Evil for Evil
Authors: K. J. Parker
Copyright © 2006 by K. J. Parker
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced,
distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Orbit
Hachette Book Group
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First eBook Edition: June 2009
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-07748-4
Contents
He went back to the tower, changed out of his pretty clothes, and put on something comfortable. Another thing his father had
always told him:
If you cheat, sooner or later you’ll be punished for it.
That was no lie. Of course, to begin with they were just letters. It was only when he’d become dependent on them that the
dishonesty began. It was perfectly simple. She was married — to Orsea, of all people, Duke of Eremia, his people’s traditional
enemy. But because he knew they could never be together, there could never be anything except letters between them, he’d carried
on writing and reading them, until he’d reached the point where he was little more than a foreign correspondent reporting
back on his own life to a readership living far away, in a country he could never go to.
And — of course — now she was here, never more than a hundred yards away from him, and he couldn’t write to her anymore, let
alone speak to her. He’d taken his country to war in order to rescue her, and thereby lost her forever.
He grinned. And Orsea thought
he
was stupid.
Praise for
K. J. Parker
“A richly textured and emotionally complex fantasy… .Highly recommended.”
—
Library Journal
(starred review)
“When so many fantasy sagas are tired, warmed-over affairs, a writer like K. J. Parker is more of a hurricane than a breath
of fresh air.”
—
Dreamwatch
By K. J. Parker
THE FENCER TRILOGY
Colours in the Steel
The Belly of the Bow
The Proof House
THE SCAVENGER TRILOGY
Shadow
Pattern
Memory
THE ENGINEER TRILOGY
Devices and Desires
Evil for Evil
The Escapement
People are all right as far as they go, but sometimes only places will do. This one’s for Century and Stickledown, Langport,
Whitestaunton and Middle Room: the pacifist’s Valhalla.
“The way to a man’s heart,” Valens quoted, drawing the rapier from its scabbard, “is proverbially through his stomach, but
if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye socket.”
He moved his right arm into the third guard, concentrated for a moment on the small gold ring that hung by a thread from the
center rafter of the stable, frowned and relaxed. Lifting the sword again, he tapped the ring gently on its side, setting
it swinging like a pendulum. As it reached the upper limit of its swing and hung for a fraction of a second in the air, he
moved fluently into the lunge. The tip of the rapier passed exactly through the middle of the ring without touching the sides.
Valens grinned and stepped back. Not bad, he congratulated himself, after seven years of not practicing; and his poor ignorant
student wasn’t to know that he’d cheated.
“There you go,” he said, handing Vaatzes the rapier. “Now you try.”
Vaatzes wasn’t to know it was cheating; but Valens knew. The exercise he’d just demonstrated wasn’t the one he’d so grudgingly
learned, in this same stable, as a boy of fifteen. The correct form was piercing the stationary ring, passing the sword through
the middle without making it move. He’d never been able to get it right, for all the sullen effort he’d lavished on it, so
he’d cheated by turning it into a moving target, and he was cheating again now. The fact that he’d subverted the exercise
by making it harder was beside the point.
“You made it look easy,” Vaatzes said mildly. “It’s not, is it?”
Valens smiled. “No,” he said.
Vaatzes wrapped his hand around the sword-hilt, precisely as he’d been shown; a quick study, evidently. It had taken Valens
a month to master the grip when he was learning. The difference was, he reflected, that Vaatzes wanted to learn. That, he
realized, was what was so very strange about the Mezentine. He wanted to learn
everything.
“Is that right?”
“More or less,” Valens replied. “Go on.”
Vaatzes lifted the rapier and tapped the ring to set it swinging. He watched as it swung backward and forward, then made his
lunge. He only missed by a hair, and the ring tinkled as the sword-point grazed it on the outside.
“Not bad,” Valens said. “And again.”
Even closer this time; the point hit the edge of the ring, making it jump wildly on its thread. Vaatzes was scowling, though.
“What’m I doing wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing, really. It’s just a matter of practice,” Valens replied. “Try again.”
But Vaatzes didn’t move; he was thinking. He looked stupid when he thought, like a peasant trying to do mental arithmetic.
It was fortunate that Valens knew better than to go by appearances.
“Mind if I try something?” Vaatzes said.
Valens shrugged. “Go ahead.”
Vaatzes stepped forward, reached up with his left hand and steadied the ring until it was completely motionless. He stepped
back, slipped into third guard like a man putting on his favorite jacket, and lunged. The rapier-point passed exactly through
the middle of the ring, which didn’t move.
“Very good,” Valens said.
“Yes.” Vaatzes shrugged. “But it’s not what you told me to do.”
“No.”
“I was thinking,” Vaatzes said, “if I practice that for a bit, I can gradually work up to the moving target. Would that be
all right?”
Valens had stopped smiling. “You do what you like,” he said, “if you think it’d help.”
For six days now it had rained; a heavy shower just before dawn, followed by weak sunshine mixed with drizzle, followed by
a downpour at mid-morning and usually another at noon. No earthly point trying to fly the hawks in this weather, even though
it was the start of the season, and Valens had spent all winter looking forward to it. Today was supposed to be a hunting
day; he’d cleared his schedule for it weeks in advance, spent hours deciding which drives to work, considering the countless
variables likely to affect the outcome — the wind direction, the falcons’ fitness at the start of the season, the quality
of the grass in the upland meadows, which would draw the hares up out of the newly mown valley. Carefully and logically, he’d
worked through all the facts and possibilities and reached a decision; and it was raining. Bored and frustrated to the point
of cold fury, Valens had remembered his offhand promise to the funny little Mezentine refugee who, for reasons Valens couldn’t
begin to fathom, seemed to want to learn how to fence.
“I think that’s enough for today,” Vaatzes said, laying the rapier carefully down on the bench, stopping it with his hands
before it rolled off. “The meeting’s in an hour, isn’t it? I don’t want to make you late.”
Valens nodded. “Same time tomorrow,” he said, “if it’s still raining.”
“Thank you,” Vaatzes said. “It’s very kind of you. Really, I never expected that you —”
Valens shrugged. “I offered,” he said. “I don’t say things unless I mean them.” He yawned, and slid the rapier back into its
scabbard. “See you at the meeting, then. You know where it is?”
Vaatzes grinned. “No,” he said. “You did tell me, but …”
“I know,” Valens said, “this place is a bugger to find your way around unless you’ve lived here twenty years. Just ask someone,
they’ll show you.”
After Vaatzes had gone, Valens drew the rapier once again and studied the ring for a long time. Then he lunged, and the soft
jangle it made as the sword grazed it made him wince. He caught it in his left hand, pulled gently until the thread snapped,
and put it back on his finger. All my life, he thought, I’ve cheated by making things harder. It’s a habit I need to get out
of, before I do some real damage.
He glanced out of the window; still raining. He could see pockmarks of rain in the flat puddles in the stable yard, and slanting
two-dimensional lines of motion made visible against the dark backdrop of the yard gate. He’d loved rain in late spring when
he was a boy; partly because he’d loathed hunting when he was young and rain meant his father wouldn’t force him to go out
with the hounds or the hawks, partly because the smell of it was so clean and sweet. Now, seven years after his father’s death,
he was probably the most ardent and skillful huntsman in the world, but the smell of rain was still a wonderful thing, almost
too beautiful to bear. He put on his coat and pulled the collar up round his ears.
From the stable yard to the side door of the long hall; hardly any distance at all, but he was soaked to the skin by the time
he shut the door behind him, and the smell was now the rich, heavy stench of wet cloth. Well; it was his meeting so they’d
have to wait for him. He climbed the narrow spiral staircase to the top of the middle tower.
Clothes. Not something that interested him particularly. Perhaps that explained why he was so good at them. Slipping off the
wet coat, shirt and trousers, he swung open the chest and chose a dark blue brocade gown suitable for formal occasions. He
took a minute or so to towel the worst of the damp out of his hair, couldn’t be bothered to look in a mirror. One more glance
through the window. Still raining. But he’d be dry, and everybody else at the meeting would be wet and uncomfortable, which
would be to his advantage. That thought made him frown. Why was he allowing himself to think of his own advisers as the enemy?
He sighed. Today should have been a hunting day; or, if it was raining, it should’ve been a day for writing her a letter,
or revising a first or second draft, or doing research for the reply to the next letter he received from her. But there weren’t
any letters anymore; she was here now, under the same roof as him, with her husband. On a whim he changed his shoes, substituting
courtly long-toed poulaines for comfortable but sodden riding shoes. He hesitated, then looked in the mirror after all. It
showed him a pale, thin young man expertly disguised as the Duke of the Vadani; a disguise so perfect, in fact, that only
his father would’ve been able to see through it. Oh well, he thought, and went downstairs to face his loyal councillors.
As he ran down the stairs, he put words together in his mind; the question he’d have asked her in a letter, if they’d still
been able to write letters to each other. Force of habit; but it was a habit he’d been dependent on for a very long time,
until he’d reached the point where it was hard to think without it.
Suppose there was a conjuror, a professional sleight-of-hand artist, who hurt his wrist and couldn’t do tricks anymore. Suppose
he learned how to make things disappear and pull rabbits out of hats by using real magic. Would that be cheating?
As he’d anticipated, the councillors were all wet, and acting ashamed, as though getting rained on was a wicked and deliberate
act. They stood up as he came in. Even now, it still surprised him rather when people did that.
He gave them a moment or so to settle down, looking round to see if anybody was missing. They looked nervous, which he found
faintly amusing. He counted to five under his breath.
“First,” he said, “my apologies for dragging you all up here in this foul weather. I’ll try not to keep you any longer than
necessary. We all know what the issues are, and I dare say we’ve all got our own opinions about what we should do. However,”
he went on, shifting his weight onto both feet like a fencer taking up a middle guard, “I’ve already reached my decision;
so, really, it’s not a case of what we’re going to do so much as how we’re going to do it.”
