Ziani had to make an effort to speak. "Of course," he said. "After all, it's going to get us into the City, isn't it?" A man pushed past him, rolling a barrel. "And that's all I've ever wanted." She looked at him.
He'd thought he understood her; the argument being, if you know everything that's inside someone, nothing that looks out through the eyes can surprise you. Not so, apparently.
"I know what you're thinking," he said. "Haven't I got anything better to do? The City's being attacked, they've drained the ditch, they're digging under the embankment like rats in a corn bin, shouldn't I be out there leading something, instead of harassing poor harmless civilians. Well?"
Shrug, nod. Well, her words had always been precious, bought at great cost.
"Listen to me." He leaned forward across the desk. "The enemy are coming. They're savages. We don't understand them; we think they want to kill us all and burn down the City so they can turn this country into pasture for their animals, but we don't even know that. But I'm fairly certain that if I don't do something very soon, hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people will die in pain and fear. Do you understand me?"
Her eyes were defences; too high to scale, too hard to batter down, too deep to undermine. She said, "What can you do?"
"Me? Not a great deal. I can't fight, and I'm not clever enough to come up with a brilliant strategy. And we're none of us soldiers. So," he added with a faint smile, "that just leaves me with you."
She sighed. "What's that supposed to mean?"
He thought: even this is too difficult for me, I simply don't have the strength. But he said, "We think the enemy has a secret weapon, something that can tear down walls or smash through gates. Most likely it's something your husband made for them, he seems to have a flair for that sort of thing. But I'm not too worried about that, because I know for a fact that I've got an even better secret weapon. I've got you."
Another sigh, and she looked away.
"Listen to me," he said again. "I know what you did. Outside in the corridor are the investigators, the men Falier reported the abomination to. They've told me how he told them what to look for. I've also got Falier. He's told me about your agreement, how you both decided Ziani had to go. He says you told him about what Ziani was doing-indirectly, of course, but you put the idea into his head. It was your plan, the whole thing."
"That's stupid," she said. "I couldn't have done anything like that. I'm not an engineer."
"No." He nodded. "But you asked Ziani to build the doll, for Moritsa. You told him it had to be the kind that could move its arms. And you knew that if you asked him to do something, he'd do it. He'd have no choice, no matter how terrible it was, because he loved you."
"Rubbish," she said. "How would I know about types and mechanisms and stuff?"
He smiled. "Thank you," he said. "For giving me my cue. You wouldn't know, unless somebody told you. Somebody who also wanted to get Ziani out of the way. Someone you were in love with-you never cared anything for Falier-and who, for a time at least, was infatuated with you."
"You're a very strange man," she said. "You're sitting here telling me all this garbage when the savages-"
He held up his hand. "But that wasn't the only reason," he went on. "He loved you-I suppose you could call it that, though I should imagine it was more of an obsession on his part; the usual thing with a middle-aged upper-class man and a young low-class woman: the thrill, the sin, the exhilaration of breaking the rules and getting away with it. And I'm assuming the physical side was at least adequate. After all, he chose you, and a man like that could've had practically any woman in the City."
She said nothing.
"Although," he went on, "from what I can gather, he wasn't like that. Usually, as I understand it, when a man of Boioannes' stature and position gets obsessed with sex, a large part of the pleasure is the number and variety of conquests. Curiously, all my researches have only turned up six verifiable liaisons, all of them brief and fairly low-key. The rest of the time, he seems to have been a contentedly married man, until he found you. Now, looking at you, I really don't see-"
She yawned. "What was that name you said?"
"Maris Boioannes." He steepled his fingers. "Your lover. It was Boioannes who came up with the idea of tricking Ziani into breaking the law. He told you to nag and wheedle Ziani into making the doll with arms that moved; he'll have said it was so Ziani could be got out of the way, and then you'd pair off with a nonentity-Falier, who happened to be smitten with you anyhow-and after a decent interval he'd find a way of getting rid of Falier as well, and then you could be together. I wonder," he went on, "how he explained how Falier fitted into the plan, why he was needed. My guess is that if anybody came snooping round-me, for instance-they'd assume it was all Falier's idea; that Ziani started building the doll off his own bat, Falier noticed the abomination and turned him in to Compliance to get you for himself. Something like that? I'll take that as a yes. I expect the way he explained it made a whole lot of sense. Whatever else he was, Boioannes was a wonderfully persuasive man."
"Maris Boioannes," she repeated. "I've heard of him. Isn't he some grand politician?"
Psellus smiled. "You're forgetting something," he said. "I don't need to prove a word of this to anybody else. I just need to know it, and make you do what I want you to."
She was still for a long time; then she nodded, a tiny movement. "All right," she said. "What's that?" "Barrels?" the colonel repeated.
"That's right." The staff major shrugged. "Beats me, too. But that's what they've been doing. According to my best observers, all those lights we've been watching come up the trench are men rolling barrels."
The colonel sat down on a smashed beam and rubbed his cheeks with his palms. "What do you make of it?" he said. "I guess they could be using them to prop up the roof of the sap, but it seems like a lot of effort to go to."
A thump, and the ground shook. Neither man seemed to notice. After four hours of the bombardment, they were getting used to it. "We ought to dig a countersap," the major said. "If we dig under their sap and undermine it-"
"I suggested that two hours ago," the colonel replied. "He didn't even answer my note."
"He's not a soldier."
The colonel grinned. "Neither are we. So, no countersap. There's probably a very good reason," he added wearily. "Probably it'd damage the embankment even more than what they're doing."
"Not if we shored it properly."
"You know how to do that?" The major shook his head. "I don't, either. Their sappers are mineworkers, they know what they're doing. If we go digging bloody great big holes in the ground, we'll probably bring down the City walls. No, leave well alone, sit tight and do as we're told. And no sorties," he added quickly. "Leave it all up to Chairman Psellus and whoever does his thinking for him. Then, whatever happens, at least it's not our bloody fault."