presence. A colleague, in that case. He frowned. He wasn't in the mood for the society of his own kind.
It turned out to be as bad as he'd thought: Maris Boioannes himself, condescending to visit him. Such a display of solidarity had to mean complications, at the very least.
'There you are,' Boioannes said, dropping easily into the other chair and steepling his fingers. He'd had his hair cut, Psellus noticed. 'Have you got a moment?'
Fatuous question. On the desk between them, half a dozen messenger tubes, a few sheets of blank paper, the inkwell. 'Always,' Psellus replied with a mild smile. 'What can I do for you?'
'It's nothing too serious.' Boioannes was looking at the wall behind his head, and Psellus suddenly couldn't remember if there was anything on that wall: a picture, a chart, a map of the war. He very much hoped there wasn't anything. The fewer insights into his mind that he conceded to any of his colleagues, the better. 'It's just something that's been itching away for a while now, and I was wondering if you could possibly shed some light.'
'If I can.'
'Splendid.' Boioannes frowned slightly, concentrating his mind the way anybody else would sharpen a pen. 'As you know, we only managed to take Civitas Eremiae because a traitor opened the gates for us.' He paused and smiled bleakly. 'Thinking about it, I really feel that traitor is far too small a word for Ziani Vaatzes. It's like calling a continent an island.'
'He seems to be quite an interesting man,' Psellus said.
'Putting it mildly.' Boioannes moved his head slightly to one side, scratched the bridge of his nose lightly, and put his head back exactly where it had been. 'First he betrays core military secrets to the enemy. Then he betrays the enemy to us.' He shrugged, precisely and elegantly. 'He causes the war, then ends it-well, not quite, but let's not let a few trivial details get in the way of symmetry. It's tempting to dismiss his motivations as irrelevant, but he's still at large-our best intelligence puts him at the court of Duke Valens, so he's still very much in the center of the action-and I find it irksome not being able to understand him.' Boioannes bent forward very slightly from the waist, bringing his formidable head a few inches closer to Psellus. 'When you were investigating him at Compliance, I imagine you found out pretty much everything there is to know about the man. I'd value your opinion.'
A tiny gleam of light broke through in Psellus' mind, and he answered almost eagerly. 'Yes, I conducted an investigation,' he said, 'and I believe I have most of the pertinent facts. As to whether I've got enough information to base a valid opinion on, I really couldn't say. I'm sure I must have missed something, because it doesn't really make any sense, but I don't know where to look for the missing clue, because I don't know what it is I'm looking for. Quite possibly I have the data but I haven't figured out its significance yet. On the other hand, I could be like a sailor trailing along an established trade-route, oblivious to the fact that just over the horizon there's an undiscovered country. I don't know.' He raised his eyebrows. 'That's not much help, is it?'
Boioannes pursed his lips. Most of his gestures seemed to constitute self-sharpening, in one form or another. 'He's only a human being,' he said, 'not a paradox of algebra; you should be able to do the equations and solve him, if you try.' He leaned back a little. He had the rare knack of looking comfortable on other people's furniture. 'Let's start with the obvious. Why do you think he told us how to get into Civitas Eremiae?'
Psellus nodded. 'There's the obvious motives,' he said. 'Remorse: he saw the horrific consequences of his betrayal of military secrets, and felt he had to make amends.'
'Discounting that,' Boioannes prompted.
'Hope,' Psellus continued. 'He hopes that, since he gave us Civitas Eremiae, we might be persuaded to pardon him and let him come home. Or, if he's a realist, he understands that we have his wife and daughter.'
Boioannes shook his head. 'Only a fool would carry out his side of the bargain before negotiating the terms. And he knows we're not savages. We don't take out our anger on innocent women and children.'
'Indeed.' Psellus twitched; nerves, probably. 'It could be some subsequent development we don't know about. For instance, he may have fallen out very badly with the Eremians while he was there, and betrayed them to get his revenge.'
'Possible.' Boioannes dipped his head in acknowledgment. 'Doesn't feel right, though. Oh, it could well be the right explanation, but in order to find it convincing, we'd have to presuppose that his mind had been affected: paranoia, psychotic tendencies. Does he seem to you to be that sort of man?'
'No,' Psellus admitted. 'But after what he's been through…'
'Let's assume it's not that. What else?'
That was as far as Psellus had got in his own speculations. 'The other extreme,' he said. 'He's a desperate man, we can agree on that. We aren't the Eremians' only enemies. Bear in mind that he's now with the Vadani, and they were at war with Eremia for a long time before the Sirupati Truce. He realizes that the Eremians are likely to lose the war sooner or later, so he does a deal with the Vadani; he betrays the Eremians to us in return for asylum in Civitas Vadanis.'
The Boioannes thoughtful smile; a rare commodity, flattering but dangerous. 'I could believe that,' he said, 'were it not for the fact that Duke Valens made a last-minute attempt to relieve the siege, and in so doing effectively declared war on us. If your theory's correct, you'll have to make some fairly large assumptions about Valens' motives, too.'
Psellus clicked his tongue. 'And that, of course,' he said, 'is the other great mystery: why did Valens attack us, at the precise moment when he had the least to gain from so doing? I can't help thinking that where you have two great mysteries in the space of one transaction, logic suggests that they're probably linked. But, of course, I'm not our leading expert on Duke Valens.'
'You're not.' The Boioannes smile darkened a little. 'I am. And there aren't two mysteries, there're three. Why did Orsea dismiss and imprison his chief adviser-the only competent man in his government-just when he needed him most?' He shook his head. 'Two enigmas might be a coincidence. Three… But now it's getting unrealistic, isn't it? What on earth could connect Orsea, Valens and our erstwhile Foreman of Ordnance? At the risk of overburdening the equation, I think that counts as a fourth enigma.' He sighed; it sounded almost like genuine frustration. 'It's ridiculous,' he said. 'We have sixty-five thousand men in arms and complete materiel superiority. The motivations of three individuals should be totally irrelevant. But apparently they matter, so we have to do something about them.'
Psellus nodded. He should have seen it coming; but if he had, what could he have done? 'You want me to investigate?'
This time, Boioannes grinned from the heart. 'Why not? It's not as though you've got anything else to do.'
'Quite.' Pause; the question had to be asked, and Boioannes would be expecting it. 'In return, would you tell me something?'
'Perhaps.'
'What am I doing on this committee?'
Boioannes' grin opened as if for laughter, but there was no sound, just a showing of teeth. 'There are various reasons,' he said. 'First, we need your expertise, wisdom and lively intellect. Second, we needed someone who would do as he was told and not make trouble. Third, there was a vacancy and we already had as many intelligent men as we could accommodate; a committee needs men like you, just as music needs rests or mosaics need blank tiles. Would you like me to continue?'
'Yes. I'd like the real reason, please.'
'Very well.' Boioannes frowned. 'In fact, it's quite complicated and not in the least profound. We wanted…' He smiled. 'I wanted someone inert and pragmatic who would stay peacefully in his office until he was given something to do. Naturally, the Foundrymen on the committee wanted another Foundryman. The other Guilds, in particular the Joiners, were prepared to allow another Foundryman only on the understanding that he was-excuse me-a nonentity. Staurachus felt that taking you out of Compliance would create a vacancy that could usefully be filled by a Tailor or a Draper; since Compliance was likely to be taking the main force of the fallout from the Vaatzes scandal, he felt that the Foundrymen should reduce their representation there and pass the poisoned cup, so to speak, to their natural enemies. If you want my opinion, your name came up because half the obvious candidates for the vacancy were too stupid, and the other half were too intelligent. You were-again, excuse me-a name more or less chosen at random from a shortlist of available Foundrymen. Nobody outside the Guild or Compliance had ever heard of you, but the Foundrymen believed you'd be safe, sensible and properly timid. Finally, it was you who got us into this war. There were other reasons-scraps of reasons-but most of them have slipped my mind.'
