Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  'Well, I don't know,' she said. 'Like I said, I only met Valens once, and we were both very young.'

  'Anyway.' Miel moved away abruptly. 'I'll certainly talk to Jarnac if you think it'll help.'

  'Thanks,' she said, and smiled. The smile hit him unexpectedly, like a drunk in a tavern, and for a moment he was unable to think. Does she know? he wondered. All this time he'd assumed she didn't; he clung to that belief as an article of faith. It'd be too hard to bear if she knew and still treated him as though nothing had changed since they were children. (But of course, faith comes in different tempers: there's the hard, brittle faith that shatters when it meets an obstacle it can't cut through, and the tough, springy faith that bounces off unchipped.)

  Just for once, Miel didn't go to his office, or a meeting, or Orsea's apartments; just for once, he went home. Not proper home, of course; proper home was a castle on top of a mountain in the Sabens, seventy miles away along narrow cliffside roads. Home in Civitas Eremiae meant the Ducas house down by the Essenhatz gate; a tall, thin house cut into the rock, with the finest Mannerist fresco ceilings in the city and virtually no windows. All there was to see from the street was a small, very old double gate, grainy grey wood worn smooth and shiny, studded with heavy nails, in a solid slab wall. Beyond the gate was the famous Ducas knot garden; a square courtyard with a formal garden in the middle, divided into twelve segments by low box and lavender hedges radiating out from a central fountain like wheel-spokes. Each segment was planted out with seventeen different types of white and yellow rose, all of them unique to this one garden (for centuries, kings, emperors and Mezentine Guild masters had pleaded and plotted in vain for cuttings; the Ducas gardeners were better paid than most goldsmiths and entirely incorruptible). Around the courtyard was the equally famous painted cloister, on whose ceiling the finest artists had recorded the glorious deeds of the thirty-seven Ducas, from Amadea I down to Garsio IV, Miel's father; there was still the underside of an arch and a portico left bare for Miel, as and when he ever got around to achieving anything. If he did well, and one day married and had a son who lived up to the family's glorious traditions, they'd either have to scrape off Amadea I's wedding for him, or build a covered walkway to the fountain.

  At the left-hand corner of the north side of the cloister was the family door (as opposed to the visitors' door, which was twelve feet high, bronze-embossed with scenes of warfare and the chase), which opened directly on to the back stair, which in turn led up to the first-floor back landing. Only the Ducas and their inner servants ever permeated through the various filters to this part of the house, which was plain black oak floorboards and panelling, with not so much as a painted architrave in sight. Fifth door off the landing was the writing room (according to family tradition, the first sixteen Ducas hadn't known how to write and hadn't wanted to), where the head of the family could finally turn at bay like a hunted boar and be safe for a while from his guests, his dependants and his responsibilities. It wasn't a spectacular interior-the fireplace was plain and unadorned, apart from the monogram of the ninth Ducas cut into the upper panel, and the plasterwork on the ceiling was positively restrained by the standards of the time-but it had become sanctified over the centuries by its function, as the only place on earth where the Ducas could be sure of being alone.

  Miel dropped into the chair-there was only one in the writing room-and stretched out his legs toward the cold fireplace. What had possessed him, he wondered, to raise the subject? He'd not so much dropped a hint as bombarded her with it, like the Mezentines with their scorpions; she must have guessed that he'd intercepted the letter and read it, and that could only make everything worse. He supposed he'd wanted to know how she felt about the man she was writing to, and he'd hoped she'd betray her emotions to his mercilessly perceptive eye. That'd be in character; he'd always been prone to doing stupid things on the spur of the moment. Now, of course, the next time he encountered her, the gates would be shut and the walls lined with archers; he'd never get past her calm stare again, or her smile. It had been a double betrayal too, because he should have gone to Orsea as soon as he saw her name on the little folded-up parchment square. All in all, he reckoned, he'd just reached a new pinnacle of achievement in a lifetime of making bad situations worse by getting involved.

  He sat until it was too dark to see; then he crossed the landing to the lesser hall. He found a footman there, messing about with the flower arrangement on the long table.

  'I need to send a letter to my cousin Jarnac,' he said.

  The footman bowed and left, came back a few minutes later with a writing-slope, a pen (in its ivory box, with spare nibs), a sand-shaker, a penknife (blued Mezentine steel blade, silver handle in the shape of a heron), a small square gold ink-pot with lid, the Ducas private seal, sealing-wax, candle in a silver holder and twelve sheets of the finest newly scraped parchment. The Ducas did not scribble notes on scraps with feathers. Miel to Jarnac

  I need you to do me a favour. The Duke-

  The Duke? Orsea? No; Jarnac was third in succession to the minor title in the collateral line. The Duke would like to go hunting; he's been working very hard, as you can imagine, and he wants a day off. Could you organise something'? Nothing too formal, please; bow-and-stable, maybe, rather than a full parforce day. I expect you know where there's a nice, gentle, slow-witted boar who's tired of life. Obviously we'll have to liaise with the chamberlain's office as regards dates. There's no tearing hurry, any time in the next ten days ought to do.

  He waggled the sand-shaker over the page, blew, folded the sheet twice and sealed it. The footman, who didn't seem to have moved at all while he'd been writing, put all the bits and pieces back into the slope, took the letter and glided away, swift and silent as a cloud riding a strong wind.

  An hour later, Miel was in the small library, painfully refreshing his childhood memories of King Fashion and Queen Reason, when the reply came. Cousin Jarnac's handwriting had always annoyed Miel intensely; Jarnac was a great big tall, broad man with fingers like peasant sausages, but he had the most elegant, almost dainty handwriting. Jarnac to Miel Delighted.

  Leave everything to me. Will sort dates out direct with chamberlain. Can offer trophy four-year-old abnormal in the Farthings, or possible record six-year-old feral cross in the Collamel valley; advise. Could do both in same day, but would involve early start and long ride in between; up to you.

  Miel sighed. King Fashion had just reminded him that abnormal meant a boar with unusual-shaped tusks, but he had no idea what a feral cross was. PS What's the name of that Mezentine character who's just set up shop in town? I seem to remember you had something to do with him. If we're hosting the Duke, better get the kit overhauled, don't you think?

  The footman brought back the writing-slope, the pen, the sand-shaker and all the rest of the panoply. Miel wrote: Miel to Jarnac

  Leave it all to your discretion. The Mezentine is called Ziani Vaatzes; care of Sorit Calaphates ought to find him-they're in partnership. Don't know if he's actually trading yet, but you can try. Say I sent you if you think it'll help.

  On second thoughts, not the one in the Collamel valley. I'm under strict orders: no rivers.

  Sealed, handed over to the footman; done. That should have been that, but Miel found he couldn't keep still. It was like an insect-bite or nettle-rash, the letter, a speck of grit lodged in his mind's eye. All of his illustrious line had been fretters, prone to waking up in the early hours of the morning and scaring themselves to death with perilous thoughts. What if someone else got hold of it? Unlikely (his better self, fighting a doomed rearguard action), because it was locked up in his trunk in his office, and the trunk had a genuine Mezentine three-lever lock-his great-grandfather had brought it back from the City sixty-two years ago, the first Mezentine lock ever seen in Eremia-not to mention sides of inch-thick oak board and massive steel bands, hardened and tempered like a sword-blade. Yes, but three men with axes would take a quarter of an hour to get through that, and ther
e the letter would be, nestling inside like a scorpion in a bouquet of roses. Suppose she'd realised he'd got it-how couldn't she, since he'd been so stupid?-and was feeling desperate; what would she do, she'd get her secretary or her maid's lover to hire some thugs from the marketplace to go and get it (she'd know where he'd keep it; she knew him too well); they'd make a botch of the job and get caught, be searched, the letter would be in Orsea's hands by morning, with full details of where it had been found. Leaving it there was next thing to pinning it up on the castle gate. Or maybe she'd already decided to cut her losses by going to Orsea, telling him about it-an innocent letter, I knew him years ago when we were just children, but Miel got hold of it and I think he means to make trouble, I thought you ought to know; and Orsea would know about the trunk-they'd tried to pick the lock together when they were kids, failed, of course; the world-famous Ducas chest with its legendary lock; he'd send his men with axes and big hammers, and God only knew what the upshot would be.

  I've got to get rid of it, he thought, it's the only way out of this. No letter, no proof, no risk. But he knew he couldn't do that-because it was important, because he wasn't at all sure why it was important; because it was something of hers, and he had so very little of her, it'd be murder to kill something that had been made for her. So, can't burn it or bury it; he'd have to find a better place to keep it, which shouldn't be hard, surely. The Ducas house was full of places where a letter could be kept hidden. He'd spent enough weary, frustrating hours looking for things he'd put in a safe place over the years to know that the house guarded its secrets with grim efficiency. There were all sorts of places that only he knew about: the crack where the panelling was lifting away from the wall in the old chapel, the false front over the boarded-up fireplace in the flower still. At least it'd be here, under his eye. It'd be far more awkward for Orsea, or a bunch of hired muscle, to come looking for it here than in his office in the castle; there'd have to be explanations, scenes, offence given and umbrage taken, writs and warrants, enough delay that he'd have time to nip in, recover it and put it on the fire while the search party was still outside in the courtyard arguing the toss with the porters.

  It was getting late, but the household was used to him slipping out to the castle at all hours. He let himself out through the postern, a small, secret door that led directly into the Essenhatz watch-tower. The duty sergeant knew him by sight, of course, and nodded respectfully as he hurried past, down the smooth spiral staircase into Essenhatz Street; across the Blind Bridge into Lepers' Court, down the twenty-seven steps of Cutlers' Stair into Desirat, across the open square with its seven orange trees into Farriers' Path and then Miraval, leading to the Ducas' private sally-port into the castle yard; across four quadrangles and down the west cloister to the foot of the stairs that led to his office, on whose floor rested the Ducas trunk with its famous but ultimately unreliable imported lock.

  He'd remembered to bring the key with him, which was a blessing.

  It was still there, where he'd left it, tucked into a report on waste and inefficiency in charcoal procurement. For a moment he weakened; wasn't he worrying unnecessarily, wouldn't it be safer to leave it where it was, the strongest box in Eremia Montis (apart from the other Ducas trunk in the treasury of Sabens Guard; it had not one but three Mezentine locks, and the head keeper's wolfhound liked to sleep on top of it; but of course that'd be the first place anybody'd think of looking)? His fingertips were slick with damp as he picked it up. Not for the first time, he wished he'd been born to a simpler life.

  After a long and painful bout of indecision, he stuffed it into his left sleeve and buttoned the cuff down tight around it. There was nobody about-nobody he could see, at any rate-in the cloister, he heard no footsteps echoing his own across the quadrangles and the yard. He fumbled with the key to the sally-port, nearly dropped it as he locked up behind him. He went back home a different way, just in case.

  Ziani was tempering a spring in the lead bath when the odd-job boy found him; he opened the door at precisely the wrong moment, when Ziani's concentration was fixed on the faint bloom of colour in the hot metal, visible only in the concentrated beam of light slanting through the narrow window into the darkened gallery. When the door opened, light flooded in like the sea overrunning the polder at Lonazep.

  'Get out,' Ziani snapped.

  But by then it was too late; the job would have to be done all over again (reheat to bright orange, quench in salt water, dry thoroughly, dip in molten lead till the blue smudge shows) and yelling at the workforce wouldn't help. It wasn't as if the boy had done it on purpose.

  'Sorry,' he said, straightening up and lifting the tongs clear of the tank. 'Not your fault. What is it?'

  The boy looked at him nervously. 'Man here to see you,' he replied. 'Said it's dead urgent. I told him you're busy but it's life and death, he said.'

  Ziani frowned. 'Did he say his name?'

  'Ducas.'

  'Oh.' Ziani shrugged. 'Better show him in, then.' He banked the fire up with fresh coal to keep it alight, in case the emergency took more than a few minutes.

  The man who pushed past the boy and strode in (not many people can genuinely stride; it's part breeding, part knack) was easily the biggest human being Ziani had ever seen. It was hard to gauge his height with any precision, because the breadth of his shoulders and the thickness of his neck skewed the proportions; at a guess, Ziani reckoned six and a half feet, a foot taller than the average Mezentine. It was only his size that made his head seem small; he had a clean-cut face, strong chin, high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, hair cropped very short; if he carried enough fat to fry a pigeon's egg, Ziani would've been most surprised. His fingers were huge but his hands were long, his forearms widening from a slim wrist to a massive swell of muscle above the elbow. He was smiling.

  'You're Ziani Vaatzes,' the man said.

  Well-informed, too. 'That's right,' Ziani said, letting the bad pronunciation go by. 'The boy said there's an emergency.'

  'You can say that again,' the man said. 'I'm Jarnac Ducas, by the way. You know my cousin Miel.'

  Ziani nodded. 'The emergency?' he said.

  Jarnac Ducas sat on the table of the big anvil, his knee hooked over the horn. He looked like a hero on his day off. 'Pretty desperate,' he said, and his eyes actually twinkled as he smiled. 'I've been told to organise a hunt for the Duke and party in ten days' time and you should see the state the gear's in. Spear-blades blunt, rusty and bent, loose on the stem, hanging by their langets, some of them. Question is, will it be quicker to fettle the old ones or make, say, a dozen from scratch? You tell me,' he added, before Ziani could say anything, 'you're the expert.'

  'Spear-blades,' Ziani repeated.

  'That's right,' said Jarnac. 'You know the pattern, of course: broad leaf shape with a strong middle rib, flowing into a square shank with a slot for the stem, crossbar, langets on two sides. Don't get me wrong, the old ones are good bits of kit, been in the family since God knows when, but it's the look of the thing more than anything. I don't want any fancy engraving or anything, just a really good, strong tool that'll get the job done. Actually,' he added, 'better make it fourteen. Couple of spares won't hurt, and I'm not absolutely sure yet who'll be coming.'

  Ziani looked at him for a moment before answering. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'but I'm rather busy at the moment, and it's not really the sort of thing I do. I'm sure there's plenty of other smiths who'll do a much better job than I could.'

  The wrong answer, evidently; Jarnac Ducas gave him a well-bred look and went on: 'Obviously, since it's a rush job, that'll have to be reflected in the price. I don't mind paying over the odds for the best. The main thing is to have them ready in time without skimping on quality. I'm sure you understand.'

  Then Ziani realised he was being stupid, allowing his irritation to cloud his perception. He looked at Jarnac Ducas again and this time saw him for what he was. 'Of course,' he said. 'I think the best thing would be if you could have the old spears brough
t here, so I can have a look at them and decide whether they can be spruced up, or whether we'll need to make new ones. Would that be all right?'

  'Of course. I'll see to it straight away.'

  'That would be most helpful,' Ziani said.

  Jarnac beamed at him; he'd forgiven and forgotten the earlier misunderstanding, where Ziani had misinterpreted his request as something capable of being refused, and now they understood each other. 'Oh, and another thing,' he said.

  Half an hour later, Ziani crossed the yard to the materials store, where Cantacusene was marking out timber for scorpion frames. Cantacusene had joined him straight away, as soon as he asked; he'd left his workshop, locking the door behind him, and vowing never to return. It was like a religious conversion, a disciple following the master.

  'What do you know,' Ziani asked him, 'about boiled leatherwork?'

  'Ah.' Cantacusene nodded. 'You don't do that in Mezentia, then.'

  Ziani shook his head. 'Not that I ever heard. But it'd presumably come under the Shoemakers', or maybe the Saddlers'. You know about it, then.'

  Cantacusene nodded again. 'You take your leather,' he said, 'sole bends are best but it depends on what you're making. You cut it out a third bigger than you want it to be, nail it to a wooden former, and dip it in boiling water for as long as it takes to count fifty. Pull it out, it'll have shrunk to size and gone hard as oak. They use it for armour mostly. Why?'

  Ziani frowned. 'Why not use steel?' he said.

  'Steel's dear, leather's cheap. Also, for hunting armour, it doesn't clank or rattle. If you want to be really fancy, you can dip it in melted beeswax instead of boiling water; makes it even harder, but you got to be careful on a hot day.'

  'You've done it, then?'

  'Loads of times,' Cantacusene said. 'Very popular line with the gentry, specially those who can't run to a full set of steel. I got all the formers back at my place.'