Ziani grinned. "You'd better not let the Duke catch you talking like that about his future in-laws," he said.
"Out of his tiny mind," the woman replied sadly. "If he knew those people like I do, he'd steer well clear of them, and I don't care what promises they're making. The thought of one of them as duchess; it's just as well his father's not alive to see it, it'd break his heart."
"Really? I'd sort of got the impression he didn't have one."
She scowled at him. "That's his son you're thinking of," she said. "Actually, it's her I feel sorry for; the savage woman. Of course, I don't believe all the stuff you hear about him not being the marrying kind, if you follow me, but even so…"
Back up the hill, as soon as he could get away. The commission was ready for him, the ink still glistening, the seal still warm.
"That," Carausius said, as he handed it over, "makes you the second most powerful man in the duchy."
Ziani frowned. "I hadn't looked at it in that light," he said.
"Of course," Carausius went on, "you'll be keeping detailed accounts."
"Naturally," Ziani replied, without looking up from the document.
"I strongly suggest you take great care over them," Carausius said. "The Duke instructs me that you're accountable directly to him, which means he'll be going over them himself. In other words, you'll have an auditor who can have your head cut off and stuck up on a pike just by giving the order. You may care to reflect on that before you start writing out drafts."
Ziani looked up and smiled pleasantly. "The sad thing is," he said, "that's the least of my worries."
Daurenja was waiting for him when he reached the room he'd been assigned as an office. The day before, it had been a long-disused tack room, and it still reeked of saddle-soap, wet blankets and mold. "Get this place cleaned up, will you?" he snapped without thinking. Daurenja nodded and said, "Of course."
"Fine." Ziani made himself calm down; he didn't like losing his cool while Daurenja was around. "Now, I want you to take a letter for me to a merchant in the town. She'll give you a letter to bring back. It's essential that you don't leave without it. I don't trust her as far as I can spit; so, polite but firm. All right?"
He wrote out the draft. Carausius had given him the appropriate seal, and ten sticks of the special green wax that was reserved for government business. He thought about what the Chancellor had said; second most powerful man in the duchy. Looked at from that perspective, he'd come a long way from the shop floor of the Mezentine ordnance factory. A reasonable man would consider that a great achievement in itself. "When you get back," he said, shaking sand on the address, "we need to talk about materials."
"You persuaded him, then?"
Ziani nodded. "Worse luck, yes. We've got ten days to build prototypes. The cart and the foundry."
Daurenja's mouth dropped open. "Ten days? He's out of his mind."
"My suggestion," Ziani replied. "We need to get moving. We can't start full-scale work until we've got approval on the prototypes; ten days is as long as I can spare. What are you still doing here, by the way? I asked you to do something for me."
Daurenja seemed to vanish instantaneously; not even a blur. Ziani took a deep breath, as though he'd just woken up from an unsettling dream, and reached for a sheet of paper and his calipers. By the time Daurenja came back, he'd finished the design for the drop-valve cupola.
"Did you get it?"
Daurenja nodded. "She wasn't any bother," he said, handing over a fat square of parchment, heavily folded and sealed. "She told me to tell you, she's thought about what you were saying about scheduling, and-"
"Forget about that," Ziani said. "I want you to look at this." He turned the sketch round and pushed it across the table. "I'm concerned about the gate," he said. "It's got to be simple, nice broad tolerances. We can't expect these people to do fine work."
Daurenja bent his implausibly long back and studied the drawing for a while. "You could replace that cam with a simple bolt," he said. "Not as smooth, obviously, but it'd be a forging rather than a machined component. Their forge work isn't so bad."
Ziani was looking at the map: a diagram, a different sort of plan; lines drawn on paper, on which everything now depended. "A bolt's no good," he muttered without looking up, "it'll expand in the heat and jam in its socket."
"Of course." He could hear how angry Daurenja was with himself. "I should have thought of that, I'm sorry."
"You were thinking aloud, it's all right. If we had time, we could make up templates so they could forge the cams, but we haven't, so that's that. I've noticed with these people: give them a model, a bit of carved wood, and they can copy it pretty well, but they can't seem to work from drawings." Ziani traced a line on the map with his finger. Of course, it meant nothing to him; places he'd never been to, mountains conveyed by a few squiggles, a double line for a river. He tried to picture a landscape in his mind, but found he couldn't. He forced his mind back into the present, like a stockman driving an unruly animal into a pen. "Here's a job for you," he said. "Get me a full list of all the competent metalworkers we've got on file, and get the Duke's people to organize the call-up. I want them here, this time tomorrow, with basic tools and six days' rations. You'll have to sort out money with the paymaster's office, and billeting as well. I imagine someone's got a list of the inns somewhere. Can I leave all that to you, while I get on with the drawings?"
"Of course." The answer came back like an echo.
"Fine. When you've done that, get back here, I should be ready to give you a materials list, so you can get on with procurement. It'll save time if you go through the Merchant Adventurers' association; they'll rip us off unmercifully but so what, it's not our money."
"Understood."
"And then…" Ziani paused for a protest, but of course none came. "Then I want you to get a requisition made out for all the carts and wagons in the country. I think Valens' people have been quietly making a register for some time, so it shouldn't be a problem finding them. They can sort out compensation and so forth. Oh, and bricklayers. That's another job for the Duke's people. Get me two dozen, any more'll just get under our feet. Got all that?"
"Yes," Daurenja said. "Metalworkers, payment and billeting; materials, and the Merchant Adventurers; carts, and bricklayers. You can leave all that to me."
"Splendid." Ziani was still staring at the map. Just lines on paper; a plan; a plan of action. "You'll need to take the commission with you. Actually, we could do with some more copies. I expect the Chancery clerks can handle that."
When Daurenja had gone (like breath evaporating off glass), Ziani laid the map down and frowned into space. He hadn't felt afraid of anybody for a long time, not since he'd been in the cells under the Guildhall, because the worst anybody could do to him after that was kill him, and in the eyes of the Republic he was already supposed to be dead. Dying would, of course, be an easy way out, practically a let-off, as though the supervisor had told him he could go home early and leave the work to someone else to finish off. Since his escape, the work had been the only thing, far more important than he could ever be. He'd served it, as he'd served the Republic, tirelessly and without any thought for himself. The pain was simply the weight of being in charge, carrying the responsibility of the whole thing being in his mind alone. Now, somehow, here was Daurenja: a man who wanted something, but he didn't know what; a man who served the work with the same single-minded ferocity as he did, but who didn't even know what it was. He was exceptionally competent, exactly what Ziani needed, a safe pair of hands, utterly reliable, a godsend and a lifesaver…