'Wouldn't know,' Vasa replied, 'never had to find out, luckily. I heard tell once that you can shift hard rock by lighting a bloody great big fire, get it really hot, then chuck water on it to split it.' He grinned. 'Sounds fine when you say it, but I wouldn't like doing it myself.'
'I bet.' Ziani smiled. 'No granite in these parts, then.'
'Never come across any. What d'you want to know about that stuff for, anyhow?'
'Oh, just another job I've got to do, sooner or later. Thanks, you've been a great help.'
Vasa hesitated for a moment, then said, 'They're saying you're here to block up the mine, because of the war. Is that right?'
'Afraid so. Means you'll be out of a job for a while, but think about it. If the Mezentines got hold of the mine intact they'd be wanting men to work it for them, and I don't suppose they'd be planning on paying any wages.'
He could see the point sinking in, like water soaking away into peat. Then Vasa shrugged. 'Let's hope the war's over soon, then,' he said. 'It's not a bucket of fun, this job, but it pays good money. I'd rather be here than on wall-building, like my brother-in-law. That's bloody hard work, and the money's a joke.'
Ziani dipped his head in acknowledgment. 'Vasa, did you say your name was?'
'Corvus Vasa. And there's my brother Bous, he works down on the faces, if ever you're looking for men for this other job of yours.'
'I might well be, later on,' Ziani said. 'So if your brother works on the faces, he must know a thing or two about cutting rock.'
'Him? Yeah, I should think so. I mean, that stuff's not hard like granite, but you don't just scoop it out with a spoon.'
'Thanks,' Ziani said, smiling. 'I'll bear you both in mind.'
'No problem.' Vasa picked up his wheelbarrow, nodded over his shoulder and went on his way.
(And why not? Ziani thought. I will be needing skilled miners, when the time comes. Assuming I can figure out the last details… He shook his head, like a wet dog drying itself.)
Two days, and he was so sick of the place he'd have given anything just to walk away. Simply staying was like trying to hold his breath, an intolerable pressure inside him. Two days did nothing to acclimatize him to the noise and the dust; if anything, their effect was cumulative, so that he noticed them more, not less.
Unfortunately, the job wasn't going well. The steel turned up exactly on time, as Carnufex had guaranteed, but not the anvils, the tools or the ten Eremian blacksmiths he'd been promised faithfully before he left Civitas Vadanis. Even Carnufex had no luck trying to track them down, and without them, nothing could be done. On the evening of the second day, Carnufex told him the adjutant would be arriving tomorrow and maybe he'd be able to get it sorted out; he seemed uncharacteristically vague and tentative, which Ziani reckoned was a very bad sign.
There'd been some progress, however; mostly due, it had to be said, to Gace Daurenja. He'd taken measurements in nine of the twelve ventilation shafts, hanging out of the winch bucket with a lantern gripped in his teeth, with seventy feet of sheer drop waiting to catch him if he happened to slip. Ziani could hardly bear to think about it, but Daurenja didn't seem bothered in the least, while the plans he produced (working on them at night after an eighteen-hour day in the bucket) were masterpieces of clear, elegant draftsmanship, and annotated in the most beautiful lettering Ziani had ever seen (when he asked about that, Daurenja attributed it to the time he'd spent copying manuscripts for a society bookseller). The only thing he seemed bothered about was how long the job was taking him, and Ziani had to tell him to stop apologizing for being so slow.
He'd drawn up the plans for the cages himself, taking his time for want of anything else to do. Carnufex had let him use his office as a drawing room; he could still hear the noise, and the dust managed to get in somehow, in spite of shutters on the windows and curtains on the doors, but at least it was tolerable, and the slow, familiar work helped take his mind off the misery of it all. If he tried really hard, he could almost fool himself into thinking that he was back in the city at the ordnance factory, and that the hammering was the slow, constant heartbeat of the trip-hammers, and the dust was foundry soot, and the men who came when he shouted were his own kind, not barbarians.
On the third day he decided he'd had enough. The adjutant had arrived and spent a thoroughly unpleasant evening being quietly shouted at by Carnufex, but there was still no clue as to the whereabouts of the anvils or the tools, let alone the blacksmiths. That, as far as Ziani was concerned, wasn't good enough. He called Daurenja and gave him a letter.
'I want you to ride back to the city,' he said, 'and give this to Duke Valens personally. Wait for a reply.'
Daurenja nodded sharply, a picture of grim determination. 'Right away,' he said. 'Leave it to me.' He was out of the office before Ziani had a chance to tell him where to find a horse or collect his conduct letters, which he'd have to produce before he'd be allowed past the sentries at the palace gate. Presumably he didn't feel the need, or thought that that'd be cheating; Ziani pictured him scaling the palace wall with a grappling hook and crawling down a chimney into the Duke's bedroom. Wouldn't put it past him, at that.
He'd finished the last of the plans, and cramp made going outside an unpleasant necessity. This time he walked up to the sluices where the ore was washed. He wasn't particularly interested in that stage of the operation, but he'd already looked at everything else. The foreman seemed happy enough to explain the procedures to him.
'That other bloke was up here yesterday, asking,' the foreman added, after a long and rather confusing account of how the crushed ore was washed through the strakes. 'But I don't think he was taking much of it in. Kept interrupting and asking questions; didn't make much sense to me.'
'The other bloke?' Ziani asked.
'The long, thin bloke. You know, him who's been measuring the vents.'
'Oh,' Ziani said, 'him. What did he want to know?'
The foreman shook his head. 'Not sure. I was telling him how we get all the shit out, calamine and pyrites and sulfur. But I think he must've lost the thread, because he kept asking what we did with the stuff we took out; and I told him, it's just washed away, it's garbage, we don't want it. He got a bit excited about that, like I was doing something wrong; then he said thank you for your time, all stiff and uptight, and went storming off in a right old state.' The foreman shrugged, expressing a broad but reluctant tolerance of lunatics. 'I told him, if the stuff's any good to him he's welcome to it, if he can figure out a way of collecting it, but I think he thought I was trying to be funny.'
Ziani scowled. 'Calamine,' he said.
'And pyrites, sulfur, red lead, all that shit. I suppose there's people who can find a use for anything.'
'I'll ask him when he gets back,' Ziani replied. 'But that won't be for at least a week.'
Wrong. Daurenja came back two days later, in a thunderstorm, riding on the box of a large, broad-wheeled cart. There were four other carts behind him, carrying crates covered with tarpaulins, anvils sticking out from under heavy waxed covers, and half a dozen wet, bemused-looking men who proved to be the first installment of the promised blacksmiths.
'They didn't want to let me in to see the Duke,' Daurenja said, standing bare-headed in the yard with the rain running down his spiked hair like millraces and puddling around his feet. 'They said I needed a pass or a certificate or something. But I got through all right. I'm afraid I'm rather used to getting my own way.'
Ziani pulled his collar round his ears. He was having to shout to make himself heard above the splashing. 'How did you manage that?' he said.
Daurenja frowned. 'To be honest, I lost my temper a little; and one of the guards shoved me-at least, he was just about to, but I beat him to it. There was a bit of a scuffle, and that brought the duty officer out, and I said I had an urgent message for the Duke, from you. The adjutant had the common sense to take me straight to the Duke. He was just sitting down to dinner, but he agreed to see me right away. I gave him the letter, and I could see he was absolutely livid. He sent for the Chancellor and gave him quite a talking-to, with me standing right next to him able to hear every word. The poor man went bright red in the face, and then a footman or something of the sort took me to one of the guest rooms. Everything was ready by dawn the next day, all signed for and loaded on the carts. We were on the road by mid-morning, and well, here we are.'
Ziani frowned. 'And he was all right, was he? About you hitting one of the guards?'
'He didn't mention it,' Daurenja said, and Ziani couldn't tell whether he was lying or telling the truth. 'There's
