Evil for Evil (60 page)

Psellus smiled. “I’ve got a letter …”

“Let’s see.”

After a moment’s hesitation he took it out and handed it to her; she rubbed her hands on her thighs before taking it. “Boioannes
himself,” she said, “impressive. So why isn’t the military giving you an escort?”

Well, why not? “I’ve been asking myself that,” he said.

She grinned; sympathy and contempt. “Don’t take it to heart,” she said. “If they weren’t completely clueless, they wouldn’t
have pulled garrison duty. Anyway, isn’t the whole big deal about Necessary Evil how shadowy and secret it is? Hardly surprising
they’ve never heard of Boioannes.”

“You have,” he pointed out.

“Yes, but I’ve got a living to earn. I don’t wait for briefings, I find things out before I need to know them. Talking of
which: sixty thalers.”

Psellus blinked. “Excuse me?”

“My fee,” she explained. “For getting you across the border and all. Practically cost,” she added, with a practiced sigh.
“Meaning, the donkey you’ll be riding could be carrying merchandise that’d earn me that much. Plus extra food and water to
keep you alive, taking up more space. Say yes quickly, before I put it up to a hundred.”

“A donkey.”

“Yes. Well, what do you expect, a carriage and four?”

Psellus looked at her. “I’ve never ridden a donkey before.”

“Easy. You just sit. If you can ride a horse, you can ride a donkey.”

“I’ve never ridden a horse.”

“Look, if you’re just going to make difficulties …” But then she paused, made an effort, got the grin working again. “Put
it this way,” she said. “You’re a Mezentine, right? The superior race, masters of the known world? Well, then. If a poor benighted
savage like me can do it, so can you.”

Now I understand, Psellus said to himself: she’s been sent — and paid — to collect me. If she goes back without me, she’ll
have to refund the fee. Otherwise, by now she’d have written me off as more trouble than I’m worth and told me to get lost.
“A wagon,” he said, “or no deal.”

She scowled horribly. “Out of the question. The way we go, you can’t take wagons. It’s a donkey or walk.”

He shrugged. There’d been a hint of panic in her voice, implying that as far as wagons were concerned she was telling the
truth. “Fair enough,” he said. “Sixty thalers; half now, half when we get there. When are you leaving?”

Later, when he thought about that journey, Psellus found it hard to remember it clearly: the sequence of events, the constant
terror, the agonizing pain in his backside and thighs. It was, he supposed, the same mental defense mechanism that caused
him to forget his worst nightmares as soon as he woke up. The only impressions that lingered were the smell of drenched wool
and the sight of the rocks that littered the ground on either side of the miserable tracks they followed, rocks on which he
was convinced he would fall and split his head open like a water jug. One thing he knew he would never forget, however, was
the first sight of Civitas Vadanis, glimpsed for a moment through a canopy of birch branches as they scrambled up a scree-sided
hill. Really, it was nothing more than a gray blur, too big and regular-shaped to be yet another rocky outcrop. To Psellus,
however, the mere fact that it was manmade lent it a beauty that no mountain, hillside, combe, gorge or valley could ever
aspire to. Buildings; houses; people. It didn’t matter that the people were hostile savages, as likely as not to kill him
and eat him on sight, and to hell with the fact that he carried universally recognized diplomatic credentials. Two days and
a night of spine-jarring across bleak, empty rocks had left him with an overpowering need for human contact, even if it took
the form of a lethal assault.

“That’s it all right,” the woman in red assured him. “Not much to look at from this distance, but when you get up close it’s
a bit of a dump, really. You’d never think the Vadani were rich as buggery just from looking at their architecture.”

Psellus didn’t reply. Even from three miles away, he’d noticed something that set his teeth on edge.

“No smoke,” he said.

It took her a moment to figure out what he’d meant by that. “There never is,” she replied. “Not by your standards, anyhow.
I gather your city looks like it’s in permanent fog, because of all the forges and kilns and whatever.”

He shrugged. “That’s all right, then,” he said.

But it wasn’t. There was more to it than that, and as they got closer the apprehension grew. There should have been specks
on the road, carts carrying things to and from the city, riders, people walking; even savages needed to eat, so there should
have been constant traffic bringing food to town. On the other hand, plague was a possibility, but surely they’d have heard
rumors. Plague aside, how else could a city be empty? The answer was that it couldn’t be, and his impressions were false.
But the city looked all wrong; it looked dead, like the still, flat corpse of an animal beside the road. While he’d been marooned
in the frontier station, had the war come here, been and gone, without anybody bothering to tell him? Possible, he had to
acknowledge. After all, he was always the last to know everything.

A mile out, even the woman in red fell silent and looked worried. They were on the main turnpike now, a straight metaled road
that looked down at the city like an archer’s eye sighting along an arrow, but they had it entirely to themselves. Furthermore,
there was no sign of livestock in the small, bare fields, divided up neatly into squares by low, crude dry-stone walls. Plague
wouldn’t have killed off all the sheep and cows as well as the people; or if it had, surely there’d be bodies lying about,
bookmarked by mobs of crows. Eventually, after not saying a word for nearly half an hour, the woman cleared her throat and
said, “This is odd.”

“There’s nobody here,” Psellus replied.

She appeared not to have heard him. “I heard your lot sent a cavalry raid not long back,” she said. “My guess is, they’ve
cleared everybody out of the outlying villages and farms and barricaded themselves inside the city, to be on the safe side.”
She made it sound as though Psellus had planned and led the raid himself, and therefore this desolation was all entirely his
fault. “Could make it tricky for us getting in. We’ll have to play it by ear, that’s all.”

It turned into something of a farce. The woman in red insisted on acting inconspicuous, even when it was obvious that there
was nobody to see. Her idea of inconspicuous shared several key elements with Psellus’ definition of low pantomime — talking
in a loud voice about deals she was planning, deals she’d recently made; stopping every fifty yards or so to check the loads
on the donkeys; bawling out each muleteer in turn for imaginary offenses; retreating demurely behind every third bush for
a mimed pee. The city, meanwhile, grew nearer in total silence and deathly stillness. She was giving the performance of her
life in an empty theater.

A quarter of a mile from the main gate, Psellus lost his patience.

“Do me a favor,” he said, slithering awkwardly off the donkey and wincing as he landed on a stone. “Wait here.”

She scowled hideously at him. “Out in the open?” she hissed. “You can’t be serious. We’ll all be arrested.”

“Thank you so much for your help,” he said politely, without looking back, and limped painfully on his wrenched ankle up the
road to the main gate.

A hundred yards away, he saw that it was open, which finally put paid to her theory about the Vadani barricading themselves
inside the city for fear of a repeat of the cavalry raid. Gate open, no guards; but a single chicken pecked busily in the
foregate. It scuttled a yard or so as he approached, then carried on feeding.

Through the shadow of the gatehouse, out into the light on the other side. He walked a few yards, then stopped. He had no
idea what he was supposed to do next.
He will meet you,
the instructions had said, and Psellus had been too preoccupied with the other prospective horrors of the journey to think
too closely about that part of it. Subconsciously, he’d never had much faith in his chances of getting this far, so there
hadn’t seemed much point.

But now he was here, by the looks of it the only living creature in Civitas Vadanis, apart from the chicken. He drew in a
breath to call out “hello” with, but the sheer scale of the silence overawed him and he breathed out again.

Cities don’t just empty themselves, like barrels with leaky seams. Either everybody was dead, or there’d been an evacuation.
Either way, it looked as though he’d wasted his time. He was struggling to come to terms with that when he saw something move,
in an alley on the other side of the square. At first he was convinced it was just a stray dog; but when it came out of the
shadows he saw it was a man; a dark-skinned man, like himself.

Well, then, he thought. This must be Ziani Vaatzes.

Shameful to have to admit it to himself, but he was shaking; not with fear, because his city’s worst living enemy was striding
toward him in an empty place. The last time he’d shaken this way was when he was seventeen, and the girl who’d agreed to come
with him to the apprentices’ dance had stepped out of the porch of her father’s house into the lamplight, and the rush of
mingled joy and fear had crippled his knees and crushed his chest.

“Lucao Psellus?”

The voice startled him. He’d been expecting a deep, powerful sound, something like the first low roll of thunder before the
first crack of lightning. The voice that called out his name was high, rather tentative; and the embodiment of complicated
evil shouldn’t have a whining downtown accent.

“That’s me,” he heard himself say. “Are you Ziani Vaatzes?”

A slight nod. He came to a halt about three yards away; about average height for a Mezentine, stocky, square; thin wrists
and small hands, unusual in an engineer; a weaker chin than he’d expected, a rounded nose, hair just starting to thin on the
top of his head. Such an ordinary man; the only way to make him stand out was to empty the city. Painfully hard to believe
that this was the man who’d caused the war, slaughtered the mercenaries, betrayed Civitas Eremiae, written the atrocious poetry.
Had he really come all this way to meet such an ordinary little man?

“Where is everybody?” Psellus asked.

Slight grin. Just a tuck in the corner of the mouth, but quite suddenly Vaatzes’ face changed. He said, “There was a general
evacuation.” The grin said,
I sent them away.
Psellus realized that he had no choice but to believe the grin.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

Vaatzes shrugged. “I think it might have something to do with the war,” he said. “Anyhow, you can be the first to pass on
the news. That on its own ought to be worth a promotion.” He adjusted the grin into a small smile. “I’m forgetting my manners,”
he said. “You’ve been traveling, I expect you’d like to sit down, have something to eat.”

Thanks to a donkey with a backbone like a thin oak pole, the last thing Psellus wanted to do was sit down, ever again. “Thank
you,” he said, with a formal nod.

“I’m sort of camping out in the gatehouse,” Vaatzes said. He raised his hand, and Psellus noticed for the first time that
he was carrying a basket, the sort women bring shopping home from market in. “I’ve been scavenging,” he went on. “All the
bread’s gone stale, of course, but I found some apples and a bit of cheese, stuff like that. There’s water inside, and a bottle
of the local rotgut.”

So many years in politics; Psellus was used to the airy politeness of enemies. Vaatzes, he realized, was talking slightly
past him; hadn’t looked at him once since the first encounter. That was faintly disturbing. Is he going to kill me, Psellus
wondered; is that why he won’t meet my eye?

Back into the dark shade of the gatehouse; through a doorway into a bleak stone cell of a room; a plain plank table and two
benches; on the table, an earthenware jug, a bottle and two horn cups. With a whole city to plunder, this was the best he
could do? Not a man, then, who cared too much about creature comforts. He waited for Psellus to sit down, then slid onto the
bench opposite and started cutting the pitch off the neck of the bottle.

“Not for me,” Psellus said.

Vaatzes nodded and put the bottle down. “Probably better if we both keep a clear head,” he said. “The water’s a bit murky
and brown, but harmless.” He tilted the jug, filled one cup and pushed it across the table before filling the other. Realizing
how thirsty he was, Psellus left it where it was.

“The proof,” Vaatzes said.

It took Psellus a moment to figure out what he was talking about. “Of course,” he said, and reached inside his coat for the
tightly sewn parchment packet. “You’ll find it’s all there,” he said. “There’s a notarized copy of the register, plus the
original applications for dispensation to remarry. I’m sure you’ll recognize her handwriting, and your friend Falier’s.”

Vaatzes looked up sharply, then went back to scowling at the packet. Understandable if he didn’t want to open it. “If you’d
rather read it in private,” Psellus went on, “I’ll step outside for a few minutes.” So considerate; such manners.

“No, that’s fine.” Vaatzes put the packet, unopened, on the table. “I don’t need to read them, do I?” he said. “I’ll take
your word everything’s in order.”

“As you like.” Psellus forced himself not to frown. He noticed he’d picked up the horn cup and drunk the water without realizing
he’d done it. “I’m supposed to ask you to let me have the applications back,” he said. “Because they’re the originals, you
see, not copies, and strictly speaking I shouldn’t have taken them out of the archive.”

“I’ll keep them, if it’s all the same to you.”

Psellus nodded. “That won’t be a problem.” He breathed in; now he was afraid. “I’ve got something else you might want to have,”
he said, laying the homemade poetry book gently on the table.

He watched Vaatzes look at it; for several seconds he sat perfectly still. “Thanks,” he said eventually. “I assume you’ve
read it.”