The Devil You Know Read Online Free PDF Page A

establishments as well or better furnished and decorated than many a nobleman’s house, in Aelia or the Republic. Insofar as there’s beauty in useful, portable artefacts, Mezentia is the gallery of the world. Glassware, fabrics, metalwork useful and ornamental, porcelain, silverware—but their public art, although spectacular in scale, I find rather unsatisfactory. They’re heavy on allegory, and the only patrons of the arts are the people who run the city, so you tend to get rather a lot of
Mezentia
Wedded to the Sea
or
The Goddess Prosperity Embraces the
Pewterers’
Guild,
in marble, stuck up high so you have to crane your neck to see it. Since they’re a proudly godless lot, the only religious art is strictly for export. They do excellent reproductions of all the great masterpieces; there are huge sheds down by the Wharf where hundreds of trained artisans crouch over benches, churning out the White Goddess of Beloisa all day every day. But it’s art to buy and own, not to look at. You know what it looks like already.
    You quickly become attuned to the customer. I felt him close his book and stand up, and sped back to the library steps, just as he was coming out. I smiled. “Useful session?”
    “Very,” he said. “Conjure me an army. I want to invade Mysia.”
    “I can do that for you,” I said. “Out of interest, why?”
    He didn’t answer; that was me told. “To invade Mysia,” I said, “the best starting point is the Butter Pass. Alternatively, you can follow the precedent of Calojan the Great and sail them up the Tonar on flat-bottomed barges. It takes longer, but you’re more likely to get the element of surprise.”
    He scowled at me. “Let’s do that, then.”
    * * *
    Mysia is a dreary place, all forests and mud huts, though they do wonderful things with seafood. That’s hardly a surprise, since the Tonar Delta has the finest oyster beds in the world, and the north coast is warmed by one of those big underwater currents. Mostly, though, people conquer Mysia because they’re afraid someone else will conquer it first. Beating the Mysians isn’t exactly difficult. The problem lies with recouping the cost of the invasion and occupation from an economy based on subsistence agriculture and nomadic livestock herding. Everybody who’s anybody has invaded, stayed a year or so, and then gone resentfully home, wondering whose bright idea that was. It has more historic battlefield sites per square mile than anywhere else on Earth, apart from the Mesoge. The farmers plough up bones and sell them to the millers, for bonemeal; widely used in the metal-finishing industry.
    We have our own armed forces, of course, but I assumed he wanted humans; so I enlisted the famous
condottier
,
Alban of Bealfoir. I’d worked with him before; he’s a good man.
    “Of course I know Mysia,” he said, over sea bass and sweet white wine in a palm-leaf-roofed teashop on the coast. “I led the annexation, four years ago. Two weeks’ work, three in the rainy season. Have you got the money?”
    Saloninus looked at me and I said, “Absolutely. My principals are footing all the bills.”
    Alban nodded. “That’s all right, then,” he said. “Your word’s as good as cash in the bank.” He turned back to Saloninus and said, “When would you like to start?”
    “Immediately.”
    “That’s not a problem.” That’s what I like about Alban, that can-do attitude. “I’ll need seventy thousand nomismata up front, plus weekly instalments of forty thousand.” He paused, then said, “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Why do you want to conquer Mysia?”
    Saloninus sipped his wine, savouring the flowery aftertaste. “If you don’t want the job, we can go elsewhere.”
    Alban held up both hands. “Sorry, sorry. Once we’ve taken the place, do you want to leave garrisons?”
    Saloninus nodded. “I shall need a full army of occupation for at least forty years.”
    I frowned at that, but didn’t say anything; not in front