"My deal with Psellus is as follows. We-I mean the Vadani and the Eremians-will disarm you and escort you over the mountains to the edge of the desert. Once you've crossed back to where you came from, Mezentine engineers will destroy the string of oases, so no one will ever be able to bring an army across there again." He shrugged. "I have no idea how you go about wrecking a large pool of water, but my people have the expertise, not to mention the incentive. Then, apart from the inevitable small raiding parties every so often, we'll never see or hear from you again, which is how it should be. The Mezentines will break down the City walls and undertake never to raise a standing army; and there'll be a trade agreement, we haven't worked out any details yet, but it'll mean the Mezentines will sell their goods for a fair price, and pay a substantial war indemnity; there'll also be a lot of changes in the way the Republic's run, but that's an internal matter, nothing to do with you. In return, the Vadani and the Eremians will be responsible for the City's defence." He frowned. "It's not a very good deal for any of us, and I expect it'll break down sooner or later and we'll all be back at each other's throats again before very long, but at least we'll be rid of you. It took this war to make us all realise that you're the one problem none of us can accommodate. You're a different kind of threat; you change everything."
One of the Aram Chantat said: "You realised it, though. Before the wedding, even. That's why you made it happen."
Ziani gave him a blank stare. "I'm not important," he said. "What possible relevance could one man's concerns have to the fate of nations? What I've done is end the war with the minimum of bloodshed and damage, and given the people of three countries some kind of chance of living in peace. Surely that's a leader's duty, and if it isn't, it should be."
"We misjudged you," said another. "We assumed you wanted revenge."
"I'm not a savage," Ziani replied calmly. "Only savages think like that."
He was about to dismiss them, but one of the Aram Chantat caught his eye and said, "Will you go back to your wife and daughter, and your work in the factory? Isn't that what you wanted?"
Ziani looked back at him, like someone looking into a mirror. "The meeting is closed," he said.
18
There was a man called Cuno Abazes; a Mezentine, about thirty-two years old, a bachelor in a city where nearly everybody over the age of twenty was married. He didn't belong to a Guild, having failed the trade test for the Carpenters'. Instead, he'd earned a sparse living as a porter, drover and general labourer, loading and unloading, holding horses and collecting nightsoil for the Fullers." The war had been remarkably kind to him: he'd joined the army on the first day of recruitment, realising it was his one and only chance of making good, and had done so well that within a matter of weeks he'd been made an officer, a captain of general infantry. He'd been assigned to guard duty on the embankment on the day of the assault, but a splinter of rock from an allied round shot had hit him on the side of the head as he went to report for the start of his shift, and when the embankment was blown up he was lying in bed in the hospital. His injuries proved to be superficial, and next morning he was passed fit for active service and told to report to the Guildhall for sentry duty. There he heard the news that the war was over.
"That's terrible," he blurted out. "What's going to happen to the army?"
"Being disbanded," they told him. "Express term of the peace treaty. You'll be able to go back to your old life, pick up where you left off. Isn't that good news?"
Cuno Abazes didn't reply to that. Instead, he asked, "So who won?" and they said, "You know, that's a very good question." Later that day, Captain Abazes was on duty in the main hall when Chairman Psellus himself passed through, on his way to the small conference suite. Since hearing the bad news about the end of the war, Abazes had had time to calm down and think it over, and he'd reached the conclusion that even if they were doing away with the army as such, they were still going to need guards, sentries, security officers, and this was exactly the time when they'd be choosing who to keep and who to let go. Accordingly, as Psellus went by, he snapped to attention like the swinging arm of an onager slamming against the stop. Abazes had always been good at drill, and he put everything he'd got into it, with the result that the crack of his heels coming together made Psellus shy like a horse and stare at him for a moment. That disconcerted him; he'd assumed the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the Republic would be a connoisseur of fine drill, but Psellus had reacted as if he'd stuck his tongue out at him and blown a raspberry.
"Very good, Captain," said the other man (shorter than the chairman, somewhere between thirty and forty-five, oddly dressed but otherwise completely unmemorable). "Carry on."
Instinctively, Abazes saluted, but neither the unmemorable man nor the chairman were watching. They were walking away from him, chatting in low, comfortable voices; old friends, he could tell. Well, he thought, obviously the other man had to be something to do with the military; at least, he sounded right, and he'd known what to say. Cuno Abazes muttered a silent prayer, and went back to doing his imitation of a statue, or one of those lifesize mechanical people that used to be in fashion, many years ago.
"You've got them saluting already," Ziani said. "I'm impressed."
Psellus shrugged. "Did he do it right? I don't know about these things."
"He wouldn't have gone down well with a Vadani drill sergeant," Ziani replied. "Slouching, gut sticking out, hand wobbling around like he was trying to swat flies. You'd never have made soldiers out of them, not if the war had dragged on for twenty years. It's not in our nature."
"I'm delighted to hear you say so," Psellus said. "War is neither a craft nor a trade, and I'm pleased we have an excuse not to meddle with it any more. By all means let's leave it to your precious Vadani. Let them get from it what pleasure they can."
Ziani laughed. "You still don't understand them," he said. "Not that there's any reason why you should. There's rather more to them than you think, but compared to us they're still just savages."
They walked on together in silence as far as the foot of the grand staircase; and Psellus thought: I've come here every day for as long as I can remember, but I've never seen it before, there's always been too many people in the way-my colleagues, my fellow clerks, hurtling up and down the stairs with files and ledgers. It's almost as though they were there to distract attention from the building itself; because we didn't build it, did we? The people who came before us did that, the people who made the padlock. And then he thought: I saved the Republic, but I don't want it any more; even looking at it makes me feel sick. And then he said: "You're really a patriot, aren't you, Ziani?"
Ziani nodded. "Always have been," he said.
"A true believer?"
"Always."
Psellus accepted the statement with a slight movement of head and shoulders. "You never intended to destroy us," he said.
"Of course not." Ziani wasn't looking at him. He was gazing at the staircase, the vaulted ceiling, the carved balustrades, the allegorical frescoes on the walls (Perfection illuminating the assembled crafts and trades; Perfection being a tall, big-bosomed woman in flowing red robes, and each craft and trade represented by a grey-haired man carrying the archetypal tool or instrument of his calling; but why, he couldn't help wondering, had they all been painted with white skins, like they were savages?). "Only a lunatic would burn down his own house; he'd have nothing to come home to."
"And that's really all it was," Psellus said, hesitating, as though he couldn't set foot on the first tread of the stair until he'd had an answer. "You just wanted to come home."