Evil for Evil

by K. J. Parker

  It was a book. Miel felt almost absurdly pleased; something to read — not tonight, obviously, but tomorrow, when he’d be spending the whole day in this horrible room. He turned in his seat and held the book up, so that the last rays of the sun glowed on its spine. Nothing to see there, however, so he opened it at random.

  It was written in a proper clerk’s hand, so it wasn’t just some homemade effort, but the letters were painfully, frustratingly small. He wriggled round a little further, screwed his eyes up, and read:

  To make green. Take thin sheet copper, soak in warm vinegar in an oak box, allow to stand for two weeks, remove and scrape when dry. To make vermilion …

  Oh well, Miel thought, and decided that on balance it could wait until the morning, when he could steep himself in it without torturing his eyes. Vermilion, he thought; wasn’t that some kind of fancy word for red? Maybe the reclusive and mysterious Framain would turn out to be nothing but a painter, a churner-out of court scenes and hunting scenes on limewood panels or a prettifier of manuscripts. He heard himself laugh; it took him a moment to identify the sound.

  Maybe he closed his eyes, just for a moment. When he opened them again, it was broad daylight. No sign of Framain, but someone had left another bottle of the good wine and a plate of bread and rawhide-pretending-to-be-bacon next to him on the table. Thankfully, no birds or rodents this time. He yawned and stretched. He was feeling much better. Good.

  He ate his breakfast. Chewing up the bacon should’ve counted as a full day’s work for a healthy man, but Miel managed to do it with only three breaks for rest. That, he reckoned, was a sign that he was well on the road to recovery; in which case, he was fit enough to get out of this strange place and be on his way, wherever that was. There remained, however, the matter of provisions for his journey, and containers to carry them in. He looked round. Yesterday’s empty wine bottle was still where he’d left it, and there was a full one to go with it. The remains of the loaf stood on the small table. The bacon was presumably back up in the rafters, but as far as he was concerned it could stay there. He rummaged for a while through the trash on the table, but about the only thing he didn’t find there was anything capable of holding water. He took another look at the room and decided to risk it. He didn’t feel comfortable here.

  Manners demanded that he say thank you and goodbye to his host, but he’d got the impression that his host really wouldn’t mind if he neglected that duty. He picked up the empty bottle and walked out into the blissfully clean, fresh air, heading for the well.

  Bright morning; the damp grass and the smell of wet foliage told him it had rained earlier, while he was still asleep. He found the well easily enough. It hadn’t been there very long, if the color of the mortar between the stones was anything to go by. He wound down the bucket; it took a long time for it to reach the water.

  “Who the hell are you?” A woman’s voice, right behind him. He turned and saw a tall, slim woman wearing man’s clothes (linen shirt, cord breeches, gaiters; almost identical to those Framain had been wearing). She had dark hair, pulled back tight into a bun. He guessed she was his own age or a few years younger, but it was hard to tell because her face was so dirty.

  Soot, he realized; there were pale rings round her eyes, and white patches on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. The rest was dull matt black, like a well-leaded stove. Her hands were filthy too, though the cuffs of her shirt were merely grimy. She was scowling at him, as though he was a servant she’d caught stealing cheese from the larder.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quickly, before he’d had time to figure out what he was apologizing for. “My name’s Miel Ducas.” Obviously that didn’t mean anything to her. “The, um …” (Couldn’t remember the wretched man’s name.) “Tropea Framain let me stay here last night. Actually, he saved my life; I’d got stuck in a quagmire up on the —”

  Clearly she wasn’t interested in anything like that. “He didn’t say anything about guests,” she said.

  “Oh.” Come on, Miel chided himself, you’re a trained diplomat, you’ve negotiated trade agreements with the Cure Doce and extradition treaties with the Vadani, you can do better than oh. “Well, I’m sure if you were to ask him …”

  “He’s busy.” Statements didn’t come more absolute than that. “What’re you doing?”

  He held out the bottle. “I was just getting some water from the well.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, my journey,” he said. “Actually, I’m just leaving.”

  Her scowl deepened. “What’re you doing round here?”

  “I got lost,” he said. “I was heading for the inn at Cotton Cross, but I must’ve —”

  “Where were you coming from?”

  Now that, he had to concede, was a very good question. He had no idea, beyond the fact that the scavengers lived there.

  “Merebarton,” he said, in desperation. (It had been the name of one of the fields behind the house when he was growing up at the Ducas country seat at Staeca. Why it should’ve been the first name to come into his head, he had no idea.)

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Small place,” Miel said casually. “Just a farmhouse and a few outbuildings in the middle of nowhere, really. About a day and a half ’s ride the other side of the Finewater.”

  “You were heading from the Finewater toward Cotton Cross and you got lost?”

  “Lousy sense of direction.”

  “You just head straight for Sharra Top. It’s the only mountain on the moor. You’d have to be blind —”

  “My mother always said I wasn’t fit to be let out on my own,” he said wearily. “But it’s all right, Framain’s given me clear directions. Just head straight for the mountain, like you said.”

  She was still frowning at him. “You won’t get much water in there,” she said.

  “It was all I could find.”

  “You should’ve asked Father. He’d have given you a water-bottle or a jug.”

  “He went out before I woke up,” Miel said. “And I didn’t want to bother him.”

  She thought about that; weighed it and found it didn’t balance. “What were you doing in — what was that place you said?”

  “Merebarton.” He trawled his brains, even toyed with telling her the whole truth. “Visiting relatives,” he said.

  “I see.” Without thinking or not caring, she dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, plowing white furrows in the soot. Miel (trained diplomat) kept a straight face. “Well, if you’re leaving, don’t let me stop you.”

  Miel dipped his head in a formal bow, cursory-polite. Someone familiar with Eremian court protocol would have recognized it at once as the proper way to acknowledge a statement or reply from a person of considerably inferior social standing. It was (he trusted) completely lost on her, but it just about constituted honorable revenge. “Nice to have met you,” he said, and he concentrated his mind on the job of filling the wine bottle from the bucket. But the edge of the well surround was narrow, and he obviously wasn’t concentrating enough, because the bucket toppled out of control and slopped nearly all its contents down the front of his trousers.

  There was a snigger somewhere behind him, but he didn’t turn round. Still enough water in the bucket to fill the bottle, provided he could just balance …

  He swore. It was at least a second and a half before he heard the splash that told him his bottle was now at the bottom of the well.

  “Don’t you hate it when that happens?” said the voice he was rapidly coming to loathe.

  He considered the feasibility of crossing the moor with nothing to drink except one bottle of fine vintage red wine, and reluctantly dismissed it. “Do you think your father would let me have a bottle or a jug?” he said plaintively.

  “I expect so.”

  “Could you possibly tell me where he is, so I can ask him?”

  “He’s busy.”

  “Then maybe you could be terribly kind and ask him for me.”
/>   “All right. Or I expect I could find you something.”

  “Thanks,” Miel said. “I’d really appreciate that.”

  She’d turned, and was walking back toward the house. “What did you say your name was?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “Miel Ducas.”

  The back of her head nodded. “Anything to do with the big landowning family?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice for you.” Her shoulders expressed a total and overriding disdain for the Ducas and all their works. “And you were out in the middle of nowhere at — sorry, it’s gone again, the place you just came from …”

  “Merebarton.”

  “Merebarton,” she repeated carefully, “visiting relatives. Big family.”

  “Very big, yes.”

  She spun round, with the deliberate poise of a fencer performing the volte. “Miel Ducas is the leader of the resistance,” she said, and all the melodrama didn’t alter the fact that she was very angry. “If the Mezentines come here, or your people, or the Vadani — anyone — it’ll ruin everything. My father’s given everything for this, I’ve been here helping him my entire life. How dare you come here and jeopardize everything we’ve worked for?”

  Miel took a step back, but only from force of habit. Nobody in a furious rage uses words like jeopardize. He looked her in the eyes, ignoring the pink smudges on her cheeks and nose; it was like facing down a merchant over a big deal. “You want something from me,” he said pleasantly. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is?”

  He’d watched men working in a foundry once, and seen them draw the plug from the bottom of the cupola, when the furnace had reached full heat and the melt was ready to pour. The white-hot iron had flooded out, dazzling bright, rushed toward him like a tide, so that he’d jumped back; but as it surged it slowed, and he could see it take the cold, fading from white to yellow. Her eyes were cold like the cooling iron as it grew solid in the bloom.

  “What makes you think —” she started to say, but he frowned and cut her off.

  “If it’s something I’m physically capable of doing,” he said, “I’ll do it. I owe your father my life. Just tell me what it is.”

  She frowned. “I don’t trust you,” she said.

  “Oh well.” He shrugged. “We’ll just have to go slowly, then. Right now, all I want out of life is an empty bottle. This makes me an unusually straightforward person. How about you? What do you want?”

  She looked at him for a long time. “Sulfur,” she said.

  It wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to say. “Sulfur,” he repeated.

  “That’s right. You do know what sulfur is, don’t you?”

  Miel raised his eyebrows. “I think so,” he said. “It’s a sort of yellow powdery stuff you find in cracks in the rocks sometimes. People use it to fumigate their houses during the plague, and I think you can mix it with other stuff to make slow-burning torches. Is that right, or am I thinking of something completely different?”

  “That’s sulfur,” she said. “We need some. Can you get it for us?”

  Miel frowned. “I really don’t know,” he said. “I mean, yes, before the war; I expect the housekeeper or the head gardener would’ve had some, somewhere. Now, though, I haven’t a clue. Is it hard to come by?”

  “Not in a city, where there’re traders,” she replied quickly. “You’d be able to get it in Civitas Vadanis.”

  “But I’m not —” He stopped; he’d said the wrong thing. “Anywhere else?”

  “Well, the Mezentines’ve probably got barrels of it, but I don’t like the idea of asking them.”

  “I mean,” he said patiently, “is there anywhere you can go and dig it out for yourself, rather than buying it?”

  She laughed. “Good question,” she said. “There used to be a deposit on the east side of Sharra. That’s where Father had been, I suppose, when he came across you. But it’s all gone now. Used up. We need to find another supply. You’re the bloody Ducas,” she said, with a sudden, unexpected spurt of anger, “you’ve got soldiers and horses and God knows what else, you could arrange for a couple of wagonloads of sulfur, if you wanted to.”

  He sighed. “I said I’d do anything you wanted, if I can. How urgently … ?”

  “Now. As soon as possible.”

  He thought for a moment. “Well,” he said, “it’ll take me, what, three days to reach Cotton Cross; then, if I take the main road, assuming I don’t get caught by the Mezentines or run into some other kind of trouble, I should reach Merveilh inside a week. Would they have any there, do you think?”

  “Merveilh? No. Tried that. It’s just a stupid little frontier post, and the merchants don’t go that way because they don’t like paying border tolls.”

  “Fine. Merveilh to Civitas Vadanis — I don’t know how long that’d take,” he confessed. “I’ve never gone there that way. Five days?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Then allow a full day to get the sulfur, and however long it takes to get back again.” He smiled. “That’s my best offer,” he said. “Any use to you?”

  She looked at him. “That wasn’t what I had in mind,” she said.

  “Oh. What … ?”

  “I thought you could go back to your army and send some of your men.”

  He grinned, like a crack in a beam or a tear in cloth. “No good,” he said. “I don’t even know if there is a resistance anymore, and if there is, I’m through with it.”

  (And all because his hand had slipped on a bottle, and it had fallen into a well. If he’d managed to keep hold of the stupid thing, he’d be on his way by now, free and clear and heading for a life entirely without purpose or meaning.)

  “You don’t expect me to believe that.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re a patriot. You fight for the freedom of Eremia. You couldn’t just turn your back on it and walk away.”

  “I was rather hoping to try.”

  She shook her head. “Someone like you,” she said, “if you’re not leading people or in charge of something, you’d just sort of fade away. You’d be like the air inside a bag without the bag.”

  For some reason, he didn’t like her saying that. “Do you want your sulfur, or don’t you?”

  “Of course I want it, or I wouldn’t have mentioned it.” She grinned sardonically at him through her covering of soot. “But the chances of you getting it for me …” She shrugged. “Like I said,” she went on, “we keep ourselves to ourselves here, we don’t want anybody dropping in. Go away, don’t come back, and forget us completely, and that’ll do fine. Wait here, I’ll get you your bottle.”

  She came back a few minutes later, holding a two-gallon earthenware jar in a snug wicker jacket. It was corked, and from the way she leaned against its weight as she carried it, full. “Keep it,” she said, reaching in her pocket, “don’t bother bringing it back, even if you just happen to be passing. And in here there’s a pound of cheese and some oatcakes, they’ll be better than bread, they won’t go stale. You know where the stable is, presumably.”

  As soon as he’d taken the water and the cloth bag containing the food she walked away. He saw her go into the house, and knew she’d gone there because he’d be watching, not because she had any business there. He shook his head. Sulfur, he thought. It would’ve been something to do.

  Later, he couldn’t remember saddling the horse and riding out of the hidden combe. He was thinking about itineraries, carters, women in red dresses who could get things you wanted if you had the money, which of course he didn’t, not anymore. When it was too dark to see his way, he dismounted and sat on the ground, holding the horse’s reins, still thinking, but not about sulfur or trade routes or who he knew in Civitas Vadanis who might lend him some money. The daylight woke him and he carried on, making excellent time; he’d abandoned the road and was cutting straight up the side of the hill. The horse wheezed and resented the exercise, but he kept a tight rein; not really his horse, after all
, so it didn’t matter what state it was in when he got there, just so long as he made it quickly. When night fell a second time he curled up behind an outcrop, out of the wind, and waited for dawn without falling asleep. Shortly after noon the next day, he saw smoke rising from the double chimneys of the Unswerving Loyalty and realized — the thought startled him — that somehow he’d made it and he was still alive.

  No money, of course. He grinned. He’d have to sell the horse, and then what?

  As he came close enough to hear, he could make out voices, a great many of them. He wondered about that. Mezentines; no, they’d have burned the place to the ground. His men, perhaps; unlikely. All right, then, who else would be roaming about this godforsaken moor in a large party? All he could think of was a big caravan of merchants; possible, if they were being forced to go all round the houses these days to avoid the war.

  But it wasn’t merchants. The horses he saw as he rode into the yard were too big and too fine, and there were bows and quivers hanging from their saddles, and boots to rest spear-butts attached to the stirrups. Very fine horses indeed; and the Loyalty’s ostlers and grooms were looking after them with a degree of enthusiasm he wouldn’t have expected to see if they belonged to the invaders. Besides, he knew enough about horses to recognize the coveted, valuable Vadani bloodline. He grinned as he passed under the fold gate. Can’t go anywhere in Eremia these days without bumping into the Vadani cavalry.

  There were two dozen or so men milling about in the yard, but the one he noticed straightaway had his back to him. He was talking to a short man in a leather apron — a farrier, quite possibly, not that he cared worth a damn. The man with his back to him was extremely tall and broad-shouldered, and there was something achingly familiar about the way the presumed farrier was edging away backward, uncomfortable about being loomed over in such an intrusive way.

  The troopers stooped talking and stared at him as he rode past them; maybe some of them knew who he was. One of them called out a name as he passed. The tall, broad man looked round and stared at him, and his face exploded into a huge, happy grin.