gratify his ambition
to join and lead Necessary Evil. Sure, Boioannes would be capable of it, but was that what had actually happened? He could
probably ascertain the truth by working out timetables, cross-referencing, looking in the files, assuming he was allowed access
at that security level. Did it matter? No. It mattered even less than Ziani Vaatzes’ poetry. The simple fact was that the
Eremian Duke (Orseus? Orseo? Whatever) had been right — them or us — but the scorpions had done for him. The strongest always
wins, and who on earth was stronger than the Perpetual Republic?

Going round in little circles, like a mouse in a box. Psellus yawned, and put the Vaatzes papers away where he wouldn’t have
to look at them. If Boioannes was responsible for the wiping out of Eremia, Vaatzes was only a pretext, of little importance;
if Vaatzes wasn’t really to blame, neither was Lucao Psellus. He didn’t smile at that thought, because things had moved beyond
smiling, but he felt a little happier with himself; like a drunk carter who runs someone over in the dark, and then finds
he was already dead.

He stood up. True, he was supposed to wait there until he was sent for. On the other hand, he was bored stiff and his back
hurt from too much sitting. He wanted to get out of his office and go somewhere. He left the tower, and the Guildhall campus.

Psellus had lived in the City all his life, but there were huge parts of it he’d never been to (like a good archer, who only
uses a very small part of the target). He didn’t even know where Sixty-Seventh Street was, so he stopped at the Guildhall
lodge and asked the duty porter, who explained that Sixty-Seventh Street was between Sixty-Sixth Street and Sixty-Eighth Street.
Psellus thanked him and started to walk.

It took him the best part of an hour to find the building; a seven-story block, what the people who lived in this part of
town called an island. According to the file, the Vaatzes family lived on the sixth floor, west side. They had four rooms,
as befitted their status as supervisory grade. As an act of extreme clemency, Ariessa Vaatzes had been allowed to stay there
after her husband’s disgrace, at least until the child came of age; her rent was paid out of the Benevolent Fund, and she
received half the standard widow’s pension.

Psellus climbed the stairs. Islands weren’t like the Guildhall, which was a pre-Reformation building, beautiful and impractical.
Island Seventeen, Sixty-Seventh Street, was built of yellow mud brick; it was ugly but the stairs were straight and wide,
and hadn’t yet been worn glass-smooth by generations of boot-soles. The stairwell was lit by tall, thin, unglazed windows
blocked in by iron bars. There was a smell of damp, and various other smells he couldn’t quite identify.

Apartment Twenty-Seven had a plain plank door with external flat hinges. He knocked and waited. Nothing. He knocked again.
Across the landing, the door of number twenty-nine opened a crack and a head poked out; an old man with deep eye-sockets and
a big, round-ended nose.

“Excuse me,” Psellus said. “I’m looking for the Vaatzes family. Have I got the right place?”

The man looked at him. “Gone away,” he said.

Psellus frowned. “Are you sure?” he said. “The Guild register says they’re still here.”

The man shook his head. “Been gone three weeks now,” he said. “Her and the little girl.
He
went on before them, of course.”

“I see,” Psellus said. “Would you happen to know where they went? The wife and the daughter, I mean.”

“Couldn’t say,” the old man said. “Men came by to shift the furniture — wasn’t a lot of it left, mind, the soldiers took on
most of it when they came for Him. Wasn’t anything good, anyhow,” the man added sourly, “just a few chairs and tables, and
some boxes, and the beds. She had her clothes, in a bag. Place is empty now. Don’t reckon they’re in any hurry to move a new
lot in. People don’t like living where something bad happened.”

Psellus hesitated; then he said, “Do you think it’d be all right if I went in and had a look? I’m from the Guild, there were
some things —”

“Nothing to do with me,” the old man said. “You do what you like.”

Psellus tried the door, pressing down the plain tongue latch. Of course, he noticed, there’s no outside lock; just bolts on
the inside, probably. “Thanks,” he said. The old man stepped back and closed the door, then opened it again, just a crack.

He’d been right; someone had stripped the place bare, even wrenched out the nails where pictures had hung on the wall. The
windows were shuttered but the shutters had been left open; a few stray leaves had been blown in by the wind, and in places
the floor was spattered with white bird droppings. In the main room a floorboard had been levered up and not replaced. Maybe
that’s where Vaatzes used to hide his poetry, Psellus thought.

Plain walls, washed with off-white pipeclay distemper; clean and unmarked, which would’ve been impossible if people had been
living there. Someone had seen the need to whitewash the place since the family left. From the bedroom window you could see
the roof of the ordnance factory.

So, Psellus thought, why would Ariessa Vaatzes move out, after so much mercy had been expended to let her stay here? Several
possibilities. Unhappy memories, that’d do it; hostility from the neighbors; she’d gone back to live with her father now she
was on her own. Fine; but regardless of what’d happened to her, she was obliged to register her address with the Guild, same
as everybody else, and the address in the file was this one. Another possibility: she was dead, and the old man across the
way was lying about having seen her take her clothes away in a bag. But if she’d died lawfully, that’d be registered on her
file; and who would want to murder her?

Not that it mattered. Sheer idle curiosity was all that had brought him here; he’d wanted to look at her again, to see if
she was the sort of woman who’d inspire a man to rhyme
love
and
prove
in a homemade book. What if an important memo arrived while he was out of the office?

He shut the apartment door behind him. The old man wasn’t the Vaatzes’ only neighbor. There was bound to be a perfectly simple
explanation for her absence, and once he’d found it out he could go back and stare at his wall some more.

Nobody at home at number twenty-eight, but the woman at number thirty seemed positively delighted to talk to him. No, he wouldn’t
come in, thanks all the same; she was short, almost circular, with long hair and a bald patch on top, neatly dressed in a
faded, carefully pressed blue dress and sandals that looked like they’d belonged to her mother. Ariessa Vaatzes; yes, she
went on three weeks ago, took all her things. Three men came to help her, they took all the furniture that was left. A youngish
man, and two middle-aged ones; the young man gave orders and the other two did as they were told. They were quick about it,
like they were in a hurry. No, no idea where she’d gone. Always kept themselves to themselves, and the little girl was such
a sweetheart, it’s always the kids that suffer most when bad things happen.

“Did you see the little girl leave?” Psellus asked.

“Oh yes,” she told him. “Went on with her mother. She didn’t seem upset or anything, of course they don’t realize at that
age, bless them.”

“Did Ariessa Vaatzes seem upset at all?”

“Not really,” she replied. “A bit on edge, that’s all. Didn’t say anything to the men, but she left with them. But she never
did say much. Quiet little thing, she was. Must’ve been dreadful for her, him turning out like he did.”

Psellus thought for a moment. “Did you talk to him much?” he asked.

“Him?” She looked at him as though he’d insulted her. “No, hardly at all. Oh, he wasn’t rude or anything, just never had anything
to say. Always the quiet ones, isn’t it?”

“Did they have any friends in the island? Anybody they got on particularly well with?”

Apparently not. “They did have a few callers, though,” she added, “from time to time. Friends of his from work, I think, and
her family, once or twice. Never met any of them to talk to, though, so I can’t tell you much about them. There was a very
tall man with gray hair, and a young woman with a baby who came round in the daytime.”

He thanked her and left, walking fast to get back to the office, just in case. No memo; apparently, the war didn’t need him
just yet.
When was it,
he asked himself,
that I stopped doing work that was actually of any use to anybody? Was it round about the time I was given a degree of power
and authority over my fellow citizens?
In the filtered light of his office he wasn’t even sure what time of day it was; time passed unevenly there, dragging or
flying depending on how close he was able to come to a state of mental detachment. Had he only just got back from his trip
to the outside world, or had he been sitting staring at the wall for hours? Not that it mattered. Like all good Guildsmen,
he lived only to serve the Republic. If it could afford to leave him idle for a while, it wasn’t his place to complain, just
as he would have no right to object if it required him to work three days and nights without food or sleep.
When was it that I stopped believing that?

Some time later, a memo arrived. A tall, thin boy brought it; he knocked at the door, pushed it at him and walked away. Psellus
scraped the seal off with his thumbnail.

From Maris Boioannes:

In consequence of various matters, it has been decided to postpone the proposed military action against Eremia Montis for
the time being. A document will be issued in due course. Personnel should resume their ordinary duties until further notice.
You are required to refrain from discussing any aspect of the proposed military action with unauthorized personnel. Members
of the Viability & Effects subcommittee will meet in the lesser chapterhouse at noon tomorrow to consider various issues arising
from the above. None of the above affects the status of the mercenary troops currently billeted in the Crescent district of
the city, who will be remaining until further notice. Commissioner Lucao Psellus is required to consult with the compliance
directorate as soon as possible regarding the detention or elimination of the abominator Ziani Vaatzes, who is still at large.

By order &c.

Abominations, Ziani thought, looking down at his work. If I wasn’t an abominator before, I’m definitely one now.

It was horrible; no other word for it. Instead of square- section steel the frame was built out of wood. The lockwork wasn’t
machined but pressed and bashed out of plate. The slider was no more than a square of thin steel sheet hammered into a folded
box over a square mandrel. The spring had been wound by hand and eye out of junk — scrap pitchfork tines, of all things, drawn
down and forge-welded together. Just looking at it made Ziani feel sick.

But it had taken him just three days to put together, and it worked: the first functional scorpion ever built outside the
Mezentine ordnance factory. And he could make more of them, very quickly, which was all that mattered.

True, the timber frame would shake itself to bits under the savage force of the recoiling spring. The lock clunked and twanged
into battery rather than purring and softly clicking. The slider rattled about in its slot, wasting precious energy. The spring
wouldn’t last, but that hardly mattered, since the frame would unquestionably disintegrate first. Without destruct-testing
it he couldn’t be sure, but his best guess was that it would last two thousand shots. Which would be enough.