Devices and Desires (43 page)

She stared at him. “Out of what?”

“
The Venerable Dialogue of King Fashion and Queen Reason, Concerning the Proper Exercise of Huntsmanship,
” Miel said. “Good God, you mean you weren’t made to read it as a child?”

“Never heard of it.”

“You lucky —” Miel shook his head. “I had to learn the whole thing off by heart when I was nine.”

“Is it ghastly?”

“It’s long,” Miel replied, with feeling. “And the bit about how to tell the age of a roebuck by the shape and texture of its
droppings is just a bit too graphic for my taste. Jarnac lives by it, you’d never get him to break the rules.”

“How about if I —?”

“But,” Miel went on briskly, “Jarnac also keeps an excellent kennel, and it’s still boar season, so we can go boar-hunting
instead, and that’ll do just as well, if you really think it’d help.”

“You aren’t sure about that, are you?”

Miel shrugged. “I don’t think Orsea’d let himself have a good time, not the mood he’s in at the moment. The trouble is, he’s
torturing himself because he believes the disaster was his fault, and to a certain extent he’s right. Someone like him can’t
get round something like that.”

“I know.” She stood up, kicking at the hem of her dress. “And it’s so stupid, because nobody else would carry on like that,
and people really don’t blame him. They’re so used to things like that happening, it’s just a fact of life to them. That’s
something I don’t understand,” she went on. “I guess it’s because I spent most of my childhood abroad, being a hostage. I
can’t see how you’d get to a state where thousands of people suddenly aren’t there anymore, and yet you carry on like nothing’s
happened. How can people live like that?”

Miel sighed. “It was very bad in the war — the proper war, I mean, between us and the Vadani. We were within an inch of bleeding
each other to death. That’s why your father and Valentinian had to patch it up at all costs.” That, he didn’t add, is why
you had to marry Orsea instead of me. “Anyhow,” he went on, “back in those days — you weren’t here — it was one hideous massacre
after another, except when we were butchering them, and that wasn’t often. Or often enough, anyhow.” He shook his head. “That’s
where the trouble lay with this war,” he went on. “We simply hadn’t realized how weak we’d become, not till we’d committed
to the invasion and it was too late to go back. We knew before we left the city, deep down, that the whole thing was a complete
joke — us, fighting the Mezentines — but we didn’t dare face up to it. Orsea should’ve, but everybody wanted to go, so we
could feel good about ourselves, and he went along with it because he always does. It’s remarkable the truly stupid things
people can do just because it’s expected of them, or they think it’s expected of them.”

She gave him a look he didn’t like. It said,
You could have stopped him.
He shook his head to say, no, I couldn’t. He believed that was true, as an article of faith.

“I’ll go and see Cousin Jarnac,” he said. “There won’t be any trouble about getting up a boar-hunt; any excuse, as far as
he’s concerned.” Miel clicked his tongue. “And who knows,” he said. “Maybe someone can get into a tight spot and Orsea can
be terribly brave and save his life. That’d do him the world of good; it’s a sort of blind spot with him, he’s got no sense
of perspective. So long as he does well and helps someone and does the right thing, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s
something big and important, like saving the city, or something small and trivial, like rescuing an old woman’s dog from drowning.”
He paused. “Did he ever tell you about that?”

“About what?”

Miel smiled broadly. “You should get him to tell you, it’s glorious.”

“You tell me. He’s not talking to me, remember.”

Miel frowned, then went on: “We were out walking once, when we were kids — playing rovers, I think, or something like that.
Anyway, there’s this river, and there’s this old woman kneeling on the bank, and two or three puppies splashing about in the
water. Orsea immediately assumes they’ve fallen in by accident, so he hurls himself into the water to save them, forgetting
in the excitement of the moment that he can’t swim — well he can, but only a sort of feeble frogs’-legs-and-otters’-paws swimming,
which is no good at all in a fast-flowing river. Luckily we’ve got a couple of my father’s men along with us — thinking about
it, I think we were shooting wild duck, not playing rovers; anyhow, they jump in and fish him out, and he makes them go back
and rescue the puppies; they get two of them but not the third. He takes them to the old woman, and she looks at him like
he’s gone off his head: what did you want to go and do that for? she says. Turns out, of course, that they were the leftovers
from the litter and she was drowning them on purpose. I’d figured that out pretty early on, of course, but Orsea had real
trouble with the whole idea, he couldn’t believe someone’d actually do that. Anyway, he caught one hell of a cold, and his
father gave him a dreadful shouting-at for nearly getting drowned making a fool of himself. And he hasn’t changed. I think
he’d still do exactly the same thing if we walked in on some old woman and a dog in the water; just in case, if you see what
I mean.”

She looked at him, and he wondered what she could see. “Tell you what,” she said. “Go somewhere where there’s no rivers. For
my sake.”

“No rivers,” he said solemnly. “Right. I’ll tell Jarnac.” A thought flitted across his mind, like a woodcock crossing a ride.
“It’ll be good practice for him, hosting a ducal function and all that.”

“Will it?”

He nodded. “Sooner or later the Vadani are going to want to celebrate the peace with a state visit, something grand with all
the trimmings. We’ll have to lay on a hunt for them, and Jarnac’s our resident expert on all that stuff — the right way of
doing things, you know. Their Duke’s mad keen on hunting, I gather.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Which surprises me. I met him once, years ago when I was living there, and practically the first
thing he said to me was how much he hated it. Hunting, I mean.”

“Oh,” Miel said. “You’ve met him. What’s he like?”

She shrugged. “What he’s like now I have no idea. Back then he was just a boy, of course. Shy, quiet, a bit introverted. Hardly
surprising; his father was the big, noisy type. I suppose he was quite sweet, in a dozy sort of way.”

Miel raised an eyebrow. “He’s not quite so sweet these days, by all accounts.”

“People change,” she said. “And I suppose he’s gone through a lot in a short time, losing his father and having to take control
of the government and everything. That’d be enough to change anyone.”

“I don’t know,” Miel said. “Look at Orsea. He was made Duke at an early age, and he seems pretty much the same now as he was
back when we were kids. A bit gilded round the edges, of course, but under the surface he hasn’t changed a lot.”

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “Like I said, I only met Valens once, and we were both very young.”

“Anyway.” Miel moved away abruptly. “I’ll certainly talk to Jarnac if you think it’ll help.”

“Thanks,” she said, and smiled. The smile hit him unexpectedly, like a drunk in a tavern, and for a moment he was unable to
think.
Does she know?
he wondered. All this time he’d assumed she didn’t; he clung to that belief as an article of faith. It’d be too hard to bear
if she knew and still treated him as though nothing had changed since they were children. (But of course, faith comes in different
tempers: there’s the hard, brittle faith that shatters when it meets an obstacle it can’t cut through, and the tough, springy
faith that bounces off unchipped.)

Just for once, Miel didn’t go to his office, or a meeting, or Orsea’s apartments; just for once, he went home. Not proper
home, of course; proper home was a castle on top of a mountain in the Sabens, seventy miles away along narrow cliffside roads.
Home in Civitas Eremiae meant the Ducas house down by the Essenhatz gate; a tall, thin house cut into the rock, with the finest
Mannerist fresco ceilings in the city and virtually no windows. All there was to see from the street was a small, very old
double gate, grainy gray wood worn smooth and shiny, studded with heavy nails, in a solid slab wall. Beyond the gate was the
famous Ducas knot garden; a square courtyard with a formal garden in the middle, divided into twelve segments by low box and
lavender hedges radiating out from a central fountain like wheel-spokes. Each segment was planted out with seventeen different
types of white and yellow rose, all of them unique to this one garden (for centuries, kings, emperors and Mezentine Guild
masters had pleaded and plotted in vain for cuttings; the Ducas gardeners were better paid than most goldsmiths and entirely
incorruptible). Around the courtyard was the equally famous painted cloister, on whose ceiling the finest artists had recorded
the glorious deeds of the thirty-seven Ducas, from Amadea I down to Garsio IV, Miel’s father; there was still the underside
of an arch and a portico left bare for Miel, as and when he ever got around to achieving anything. If he did well, and one
day married and had a son who lived up to the family’s glorious traditions, they’d either have to scrape off Amadea I’s wedding
for him, or build a covered walkway to the fountain.

At the left-hand corner of the north side of the cloister was the family door (as opposed to the visitors’ door, which was
twelve feet high, bronze-embossed with scenes of warfare and the chase), which opened directly on to the back stair, which
in turn led up to the first-floor back landing. Only the Ducas and their inner servants ever permeated through the various
filters to this part of the house, which was plain black oak floorboards and paneling, with not so much as a painted architrave
in sight. Fifth door off the landing was the writing room (according to family tradition, the first sixteen Ducas hadn’t known
how to write and hadn’t wanted to), where the head of the family could finally turn at bay like a hunted boar and be safe
for a while from his guests, his dependents and his responsibilities. It wasn’t a spectacular interior — the fireplace was
plain and unadorned, apart from the monogram of the ninth Ducas cut into the upper panel, and the plasterwork on the ceiling
was positively restrained by the standards of the time — but it had become sanctified over the centuries by its function,
as the only place on earth where the Ducas could be sure of being alone.

Miel dropped into the chair — there was only one in the writing room — and stretched out his legs toward the cold fireplace.
What had possessed him, he wondered, to raise the subject? He’d not so much dropped a hint as bombarded her with it, like
the Mezentines with their scorpions; she must have guessed that he’d intercepted the letter and read it, and that could only
make everything worse. He supposed he’d wanted to know how she felt about the man she was writing to, and he’d hoped she’d
betray her emotions to his mercilessly perceptive eye. That’d be in character; he’d always been prone to doing stupid things
on the spur of the moment. Now, of course, the next time he encountered her, the gates would be shut and the walls lined with
archers; he’d never get past her calm stare again, or her smile. It had been a double betrayal too, because he should have
gone to Orsea as soon as he saw her name on the little folded-up parchment square. All in all, he reckoned, he’d just reached
a new pinnacle of achievement in a lifetime of making bad situations worse by getting involved.

He sat until it was too dark to see; then he crossed the landing to the lesser hall. He found a footman there, messing about
with the flower arrangement on the long table.

“I need to send a letter to my cousin Jarnac,” he said.

The footman bowed and left, came back a few minutes later with a writing-slope, a pen (in its ivory box, with spare nibs),
a sand-shaker, a penknife (blued Mezentine steel blade, silver handle in the shape of a heron), a small square gold ink-pot
with lid, the Ducas private seal, sealing-wax, candle in a silver holder and twelve sheets of the finest newly scraped parchment.
The Ducas did not scribble notes on scraps with feathers.

Miel to Jarnac

I need you to do me a favor. The Duke —

The Duke? Orsea? No; Jarnac was third in succession to the minor title in the collateral line.

The Duke would like to go hunting; he’s been working very hard, as you can imagine, and he wants a day off. Could you organize
something? Nothing too formal, please; bow-and-stable, maybe, rather than a full parforce day. I expect you know where there’s
a nice, gentle, slow-witted boar who’s tired of life. Obviously we’ll have to liaise with the chamberlain’s office as regards
dates. There’s no tearing hurry, any time in the next ten days ought to do.

He waggled the sand-shaker over the page, blew, folded the sheet twice and sealed it. The footman, who didn’t seem to have
moved at all while he’d been writing, put all the bits and pieces back into the slope, took the letter and glided away, swift
and silent as a cloud riding a strong wind.

An hour later, Miel was in the small library, painfully refreshing his childhood memories of King Fashion and Queen Reason,
when the reply came. Cousin Jarnac’s handwriting had always annoyed Miel intensely; Jarnac was a great big tall, broad man
with fingers like peasant sausages, but he had the most elegant, almost dainty handwriting.

Jarnac to Miel

Delighted. Leave everything to me. Will sort dates out direct with chamberlain. Can offer trophy four-year-old abnormal in
the Farthings, or possible record six-year-old feral cross in the Collamel valley; advise. Could do both in same day, but
would involve early start and long ride in between; up to you.

Miel sighed. King Fashion had just reminded him that abnormal meant a boar with unusual-shaped tusks, but he had no idea what
a feral cross was.

PS What’s the name of that Mezentine character who’s just set up shop in town? I seem to remember you had something to do
with him. If we’re hosting the Duke, better get the kit overhauled, don’t you think?