Evil for Evil (13 page)

Valens nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Go ahead. Will two squadrons be enough?”

“Oh, plenty,” Jarnac said quickly. “I don’t think these characters are fighters, it’ll be more about speed and surprise than
weight of numbers.”

“Go ahead then, by all means.” Valens frowned. “There’s just one thing,” he added. “I don’t know much about the background,
but I get the impression there’s bad blood between your cousin and Duke Orsea. Presumably once you’ve rescued him, you’ll
be bringing him back here. Is there anything I should know about, or is it strictly a private matter?”

Jarnac kept perfectly still for a moment, but his eyes were wide open. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I assumed …”

“That doesn’t sound very good,” Valens said. “Perhaps you ought to tell me about it.”

Jarnac wriggled a little, and Valens felt a moment of anxiety for the chair he was sitting in. “I assumed you’d have known,”
he said. “Orsea had Miel arrested for treason.”

“I see,” Valens said. “I’m assuming he was wrong about that.”

It was almost painful to watch. “I suppose it depends on how you define treason,” Jarnac said. “You see, Orsea found out that
Miel had got hold of a letter he shouldn’t have had.”

Valens didn’t move, not even to breathe. “A letter.”

“Yes.” Jarnac was looking at him. He had bright blue eyes. “I can’t remember offhand whether it was a letter from you to Duchess
Veatriz or the other way about …”

“I see.”

“Anyway,” Jarnac went on, speaking quickly, practically mumbling, “Orsea seemed to feel that as soon as Miel got hold of the
letter, he should’ve given it to him straightaway, and hanging on to it like that was an unforgivable breach of trust. Which,
I suppose, it was, in a way; but Miel’s been crazy about Veatriz ever since they were both kids, it was always sort of understood
that they’d marry each other, but then Veatriz became the heiress to the duchy, which nobody had been expecting, and everyone
thought it’d be quite wrong politically for the Ducas to succeed to the duchy, because it’d mess up the balance of power.”
He froze for a moment; Valens nodded, very slightly. “Anyhow,” Jarnac went on, “Miel couldn’t bring himself to give her away,
partly for her sake, partly because he knew how upset Orsea would be if he knew …” Jarnac shut his eyes. Not his forte, this
sort of thing. “So yes, I suppose it was treason, strictly speaking, and I understand why Orsea had to do what he did. But
in my opinion, for what it’s worth, I don’t think Miel did anything wrong. Frankly, if only Orsea hadn’t found out it would
probably all have blown over.” He looked up. There was a kicked-spaniel look on his face that made Valens want to burst out
laughing. “That’s it,” he said, “more or less. So yes, it might be awkward if Miel came here. Does that change anything?”

Valens sighed and shook his head. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “the one and only time I met Veatriz — before the fall of
Civitas Eremiae, I mean — was years ago, when I was a sixteen-year-old kid. Yes, we wrote letters to each other. It had been
going on for about eighteen months. Did you happen to see the letter that your cousin intercepted?”

Jarnac shook his head.

“Fine,” Valens said. “Well, you’ll have to take my word for it. They were all …” He paused. Even talking about it felt like
a grotesque breach of trust. “They were all perfectly innocent; just chat, I guess. What we’d been reading, things we’d seen
that happened to snag our interest.” He sighed again. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you really don’t want to know anything about
it, and I don’t blame you. The fact remains that the blame for your cousin’s disgrace ultimately rests with me, and it’s because
of it that he was out there in the first place, so naturally I have an obligation to do whatever’s necessary to rescue him.
The one thing I can’t do is let the Mezentines get hold of him just because having him here would be embarrassing, either
to Duke Orsea or myself. However,” he went on, “if there’s any way of keeping him out of Orsea’s way once you’ve rescued him,
I’d take it as a personal favor. Is that clear?”

Jarnac nodded. “Perfectly,” he said. “Thank you.”

Valens smiled thinly. “My pleasure,” he said. “You have complete discretion over the details, and your choice of whatever
forces and materiel you might need. I’ll have a warrant ready for you by morning; you can pick it up from the clerk’s office.
Was there anything else?”

Jarnac stood up, back straight as a spear-shaft. “No,” he said. “And thank you for your time.”

“That’s all right.” Valens turned his head just a little so he wasn’t looking straight at him anymore. “When you get back,”
he said, “perhaps you’d care to join me for a day with the falcons. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that you used to
keep a few birds yourself.”

A split second, before Jarnac realized it was meant as a joke. “One or two,” he said. “Thank you, I’d be delighted. I haven’t
had a day out in the field — well, since the war started.”

“I know,” Valens replied. “That’s the rotten thing about a war, it cuts into your free time.”

Pause; then Jarnac laughed. “Till then,” he said. “And thank you.”

He left, and once he’d gone the room felt much bigger. Valens took a series of deep breaths, as if he’d been running. Well,
he thought, after all that I know something I didn’t know before, so it can’t have been a complete disaster. He let his hands
drop open and his forearms flop onto his knees. Irony, he thought. First I rescue her husband, and now her childhood sweetheart.

At the back of his mind a couple of unexplained details were nagging at him like the first faint twinges of toothache. He
acknowledged their existence but resolved to ignore them for the time being. For the time being, he had other things to think
about.

Obviously, then, Orsea knew about the letters. That explained a great deal about the way he’d been behaving ever since he’d
arrived in Civitas Vadanis. Methodically Valens drew down the implications, the alternative courses of action open to him
and their consequences. Logically — logically, it was perfectly straightforward, one move on a chessboard that would resolve
everything. If Orsea was taken by the Mezentines …

He allowed himself the luxury of developing the idea. The Mezentines are sick and tired of the war in Eremia, which has dragged
on long after the supposedly quick, clean victory at Civitas Eremiae. By the same token, they don’t want to have to fight
us, but I can’t be allowed to get away with interfering as I did. A simple note, therefore, to the Mezentine commander, suggesting
that he demand the surrender of Duke Orsea as the price of peace. He makes the demand; I refuse, naturally; Orsea immediately
offers himself as a sacrifice — no, too melodramatic. Of course; as soon as he hears about the demand, Orsea quietly slips
out of the palace and hands himself over to the enemy. Outcome: Orsea finds redemption from his intolerable guilt; my people
are saved from a war we can’t win; she becomes a widow.

He smiled. The frustrating thing about it was that if he sent for Orsea and asked his permission to do it, Orsea would almost
certainly give it.

Instead, he was going to have to think of something else; annoying and difficult, because it’s always harder to find a satisfactory
answer to a problem when you already know the right answer but aren’t allowed to use it. And it was the right answer; he could
see that quite clearly. Further irony, that the right answer should also be cheating.

Instead …

Instead, he would have to go the long way round, and nobody would be happy, and thousands of innocent people would have to
die. Query (hypothetical, therefore fatuous; another indulgence): would the answer have been different if Orsea hadn’t known
about the letters? He thought about that for a moment, but failed to reach a clear decision.

He pulled a sheet of paper toward him across the table, picked up his pen and wrote out Jarnac Ducas’ warrant:
afford him all possible cooperation,
one of those nice old-fashioned phrases you only ever get to use in official documents. He frowned, tore it up, and started
again.

Valens Valentinianus to Ulpianus Macer, greetings.

An Eremian called Jarnac Ducas will show up in the front office tomorrow morning asking for soldiers and supplies. Give him
everything he wants.

He folded the paper and added it to the pile. His knees ached from too much sitting. Somewhere in the building, she was …
He frowned, trying to think where she was likely to be and what she’d be doing. Needlework, probably. She hated needlework;
a pointless, fatuous, demeaning exercise, a waste of her mind, her life and good linen. She was tolerably competent at it,
but not good enough to earn a living as a seamstress. There had been five — no, six references in the letters to how much
she despised it. In her mother’s room, she’d told him, there was a huge oak chest, with massive iron hinges. As soon as she
finished a piece of work — an embroidered cushion, a sampler, a pair of gloves with the Sirupati arms on the back — it was
put away in the chest and never taken out again; the day after her mother died, the chest was taken away and put somewhere,
and she had no idea what had become of it. In his reply, Valens had told her about how he’d loathed hunting, right up to the
day his father died. It’s different for you, she’d written back, you’re a man. It was one of the few times she’d missed the
point completely.

Needlework, he thought. When we abandon the city and take to the wagons, I guess we’ll have to take her work boxes and embroidery
frames and her spinning-wheel and God only knows what else with us. And Orsea, of course, and my falcons and my hounds and
the boar spears.

Suddenly he couldn’t bear sitting down any longer. He jumped up, scowled, hesitated for a moment and walked quickly out of
the library, down the stairs and across the hall to the ascham. He grabbed the first bow that came to hand and the quiver
of odds-and-ends arrows, the ones that wouldn’t matter if he lost them, and took the back passageway out into the lists. The
sally port was still unlocked, and he scrambled down the rampart (he was still wearing his stupid poulaines, he realized,
but he couldn’t be bothered to go back and change into boots) and ran across the port-meadow into the wood. As he crept and
stumbled down the path he could hear ducks squabbling down on the river at the bottom of the hill. It was still three weeks
until the start of the season, but the ducks didn’t seem to know that. They’d come in early; he’d watched them arrive one
evening, a week or so back. It would be cheating, but for once he didn’t care. Besides, nobody would be about at this time
of day, so the guilt would be his alone. The wet leaves were soft and treacherous under his smooth-soled feet; wild garlic,
long since gone over.

As soon as he could see the river through the trees he stopped and made himself calm down. His best chance of a shot would
be a drake right on the edge of the water; they liked to sit out after feeding at this time of day, to catch the last warmth
of the evening sun. The problem, as usual, would be getting close enough. Twenty yards would be pushing it; fifteen for a
proper job. The screen of coppiced willow that edged the bank would cover him, but it would most likely obstruct the shot
as well. He ran the odds, and decided that the best bet would be to assume that there’d be at least one pair of ducks on the
shingle spit that stuck out into the water a few yards on from where the main path came down to the water’s edge. If he left
the path and worked his way down to the point where the big oak leaned out from the bank, he could use it as cover and get
a clear sight across to the spit; closer to twenty yards than fifteen, but just about in range.

A splash of water, and the unmistakable
quack
-quack-quackquack of a drake sounding the general alarm. Valens tensed with anger, because he hadn’t made any noise; if the
ducks had taken fright and launched out onto the river, they were cheating. He scowled, and realized how ridiculous his reaction
was, but that didn’t really make it any better. He leaned round the tree trunk and saw a solitary drake, head up, floating
on the calm, deep water of the river-bend. Bastard, he thought, and nocked an arrow. The drake looked at him smugly, as if
he knew he was a sitting target and therefore safe. Valens whistled, then shouted, but the drake stayed where he was. Fine,
Valens thought; he pushed the bow handle away with his left hand and drew the string back with his right until his shoulder
blades were jammed together and his right thumbnail brushed against the corner of his mouth. He glanced along the arrow shaft
until he could see the duck on the point of the blade, then dropped his aim a hand’s span. At that point, the three fingers
of his right hand against which the bowstring pressed should have relaxed (you don’t let go of the string, they’d told him
when he was a boy, you drop it); but nothing seemed to be happening. The countdown was running in his mind: three, four, five,
and then it was too late. Still restraining the string, he let it jerk his arm forward; the jolt hurt his shoulder and his
elbow, and he dropped the arrow onto the ground. The drake made a rude noise, unfolded its wings and lifted off the water
in a flailing haze of spray.

He stooped and picked up the arrow. Obviously not my day for killing things, he thought. He lifted his foot to step into the
bow and unstring it, then changed his mind. Nocking the arrow once again, he walked slowly and steadily along the bank, trying
to persuade himself that it didn’t really matter whether he put up anything to shoot at or not. No sign of any ducks; but
that was just as well, since they weren’t in season yet. At the point where the coppice was too thick to pass through, he
turned away from the river and started to walk back uphill. He’d taken no more than five steps when a young pricket buck stepped
out of nowhere, stopped, turned its head and looked at him.

He felt the breath go solid in his throat. Ten yards away, no more, and broadside on; but if he moved at all, he’d lose it;
there’d be a flash of motion and the buck would be gone. He forced himself to keep still, as the deer studied him, trying
to reconcile the lack of movement with the presentiment of danger. To take his mind off the pressure building in his lungs,
he made a dispassionate assessment of the quarry. One stud horn, he noticed, the other broken off about half an inch above
the crown; a fairly miserable animal all round, thin and spindly-legged, with a narrow chest and too much neck; a weakling,
no use to the herd, no prize for a hunter. It watched him, eyes wide, ears forward. I was you once, Valens thought, but not
anymore. Nevertheless, I shall ask your permission. I’ll make a mistake, and if you run, so be it. As slowly as he could,
he lifted the bow, watching the deer’s neck all the time over the arrow tip. When he’d put the point on the spot just above
the front shoulder, he dropped his aim to allow for the arrow’s jump and trusted his fingers to know what to do. He felt the
string pull out, dragging against the pads of his fingertips. For a fraction of a second, he closed his eyes.