by K. J. Parker
A long silence. Orsea was peering at him with his face screwed up, as if it was too dark to see properly.
"This is all complete drivel," he said eventually. "For pity's sake, Valens. I haven't got the faintest idea what's going on-nobody ever tells me anything, and why should they? But if this is something to do with you and Veatriz-"
Valens broke eye contact for a moment. "You're not helping yourself," he said.
"But…" Orsea nodded, as if acknowledging that the rules had changed halfway through the game. "All right," he said. "Yes, I remember that merchant woman. She turned up in a stupid little chaise-with a red parasol, I think. Anyway, she handed me some potpourri, which Veatriz had ordered from her some time before we left Civitas-"
"Potpourri?" Valens interrupted.
"Yes. You know, bits of minced-up dried flowers, lavender and stuff. You put it in little saucers to make the room smell nice."
"You're saying she tracked you down in the wilderness, when nobody except me knew where we were headed, just to sell you dried flowers?"
"No, of course not." As close to anger as Valens had ever seen him. All the more likely, in that case, to be synthetic. "She was on her way from Calva to White Cross; she happened to stop off at the Loyalty, and heard we were nearby. She'd got this unfilled order for the potpourri stuff, must've had it with her, and I suppose she'd got a tidy mind or something. Look, there was a cavalry officer who saw her arrive. Maybe he overheard what she said to me."
Valens nodded. "Captain Vesanio. I've spoken to him. She asked for you by name, and quite by chance you were standing by, only a few yards away. He heard what you said to her, and he saw you take a package from her."
"Exactly," Orsea said. "The dried flowers. I took them, and I gave them to Veatriz. Call her here and ask her yourself. She'll tell you, she ordered it before we left. She probably knows the stupid woman's name and everything."
Valens smiled. "Was that meant to be a defense?" he said. "I guess my attention must've wandered, and I missed it. Seems to me you're just agreeing with what I've told you."
"But that's what happened." He could see Orsea starting to go red in the face; please don't let him cry, he thought. "That's all that happened. Really."
"Not quite." Valens' voice was getting softer. "You came looking for me, with a message. A warning, rather; you warned me that the Mezentines were at the inn and knew where we were. I believed you. We packed up and moved on, straight into the ambush. Yes, I remember that very well."
"But…" Orsea's eyes were wide. "The woman said she'd been told where we were by someone at the Loyalty. I thought you ought to know, because if they knew about us at the inn, and the Mezentines were there too, then we were in danger. Which was true," he added desperately. "It must have been true, because the Mezentines found us, didn't they?"
"Quite. They knew exactly where we were; after I'd heard your message and acted on it." Valens shook his head. "As defenses go," he said, "this one's a pretty poor specimen. Disagree with me about something, for crying out loud, even if it's only the color of her hat."
Orsea didn't say anything. He was staring, his mouth slightly open, like a man who's just seen something he knows is impossible.
"There's the letter," Valens said wearily. "It pretty much speaks for itself. There's your own admission that you were seen talking to the bearer of the letter on at least one occasion; also, you admit that you and your wife had had previous dealings with her, before we left Civitas Vadanis. You also admit giving me the message that caused me to lead the expedition to the place where we were attacked." He frowned. "All right," he said, "you've heard the interpretation I'm putting on these facts we all agree are true. Maybe you could give me yours, and we'll see if it makes better sense."
Orsea looked round, as if he expected help to arrive. "I don't know, do I?" he said. "I suppose-well, I suppose somebody's trying to make it look like I'm a traitor, and I betrayed us all to the Mezentines. But-"
"But who would want to do that?" Valens interrupted. "Good question. Whoever it was, he was able to procure a letter from an authentic Mezentine official-a pretty high-ranking one at that; so the enemy were in on it as well. Are you going to argue that the Mezentines are plotting to discredit you?"
"I don't know." Orsea rubbed his face with the palms of his hands, as if he was trying to wake himself up. "I suppose it's possible, yes."
"I can't see it myself," Valens replied gently. "To be perfectly frank, why on earth would they bother? Well? Can you give me a reason? Can you tell me why you matter to them anymore?"
Silence. "No," Orsea said.
"Nor me," Valens replied. "Come to think of it, I can't come up with anybody who'd want to frame you for treason, or anything else, except for one person; the only man who's got any sort of motive for trying to get you into trouble, get rid of you."
Orsea looked at him. "You."
"That's right." Valens acknowledged him with a slight gesture of his left hand. "Me. I have a motive for getting you out of the way. What I don't have is the influence to get Commissioner Lucao Psellus of the defense committee to write an incriminating letter." He paused, then added: "And I don't really see me arranging for the Mezentines to ambush my own convoy, slaughter my people and near as damn it kill me in the process. I'm not the nicest man in the world, but I'm not the most stupid, either. I think I'd have found an easier way of getting shot of you-poison, an accident, all sorts of things spring readily to mind." A smile flashed across his face. "So, if it wasn't the Republic and it wasn't me; who else have you been pissing off, Orsea? You're such a mild, inoffensive fellow, always so anxious to do the right thing. Your friend Miel Ducas, maybe? The man you condemned for treason for hiding a letter? We haven't talked about him yet. Do you think the Ducas might be behind all this?"
Orsea breathed in, then out again. "No," he said.
"You don't? I'd have considered him myself, but if you say not, I'm happy to be guided by you. So, forget the Ducas; anybody else?" He spread his fingers on the top of the folding table. "You're really going to have to come up with somebody or something, if you want me to take your denials seriously. Come on, Orsea, help me out. I've been making all the running so far. Suggest something, if only for my sake. Otherwise…" He shrugged. "Well, what would you do, in my position?"
"I can't." Orsea was looking straight at him. "Do you want me to make something up? I can't think of any explanation, any reason. It's just not true, that's all."
Valens sighed, then shifted in his chair, leaning forward a little.
"The legal position," he said, in a rather forced tone of voice, "is complicated. A case could be made for saying that I have no jurisdiction over you, since you are the head of state of a foreign country-one that doesn't exist anymore, but the law can be funny about that sort of thing. If we were to have a proper trial, with lawyers and everything, I can see us getting well and truly laid up on that one. To be honest with you, I haven't got the time or the patience; and something like that, dragging on and on, isn't likely to do my people's morale any good, either. In fact, I'd prefer it if they didn't know that someone I'd trusted had sold us out to the Mezentines. I wouldn't particularly want them to know his motive for doing it-I'm quite satisfied in my mind what that motive was, by the way. I noticed that note of high moral indignation in your friend Psellus' letter-seducing another man's wife, completely unforgivable. For what it's worth, Orsea, I never did anything of the sort. We wrote letters to each other, that's all. Before I came and pulled you both out of Civitas Eremiae, the last time I set eyes on her I was seventeen. Now, maybe what I did was-well, bad manners, let's say, or worse than that, a breach of protocol and bad form generally. For that, I apologize. What you did…" He shrugged. "I've never seen the point of getting angry," he said. "Far better to deal with problems as efficiently as possible, which is much easier to do with a cool head. I'm sorry, but I know what's got to be done."
He paused, as if inviting Orsea to say something. Silence.
"Fine," Valens went on. "As I see it, there're two courses of action open to me. One of them-well, you can guess. The alternative is to send you over to your Mezentine friends, let them have the bother and expense of feeding and clothing you. The risk in that is what you could tell them, things they'd like to know about troop numbers, supplies, future movements. Now, I don't actually believe you know very much; quite likely you've already told them everything you can. Sending you to them wouldn't be too much of a risk, in my opinion. On the other hand, I'm not sure it's what I want to do. Have you got any strong feelings on the issue, one way or another?"
But Orsea shook his head. "I can't believe you really think I'd do something like that," he said. "So all I can think of is, you want me out of the way so-" He stopped, as though he didn't know the word for what he was trying to say. "If that's it," he said, "you're making a very bad mistake."
Valens frowned a little, like a parent rebuking a child's untimely frivolity.
"If you-" Again Orsea stopped short. "If anything happens to me because of you," he said, "she'll never speak to you again. You'll lose any chance you might've had-"
"I know." Valens' face was set, but his eyes were wide and bright. "That can't be helped," he said briskly. "And you aren't helping me make up my mind. Who's going to get you, the Mezentines or the crows?"
"You can't send me to the Mezentines. They'd kill me."
"Orsea." Exasperation; a patient man reaching the end of his tether. "Haven't you been listening? I'm sorry, but you've gone too far, and I don't have any choice." He turned his head to look at Nennius. "Change of plan," he said. "There won't be a formal hearing, I want this business settled straightaway. Please deal with it; now, as quickly as possible. I'll need a report-nothing long-winded, just a note with the date, time, names of three witnesses." He hesitated, then added, "Be reasonably discreet about it, will you? I don't want the whole camp knowing about it; not yet, anyway."
If Nennius hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second; then he nodded to the two guards, who closed in around Orsea like the jaws of a pair of tongs. Orsea looked at them; he was still sitting in his chair, his hands on his knees.
"Orsea," Valens said. The tone of voice would have suited a man reprimanding a disobedient dog.
"No," Orsea said, and his voice was high and weak. "Valens, this is stupid. You can't honestly believe-"
"All right," Valens said (a gentle man pushed too far). "I wasn't going to mention it, because-believe it or not-I'm really not enjoying this. But so what; it wasn't the first time, was it?"
Orsea's mouth and throat moved several times before he managed to speak. "I don't understand."
"The first attack," Valens said wearily. "On my wedding day. Yes, I wondered about that; I gave it quite a lot of thought at the time, and then other stuff came along and got in the way. The Mezentine cavalry didn't just turn up out of the blue, on the off chance they'd catch us all out in the open. Someone told them where we were likely to be. It had to be someone who knew the plan for the day: which coverts we were going to draw, where the birds were, roughly how long we'd take over each drive. I've been trying to remember who I discussed the plan with; well, the falconers, obviously, but I ruled them out, they didn't have any way of passing on a message. I suppose they could have been reporting back to someone else, but I doubt it. I've known most of them all my life, and the rest are from families that've been in our service for generations. No, the only person I could remember going over the program with in detail was Jarnac Ducas; and for the life of me, I couldn't see him as a traitor, not under any circumstances. Then I found out my friend Mezentius had been spying for the Mezentines, so I assumed it was him; but he wasn't even there, he was away on the frontier. I know, because I wanted him to be at the wedding, but he couldn't make it back in time. Then it struck me, left me wondering how I could've been so dim. You got the details of the plan from Jarnac-you asked him, making out you were interested; he'd have assumed there was no harm in telling you. Then you scribbled a few lines to your friend Psellus-"
"You're out of your mind, Valens." Anger, but too weak with shock to rise above petulance. "I was nearly killed. That weird engineer, Daurenja, he rescued me. Ask him."
Valens tapped the letter on his desk with his forefinger. "Presumably you had an arrangement with Psellus to make it look convincing, just like in this letter here. I'm not going to discuss it with you, Orsea, this isn't a trial. I'd more or less figured out it was you before we left the city, but I was too weak and scared of-well, what you said just now. I forgave you; I reckoned you'd have learned your lesson, you wouldn't try anything so stupid again. Then, when this last lot happened, I tried to put you at the back of my mind, until Vaatzes' people found the woman's body and the letter. Even then, I wasn't going to do anything, because of her. I suppose I was fooling myself, thinking-well, no point in saying it, we both know what I'm talking about. But then she came to see me, about that fool Miel Ducas, and we talked about various things."
Orsea grinned at him, like a dying animal baring its teeth. "She turned you down."
Valens smiled; empty, like a flayed skin. "She made me realize I'd been acting like a bloody fool for quite long enough; that I should never have interfered at Civitas Eremiae, and that it was time I cut my losses and started behaving like a grown-up with responsibilities. I'm very sorry," he went on, looking away, "but I can't risk a third time, not even for you. Nennius, if you'd be so kind."
The guards caught hold of Orsea's wrists; they sort of flicked him up out of the chair and onto his feet; so accomplished at holding and controlling a man that it was impossible to tell whether Orsea was trying to struggle or not. They turned him round (no ostentatious use of force; small movements are the most efficient) and propelled him out of the tent. Nennius saluted formally and followed them. The tent flap fell back into place.
Ziani looked up, trying to see Valens' face without being too obvious about it, but his head was turned and in shadow. He waited for Valens to say something.
"Well," Valens said. "That's another rotten job I can cross off my list. My father always used to say, when you've got a load of shitty jobs to get done, do two or three a day for a week and it's not so bad." For a moment he let his chin sink onto his chest, and then he looked up again. "Silver mines," he said. "We were talking about air pumps for underground galleries."
"Were we?" Ziani shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said, "I can't remember."
Valens clicked his tongue. "You were saying that a big double-action bellows was all right for relatively shallow shafts, but for deeper work there's some way of using fires to suck air down into the tunnels. Sounded a bit dubious to me, but you're the engineer." Ziani took a deep breath. "What's going to happen to him?"
"What do you think?" Valens laughed. "You Mezentines may be streets ahead of us in everything else, but when it comes to judicial murder, we've got you beat every time. You won't find any condemned traitors getting away from us by jumping out of windows or carving up sentries. Count yourself lucky on that score that you didn't have us to contend with. No, they'll probably take him round behind one of the big supply wagons and do it there. It's where the butchers go to slaughter chickens, out of sight of the horses so they don't spook. It's amazing, the way horses freak out if they see something getting killed; though not people, oddly enough, only other animals. Though we did have a few of the wagon horses go crazy during the battle; smashed up their traces and bolted, miserable bloody creatures. It makes you ask yourself: why can't anything in this world ever hold still?" He paused, then shrugged his shoulders. "It was justice, that's all. I can see why you probably don't like the look of it, you having had such a close call yourself. Can't blame you; but it's got to be done."
"What about the Duchess?" Ziani asked. "Will she understand?"
Valens scowled, then said: "No, of course not. I've screwed that up, for good. But that's no bad thing. It was a distraction; all very fine and splendid when there's nothing
serious going on, but when you're facing the annihilation of your people, you need to keep a clear head. If we're going to get across the desert, I'll need to be able to concentrate. Hence the clearing up of odds and ends." He shifted suddenly in his seat, then became still again. "That Nennius is a competent man. Still a bit young, but he has the rare and valuable virtue of doing what he's told." He yawned; genuinely tired, as far as Ziani could judge. "Do you think I should've sent him back to the Mezentines?"
"No," Ziani said.
Valens nodded. "It did seem like a fair compromise," he said, "but I thought, what the hell, let's just for once do something properly, instead of fudging the issue just in case we've misjudged it. My father always used to say, never ever give anybody a second chance. I always used to think he was a vicious bastard. Well, he was, but I'm beginning to understand why. Didn't somebody say once that the tragedy of mankind is that as they get older, sons gradually turn into their fathers? Probably a young man, the one who said that. I wish I'd had the chance to know my father when I was a bit older. He died when I was at that rebellious stage, and so I've always been torn between hating and despising everything he stood for, and trying to be his deputy, so to speak, doing the things he'd have done if he'd lived. Of course, he'd never have gone to Civitas Eremiae; which rather puts me in my place, don't you think?"
Ziani stood up. "If that's everything you wanted to see me about…" he said.
Outside, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They were carrying hay on pitchforks to feed the horses, or rolling barrels, or searching for strayed children, or arguing with the sentries about some camp regulation or other. Obviously Nennius had done a properly discreet job; not a good idea to spook the rest of the flock by slaughtering a duke where people could see. Well; the news would circulate quickly enough. Built into Ziani's calculations was the assumption that Orsea's death would be a popular move among the Vadani; they'd all sleep better at night knowing that the traitor who'd brought the Mezentines down on them was dead, and Valens would be respected for not allowing the malefactor's exalted rank to save him. He paused to remember Orsea as he'd first encountered him-wounded in the disastrous battle, confused, tearing himself apart with guilt, still able to find a little compassion for the misfortunes of a stranger. Well; like a true nobleman, he'd lived to serve. In death he'd been useful. By now, he was just a carcass, inedible meat. One more, among so very many.