The thin man shifted a little, and Ziani could just about have squeezed through the gap between him and the wall without committing an assault. But he stayed where he was.
'I must apologize for accosting you like this,' the thin man went on. 'It is, of course, a deplorable breach of good manners, and not the sort of thing I would normally dream of doing. However…' He hesitated, but Ziani was fairly sure the pause was part of the script. Stage direction; look thoughtful. 'We move in rather different social circles,' the thin man went on, and Ziani wished he knew a little bit more about Vadani accents. He was fairly sure the man had one, but he couldn't place it well enough to grasp its significance. 'You enjoy the well-deserved favor of the Duke. I am only a poor student. It's hardly likely our paths would have crossed in the normal course of events.'
'Student,' Ziani said, repeating the only word in the speech he'd been able to get any sort of grip on. 'At a university, you. mean?'
'Indeed.' The thin man's smile widened like sunrise on the open plains. 'I have honors degrees in philosophy, music, literature, astronomy, law, medicine and architecture. I have also completed apprenticeships in many crafts and trades, including carpentry, gold, silver, copper, foundry and blacksmith work, building and masonry, coopering, tanning, farriery and charcoal-burning. I am qualified to act as a public scrivener and notary in four jurisdictions, and I can play the lute, the rebec and the recorder. People have asked me from time to time if there's anything I can't do; usually I answer that only time will tell.' The smile was beginning to slop over into a smirk; he restrained it and pulled it back into a look of modest pride. 'I was wondering,' he went on, 'if you would care to give me a job.'
Ziani's imagination had been busy while the thin man was talking, but even so he hadn't been expecting that. 'A job,' he repeated.
'That's right. Terms and conditions fully negotiable.'
Ziani made an effort and pulled himself together. 'Sorry,' he said. 'I don't have any jobs that need doing.'
A tiny wisp of a frown floated across the thin man's face, but not for long. 'Please don't get the idea that I'm too delicate and refined for hard manual labor,' he went on. 'Quite the contrary. At various times I've worked in the fields and the mines. I can dig ditches and lay a straight hedge. I can also cook, sew and clean; in fact, I was for five months senior footman to the Diomenes house in Eremia.'
Try as he might, Ziani couldn't think of anything to say to that; so he said, 'I see. So why did you leave?'
Every trace of expression drained out of the thin man's face. 'There was a misunderstanding,' he said. 'However, we parted on good terms in the end, and I have references.'
Ziani almost had to shake himself to break the spell. 'Look,' he said, 'that's all very impressive, but I'm not hiring right now, and if I did give you a job, I couldn't pay you. I'm just…' He ran out of words again. 'I'm just a guest here, not much better than a refugee. God only knows why the Duke lets me hang around, but he does. I'm very sorry, and it's very flattering to be asked, but I haven't got anything for you.'
'I'm sorry to hear that,' the thin man said. 'Very sorry indeed. I'm afraid I'd allowed myself to hope.' He seemed to fold inwards, then almost immediately reflated. 'If you'd like to see my certificates and references, I have them here, in this bag.' He pulled a small goatskin satchel off his shoulder and began undoing the buckles. 'Some of them may be a little creased, but-'
'No,' Ziani said, rather more forcefully than he'd intended. 'Thank you,' he added. 'But there's no need, really. I don't need any workers, and that's all there is to it.'
'A private secretary,' the thin man said. 'I can take dictation and copy letters in formal, cursive and demotic script…'
Ziani took a step forward. The thin man didn't move. Ziani stopped. 'No,' he said.
'A valet, maybe,' the thin man said. 'As a gentleman of the court-'
Because he was so thin, he'd be no problem to push aside. But Ziani felt an overwhelming reluctance to touch him, the sort of instinctive loathing he'd had for spiders when he was a boy. He retraced the step he'd just taken and folded his arms. 'I'm not a courtier,' he said, 'and I haven't got any money, and I'm not hiring. You don't seem able to understand that.'
'Payment wouldn't be essential.' The thin man was watching him closely, as if inspecting him for cracks and flaws. 'At least, not until something presented itself in which I might be of use. I have…' This time the hesitation was genuine. 'I have certain resources,' the thin man said warily, 'enough to provide for my needs, for a while. In the meantime, perhaps you might care to set me some task, by way of a trial. It would be foolish of me to expect you to take me on trust without a demonstration of my abilities.'
Too easy, Ziani thought. It must be some kind of trap. On the other hand… 'All right,' he said. 'Here's what I'll do. I'll give you a test-piece to make, and if it's up to scratch, if ever I do need anybody, I'll bear you in mind. Will that do?'
The thin man nodded, prompt and responsive as a mechanism. 'What more could I ask?' he said.
Ziani nodded, and applied his mind. To be sure of getting rid of him it'd have to be something unusual in these parts, not something he could just go out and buy, or get someone to make for him and then pass off as his own. 'Fine,' he said. 'Do you know what a ratchet is?'
The thin man's eyebrows rose. 'Of course.'
'All right, then,' Ziani said. 'At the factory where I used to work, we had a small portable winch for lifting heavy sections of steel bar, things like that. It hung by a chain off a hook bolted into a rafter, and you could lift a quarter-ton with it, just working the handle backward and forward with two fingers. Do you think you could make me something like that?'
'I guarantee it,' the thin man said. 'Will six weeks be soon enough?'
Ziani grinned. 'Take as long as you like,' he said.
'Six weeks.' The thin man nodded decisively. 'As soon as it's finished, I'll send word to you at the Duke's palace. I promise you won't be disappointed.'
Ziani nodded; then he asked, 'All those degrees and things you mentioned. Where did you say they were from?'
'The city university at Lonazep,' the thin man replied. 'I have the charters right here…'
'No, that's fine.' Was there a university at Lonazep? Now he came to think of it, he had a feeling there was, unless he was thinking of some other place beginning with L. Not that it mattered in the slightest. 'Well, I'll be hearing from you, then.'
'You most certainly will.' The thin man beamed at him again, bowed, then started to walk away backward up the hill. 'And thank you, very much indeed, for your time. I absolutely guarantee that you won't be disappointed.'
Whatever other gifts and skills the thin man had, he could walk backward without looking or bumping into things. Just when Ziani was convinced he was going to keep on bowing and smiling all the way up to the citadel, he backed round a corner and vanished. Ziani counted to ten under his breath, then headed back down the hill toward the town, making an effort not to break into a run.
Back where he'd started from, more or less. This time, he walked past the smithy and down an alleyway he'd noticed in passing a day or so earlier. It looked just like all the others, but he'd recognized the name painted on the blue tile: Seventeenth Street. Past the Temperance and Tolerance, he recalled, second door on the left. He found it-a plain wooden door, weathered gray, with a wooden latch. You'll have to knock quite hard, they'd told him, she's rather deaf.
He knocked, counted fifty under his breath, and knocked again. Nothing doing. He shrugged and was about to walk away when the latch rattled, the door opened and an enormously fat woman in a faded red dress came out into the street.
'Was that you making all the noise?' she said.
'Sorry.' Ziani frowned. 'Are you Henida Zeuxis?'
'That's right.'
He wanted to ask, Are you sure? but he managed not to. 'My name's Ziani Vaatzes. I'd like to talk to you for a moment, if you can spare the time.'
'Been expecting you,' the fat woman replied. 'Marcellinus at the Poverty said you'd been asking round after me.' She looked at him as if she was thinking of buying him, then added, 'Come in if you want.'
He followed her through the door into a small paved courtyard. There was a porch on one side, its timbers bowed under the weight of an enormous overgrown vine, in front of which stood two plain wooden chairs and a
