Ziani realized he'd forgotten to breathe for a while. "What stuff would that be?" he asked.
Maybe Daurenja hadn't heard him. "Obviously," he said, "that got me thinking. As soon as I was on my feet again-I told my partner I'd tripped and fallen into the furnace, and that's how I got all burned up; I don't think he believed me, but that couldn't be helped-I set about trying to do it again, on purpose, as it were. It took me a while. Where I went wrong to start with was assuming that it was the pounding that set it off. In fact, it must've been a spark or something, that first time. What actually gets it going is plain ordinary fire; a taper or a spill. Once I'd figured that out, it was just a matter of getting the proportions right. And keeping it to myself, of course."
"You didn't want your partner to find out."
"Well, of course not." Daurenja frowned. "I'd come to realize he wasn't to be trusted. All my life people have cheated me, taken advantage. Once I'd worked out the proportions of the mix, I left him; I didn't need his workshop anymore, and in any case, he was getting on my nerves. I think he believed I'd found the formula for the colors we'd been looking for, and I was keeping it to myself. There were other problems too, but I won't bore you with them. Personal stuff."
He was silent for a moment. "So you left," Ziani prompted.
Daurenja nodded. "I set up a little workshop of my own," he said. "I had money, so it wasn't a problem. What you've got to understand about the mixture I discovered," he went on, "is the extraordinary power it produces when it flares up. The first time it happened, one chunk of the stone mortar was driven an inch deep into a cob wall. It's like a volcano; a little volcano you can set off whenever you want, and if you could only contain it…" He stopped; his voice had risen, and his hands were clenched. "If you could contain it," he said, "in a pot, or a bell, so that all the force went in one direction only…" He looked up; his eyes seemed very wide and round. "You worked in the ordnance factory," he said, "you know about the scorpions and mangonels and torsion engines that can throw a five-hundredweight stone a quarter-mile. If only I could contain this-this thing that happens when the mixture flares up; if I could build a sort of portable volcano, something you could carry about and point at a wall or a tower, it'd make all your Mezentine engines seem like toys. You could crack open cities like walnuts."
Ziani breathed out long and slow. "You've tried, of course," he said.
Daurenja laughed, like a dog barking. "I've tried all right," he said. "I tried stone mortars, but they shatter like glass. I tried casting a mortar shape, only in metal. I used brass first, then bronze, then iron. I think the problem is something to do with the way the metal cools down." His words were coming out in a rush now, a fast, smooth flow like lava. "Because it's got to be thick, to contain the force, I think that by the time the metal on the outside has taken the cold, the inside's still hot, and this causes little flaws and fractures; either that, or there's air bubbles, I don't know. All I do know is that I've tried everything, and every time it either cracks or shatters. I've lost count of how many times it's nearly killed me. In the end, I reached the point where I couldn't think what to do next. Everything I know about casting in metal, everything I could find out, none of it was any good. I tried casting a solid trunk and boring out a hole in the middle; I built a lathe ten feet long, with a three-inch cutting bar. Still no good. I nearly gave up."
He looked away. It was as though he'd just said, I died.
"And then you heard of me," Ziani said.
"Yes." Suddenly Daurenja stood up; and Ziani wondered what on earth had possessed him to attack this man, because he was as full of strength and speed and anger as a wolf or a boar. "I heard about you: a Mezentine, foreman of the ordnance factory-if anybody knew how to do it, you would. It was like a miracle, like something out of a story, when the gods came down from heaven. I knew I had to have you." He stopped. "I knew I had to have you help me, because the Mezentines do the most amazing castings, great big bells and statues, the frames of machines; you've got ways of blowing a furnace so you can pour iron as easy as bronze. I'd even thought of going to the Guilds myself, except I knew they'd take it away from me and make it their own, and I can't have that. But I can trust you; you're an outsider too, like me, you've been thrown out of your home and persecuted."
(He didn't say, Just like I was; he didn't have to.)
"I'm sorry," he went on-Ziani could see the effort that went into calming himself down. "I thought, first I'd prove to you that I'm not just some lunatic who thinks he's figured out how to do magic. I'd prove that I'm what I say I am, an engineer, a craftsman, so you'd take me seriously. I heard all about what you did in the defense of Civitas Eremiae; how you built the scorpions, practically from nothing. I knew you'd need an assistant, someone you could rely on-an apprentice, really. And then, when we'd come to know and trust one another…"
Ziani looked at him. For a moment, he was afraid that it would be like looking into a mirror.
"I know," Daurenja went on. "I'm good with brass and iron, but I've never got the hang of dealing with people. I never seem to be able to make them understand me, and then problems develop. I suppose it's been the same with you, and these people here. I thought when I saved that woman, during the hunt, when the Mezentines attacked… It seemed like such a wonderful opportunity, to get the Duke on my side; and then, when we need to ask him for help-money and materials; and he's got a war to fight, it couldn't be better from that point of view. I don't know; if I'd told you earlier, maybe. But I wanted to make sure."
Ziani was quiet for a long time. He knew Daurenja was hiding something, and that no amount of violence or manipulation would get it out of him; the question was whether it was important, or whether it was just slag on the top of the melt. He wondered too about the serendipity of it all. To crack open cities like walnuts; he already knew how to do that, even if this strange and unpleasant man could show him a more efficient way. He was a refinement, an improvement, but an unnecessary one-a departure from Specification, and in orthodox doctrine, wasn't an unnecessary improvement inevitably an abomination?
On the other hand, he needed a good foreman.
"Casting's not the answer," he said eventually. "All castings are brittle, you'll never get round that." In the corner of the shop, he caught sight of the slack-tub; just an old stave barrel, half full of black, oily water. "You don't want a mortar," he said, "or a bell. You want a barrel."
16
"It was a success, I grant you," Boioannes was saying, in that loud, carrying voice of his. "Twenty-seven confirmed dead, including the Chancellor. I concede that it was well planned and efficiently executed. What I'm asking, however, is whether it was a good idea or a bad one."
The meeting had already overrun by an hour. By the look of it, someone else had booked the cloister garden for a meeting or a reception; Psellus had seen a man's head bobbing round a pillar with a look of desperate impatience on his face-the establishments clerk, probably, too timid to dare interrupt Necessary Evil, but petrified that he'd be blamed for double-booking. The Republic's bureaucracy ran on the principle of symmetry; for every blunder, one responsible official. He sympathized, but found it hard to spare much compassion for someone else. Never wise to be too liberal with a scarce commodity you may well need for yourself.