'Been busy,' Ziani replied, trying not to stare. The dress she was wearing this time was the worst yet; a gushing, flowing mess of crimson velvet that made her look as though she was drowning in blood. 'I've got the money,' he went on, 'or at least, I'll have it for you this evening, without fail.'
'That's a big or at least,' she grumbled, but he knew he was safe. 'Cash?'
'Draft,' Ziani replied. 'Royal draft,' he added, as her face tightened, 'drawn direct on the Chancery, and no questions asked. My man'll bring it down to you before the ink's dry.'
'Whatever.' She was doing her best not to be impressed; on balance, succeeding. 'That'll save me a trip, then. When he brings me the money, I'll give him the map.'
'Fine.' Ziani dropped into a chair, trying to look casual, his legs suddenly weak. 'Now, let's talk about quantities.'
'Thought you'd say that.' She grinned at him, pleased to have read his mind so easily. 'Obviously, given the overheads on each caravan, each consignment's got to be big enough to give us our margin; say a minimum of seven tons a time.'
'Oh,' Ziani said. 'I was thinking a minimum often.'
She gave him a pitying look. 'You got any idea how many mules it takes to shift ten tons of salt?'
'Mules,' Ziani repeated. 'Why mules? Why not carts?'
She sighed. 'It's not just the run from here to the border,' she said. 'You'll see when you get the map. You avoid the desert, sure, but you've still got to get across the mountains before you reach the salt pans. Which means carts are out; it's all got to go on mules.'
Ziani nodded. 'I appreciate that,' he said. 'But you can take a train of carts up as far as the foothills, can't you?'
'Well, yes. But what good's that?'
Panic over; Ziani breathed out slowly. 'Well, couldn't you take the stuff down the mountain on mules and then load it onto carts once you're back on the flat?'
She laughed, making her many chins dance. 'Shows how much you know about the haulage business. Do that and you'll have to hire one team for the mule-train and another team for the wagons. Double your wage bill for an extra three tons. Not worth it.'
'I see,' Ziani said, 'I hadn't thought of that.'
'Obviously. Just as well you've got me to hold your hand for you. No, seven tons is your maximum, each trip. The idea is to get in as many trips as possible while the weather's good. By late autumn you've got the rains in the mountains, the rivers flood, can't be crossed, you're screwed. Ideally you want two mule-teams, one going and one coming back, all the time. But then you run into production difficulties, meaning the bloody idle savages in the mines. Oh, they'll promise you fifteen tons on the nail, swear blind they'll deliver bang on time; but when you get there, it's nine tons if you're lucky, and if you're not, you're stuck out there in the desert waiting for them to get around to doing some work. Honest truth, they don't understand the meaning of time like we do. Today means tomorrow or three weeks or three months, and if you lose your rag and start yelling at them they stare at you like they can't understand what all the fuss is about. Doing business with people like that…' She made a wide gesture with her hands, half compassion, half contempt. 'And then people whine about salt being expensive. Bloody hard way to earn a living, if you ask me.'
Ziani grinned. 'You'd better not let the Duke catch you talking like that about his future in-laws,' he said.
'Out of his tiny mind,' the woman replied sadly. 'If he knew those people like I do, he'd steer well clear of them, and I don't care what promises they're making. The thought of one of them as duchess; it's just as well his father's not alive to see it, it'd break his heart.'
'Really? I'd sort of got the impression he didn't have one.'
She scowled at him. 'That's his son you're thinking of,' she said. 'Actually, it's her I feel sorry for; the savage woman. Of course, I don't believe all the stuff you hear about him not being the marrying kind, if you follow me, but even so…'
Back up the hill, as soon as he could get away. The commission was ready for him, the ink still glistening, the seal still warm.
'That,' Carausius said, as he handed it over, 'makes you the second most powerful man in the duchy.'
Ziani frowned. 'I hadn't looked at it in that light,' he said.
'Of course,' Carausius went on, 'you'll be keeping detailed accounts.'
'Naturally,' Ziani replied, without looking up from the document.
'I strongly suggest you take great care over them,' Carausius said. 'The Duke instructs me that you're accountable directly to him, which means he'll be going over them himself. In other words, you'll have an auditor who can have your head cut off and stuck up on a pike just by giving the order. You may care to reflect on that before you start writing out drafts.'
Ziani looked up and smiled pleasantly. 'The sad thing is,' he said, 'that's the least of my worries.'
Daurenja was waiting for him when he reached the room he'd been assigned as an office. The day before, it had been a long-disused tack room, and it still reeked of saddle-soap, wet blankets and mold. 'Get this place cleaned up, will you?' he snapped without thinking. Daurenja nodded and said, 'Of course.'
'Fine.' Ziani made himself calm down; he didn't like losing his cool while Daurenja was around. 'Now, I want you to take a letter for me to a merchant in the town. She'll give you a letter to bring back. It's essential that you don't leave without it. I don't trust her as far as I can spit; so, polite but firm. All right?'
He wrote out the draft. Carausius had given him the appropriate seal, and ten sticks of the special green wax that was reserved for government business. He thought about what the Chancellor had said; second most powerful man in the duchy. Looked at from that perspective, he'd come a long way from the shop floor of the Mezentine ordnance factory. A reasonable man would consider that a great achievement in itself. 'When you get back,' he said, shaking sand on the address, 'we need to talk about materials.'
'You persuaded him, then?'
Ziani nodded. 'Worse luck, yes. We've got ten days to build prototypes. The cart and the foundry.'
Daurenja's mouth dropped open. 'Ten days? He's out of his mind.'
'My suggestion,' Ziani replied. 'We need to get moving. We can't start full-scale work until we've got approval on the prototypes; ten days is as long as I can spare. What are you still doing here, by the way? I asked you to do something for me.'
Daurenja seemed to vanish instantaneously; not even a blur. Ziani took a deep breath, as though he'd just woken up from an unsettling dream, and reached for a sheet of paper and his calipers. By the time Daurenja came back, he'd finished the design for the drop-valve cupola.
'Did you get it?'
Daurenja nodded. 'She wasn't any bother,' he said, handing over a fat square of parchment, heavily folded and sealed. 'She told me to tell you, she's thought about what you were saying about scheduling, and-'
'Forget about that,' Ziani said. 'I want you to look at this.' He turned the sketch round and pushed it across the table. 'I'm concerned about the gate,' he said. 'It's got to be simple, nice broad tolerances. We can't expect these people to do fine work.'
Daurenja bent his implausibly long back and studied the drawing for a while. 'You could replace that cam with a simple bolt,' he said. 'Not as smooth, obviously, but it'd be a forging rather than a machined component. Their forge work isn't so bad.'
Ziani was looking at the map: a diagram, a different sort of plan; lines drawn on paper, on which everything now depended. 'A bolt's no good,' he muttered without looking up, 'it'll expand in the heat and jam in its socket.'
'Of course.' He could hear how angry Daurenja was with himself. 'I should have thought of that, I'm sorry.'
'You were thinking aloud, it's all right. If we had time, we could make up templates so they could forge the cams, but we haven't, so that's that. I've noticed with these people: give them a model, a bit of carved wood, and they can copy it pretty well, but they can't seem to work from drawings.' Ziani traced a line on the map with his finger. Of course, it meant nothing to him; places he'd never been to, mountains conveyed by a few squiggles, a double line for a river. He tried to picture a landscape in his mind, but found he couldn't. He forced his mind back into the present, like a stockman driving an unruly animal into a pen. 'Here's a job for you,' he said. 'Get me a full list of all the competent metalworkers we've got on file, and get the Duke's people to organize the call-up. I want
