Evil for Evil (18 page)

Valens sighed. What he really wanted to do was run away. "For pity's sake," he said peevishly. "They don't even live in proper houses. Do you really see me with a wife who insists on camping out in a tent in the pear orchard?" Another smile. Carausius was indulging himself. "The princess—her name, I believe, begins with an A—has spent the last four years being educated in Tannasep; I believe she's been studying music, astronomy, poetry, needlework and constitutional and civil law. Presumably while she was there, she slept in a bed and learned how to use a knife and spoon. I gather she's also interested in—"

"I couldn't care less what the bloody woman does in her spare time," Valens snapped. "I don't want to get married, and I most definitely don't want to get married to a savage, thank you all the same. Maybe when the war's over, or at least once we're settled somewhere…"

Carausius teased his napkin out of his collar and folded it precisely. "Logically," he said, "given our immediate plans, a wife who's used to living under canvas has to be a most suitable choice."

Valens closed his eyes. When Carausius started making jokes, it was time to assert his authority. "Thank you for raising the issue with me," he said, "and I shall give it careful thought. Meanwhile, if that's the only reason why these Cure Hardy are coming here, maybe it'd be better if you saw them instead of me. I'm sure you can handle the diplomatic stuff, and I have rather a lot of work to do."

"That would be unfortunate," Carausius said smugly. "Perhaps I forgot to mention it, but among the gifts they're bringing with them are four hundred mounted archers. Not a loan," he added firmly. "To keep, for our very own. Just for meeting you. I imagine that if they're fobbed off with a substitute, they may think better of their generosity."

Valens opened his eyes wide. "They're serious, then," he said.

"I believe so." Carausius had had his moment of revenge. His voice was back to normal, soft, businesslike and anxious to please. "My understanding is that they're very keen indeed to make an alliance with a settled nation. Their chieftain is something of a visionary. He believes that the nomadic life is all very well, but it's time his people bettered themselves. In the long term, I imagine he wants to cross the desert and settle on this side; the tragic fate of the Eremians means that there's now empty land for the taking. Naturally he needs an ally, but his choices are clearly limited. Not the Mezentines, for obvious reasons; similarly, not the Eremians. That means the Cure Doce—but they're too far away from the land he's got his eye on—or us. If you care to consider what that could mean to us: a powerful, friendly neighbor with practically unlimited manpower…"

Valens nodded. "All right," he said. "And thank you, you've done well. But all the same; marrying one…"

"It's their principal means of securing alliances," Garausius said firmly. "Without a marriage, as far as they're concerned it's not a proper treaty; once it's done, it means we can rely on them absolutely. They take it very seriously. It's not like the political alliances we're used to. I'm not sure they even have politics where they come from, or at least not in any sense we'd understand." He leaned forward a little, lowered his voice. "They aren't complete barbarians," he went on, "they understand that strategic and dynastic marriages aren't necessarily the perfect union of heart and mind. If you hate the girl that much, you won't have to see her more than absolutely necessary, she'll understand that. If that's the reason—"

Valens frowned. "I hope you know me better than that," he said. "I understand how things are. I'm just a bit concerned about ending up with a wife who dresses in animal bones and feathers. Which," he added quickly, before Carausius could say anything, "I'd be perfectly prepared to do if I was sure it'd help the war or put our economy straight. But I'm not; so either come up with some better arguments or drop the whole thing."

Carausius looked at him. He knows me too well, Valens reflected. "There's something else," Carausius said.

"Yes."

"I see." Carausius frowned. "Can I ask what it is?"

"No." As soon as he said the word, he knew he'd lost. "But I will meet these savages of yours, and yes, I'll be civil to them, so don't nag." He shrugged, rather more floridly than usual. "Four hundred cavalry, just for being hospitable. I think I can handle that. Tell me, did the offer come from them, or did you have to haggle?"

"Their idea," Carausius said. "I don't think the Cure Hardy understand bargaining in quite the same way as we do. I don't know if it's true, but someone told me once that their word for trade literally means 'to steal by purchase.' I gather they're a fascinating people, once you get to know them."

"I'm sure," Valens said. "Now, by rights I ought to threaten you with awful retribution if you ever ambush me with something like that again. But I don't need to do that, do I?"

"Certainly not."

"Splendid. I'm a strong supporter of the old tradition that every dog's allowed one bite. I hope it was worth it."

For the rest of the meal they talked about barrel-staves, canvas, salt and rope. Carausius said he was sure they'd be able to get what they needed for the evacuation from the merchants; he'd sounded out the likeliest suppliers, in very general terms so as not to raise suspicions, and the consensus was that it was a buyers' market at the moment; supply wouldn't be a problem, and an acceptable price could easily be agreed as soon as they were in a position to discuss firm orders. "Which means," Carausius went on, "they don't yet know where to lay their hands on what we want, in the quantities we want it in, but they're happy to go away and find out. Luckily, none of the supplies we're after has ever been a Mezentine monopoly, so we should be all right." He paused, just for a moment, then went on, "Have you decided on a date yet? Or are we still working on the basis of six to nine weeks?" Valens pulled a face. "If you'd asked me that question this time yesterday, I'd have given you a definite answer," he said. "Six weeks, I'd have said, and no messing. Unfortunately, it's not going' to be quite as straightforward as I thought, so you'll have to leave it with me."

"Longer than nine weeks?"

"No." The second time in one evening that he'd been backed into saying that.

"Work on that assumption, if you like. You won't be far out." There was music after dinner. Harp, rebec, flute, oboe, pipes, guitar and a singer. It went without saying that they'd been practicing day and night for weeks to be ready for their big chance, playing to the Duke and his court. Everywhere he went, in everything he did, he saw people doing their best, because it was him. He left before the music started.

There was a meeting of Necessary Evil that night. The defense committee had taken to gathering at strange hours—eleven at night or four in the morning—and nobody seemed to know why, though most people assumed it was something to do with their legendary and indefinable flair. The agenda had arrived on his desk shortly after noon; he'd read it through a dozen times, but all his political skill and experience couldn't tease a single shred of significance out of it.

1. Minutes of previous meeting

2. Chairman's report

3. Any other business

Psellus raised his eyebrows, rolled up the paper and slotted it neatly back into the thin brass tube it had come in. All committee correspondence came in message tubes these days, sealed at both ends, never the same seal twice. If he didn't know better, he could well believe that someone on the committee had a sense of humor. The same messenger had brought him the latest dispatches from Eremia. Two rolls, one brass and one silver; the brass tube was for the official report, the silver one was the truth. He opened the silver one first, which said something about him. He was pretty sure he was the only man on Necessary Evil who read dispatches in that order.

Not good, apparently. There had been successes: villages burned, six; isolated farms and crofts burned, twenty-seven; civilians confirmed killed, a hundred and nine; material seized, various, to include thirteen mail shirts, nine bascinets, three sallets with bevor, five sallets without bevor, nine leg harnesses (nine; an odd number. Had they managed to kill a one-legged man, maybe?), four spears, nine swords, two bows, thirty-two arrows, eight knives, fourteen lengths of wood capable of being used as bludgeons…

(Psellus smiled, as an image drifted into his mind of soldiers sent into the forest to cut poles in order to bulk out the captured-material schedule. He wouldn't put it past them, assuming anybody on the expeditionary staff had that much imagination.) There had also been failures. Dead, forty-six; wounded and unfit for duty in the medium to long term, thirty-eight; horses killed, seven; horses lost, nineteen; wagons lost or damaged beyond repair, eight; issued equipment lost or damaged, see separate schedule. The most serious reverse was an ambush by insurgents at some place he hadn't heard of. While attempting to pursue a small body of insurgent cavalry apparently in retreat, Fifteenth Squadron had come under attack from insurgent archers concealed in a spinney. Casualties…

Psellus marked the place with his finger and looked back up the page. That explained where they'd got the thirty-two enemy arrows from. Whether pulling them out of the bodies of the dead counted as capturing, he wasn't sure.

Not that it mattered. There were plenty of men, both in and outside Necessary Evil, who stoutly maintained that every soldier lost was a mercenary who wouldn't need to be paid. Psellus felt there was a flaw in that line of reasoning; nevertheless, reports from the recruiting stations back in the old country assured him that they were still queuing up for a chance to sign on. What bothered him more was the double column of figures at the bottom of the page, the monthly payment and expenditure account. He glanced down at the total and winced.

The news in the brass tube was much better. The forces of the Republic had destroyed six major rebel strongholds, raided a further twenty-seven installations, and killed over a hundred rebel fighters, as well as recovering a substantial quantity of weapons. Losses remained within acceptable parameters, and the war was coming in under budget. In his monthly briefing, Field Marshal Megastreuthes stressed that—

He rolled up both versions and stuffed them back in their tubes. None of it really mattered, not even the ruinous cost. According to the figures, all the exporting Guilds had stepped up both production and sales to meet the demands of the war budget. Prices had necessarily been lowered to ensure that strategically important markets were retained in the face of local competition, but the losses thereby incurred were amply covered by the increased volume. He paused, and looked at the finance report. It had come, he noticed, in a brass tube.

It still didn't matter. The Perpetual Republic could keep on waging war on this scale forever. The key had been lowering prices. Demand in the export markets had been wavering for some time, simply because Mezentine goods had gradually come to cost more than the locals could afford. Gutting prices, however, had been seen as an unacceptable loss of face, a move that would give the buyers more leverage than was good for them and lead inevitably to lower standards, debased specifications, ruin, abomination and death. The war had been the excuse the Republic needed, and the increase in volume had fully justified Necessary Evil's hard-line stand on the issue. Politically, more production meant a slight shift in the balance of power between the leading Guilds. War work had given the Foundrymen a temporary edge over their rivals; now, the need for export sales meant that the Weavers and Drapers were clawing ahead, with the Potters and Cutlers coming up close behind. The Cutlers were still unaligned, though their traditional allegiance had always been to the Foundrymen; the Potters were making a show of resisting the Weavers' attempts to negotiate a rapprochement, but it was generally believed that they were simply holding out for a better deal, which would inevitably involve the fall of Dandola Phrantzes, chairman of the Joint Transport Executive…

The war, Psellus realized, was like a tree. Its branches grew and were lopped, but it drew its life from its roots, widespread, tangled and hidden. The plain fact was that what happened in Eremia didn't matter very much. Men died, buildings were burned, endless columns of wagons stirred up the dust as they carried thousands of tons of freight into the deserted mountains, but the real battle was being fought here, a close grapple in the dark between politicians, for whom victory and defeat had very little to do with the deaths of soldiers. That was something he could accept; ever since he was old enough to understand how things worked, he'd known that in Mezentia, nothing mattered except politics, and everything was political. The part he couldn't make out, however, was how he fitted into it; in particular, how he'd come to be co-opted into Necessary Evil in the first place. Until he got to the bottom of that, he was effectively blind, deaf and dumb.