Evil for Evil (69 page)

"I'm not sure that'd be appropriate," the duty officer said. "But I assure you, as soon as I see him—"

"Haven't you been listening to me?" Orsea could hear the shrill, petulant anger in his own voice; it revolted him. "As soon as you see him could be too late. If the innkeeper at Sharra knows we're here and there's a Mezentine patrol stationed there—"

"Assuming," the duty officer interrupted quietly, "that what this woman told you is true."

I must try and make him understand. "She found me, didn't she?" he said. "She heard we were here from someone; she told me it was the innkeeper who told her. I can't imagine why she'd want to lie about it. Think about it, can't you? There's this merchant with a delivery for my wife. Here, look." He thrust the little cloth sack at the officer's face, like a fencer testing the distance. "Now, if she wasn't told where I was likely to be, how do you think she found me? Just wandering around at random on the off chance she'd run into me?"

The officer leaned back a little, putting space between himself and the smell of the bag. "You may like to bear in mind that we're on a road," he said, voice flat and featureless. "People travel up and down roads, on their way to wherever they happen to be going. It seems more likely to me that she fortuitously came across this column while following the road than that she heard about us at Sharra and made her way here across country, in a ladies' chaise, just to deliver a bag of dried flowers." Orsea pulled in a deep breath. "I don't agree," he said. "And I'm asking you to send someone to find Valens, right now. Are you going to do it?" The officer's eyes were sad as well as hostile. "I'm afraid I can't," he said.

"Fine." Orsea swung round, traversing like a siege engine on its carriage, to face the Eremian officer who'd led him there. "All right," he said, "you do it." The Eremian was only a young man, embarrassed and ashamed. "I'm sorry," he began to say.

"You heard what I just told him?"

The Eremian nodded wretchedly.

"Good. I'm telling you to find Duke Valens and pass the message on." Such a reproachful look in the young man's eyes. "Actually, I'm supposed to be taking a note to—"

"Never mind about that." Orsea couldn't help thinking about the drunk with the stick. "It can wait. Do you understand what I want you to do?" The young man was looking past him, at the duty officer. Orsea couldn't see what he saw, but the young man nodded slightly. "Of course," he said.

"Straightaway." He left quickly, grateful to get away, leaving Orsea and the duty officer facing each other, like the big man and the little drunk. I won, Orsea thought, I got my way. Shouldn't that make me the big man, not the other way round?

The carpenters weren't happy. Valens found that hard to take, since he was merely telling them to do what they'd told him was the only way. But apparently there wasn't enough good seasoned timber to do the job; they could use green wood, but—

"I know," Valens snapped. "You told me."

Dignified silence. They were good at dignified silence. "Do the best you can," he growled at them, and left with what little remained of his temper.

Heading back to his coach, he met a sad-looking ensign; an Eremian, he noticed from his insignia. He looked weary and ground down, as though he'd been given an important job he didn't know how to do.

"I've got a message for you," the sad ensign said. "From Duke Orsea." One damn thing after another. "Go on, I'm listening."

He listened, and when the ensign had finished, he said, "Orsea told you that?

Himself?"

The ensign nodded. "He reported it to the duty officer—"

Valens wasn't interested in any of that. "All right," he said, "here's what I want you to do."

He fired off a list of instructions, detailed and in order of priority. He could see the ensign forcing himself to remember each step, his eyes terrified. Fear of failure; must be an Eremian characteristic. "Have you got that?"

"Yes."

"Repeat it all back to me and then get on with it."

It all came back at him like an echo; it sounded very impressive, as though Duke Valens was on top of the situation. It'd be nice if he was, since the lives of everybody in the column depended on him. If only the warning hadn't come from Orsea; anybody else, a soldier, a half-blind crippled shepherd, a twelve-year-old boy, and he'd be comfortable with it. But no, it had to be Orsea. Still, the risk was too great. If he ignored it, and the Mezentines came…

The ensign darted away, swift as a deer pursued by hounds, born to be hunted, inured to it. Valens stopped to take a deep breath and clear his mind, then went to find the duty officer.

21

His third visit to the Unswerving Loyalty; Miel Ducas was starting to feel at home there. Mind, he wasn't sure he liked what the Mezentines had done with the place. Rows of hastily built sheds crowded the paddock behind the original stable block, and the yard was churned and rutted from extreme use. Stacks of crates and barrels masked the frontage; it hadn't been a thing of beauty, but the supply dumps hadn't improved it. Mezentine soldiers everywhere, of course; definitely an eyesore. He wondered if he ought to point out to someone in charge that the inn was, properly speaking, his property, and he hadn't authorized the changes.

They let him out into the yard for half an hour, for exercise. They were punctilious about it—probably because they were cavalrymen, used to the need to exercise horses. The degree of joy he felt at being allowed into the open air disturbed him. Something so trivial shouldn't matter, now that his life was rushing to its end. He'd wanted to achieve a level of tranquility; how could it possibly matter whether or not he saw the sun one last time before he died? But the light nearly overwhelmed him, after a sleepless night in a stone pigsty. Perhaps it wasn't the light so much as the noise. Out here, people were talking to each other. Not a word had been spoken in the dark; his fellow prisoners' silence had been harder to bear than anything they could have said to him. As soon as they'd left the pigsty, Framain and his daughter had walked away from him, crossed to the other side of the yard. He could see them talking to each other, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. Probably just as well.

He watched a Mezentine groom leading a horse across the top of the yard, passing a man sharpening a bill-hook on a big wheel grindstone. The horse tried to shy as it passed the shower of orange sparks, but the groom twitched its headstall and it followed him, resigned rather than calm. Someone else was forking hay out of a cart into a hayloft. A sack of grain rose into the air on the end of a rope, as a winch creaked. A boy, not Mezentine, raked up horse dung into a barrow. Nobody seemed interested in Miel Ducas, apart from the two guards who watched him as though he was the only thing in the world. He felt mildly ashamed that he hadn't given any serious thought to trying to escape; properly speaking, it was his duty, but he simply couldn't be bothered. If he tried to get away, they'd only kill him. It was less effort to stay where he'd been put, and he was enjoying watching the people.

They brought in a cart—he was treating it as a show put on for his benefit—and took off one of the wheels. Enter a wheelwright, with tools and helpers; they struck off the iron tire with cold chisels and cut out a damaged spoke. Miel wondered how they were going to fit the replacement; would they have to dismantle the whole wheel, and if so, how were they going to get the rim off? They were bringing out strong wooden benches. Miel tried to remember; he'd seen wheels made and mended before but hadn't bothered to observe, assuming in his arrogance that it wasn't any of his business. Now, he realized, he urgently wanted to know how it was done. If they took him back inside, and he missed the exciting part, it'd be like listening to most of a story and being cheated of the ending. Felloes, he suddenly remembered; the rim of a wheel is made up of six curved sections, called felloes, dowelled together, held rigid by the spokes, restrained by the tire. Where had he learned that; or had he been born knowing it?

"Are you going to move?" one of his guards said.

That struck Miel as a very odd question. "I'm sorry?"

"You're supposed to be exercising," the guard explained. They'd put the wheel on its side on top of a large barrel. It had taken three men to lift it into place. "But you're just standing still."

Fair enough. "I was watching them mend the wheel," he explained. "Is that all right?"

The guard shrugged. "You're supposed to be walking about," he said.

"Have I got to?"

"You please yourself," the guard replied. Clearly he didn't approve. "It's just some men fixing a wheel."

"I know," Miel said.

The wheelwright was tapping carefully on the inside of the rim, easing the felloe off the dowels. Obviously you'd have to be careful doing that. Too much force and you'd snap off a dowel. How would you cope if that happened? Drill it out, presumably; not the end of the world, but a nuisance. "I wish I could do that," Miel said. The guard didn't reply. They'd got the felloe off; now the wheelwright was flexing the damaged spoke in its socket, the way you waggle a loose tooth. Were all the spokes on Mezentine carts interchangeable, so that you could simply take out a broken one and replace it with a brand-new spare from the stores? But perhaps it wasn't a Mezentine cart.

"That's enough," the guard said. "You've got to go back inside now." Miel didn't argue, though he couldn't really see why a few minutes more would make such a difference. But it wouldn't do to get stroppy with the guard, who was only doing his duty. Miel realized that he felt sorry for him, because he still had duty to do.

She didn't look at him as they were herded back into the pigsty. Framain gave him a blank stare, then looked away. The door closed, shutting out all but a few splinters of light. Miel found the corner he'd sat in before. The wall he leaned his back on was damp and crusted with white powder, like fine salt. There was a strong smell of mold, wet and pig.

"I'm sorry," he said aloud.

He might as well have been alone. He could barely see them in the dark. Nevertheless, he felt he ought to apologize. He hadn't done so before, and it was an obligation, possibly the last one he'd ever have to discharge. He wasn't particularly bothered whether they accepted his apology or not. Still; if it was his last duty, he might as well do it properly.

"It was my fault," he said. "Obviously that Mezentine I rescued led them to us. I knew at the time it was a bloody silly thing to do. I guess it was self-indulgence, me wanting to do the right thing." He smiled, though of course they wouldn't see.

"Really, I should've learned by now, as often as not doing the right thing makes matters worse. Mind you," he added, "you were just as bad as me in that respect. You should've left me in the bog where you found me, it wouldn't have made any real difference in the long run."

Silence. Perhaps they'd both fallen asleep—exhausted, maybe, by their exercise session.

"Anyway," he went on (now that he'd started talking, he found that he was afraid to stop, because of the silence that would follow), "I'm very sorry it turned out like this. I hope you can make a deal with the Mezentines and get away. Of course, all that work you did will be wasted, as far as you're concerned." He stopped himself. There was a fair chance they didn't need to be told that. "If it means anything, I really am sorry you got caught up in the bloody mess I've made of my life. I wish there was something I could do, but there isn't."

If they'd been asleep, he'd have heard them breathing. To stay that quiet, they had to be awake. There, he thought, duty done. The rest of my life's my own. He breathed out and relaxed his back and neck, letting his head droop forward. Irony: at last he was free to do what he chose, except there wasn't anything to do. He wished they'd let him back out in the yard, so he could watch the wheelwright for a little longer. He contemplated crawling up next to the door, in case there was a crack or a knothole big enough for him to see through, but he dismissed the idea as requiring too much energy. Later, perhaps, when he started to feel bored. Instead, he considered the rapier-blades of light and the dust specks, like stars, that glittered in them for a while before floating away into the shadows. It turned out to be a pleasure, sitting still and letting his mind slip out of focus. That was all wrong, of course. A condemned man awaiting execution in a pigsty shouldn't be enjoying himself. That thought made him smile. He had a duty to feel miserable, but he was neglecting it. No more duty. Often in the past, when he'd heard that someone had killed himself, he wondered how anybody could possibly choose to die; such a strange choice to make, the prey failing in its obligation to evade the hounds for as long as possible. But sometimes the deer did just that; they stopped, not from exhaustion or injury or because there wasn't anywhere for them to go. Not often, but it happened; and Miel wondered if they came to this same place, the point where the obligations of instinct become weak enough to be put aside. An animal lives to serve a function, its duty to survive long enough to procreate and so maintain and propagate the species. Apart from that obligation, its life is mere tiresome necessity, the need to find enough to eat every day, the need to escape from predators. He thought about love, which was just a sophistication of that duty; something you were required to believe in, like a state religion, but only so that you'd do your otherwise unpalatable and irksome duty of acquiring and raising children. Of course, the deer has its duty to the wolves and hounds, who depend on it for their existence (obligation of the prey to the predator; obligation of the individual to society; of the beloved to the lover). In that case, the willing surrender after going through the obligatory motions of pursuit made perfect sense. The deer must run in order to keep the wolves fit, to give them a criterion by which to choose their pack leaders; the wolves must hunt in order to keep the numbers of deer in balance, so that they don't overpopulate their habitat and wipe themselves out through starvation and epidemic disease. Balance; as in the relationship between a great lord and his people. Miel wondered if this was the lesson he should've been learning—the hints dropped all round him had been heavy enough: that duty to friends and lovers is solemn enough, but no more valid than duty to enemies; quite possibly the most sacred duty of all. Or perhaps the distinctions were artificial and there was only one duty, and dependents, lovers and predators were really all the same thing.