The Escapement (68 page)

"Daurenja? What's he got to do with it?"

"Only that he was an evil man who kept trying to do good things, and you were a good man doing evil. As I understand it, Duke Orsea spent his life trying to do the right thing, and by any objective criteria he caused just as much harm as you did. And Duke Valens; I see him as a man made up equally of good and evil who chose the good side believing that you can part copper and tin and still have bronze; and so he did more damage than anybody, in the end. And as for myself… Well," he said,

"I can't have you arrested and put to death as long as your army's camped outside the City, which spares me from forcing myself to acknowledge that I wouldn't want to do it if I could. There are times when it's a great relief not to be able to do the right thing, or your duty, or whatever you want to call it."

Ziani was silent for a while. Then he said: "That was a good speech, for something you just made up on the spur of the moment."

Psellus smiled. "I used to read a lot of books," he said, "on days when work was quiet and there wasn't a lot to do. Dizanes on forensic and political oratory. Six fat volumes, I found them wedged under the legs of a wobbly table in the Coopers'

library." He stopped; they were standing outside a door. "You think that just because I made it into a speech, I can't really mean it."

"If it was what you really thought, you wouldn't have needed to dress it up." They were standing outside a door.

"What I think doesn't matter," Psellus said abruptly. "I'm not important. We're here."

Ziani nodded; then he said: "I can't stay here, then?"

"No."

"That's a pity, considering what I've been through to get back here."

"Yes," Psellus said. "But if you really want to stay, you'll have to kill us all. I believe you'd be capable of it, but there'd be no point; it wouldn't be your home any more. And besides, it's not what you really want, is it?"

"I want it to be how it was," Ziani replied angrily. "What the hell is so difficult about that?"

"Accept the compromise," Psellus said gently. "You had to come this far to get it; you could never have trusted any deal we made with you, especially while Boioannes was still in power. Take what you came for and go, while you still can." Ziani breathed out; it was as though he'd been holding that breath for a very long time. "No choice, then," he said.

"No."

"Oh well, then," Ziani said, and he put his hand to the latch.

She said: "So what are you going to do now?"

Valens leaned back in his chair, as though he was melting into it. "I'd like to go home," he said, "to Civitas Vadanis. I'd like to look after my people, try to be a good duke. I'd like to hunt twice a week in the season, business and weather permitting. I'd like to be a good father to our child. I'd like to spend as much time as I can with my wife, though I don't suppose it'll ever be enough." He closed his eyes.

"Is that really so unrealistic?"

She looked at him. The wound was healing fast, in spite of what Daurenja had done, though there'd always be the second scar; and the third, on the inside. "Do you love me?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. "As much as I always have, ever since I first saw you. I've never stopped loving you, and I've never loved anyone else." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Is that enough?"

"It's all anyone could ask," she replied.

He nodded. "When did I lose you?" he asked.

She hesitated, then said, "When you let that man beat you."

"Oh." He thought about that for a moment, then said: "Was that all? You can't love a man unless he always wins?"

But she shook her head. "It's not that," she said. "I loved Orsea, and he never won anything."

"I see." Valens was massaging the swollen place under the scar. It had become a habit; he probably didn't know he was doing it. "So you can't love
me
unless I always win, is that it?"

She sighed. "It's a very stupid reason," she said.

"I don't know," he replied. "I don't think there's good or bad reasons for loving someone, or stopping loving them. But it's a little bit hard to understand." She stood up, turned her back on him. "I think it's because…" She didn't speak for a while. "I think it's because my life kept going wrong, and each time you came and rescued me. From Civitas Eremiae; and before that, when I was stuck in that awful excuse for a life with Orsea, and your letters gave it some kind of meaning." She kept her voice level; it took some doing. "I loved the man who wrote the letters. I loved the man who rode into the battle, just for me, even though it meant the end of everything he cared about. I loved the man who fought the Mezentines to save his people. The thing is, though," she added, "I think that man's only one part of you, and I think Daurenja killed him. The man who's left is the awkward boy who kept staring at me when I was sixteen, and I never really loved him. Not like I loved Orsea."

Valens nodded. "And if I'd won the duel and killed Daurenja? Then it'd all have been all right."

"I did try and stop you, remember."

He grinned. "I thought it was because you were afraid he'd kill me."

"That's right." She couldn't help letting just a little bit of the bitterness through.

"One way or another, I thought he'd kill you, and I was right. If you'd listened to me, if you'd put me first instead of doing the right bloody thing, there'd have been no fight and you'd still be…" She shook her head. "You can't expect me to explain something I don't understand myself."

"Oh, I understand," he replied gently. "The man you thought you loved never really existed. I wrote him, like a character in a book; I made him up when I wrote you those letters. It was so hard, it took me a whole day to write one. I guess I always knew you'd never love the man I really am. He'd never have ridden to Civitas Eremiae, and screwed up everything for his people, just to save one woman. I had to invent him, too; just like I invented my father's perfect son, who never really existed. There was a real Valens Valentinianus once; he was a stroppy boy who hated hunting and fencing and hated his father, and loved a girl he saw once. When my father died he had to go, because there was a country to be governed; and I suppose I must've thought, if I can't be me, I might as well be someone perfect—the good duke, the world's best huntsman, the ideal of pure courtly love; and after that, the great leader in adversity, and then the avenger, though I was never really comfortable with him." He laughed again, and went on: "The strange thing is, I've been the imaginary man so long, I don't know how to be anything else. And, as you say, Daurenja killed him, just because he was better at swordfighting. It's a hell of a thing, for your entire conception of good and evil to depend on the outcome of a fencing match. If I won, my ideas of right and wrong are vindicated. If I lose, I must've been wrong all along. And I lost." He closed his eyes again. "So what are you planning to do now?"

"Nothing," she said, as she sat down and picked up her embroidery. "Nothing of any importance. What I've been doing my whole life."

A courier rode to Civitas Vadanis with the news that the war was over. No, the City hadn't fallen; in fact, the Mezentines were now friends and trusted allies against the Aram Chantat, who'd turned out to be the real enemy all along. After a certain initial surprise, the news proved to be popular, because the war was over, and surely that was all that mattered. Besides, the duke was very wise, and had their best interests at heart. If that was what he'd decided, it had to be the right thing to do. After he'd delivered the message, the courier gave another letter to the captain of the citadel guard. He wasn't happy about it. He tried to get out of it on the grounds that he didn't take orders from Engineer Vaatzes. But the courier told him that General Vaatzes was the commander-in-chief now, and they all had to respect the chain of command.

So the captain took six men and went down to the cells, where the Mezentine prisoner Boioannes was being held. First, they gave him a letter. He thanked them and said he'd read it later. No, they said, read it now. So he read it; and when he'd done that, before he could say anything, they threw him down on the floor and the captain stabbed his eyes out with a saddler's needle. Then (carefully following the instructions in the letter; they were very specific) he used the needle to puncture Boioannes' eardrums. That was all he felt he could do, so he left the rest of the orders to his men; they cut off the prisoner's hands, being careful to cauterise the wounds with a hot iron afterwards, and then his tongue. The rest of Vaatzes' letter said:

After you've done that, you will give him food and water every day for the rest of
his life, which I trust will be very long. I won't be there to enforce this, but you'll
have no choice, since he'll be incapable of doing anything for himself, and you
won't be able to bring yourself to let a helpless man starve to death. You should
bear in mind the fact that he was the sole cause of the war; he started it to further
his political ambitions, and he is directly responsible for everything your people
have suffered. Keep him safe and well. By the time you read this, I will have
promised my wife to spare his life and see to it that he wants for nothing.
There was an announcement: by joint declaration of the commander-in-chief and Duke Valens, with the concurrence and goodwill of Chairman Psellus, Miel Ducas had been appointed Duke of Eremia, with immediate effect.

While the announcement was being read out, Duke Miel married some woman nobody had ever heard of, in a perfunctory ceremony conducted by a clerk, promoted to the rank of chief registrar of Eremia for the occasion. The few people who witnessed the ceremony said afterwards that they found the whole business too bizarre to understand. The bride was neither young nor beautiful; in fact, her face was quite hideous because of a scar and a broken nose and jaw that hadn't been properly set. As for her rank and birth, she was nobody at all, the widow of some provincial squire. Afterwards there was no reception, no speeches, no scattering of coins or conspicuous donations of food to the poor (true, there weren't any poor to be found, unless you counted soldiers and camp followers, but it was the look of the thing), and the happy couple walked away unescorted, not even holding hands. It was unworthy of the Ducas, they said, and an insult to the Eremian people, who deserved a little pageantry and splendour to raise their morale after the misery of the war and the occupation.

The new duke's first official act was widely regarded as equally ill-omened. Instead of announcing measures to alleviate conditions for the refugees, or plans to rebuild Civitas Eremiae, or any of the things that were expected of him, Duke Miel chose to inaugurate his reign by granting a monopoly in perpetuity for the manufacture and sale of fine porcelain, along with a grant of land in the mountains somewhere, to some minor nobleman called Framain. No explanation was given, a further proof of arrogance. People with long memories seemed to recall rumours of some kind of liaison between the duke and Framain's daughter. Later it emerged that Framain had been General Daurenja's business partner, and this went some way towards reconciling popular opinion; Daurenja, already much admired by the Eremian people during his lifetime, had won a lasting place in their hearts by his heroic death (if only he'd survived, they said, we'd have taken the City and lived like princes on the spoils for the rest of our lives). Even so, as many influential figures pointed out, it was a most unhealthy precedent. None of the duke's predecessors had ever granted monopolies. Power had clearly gone to his head; hardly surprising, given his family history, and what had the Ducas ever done for the ordinary people?

"They're in there," Psellus said.

"Thank you," Ziani replied. He'd known, without having to be told. Psellus hesitated. "I imagine you'd like me to go now."

"Yes."

"Of course. Will you see me again before you leave?"

Ziani shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "I was planning to slip away as quietly as possible. I don't suppose it'll take them long to realise their commander-in-chief has gone absent without leave, and in the circumstances I'd be grateful for as much of a head start as I can get."

Psellus nodded, but he seemed reluctant to move. "What about money?" he said.

"You'll need some for your journey, and—"

"Taken care of." Ziani cut him off short. "They can add embezzlement of public funds to the list of charges at my court martial. Now, if you'll excuse me." Psellus took a step away, and saw Ziani put his hand to the latch again; he reached out and caught his wrist. "Are you sure this is a good idea?" he said. "You know what she did to you…"

Ziani took his fingers and prised them gently apart. "My daughter hasn't done anything to anybody," he said, "and I love her very much. And she loves her mother. That's a good enough reason on its own."