The Escapement

Book 3: Engineer Trilogy

by K.J. Parker

Genres: War & Military; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

The astonishing conclusion to the Engineer Trilogy, an exquisitely crafted tale of revenge from a unique and remarkable new voice in fantasy fiction. The engineer Ziani Vaatzes engineered a war to be reunited with his family. The deaths were regrettable, but he had no choice. Duke Valens dragged his people into the war to save the life of one woman -- a woman whose husband he then killed. He regrets the evil he's done, but he, equally, had no choice. Secretary Psellus never wanted to rule the Republic, or fight a desperate siege for its survival. As a man of considerable intelligence, he knows that he has a role to play -- and little choice but to accept it. The machine has been built. All that remains is to set it in motion.

Release date: May 27, 2009

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 436

Sample

The quickest way to a man’s heart,” the instructor said, “is proverbially through his stomach, but if you want to get into
his brain, I recommend the eye socket.”


He reached out with the tip of the rapier and tapped it against the signet ring he’d hung by a strand of cotton from the arm
of the ornate gilt lamp bracket. The ring began to sway slowly backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. He took a step back,
then raised the sword again, and slid his front foot smoothly across the tiles as he lunged. The point of the rapier tinkled
against the ring as it passed through its centre.


“That’s very good,” Psellus said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do that.”

The instructor nodded. “Not to begin with,” he said. “You’ve got to work up to it. But try it anyway.”

Psellus frowned, then nodded. “You never know,” he said. He closed his hand around the grip of his rapier. (‘That’s it. Imagine
you’re holding a mouse; tight enough to stop it escaping, but don’t crush its ribs.”) He felt a stabbing pain in the overworked
tendons of his elbow as he raised his hand into the third guard, and knew he’d regret all this later. Twenty years holding
nothing heavier than a pen, and now he would insist on learning to fence.


“Just look at the ring,” the instructor said. “Forget about the sword, just the ring.”

Psellus felt his muscles tense, which was quite wrong, of course. He’d been told about that, and it had made sense and he’d
understood, but for some reason he couldn’t stop himself doing it. That was what came of fifty years of imagining what it’d
be like to fence with a real sword.


“When you’re ready,” the instructor sighed.

That meant, get on with it, freely translated from the diplomatic; so he snatched a half-mouthful of breath, fixed all his attention on the tip of the
sword and prodded desperately at the ring. The rapier point missed it by a handspan, glanced off the base of the bracket and
gouged a small chip of plaster out of the wall.


“Not quite there yet,” the instructor said, in a very calm voice. “You’d have taken a chunk out of his ear, but that’d probably
just make him hate you. Now then.”


Psellus lowered the sword until the tip rested on the tiles. It was hopeless, he reckoned. For one thing, they’d given him
a sword that was far too heavy. You couldn’t expect to be able to do fine work with a great big heavy thing, it’d be like
trying to write with a scaffolding pole. He’d mentioned this several times but the instructor had politely ignored him.


“It’s basically the same idea as everything else we’ve covered so far,” the instructor was saying. “You start off slow and
easy, just leaning gently forward and putting the point in the ring; and when you’ve done that a thousand times or so, you can gradually pick up speed and force until
it’s right. So, as slow as you like, lift the sword and just point at the ring, like you’re pointing with your finger.”


Ten times (which meant only nine hundred and ninety to go), and then Psellus said, “I’m sorry, I think I’ll have to stop now,
my elbow’s hurting rather a lot. Perhaps we can try again tomorrow, if that would be convenient for you.”


“Of course.” The instructor reached out and tugged the ring off the cotton, which dangled like a strand of dusty cobweb. “If
you can possibly make time to practise before then, I think you’ll find it very useful.”


He put his rapier back in its case, buckled up the strap, bowed ever so politely and left. When he’d gone, Psellus walked
slowly back to his desk and sat in his chair for a while, unable to think about anything much apart from the pain in his elbow.
So much for fencing. It would have been nice to be able to do it; and now that he was the chairman of Necessary Evil, in effect
the supreme ruler of the City, he’d assumed that the ability would somehow have come to him, as part of the package. Rulers,
princes could do that sort of thing; they could fence and ride and shoot and dance minuets and fly hawks and sing serenades
while accompanying themselves on the rebec or psaltery, because those sorts of thing were what princes did; you never heard
or read about a prince who couldn’t hunt or swordfight, so obviously there was some kind of basic connection between the job
and the ability. But maybe it didn’t apply to chairmen, or maybe there was rather more to it than that. Still, at least he
was trying; and perhaps nine hundred and ninety more tentative jabs with the very heavy sword would turn him into what everybody
seemed to think he was these days. Or maybe not.


The truth is, he thought as he reached across his desk and uncapped his inkwell, I seek to make myself ridiculous, because
I know I shouldn’t be here. A pretender (the perfect word; ever since it had occurred to him, he’d been hugging it to himself
like a child’s toy) ought to have ridiculous pretensions, such as fencing, riding, archery, dance, falconry, all of which
he’s hopeless at, and that’s how the people come to realise he’s not the true prince. Tomorrow, if there’s time, I must find
someone to teach me how to dance. It’s practically my duty.


If there’s time. He looked down at his desk. If he was really a prince, someone else would be reading all these reports for
him, and he’d have all the time in the world. He’d have a chancellor or a grand vizier, either bald and enormously fat or
long, dark and saturnine, discreetly running the empire while His Imperial Highness rode to hounds or recited poetry to beautiful,
empty-headed young women.


He lifted his head to look out of the window, and thought about his enemy. Duke Valens was reckoned to be the finest huntsman
in the world, so clearly he was a proper prince. It should have followed, therefore, that Valens was a pinhead, the natural
quarry of clever, austere predators like himself. But maybe Valens wasn’t a proper prince either; too intelligent, or else
how had it come about that he was bearing down on the City at the head of an army of a million savages, while the ruler of
the Perpetual Republic flounced and panted up and down a chalk line, trying to master the rudiments of the low guard?


Perhaps, he thought, that’s why I want to be able to fence and dance and hunt and compose pastoral eclogues in trochaic pentameters;
because I secretly believe that these accomplishments will turn me into someone who can also command armies and fight battles,
and save my city from the million savages. Quite possibly there’s a grain of sense in that, except that I’ve left it far too
late to start learning all that stuff now. Somewhere he’d read that in order to fight your enemy, you had to understand him;
more than that, you had to become him. It had struck him as extremely profound at the time, although something a little less inspirational and a little more
practical would’ve been even better; how to run an efficient commissariat, for example, or the basics of fortifying against
artillery.


That was, of course, the problem. The Perpetual Republic had a complete monopoly of all skills, trades, sciences and crafts,
except one; it had no idea how to fight a war. There hadn’t been any need; not until now, when mercenaries refused to sign
up for fear of the Cure Hardy and the murderous field artillery designed and built by the defector Ziani Vaatzes. So, quite
unexpectedly, and far too late in life, the citizens of the Republic were straining themselves trying to learn to be soldiers,
as improbable and ill-fated an enterprise as Lucao Psellus learning the smallsword, the stock and the case of rapiers. Hopeless,
of course; the sheer helplessness of the situation was apparent from the fact that Guild politics had practically ground to
a halt. Suddenly, nobody wanted to run or be in charge of anything, there was no opposition, no factions; just a blind, desperate
consensus of goodwill, support and pitiful enthusiasm, led by the unwilling ignorant under the supreme authority of a jumped-up
clerk.


A million savages under arms; well, that was what everybody was saying. The intelligence reports put the figure at a mere
eight hundred thousand, including the Vadani cavalry and the Eremians. Psellus closed his eyes and tried to imagine eight
hundred thousand of anything, but he couldn’t. How many bees were there in a hive, or leaves in a forest? He believed in big
numbers, that there could exist a million silver thalers, in the context of a budget deficit, or eight hundred thousand rivets,
packed in barrels COD at Lonazep. But men, human beings, with weapons, on their way here to burn down the City… What strategic
advantage did eight hundred thousand have to offer over, say, six hundred thousand? Or were numbers of that order of magnitude
as much a liability as an asset? He didn’t know, of course, but he knew that there were answers to that kind of question,
and without that knowledge he’d soon be presiding over the fall of the Republic and the annihilation of its people.


He opened the door and said, “Hello?”

Immediately (he couldn’t get used to it; like an echo, only faster) a clerk materialised, like a genie out of a bottle. Psellus
took a moment to look at him, because it was like looking in a mirror. The clerk was in his fifties, bald, with wispy grey
clouds over his ears, soft-chinned and stout, like a pig being fattened for bacon. It was always my ambition, Psellus reflected,
to be a senior clerk in the administration office. Instead…


“Go to the library,” he said, “and get out all the books you can find about military logistics.”

Silent pause, long enough to count up to two. “Military…”

“Logistics.” Psellus scrambled for words, gave up. “Anything called The Art of War or The Soldier’s Mirror or anything with war or soldiers in the title.”


The clerk looked at him as though he was mad. But Psellus was getting used to that. “And then,” he went on, “I want you to
read them.”


The clerk said nothing. It was the sort of silence you could have built houses on.

“You may want to get someone to help you with that,” Psellus continued. “Anyway, read them, and I want you to make an epitome
with references, anything to do with supplying an army – food and hay and boots and so on – how much of everything you need
per day, and how much it costs, and how you get it to the soldiers in the field; carts and roads and changes of draught horses
– I’m sure you’ve got the idea. On my desk by tomorrow evening, please.”


The clerk gave him a horrified stare, as though he’d just been ordered to eat his grandfather. Psellus knew that look, too.
He’d worn it often enough himself. “Get as many people on it as you need,” he added, because he knew the clerk would like
that. Being allowed to order his fellow clerks around would go some way towards making up for the bizarre and unnatural nature
of the assignment. Which reminded him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think I know your name.”


The clerk hesitated, then said, “Catorzes. Simuo Catorzes.”

Psellus nodded, as if to signify that that was indeed the answer he’d been looking for. “I’m appointing you as my research
assistant. My chief research assistant.Do you think you’ll be up to the job?”


Catorzes hesitated again, then nodded grimly. “Of course,” he said; then, almost reluctantly, “Thank you. I’ll, um, do my
best.”


“I’m sure you will.”

There, he thought, as he sat down again at his desk, I’ve done something. Quite possibly something useful, although that remains
to be seen. Have we actually got any books about fighting wars? Yes, we must have, because the Copyists’ Guild copies and
binds all the books in the known world for export, though we never actually read them ourselves, and I’m sure we must keep
copies, if only out of habit. Of course, there’s no guarantee that any of the books is any good; probably they’re just collections
of bits copied out of other books copied out of other books by men who’ve never been in a battle in their lives. But real
princes buy them from us, so they must have something in them, if only…


He looked down at his hands; ten soft brown worms attached to two flat cakes of putty. I must cope, he told himself. I must find a way of coping, because there’s nobody else but me. I know I’m not fit to be in charge
of a war, I know I’m hopelessly ignorant and not particularly clever. But unless I find a way of coping, a million savages
will come and break open the city like a crabshell and pick us all out like shreds of meat; and war can’t be all that difficult
if a lot of bone-headed princes can do it, surely.


He glanced up at the opposite wall, where the clock stood. It was a Pattern Fifty-Seven, the best specification of all, guaranteed
accurate to within an hour a year if properly sited and maintained. If the City fell, of course, there would be no more clocks,
because nobody else in the whole wide world knew how to make them. How long, he wondered, would it take for the clock to be
reinvented, and how long after that before anybody was skilled enough to build a clock up to the standards of a Pattern Fifty-Seven?
A thousand years, possibly; or never. If we die, everything dies with us…


No, he reflected, not quite. If Valens and the savages come and the walls are breached and we’re slaughtered like ants in
a crack between flagstones, there’ll still be one of us left. Ziani Vaatzes could build a clock, if he wanted to and he set
his mind to it. Ziani Vaatzes, the abominator, our greatest enemy and civilisation’s only hope.


He thought about Vaatzes; studying him so intensely for so long, finally meeting him in the empty streets of Civitas Vadanis.
To the best of his knowledge, Psellus had never been in love; but if he had to imagine what love must be like, his nearest
reference would be how he felt about Ziani Vaatzes, the supreme enemy. Which was strange, and more than a little disturbing,
since Vaatzes was to blame for everything. He’d brought the war here, like a man carrying the plague – infected, a victim
and also a predator, a weapon, an enemy. Under other circumstances, Psellus liked to believe, they’d have been friends, good
friends (which was, of course, absurd, since a ranking Guild official would never condescend to mix with manual workers, outside
of circumstances that in themselves precluded any possibility of friendship). Perhaps it’s because I’m so isolated from ordinary
people that the only one I ever bothered to try and understand fascinates me so. In which case, I’m even more pathetic than
I ever imagined.


Be that as it may; the clock told him it was a few minutes to noon, at which time he was due to meet with the Strategy and
Tactics Committee to discuss the progress of the war…


“I can’t help thinking,” he told them, and they just looked at him, as they always did, “that we might as well be logs meeting
in the grate to discuss the fire.” He paused. They were waiting for him to say something – anything – they could possibly construe as coherent. “Siano, you’re in charge of intelligence. Where are they now?”


Siano Bossas, Drapers’ Guild; a closed box of a man, with the biggest feet Psellus had ever seen in his life. “According to
our contacts in Jasca, they crossed the Redwater two days ago, which puts them somewhere between Lopa and Boc Polizan.” He
paused, well aware that Psellus didn’t have a clue where the Redwater, Lopa or Boc Polizan were. Neither, Psellus suspected,
did Siano Bossas.


Psellus nodded gravely. “Could somebody please go out to the front office and fetch in the map? I had one drawn,” he explained.
“There didn’t seem to be one that showed all the places you’ve been telling me about, I suppose they hadn’t been built yet
when the specifications for the maps were drawn up, so they couldn’t officially exist. Strictly speaking, I suppose that means
I’ve committed an abomination, but never mind. We really ought to know where all these places are, don’t you think?”


It wasn’t a very good map, by Guild standards. The calligraphy was poor, and it wasn’t even coloured in. But it did show Lopa,
Boc Polizan and the Redwater, and if it was drawn to anything like scale…


“Nine days,” Psellus said, after he’d put down his dividers. “In theory,” he added. “But I don’t suppose they’ll actually
be here in nine days, because of lines of supply and things like that. It’d help,” he added mildly, “if we knew where they
were getting their food and forage from.” He bent his head and looked at the map. “Does anybody know anything about this countryside
here? I mean, is it farmland or moor or heath or what?” He waited for a moment or so, then added, “Someone must know, surely.”


Apparently, nobody did. Psellus straightened his back and looked round at the empty faces surrounding him. “Fine,” he said.
“Now, I’ve ordered a study of military logistics, which I hope will tell us what we need to know about how armies are fed
and supplied. What I’d like you to do for me is find out everything you can about the country between there” – he prodded at the map –” and the City. I want to know whether they can feed themselves with what they can find and steal
as they go along, or whether they need to carry their supplies in carts from somewhere else. Also, it’d be helpful to know
something about the roads, that sort of thing. Also, it’s really no good at all relying on little bits and pieces of news
we get from carters and carriers. We need proper scouts to observe their movements and report back. Can someone see to that,
please?” No volunteers; he looked round and chose someone at random. “Feria, that can be your job. Now then, what else?”


Slowly and painfully, like a snail climbing a wall, he led and dragged them through food reserves, materiel procurement, finance,
the condition of the City walls, recruitment and basic training; things he’d heard about, mostly, without really knowing what
they meant, so that he had to reconstruct them from first principles as he went along. It was like trying to read and understand
a book whose pages had all been lost, so that all he had to go on was the list of contents.


“Arms and munitions production,” he said at last, and he could sense the relief, since finally they’d reached a subject they
all understood. “I’d like one of you to be my permanent liaison with the ordnance factory; Galeazo, you know the setup there
as well as anybody. Do you think you could get me copies of the production schedules, so we can be sure they’re making the
right quantities of the right things. Wall-mounted artillery’s an obvious priority, but we’re also going to have to kit out
a large number of infantry in a hurry, as soon as Lanuo here has recruited them for us. You’ll need to talk to the Tailors
and Clothiers as well, boots and helmet linings and padded jackets – what’s the word, gambesons; those things you wear under
your armour to cushion the blows. I know we used to make them for export, it’s just a matter of getting everything up together
so every helmet we issue’s got a lining to go with it. Just common sense, really.”


As he spoke, he thought: this is hopeless. We don’t know what we’re doing, and they’re all desperate to leave it up to me;
only because they’re afraid, but that doesn’t really make it any better. The fact is, we can’t, I can’t fight a war against eight hundred thousand men, any more than I can build a Fifty-Seven clock or a water-mill. We don’t
have a specification for a war, and there isn’t enough time to write one.


The meeting ended and they left, as quickly as possible without being ostentatiously anxious to escape. When they’d gone,
Psellus sat for a long time, staring out of the window. He had the best view in the Guildhall: the grounds, with the formal
gardens in the middle, surrounded by the cloister gardens, each with its own fountain and arbor. It wasn’t beautiful, in any
meaningful sense, but there again, it wasn’t supposed to be.


Very well, then, he decided. I don’t know about war and I can’t fight eight hundred thousand men. But I know Ziani Vaatzes
and I can fight one man, and maybe that’s all I need to do.


Simuo Catorzes handed in his summary on time. It covered both sides of twelve sheets of charter paper, was copiously annotated
with references to the source material, and would probably have been exactly what Psellus wanted if the handwriting had been
legible.


“Excellent,” he said. “Now, could you please take it away and get someone else to copy it out again?”

Psellus spent an hour reading a report he didn’t understand about proposed reforms of fiscal policy, then left his office,
walked down three flights of stairs and several hundred yards of corridor, and eventually found the library.


He’d never been in there before, of course. No need. Ever since he’d passed the professional examinations and qualified for
the clerical grade, he’d spent his life reading, but could still count on his fingers the number of actual books he’d had
occasion to open in the course of his work. He stood in the doorway for a moment and stared, like a man on a cloudless night
looking up at the stars.


He’d checked the regulations. Every book acquired by the Copyists for the purposes of publication reverted to the Guildhall
library after they’d finished with it. The room – if it was laid down to grass, it would easily graze two milking cows and
their calves for a week – was lined with shelves that reached up from floor to ceiling, and every shelf was full. In accordance
with Guild policy, every book was the same height, and identically bound, with the title written in tiny lettering at the
base of the spine. The only thing like it that Psellus had ever seen was the review of troops, just before the army left for
Eremia.


At the far end, under a long, thin window, was a desk, behind which a small man sat on a tall backless stool. The sunlight
glowed on his bald head.


“Excuse me,” Psellus asked him. “Are you the librarian?”

The bald man looked at him. “Have you got an appointment?”

“My name is Lucao Psellus.”

The librarian’s eyes widened a little. “How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for…” A book, he nearly said. “I need to see everything you’ve got on the fortification of cities against artillery.”


The librarian breathed out slowly through his nose. “I’ll have to look in the general catalogue,” he said. “If you’ll bear
with me for a moment.”


He hopped down off his stool like a sparrow and walked quickly to a table on which rested a single enormous book; each page
as wide as an arm, as tall as a leg. “There was a clerk in here a day or so ago,” the librarian said. “He was looking for
military books.” Something in his tone of voice suggested that military books ranked about equal in his estimation with pornography.
“With any luck – ah yes. Case 104, shelf twelve. If you’d care to follow me.”


Psellus found the click his heels made on the wooden floor embarrassing, and he tried walking on the sides of his feet. It
helped, a little. “Case 104,” the librarian announced proudly, like an explorer on a mountaintop. “Shelf twelve.” He looked
up, counting under his breath, then put his foot on the bottom shelf, reached up and started to climb, each shelf a rung.
The bookcase trembled under his weight.


“Fortification,” he said, and hung for a moment by his left hand as he picked a book off a shelf, clamped it between his teeth
and clambered down backwards. He wiped a drop of spittle off the cover with his sleeve before handing it over.


“Thank you,” Psellus said. “Is that all?”

The librarian looked at him as though he didn’t understand the question. “Was there something else you wanted?” he asked.

Psellus shook his head. “Is it all right if I take this with me?” he said. “I may need to hold on to it for quite some time.”

The librarian took a moment or so to reply. “Of course,” he said, in a rather tight voice. “I’ll make a note.”

For some reason, Psellus couldn’t bring himself to open the book or even look at the spine until he was back in his office;
even there, he had to resist an urge to wedge a chair against the door. He cleared space on his desk, then peered at the writing
on the white pasted-on label:


Varus Paterculus

Psellus frowned. A Vadani name. The book creaked loudly as he opened it and turned to the title page, where he could find
the date when it was acquired and copied. A little mental arithmetic. The book was two hundred and seven years old.


Well, he thought. On the other hand, we have nothing else. He turned to the first page: a dedication, in Mannerist dactylic
pentameters. He skipped all that.


Of the various kinds of artillery; in particular, the various types of engine used by the Perpetual Republic of Mezentia.


Psellus smiled. Ah, he thought, Specification. Military technology was the one exception to the Republic’s most inflexible
rule. Even so, the siege engines (drawn to scale in meticulous detail, with numbered parts) were essentially the same as the
ones he’d seen on the walls a week ago, when he’d made a rather self-conscious tour of inspection. Whoever Varus Paterculus
was, he had an excellent eye. After scanning a couple of pages, Psellus reluctantly skipped the rest of the chapter, and moved
on to:


Of the various devices whereby a city may be defended from the said engines.

He tried to read on, but he couldn’t. The diagrams, he assumed, were supposed to represent fortified cities, seen from the
air; but they made no sense. On each page was a shape; abstract, symmetrical, perfect. The simplest were like ornate, many-pointed
stars. Others were like gears from some extraordinarily sophisticated machine, or blades for a circular saw designed to cut
through some desperately resilient material, or frost patterns on a pane of glass. After staring at a dozen or so, Psellus
leafed forward until he found text.


The explanation helped, though not much. The basic theory was that a city under siege needed to be protected against siege
engines and sappers. A plain, straight wall meant that the defenders’ engines and archers had a very limited arc in which
they could shoot down at the enemy, who would be safe in any event once they reached the foot of the wall. To give the defenders
a better field of fire, it was desirable to build projections at regular intervals. The simplest ones were triangular, like
the teeth of a saw. These offered opportunities to shoot straight ahead, and also sideways, at attackers venturing into the
V-shaped gaps between the projections. Faced with these, however, the attacker would inevitably react by digging trenches,
zigzagging across the open ground in front of the city like a mountain path, so that his army could approach the walls in
safety. This could be countered by making the shape of the projections more elaborate. Instead of a simple V offering only
three directions to shoot in, the defender’s mantlets and ravelins (the terms weren’t explained) should be pentagonal or hexagonal,
multifaceted as a jewel, so that wherever the enemy led his trench, one face of the defensive works should always be in line
with it and able to shoot down into it. Furthermore, since a determined attacker with plentiful manpower would sooner or later
over-run or underm