by K. J. Parker
He watched a Mezentine groom leading a horse across the top of the yard, passing a man sharpening a bill-hook on a big wheel grindstone. The horse tried to shy as it passed the shower of orange sparks, but the groom twitched its headstall and it followed him, resigned rather than calm. Someone else was forking hay out of a cart into a hayloft. A sack of grain rose into the air on the end of a rope, as a winch creaked. A boy, not Mezentine, raked up horse dung into a barrow. Nobody seemed interested in Miel Ducas, apart from the two guards who watched him as though he was the only thing in the world. He felt mildly ashamed that he hadn't given any serious thought to trying to escape; properly speaking, it was his duty, but he simply couldn't be bothered. If he tried to get away, they'd only kill him. It was less effort to stay where he'd been put, and he was enjoying watching the people.
They brought in a cart-he was treating it as a show put on for his benefit-and took off one of the wheels. Enter a wheelwright, with tools and helpers; they struck off the iron tire with cold chisels and cut out a damaged spoke. Miel wondered how they were going to fit the replacement; would they have to dismantle the whole wheel, and if so, how were they going to get the rim off? They were bringing out strong wooden benches. Miel tried to remember; he'd seen wheels made and mended before but hadn't bothered to observe, assuming in his arrogance that it wasn't any of his business. Now, he realized, he urgently wanted to know how it was done. If they took him back inside, and he missed the exciting part, it'd be like listening to most of a story and being cheated of the ending. Felloes, he suddenly remembered; the rim of a wheel is made up of six curved sections, called felloes, dowelled together, held rigid by the spokes, restrained by the tire. Where had he learned that; or had he been born knowing it?
"Are you going to move?" one of his guards said.
That struck Miel as a very odd question. "I'm sorry?"
"You're supposed to be exercising," the guard explained. They'd put the wheel on its side on top of a large barrel. It had taken three men to lift it into place. "But you're just standing still."
Fair enough. "I was watching them mend the wheel," he explained. "Is that all right?"
The guard shrugged. "You're supposed to be walking about," he said.
"Have I got to?"
"You please yourself," the guard replied. Clearly he didn't approve. "It's just some men fixing a wheel."
"I know," Miel said.
The wheelwright was tapping carefully on the inside of the rim, easing the felloe off the dowels. Obviously you'd have to be careful doing that. Too much force and you'd snap off a dowel. How would you cope if that happened? Drill it out, presumably; not the end of the world, but a nuisance. "I wish I could do that," Miel said. The guard didn't reply. They'd got the felloe off; now the wheelwright was flexing the damaged spoke in its socket, the way you waggle a loose tooth. Were all the spokes on Mezentine carts interchangeable, so that you could simply take out a broken one and replace it with a brand-new spare from the stores? But perhaps it wasn't a Mezentine cart.
"That's enough," the guard said. "You've got to go back inside now."
Miel didn't argue, though he couldn't really see why a few minutes more would make such a difference. But it wouldn't do to get stroppy with the guard, who was only doing his duty. Miel realized that he felt sorry for him, because he still had duty to do.
She didn't look at him as they were herded back into the pigsty. Framain gave him a blank stare, then looked away. The door closed, shutting out all but a few splinters of light. Miel found the corner he'd sat in before. The wall he leaned his back on was damp and crusted with white powder, like fine salt. There was a strong smell of mold, wet and pig.
"I'm sorry," he said aloud.
He might as well have been alone. He could barely see them in the dark. Nevertheless, he felt he ought to apologize. He hadn't done so before, and it was an obligation, possibly the last one he'd ever have to discharge. He wasn't particularly bothered whether they accepted his apology or not. Still; if it was his last duty, he might as well do it properly.
"It was my fault," he said. "Obviously that Mezentine I rescued led them to us. I knew at the time it was a bloody silly thing to do. I guess it was self-indulgence, me wanting to do the right thing." He smiled, though of course they wouldn't see. "Really, I should've learned by now, as often as not doing the right thing makes matters worse. Mind you," he added, "you were just as bad as me in that respect. You should've left me in the bog where you found me, it wouldn't have made any real difference in the long run."
Silence. Perhaps they'd both fallen asleep-exhausted, maybe, by their exercise session.
"Anyway," he went on (now that he'd started talking, he found that he was afraid to stop, because of the silence that would follow), "I'm very sorry it turned out like this. I hope you can make a deal with the Mezentines and get away. Of course, all that work you did will be wasted, as far as you're concerned." He stopped himself. There was a fair chance they didn't need to be told that. "If it means anything, I really am sorry you got caught up in the bloody mess I've made of my life. I wish there was something I could do, but there isn't."
If they'd been asleep, he'd have heard them breathing. To stay that quiet, they had to be awake. There, he thought, duty done. The rest of my life's my own.
He breathed out and relaxed his back and neck, letting his head droop forward. Irony: at last he was free to do what he chose, except there wasn't anything to do. He wished they'd let him back out in the yard, so he could watch the wheelwright for a little longer. He contemplated crawling up next to the door, in case there was a crack or a knothole big enough for him to see through, but he dismissed the idea as requiring too much energy. Later, perhaps, when he started to feel bored. Instead, he considered the rapier-blades of light and the dust specks, like stars, that glittered in them for a while before floating away into the shadows. It turned out to be a pleasure, sitting still and letting his mind slip out of focus. That was all wrong, of course. A condemned man awaiting execution in a pigsty shouldn't be enjoying himself. That thought made him smile. He had a duty to feel miserable, but he was neglecting it. No more duty. Often in the past, when he'd heard that someone had killed himself, he wondered how anybody could possibly choose to die; such a strange choice to make, the prey failing in its obligation to evade the hounds for as long as possible. But sometimes the deer did just that; they stopped, not from exhaustion or injury or because there wasn't anywhere for them to go. Not often, but it happened; and Miel wondered if they came to this same place, the point where the obligations of instinct become weak enough to be put aside. An animal lives to serve a function, its duty to survive long enough to procreate and so maintain and propagate the species. Apart from that obligation, its life is mere tiresome necessity, the need to find enough to eat every day, the need to escape from predators. He thought about love, which was just a sophistication of that duty; something you were required to believe in, like a state religion, but only so that you'd do your otherwise unpalatable and irksome duty of acquiring and raising children. Of course, the deer has its duty to the wolves and hounds, who depend on it for their existence (obligation of the prey to the predator; obligation of the individual to society; of the beloved to the lover). In that case, the willing surrender after going through the obligatory motions of pursuit made perfect sense. The deer must run in order to keep the wolves fit, to give them a criterion by which to choose their pack leaders; the wolves must hunt in order to keep the numbers of deer in balance, so that they don't overpopulate their habitat and wipe themselves out through starvation and epidemic disease. Balance; as in the relationship between a great lord and his people. Miel wondered if this was the lesson he should've been learning-the hints dropped all round him had been heavy enough: that duty to friends and lovers is solemn enough, but no more valid than duty to enemies; quite possibly the most sacred duty of all. Or perhaps the distinctions were artificial and there was only one duty, and dependents, lovers and predators were
really all the same thing.
He noticed that the blades of light had almost faded away, like the last melt of snow; so much for being bored, lying in the dark with no work to do. He felt no inclination at all to sleep, and his only regret was that his presence stopped Framain and his daughter from talking to each other. Something scuttled over his foot, but to his surprise he felt no shock of revulsion. Have I forgotten how to be afraid? he wondered. Normally I'd be halfway up the wall by now if a rat ran over me.
He found that as the light died away, his vision actually improved; he found it easier to make out shapes in the gloom without the distraction of the bright glare. His two fellow prisoners were slumped heaps in the opposite corner; there was also a barrel, four or five sacks and something that puzzled him for quite a while until he worked out that it was a small log-pile. Odd, because he'd always been disappointed with his poor night vision. The obvious conclusion was that he'd been trying too hard all these years. He let his mind drift through a range of reflections and sudden perceptions; he felt both relaxed and wonderfully sharp, as though he could solve any problem just by thinking it through from first principles. It's not supposed to be like this, he scolded himself. A man facing death should be wretched, sobbing, screaming with misery and fear, or frantically trying to divert his mind with pointless trivia. He'd heard of kind-hearted jailers who sat up with their prisoners through the last night, playing chess or cards, making a point of losing. He admired the principle, but what a wasted opportunity to be alone with the thoughts that really matter, all irrelevant distractions cleared away.
At some point, they must have fallen asleep. He heard the rhythm of their breathing change. He forgave them, since they were probably going to make a deal with the Mezentines and survive. He bore them no ill will on those grounds. It would have been nice to know if the experiment to make vermilion had worked, just as he'd have enjoyed watching the men repair the wheel. If they had the vermilion formula, they'd be better placed to bargain with the Mezentines. He hoped so. In the state they were in, death would be wasted on them.
In spite of himself, he began to wander, sliding into the debatable region between asleep and awake. He was writing poetry and composing music. He had the verse and half the refrain of a wonderful song-he wasn't sure what it was about but he knew it was there, as though he had it on his lap wrapped in a sack. He knew it would evaporate as soon as he woke up. It always did. Perhaps life slips away like that at the moment of death, and the few fragments he'd manage to catch as it faded would turn out to be garbled nonsense, a dreamer's false impression of poetry and music, incomprehensible in the context of being awake again.
In his dream, something was tapping at the door. At first it was an old woman in a shawl, wanting to come in out of the cold; it was the Ducas' duty to provide hospitality, and he considered getting up to let her in. Then it was just the guard bringing them something to eat. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a nail being wrenched out of wood.
He opened his eyes. Needless to say, that fine night vision was blurry and thick, and for several seconds he couldn't make out anything. A board creaked under great stress. It sounded strangely like one of the slats of the door being prized off with a crowbar, but that made no sense at all.
"Hello," he called out in a muffled, croaky voice (not at his best when he first woke up, the Ducas). "Who's there?"
Somebody made a shushing noise. He felt properly remorseful. Maybe the guards had come to fetch him, but they didn't want to wake up Framain and his daughter. No, that didn't make sense either.
Another sort of creak; a hinge-hoop turning around a rusty, undersized pintle. In which case, someone was coming through the door, trying to be stealthy and quiet, but failing. That was completely beyond him, because why would the guards…
"Framain?"
Not a voice he knew, but whoever it was sounded painfully tense. It was the sort of whisper that comes out louder than a normal tone of voice. "Framain, are you there?"
Long silence. Miel was about to point out that Framain was asleep when he realized that the regular breathing had stopped. Framain must be awake, but he wasn't answering. The door creaked a little more, and Miel could see a rectangle of the dark blue of the night sky. Whoever it was had opened the door.
If the door was open, maybe he could get out.
Immediately, he felt that he didn't want to. It was dangerous (yes, but not nearly as dangerous as staying put). It was inconvenient. It was the middle of the night. He felt the shameful resentment that comes with getting an unwanted present. He wanted to stay where he was.
"Daurenja?"
Framain's voice; and he couldn't interpret the tone of it at all.
"Come on, for crying out loud," the unknown man in the doorway growled back. Daurenja; not a name he knew, but clearly it meant a lot to Framain, because Miel saw his shape move; he was standing up; they both were. They were leaving. In which case…
"Don't just sit there, you idiot." Framain's voice, addressing him. They wanted him to leave with them. But…
But he'd got to his feet anyway; instinct, or simply that he didn't want to give offense by declining the invitation. He wondered if the enigmatic Daurenja would mind him coming too. Shocking bad manners to gatecrash somebody else's jailbreak.
"Who the hell…?" Daurenja started to say. Framain muttered, "Later." Nothing more said by either of them. Presumably that constituted a formal invitation. Hell of a time to discover that he'd got cramp in his leg.
From sitting still for so long, presumably. He wanted to laugh, mostly because Framain and this Daurenja sounded so serious; as if they thought they stood a chance of getting away with it-somehow evading the guards, crossing the inn yard without being seen, retrieving or stealing horses, mounting up, riding away (and where to? He knew for a stone-cold-certain fact that the Loyalty was the only habitable dwelling within feasible reach, unless you counted Framain's house). All that, and an unscheduled, hobbling freeloader. He decided to go with them simply to see how far they managed to get.
It was like an arrowhead stuck in his calf muscle, but he made it as far as the doorway. The other three were already outside, standing perfectly still, waiting for him. Any moment now, and the guards…
He saw the guards. One lay on his face, the other on his side. Lamplight from somewhere twinkled a reflection in a dark pool that probably wasn't water. Not one but both of them; and done so quietly that he'd dozed through it. If that was Daurenja's unaided work, he must be a talented man. He tried to feel pity for the guards, but couldn't quite do it. Perhaps they really were going to escape, after all.
Stepping out of the pigsty into the yard was a bit like jumping into water without knowing how deep it is. He wasn't sure he could have done it, if he'd cared about staying alive. As it was, he felt his stomach muscles tighten into a knot as painful as his cramped leg. He wished he knew what the plan was, assuming there was one.
They were heading for the stables-the original block, not the new ones the Mezentines had built. It occurred to him that, since Daurenja hadn't known about him, he couldn't have provided a horse for him to ride. Was he supposed to run alongside them, like a dog, or were they proposing to turn him loose at the courtyard gate and leave him to fend for himself? If it hadn't been for the two dead guards, he'd have stopped by the mounting block and waited for the Mezentines to find him and take him back to the pigsty. He thought about them again, and about the two scavengers he'd killed with the hunting sword, when he escaped from their camp; and, for good measure, about the desperate flight of Ziani Vaatzes, who'd also killed two men in order to get out of prison.
Daurenja had stopped. A moment later, someone started to say something, but didn't get far enough for Miel to make out what he was saying. He saw Daurenja move; he seemed to have pulled a black shape out of the shadows, a man, and they were fighting. No, that was overstating the case. Daurenja had caught hold of him round the neck and was forcing him down on his knees, smoothly and effort
lessly, like a man wrestling with a child. It was a remarkable display of physical strength, and Miel wished he could admire it. Daurenja's opponent must have done something to loosen that appalling grip on his neck; he wriggled and got loose for a moment. Then Miel saw Daurenja's arm outlined against the dark blue sky. It curled round the side of the man's head; it was like watching twenty years' growth of ivy in less than a second. Then there was a loud, sharp crack; the shape in Daurenja's embrace jerked and wriggled for a very short moment and was let fall, flopping on the ground like grain from a split sack.
Miel had seen so many men killed in his life-some by others, some by himself-that the sight had gradually lost its meaning, to the extent that he could no longer remember the first one he'd seen, though he'd been sure at the time he'd see it in his mind every time he shut his eyes for the rest of his life. Now it was just a process, like threshing wheat or dressing game. But the sound-a crack like a thick dry branch breaking, carrying implications of such a terrible strength exerted with such purpose-shocked him so much that he felt his guts spasm; he'd have been sick if the Mezentines had bothered to feed him, but his stomach was empty. Instead, he felt acid fluxing in his throat and into his mouth, so that he nearly choked. He couldn't have moved if someone (not Daurenja, obviously; not Framain) hadn't grabbed a handful of his shirt and tugged him so hard he overbalanced, and had to take a step forward to keep from falling. Once he was moving, he kept going, except that he shied like a horse when his toe thudded into a soft heap on the ground, and he had to be dragged again, standing on something that yielded at first to his weight and then resisted; springy, like green branches, or ribs. "What's the matter with you?" her voice hissed accusingly in the darkness. Fortunately, he could safely assume she didn't want a reply.