"Hang on," Miel interrupted - he was still feeling completely numb and vague from the astonishment Vaatzes' announcement had caused; he could hear himself talking calmly and pleasantly to this man, and he wondered why. Probably, he decided, because he didn't really believe him. "You make it sound like you - well, like you approve of what they were planning to do to you."

"You could put it like that."

"Fine. So why did you escape?"

Vaatzes smiled. "For a very basic, stupid reason. I'm in love with my wife, you see. If I die, I'll never see her again. So I had to stay alive. It's that simple."

Miel frowned. "But - sorry if I'm being a bit blunt - running away, coming here, and then building all the war engines so we could beat off the invasion. There's no way you'll ever be able to go home."

"We'll see about that," Vaatzes said mildly. "I rather believe I will, some day. But we're drifting away from the point. When I came here, it didn't take me long to realize how this country works. Basically, it's all rather haphazard. The people who rule this place aren't chosen because they're wise or talented, it goes entirely by what I believe is called the accident of birth. To make up for that, you noblemen are trained from birth to do the jobs you're born to; and you grow up having a code of duty and honor drilled into you, to the point where you aren't really in charge of your own actions. You do the right thing, instinctively." Vaatzes shrugged. "There are worse ways of running things," he said. "But I saw, straight away, that you're the man who the Duke listens to. And that's because he knows he's a bad leader and you're a better one; he's a fool, but clever enough to recognize a better man and let him run things. That's why I had to get rid of you; part of it, anyway, but the rest of it's a bit complicated. Anyway; I asked questions. I was sure that you must have a weak spot somewhere, a point where you'd be vulnerable, and it didn't take me long to find it. It's common knowledge that you were always supposed to marry Duchess Veatriz, because that was the best possible match for both of you, politically and socially. Also, you were more or less in love with her - not that it mattered, since the whole thing was a foregone conclusion."

Miel shifted uncomfortably and said nothing.

"Well," Vaatzes went on, "as soon as love came into it, I knew I'd found the weak point, something I could hammer a wedge into. Love's always the most dangerous thing; so much of the unhappiness and quite a lot of the evil in the world comes directly out of it. I guessed that you'd played the good loser, ever since Orsea married her, and that there'd never actually been anything between you and her after he won and you lost. Also, I reckoned it was extremely likely that, deep inside somewhere, Orsea would never really believe that she loves him and not you. Logical enough; he's a fool and you're a good man, everything he wishes he could be but can't. That was perfect, as far as I was concerned. Because you're innocent, you never had anything to hide, you never imagined you'd be vulnerable to attack on that front. All I had to do was find something wrong that I could involve the two of you in - you and her."

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 realize 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."

It was Miel's turn to shake his head. "I wasn't talking about that," he said. "I ought to kill you for what you did to her. And to Orsea, my best friend."

Vaatzes considered that. "You'd have a stronger case on those grounds, certainly," he said. "But that wouldn't be the real reason, just an excuse. No," he went on, getting painfully to his feet, "you won't do anything to me. For all sorts of reasons. Saving my life, for instance. That took some arranging, by the way."

Miel had thought he was beyond surprise by now. "Arranging?"

Vaatzes smiled and nodded. "On reflection," he said, "it was worth the effort. It got me into your house for an extended stay, which meant I was able to make contact with your housekeeper and various other members of the household. It was hard work, though; hours and hours reading those ridiculous books - King Fashion and the Mirror; and teaching myself to shoot a bow and arrow. All that, just so I could talk to a few domestic servants without making them suspicious."

"I don't understand," Miel said weakly.

"What? Oh, right." Vaatzes leaned against the doorframe. "I read in one of the books, King Fashion, I think, about the dangers of boar-hunting. It said that a boar who's been shot in the back leg with an arrow is particularly dangerous; it can't run away, which is what its instincts tell it to, but it can still use its front legs to drag itself along and get at you, so you can pretty well guarantee it'll attack. So I made myself a bow and I practiced until I could hit a target the size of a boar's back leg every time. I knew there'd be no guarantee that the perfect opportunity would arise, but it was worth going along just in case it did. And I got lucky; and it all worked out perfectly after all. That benign providence again, I suppose. On balance, I'd have preferred it if you'd shown up about five seconds earlier; I'd have got away with some nasty cuts and bruises, and I could've faked broken bones and internal injuries instead of having to put up with the real things. But, like I said, it all came out just right. I got into your house like I wanted; also, because of your personal code of chivalry, it turned me into one of your responsibilities, someone you had to help and look out for thereafter. Naturally, that made my life much easier, by putting me above suspicion." He smiled slowly. "I won't deny I've had one or two really big slices of luck, but at least I've made the most out of them. A bit like a man killing a pig; nothing goes to waste, it all turns out to be useful."

Miel looked at him. "Get out," he said. "And if I ever set eyes on you again, I will kill you. For the reasons stated."

Vaatzes nodded, thanked him for the wine and left. He'd have liked to stay longer and explain further, but as always he was racing a deadline. Soon - he wasn't sure when, of course, he was basing all his timings on estimates, little more than guesses - soon the Mezentines would be creeping up through the maintenance tunnels, heading for the gate. That would be a problem, of course; when he'd sent his letters to Falier, the first of them months ago, with the instructions enclosed, he hadn't foreseen the destruction and walling up of the gateway. It remained to be seen what effect it would have on the overall working out of the design; from here on, for a while, it was all out of his hands. He felt a degree of apprehension about that, quite naturally, and also a certain relief. He was far more tired than he'd anticipated he would be at this point, and that in itself was a reason to feel apprehensive.

Now, at least, he didn't have anything in particular to do. He daren't go back to his room at the factory and fall asleep; the factory was too near the gate, for one thing, and he would need to be fairly close to the palace. He didn't relish the prospect of wandering aimlessly about for an hour, or three hours, however long it was going to be. The sensible thing to do would be to find somewhere light and sheltered, and read the book he'd brought with him.

(Ludicrous, he thought; who else but me would remember to bring a book to read while waiting for a massacre to start? But, he reflected, all his life he'd had a peculiar horror of being bored, and he'd been saving this particular book for when he needed to take his mind off something. So; it was just a perfectly reasonable act of preparation.) He wandered out into the courtyard, just below the tower. Since he was already inside the restricted area, and the guards knew who he was and why he was here, nobody was likely to bother him. They kept torches burning all night here - visibility was important, prisoners can escape better in the dark - and there was a bench he could sit on. Light to read by, and it wasn't uncomfortably cold, just fresh enough to help him stay awake. He sat down, curled his coat tails round his knees, and opened his book.

The candidate [he read] is not expected to understand the theoretical basis of perfection; nor is he encouraged to consider such matters in any further detail than that included in the syllabus. It is sufficient for him to be aware that, in a necessarily imperfect world, perfection is most immediately and tangibly represented in the various established specifications ordained by each Guild for its members.

However, some observations on the basic principles of this subject will prove useful to the candidate, and should be committed to memory. First, perfection can be expressed as the smallest degree of tolerance of error or divergence from Specification that can be obtained in the circumstances prevailing in each instance. Thus, a standard tolerance of one thousandth of an inch is allowed for in specifications of lathe work and most milling operations. In casting, a tolerance of ten thousandths is permitted; in general carpentry, twenty thousandths, although in fine joinery and cabinet-making this is reduced to ten thousandths.

None of these divergences can be taken to express perfection; a perfect artifact must conform to Specification exactly. Given the inevitability of error, however, the Guild recognizes the need for strictly regulated tolerance, and such tolerance is therefore included in the specification. The question arises, therefore, whether an artifact that is perfect, i.e. one that contains no error whatsoever, can be in accordance with Specification; since it differs from the prescribed form by omitting the permissible degree of error, is it not therefore out of Specification, and therefore an abomination?

This issue was addressed by the seventh extraordinary assembly of the united Guilds, who declared that a perfect artifact is permitted provided that in its creation there was no inherent intent to improve upon Specification by reducing error beyond permitted tolerance. Evidence of such intent would be, among other things, modification of other components to allow for or take advantage of perfection in any one component. Thus, if a mechanism is found to have only one perfect component, intent is not found; whereas if more than one component is perfect, and if the perfection of one component is ancillary to or dependent upon the perfection of another (for example, where two parts fit together), there is a rebuttable presumption of such intent, and the accused must prove beyond reasonable doubt that no such intent was in his mind when he produced the components.

He rested the book on his knees for a moment, then turned the page.

Perfection is most often attained, or, more usually, aspired to, through the destruction or removal of material. Such destroyed or discarded material is referred to as waste. Waste can be created by separation (for instance, by sawing off surplus material) or by attrition (e.g. filing, turning). The creation of waste can therefore be partly or wholly destructive. It is policy that wherever possible, partial destruction is preferred to total destruction, since surplus material that is only partially destroyed - offcuts, for example - can often be put to good use. However, this preference should not be allowed to interfere with the imperatives of precision. Thus, where a more exact result can be obtained by a wholly destructive process, e.g. filing or milling, than by a partially destructive one such as sawing or chain-drilling, total destruction is preferred. Acceptable levels of waste are, of course, allowed for in all Specifications, and any attempt to reduce waste beyond the specified levels is prohibited. As the report of the ninth general review committee puts it, waste is part and parcel of any properly conducted procedure; material is there to be cut and destroyed in the furtherance of the design.

He closed his eyes for a moment. There wasn't, as far as he was aware, a specification for the cutting and piercing of flesh, the bending and breaking of bone and sinew; there was no established tolerance through which perfection in this sphere could be expressed. In the absence of anything of the sort, it was impossible to establish what represented a permissible degree of waste. However, the basic rule must still apply: where a more exact result can be obtained by total destruction, it is preferred. He closed his hands around his face, and tried to find the absolution those words ought to bring. It was only logical. The mechanism he'd built wasn't some whim of his own. It was the only possible device that could be capable of achieving his only objective, and that objective had been forced on him by the men who'd taken him away from his house, his family, the only things in the world that mattered to him. So he'd followed the design to its logical end, accepting the inevitability of a high level of wholly destructive waste; in effect, he'd been following the design specified by the actions of his betters in the Guild, and it was the imperatives of precision that had destroyed Miel Ducas and Duchess Veatriz and Duke Orsea, and were even now threading their nervous way through the tunnels in the rock under his feet, heading for a gate that shouldn't have been blocked, with a view to the laying waste, by cutting and attrition, of an entire city.

He was glad that it was all outside his control for a while.

They had no idea what to expect as they lifted the heavy trapdoor. They weren't supposed to know that the whole plan was the work of the traitor-abominator Vaatzes, but the deputy chief of staff had felt obliged to tell them, just in case it was all a trap. It wasn't the sort of information that inspires confidence, particularly when taken together with the obvious mistake about the gate.

Nevertheless, a color-sergeant by the name of Pasargades lifted the trapdoor, took a deep breath and scrambled out of the tunnel into the sweet night air. He may have ducked his head involuntarily, as though anticipating a cut or a blow, but nothing like that happened. He jumped out, looked round quickly and dropped to his knees to help the next man out.

The first thing they noticed was how quiet it was. No voices, which was encouraging; no boots grinding on the cobbles, no scrape of heels or spear-butts. There was a certain degree of light, from a lantern hanging off a bracket five yards or so away. So far, the abominator had done them proud.

Thirty-six men followed Color-Sergeant Pasargades out of the tunnel: two infantry platoons, one squad of engineers and the commanding officer, Captain Boustrophedon. They were light enough on their feet - minimum armor, sidearms only, and the engineers' tools. All they had to do was breach the rubble blocking the gate. The army would do the rest.

The captain led the way, as was only right and proper. One platoon of infantry followed him, then the engineers, then the second infantry unit. They had a fair idea of where to go. The last Mezentine diplomat to visit the city had briefed them on the layout of the gatehouse, not that there was much to tell. Through the archway into a large empty room, and there was the gate.

Or there it wasn't. Instead, blocking a ragged-sided hole in the wall, there was a heap of wicker baskets, piled on top of each other, each one filled with rubble. In front of the heap someone had made a start on a brick wall, but as yet it was only three courses high. You could step over that without any bother. Propping up the heap of baskets were half a dozen beams - they looked like rafters, or something of the sort. Presumably the idea was that if there was another battering-ram attack, the beams would to some extent brace the baskets against the impact; either that, or the bricklayers were afraid that the heap was unsteady and might come crashing down on them at any moment. All in all, it was a fairly unconvincing piece of fortification. Once the brick wall was finished, of course, it'd be better, though not much. Not that it mattered. Even if the gate was wide open, the Mezentines didn't have the manpower for a direct assault, not if their entry was resisted.

Simple, thought Captain Boustrophedon: knock away the beams, get a grappling-hook into a few of those baskets, and pull. Of course, you wouldn't live to enjoy being a hero. The rubble would come down on you like a rockslide in the mountains, you'd be a bag full of splintered bones when you died.

Someone was calling out; an inquiry rather than a challenge, but it had to go unanswered. More voices, which meant choosing a course of action quickly and hoping it'd work. Well, the captain thought, if we can't have the rubble collapsing inward, we'll have to try pushing instead. He wasn't particularly happy about it, but there wasn't time to draw diagrams and calculate angles.

"Get hold of those beams and push," he ordered.

The back platoon were already engaged. He heard a shout or two, then a yell as someone got hurt - them or us, hardly matters. So long as this gateway's opened up in the next fifteen seconds.

They pushed. A couple of arrows skittered off the side wall, someone was yelling, "In there!" They pushed again, and in the split second it took for Boustrophedon to realize he'd made the wrong decision, the Eremian guards swept away the nine men of the back platoon who were still standing, and charged into the gatehouse.

Boustrophedon lived long enough to see the first gleam of light through the breach. He hardly noticed it, although it meant he'd succeeded; there was surprisingly little pain, but his sight was being squeezed into a narrow ring by encroaching darkness. The air was full of dust. He died, and a Mezentine soldier stumbling through the breach trod on his head before an Eremian shot him. That hardly mattered, in the grand scheme of things. There were plenty more where he'd just come from. What was left of the defenders was shoved out of the way as the assault party burst through. The Eremian night patrol, who might have made a difference if they'd arrived twenty seconds earlier, hardly slowed the attack up at all. The first objective, the square behind the main gate, was secured within a minute of the opening of the breach; five minutes, and the Mezentines were on the wall, racing along the ramparts to secure access to the whole city.

24.

Miel Ducas had, remarkably enough, fallen asleep. He hadn't thought he'd be able to sleep, with Vaatzes' words rattling round inside his head like stones in a bucket. Nevertheless, when the guard captain burst in, he was flopped in his chair, eyes closed.

The captain was yelling at him. At first he thought, he's come to kill me, but it soon occurred to him that that wouldn't call for panic-stricken shouting, so he listened to what the man was saying.

"They're on the wall," he said, which didn't make sense. "We can't hold them. Come on, get out."

Get out he understood. "Hold on," he mumbled, "I'll get my things." But the captain grabbed him by the elbow and dragged him toward the door. He was too sleepy to resist.

"Head for the palace," the captain was saying, and that didn't make sense either.

"What's going on?" Miel asked.

"The Mezentines," the captain snapped back at him. "They're inside the city, and up on the wall. They'll be here any moment now. Head for the palace."

Still didn't make sense. We've won the war, how come there's Mezentines in the city? Miel knew better than to argue, however. The captain let go of his elbow and ran off, leaving him standing in the little courtyard. Well, Miel thought, I suppose I'm free.

If there really were Mezentines... He found it impossible to believe. How could they have got in? Surely there'd have been an alert, trumpets blasting and men shouting, war noises. Ridiculous. Even so; head for the palace. He could do that.

Someone jumped out in front of him. At first he thought it must be Vaatzes, because of his dark skin. Then he realized: Mezentine. Immediately he felt bloated with panic. The Mezentine soldier was coming at him, holding some kind of polearm, and he himself was empty-handed and defenseless. Oh well, he thought, but he sidestepped anyway, at the very last moment, and was pleasantly surprised as the soldier blundered past him, lunging ferociously at the patch of empty air he'd just left behind.

The drill he'd learned when he was twelve said that the sidestep is combined with a counterattack in time, either both hands round the throat or a stamping kick to the back of the knee. Miel, however, turned and ran.

Head for the palace. The courtyard archway opened into Coopers' Street; uphill, second left was Fourways, leading to Drapers' Lane, leading to Middle Walk. There he met the guards, running flat out; he flattened himself against a wall to let them pass. Up Middle Walk (he'd been cooped up in small rooms far too long, his legs were stiff and painful) to the Review Grounds, across the Horsefair and down the little alley that led to Fivesprings. Halfway down the alley was a narrow stair up the side of a house, which led to a passageway inside the palace wall, which let you into the Ducas' private entrance; assuming you had the key, which he didn't.

But the door was open; and the reason for that unexpected stroke of luck was Jarnac Ducas, struggling to do up the buckles on his brigandine coat left-handed as he pulled the key out of the lock with his right.

"Miel?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

Stupid question, as both of them realized as soon as he'd said it. "What's going on, Jarnac?" Miel asked. "They said the Mezentines are in the city, and I met -"

But Jarnac nodded. "Don't ask me how," he said. "Seems like they came in through the gate, and now they've secured the walls, by the sound of it. We're falling back on the palace and the inner yards; if we can regroup, maybe we can push them back, I don't know. You coming?"

Another stupid question. Up onto the palace wall - they arrived at the same time as the guards, who told them that Duke Orsea was down below trying to drive the invaders out of the Horsefair. "Not going well when we left," one of the guards said. "He made a good start, but they came in from Long Lane and Halfacre, took him in flank. That's all I know."

Jarnac swore, and scrambled down the stairs into the palace. Miel followed; but by the time he made it to the long gallery that ran the length of the top floor, Jarnac had disappeared down one of the side passages. Miel stopped, leaned against the wall and caught his breath. This was ridiculous, he decided; I won't be any good to anybody, lost and out of breath.

He closed his eyes for a moment and thought. Something to fight with would be a good start, and then he supposed he ought to go and look for Orsea. There weren't any armories or guard stations on this floor, but there was a trophy of arms on the wall of the small reception chamber, fancy decorative stuff tastefully arranged in a sort of seashell pattern. He couldn't reach any of the swords or shields, but by standing on a chair he was able to pull down a finely engraved gilded halberd, which was going to have to do. Armor was out of the question, of course, and besides, he didn't have time to put it on.

Down five flights of stairs; people coming in both directions. Most of them gave him a startled look as he passed them, but nobody stopped or said anything. The front gate of the palace was open, though there was a platoon of guards standing by to close it as soon as the Duke managed to disengage and pull back. Assuming he was still alive.

As Miel ran through the gateway, the significance of what Jarnac had told him began to sink in. If Orsea had initially pushed through into the Horsefair, and then enemy units had come out from the alleys on either side, it was more than likely he'd been cut off, quite possibly encircled, depending on the numbers. It was exactly the sort of mess Orsea would get himself into (impulsive, brave, very stupid Orsea), and of course it was the hereditary duty of the Ducas to get him out of it.

That's right, he thought bitterly - the cobbles hurt his feet through his thin-soled slippers as he ran - me in my shirtsleeves, with this stupid toy halberd. This would be a good time to be excused duty, on grounds of having been imprisoned for high treason (can't get more excused than that). But he remembered, he was innocent. So that was no use.

North Parade was crowded with soldiers, some running forward toward the arch that led into the Horsefair, others scrambling through them, headed for the palace. The men coming back in had a dazed, bewildered look about them. Many were bloody, some were dragging wounded men along with them. One of them tried to grab his arm; he was shouting, go back, get away, they're coming through. Miel dodged him and kept going, but it didn't sound encouraging. All in all, it was a bad situation, he felt. Death in the defense of Duke and city was, naturally, a fitting and entirely acceptable end for the Ducas, but it was understood that somebody would be watching, taking notes, appreciating what he was doing with a view to making an appropriate entry in the family history. Death by massacre, blunder and shambles wasn't quite the same thing, but there wasn't anything he could do about it.

North Parade Arch was blocked by a crush of soldiers, filling the opening with their compressed bodies and limbs for want of anything better. No chance of getting through that; so he ran back along the wall, kicked open a doorway (side door of the Nicephorus house; he was sure they wouldn't mind) into a garden. The Nicephorus had their own private door opening into Horsefair - handy for the kitchenmaids going to market for spices and walnut oil. Assuming the enemy didn't know about it (they didn't, because the Nicephorus garden wasn't full of soldiers) he could use it to nip out into the battle, privileged to the last.

They'd bolted it, as they always did at night, but they hadn't locked it with the key. He shot the bolt, opened the door a crack and looked out. He could see people running, a bit of open space, and a big crowd on the north side, which presumably was the battle. Taking care to close the gate behind him, he slipped through.

Nobody took any notice of him, unless they were running and he got in their way, in which case they dodged round him or shoved him aside. It was still too dark to make out anything more than silhouettes and moving shadows in the distance, over on the north side of the Horsefair, where the fighting appeared to be. He walked rather than ran - why run to your death? he asked himself, it'll probably still be there in a minute or two. For the first time in a long while he was fully alert and focused. He knew what his job was - to save Orsea - and that it was most likely impossible, and that he'd die trying. Under other circumstances he'd be out of his mind with panic, but there didn't seem any call for that. As far as he could judge, the city was lost. Even if they managed to save it, his life as the Ducas was ruined, gone forever. Orsea, his best friend and his Duke, hated him as a traitor. There didn't seem to be much point in a life where everything he was had been taken away from him. If he couldn't be Miel Ducas anymore, he didn't want to play.

As he got closer to the fighting, he could hear the usual noises: shouts, yells, screams, thumps, scrapes, clangs, the shearing noise of cut meat. Take fear away and it was just noise; he approached it slowly and calmly, like a farmer walking up to a bull.

Something was going on directly in front of him; there was a commotion, and the movement seemed particularly intense. Remembering the silly gilded halberd he had in his hands, he quickened his pace a little. He had no idea where Orsea might be, assuming he was still alive, but here was as good a place to start as any.

The commotion turned out to be his cousin Jarnac. By the look of it, he was trying to cut his way into a dense wedge of the enemy. There was a handful of Eremians with him, but they were hanging back - probably, Miel guessed, because they didn't want to get too close to Jarnac while he was swinging his pole-axe.

It was an extraordinary sight. Every inch of Jarnac was on the move; as he dodged a spear-thrust, he pivoted, sidestepped, simultaneously jabbing, fending, hooking, hammering. There was a Mezentine right in front of him; he reversed the pole-axe and thrust the butt-spike into the man's stomach - there was eighteen-gauge steel plate in the way, but Jarnac's spike punched through it like tree-bark - then skipped side-and-back like a dancer to avoid another one; he jerked the spike out of the fallen man and tucked the hook inside the knee of his replacement; down that one went, Jarnac drove the spike through his helmet into his brain without bothering to look down, because his attention was fixed on another one, who got the axe-blade in his neck, in the gap between aventail and collarbone; Jarnac had moved again, diagonally forward so as to step in for a thrust in time into the face of the next Mezentine; he converted the pull that freed the blade into a backward thrust, piercing the skull of the man who was trying to get behind him; then he pushed forward and swung the poleaxe in a circle round his head to strike with every scrap of his strength; Miel couldn't see the man who was on the wrong end of that, but he heard the ring, clear and sharp as a hammer on an anvil. Every movement of hand and arm was mirrored in a step, forward, sideways or back; each step was combined with a twist or a turn that tensioned the muscles for the next thrust or cut. The only reason the Mezentines stood in his way was because they were too closely jammed together to get away; it was like watching a man dance his way through a tangle of briars. What happened? Miel asked himself. What happened to turn my genial buffoon of a cousin into the angel of Death?

As he watched, a Mezentine slipped past Jarnac on the left, got behind him and stabbed him in the back with a spear. Miel could feel his own heart suddenly stop, as though someone had reached down inside his chest and grabbed hold of it. Jarnac was dead; apparently not, because the spear didn't seem to want to go in. The attacker couldn't believe it. He froze, completely bewildered, and Jarnac spun on his heel and crushed his head with a monstrous overhand blow. Miel heard bone failing, and he remembered that when he'd met Jarnac in the passageway, he'd been climbing into a brigandine coat.

The dance stopped abruptly. Jarnac had run out of Mezentines for the time being, and exhaustion had caught up with him. He staggered, steadied himself against the axe-shaft, and stood still.

"Jarnac," Miel shouted. Jarnac lifted his head and frowned. A red wash from the rising sun bathed the side of his face, glittering off the splashed blood that coated his cheeks.

"Hello, Miel," Jarnac said quietly, and he grinned. "This is a fucking mess, isn't it?"

"Where's Orsea?" Miel asked.

Jarnac shook his head. "Search me," he said. "I caught sight of him a minute or so back, but then this lot here" - he jabbed the butt-spike in the vague direction of a dead man -"bust through our line and I got distracted." He frowned slightly. "I wouldn't bother going and looking for him, if I were you."