Evil for Evil (23 page)

"Don't you hate it when that happens?" said the voice he was rapidly coming to loathe.

He considered the feasibility of crossing the moor with nothing to drink except one bottle of fine vintage red wine, and reluctantly dismissed it. "Do you think your father would let me have a bottle or a jug?" he said plaintively.

"I expect so."

"Could you possibly tell me where he is, so I can ask him?"

"He's busy."

"Then maybe you could be terribly kind and ask him for me."

"All right. Or I expect I could find you something."

"Thanks," Miel said. "I'd really appreciate that." She'd turned, and was walking back toward the house. "What did you say your name was?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Miel Ducas."

The back of her head nodded. "Anything to do with the big landowning family?"

"Yes."

"Nice for you." Her shoulders expressed a total and overriding disdain for the Ducas and all their works. "And you were out in the middle of nowhere at—sorry, it's gone again, the place you just came from…"

"Merebarton."

"Merebarton," she repeated carefully, "visiting relatives. Big family."

"Very big, yes."

She spun round, with the deliberate poise of a fencer performing the volte. "Miel Ducas is the leader of the resistance," she said, and all the melodrama didn't alter the fact that she was very angry. "If the Mezentines come here, or your people, or the Vadani—
anyone
—it'll ruin everything. My father's given everything for this, I've been here helping him my entire life. How
dare
you come here and jeopardize everything we've worked for?"

Miel took a step back, but only from force of habit. Nobody in a furious rage uses words like
jeopardize
. He looked her in the eyes, ignoring the pink smudges on her cheeks and nose; it was like facing down a merchant over a big deal. "You want something from me," he said pleasantly. "Why don't you just tell me what it is?" He'd watched men working in a foundry once, and seen them draw the plug from the bottom of the cupola, when the furnace had reached full heat and the melt was ready to pour. The white-hot iron had flooded out, dazzling bright, rushed toward him like a tide, so that he'd jumped back; but as it surged it slowed, and he could see it take the cold, fading from white to yellow. Her eyes were cold like the cooling iron as it grew solid in the bloom.

"What makes you think—" she started to say, but he frowned and cut her off.

"If it's something I'm physically capable of doing," he said, "I'll do it. I owe your father my life. Just tell me what it is."

She frowned. "I don't trust you," she said.

"Oh well." He shrugged. "We'll just have to go slowly, then. Right now, all I want out of life is an empty bottle. This makes me an unusually straightforward person. How about you? What do you want?"

She looked at him for a long time. "Sulfur," she said.

It wasn't what he'd been expecting her to say. "Sulfur," he repeated.

"That's right. You do know what sulfur is, don't you?"

Miel raised his eyebrows. "I think so," he said. "It's a sort of yellow powdery stuff you find in cracks in the rocks sometimes. People use it to fumigate their houses during the plague, and I think you can mix it with other stuff to make slow-burning torches. Is that right, or am I thinking of something completely different?"

"That's sulfur," she said. "We need some. Can you get it for us?" Miel frowned. "I really don't know," he said. "I mean, yes, before the war; I expect the housekeeper or the head gardener would've had some, somewhere. Now, though, I haven't a clue. Is it hard to come by?"

"Not in a city, where there're traders," she replied quickly. "You'd be able to get it in Civitas Vadanis."

"But I'm not—" He stopped; he'd said the wrong thing. "Anywhere else?"

"Well, the Mezentines've probably got barrels of it, but I don't like the idea of asking them."

"I mean," he said patiently, "is there anywhere you can go and dig it out for yourself, rather than buying it?"

She laughed. "Good question," she said. "There used to be a deposit on the east side of Sharra. That's where Father had been, I suppose, when he came across you. But it's all gone now. Used up. We need to find another supply. You're the bloody Ducas," she said, with a sudden, unexpected spurt of anger, "you've got soldiers and horses and God knows what else, you could arrange for a couple of wagonloads of sulfur, if you wanted to."

He sighed. "I said I'd do anything you wanted, if I can. How urgently…?"

"Now. As soon as possible."

He thought for a moment. "Well," he said, "it'll take me, what, three days to reach Cotton Cross; then, if I take the main road, assuming I don't get caught by the Mezentines or run into some other kind of trouble, I should reach Merveilh inside a week. Would they have any there, do you think?"

"Merveilh? No. Tried that. It's just a stupid little frontier post, and the merchants don't go that way because they don't like paying border tolls."

"Fine. Merveilh to Civitas Vadanis—I don't know how long that'd take," he confessed. "I've never gone there that way. Five days?"

"Something like that."

"Then allow a full day to get the sulfur, and however long it takes to get back again." He smiled. "That's my best offer," he said. "Any use to you?" She looked at him. "That wasn't what I had in mind," she said.

"Oh. What…?"

"I thought you could go back to your army and send some of your men." He grinned, like a crack in a beam or a tear in cloth. "No good," he said. "I don't even know if there is a resistance anymore, and if there is, I'm through with it." (And all because his hand had slipped on a bottle, and it had fallen into a well. If he'd managed to keep hold of the stupid thing, he'd be on his way by now, free and clear and heading for a life entirely without purpose or meaning.)

"You don't expect me to believe that."

"Why not?"

"You're a patriot. You fight for the freedom of Eremia. You couldn't just turn your back on it and walk away."

"I was rather hoping to try."

She shook her head. "Someone like you," she said, "if you're not leading people or in charge of something, you'd just sort of fade away. You'd be like the air inside a bag without the bag."

For some reason, he didn't like her saying that. "Do you want your sulfur, or don't you?"

"Of course I want it, or I wouldn't have mentioned it." She grinned sardonically at him through her covering of soot. "But the chances of you getting it for me…" She shrugged. "Like I said," she went on, "we keep ourselves to ourselves here, we don't want anybody dropping in. Go away, don't come back, and forget us completely, and that'll do fine. Wait here, I'll get you your bottle."

She came back a few minutes later, holding a two-gallon earthenware jar in a snug wicker jacket. It was corked, and from the way she leaned against its weight as she carried it, full. "Keep it," she said, reaching in her pocket, "don't bother bringing it back, even if you just happen to be passing. And in here there's a pound of cheese and some oatcakes, they'll be better than bread, they won't go stale. You know where the stable is, presumably."

As soon as he'd taken the water and the cloth bag containing the food she walked away. He saw her go into the house, and knew she'd gone there because he'd be watching, not because she had any business there. He shook his head. Sulfur, he thought. It would've been something to do.

Later, he couldn't remember saddling the horse and riding out of the hidden combe. He was thinking about itineraries, carters, women in red dresses who could get things you wanted if you had the money, which of course he didn't, not anymore. When it was too dark to see his way, he dismounted and sat on the ground, holding the horse's reins, still thinking, but not about sulfur or trade routes or who he knew in Civitas Vadanis who might lend him some money. The daylight woke him and he carried on, making excellent time; he'd abandoned the road and was cutting straight up the side of the hill. The horse wheezed and resented the exercise, but he kept a tight rein; not really his horse, after all, so it didn't matter what state it was in when he got there, just so long as he made it quickly. When night fell a second time he curled up behind an outcrop, out of the wind, and waited for dawn without falling asleep. Shortly after noon the next day, he saw smoke rising from the double chimneys of the Unswerving Loyalty and realized—the thought startled him—that somehow he'd made it and he was still alive.

No money, of course. He grinned. He'd have to sell the horse, and then what?

As he came close enough to hear, he could make out voices, a great many of them. He wondered about that. Mezentines; no, they'd have burned the place to the ground. His men, perhaps; unlikely. All right, then, who else would be roaming about this godforsaken moor in a large party? All he could think of was a big caravan of merchants; possible, if they were being forced to go all round the houses these days to avoid the war.

But it wasn't merchants. The horses he saw as he rode into the yard were too big and too fine, and there were bows and quivers hanging from their saddles, and boots to rest spear-butts attached to the stirrups. Very fine horses indeed; and the Loyalty's ostlers and grooms were looking after them with a degree of enthusiasm he wouldn't have expected to see if they belonged to the invaders. Besides, he knew enough about horses to recognize the coveted, valuable Vadani bloodline. He grinned as he passed under the fold gate. Can't go anywhere in Eremia these days without bumping into the Vadani cavalry.

There were two dozen or so men milling about in the yard, but the one he noticed straightaway had his back to him. He was talking to a short man in a leather apron—a farrier, quite possibly, not that he cared worth a damn. The man with his back to him was extremely tall and broad-shouldered, and there was something achingly familiar about the way the presumed farrier was edging away backward, uncomfortable about being loomed over in such an intrusive way.

The troopers stooped talking and stared at him as he rode past them; maybe some of them knew who he was. One of them called out a name as he passed. The tall, broad man looked round and stared at him, and his face exploded into a huge, happy grin.

Miel reined in his horse, dismounted, reached the ground clumsily, nearly fell over. He smiled at the tall man.

"Hello, Jarnac," he said.

Miel Ducas had never really cared much for beer: too sweet, too full of itself, and the taste stayed with you for hours afterward. After Framain's vintage wine and dusty water, it tasted heavenly.

"We'd given up on you," Jarnac said for the fifth time, tilting the jug in spite of Miel's protests. "No trace of you at the scavengers' camp; they swore blind they'd never seen you, we knew they were lying, we assumed they'd cut your throat or sold you to the Mezentines. Anyhow, they won't be bothering anybody anymore." He opened his face and filled it with beer, best part of a mugful. Alcohol had never affected Jarnac at all, except to magnify him still further. "Should've known you'd be able to take care of yourself, of course. Bunch of thieves and corpse-robbers weren't going to keep hold of you for long."

Miel made a point of not asking what had happened to the scavengers. Instead,

"Jarnac," he said.

"Yes?"

"Do you think you could lay your hands on three wagonloads of sulfur?" Jarnac lowered his mug and put it down on the table, like a chess-player executing a perfect endgame. "Sulfur," he repeated. "What the hell do you want with that?"

"I need some to give to somebody."

Jarnac shrugged. You could practically see doubt and confusion being shaken away, like a horse bucking a troublesome rider. "Should be able to get some from somewhere," he said. "Merchants sell it, don't they? Or we could probably requisition some from Valens' lot. Theoretically, I've still got an open ticket with the Vadani quartermaster's office."

Miel frowned. "It'd probably be better if we bought it," he said. "Talking of which, have you got any money?"

Big, Jarnac-sized laugh. "I'll be honest with you," he said, "I really don't know. Ever since I've been with Valens' lot, I haven't actually needed any. But I'm a serving officer in the Vadani cavalry, so I guess they're paying me. Not a problem," he went on, before Miel could interrupt. "Three wagonloads of sulfur, as soon as we get back to headquarters. Anyhow," he went on, "the war. Well, I'm not quite sure where to start. Strikes me, the more battles we win, the further we retreat, which I suppose is probably sensible since it's strictly a hiding to nothing, but it makes it a bit hard to keep score, if you know what I mean. To cut a long story short, though; no easy way to say this, Valens is cutting you loose. No more support for the resistance—which is short-sighted of him if you ask me, because…" Miel kept nodding, but he wasn't interested. He was thinking, not for the first time, about the book he'd found on Framain's table, and a beehive-shaped building with a chimney, a woman with soot all over her face, and sulfur. It was a strange mash of thoughts to have crammed inside his head, but as he turned it over and over again, he realized that it had grown to fill all the available space, driving out everything else—the war, Eremia, the Ducas, honor, duty, loyalty, Orsea, Veatriz…