Evil for Evil e-2

by K. J. Parker

"Greetings," he recited, in a flat, dead voice, "from the convocation of Guilds of the Mezentine Republic. This is to inform you that unless you accede forthwith to the Republic's legitimate demands, a state of war will exist between yourself and-"

  "Just a moment," Valens interrupted. "What demands?"

  Cannanus blinked. "I'm sorry?"

  "What demands? I don't know what you're referring to. We haven't had any demands, have we, Mezentius?"

  The rusty-haired man, who'd joined them at some point, shrugged. "Not that I'm aware of."

  Valens sighed. "Which isn't to say there haven't been any," he said. "The trouble is, this sort of thing's the province of my chancellor, and unfortunately he was killed only a few days ago. As a result we're still in a bit of a tangle, not quite back up to speed. Would you be very kind and just run through them for me? The demands," he added, as Cannanus goggled at him. "Just to jog my memory, really. For all I know, we might be able to clear all this business up here and now."

  Nightmare, Cannanus thought. There'll be a war that could have been avoided, and it'll all be my fault. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know. I'm just a messenger."

  "Oh." Big frown. "That's a nuisance. Mezentius, do you think you could quickly go and scout through the papers on Carausius' desk, just in case they're there?" The rusty-haired man nodded and stomped away. "Won't be long," Valens said coolly. "Now, would you like a drink while you're waiting? I'm having one."

  Infuriating. "Yes, thank you." If he can be polite, so can I; we'll see who crumbles first.

  "Splendid." Valens nodded, and someone appeared at once with a tall, plain earthenware jug and two silver mugs. They at least were Mezentine, though ordinary trade quality. "Well, what shall we talk about? It's not often I get a chance to talk to a real Mezentine these days."

  A cue, if ever there was one. "Is that right? I was under the impression you had a Mezentine living here at your court."

  "A real Mezentine, I said." Valens grinned. "If you're thinking of my friend Ziani Vaatzes, I tend to think of him as one of us now, rather than one of you."

  "Talking of him." Too good to be true, surely. The Duke was suspicious, hence the slightly forced lead. It wasn't fair, he reflected bitterly, to send a clerk to play at top-level diplomacy. A trained diplomat would be able to interpret all these subtleties. Instead, he had the feeling he usually only felt in dreams: playing chess against a master, and suddenly realizing he didn't know the rules of the game. Nevertheless, he was here now and there was nobody else. "I take it you can confirm he's still alive."

  Valens tilted his head slightly on one side, like a dog. "So that's what the ambush was all about, was it? To kill poor old Ziani. In which case, yes, you wasted your time. Pity, really. A bit of a disaster all round."

  "I wouldn't know," Cannanus replied. "I'm afraid the standing committee doesn't discuss policy with the likes of me."

  "But they want to know the answer," Valens said, smiling. "It was one of the instructions you were given: find out if Vaatzes is still alive."

  That question clearly didn't need an answer. "I wonder," Cannanus said, "if it'd be possible for me to talk to him. Just for a moment."

  At least he'd contrived to take Valens by surprise. There was a short pause before he said, "Now why would you want to do that? I assume," he went on, recovering a little of his previous assurance, "that you aren't going to try and murder the poor chap."

  "I have a message for him from the council."

  Valens raised both eyebrows, then laughed. If Cannanus didn't know better, he'd have believed the amusement was genuine. "I'm very sorry," Valens said, "but I really don't think that'd be a terribly good idea. Will it spoil your trip terribly if I refuse?"

  Cannanus shrugged. "To be honest with you," he said, "it wasn't part of my mission at all. I was just curious."

  "Curious?"

  "I wanted to see what he looks like."

  "Oh." It was clear from his face that the very perversity of the idea appealed to Valens on some level Cannanus probably wouldn't be able to understand. "No, sorry. The wretched fellow's got enough on his plate without becoming a tourist attraction."

  "I understand." He tried to put just the right hint of resentment into his reply, while keeping it diplomatically polite. "I'm sorry if the request was out of line."

  "Think nothing of it," Valens answered. "Now, if it'd been me you'd wanted to see, I'd have had no problem with it. Probably have charged you two quarters for admission, but that's all. Now, where's Mezentius got to with those documents? He's a fine soldier, but not at his best with paperwork."

  As if he'd been waiting behind a pillar for his cue, the rust-haired man came back, scowling and slightly short of breath. "I couldn't see anything on his desk," he said. "It could be anywhere in the files, of course, but it'd take days to go through all that lot."

  Valens shrugged. "Well," he said, "since the alternative is war with the Republic, what's a few days scrabbling about in the dust? Get some clerks to help you." He turned and frowned politely at Cannanus. "You're not in a tearing hurry to get back, are you? Or will they dispatch a million cavalry if you're not home by this time tomorrow?"

  "I don't think so," Cannanus replied. He didn't like the thought of hanging around in the Vadani capital for a moment longer than necessary. It made his flesh crawl; not fear, in fact, but disapproval. "But I think it'd be better if I went back and explained that the previous correspondence has been…" He scrabbled for the right word. "Mislaid. Otherwise," he added, with what he was sure was overdone ingenuousness, "they might just assume you're playing for time."

  "Of course." Valens nodded firmly. "You do that, then. If you could possibly do your best to persuade them not to invade us till the copies have arrived, that'd be really kind." Valens stood up, an unambiguous indication that his ordeal was over. "Mezentius, would you mind showing our guest out? Unless he'd like to stay to dinner? No? Well, maybe next time, when you come back with the copy of the terms, I'll look forward to it. You'd better get a fresh horse for him," Valens went on. "Find him a good one, nothing but the best for our friends in the Republic."

  The rusty-haired man started to walk away, and Cannanus hurried to follow him. The four guards came forward, as though to follow, but rust-head waved them away; the dreaded Mezentine apparently wasn't such a threat after all.

  They walked about ten yards down the cloister, rust-head leading at a brisk pace that Cannanus found it irksome to match. Then he stopped dead and dropped a couple of documents. Looking down, Cannanus saw they were blank sheets of paper.

  "I thought you hadn't seen my signal," Cannanus said.

  "Quiet," rust-head snapped, not looking up. "Keep your voice down. Quick, look like you're helping me with these papers."

  Cannanus knelt down beside him and picked up one of the blank sheets. "Sorry about not giving you any notice," he said quietly. "But it's an emergency, no time to warn you in advance."

  "I'd gathered. And yes, I saw your signal, thank you very much. It's supposed to be a subtle hand-gesture. The way you were carrying on, you could've put someone's eye out."

  Just stress and irritation talking; besides, there wasn't time.

  "I've got a letter," Cannanus said. "For the abominator, Vaatzes. Make sure he's alone when he gets it, all right?"

  "I'm not completely stupid. Well, where is it, then?"

  "In my shoe."

  "Oh for crying out loud."

  "Well," Cannanus muttered, fumbling with his shoe-buckle, "I knew I'd be searched at the frontier. You want to upgrade your security procedures. If it'd been a Mezentine checkpoint, inside the shoe's the first place we'd have looked."

  "What minds you people must have." Rust-head took the small, square packet from him and tucked it firmly into his sleeve. "Now let's get you out of here before anything goes wrong," he said. "And next time…"

  "I know. We're sorry."

  Rust-head sighed and stood up. "It's going to be much harder for me from now on," he
said. "Chances are I'm going to be promoted, now that there's so many jobs that need filling, so I'll have to be that much more careful. Whose idea was that, by the way? The sneak attack, I mean."

  Cannanus shrugged. "They don't tell me stuff like that."

  "No, I suppose not. Anyway, you tell them from me. Next time I want plenty of advance warning, or the deal's off. Can you do that? They know I'm far too valuable to piss off."

  "I'll be sure to mention it," Cannanus said.

  "Do that." Rust-head glanced up and down the cloister. "And while you're at it, you can tell them that the evacuation's been brought forward again, in spite of the attack. And your abominator's been keeping very busy indeed, bashing out great big iron sheets. Nobody knows what it's all in aid of; rumor has it they're mass-producing armor, since they can't buy ready-made off your lot anymore, but it's not true. I'll try and find out from Valens what's going on, ready for when you come back."

  "It probably won't be me on the return trip…" Cannanus tried to tell him, but he'd started walking again. Meeting over.

  The horse they'd given him was beautiful, a Vadani mountain thoroughbred, intended to make him feel guilty and in their debt. He felt the guilt in spite of himself, but not the gratitude; it'd be impounded by the messengers' office as soon as he got back and given to some colonel in the mercenary cavalry. Just as well; it wouldn't be right to keep something the enemy had given him.

  The fine, handsome, morally questionable thoroughbred cast a shoe almost as soon as he crossed the Eremian border, a few miles after his Vadani escort had turned back and left him on his own. That, he couldn't help thinking, was probably a judgment on him for his ingratitude, or else for being tempted to keep the horse. It gave him a certain amount to think about as he walked, leading the gift-horse by its reins, along the dusty, stony track that passed for the main road to Civitas Eremiae.

  Other concerns, too; less high-minded and abstruse, rather more immediate. One of them was the fact that he'd forgotten to fill his water bottle back at Valens' palace; rather, he'd assumed that one of the Duke's countless servants would have done it for him while he was busy with the meeting. Another was the emptiness of his ration sack: the scrag end of a Mezentine munitions loaf, turned stale by the dry mountain air, a bit of cheese-rind and a single small onion.

  He could, of course, ride the horse; but that would lame it, maybe cripple it for good on these horrible stony roads, and it was such a very fine horse, with its small, graceful head, arched neck and slim, brittle legs… Walking it lame would be as bad as damaging government property, for which he was personally responsible. That, he reckoned, was the Vadani for you: they bred exquisite horses, but their farriers couldn't nail a shoe on properly.

  As if on purpose, the track started to climb steeply. Being a highly trained courier, Cannanus wasn't used to walking, and it wasn't long before he felt an ominous tightness in the back of his calves. He tried to picture in his mind the maps of the Eremian border country that he'd glanced at before he started out. The big stony thing he was struggling up was tall enough to count as a mountain, worth marking on a map and giving a name to; but there were so many mountains in Eremia that that was no great help. He gave up and started looking about him, but all he could see on the plain below was empty, patchy green blemished here and there with outcrops and bogs. Not a comfortable environment for a city boy at the best of times.

  The thought that he could die out there, stupidly, through carelessness, took a while to form in his mind, but once he'd acknowledged it, he found it hard to silence. People died, lost in the mountains (but he wasn't lost, he was on the main road), particularly if they had no water and only a few crumbs of food (but Eremia was Mezentine territory now; there'd be patrols, hunting down the resistance or keeping out insurgents). He remembered passing an inn at some point. He'd only caught a glimpse of it as he galloped past (he'd been making up time after being held up crossing some river-a whole river full of water, unimaginable excess). He could remember the name from the map-the Unswerving Loyalty at Sharra Top-but he couldn't place it in this disorganized mess of landscape; could be an hour away, or a day's march on foot. Nothing for it; he was going to have to ride the stupid horse. After all, deliberately allowing a courier of the Republic to die of thirst in the desert was surely a worse crime against the state than crippling some overbred animal. Reluctantly, almost trembling with guilt, he ran down the stirrup, put his foot in it and lifted himself into the saddle.

  The horse reared.

  High-strung, temperamental thoroughbred, he thought, as his nose hit the horse's neck and his balance shifted just too far. He hung in the air for a moment, realizing objectively that he wasn't going to be able to sit this one out, and watched the sky as he fell.

  Not as bad, actually, as some of the falls he'd had in the past; he'd been expecting worse, he told himself, as the pain subsided enough to allow his mind to clear. He opened his eyes, tried to move, found out that everything still worked. Stupid bloody horse, he thought, and dragged himself up, feeling the inevitable embarrassment of the seasoned rider decked by a mere animal; won't let it get away with that, or it'll think it's the boss. He looked round for it. Not there.

  The rush of panic blotted out thought for a moment. He recovered, hobbled a little way to a tall rock, scrambled up and looked round. There was the horse; off the track, heading down the steep, rocky slope at a determined canter, obviously unaware of the desperate risk to its fragile, expensive legs. Served it right if it broke them all.

  It took at least two heartbeats before he realized that it had gone too far-just too far, but enough-for him to have any hope of catching it, unless it stopped of its own accord, to rest or graze (graze? Graze on what?). No horse, no transport; and, needless to say, his few crumbs of food were in the ration sack, just behind the saddle roll.

  Fear came next. He felt its onset, recognized it from a distance, as it were; but when it overtook him, there was nothing he could do about it. He was going to die; he was going to die very slowly, his throat and mouth completely dried out, like beans hung in the sun; it was all his own fault that he was going to die so unpleasantly, and there was no hope at all. He felt his knees weaken, his stomach tighten, his bladder twitch, he was shaking and sobbing. For crying out loud, he tried to tell himself, this is ridiculous; you haven't broken a leg, you're fit and healthy and it can't be far to that inn, but the forced hopes turned like arrows on proof armor. He dropped to the ground in a huddle, and shook all over like a fever case.

  Fear came and went, taking most of him with it. He stood up; he was talking to himself, either out loud or in his head, he couldn't tell. You're not thinking straight, he said, you're going to pieces, that's not going to help; and you're missing something really important.

  That stopped him. He looked round, like a man who's just realized he's dropped his keys somewhere. Something important that he'd seen just a few moments ago, before the fear set in and wiped his mind. Something…

  It came back to him, and he thought, idiot. It had been there all the time, he'd probably been looking straight at it while he was crouching there quivering and blubbing. It had been a silvery flash; sunlight on the surface of a bog-pool, down below in the valley.

  Some of his intelligence was starting to creep back. He looked for patches of darker, lusher green, and soon enough he caught sight of that flash again. He tried to gauge the distance-hard in such open country, but no more than two miles away, probably less, and all downhill. Now he thought about it, the horse had gone that way; there was a chance he'd find it again, drinking peacefully. Two miles downhill; he could do that, and then he'd have water. Not water to spare-the water bottle was with the ration sack, on the saddle of the stupid fucking horse-but enough to keep him alive, give him a chance to calm down and get a grip. He heard someone laugh, high, braying, almost hysterical; it took him a moment to realize he was listening to himself, but now he thought about it, he could see the joke.

  To begin wit
h he tried to hurry, but a couple of trips and sprawls made it clear that haste could kill him, if he fell awkwardly and twisted something. He'd been careless twice already that day. He slackened his pace to an amble, as though he was strolling home from work. All the way, he kept his eye fixed on the spot where he'd seen the silver flash, just in case it turned sneaky on him and crept away.

  When he got there… It wasn't beautiful, even to a man who'd killed himself with anticipated thirst only an hour earlier. It was a brown hole surrounded by black peaty mud, sprinkled with white stones and fringed with clumps of coarse green reeds, a very few' clumps of dry heather, here and there a tuft of bog-cotton. He slowed down as he approached it; wading into the mud and getting stuck would be careless too, and he was through with carelessness for good. From now on, every action he committed himself to would be exquisitely designed, planned and executed with all proper Mezentine precision, a work of art and craft that anybody would be proud to acknowledge.

  In accordance with this resolution, he crept forward, taking care to test the ground with his heel before committing his weight. It soon struck him that he was wasting his time; the mud was slimy and stank, but the most his boot sank in it was an inch or so. He quickened his pace; he could see the water now, and smell it too. Nothing to be afraid of…

  He stopped. In front of him, unmistakable as a Guild hallmark, was the print of a horse's hoof. He frowned. So the horse had been this way-the print was fresh, he could tell by the sharpness of the indentation's edge, the deeper pits left by the nail-heads. Maybe it was still somewhere close, in which case at least some of his troubles could well be over. He swung his head, looking round, and saw another print, identical, and then another, at just the right interval. He'd found the wretched animal's tracks, so he could follow it until he caught up with it, and…

  The fourth print he found was of an unshod hoof. Definitely his horse, then.

  He hurried along the trail of prints. As he'd anticipated, it was heading straight for the water. Logical: horses get thirsty too. He wondered how much of a head start it'd have on him by now. Not too much, he hoped. The miserable creature would just be ambling along, grazing as it went, in no particular hurry. And it shouldn't be too hard to spot in this open, flat country.