by K. J. Parker
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 th
e 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-quack-quack 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.
The sound was right; both shearing and sucking, as the sharp edges of the arrowhead slit open their channel. He opened his eyes and saw the buck stagger a little against the shove of the penetrating arrow. Inch-perfect in the heart. He saw the moment of death, and watched the fall of the carcass, like an empty sack flopping.
He let go the breath he'd been holding for as long as he could remember, and in his mind he was carefully phrasing a paradox for a letter he'd never write; about how a living animal is a pig, a cow, a sheep or a deer, but a dead one is pork, beef, mutton, venison; the two are so completely different that the same word can no longer be applied. The thing lying on the leaf mold in front of him was venison now, so completely changed that it was almost impossible to believe it had ever been alive. He thought of the battlefields he'd seen-all Jarnac Ducas' fault, for mentioning the corpse-robbers he was planning to deal with; if anybody had a word for it, a trade or technical term, it'd be them. Maybe there was one, but he doubted it; the difference being that the dead meat of human beings is no use to anybody.
He went forward, knelt beside the carcass and forked the fingers of his left hand round the shaft of the arrow at the point where it entered the wound. Drawing slowly with his right hand, he pulled the arrow out, and winced as a spot of blood hopped off the blade onto his cheek. I could still prevent the war, he thought. It would be the right thing to do, and I'd do it, if only…
If only Orsea wasn't her husband. But he is; which means there'll have to be a war, and killing, a wholesale conversion of life into waste, and one of those lives will quite probably be mine. He looked up sharply, as if expecting to see the hunter watching him, surprised in mid-breath, over the blade of his arrow. Nothing to see, of course; but just because he's not visible doesn't mean he's not there, and now it's his turn to ask my permission.
He wiped the arrow and put it back in the quiver, then stood up and unstrung the bow. Ask away, he thought, I've already made that decision; nor do I begrudge you your shot.
He paused, listening. He could hear the river, the creaking of the tall, spindly birches behind him on the slope, the distant miserable voices of crows. Nothing unusual or disturbing, nothing to put him on his guard. Maybe he couldn't see the hunter for the same reason the deer hadn't been able to see him; not that it mattered. So, he told himself, now I know: there'll have to be a war, and I won't survive it. Query, though: if I'd cheated and shot the drake sitting on the water, thereby scaring off the buck, would that have made a difference?
It was only a pricket, no more than thirty-five pounds dressed-out weight, but lugging it back up the hill on his shoulders left him aching and breathless. The warmth of its blood, trickling down under his collar and mixing with his own sweat, made his skin itch, and he had to stop halfway to adjust his grip, to stop the carcass sliding off his back. He startled the life out of the sentry at the sally port, now closed for the night, as he staggered out of the wood covered in blood.
He left the carcass for the guards to carry the rest of the way, and hurried up the back stairs to his tower room for a wash and a clean shirt. Unfortunately, there was someone lying in wait for him on the landing, hidden in the shadows. He was about to tell whoever it was to go away when he recognized the voice saying his name.
"Oh," he said, "it's you."
Ziani Vaatzes; staring at him as though he was some sort of extraordinary monster. "I'm sorry," Vaatzes said, "it's obviously a bad time. I'll come back later."
Valens grinned. He was exhausted, bloody all over and visibly in no fit state to conduct official business; but Vaatzes was an outsider and didn't count. "Don't worry about it," he said. "Come in and talk to me while I get cleaned up."
By the time Valens had pulled off his sodden, sticky shirt, three middle-aged women had appeared out of nowhere with hot water and towels. Valens knew who they were-he knew everybody in the castle, naturally-but he had no idea how they'd got there, and it wouldn't have occurred to him to ask. He dipped a towel in the water jug and scrubbed the back of his neck.
"So," he said, "what's on your mind?"
Vaatzes was looking away. "You wrote me a note asking for suggestions about how to block up the silver mines," he said. "I've been thinking about it."
"What? Oh, yes. Excellent. What've you come up with?"
"That depends," Vaatzes said to the opposite wall, as Valens poured the rest of the water over his head. "Really, it's a case of how thoroughly you want the job d
one."
"I see." Valens nodded. "Well, you know the reasoning behind it. First priority's got to be making sure the Mezentines can't open the mines up again in a hurry. If they got hold of them and got them back into production, they'd have all the money they need to pay for the war against us. On the other hand, if and when the war's over and the Mezentines have gone away, we'll need to get the mines going again as soon as we can. Basically, it comes down to cost-effectiveness. Our labor won't cost us anything, because we can use the army or conscripted workers. They've got to pay labor costs and make a profit. Is that any help? It's all right," he added, toweling his hair and pulling on his fresh shirt, "you can look round now and it won't be high treason."
Vaatzes nodded. "Seems to me," he said, "you want to make it look like the mines have been sabotaged beyond economic repair, enough to fool the Mezentine engineers, but really you've only damaged them a little."
"Exactly." Valens sat down on the bed and dragged off his muddy, ruined shoes. "Not much to ask, but presumably you're going to tell me it's not possible."
"Oh, it's possible," Vaatzes replied. "Everything's possible in engineering; it's just that some things take more time and money than they're worth."
Valens shrugged. "Go on," he said.