Ziani stood up. 'You've got the idea,' he said. 'If I were you, once your colleagues start selling out their fine ware at sacrifice, you want to be in there buying. After all,' he added, 'you know something they don't. Only,' he added, 'for crying out loud be a bit discreet about it. We don't want anybody putting two and two together.'
He left her to her long thoughts and the unopened bottle, and walked back up the hill. People were staring at him as he went by; not just because of the color of his skin, now that he was the hero of the hour, the man who'd raised the alarm and saved the Duke's life. The thought made him smile.
He heard the foundry half a mile before he reached it. There were all sorts of rumors about what was going on there. The favorite, for the time being, was that all that steel sheet was for making armor, to equip the thousands of cavalrymen the Cure Hardy would be sending to help avenge the massacre. The proponents of this theory weren't having it all their own way; they couldn't explain to those awkward-minded cynics who wanted to argue the point how all these notional soldiers were going to get from the Cure Hardy homelands to Civitas Vadanis, given that there was a huge, impassable desert in the way. That uncomfortable fact was very much in people's minds; had been ever since the news of the marriage alliance had broken. It was all very well making friends with a nation that had endless resources of warlike manpower, but what help was that likely to be if it was going to take them six months to get here? (Six months was the figure usually quoted; pure conjecture, since nobody really knew how big the desert was or how you got round it.) The same point had exercised the minds of most of the Duke's court; but Carausius had been quite adamant that the problem was by no means insoluble, and since he hadn't been prepared to discuss the matter, his assurance had been generally taken on trust. Hooray for autocratic government.
That thought made Ziani smile too, as he banged on the massive gates of the foundry and waited for the porter to let him in. It had cost him a good deal of effort and ingenuity to find a way of sharing the secret of the salt road across the desert with Carausius, since the late Chancellor had taken a dislike to him from the start. In the end, he'd had to plant in his business partner's mind the idea of selling Carausius' wife twenty yards of best hard linen at practically cost, and hanging around to chat after the deal had been made. He'd explained that if the marriage alliance went ahead, there'd be a need for regular traffic between the Cure Hardy and the Vadani; which meant convoys of troops, which meant free escorts for the shipments of salt they'd be taking across the desert, and quite possibly free fodder for the horses, someone else to carry the water, all sorts of fringe benefits. Thanks to his gentle, patient suggestions, Carausius had learned about the secret road across the desert, firmly believing he'd found out about it by happy chance rather than being force-fed it by someone he regarded as a threat to national security. In his apparent monopoly of the secret, he'd seen a wonderful opportunity to consolidate and maintain his grip on power. As far as Ziani could find out, he hadn't even shared it with Valens himself; and now, of course, Carausius was dead. The Cure Hardy still believed that in order to get to Civitas Vadanis, they had to struggle across the desert the hard way, and that way was very hard indeed: the bride's escort had consisted of the wedding party, fifty horses to carry water and supplies and their drivers. Twenty men and thirty-seven horses had died in the crossing, quietly and without complaint; these losses were rather lower than had been anticipated when the party set out. The Cure Hardy were serious about the alliance. How pleased they would be, therefore, when they saw the map Ziani had hidden under a floorboard in the cramped back room at the foundry that he used as an office.
'They'll be pleased to see you,' the porter told him mournfully as he swung open the gate. 'They're having problems with the drop-hammers.'
Ziani closed his eyes, but only for a moment. There had been a short, happy interval when he'd actually come to believe that Vadani workmen could be trusted with mechanisms more complicated than a pair of tongs, but that was some time ago. 'Where's Daurenja?' he heard himself say. 'Couldn't he have sorted it out?'
'They were looking for him,' the porter replied, 'but he's off somewhere. They're having to do the blooms by hand.'
Patience, Ziani ordered himself. The idiots'll be beating the sheets out to any old thickness, and quite probably cracking and splitting them as well; a day's production, only fit to go back in the melt. 'Wonderful,' he said, and he quickened his pace. He always seemed to be rushing about these days; not good for someone who didn't really like walking, let alone running.
Nothing wrong with the drop-hammers that a blindfolded idiot couldn't have fixed in five minutes; but the Vadani foundrymen were standing around looking sad, still and patient as horses in a paddock. He put the problem right-a chain had jumped a pulley and mangled a couple of gear-wheels, but there were spares in the box-shouted at the men whose names he could remember, and scampered off to get on with some real work.
He was building a punch, to cut mounting holes in the plates, to save having to drill each one. It was nothing more complicated than a long lever bearing on cams, bolted down for stability to a massive oak log, but he was having a little trouble with the alignment of the bottom plate, and the sheets were coming out distorted after the holes had been punched. All it needed was shims, but that meant laboriously hacksawing, drilling and filing each one by hand, since such basic necessities of life as a lathe and a mill were unknown in this godforsaken country. He clamped a stub of two-inch-round bar in the vise, picked up the saw and set to work, pausing after every fifty strokes to spit into the slot for lubrication. He was three-quarters of the way through when he heard footsteps behind him, a pattern he recognized without having to turn and look.
'Daurenja?' he called out.
Immediately he was there: long, tense, attentive, unsatisfactory in every way. Today he had his ponytail tied back with a twist of packing wire, and there was something yellow under his fingernails.
'Where the hell did you wander off to?' Ziani asked.
'I had some errands to run,' Daurenja answered. 'I'm very sorry. I gather there was some bother with the-'
'Yes. Two hours lost. You should've been here to deal with it.'
Being angry with Daurenja was like pouring water into sand; he absorbed it, stifling the healthy flow of emotion.
'You know we're in a hurry,' Ziani went on. The default had been trivial enough; two hours' lost production wasn't the end of the world, or even a serious inconvenience. If it hadn't been for Daurenja's energy, initiative and enthusiasm, the whole project would probably have stalled by now and be in jeopardy. 'You know you can't leave these clowns on their own for ten minutes, but you bugger off somewhere without a word to me; they could have trashed the place, wrecked all the machinery, blown the furnace…'
'I'm sorry. It won't happen again.'
Ziani put the hacksaw down on the bench and wiped sweat and filings from his hands. 'It's not bloody well good enough, Daurenja,' he said, and the thin man's pale eyes seemed to glow at him as Ziani took a step forward, balling his right fist. 'I never asked you for help; you came to me, remember. You came begging me for a job.'
'I know. And I'm grateful, believe me.'
'Yes, you are.' Ziani grabbed the front of Daurenja's shirt with his left hand and pulled, forcing Daurenja to come close. 'You're always so very grateful, and then when my back's turned…'
He'd learned how to punch in the ordnance factory; not a scientific philosophy of personal combat, like the rapier fencing Duke Valens had tried to teach him, more a sense of timing refined by desperation into an instinct. You don't have to teach a dog or a bull how to fight; it comes by light of nature and works out through practice. He jabbed his fist into Daurenja's solar plexus, making him fold like a hinge; as his head came down, he let go with his left hand and bashed him on the side of the jaw. It felt hard and thin, like hammering on a closed door. Daurenja staggered sideways, and as his balance faltered, Ziani kicked him hard on the left kneecap, dropping him on the ground in a heap.
'Get up,' he said. 'Oh come on,' he added, 'you're a fighting man, you held off the entire Mezentine army the other day, armed with nothing but a bit of stick.'
Daurenja struggled to his knees; Ziani kicked him in the ribs and put his foot on his throat.
'Fine,' he said. 'Don't fight if you don't want to. I'll break your ribs one at a time.'
There was something about the way he lay there; it took Ziani a moment to recognize what it was. Practice, because this wasn't the first time, not by a long way. He was enduring the beating the way a chronic invalid endures some painful but necessary treatment he's been subjected to many times, holding still so as not to inconvenience the doctor as he goes about his work, tilting his head sideways or holding out his arm when he's told to. To test the hypothesis, Ziani lifted his foot off Daurenja's throat and swung it back for a kick; sure enough, Daurenja moved his head a little to the side, anticipating the attack, not trying to avoid it but seeking to minimize
