Vaatzes laughed. "You think that word's a bit odd, coming from me."

"I wouldn't have imagined you'd think in those terms."

Vaatzes stopped walking and looked at him. "The thing you need to understand," he said, "if you want to understand what I have to offer - if you want to understand me, even; the one thing that matters is the principle of tolerance."

The word didn't fit at all. Miel repeated it. "Tolerance."

Vaatzes nodded. "That's right. Do you know what it means, to an engineer?"

Miel shrugged. "I thought I did, but maybe I don't."

"Tolerance," Vaatzes said, "is the degree something can differ from perfection and still be acceptable. It's not always the same. For one job, it could be three thousandths of an inch, and for something else it could be half a thousandth. The point is, if you want to make something that's good, you need your tolerance to be as small as possible. That's the key, to everything. It's what the Guilds are built on, it's everything Mezentia stands for. Precision; tolerance. We try and get as close to perfection as we possibly can, and we don't tolerate anything less than that." He smiled. "Your man back there," he said, "I don't suppose he even thinks in those terms. If it just about works and it sort of fits, it's good enough." Miel thought about his gauntlets, which had saved his hands in half a dozen battles. "We don't tolerate the word enough," Vaatzes went on. "Either it's good or it isn't. Either a line is straight and a right angle's a right angle, or it's not; it's true, or out of true. True or false, no gray areas. Do you see what I mean?"

"Fine," Miel said. "Which are you?"

Vaatzes laughed. "Oh, I'm all right," he said. "I've never had any doubts on that score. You mean, if I believe so strongly in the Mezentine way, how come they were going to kill me for abomination?"

Miel didn't say anything.

"The trouble is," Vaatzes went on, "the Guilds have lost their way. They've become..." He made a vague gesture. "I'm not quite sure how to put it. I suppose you could say they've become too tolerant."

"What did you say?"

"They tolerate a lie," Vaatzes said. "The lie is that their specifications, which are written down in the books and can't be changed, ever, are perfect and can't be improved on. And that's wrong. Obviously it's wrong. We can do better, if only we're allowed to. That's what I mean; their tolerances are too great. They make it an article of faith that you can't cut this line closer than one thousandth, when it's actually possible to shave that by half. That's the real abomination, don't you think?"

Miel didn't say anything for a while. "And that makes it all right for you to humiliate perfect strangers."

Vaatzes shrugged. "Either he'll learn from it and be a better craftsman, now he's seen there's a better way; or else he won't, in which case he isn't fit to be in the trade. I remember my trade test, when I was an apprentice. Actually, it was the same as your man back there set me, to file a perfect circle. But it had to be right. The tolerance was one thousandth of an inch, which is the thickness of a line scribed with a Guild specification dogleg caliper. The material was half-inch plate, and the edge had to be chamfered to exactly forty-five degrees, in accordance with a Guild half-corner square. If you got it right, you passed and got your Guild membership."

Miel nodded. "What happened if you got it wrong? Did they burn you at the stake or something?"

Vaatzes shook his head. "The finished piece is measured with the Guild's prescribed gauges; basically, a hole the right size cut into a big half-inch sheet. It has to be an exact fit - they test it with a candle. If light shows through, or if a speck of soot finds its way into the join, you fail. If that happens, there's a sort of ceremony. They put you in a cart, with your work hung round your neck on a bit of string, and on Guild meeting day, when everybody goes to the Guildhall to hear the speeches, they drive you round and round the town square from noon to sunset. People don't jeer or throw things at you, it's worse than that. It's dead quiet. Nobody says anything, they just stare. For that half a day, you're completely - I don't know what the right word is. You're completely separate, apart; you're up there and they're down below looking at you, like you're everything that's wrong in the world, captured and brought out so they can all have a good look at you and see what evil looks like, so they'll know it if they meet it again. Then, at sunset, they get you down off the cart in front of everybody, and Guild officers take your piece of work and they kill it; they bash it with hammers, they bend it and fold it over stakes, and finally they heat it up white hot in a furnace until it melts, and they pour the melted metal into sand, so it can't ever be made into anything else ever again."

It took Miel a moment to find his voice. "And that happened to you?"

"Good God, no," Vaatzes said. "I passed. It's incredibly rare, someone not passing; I think it's happened two or three times in my lifetime. Which goes to show, the system works. It's a bit harsh, but it makes for good workmanship."

"And what happens to people who fail? Do they get thrown out of the City?"

"Of course not. They learn their lesson, and the next year, they take the test again. Nobody's ever failed twice."

"Fine," Miel said. "I wouldn't recommend you trying to introduce that system here. I don't think that sort of thing would go down well."

"Of course not. You've got a long way to go, I can see that."

Miel took Vaatzes back to his room. He had to make his report to the Duke, he said, and then the decision would be made about whether to accept his offer. "We'll try not to keep you in suspense any longer than necessary," he told him. Then he went to find Orsea, thinking long thoughts about the nature of perfection.

The Duke in council considered his report, together with a written submission from the Armorer Royal, who gave his opinion that the Mezentine possessed skills far in advance of anything known to the Vadani, and recommended in the strongest possible terms that his offer should be accepted. Further submissions were heard from the exchequer, the trade commissioners, the Merchant Adventurers and other concerned parties, after which the meeting debated the issue, with special reference to the effects of the aftermath of the recent war, the manpower position, the need to remodel the Duchy's defenses and other pertinent factors. At the conclusion of the debate, the Duke and his special adviser Miel Ducas retired to consider their decision. After a brief recess, the Duke announced that the Mezentine's offer was rejected.

9.

Commissioner Lucao Psellus had seen many strange sights in his time, and it was a tribute to his flawless orthodoxy that he had survived each disturbing experience without allowing a single one of them to damage him in any way. He had, reluctantly, read heresy and listened to abomination, both the forced confessions of the man broken up by torture and the proud ranting of the unrepentant martyr. He had seen things that nobody ought to have to see, every imaginable permutation of the aberrant and the false. He had endured.

The spectacle he was presented with on this occasion was different, if no less taxing, and he found it extremely difficult to cope with. It took the form of a very large foreign woman, dressed in painfully bright patterned red velvet, with pearls in her hair and rings on all ten fingers. Even her boots were red, he noticed. Compared to the woman herself, the news she brought was trivial.

"Of course," she was saying, "they haven't made a formal decision yet. It'll have to go before the council. They'll call for reports and evidence and what have you, and then there'll be a meeting, and then the Duke will finally make up what he pleases to call his mind. They're like that in Eremia, since that young Orsea took over. He's the worst thing that ever happened to the Duchy; can't take a decision on his own, always terrified he'll do the wrong thing, no confidence in his own judgment."

Psellus made an effort to pull himself together. "You're not Eremian, are you?"

She laughed. It was an extraordinary noise. "I suppose we all look alike to you," she said. "No, I'm Vadani, I'm delighted to say."

"No offense," Psellus said weakly.

"None taken." She laughed again. "I know that you people in the City don't get to see foreigners very often. Besides, it's actually quite an easy mistake to make. The Adventurers are pretty much a breed apart on both sides of the border; we're more merchant than Vadani or Eremian. I suppose I've got more in common with my colleagues in Eremia than with the silver-miners or the horse-breeders back home. It comes with travel, I always think; you can't be parochial if you're constantly moving about. And you don't get more parochial than backcountry Vadani."

Psellus frowned. "Since we're talking about that sort of thing," he said, "I might as well ask you now. Why is it that all you merchants are women?"

She raised both eyebrows. "Blunt, aren't you?" she said. "But it's a fair question, I suppose, and if you don't ask, you won't ever know. It's a social thing, I suppose you could say. You see, where I come from - I know it's different here, but so's everything - we don't like waste. Mountains, you see; you don't waste anything if you live in the mountains, because anything you can't actually grow up there, or catch, or dig out of the ground, has got to come all the way up the mountain, usually on someone's back. So we have this mindset, I guess you could say: make best use of everything you've got, and don't squander your resources. And if there's something you can't use, you apply your mind and find a use for it."

"That makes sense," Psellus conceded.

"Well," she continued. "people are a resource, just like everything else. And mostly, it's obvious what use most people should be put to. Men work outside, in the pastures or mining; men of good family run things, naturally. Women work inside, running the home, bringing up children. But there's one group of people who don't immediately seem to be much good for anything. People like me."

She paused, clearly waiting for a rebuttal or at least a protest. Psellus wasn't minded to indulge her, so she went on: "Unmarried middle-aged women of good family. Completely useless, wouldn't you say? No homes to run or families to look after; obviously we can't go out herding goats or spinning wool. All we've got is a bit of capital of our own and a bit of education. So, when you think about it, it's obvious, isn't it?"

"I suppose so," Psellus replied. That made her laugh again.

"You don't see it, I can tell. And that's understandable, you don't have the problem. You've got people at the top - all men, of course - and people at the bottom, and nothing in between. I imagine you think it's perfect, like everything else here."

Psellus tried not to frown. He wished he hadn't raised the subject. Some of his colleagues claimed that they actually enjoyed foreigners, their appallingly quaint lack of civilization, but he couldn't see it himself. "As you say," he replied, "we don't have the problem. Please forgive me if the question was offensive."

She shook her head. "It's pretty hard to offend an Adventurer," she said. "You get to learn quite quickly, people are different wherever you go. Wouldn't do if we were all the same."

"Ziani Vaatzes," Psellus said.

"Ah yes. Him. Well, I think I've told you everything I know. Seems to me," she added cheerfully, "like all your nightmares have come true. One of your top people has got away and taken all your secrets with him, and he's offered to give the whole lot to your deadly enemies, who you just stomped on hard in a war. Couldn't really be any worse, from your point of view. Of course," she added, "there's not a lot to worry about really. The Eremians are poor as dirt, it'd take them a hundred years to get to the point where they could be a threat to you, even if you left them alone and let them get on with it. It'd be different if this Vaatzes of yours had gone to the Vadani, of course, because we may be ignorant hill folk just like the Eremians, but we've got all that lovely silver, not to mention a duke who knows his own mind and gets things done. And I wouldn't be surprised if this Vaatzes isn't wishing he'd gone the other way up the mountain, if you follow me."

It took him another quarter of an hour and a certain sum of money to get rid of her; then he crawled away to his office at the top of the Foundrymen's tower, to pick the meat off what he'd just heard. A cup of strong willowbark tea helped him clear his head, and as the fog dispersed and he was able to give his full mind to the facts, he started to worry.

No doubt the woman was right. The Perpetual Republic wasn't scared of Eremia Montis. The whole Eremian army, hell-bent on razing the city to the ground, hadn't constituted enough of a threat to warrant a meeting of the full executive council; and where was that army now? If you took the broad view, there really wasn't anything to worry about.

But he didn't have that luxury. Another thing the wretched woman had been right about: from the point of view of the commissioner of the compliance directorate, this was the worst day in the history of the world. A convicted abominator had escaped justice, killed two jailers, seriously injured an officer of the tribunal, walked out of the Guildhall in broad daylight, fled the country and run straight to the court of an actively hostile enemy, begging them to accept all the most closely guarded secrets of the Foundrymen's and Machinists' Guild. Yes, Eremia was negligible. So, come to that, were the Vadani, for all their wealth. But that wasn't the point. Once the secrets were outside the Guild's control, there was no way of knowing who would get hold of them, or where they'd end up. Geography wasn't his strong suit, but he knew there was an inhabited world beyond the Cure Doce and the Cure Hardy, not to mention beyond the sea (his colleagues in the Cartographers' Guild would know about that; except, of course, he daren't ask them, because they'd want to know the reason for his unusual curiosity). And besides; even if there was no risk at all, that was entirely beside the point. His directorate had been created on the assumption that there was a risk, and the sole justification for his existence was that that risk had to be guarded against at any expense. In those terms, which were all that mattered, he'd failed.

He thought about it for a while, just in case he'd overlooked something, but he knew there was nothing to overlook. It was perfectly clear and perfectly simple. Crisestem and his assassination squad weren't relevant anymore. Killing Vaatzes would be a desirable end in itself, of course, but it would no longer be enough. The whole of Eremia - He wanted to laugh, because it was absurd. Here he sat, one man, chairman of a committee, in a tower above a small formal garden, and he'd just taken the decision to wipe out an entire nation. Ludicrous; because even if Vaatzes had already betrayed the secrets; even if he'd written them all out in a book, with notes and explanatory diagrams and a glossary and index in the back, there wasn't a single soul in Eremia, or Vadanis, or among the Cure Doce or (God help us all) the Cure Hardy who could understand a word of it. But he was going to have to go down the stairs, through the cloister, across the small formal garden into the Great Hall and recommend that the army of the Perpetual Republic be mobilized and sent to kill every man, woman and child in a place he knew virtually nothing about, just in case; better safe than sorry, after all. It was stupid; and of course his recommendation would be accepted, and once the resolution had been passed in Guild chapter and the order had been given to the military, it would happen, and nothing on earth could stop it. Even if, by some extraordinary freak of chance, the army was resisted, defeated, massacred in a narrow mountain pass or drowned by a river in spate, another army would be raised and dispatched, and another, and another after that (because the Republic daren't ever say it was going to do something and then back down; gods must be seen to be omnipotent, or the sky will fall). Even if the world was emptied of expendable people and the Mezentines themselves had to be conscripted, they'd keep sending armies, until the job was done. As soon as he left this room, the machine would be set in motion and the outcome would inevitably follow.

Not that he cared about savages; not that it mattered particularly if the whole lot of them were wiped out - there was a body of opinion among the more radical Consolidationist factions that held that the Eremians and the Vadani formed a necessary buffer between the Republic and the human ocean of the Cure Hardy, but that was fatuous. The real barrier was the desert, and there was no way an army could cross it. Therefore the Eremians and the Vadani were irrelevant, and it wouldn't matter if they all died tomorrow.

But for hundreds of thousands of people, even savages, to die simply because he got up out of this chair and walked across that stretch of floor to that door and opened it... The reluctance was like a weight on his shoulders, pinning him to his seat. It was simply too big an act for one man. It was (he grinned as the thought crossed his mind; why? It wasn't funny) an abomination.

But if it was that, how could it be happening? This act, this extraordinary thing, was nothing more than the Republic conducting business in the prescribed manner. It wasn't as though he was some king or duke among the savages, acting on a whim. He was a component, an operation of a machine. That was more like it, he thought. The Republic is a vast and complex machine, powered by constitution and specification, with hundreds of thousands of human cogs, gears, cams, spindles, shafts, beams, arms, pawls, hands, keys, axles, cotters, manifolds, bearings, sears, pins, latches, flies, pistons, links, quills, leads, screws, drums and escapements, each performing in turn its specific operation. He was the last operation before the army was engaged, but he was a component of the whole; ordinances and directives drove him, his office and his duties were the keyway he traveled in. It wasn't as though he had any choice in the matter.

But if he stood up, he would walk to the door and open it, and the Eremians would all be killed. It occurred to him that although sooner or later he would have to stand up, he didn't have to do it quite yet. He could pour himself another cup of the willowbark tea (it was cold now, but there), pick up a letter or a memorandum, answer some correspondence, sharpen his pen. If he really tried, using every trick of prevarication he could think of, maybe he could buy the Eremians a whole half-hour - He stood up.

"I'm sorry," Ducas said.

Ziani lifted his head and looked at him. "That's all right," he said. "It was just a suggestion." He waited for the Eremian to leave, but he didn't seem to be in any hurry. Ziani wondered if he was going to apologize; maybe he'd confess he was the one who talked the Duke out of accepting his offer - he was sure that was what had happened. A strange man, Ducas. But that made him complex, and a complex component can be made to perform several operations at once. Over the last few days, Ziani had come to value him.

"So," he said, "have they decided what's going to happen to me?"

Ducas left the doorway, came in; he stood over the chair but hesitated before sitting down. The instinctive good manners of the aristocrat (it's more important to be polite to your inferiors than your equals). Ziani nodded, and Ducas sat down.

"That's pretty much up to you," he said. "Well, strictly speaking it's up to me, since you've been bailed into my charge; but that's just a formality, since in theory you're an enemy alien and all that."

"I see."

Ducas shook his head. "Don't worry about that," he said. "You're free to go, if that's what you want. You can go wherever you like. Or," he added with a slight frown; probably he didn't realize he was betraying himself with that frown, "you can stay here, whichever you like. You don't need me to tell you, you could set up shop as a smith or an armorer or pretty much anything you like, and you'd be guaranteed a damn good living."

Ziani raised an eyebrow. "People would be prepared to have dealings with a Mezentine?"

"Of course." Ducas grinned. "Even if you were no good, they'd flock to you for the novelty value. But according to Cantacusene, you're the best craftsman who ever set foot in the Duchy, so..."

Ziani nodded. "I'd need capital," he said. "A workshop, tools, materials..."

"That wouldn't be a problem, I'm sure. You'll have no trouble finding a backer. The whole city's talking about you, you know."

"I'd have thought they'd have other things on their minds right now."

"Yes," Ducas admitted. "But life goes on. We're a resilient lot. A great many people died in the Vadani war; it's not the first time we've had to cope with a national disaster. And as far as you're concerned, they won't blame you just because of where you're from or the color of your skin. We aren't like that here. And everybody knows you've suffered just as much at the hands of the Republic as they have."

Everybody knows that, do they? What exactly do they know, Ziani wondered, about anything? He kept his face blank. "Well," he said, "at first sight that'd seem like the logical thing to do. At least until I find my feet and decide what's the best use I can put my life to. It's a strange feeling, you know," he went on, watching Ducas out of the corner of his eye. "Suddenly finding yourself in a new place, with nothing at all except yourself. I mean, from what you've just told me, it could be the making of me."

"Perfectly true," Ducas said. "A man like you, with your skills and talents. How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Thirty-four."

"Well, there you are, then." Ducas was smiling. "You've got plenty of time to start again. Settle down, build up a business, start a family. You can do anything you like."

I could so easily hate you for saying that, Ziani thought; but you're too valuable to hate. "Clouds and silver linings," he said. "Or I could move on. If I were to do that, where could I go?"

Ducas shrugged. "Well," he said, "if you're dead set on this business of teaching people the Mezentine way, you'd probably be better off across the border, in Vadanis. They'd be more likely to listen to you there. Of course," he added quickly, "there's no hurry, you can take your time and decide. Really, in spite of everything, I guess you're in a good position - I know that's hard to believe, seeing what you've been through, but..." He paused, rebuking himself for crassness. Really, it would be easy to like this man. "What I mean is, you're a free agent; no ties, no responsibilities. You can make a fresh start, wherever you want."

Ducas went away shortly after that. There was, he'd stressed again before he left, no hurry at all. Vaatzes could stay here in the castle for a bit, it was entirely up to him. No pressure. Everything very relaxed, very tranquil. Quite.

Ziani looked round the room to see if there was anything that might come in handy, but there wasn't. They'd given him clothes, respectable, what passed for good quality among these tribesmen; clothes and shoes were all he'd take when he left in the morning, and that would do fine. He'd got over the sudden spurt of violent anger that had made him want to grab Ducas by the throat and dig his thumbs into the hollow between the collarbones, thus quickly and efficiently stopping the mechanism. He thought about that impulse for a moment, and wondered what was happening to him. He'd been alive for thirty-four blameless years, he could remember, and count on the fingers of one hand, all the times when he'd lost his temper and committed or even contemplated violence. It was, he'd always prided himself, completely foreign to his nature. He'd seen fights at the factory, once or twice in the street (drunks, of course), and he'd acknowledged the existence of the violent impulse without being able or wanting to understand it. There were bad things in the world, and that was one of them. Since then, he'd killed two men, possibly three, but he'd been forced to it. The acts had been neutral, since they'd been imposed on him by forces outside his control. This time, though...

He analyzed the moment. Ducas had said something unbearable, and it had provoked him; he couldn't stand the idea that the words would go unanswered, as though unless they were challenged and avenged, they'd be minuted forever in some sort of metaphysical transcript, the proceedings of his life. But he knew perfectly well that Ducas hadn't meant to torture him, or even give offense. He'd been trying to be helpful. True, he had his own clumsy motivations. Ducas, he knew, was afraid of him, which was understandable. He wanted him to go away. Because of his breeding and upbringing and the mess of jumbled principles and ethics his poor brain was stuffed with, he'd found himself urging this foreigner whose presence disturbed him so much to do the opposite of what he wanted him to; because he was ashamed of his fear, presumably, and because he felt he was offending his duty of hospitality. Accordingly, because he wanted Ziani to go away, he'd made a great song and dance about how easy and profitable it'd be for him to stay. It would be dangerously easy to like these people.

That was beside the point. There had been a moment when he'd wanted to kill Ducas, or at least hurt him very badly, just for a tactless word. He wondered: have I been quiet and harmless all my life because that's who I am, or just because I've never before run into anything more than trivial provocation? It was, he recognized, an important issue. It was essential that he should know his own properties, tensile strength and breaking strain, before he started work.

A little later they brought him up some food (it was a depressing thought that the garbage on his plate probably counted as the best this country could offer); he ate it, lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling until he fell asleep.

Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus; greetings.

Trying to understand people is like trying to catch flies in a net; just when you think you've got them and you pounce, they flit out through the holes in the mesh and leave you feeling baffled and stupid.

When Orsea got back from the war, I thought everything was going to be dreadful; and so it has been, but not in anything like the way I thought. I was sure everybody would be angry and bitter and hysterical, there'd be riots and mobs throwing stones and ferocious speeches in the streets, everybody blaming Orsea and the court, everything out in the open. But it hasn't been like that at all. It's been quiet; and I think that's much, much worse. It's like a married couple, I suppose. If they quarrel and shout at each other and throw things, obviously it's pretty bad; but when they just don't talk at all, you know it's hopeless. That's the sort of quiet there's been here, ever since the news broke about the disaster; except I don't get the feeling anybody blames us for what happened (which is ridiculous, isn't it? Surely it was all our fault, when you come right down to it). They don't hate us; I don't even think they particularly hate the Mezentines, either. It's like there's no point getting angry with what's happened, the way you don't get angry with death. It's something that happens and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. All I can think of is that people here are so used to war and slaughter and armies not coming back that they don't get angry anymore. Do you know that, over the last two hundred years, among men over the age of twenty-five, one in three has been killed in wars? No wonder they all marry young here. I can't understand how people can live like this.

(I'm not thinking, of course. Since most of that time we've been at war with you, presumably it's pretty much the same with your people; so you understand it better than I can. I hate the fact that I spent so much time living away from here when I was young. This might as well be a foreign country, for all I understand it.) The biggest thing that's been happening lately is the business with the Mezentine exile. It's all been a complete mystery to me, I'm afraid. As far as I was concerned, there simply wasn't an issue. He was offering to teach us how to be just like the Republic: all working in factories, making things to sell abroad with those amazing Mezentine machines and so forth. But it would've been completely impossible; we're nothing like the Mezentines - by their standards, I suppose we're unspeakably primitive; and besides, if we were to start making all these things to sell, who on earth are we supposed to sell them to? But Orsea and the court had a long debate about it. I think Orsea really liked the idea; it would've been a new future for the Duchy, he thought, at a time when he'd just brought about a total disaster; it would've been a way of putting things right, and he's so completely heartbroken and torn up with guilt. But Miel Ducas talked him out of it, and of course he listened to Miel. He listens to everybody except himself. It's stupid, really; it's not just that Orsea's his own worst enemy, he's his only enemy. But he puts so much work into it, to make up the shortfall.

This is turning into a very bad letter. It's full of politics and news and personal stuff and all the things we agreed we wouldn't write to each other about; I'm being very boring and no fun. I really don't mean to dump all my problems on you like this. Let's talk about something interesting instead.

I've left some lines blank to indicate me sitting here trying to think of something interesting to say. If I could draw, I'd put in a little sketch of me, baffled (but I can't, as you know; all my faces end up long and thin and pointy, like goblins). The truth is, I'm so worried about Orsea and there's absolutely nothing I can do to help him. He's wandering about the place all numb - it's the way he is first thing in the morning, when he blunders about still asleep for an hour, except that it lasts all day. He's not trying to be horrible or anything like that. I think he's trying so hard not to think about the disaster and everything, and the only way he can manage it is not to think about anything. It's like when you've got a little scrap of a tune going round and round in your head, and the only way you can make it shut up is to think a kind of low, monotonous hum.

I've left some more lines blank, because I really am trying to think of something cheerful and interesting, because I imagine you need cheering up, too. Your last letter - here I go again - it was so intensely bright and clever and full of fascinating things that I got the distinct feeling you've got an annoying tune in your head as well; but you don't hum, you sing something else to get rid of it. Which is not to say that it wasn't a wonderful letter, and it kept me going for ages; I rationed it, a paragraph a day for a week, like a besieged city. Look, I can't leave any more lines, because this is all the paper I've got, and it's got to fit inside a little carved soapstone box that that dreadful Adventurer woman is taking to sell in Avadoce, so I can't waste any more space; but I've got to tell you something interesting, or you won't want to bother with me anymore.

Here's something I've just thought of. It's not new, I'm afraid. I've been saving it up. Apparently - this is from one of the merchant women, so believe it or not as you like - somewhere in the desert there's an underground river. It's a long way down under the sand, and the only way they know it's there is because there's a certain kind of flower that puts down incredibly long roots, and it can tap into the river and that's how it survives. Apparently there was this man lost in the desert one time, and he was wandering around convinced he was going to die, and suddenly he saw the most amazing thing: a long, straight line of bright red flowers, like a fence beside a road. At first he thought it was some kind of vision, and if he followed the flowers it'd lead him to Paradise; so, he thought, I might as well, just in case; and he followed the line, and just when he couldn't go a step further, he literally stepped into a pool of water and very nearly drowned. Anyway, he was all right after that; the thing is (according to this merchant woman) that these flowers only bloom for one week a year, and then they die off completely and shrink back into their roots, and you could tread on them and never know they were there.

Thinking about it, I'm pretty much positive it isn't true; but it's a bit more cheerful than me moaning on about how sad everything is. You never know; tomorrow Orsea might tread on an unexpected flower, and we'll find our way out of here.

Write soon.

Walking out of the castle felt strangely familiar. It took Ziani a moment or so to work out what it reminded him of; passing under the gateway arch and into the narrow street, he remembered leaving the Guildhall in Mezentia. He tried to think how long ago that had been, but he couldn't. It was a notable failure in calibration. Perhaps he was losing his fine judgment.

There was one distinct difference from the last time. Then, he'd walked out alone and nobody had seen him. This time, there was someone waiting for him.

A tall man in a long cloak had been leaning against the gatepost; he straightened up and hurried after Ziani. "Excuse me," he called out. Obviously Ziani didn't recognize him, but the voice was easily classified; another feature of the nobility is how similar they all sound. Since it was unlikely that an Eremian aristocrat would be acting as a paid assassin for the Republic, Ziani allowed himself to breathe again.

Ziani stopped and waited for him.

"You're the Mezentine," the man said.

No point trying to deny it, even if he wanted to. "That's right," he said.

"Vaatzes," the man said. He pronounced it slightly wrong; one long A instead of two short ones. "The Ducas told me about you. My name is Sorit Calaphates."

He paused, as if waiting for some reaction; then he realized he was talking to someone who couldn't be expected to know who he was. "Pleased to meet you," Ziani said.

Calaphates seemed a little nervous, but most likely only because he was talking to someone he hadn't been formally introduced to. "I understand from the Ducas," he went on, "that you may be considering setting up in business here in the city. Would that be correct?"

"I'm not sure," Ziani said. "I haven't made up my mind, to be honest with you."