Devices and Desires (38 page)

“Thanks,” Orsea replied. “Miel, have you still got any of that disgusting Vadani stuff that tastes like etching acid?”

Miel pushed the small horn cup across the table; he was a loyal subject, and could drink straight from the bottle when he
had to.

“I’m fairly sure,” Orsea said slowly, after he’d taken his medicine, “that there wasn’t anything else we could’ve got wrong;
I mean, as far as I can see, we’ve got the complete set. If I missed anything, though, we could have a stab at it tomorrow
morning early, before they set off.”

Miel thought for a moment. “We didn’t actually kill any of them,” he said, “or set fire to their hair.”

“True.” Orsea leaned forward and reached for the bottle. “But that’d just be gilding the lily. We did enough, I reckon.”

“It didn’t go well.”

“Not really.” Orsea passed the bottle back, and they sat in silence for a while.

“What bugs me, though,” Miel said, “is why they came up from the south, instead of down the Lonazep road.” He had a certain
amount of trouble with the word Lonazep. “It’s all very well saying they got lost, but they were early. If they’d got lost,
they should’ve been late.”

“Wish they had got lost,” Orsea said. “Permanently.”

Another silence; then Miel said: “Well, now we know what the Cure Hardy look like.”

“Miserable lot,” Orsea said. “Always complaining. Didn’t like their rooms much, either. Oh, they didn’t say anything, but
I could tell.”

Miel suggested various things they could do. “And besides,” he went on, “it doesn’t actually matter, does it? You heard them.
Won’t be back this way for another twenty years. By which time,” he added brightly, “we’ll all’ve been massacred by the Mezentines.”

“There’s that,” Orsea conceded. “No, I won’t, thanks,” he said, as Miel threatened him with the bottle. “Got to be up early
tomorrow to see ’em off, don’t forget, and I’d hate for us to give a bad impression.”

“One thing,” Miel remembered. “That bald man. He asked me if we could sell them some wood.”

Orsea frowned, as if the concept was unfamiliar to him. “Wood.”

“That’s right. For immediate delivery, before they move out of range. Dogwood, cornel wood, ash, hazel. Willing to pay top
thaler for quality merchandise.”

“Well, he’s out of luck,” Orsea said. “Besides, after the way they behaved, I wouldn’t sell them wood if they were the last
men on earth. Screw them, in fact.”

“Absolutely.” Miel thought for a bit, but all the edges were getting blurred. “What’s dogwood?” he asked.

“No idea.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Miel waved away dogwood in perpetuity. “Sure you won’t have another?”

“Revolting stuff. Just a taste, then.”

Just a taste was all that was left in the bottle; odd, Miel thought, because it was nearly full a moment ago. Evaporation,
maybe. “I’ll say this for them,” he said, “if I hadn’t known they were savages, I’d never have guessed.”

Orsea concentrated. “Insidious,” he said. “Get under your guard pretending to be not savage.” He looked at the tips of his
fingers for a long minute, then said: “So let’s get this straight. Nearest to our border are the Doce Votz. Next to them are
the Rosinholet.”

Miel shook his head; an interesting experience. “No, you’re wrong,” he said. “Next to the Doce Votz you’ve got the Lauzeta.
Next to them’s the Aram Chantat.”

“The Aram Chantat? You sure?”

Miel shrugged. “Something like that. Anyhow, now we know what they’re like, these barbarians —”

“No meat. And no drink.”

“Exactly. Now we know what they’re like, we can talk to them. Bloody useful initiative. Good men to have on your side in a
fight, I bet.”

For some reason, Orsea thought that was terribly funny. So, after a moment, did Miel. “No, but seriously,” Miel went on. “If
only we knew why they didn’t come up the Lonzanep road —”

“Lonazep.”

“That too. Can’t figure that out. Bloody great big desert in the way if you’re coming from that direction. Should’ve starved
and parched ten times over before they got here.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Orsea objected. “I mean, they don’t eat a lot, or drink.” He reached for the bottle, just in case there
was a drop lurking inside it somewhere, and knocked it off the table onto the floor. “Bloody Vadani,” he said. “Can’t even
make a bottle that stands upright.”

Not long after that he fell asleep. Miel, who knew about protocol, struggled to his feet, called a page and had him carried
back to his apartments; then he flopped back into his chair and closed his eyes. That was one of the good things about not
being a duke: he could grab forty winks in his chair without having to be carried home like a drunk.

Someone he didn’t know woke him up in his chair the next morning with a message from Orsea. The Cure Hardy had gone home,
the message said (Miel asked the stranger what time it was; just after noon, the man replied); the Duke’s compliments, and
it would’ve been nice if Miel could have been there to see them on their way. A little later, he found Orsea in the small
rose garden and apologized. His head hurt and his digestion wasn’t quite right — that was what came of eating bread and cheese
for dinner, Orsea said — which probably explained why he forgot to tell Orsea about the letter. He considered mentioning it
then and there, but decided not to.

Since he wasn’t feeling his best, he reckoned he might as well go home. On his way, he ran into Sorit Calaphates, who thanked
him for inviting him to meet the Cure Hardy at dinner. It was news to Miel that he’d done so, but he accepted the thanks in
the spirit in which they were given.

“So,” Miel said, “haven’t seen you around much lately. Been busy?”

Calaphates nodded. “My new business venture,” he said with a slight roll of the eyes. “I’m starting to wonder what I’ve got
myself into.”

“Remind me,” Miel said.

“The Mezentine,” Calaphates said. “You suggested it, remember?”

“Oh yes,” Miel said. “Him. Going well?”

“You could say that,” Calaphates muttered. “Going to cost me an absolute fortune by the time he’s done. Still, clever man,
can’t deny that. This morning he was on about some new way of smelting iron ore; reckons it’ll be better than how it’s done
in Mezentia, even. Anyway, that’s what I need to talk to you about sometime. Not now,” he added, because he was a reasonably
perceptive man. “Later, when you’ve got a moment. I’ll send my clerk, and he can fix up a time.”

“Splendid,” Miel said. “I’ll look forward to that. So, what did you think of the savages?”

“Not what I’d been expecting,” Calaphates admitted. “Quiet. Can’t say I took to them.”

“They’ve gone now,” Miel said. “Still, we had some useful discussions.”

Calaphates nodded. “Wonder what they’ll make of the Merchant Adventurers,” he said. “Don’t suppose they’ve got anything like
them back where they come from.”

“Merchant Adventurers?” Miel repeated. “What’ve they got to do with anything?”

“The man I was talking to last night said they were meeting them this morning, on their way home. Didn’t they mention it?”

“Possibly,” Miel said. “Can’t think why, though, they live too far away.” He shrugged. He’d had enough of the Cure Hardy.
“Can’t do any harm,” he said.

“Probably want to sell them something,” Calaphates said, reasonably enough. “In which case, bloody good luck. Strange people,
though. All those different tribes.”

“Sects,” Miel corrected.

“As you say, sects. The man I was talking to did try and explain, but I’m afraid I lost the thread. Apparently they’re all
descended from one tribe, but they split up hundreds of years ago over religious differences; they stopped believing in the
religion long since, but they still keep up the differences. Charming, though, about the names.”

“What about the names?” Miel asked.

“The names of the sects. Let’s see.” Calaphates’ narrow forehead crinkled in thought. “Their lot, the Biau Votz; that means
Beautiful Voice in their language. The Rosinholet are the Nightingales, the Aram Chantat are the Voices Raised in Song, the
Flos Glaia are the Meadow Flowers or something of the sort, and so on. Apparently they believe that when they die, they’re
reborn as songbirds.”

“Good heavens,” Miel said, mildly stunned.

Calaphates nodded. “People are curious, aren’t they? Well, I won’t keep you.” He dipped his head in formal salutation and
scuttled away.

The Beautiful Voice and the Meadow Flowers… Miel gave that a great deal of thought on the way home, but in spite of his best
endeavors he was unable to arrive at any meaningful conclusion.

“This,” the foreman said, “is the main transmission house. Power for the whole machine shop comes from this one flywheel,
which is driven by direct gearing from the big overshot waterwheel out back. This here is the main takeoff” — he pointed with
his stick — “and that’s the gear train that supplies the overhead shafts in the long gallery, where all the heavy lathes and
mills are.”

Falier Zenonis nodded and muttered, “Ah” for the twentieth time that morning. He knew it all already, of course, though he’d
never actually seen it. But he’d spent a week laboriously working through the notes poor Ziani had made; notes, drawings,
sketches, detail sketches, you couldn’t fault Ziani on his thoroughness when it came to mechanisms. As a result, he knew his
way round the machine shop better than his guide; like a blind man who’s lived in the same house all his life. But even if
Ziani’s notes were strictly legal (which he doubted) he didn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he’d read them, or
known Ziani at all. So, “What does that thing there do?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well.

“That?” The foreman pointed. “That’s clever. You just knock back the handle — there, look — and that disengages the main drive.
It’s a safety thing, mostly; someone gets his arm caught in a belt, you call up to the transmission house and they throw this
lever, and the whole lot stops dead.”

“I see,” Falier replied, remembering to sound suitably impressed. “Do we get a lot of accidents?”

“Not really,” the foreman replied. “Not when you consider how many people work here, and how much machinery we’ve got running.
Obviously, from time to time someone’s going to get careless, there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it happening. But you
can cut down the risk with the right shift rotations, so nobody’s working the dangerous machines long enough to get tired,
and only properly trained men use the really big, heavy stuff. That sort of thing’s going to be a large part of your job:
duty rosters, choosing the right men for each machine, all that stuff.”

Before his disgrace, Ziani had written out frameworks for duty rosters for the next eighteen months; all Falier would need
to do would be to fill in the names and copy them out in his own handwriting. Involuntarily, he wondered where Ziani was at
that precise moment, and what he was doing.

“Tell me about the man who used to do this,” he said, as casually as he could. “Didn’t he get into some kind of trouble?”

“You could say that,” the foreman replied with a grin. “You must’ve heard, it was really big news, just before the Eremian
invasion.”

“Hold on,” Falier said. “That’s right, I remember now. Abomination, wasn’t it?”

The foreman scowled as he nodded. “We were stunned, I can tell you. Gutted. I mean, he always came across as, you know, an
ordinary kind of bloke. A bit keen, maybe, inclined to shave the rules a bit to get on top of a schedule; but sometimes you’ve
got to be like that to get things done around here. Within reason,” he added quickly. “I mean, what he did, there’s no excuse
for that.”

No excuse. Well. A picture of Ziani as he’d last seen him flooded uninvited into Falier’s mind; dazed, he’d seemed, wondering
what was going on, in the prison cell in the Guildhall basement, clutching trustingly to the tiny fragment of hope Falier
had given him — not for himself, but for his wife and daughter. No excuse; reading the notes and the rosters, page after page
covered in neat, ugly, small writing — Ziani always wrote quickly, but he’d never mastered the art of joined-up letters, so
he’d invented a method all his own (which was also an abomination, strictly speaking), he remembered the times he’d borrowed
Ziani’s notes for revision in school, because he’d lost his own, or he’d been playing truant that day. You looked at the page
and you thought it was illegible scrawl, but when you looked closer it was as easy to follow as the best clerk’s copy-hand.

“It’s always the quiet ones,” he heard himself say.

The foreman nodded briskly. “He was that all right,” he said. “Always kept himself to himself. I mean, he talked to the lads,
but he was never one of them, if you see what I mean. Standoffish, I guess you could call it — not like he thought he was
better than us, just sort of like he didn’t want to join in. Like his mind was always somewhere else. And now,” he added grimly,
“we know all about it, don’t we?”

“Well, I’m not like that,” Falier said, and he gave him one of his trust-me smiles. “I expect I’m going to have to rely on
all of you quite a lot, till I’m up to speed.”

The foreman shrugged his concerns away. “Place more or less runs itself,” he said, thereby damning himself forever in Falier’s
judgment. “Let the lads get on with it, they know what to do. I mean, you’ve got the Specifications, what else do you need?”

Down the iron spiral stairs into the main shop; a huge place, bare walls like horizons enclosing a vast stone-flagged plain,
on which stood rows and rows of machines. Falier had never seen an orchard, though he’d seen pictures and heard descriptions,
and had imagined the straight, bare rides between the rows of trees. There was something like that about the shop floor, the
same sense of order firmly imposed. There was far more than he could take in; the noise, an amalgam of dozens of different
sounds forming a buzzing, intrusive composite; the smell of cutting oil, sheep’s grease, steel filings, sweat and hot metal;
the crunch of swarf under his feet, the taste in his mouth of thick, wet air and carborundum powder. He knew that Ziani had
loved it here, that there was only one place on earth he’d rather be. Himself, he found it too hot, too noisy and too crowded.
It had cost him a great deal of effort to get here, but he wasn’t planning on staying any longer than he had to.