Devices and Desires e-1

by K. J. Parker

  Perhaps, he thought (the ink-bottle was still uncapped, he had plenty of paper left), he should write to her again-no mention of the fact that she hadn't replied to his last letter, just something bright and witty and entertaining, the sort of thing he could do well, for some reason he'd never been able to grasp. If what he'd said the last time had offended her, maybe it'd be the right thing to pretend that letter had never been written; they could start again, talking about Mannerist poetry, observations on birds and flowers, the weather. But if he knew her (he'd only talked to her once, but how could there be anybody in the world he knew better?) she wouldn't sulk if he'd offended her, or break off entirely; she'd tell him he was wrong, stupid, insensitive, horrible, but she'd write back, if she possibly could. So maybe she couldn't.

  The hell with this, he thought. He frowned, took a new sheet of paper, and started to write: to Lelius Lelianus, alias Nustea Cordatzes, timber merchant in Civitas Eremiae and his best spy in Eremia. Query: any rumours circulating anywhere about the Duchess, ructions in the Duke's household, society scandals, unexplained disappearances of Merchant Adventurers. Urgent. That one he wrote out himself, rather than adding it to the pile for copying.

  Outside, the rain had slowed to a fine drizzle. He went down two flights to his wardrobe, quickly put on an oilskin cloak, big hat and waxed boots, collected a bow and quiver from the ascham (an old self-bow that wouldn't come apart in the wet) and left the castle by the north-end postern, heading for the dew-ponds. There might be duck there, though strictly speaking ducks didn't start for a month (but what's the point in being supreme and final judge of appeals if you can't bend the rules in an emergency?), and he hadn't shot for weeks.

  The air smelt wet. It had been an unusually dry summer, so the rain hadn't sunk in to what passed for soil in the high marches. Water trickled down from his hair into his eyes, like tears, and he mopped it away with the back of his hand. Nobody had been this way for several days; the footprints in the softened dirt of the track had baked into puddled cups, filling with rain. He brushed past a low branch, spraying water. A drop landed on his tongue, and he spared some attention to taste it. I'm a different man outside, he thought; not better, but different.

  The path down to the ponds was steep, slicked with dust turned to mud; he had to dig his heels in to keep upright, and the soles of his boots were too smooth (some hobnails would deal with that, if he remembered later). The light below the treeline was grey and faintly misty, and he could smell the leaves and the wet leaf-mould. He was aware of the silence, until something crashed away twenty yards or so to his left; a pricket buck, probably (he'll keep, he thought, and made an entry in his mental register). There weren't any duck, which was probably just as well for his conscience. He stood under a crooked beech tree for half an hour, listening to the rain and watching for ducks flighting in for the evening feed, but nothing showed; so he shot a big old crow out of the upper branches and went home.

  They had told her that Orsea was in the arbour behind the chestnut tree. She called his name a few times, but he didn't reply, so she assumed he'd gone back inside. Then she caught sight of a flash of blue through the curtain of trailing vine. He hadn't answered her because he was asleep.

  Like an old man, she thought, snoozing in the afternoon. Orsea never slept during the day; indeed, he resented sleep on principle, the way people resent paying taxes. It wasn't fair, he'd told her once, that nature only gave you a very short time on earth, and then saw fit to steal a third of it back from you. At one time he'd tried to train himself to make do with less of it-like a devious banker, he'd said, clipping little bits off the edges of coins. If he learned how to get by on seven hours a night instead of eight, he'd told her, at the end of a year he'd have gained fifteen days. Suppose he lived another forty years; that'd be over eighteen months, absolutely free. But it hadn't lasted, of course. He struggled through six weeks of the new regime, yawning and drifting off into daydreams, and then issued a revised opinion. Scrounging extra time by neglecting a vital function like sleep was counterproductive. For every waking hour gained you sacrificed two or three spent in a daze halfway between concussion and a bad hangover. In fact, eight hours wasn't really enough. Nine hours, on the other hand; nine hours would lose you eighteen months, theoretically speaking, but the extra energy and zest you'd get from being properly rested would mean you'd fit more activity into your voluntarily truncated life than you'd manage to wring out of your unnaturally extended one.

  He was asleep now, though; dead to the world, with his head cradled on his arms, his face buried in the extravagant sleeves of his blue slash-cut doublet. Men say that the sight of a man asleep touches a woman's maternal instinct; for once, she thought, men might have a point. He looked about twelve years old, his hair scrambled, the tip of his nose visible in the crook of his elbow. She felt a deep-seated urge to tuck a blanket round him.

  'Orsea,' she said. He didn't stir, so she came closer. 'Orsea.'

  At least he didn't snore. She could never have endured a snorer. Her brother had snored so badly, all through her early years, when he slept at her end of the great solar, no barrier to the excruciating noise except a tapestry screen, that her first thought when they told her he was dead was that now she'd be able to sleep at night. False optimism; by the time she'd driven his face out of her dreams, her father's had replaced it. Lately, she'd dreamed about Orsea, dead on the battlefield or hanging by his hair from the low branches of a tree.

  'Orsea,' she said. He twitched a little, like a pig. She smiled, and sat down beside him. When he was so fast asleep that her voice didn't stir him, it meant he'd wake up of his own accord quite soon. She could wait. She could sit and read the letter from Maiaut, and get that particular chore out of the way. Maiaut to Veatriz: greetings.

  Or not. It was a warm, mellow autumn day, too pleasant to spoil with echoes of the most annoying of all her sisters. There was something about Maiaut, even on paper, that made her want to break things. That was, of course, unreasonable. It wasn't Maiaut's fault that she was a widow; and there was nothing inherently wrong with a noblewoman in reduced circumstances putting on the red dress and trekking around the world buying and selling things. It had taken her away from home, and it meant that her visits to Civitas Eremiae were pleasantly infrequent, though not nearly infrequent enough. She made enough money at it, God only knew (there were times, black times in the middle of the night when her dreams stabbed her awake, when she suspected that Maiaut had considerably more money than she did; and wouldn't that count as' high treason, being richer than your Duchess?), and it gave her plenty of scope for her exceptional gift for whining. Maiaut to Veatriz, greetings.

  Well, here I am in Caervox. It's a nasty, smelly place. The water in the public reservoir is green on top and there are green squiggly things living in it; probably explains why the people here don't wash. The food tastes like armpit. I'm stuck here for another three days at least, probably more like five, because I'm waiting for a mule-train from Corsus, and the Cure Doce muleteers are the laziest people on earth. Also the most careless, so they may not arrive at all, or else they'll turn up without the cargo, having dropped it down a crevasse or lost it crossing a river. If by some miracle they do eventually show up, I'll be taking fifteen hundred rolls of gaudy, stringy carpet with me south to Herulia; sell enough of it therefor a grubstake, and move on to Civitas Vadanis by slow, easy stages. At least the Vadani pay in silver and I won't be lumbered with anything bulky or heavy, though of course the western passes are swarming with bandits.

  'Orsea,' Veatriz said loudly, and still he didn't move. She resented him for not waking up and saving her from Maiaut's letter. Mind you, bandits are likely to be the least of my troubles crossing the border, if the latest rumours are true. They were saying in Durodrice that there could be a war, Eremia against the Republic. I told them don't be silly, the war's been and gone, but they reckon there's going to be another one. I asked them, how could they possibly know that? Of course, you can't ge
t a straight answer out of these people. It makes doing business with them very trying indeed. They just smile at you and look dumb and innocent, or gabble away among themselves.

  'Triz,' said a voice beside her. 'Where did you appear from? I didn't see you come.'

  There were times when she'd wondered if she really loved him; because if she did, why did she feel hot and panicky when she saw Valens' name on the top line of a letter? And there were times like this, when it was so obvious she loved him, it was surprising how passers-by could see them together and not grin. She'd never doubted him like that. She knew exactly what and how Orsea felt, as though there was a little window in the side of his head and she could read all his thoughts written up on a blackboard.

  'You were fast asleep,' she said.

  He groaned. 'What's the time? I only came out here so I could concentrate on this wretched report. I tried reading it indoors but people kept coming up and talking to me, so I slipped out here.'

  'About an hour after noon,' she said. 'Hungry?'

  He shook his head. He was never hungry when he'd just woken up. 'I'll have something later. I'll need to see Miel about this purchase order business; we can have something together.'

  She nodded, hurt; but he was looking dozy and creased, and she knew he hadn't meant it to sound the way it came out. 'What's the report about?' she asked. 'Something important?'

  'Unfortunately,' he said. 'Those horrible machines the Mezentines used on us. The exile, that chap we found, he reckons he can build them for us, loads of them and quickly. The committee's agreed and placed an order.'

  'Can they do that?' she asked. 'Without you agreeing, I mean?'

  He smiled. 'No they can't,' he said, 'which is why I've got to read their report and then sign it. Then they'll be able to. In practice I leave them to it, they know all about this sort of stuff, far more than I do, so I'd be stupid not to do as they say. So the decision's been made already, but I've still got to plough my way through it.'

  'Can't you just sign it and pretend you've read it?'

  He laughed, as though she'd meant it as a joke. 'He offered me something like it before,' he said, 'the day we found him, in fact. I turned him down. To listen to him talk, he was going to turn the whole of Civitas into one huge factory. Now he's back again, apparently, and he's got Sorit Calaphates putting up the money and an old tanner's yard, which he's-'

  'Sorit Calaphates?' she interrupted. 'Lycaena's father?'

  Orsea thought for a moment. 'That's right,' he said. 'I'd forgotten you knew the family. How is Lycaena, by the way?'

  'Haven't seen her for a while.' She hesitated, but the hesitation was too obvious; he'd noticed it. 'Careo was wounded in the war,' she said. 'He lost an arm, and he was in pretty bad shape for a while. But last time I heard he was on the mend; they've gone back to his uncle's place out on the Green River while he gets his strength back.'

  'Ah,' Orsea said, and for a moment she saw that terrible look in his eyes; something new to feel guilty about, ambushing him in his safe place, like the hunters in bow-and-stable. 'Anyway,' he went on, 'that's what this report's about; and even if I could say no now that the council's approved it, I wouldn't.' He shook his head, like a horse plagued with flies in summer. 'I hate the thought of those machines, after what they did to us. I can't get those pictures out of my head, all those dead men pinned to the ground, and the ones who weren't dead yet… But if there's going to be an invasion-'

  'Which there won't be,' she said.

  'If there's going to be an invasion, and if this wretched man can make them for us, so we can put them up on the ramparts and shoot down at the road; just think, Triz, it could be the difference between surviving and being wiped out. So of course we've got to have them, even if it's an evil, wicked thing.' He turned his head away so he wasn't looking at her; as if he could pass on the infection through his eyes. 'People used to think,' he said, 'that there were gods who punished you if you did bad things, and sometimes I wonder if they're not still up there, in the clouds or on top of Crane Mountain or wherever it was they were supposed to live. It'd be a joke if they were, don't you think? But if they really are still there, it'd be better if they only had me to pick on for arming the city with scorpions, rather than all of us. It all comes from my mistake, so-'

  'You should hear yourself,' she said. 'Really, Orsea. This is so stupid.'

  He shook his head again. 'I keep having these dreams,' he said. 'I'm at this place my uncle Achima took me to once, when I was a kid. It's on a hilltop in the Lanceta; there's a river winding round the bottom of the hill, really peaceful and quiet, you can see for miles but you won't see another human being. But years ago-a thousand years, Uncle Ach said-it was a great castle; you can still make out ditches and ramparts and gateways, just dips and humps in the ground now, with grass growing. In my dream, I'm climbing up this hill and I'm asking my uncle who built it, and he says nobody knows, they all died out so long ago we don't know a thing about them; and when I get to the top and look down, it's not the Lanceta any more, it's here; and then I realise that I'm seeing where Civitas used to be, before the Mezentines came and killed us all, till there weren't any of us left; and they only came because of me-'

  'That's ridiculous,' she said. 'It's just a dream.'

  He turned a little more; his back was to her. 'Anyhow,' he said, 'that's why I've got to read the stupid report.'

  'I see,' she said. 'I'm sorry. I wouldn't have woken you up if I'd known.'

  'Triz…' He was still looking away, so she couldn't see. 'If I abdicated, do you think Miel would make a good Duke?'

  'You can't abdicate,' she said. 'You know that.'

  'I'm the Duke because I'm married to you,' he said.

  'I think it's a stupid question,' she said. 'And there won't be an invasion, because they've got no reason to invade. It won't make money for them if we're all dead. And as long as you're like this, you're no good to anybody.'

  She didn't wait to see if he turned round. She crossed the lawn to the arch that led back into the cloister, straight up the stairs to the little solar. Most of all, she hated Valens, because he hadn't answered her letter, and instead she had to reply to her insufferable sister, who thought there was going to be an invasion, because that was what they were saying in the market at Durodrice, wherever the hell that was. (If there was an invasion, she thought, could they escape to Durodrice, among the peaceful, cowlike Cure Doce? Would they take them in, or would they be afraid of the Mezentines?) She had a good mind to sit down right now and write to Valens, telling him she didn't want to hear from him any more. It was wrong, anyway, this secret correspondence; she ought to put an end to it before it was found out, and people got the wrong idea. Would Valens protect them? Protect them both? The boy she'd spoken to would, but he wasn't the man who wrote to her about Mannerist poetry and the hover of the peregrine and the blind carter whose dog opened gates for him. She knew him too well. He'd protect both of them, just as he'd rescued Orsea in the Butter Pass, even if it brought the Mezentines down on him and lost him his duchy. He'd do it, for her, but she'd lose him; and if she lost him, she'd have nothing; except Orsea.

  I love Orsea, and I could never love anybody else. But would that be enough? If I had nothing else?

  Ziani was tired; he felt like he hadn't had a good night's sleep for a year, though in fact it was only a few days; only since Jarnac Ducas had placed his order. Since then he'd been up at first light each day, cutting sixteen-ounce leather on the saddler's shear, ready for when Cantacusene arrived. He cut out the pieces, Cantacusene nailed them to the formers, did the boiling, shaping and tempering; when Cantacusene went home in the evening, Ziani did the riveting, assembly and fitting. They were getting on well, ahead of schedule. When he'd finished work for the day on the hunting armours, he went round the main shop, checking the men's progress on the first batch of scorpions-they were turning out well, too, even the lockwork and the springs. After that, he'd sit in the tower and read-either King Fashion, or t
he equally seminal and tedious Mirror of the Chase; he couldn't make up his mind which of them he hated more, but he now knew two thirds of both of them by heart-before finishing up the day with an hour's archery practice in the cellar.

  He was doing well with the archery. This was perhaps the most surprising thing of all, since he'd never held a bow in his life before he left Mezentia. Because he had no money to buy one with and didn't know how to make one, he'd had to re-invent the bow from scratch. A bow, he realised, is just a spring. He knew how to make springs, so that was all right. He had no idea whether there was such a thing as a steel bow; but he went across to the forge after the men had gone home, drew down a length of broken cart-spring into a long, elongated diamond, worked each end down to a gentle distal taper, shaped it till it looked like pictures he'd seen in books, and tempered it to a deep blue. His first attempt at a string was three strands of fine wire, which cut his fingertips like cheese. Luckily, King Fashion had a bit to say about bowstrings; they should be linen, he reckoned, rather than hemp. He made his second string out of twelve strands of strong linen serving thread; and when it broke, the top limb of the bow smacked him so hard under the chin he blacked out for quite some time. His next attempt, eighteen strands, seemed to be strong enough, and hadn't broken yet.

  Whether or not the thing he practised with was a bow in any conventional sense of the term, it did seem to work. He was using three-eighths cedar dowel for arrows; he knew you were meant to tie or glue bits of feather on the ends, but he didn't have any feathers, and the arrows seemed to go through the air quite happily without them. He cut his arrows at thirty inches, because that was as far as he could draw them without them falling off the bow.