are digging under the walls, laying their camouflets, lighting their fires; and when the walls fail, it's not the direct attack that's done the trick, it's the undermining.
'Anyway,' he said, lifting his empty cup. 'Here's to love.' He mimed a sip and put the cup down. 'Now, I think, it's about the right moment to go back to that big mystery I was talking about a while ago. Are you ready for it, do you think?'
She made a soft, disdainful noise in her throat.
'Splendid,' he said. 'Here goes, then. I told you just now that the mice ate the records of the board's decision on your pension application. Well, it seems we've got quite a serious vermin problem down there in the vaults, because they aren't the only records that appear to have got all chewed up-assuming that's what happened to them, of course. Another batch of papers that seems to be very difficult to get hold of is the early part of the file on Ziani's investigation; you know, the inquiries that led to his arrest. The interesting stuff, not the bits they read out at the trial. The bits that'd tell me how they found him out in the first place.'
He looked at her. Blank, sheer, closed, like a city wall.
'Well,' he went on, 'I couldn't get hold of the papers, but I thought, that's all right, all I need to do is find the investigating officers and ask them; simple as that. And here's where it starts to get a little disturbing, because those officers seem to have become confoundedly elusive. I wrote to them and got no answer; I wrote to their superiors, and all I got was an acknowledgment. I got my superiors to write to their superiors, and they told me my inquiry had been noted and they'd see what they could do about arranging interviews, but I waited and nothing happened. I went to the paymaster's office and checked, just to make sure the officers were still alive and in the service; no worries on that score, they're still on the books and drawing their pay. That set my mind at rest; I was worried they might have got lost down in the archives and eaten by the mice. But I still haven't been able to talk to them, or get a letter from them, or anything resembling answers to my questions. And then I thought of you.'
'Me,' she repeated.
He shrugged. 'It's worth a try, I thought. Maybe you might know. You see,' he went on, 'logically, there're only a limited number of ways that anybody could've found out about what Ziani was doing. He could have shown the doll to someone and told them; or someone could have visited the house and seen the doll, or drawings and sketches; either that, or someone else must have mentioned it-informed on him direct to the Guild, or told someone who did the actual informing. One of those three possibilities, unless you remember different, or you can think of any other way. No? Fine.'
'It came as a complete shock,' she said. 'They just turned up on the doorstep one day, said they were from the Guild, and where was his workshop? Then they started measuring things with calipers and rules and stuff, and when Ziani came home, they arrested him.'
Psellus nodded slowly. 'That's interesting,' he said. 'Interesting, I mean, that they seemed to know what they were looking for. Of course it's all a bit technical-I can explain it for you if you like, or you can take my word for it- but the thing is, the actual changes he made, the abominations; they weren't the sort of thing you'd notice just by looking. You'd need to measure everything very carefully, do all sorts of tests before you found them. You mentioned calipers and rules, by the way; can you remember anything else they used? Any other kinds of equipment?'
'There could have been other things,' she said. 'I wouldn't know what they were. I don't know about technical stuff.'
'Of course not. But they'd have needed resistance gauges-that means gadgets you use to measure the strength of a spring; other tools like that. They're quite bulky, not the sort of thing you can cart around in a pocket or a tool-roll. Were they carrying heavy bags, or cases?'
'I don't remember.'
'Ah well.' Psellus looked down at his hands for a moment. 'Maybe we can get rid of the second alternative-if you remember, that was someone, a visitor, catching sight of the doll while it was being made, and noticing something was wrong. I'd figured out a perfectly plausible way it could've happened; a dinner guest wandering into the wrong room, or going to get a coat he'd left. But this notional visitor would have to be someone who knew that particular specification intimately-rather narrows the field, I'd say-and who just happened to have calipers and a resistance gauge handy at the time… And then I thought, perhaps what he saw wasn't the doll itself, but drawings and schematics, and he noticed the changes. But that'd still mean he'd need to be an expert on the specification. No, I think we can sideline that possibility. In which case, we're left with the other two. Either Ziani told someone, or someone else knew what Ziani was up to and informed on him.' He looked up and smiled brilliantly. 'And, of course, both of those are impossible too. Aren't they?'
She looked past him. 'You've lost me,' she said.
'Really?' He raised his eyebrows. 'It's not exactly difficult to follow. Ziani wouldn't have told anybody, because we agreed, it's not in his nature. And there can't have been anybody else who told on him, because who else would've known about it? Only someone who knew he was making the doll, and who knew he was including the abominations-someone he'd told about the changes he was planning on making. And, frankly, who could that possibly have been? Nobody.' He looked up, at a spot on the ceiling directly above her head. 'Well, you, possibly. Just conceivably he might have told you. But that makes no sense, because why on earth would you betray him to disgrace and death? After all, you stood to lose everything. And,' he added, 'you loved him, of course. True love.'
'That's right,' she said, quietly and icily. 'I didn't know, and if I'd known I wouldn't have told.'
'Of course not,' Psellus said. 'Of course you wouldn't. But then who does that leave? No one at all. Except…' He rubbed the bridge of his nose. 'There's Falier, of course. His direct subordinate at the factory, the man you're about to marry. He'd understand the technical stuff. I don't suppose for one minute that he'd be carrying the mechanical doll specification around in his head, but he'd know where to look it up. Even so; that still needs someone to have tipped him off, so he could go and inform on Ziani to the Guild. And who could've done that? Someone who wanted to, and someone who knew about it. That rules you out,' Psellus said, smiling, 'on at least one count. So, now you understand why I've taken to thinking of this as the big mystery. It's not just big, it's huge, don't you think? Not that it'd matter a damn,' he went on, 'if Ziani hadn't managed to escape from the Guildhall the way he did. Because, all said and done, it's irrelevant exactly how he was found out. What matters, in the end, is the fact that he did actually commit the crime. He was guilty. We know that, because he said so. No, it's only worth going over all this old stuff because Ziani's still very much alive and on the loose. You know, don't you, that he betrayed Civitas Eremiae to us?'
(There, he thought; the camouflet sprung, the props burned out, the walls undermined.)
She looked at him for three heartbeats. 'No,' she said, 'I didn't know that.'
'Perfectly true.' Psellus smiled. 'Odd thing to do, don't you think, given that he'd built the scorpions that slaughtered our army. Because of him, in fact, we were that close to giving up and going away. Then, after causing us all that trouble, he turns round and hands us the city. Would you care to suggest why he might've done that?'
'No idea.'
'Well.' Psellus ate the last of the biscuit, brushed crumbs off his chest. 'He wrote a letter to a friend; the one man in Mezentia he reckoned he could still trust. I'm surprised, actually, that you don't know. I'd have thought Falier might have told you.'
'What's he got to do with it?'
'It was Falier he wrote to.'
She couldn't stop her eyes widening; and it was like seeing a crack appearing in masonry. 'He didn't tell me, no. I suppose he was ordered not to.'
'Oh, quite so. But still; when you're as much in love as he is…' He shrugged. 'But that fits in with what we know about Falier; a very trustworthy man, reliable. Anyway, to go back to what we were saying. Why would Ziani have done such a thing, do you think?'
'Didn't he say why? In the letter?'
Psellus smiled. 'As a matter of fact, he did. He said it was because he was filled with remorse and wanted to make things right. Do you think that's likely to be the real reason?'
She shrugged. 'I don't know.'
'It occurred to me,' Psellus went on, 'that he was hoping we might forgive him, and let him come home. Of course, that would be impossible.' She looked up when he said that. 'Out of the question, naturally. First he creates
