"Evil," Ziani replied, as blandly as he could. "I was in the market one day, years ago now, and there was this man selling lamps. They were cheap and I needed one, so I bought one. Got it home, unscrewed the cap to fill it up with oil, and this thing came out of it. Like a puff of white smoke, it was. Well, I must've passed out, because the next thing I remember was waking up, and it was pitch dark outside the window; and ever since then I get these terrible uncontrollable urges to do really bad, wicked things. Absolutely nothing I can do about it, can't control it, just have to go with the flow. And look where I've ended up." He sighed. "My life ruined, just like that. Only goes to show, you can't be too careful."

The warders looked at him for rather a long time; then Bollo said, "All right, move along," in a soft, strained voice. At the cell door, he said, "That was all just a joke, right? You were just being funny."

Ziani frowned. "Don't be stupid," he said. "I'm going to die in an hour or so, why the hell would I lie about a thing like that?"

They closed the door on him, and he sat down on the floor. It had been a valid question: what on earth had possessed him to do such a reckless, stupid thing? Unfortunately, he couldn't think of an answer, and he'd been searching for one ever since they arrested him. If they bothered marking the graves of abominators, his headstone would have to read: SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME.

Wonderful epitaph for a wasted life.

In an hour or so, it wouldn't matter anymore. He'd be out of it; the story would go on, but he wouldn't be in it anymore. He'd be a sad memory in the minds of those who loved him, a wound for time to heal, and of course they'd never mention him to strangers, rarely to each other. A new man would take his place at work, and it'd be pretty uncomfortable there for a week or so until he'd settled in and there was no longer any need for his replacement to ask how the other bloke had done this or that, or where he kept his day-books, or what this funny little shorthand squiggle was supposed to mean. The world would get over him, the way we get over our first ever broken heart, or a bad stomach upset. Somehow, the idea didn't scare him or fill him with rage. It would probably be worse to be remembered and mourned for a long time. There'd be sympathy and condolences, tearing the wound open every time it started to scab over. That was always Ziani's chair; do you remember the time Ziani got his sleeve caught in the lathe chuck; Ziani lent this to me and I never had a chance to give it back.

If it had been a sudden illness, say, or a freak accident; if he'd been stabbed in the street or killed in a war; you could get angry about that, the stuff of tragedy. But to find yourself in the cells waiting to be strangled to death, all on account of a few measurements; it was so bewildering, so impossible to understand, that he could only feel numb. He simply hadn't seen it coming. It was like being beaten at chess by a four-year-old.

The door started to open, and immediately he thought, here it is. But when Bollo came in (still looking decidedly thoughtful), he didn't usher in the man in the black hood, the ends of the bowstring doubled round his gloved hands. The man who was with him was no stranger.

Ziani looked up. "Falier?" he said.

"Me," Falier answered. Bollo glanced at him, nodded, left the cell and bolted the door behind him. "I came..."

"To say goodbye," Ziani helped him out. "It's all right, I'm being really calm about it. Sort of stunned, really. With any luck, by the time the truth hits me I'll have been dead for an hour. Sit down."

His friend looked round. "What on?"

"The floor."

"All right." Falier folded his long legs and rested his bottom tentatively on the flagstones. "It's bloody cold in here, Ziani. You want to ask to see the manager."

"It'll be a damn sight colder where I'm going," Ziani replied. "Isn't that what they say? Abominators and traitors go to the great ice pool, stand up to their necks in freezing cold water for all eternity?"

Falier frowned. "You believe that?"

"Absolutely," Ziani said. "A chaplain told me, so it must be true." He closed his eyes for a moment. "Gallows humor, you see," he said. "It means I'm either incredibly brave in the face of death, or so hopelessly corrupt I don't even take eternal damnation seriously."

"Right," Falier said, looking at him. "Sorry," he said, "I haven't got a clue what to say."

"Don't worry about it. After all, if you really piss me off and I hold a grudge for the rest of my life, that's - what, three-quarters of an hour? You can handle it."

Falier shook his head. "You always were a kidder, Ziani," he said. "Always Laughing Boy. It was bloody annoying in a foreman, but you make a good martyr."

"Martyr!" Ziani opened his eyes and laughed. "Fine. If someone'd do me a favor and let me know what I'm dying for, I'll try and do it justice."

"Oh, they'll come up with something," Falier said. "Well, I guess this is the bit where I ask you if you've got any messages. For Ariessa, and Moritsa. Sorry," he added.

Ziani shrugged. "Think of something for me, you're good with words. Anything I could come up with would be way short of the mark: I love you, I miss you, I wish this hadn't happened. They deserve better than that."

"Actually." Falier sounded like he was the condemned man. "It's Ariessa and Moritsa I wanted to talk to you about. I'm really sorry to have to bring this up, but it's got to be done. Ziani, you do realize what's going to happen to them, don't you?"

For the first time, a little worm of fear wriggled in Ziani's stomach. "I don't know what you mean," he said.

Falier took a deep breath. "Your pension, Ziani, from the Guild. You're a condemned man, an enemy of the state."

"Yes, but they haven't done anything wrong." The worm was running up his spine now.

"Neither have you, but that doesn't mean..." Falier dried up for a moment. "It's the law, Ziani," he said. "They don't get the pension. Look, obviously I'll do what I can, and the lads at the factory, I'm sure they'll want to help. But -"

"What do you mean, it's the law? I never heard of anything like that."

"I'm sorry," Falier replied, "but it's true. I checked. It's terrible, really wicked if you ask me. I don't know how they can be so cruel."

"But hang on a moment." Ziani tried to rally his scattered thoughts, but they wouldn't come when he called. "Falier, what are they going to do? What're they going to live on, for God's sake?"

Falier looked grave. "Ariessa says she'll try and get work," he said. "But that's not going to be easy; not for the widow of -" He stopped. "I don't think I ought to have told you," he said. "Dying with something like this on your mind. But I was thinking."

Ziani looked up. He knew that tone of voice. "What? There's something I can do, isn't there?"

"You could make a deal," he said.

That made no sense at all. "How? I don't understand."

"You could ask to see the investigator. There's still time. You could say, if they let Ariessa keep your pension, you'll tell them who your accomplices are."

Accomplices. He knew what the word meant, but it made no sense in this context. "No I can't," he said. "There weren't any. I didn't tell anybody about it, even, it was just me."

"They don't know that." Falier paused for a moment, then went on: "It's politics, you see, Ziani. People they don't like, people they'd love an excuse to get rid of. And it wouldn't take much imagination to figure out who they'd be likely to be. If you said the right names, they'd be prepared to listen. In return for a signed deposition -"

"I couldn't do that," Ziani said. "They'd be killed, it'd be murder."

"I know." Falier frowned a little. "But Ariessa, and Moritsa -"

Ziani was silent for a moment. It'd be murder; fine. He could regret it for the rest of his life. But if it meant his wife and daughter would get his pension, what did a few murders matter? Besides, the men he'd be murdering would all be high officials in the Guild.... The thought of revenge had never even crossed his mind before.

"You think they'd go for that?"

"It's got to be worth a try," Falier said. "Face it, Ziani, what else can you do for them, in here, in the time you've got left?"

He considered the idea. A few minutes ago, he'd been clinging to the thought that it didn't matter, any of it. He'd practically erased himself, every trace, from the world. But leaving behind something like this - poverty, misery, destitution - was quite different. The only thing that mattered was Ariessa and Moritsa; if it meant they'd be all right, he would cheerfully burn down the world.

"What's the plan?" he said.

Falier smiled. "Leave it to me," he said. "I can get in to see the secretary of the expediencies committee -"

"How?"

"I got in here, didn't I? Obviously there's not a lot of time. I'd better go."

"All right."

Falier moved to the door, paused. "It's the right thing to do, Ziani," he said. "This whole thing's a bloody mess, but at least there's still something you can do. That's got to be good."

"I suppose."

"I'll be back in an hour." Falier knocked on the door; it opened and he left. Remarkable, Ziani thought; I've known Falier most of my life and I never knew he had magic powers. Always thought he was just ordinary, like me. But he can walk through doors, and I can't.

Hard to measure time in a cell, where you can't see the sunlight. Pulse; each heartbeat is more or less a second. But counting - sixty sixties is three thousand six hundred - would be too much effort and a waste of his rapidly dwindling supply of life. Ziani looked round; he was an abominator, apparently, but still an engineer. He thought for a moment, then grinned and pulled off his boot, then his sock. With his teeth, he nibbled a small hole; then he scooped a handful of the grimy gray sand off the floor and persuaded it into the sock. That done, he hung the sock from a splinter of wood in the doorframe, with his empty drinking-cup directly underneath. Then he found his pulse, and counted while the sand trickled through the hole in the sock into the cup. When it had all run through, he stopped counting - two hundred and fifty-eight, near as made no odds four minutes. He drew a line in the dirt beside him, and refilled the sock. There; he'd made himself a clock.

Eight fours are thirty-two; half an hour later, the door opened again. Falier was back. He looked excited, and pleased with himself.

"All set up," he said. "The secretary wants to see you in his office." He frowned. "For crying out loud, Ziani, put your boots on."

Ziani smiled. "Are you coming too?" he said.

"No." Falier knocked on the door. "Best of luck, Ziani; but it should be all right. He was definitely intrigued. Have you got a list of good names?"

Ziani nodded. "I'm not too well up in politics, mind," he said. "Any suggestions?"

Falier fired off a dozen or so names, all of whom Ziani had already thought of, as the sand dribbled through into the cup. "That'll probably do," he went on, "but have half a dozen more up your sleeve just in case." The door opened; different warders this time. "Well, so long," Falier said. "It'll be all right, you'll see."

Not all, Ziani thought; but he didn't want to sound ungrateful. "So long," he repeated, and the warders led him out into the corridor.

Three flights of winding stairs brought him to a narrow passage, with heavy oak doors at irregular intervals; quite like the cells, he thought. Outside one of these, the warders stopped and knocked. Someone called out, "Yes, come in." A warder went in first; Ziani followed, and the other warder came in behind him.

He didn't know the secretary's name, or his face; but he was looking at a broad, fat man with huge hands resting on top of a wide, well-polished desk. "This him?" the man asked, and one of the warders nodded.

"Fine." The warder pulled out a chair, and Ziani sat in it. "All right," the man went on, "you two get out. Don't go far, though."

It wasn't easy to make out the man's face; he was sitting with his back to a window, and Ziani had been out of the light for some time. He had a bushy mustache but no beard, and round his neck was a silver chain with a big Guild star hanging from it. "Ziani Vaatzes," he said. "I know all about you. Seventeen years in the ordnance factory, foreman for six of them. Commendations for exceptional work." He yawned. "So, why does a solid type like you go to the bad?"

Ziani shrugged. "I don't know what came over me," he said.

"I do." The man leaned forward a little. The sun edged his dark head with gold, like an icon that's hung too long in the candle smoke. "Thinking you're better than everybody else, that's what did it. Thinking you're so bloody clever and good, the rules don't apply to you. I've seen your kind before."

"I admit I'm guilty," Ziani said. "But that's not what you want to talk to me about. You want to know who else was involved."

"Go on."

Ziani said four names. The secretary, he noticed, had a wax writing-board next to him, but wasn't taking any notes. He tried another four. The secretary yawned.

"You're wasting my time," he said. "You don't even know these people, and you're asking me to believe they all came round to your house, these important men you've never met, to see this mechanical doll you were making for your kid."

"I'm telling you the truth," Ziani said.

"Balls." The man wriggled himself comfortable in his chair. "I don't believe you."

"You agreed to see me."

"So I did. Know why?"

Ziani shrugged. "I'm prepared to sign a deposition," he said. "Or I'll testify in court, if you'd rather."

"No chance. I know for a fact you wouldn't know these people if you met them in the street. You didn't have any accomplices, you were working alone. All I want from you is who put you up to this. Oh, your pal Falier Zenonis, sure; but he's nobody. Who else is in on it?"

Ziani sighed. There was nothing left inside him. "Who would you like it to have been?"

"No." The man shook his head. "If I want to play that sort of game, I decide when and how. You're here because obviously some bugger's been underestimating me."

"All I wanted," Ziani said, "was for my wife to get my pension. That's all that matters to me. I'll say whatever you like, so long as you give me that."

"Not interested." The man sounded bored, maybe a little bit annoyed. "I think you thought the idea up for yourself, all on your own. Trying to be clever with men's lives. You can forget that."

"I see," Ziani said. "So you won't do what I asked, about the pension?"

"No."

"Fine." Ziani jumped to his feet and threw his weight against the edge of the desk, forcing it back. The man tried to get up; the edge of the desk hit the front of his thighs before his legs were straight - a nicely judged piece of timing, though Ziani said it himself - and he staggered. Ziani shoved again, then hopped back to give himself room and scrambled on to the desktop. The man opened his mouth to yell, but Ziani reached out; not for the throat, as the man was expecting, and so Ziani was able to avoid his hands as he lifted them to defend himself. Instead, he grabbed the man's shoulders and pushed back sharply. It was more a folding maneuver than anything else. The man bent at the waist as he went down, and his head, thrown backward, smashed against the stone sill of the window. It worked just as Ziani had seen it in his mind, the angles and the hinges and the moving parts. Seventeen years of looking at blueprints teaches you how to visualize.

He was only mildly stunned, of course, so there was still plenty to do. Ziani had been hoping for a weapon; a dagger slung fashionably at the waist, or something leaning handy in a corner. Nothing like that; but there was a solid-looking iron lampstand, five feet tall, with four branches and four legs at the base to keep it steady. Just the thing; he slid off the desk, caught hold of the lamp-stand more or less in the middle, and jabbed with it, as though it was a spear. One of the legs hit the man on the forehead, just above the junction of nose and eyebrows. It was the force behind it that got the job done.

The man slid onto the floor; dead or alive, didn't matter, he was no longer relevant. Three flights of stairs, and Ziani had counted the steps, made a fairly accurate assessment of the depth of tread. It would be a long way down from the window and he had no idea what he'd be dropping onto; but he was as good as dead anyway, so what the hell? At the moment when he jumped, entrusting himself to the air without looking at what was underneath, he couldn't stop himself wondering about Falier, who was supposed to be his friend.

It wasn't pavement, which was good; but it was a long way down.

For a moment he couldn't breathe and his legs were numb. I've broken my bloody neck, he thought; but then he felt pain, pretty much everywhere, which suggested the damage was rather less radical. Somewhere, not far away (not far enough), he heard shouts, excitement. It was a fair bet that he was the cause of it. Without knowing how he got there, he found himself on his feet and running. It hurt, but that was the least of his problems.

Because he'd never expected to survive the drop, he hadn't thought ahead any further than this. But here he was, running, in an unplanned and unspecified direction. That was no good. The pity of it was, he had no idea where he should be heading for. He was somewhere in the grounds of the Guildhall; but the grounds, like the building itself, were circular. There was a wall all the way round, he remembered, with two gates in it. The only way out was through a gate. If they were after him, which was pretty much inevitable, the first thing they'd do would be to send runners to the gatehouses.

Every breath and heartbeat is an act of prevarication, a prising open of options. It'd sounded good when the preacher had said it, but did it actually mean anything? Only one way to find out. The gardens were infuriatingly formal, straight lines of foot-high box hedge enclosing neat geometric patterns of flowers, nothing wild and bushy a man could hide in long enough to catch his breath, but there was a sort of trellis arch overgrown with flowery creeper, a bower or arbor or whatever the hell it was called. He headed for it, and collapsed inside just as his legs gave out.

Fine. First place they'll look.

Breathing in was like dragging his heart through brambles. He got to his knees and peered round the edge of the arch. There was the wall, a gray blur behind a curtain of silly little trees. He followed its line until he came to a square shape, almost completely obscured by a lopsided flowering cherry. That would be a gate-house. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't see the sun through the arbor roof, so he couldn't tell if it was the north or the south gate. Not that it mattered. He wasn't likely to get that far, and if he did the gatekeepers would be on him like terriers.

He plotted a course. Arbor to the line of trees; using the trees as cover, along the wall to the gatehouse. He could hear shouting coming from several different directions, and he wondered whether they'd catch him and take him back to his cell to be strangled, or just kill him on the spot.

I'll escape, though, if only to be annoying. He stood in the doorway of the arbor for a moment, until he saw two men running toward him. They were wearing helmets and carrying halberds; there goes another option, snapping shut like a mousetrap. He lowered his head and charged in the direction of the trees. They'd get him soon enough, but at least he was making an effort, and he felt it was better to die running toward something, rather than just running away.

It was inevitable that sooner or later he'd trip over something and go sprawling. In the event, it was one of those ridiculous dwarf box hedges that did the damage. He landed on his face in a bed of small orange flowers, and the two warders were on him before he had a chance to move.

"Right." One of them had grabbed his arms and twisted them behind his back. "What's the drill?"

He couldn't see the other warder. "Captain said get him out of sight before we do him. Don't want the Membership seeing a man having his head cut off, it looks bad."

The warder he could see nodded. "Stable block's the nearest," he said.

Between them they hauled him to his feet and dragged him backward across the flowerbeds. He sagged against their arms, letting them do the work; buggered if he was going to walk to his death. He heard a door creak, and a doorframe boxed out the light.

"Block," said the other warder. "Something we can use for a block."

"Log of wood," his colleague suggested.