The ambassador hesitated, as though trying to translate what he'd heard into a language he could understand. "Of course," he said. "It's the only logical-"
"Though obviously," Psellus went on, "there's a bit more to it than that. The last thing we want to do is make them come here before we've done what we can to get ready for them. If your soldiers were to drive off all their cattle, it could force them to attack us straight away, simply because the only reserve of food large enough to feed them and close enough to be any use is what we've got here-though I think you ought to know, we're not exactly well provided for in that department ourselves. Of course, I've made arrangements for every ship we can buy or hire to bring in as much food as possible from across the sea-the old country won't send us soldiers any more, but they're still happy to sell us wheat, thank goodness-but it's all got to come in through Lonazep, and I understand it's absolute chaos there at the moment. Still, they probably don't know that, and if they do, it's not as though they'd have a choice, if we somehow contrived to run off all their livestock. So, we don't want to leave them starving. We just want to slow them right down, so we've got time to build up our walls and get in as much food as we can for a long siege. That's our best chance, I reckon. If it's a matter of who starves first, I think we can win. If it comes to fighting, we might as well not bother." Psellus breathed out (he still wasn't used to talking uninterrupted for so long), then added, "Do you think I'm on the right lines here, or have I got it all wrong? Really, I'd value your opinion. It's been such a worry, trying to learn all this very difficult stuff in such a tearing hurry. It'd be a relief if an expert like yourself can reassure me I haven't made a dreadful mess of it all."
The ambassador looked at him warily for a while, then said, "Can I ask you what you did before all this?"
"I was a clerk."
"A…"
Psellus nodded. "I was a records clerk for nine years, after I'd finished my apprenticeship. Then I got my transfer from the executive to the administrative grade; I was a junior secretary in the Compliance directorate for six years, and then general secretary for five years after that. And then," he added sadly, "Ziani Vaatzes came along, and now look at me. Lord of all I survey. I met him once, did you know that? Vaatzes. He's the key to it all, of course." Psellus shook his head. "I'm terribly sorry, I'm rambling, and you're a busy man. Now then, about this army of yours."
Later, in the ten minutes or so between appointments (he had his beautiful clock to thank for such an indecent degree of precision; he still loved it for its beauty, but it nagged him like a wife), he wrote down the minutes of his meeting with the ambassador and compared them with the plan he'd prepared beforehand. Well, he thought, now at least we have a few soldiers, thanks to the incredible stupidity of the Cure Doce. He still couldn't quite believe it. But then they'd been brought up to believe the Republic was invincible; invincible and gullible. Two mistakes, and they'd probably cost the Cure Doce their existence. Not that it mattered, if they could buy him time to turn the City into one of those extraordinary star shapes he'd seen in the book.
He put the sheet of minutes on the pile of papers to be filed, and spent his last few moments of solitary peace going over his plan for the meeting with the architects. He would never be able to understand the book, but they might.
Suddenly, he smiled. Wouldn't it be a superb piece of irony, he thought, if we actually contrived to get away with it? A million enemies, and we beat them because there's too many of them to take the City. The sheer perversity of it appealed to him enormously. They lose, because they sent a million men to do the job of fifty thousand; I beat a million men by fighting just one.
Which reminded him. He pulled a fresh sheet of paper from the pile, inked his pen and wrote, wastefully, in the middle of the page:
His wife.
2
He was cold, hungry, and still damp, though it had stopped raining through the hole in the roof. He could feel drops of water trickling down his forehead from his sodden cap, and smell the stench of drying wool.
I might be late, he remembered her saying. It's hard for me to get away in the evenings. Well, of course it was. She had a husband to look after, and right now he'd be the busiest man in the City; rushed off his feet, frustrated by his inferiors, yelled at by his masters for not working miracles, painfully aware that nothing was under his control, but everything was his fault. So, naturally, when he finally got home from work, he'd expect a hot meal on the table and everything just so. That didn't alter the fact that she had other responsibilities, and no excuse for not performing them efficiently.
He had to have a new coat. This one was worn out, useless. She'd have to steal one from her husband-shouldn't be a problem, she could say that she was sick to death of seeing him in that tatty old thing, so she'd thrown it out, given it to a beggar…
(He grinned angrily. That'd be no less than the truth.)
The straw he lay on was filthy, too. Of course, straw was a problem, a luxury the Republic couldn't afford, now that all the carts were being used to carry grain and flour for the coming siege. That didn't alter the fact that it stank and was starting to go black, because of the damp. It was all intolerable, every wretched detail. She'd have to find him somewhere else.
Worst of all, needless to say, was not knowing what was going on. All he knew was what he could figure out from what he'd seen in the streets, when he'd felt brave enough to venture outside. Constant traffic, of course, all the grain carts blocking every thoroughfare in the City-that was the fault of the highways superintendent at the prefecture. He tried to remember the man's name, but he couldn't, though he could dimly picture a short, plump man with a big moustache. Whoever he was, he wasn't doing his job very well. In any event, the gridlocked traffic told him that they were still getting in supplies; so the enemy hadn't taken Lonazep (it would have been the first thing he'd have done) or cut the road to the coast. Since they weren't fools, or at any rate the Vadani duke was no fool, he didn't know enough about the leaders of the savages to form an opinion, the logical inference was that they hadn't taken steps to cut the City's supply lines because they weren't in a position to do so. And that, of course, could mean any one of many things. That aside, all the factories had moved from four to three shifts. He couldn't approve of that. Lengthening shifts was all very well, but it was a proven fact that working men too hard always led to a slump in productivity. So, whoever had ordered the shifts to be cut either didn't understand simple management, or else needed to give the impression he was doing something, even if he knew it'd be counterproductive. Since that was the more likely explanation, it suggested that things weren't going well for the new regime. He smiled at that, but it worried him. Even though they were his enemies, he was relying on them to save the City, just as everybody else was. Didn't the morons realise they simply couldn't afford to make mistakes?