Devices and Desires

Chapter One

'The quickest way to a man's heart,' said the instructor, 'is proverbially through his stomach. But if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye-socket.'

Like a whip cracking, he uncurled his languid slouch into the taut, straight lines of the lunge. His forearm launched from the elbow like an arrow as his front leg plunged forward, and the point of the long, slim sword darted, neat as a component in a machine, through the exact centre of the finger-ring that dangled from a cord tied to the beam.

It was typical of Valens' father that he insisted on his son learning the new fencing; the stock, the tuck, the small-sword and the rapier. It was elegant, refined, difficult, endlessly time-consuming and, of course, useless. A brigandine or even a thick winter coat would turn one of those exquisite points; if you wanted to have any chance of doing useful work, you had to aim for the holes in the face, targets no bigger than an eight-mark coin. Against a farm worker with a hedging tool, you stood no chance whatsoever. But, for ten years, Valens had flounced and stretched up and down a chalk line in a draughty shed that hadn't been cleaned out since it was still a stable. When he could hit the apple, the instructor had hung up a plum, and then a damson. Now he could get the damson nine times out of ten, and so the ring had taken its place. Once he'd mastered that, he wondered what he'd be faced with next. The eye of a darning-needle, probably.

'Better,' the instructor said, as the point of Valens' sword nicked the ring's edge, making it tinkle like a cow-bell. 'Again.'

It was typical of Valens that he suffered through his weekly lesson, face frozen and murder in his heart, always striving to do better even though he knew the whole thing was an exercise in fatuity. Fencing was last lesson but one on a Monday; on Wednesday evening, when he actually had an hour free, he paid one of the guardsmen four marks an hour to teach him basic sword and shield, and another two marks to keep the secret from his father. He was actually quite good at proper fencing, or so the guardsman said; but the tuck had no cutting edge, only a point, so he couldn't slice the grin off the instructor's face with a smart backhand wrap, as he longed to do. Instead, he was tethered to this stupid chalk line, like a grazing goat.

'That'll do,' the instructor said, two dozen lunges later. 'For next week, I want you to practise the hanging guard and the volte.'

Valens dipped his head in a perfunctory nod; the instructor scooped up his armful of swords, unhooked his ring and left the room. It was still raining outside, and he had a quarter of an hour before he had to present himself in the west tower for lute and rebec. Awkwardly-it was too small for him at the best of times, and now his fingers were hot and swollen-he eased the ring off his right index finger and cast around for a bit of string.

Usually, he did much better when the instructor wasn't there, when he was on his own. That was fatuous too, since the whole idea of a sword-fight is that there's someone to fight with. Today, though, he was worse solo than he'd been during the lesson. He lunged again, missed, hit the string, which wrapped itself insultingly round the sword-point. Maybe it was simply too difficult for him.

That thought didn't sit comfortably, so he came at the problem from a different angle. Obviously, he told himself, the reason I can't do it is because it's not difficult enough.

Having freed his sword, he stepped back to a length; then he leaned forward just a little and tapped the ring on its edge, setting it swinging. Then he lunged again.

Six times out of six; enough to prove his point. When the ring swung backwards and forwards, he didn't just have a hole to aim at, he had a line. If he judged the forward allowance right, it was just a simple matter of pointing with the sword as though it was a finger. He steadied the ring until it stopped swinging, stepped back, lunged again and missed. Maybe I should have been a cat, he thought. Cats only lash out at moving objects; if it's still, they can't see it.

He cut the ring off the cord with his small knife and jammed it back on his finger, trapping a little fold of skin. Rebec next; time to stop being a warrior and become an artist. When he was Duke, of course, the finest musicians in the world would bribe his chamberlains for a chance to play while he chatted to his guests or read the day's intelligence reports, ignoring them completely. The son of a powerful, uneducated man has a hard time of it, shouldering the burden of all the advantages his father managed so well without.

An hour of the rebec left his fingertips numb and raw; and then it was time for dinner. That brought back into sharp focus the question he'd been dodging and parrying all day; would she still be there, or had his father sent her back home? If she'd left already-if, while he'd been scanning hexameters and hendecasyllables, stabbing at dangling jewellery and picking at wire, she'd packed up her bags and walked out of his life, possibly for ever-at least he wouldn't have to sit all night at the wrong end of the table, straining to catch a word or two of what she said to someone else. If she was still here… He cast up his mental accounts, trying to figure out if he was owed a miracle. On balance, he decided, probably not. According to the holy friars, it took three hundred hours of prayer or five hundred of good works to buy a miracle, and he was at least sixty short on either count. All he could afford out of his accrued merit was a revelatory vision of the Divinity, and he wasn't too bothered about that.

If she was still here.

On the off chance, he went back to his room, pulled off his sweaty, dusty shirt and winnowed through his clothes-chest for a replacement. The black, with silver threads and two gold buttons at the neck, made him look like a jackdaw, so he went for the red, with last year's sleeves (but, duke's son or not, he lived in the mountains; if it came in from outside, it came slowly, on a mule), simply because it was relatively clean and free of holes. Shoes; his father chose his shoes for him, and the fashion was still for poulaines, with their ridiculously long pointy toes. He promised himself that she wouldn't be able to see his feet under the table (besides, she wouldn't still be here), and pulled out his good mantle from the bottom of the chest. It was only civet, but it helped mask the disgraceful length of his neck. A glance in the mirror made him wince, but it was the best he could do.

Sixty hours, he told himself; sixty rotten hours I could've made up easily, if only I'd known.

Protocol demanded that he sit on his father's left at dinner.

Tonight, the important guest was someone he didn't know, although the man's brown skin and high cheekbones made it easy enough to guess where he was from. An ambassador from Mezentia; no wonder his father was preoccupied, waving his hands and smiling (two generations of courtiers had come to harm trying to point out to the Duke that his smile was infinitely more terrifying than his frown), while the little bald brown man nodded politely and picked at his dinner like a starling. One quick look gave Valens all the information he needed about what was going on there. On his own left, the Chancellor was discussing climbing roses with the controller of the mines. So that was all right; he was free to look round without having to talk to anybody.

She was still here. There was a tiny prickle of guilt mixed in with his relief. She was, after all, a hostage. If she hadn't been sent home, it meant that there'd been some last-minute hitch in the treaty negotiations, and the war between the two dukedoms, two centuries old, was still clinging on to life by a thread. Sooner or later, though, the treaty would be signed: peace would end the fighting and the desperate waste of lives and money, heal the country's wounds and bring the conscript farmers and miners back home; peace would take her away from him before he'd even had a chance to talk to her alone. For now, though, the war was still here and so was she.

(A small diplomatic incident, maybe; if he could contrive it that their ambassador bumped into him on the stairs and knocked him down a flight or two. Would an act of clumsiness towards the heir apparent be enough to disrupt the negotiations for a week or ten days? On the other hand, if he fell awkwardly and broke his neck, might that not constitute an act of war, leading to summary execution of the hostages? And he'd be dead too, of course, for what that was worth.)

Something massive stirred on his right; his father was standing up to say something, and everybody had stopped talking. There was a chance it might be important (Father loved to annoy his advisers by making vital announcements out of the blue at dinner), so Valens tucked in his elbows, looked straight ahead and listened.

But it wasn't anything. The little bald man from Mezentia turned out to be someone terribly important, grand secretary of the Foundrymen's and Machinists' Guild (in Father's court, secretaries were fast-moving, worried-looking men who could write; but apparently they ruled Mezentia, and therefore, by implication, the world), and he was here as an observer to the treaty negotiations, and this was extremely good. Furthermore, as a token of the Republic's respect and esteem, he'd brought an example of cutting-edge Mezentine technology, which they would all have the privilege of seeing demonstrated after dinner.

Distracted as he was by the distant view of the top of her head, Valens couldn't help being slightly curious about that. Everyday Mezentine technology was so all-pervasive you could scarcely turn round in the castle without knocking some of it over. Every last cup and dish, from the best service reserved for state occasions down to the pewter they ate off when nobody was looking, had come from the Republic's rolling mills; every candle stood in a Mezentine brass candlestick, its light doubled by a Mezentine mirror hanging from a Mezentine nail. But extra-special cutting-edge didn't make it up the mountain passes very often, which meant they had to make do with rumours; the awestruck whispers of traders and commercial travellers, the panicky reports of military intelligence, and the occasional gross slander from a competitor, far from home and desperate. If the little bald man had brought a miracle with him (the ten-thousand-mark kind, rather than the three-hundred-hour variety), Valens reckoned he could spare a little attention for it, though his heart might be broken beyond repair by even the masters of the Soldefers' and Braziers' Guild.

The miracle came in a plain wooden crate. It was no more than six feet long by three wide, but it took a man at each corner to move it-a heavy miracle, then. Two Mezentines with grave faces and crowbars prised the crate open; out came a lot of straw, and some curly cedar shavings, and then something which Valens assumed was a suit of armour. It was man-high, man-shaped and shiny, and the four attendants lifted it up and set it down on some kind of stand. Fine, Valens thought. Father'll be happy, he likes armour. But then the attendants did something odd. One of them reached into the bottom of the crate and fished out a steel tube with a ring through one end; a key, but much larger than anything of the kind Valens had seen before. It fitted into a slot in the back of the armour; some kind of specially secure, sword-proof fastening? Apparently not; one of the attendants began turning it over and over again, and each turn produced a clicking sound, like the skittering of mice's feet on a thin ceiling. Meanwhile, two more crates had come in. One of them held nothing more than an ordinary blacksmith's anvil-polished, true, like a silver chalice, but otherwise no big deal. The other was full of tools; hammers, tongs, cold chisels, swages, boring stuff. The anvil came to rest at the suit of armour's feet, and one of the Mezentines prised open the suit's steel fingers and closed them around the stem of a three-pound hammer.

'The operation of the machine…' Valens looked round to see who was talking. It was the short, bald man, the grand secretary. He had a low, rich voice with a fairly mild accent. 'The operation of the machine is quite straightforward. A powerful spiral spring, similar to those used in clockwork, is put under tension by winding with a key. Once released, it bears on a flywheel, causing it to spin. A gear train and a series of cams and connecting rods transmits this motion to the machine's main spindle, from which belt-driven takeoffs power the arms. Further cams and trips effect the reciprocating movement, simulating the work of the human arm.'

Whatever that was supposed to mean. It didn't look like anybody else understood it either, to judge from the rows of perfectly blank faces around the tables. But then the key-turner stopped turning, pulled out his key and pushed something; and the suit of armour's arm lifted to head height, stopped and fell, and the hammer in its hand rang on the anvil like a silver bell.

Not armour after all; Valens could feel his father's disappointment through the boards of the table. Of course Valens knew what it was, though he'd never seen anything like it. He'd read about it in some book; the citizens of the Perpetual Republic had a childish love of mechanical toys, metal gadgets that did things almost but not quite as well as people could. It was a typically Mezentine touch to send a mechanical blacksmith. Here is a machine, they were saying, that could make another machine just like itself, the way you ordinary humans breed children. Well; it was their proud boast that they had a machine for everything. Mechanising reproduction, though, was surely cutting off their noses to spite their collective face.

The hammer rang twelve times, then stopped. Figures, Valens thought. You get a dozen hits at a bit of hot metal before it cools down and needs to go back in the fire. While you're waiting for it to heat up again, you've got time to wind up your mechanical slave. Query whether turning the key is harder work than swinging the hammer yourself would be. In any event, it's just a triphammer thinly disguised as a man. Now then; a man convincingly disguised as a triphammer, that'd be worth walking a mile to see.

Stunned silence for a moment or so, followed by loud, nervous applause. The little grand secretary stood up, smiled vaguely and sat down again; that concluded the demonstration.

Ten minutes after he got up from the table, Valens couldn't remember what he'd just eaten, or the name of the trade attache he'd just been introduced to, or the date; as for the explanation of how the heavy miracle worked, it had vanished from his mind completely. That was unfortunate.

'I was wondering,' she repeated. 'Did you understand what that man said, about how the metal blacksmith worked? I'm afraid I didn't catch any of it, and my father's sure to ask me when I get home.'

So she was going home, then. The irony; at last he was talking to her, and tomorrow she was going away. Further irony; it had been his father himself who'd brought them together; Valens, come over here and talk to the Countess Sirupati. Father had been towering over her, the way the castle loomed over the village below, all turrets and battlements, and he'd been smiling, which accounted for the look of terror in her eyes. Valens had wanted to reassure her; it's all right, he hasn't actually eaten anybody for weeks. Instead, he'd stood and gawped, and then he'd looked down at his shoes (poulaines, with the ridiculous pointy toes). And then she'd asked him about the mechanical blacksmith.

He pulled himself together, like a boy trying to draw his father's bow. 'I'm not really the right person to ask,' he said. 'I don't know a lot about machines and stuff.'

Her expression didn't change, except that it glazed slightly. Of course she didn't give a damn about how the stupid machine worked; she was making conversation. 'I think,' he went on, 'that there's a sort of wheel thing in its chest going round and round, and it's linked to cogs and gears and what have you. Oh, and there's cams, to turn the round and round into up and down.'

She blinked at him. 'What's a cam?' she asked.

'Ah.' What indeed? 'Well, it's sort of…' Three hours a week with a specially imported Doctor of Rhetoric, from whom he was supposed to learn how to express himself with clarity, precision and grace. 'It's sort of like this,' he went on, miming with his hands. 'The wheel goes round, you see, and on the edge of the wheel there's like a bit sticking out. Each time it goes round, it kind of bashes on a sort of lever arrangement, like a see-saw; and the lever thing pivots, like it goes down at the bashed end and up at the other end-that's how the arm lifts-and when it's done that, it drops down again under its own weight, nicely in time for the sticky-out bit on the wheel to bash it again. And so on.'

'I see,' she said. 'Yes, I think I understand it now.'

'Really?'

'No,' she said. 'But thank you for trying.'

He frowned. 'Well, it was probably the worst explanation of anything I've ever heard in my life.'

She nodded. 'Maybe,' she said. 'But at least you didn't say, oh, you're only a girl, you wouldn't understand.'

He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. Tactically (four hours a week on the Art of War, with General Bozannes) he felt he probably had a slight advantage, a weak point in the line he could probably turn, if he could get his cavalry there in time. Somehow, though, he felt that the usages of the wars didn't apply here, or if they did they shouldn't. Odd; because even before he'd started having formal lessons, he'd run his life like a military campaign, and the usages of war applied to everything.

'Well,' he said, 'I'm a boy and I haven't got a clue. I suppose it's different in Mezentia.'

'Oh, it is,' she said. 'I've been there, actually.'

'Really? I mean, what's it like?'

She withdrew into a shell of thought, shutting out him and all the world. 'Strange,' she said. 'Not like anywhere else, really. Oh, it's very grand and big and the buildings are huge and all closely packed together, but that's not what I meant. I can't describe it, really.' She paused, and Valens realised he was holding his breath. 'We all went there for some diplomatic thing, my father and my sisters and me; it was shortly before my eldest sister's wedding, and I think it was something to do with the negotiations. I was thirteen then, no, twelve. Anyway, I remember there was this enormous banquet in one of the Guild halls. Enormous place, full of statues and tapestries, and there was this amazing painting on the ceiling, a sea-battle or something like that; and all these people were in their fanciest robes, with gold chains round their necks and silks and all kinds of stuff like that. But the food came on these crummy old wooden dishes, and there weren't any knives or forks, just a plain wooden spoon.'

Fork? he wondered; what's a farm tool got to do with eating? 'Very odd,' he agreed. 'What was the food like?'

'Horrible. It was very fancy and sort of fussy, the way it was put on the plate, with all sorts of leaves and frills and things to make it look pretty; but really it was just bits of meat and dumplings in slimy sauce.'

To the best of his recollection, Valens had never wanted anything in his entire life. Things had come his way, a lot of them; like the loathsome pointy-toed poulaines, the white thoroughbred mare that hated him and tried to bite his feet, the kestrel that wouldn't come back when it was called, the itchy damask pillows, the ivory-handled rapier, all the valuable junk his father kept giving him. He'd been brought up to take care of his possessions, so he treated them with respect until they wore out, broke or died; but he had no love for them, no pride in owning them. He knew that stuff like that mattered to most people; it was a fact about humanity that he accepted without understanding. Other boys his age had wanted a friend; but Valens had always known that the Duke's son didn't make friends; and besides, he preferred thinking to talking, just as he liked to walk on his own. He'd never wanted to be Duke, because that would only happen when his father died. Now, for the first time, he felt what it was like to want something-but, he stopped to consider, is it actually possible to want a person? How? As a pet; to keep in a mews or a stable, to feed twice a day when not in use. It would be possible, of course. You could keep a person, a girl for instance, in a stable or a bower; you could walk her and feed her, dress her and go to bed with her, but… He didn't want ownership. He was the Duke's son, as such he owned everything and nothing. There was a logical paradox here-Doctor Galeazza would be proud of him-but it was so vague and unfamiliar that he didn't know how to begin formulating an equation to solve it. All he could do was be aware of the feeling, which was disturbingly intense.

Not that it mattered. She was going home tomorrow.

'Slimy sauce,' he repeated. 'Yetch. You had to eat it, I suppose, or risk starting a war.'

She smiled, and he looked away, but the smile followed him. 'Not all of it,' she said. 'You've got to leave some if you're a girl, it's ladylike. Not that I minded terribly much.'

Valens nodded. 'When I was a kid I had to finish everything on my plate, or it'd be served up cold for breakfast and lunch until I ate it. Which was fine,' he went on, 'I knew where I stood. But when I was nine, we had to go to a reception at the Lorican embassy-'

She giggled. She was way ahead of him. 'And they think that if you eat everything on your plate it's a criticism, that they haven't given you enough.'

She'd interrupted him and stolen his joke, but he didn't mind. She'd shared his thought. That didn't happen very often.

'Of course,' he went on, 'nobody bothered telling me, I was just a kid; so I was grimly munching my way through my dinner-'

'Rice,' she said. 'Plain boiled white rice, with noodles and stuff.'

He nodded. 'And as soon as I got to the end, someone'd snatch my plate away and dump another heap of the muck on it and hand it back; I thought I'd done something bad and I was being punished. I was so full I could hardly breathe. But Father was busy talking business, and nobody down my end of the table was going to say anything; I'd probably be there still, only-'

He stopped dead.

'Only?'

'I threw up,' he confessed; it wasn't a good memory. 'All over the tablecloth, and their Lord Chamberlain.'

She laughed. He expected to feel hurt, angry. Instead, he laughed too. He had no idea why he should think it was funny, but it was.

'And was there a war?' she asked.

'Nearly,' he replied. 'God, that rice. I can still taste it if I shut my eyes.'

Now she was nodding. 'I was there for a whole year,' she said. 'Lorica, I mean. The rice is what sticks in my mind too. No pun intended.'

He thought about that. 'You sound like you've been to a lot of places,' he said.

'Oh yes.' She didn't sound happy about it, which struck him as odd. He'd never been outside the dukedom in his life. 'In fact, I've spent more time away than at home.'

Well, he had to ask. 'Why?'

The question appeared to surprise her. 'It's what I'm for,' she said. 'I guess you could say it's my job.'

'Job?'

She nodded again. 'Professional hostage. Comes of being the fifth of seven daughters. You see,' she went on, 'we've got to get married in age order, it's protocol or something, and there's still two of them older than me left; I can't get married till they are. So, the only thing I'm useful for while I'm waiting my turn is being a hostage. Which means, when they're doing a treaty or a settlement or something, off I go on my travels until it's all sorted out.'

'That's…' That's barbaric, he was about to say, but he knew better than that. He knew the theory perfectly well (statecraft, two hours a week with Chancellor Vetuarius), but he'd never given it any thought before; like people getting killed in the wars, something that happened but was best not dwelt on. 'It must be interesting,' he heard himself say. 'I've never been abroad.'

She paused, considering her reply. 'Actually, it's quite dull, mostly. It's not like I get to go out and see things, and one guest wing's pretty like another.'

(And, she didn't say, there's always the thought of what might happen if things go wrong.)

'I guess so,' he said. 'Well, I hope it hasn't been too boring here.'

'Boring?' She looked at him. 'I wouldn't say that. Going hunting with your father was-'

'Quite.' Valens managed not to wince. 'I didn't know he'd dragged you out with him. Was it very horrible?'

She shook her head. 'I've been before, so the blood and stuff doesn't bother me. It was the standing about waiting for something to happen that got to me.'

Valens nodded. 'Was it raining?'

'Yes.'

'It always rains.' He pulled a face. 'Whenever I hear about the terrible droughts in the south, and they're asking is it because God's angry with them or something, I know it's just because Dad doesn't go hunting in the south. He could earn a good living as a rain-maker.'

She smiled, but he knew his joke hadn't really bitten home. That disconcerted him; usually it had them laughing like drains. Or perhaps they only laughed because he was the Duke's son. 'Well,' she said, 'that was pretty boring. But the rest of it was…' She shrugged. 'It was fine.'

The shrug hurt. 'Any rate,' he said briskly, 'you'll be home for harvest festival.'

'It's not a big thing where I come from,' she replied; and then, like an eclipse of the sun that stops the battle while the issue's still in the balance, the chamberlain came out to drive them all into the Great Hall for singing and a recital by the greatest living exponent of the psaltery.

Valens watched her being bustled away with the other women, until an equerry whisked him off to take his place in the front row.

Ironically, the singer sang nothing but love-songs; aubades about young lovers parted by the dawn, razos between the pining youth and the cynical go-between, the bitter complaints of the girl torn from her darling to marry a rich, elderly stranger. All through the endless performance he didn't dare turn round, but the thought that she was somewhere in the rows behind was like an unbearable itch. The greatest living psalterist seemed to linger spitefully over each note, as if he knew. The candles were guttering by the time he finally ground to a halt. There would be no more socialising that evening, and in the morning (early, to catch the coolest part of the day) she'd be going home.

(I could start a war, he thought, as he trudged up the stairs to bed. I could conspire with a disaffected faction or send the keys of a frontier post to the enemy; then we'd be at war again, and she could come back as a hostage. Or maybe we could lose, and I could go there; all the same to me, so long as…)

He lay in bed with the lamp flickering, just enough light to see dim shapes by. On the opposite wall, the same boarhounds that had given him nightmares when he was six carried on their endless duel with the boar at bay, trapped in the fibres of the tapestry. He could see them just as well when his eyes were shut; two of them, all neck and almost no head, had their teeth in the boar's front leg, while a third had him by the ear and hung twisting in mid-air, while the enemy's tusks ripped open a fourth from shoulder to tail. Night after night he'd wondered as he lay there which he was, the dogs or the pig, the hunters or the quarry. It was one of the few questions in his life to which he had yet to resolve an answer. It was possible that he was both, a synthesis of the two, made possible by the shared act of ripping and tearing. His father had had the tapestry put there in the hope that it'd inspire him with a love of the chase; but it wasn't a chase, it was a single still moment (perhaps he couldn't see it because it didn't move, like the ring hanging from the rafter); and therefore it represented nothing. Tonight, it made him think of her, standing in the rain while the lymers snuffled up and down false trails, his father bitching at the harbourers and the masters of the hounds, the courtiers silent and wet waiting for the violence to begin.

The peace won't last, they said. They gave it three months, then six, then a year; just possibly three years, or five at the very most. Meanwhile, Count Sirupat's third daughter married the Prince of Boha (bad news for the shepherds, the lumber merchants and the dealers in trained falcons, but good for the silver miners and refiners, who were the ones who mattered), and his fourth daughter married her third cousin, Valens' fourth cousin, the Elector of Spalado.

Father celebrated Valens' nineteenth birthday with a hunt; a three-day battue, with the whole army marshalled in the mountains to drive the combes and passes down to the valley, where the long nets were set up like lines of infantry waiting to receive a cavalry charge. On the morning of the third day, they flushed a magnificent mountain boar from the pine woods above the Blue Lake. One look at the monster's tusks sent the master hurrying to find the Duke; it'd be nothing short of treason if it fell to anybody else. But the Duke was right up the other end of the valley; he came as quickly as he could, but when he got there the boar had broken through, slicing open two guardsmen and half a dozen hounds, and was making a run for it across the water-meadows. If it made it to the birch forest on the other side of the water, they'd never find it again, so if the Duke didn't want to miss out on the trophy of a lifetime, he was going to have to address the boar on horseback. As far as Valens' father was concerned, that wasn't a problem; he galloped off after the boar, leaving his escort behind, and caught up with it about three hundred yards from the edge of the forest, in a small dip littered with granite outcrops. The boar didn't want to stop and turn at bay. It could see safety, and all it had to do was run faster than a horse. The Duke managed to slow it up with an arrow in the left shoulder, but the thought of bringing down such a spectacular animal with the bow didn't appeal to him in the least. Anybody could drain its strength with half a dozen snagging hits and then dispatch it tamely, like a farmer slaughtering the family pig. The Duke needed it to still be dangerous when he faced it down the shaft of a number four spear, or else it'd be a waste. So he urged on his horse and managed to overtake it with fifty yards or less to go. The boar was slowing down, favouring its wounded side, as he surged past it and struck with his lance. The strike was good, catching the boar just behind the ear and killing it outright.

But in order to get in close he'd pulled his horse in too tight; when the boar dropped, the horse couldn't clear it in time and stumbled, throwing its rider. The Duke fell badly, landing in a nest of granite boulders. His shoulder was smashed and so was his right eye-socket, and when he tried to get up, he found he couldn't move. The dogs had caught up by then and swarmed over him to get to the boar; behind them came the front-riders, who saw what had happened and tried to lift him, until his roars of pain frightened them and they put him down again. It was dark by the time a surgeon arrived from the castle, and the lamps wouldn't stay lit in the rain and wind. Later, they said that if they'd got to him earlier, or if the huntsmen hadn't tried to move him, or if the surgeon had been able to see the full extent of the damage, it might have been different; as it was, there was very little they could do.

Valens wasn't there when it happened. He'd stayed back from the main hunt, pretending he had a headache; then, just after they'd driven the square spinney, he'd been knocked down by an old fat sow nobody had realised was there. As it happened he'd suffered nothing more than a bruised shin and a mild scat on the head; but by then he'd had about as much of his extended birthday as he could take, and lay groaning and clutching his knee until they'd loaded him on the game cart and driven him back to the castle. When they brought Father home, Valens had been lying on his bed reading a book (a twelve-thousand-line didactic poem about bee-keeping). Everyone was sure his father was going to die, so Valens was hustled down into the courtyard, where they'd rigged up a tent so they wouldn't have to risk taking the Duke up the narrow spiral stairs of the gatehouse.

'It's not good.' The Chancellor's face was streaked with rain, drops of water running off the spikes of hair plastered to his forehead. Like tears, Valens thought, but really only rainwater. 'Truth is, the doctor can't say how bad it is, not without a proper examination; but I think we should assume the worst.' He looked harassed, like a man late for an appointment who has to stop and chat with someone he daren't offend. 'Which means there's a great deal to be done, and not much time. The main thing, of course, is to secure the succession.'

It was as though he was talking a different language. 'I don't understand,' Valens said.

The Chancellor sighed. 'No, I don't suppose you do. Listen. You're nineteen, so in law you're still a minor. That means a three-year regency. So, who've we got? There's rules about this sort of thing, obviously, but the fact is that they don't- count for all that much when power's at stake. All it takes is a little bit of panic, and all hell's going to break loose.'

While he was still talking, Valens' mind had jumped ahead. It wasn't something he'd ever considered-because Father would live for ever, naturally-but now that the concept had been planted so violently in his mind, he was bright enough to see the implications. If there was a free-for-all power struggle in the Duchy, there were three obvious contenders: his cousin Count Licinius, commander of the Guards; his step-uncle Vetranio, commissioner of the mines, generally acknowledged as the main representative of the mining lobby; his cousin Count Torquatus, after Father the biggest landowner in the Duchy. Licinius had an army, but he was a cautious, unimaginative man, unlikely to take drastic action unless he felt himself threatened. Torquatus and Vetranio loathed each other, both on a personal level and as representatives of the wool trade and the mines; as such, either of them would be prepared to do whatever was necessary to stop the other getting power, and the easiest way of doing that would of course be to assume it themselves. If Vetranio won the race, Valens wouldn't give much for his chances of seeing his twentieth birthday. Vetranio was third in line of succession after his own nephew Domenicus, a seven-year-old boy that nobody would ever miss. With him and Valens out of the way, Vetranio would be Duke by right. He had thirty thousand silver-miners at his disposal, as against Licinius' six hundred Guards; Torquatus could maybe raise ten thousand men from the mountain pastures, but by the time they were mustered it'd be all over.

'What about you?' Valens asked. 'Would you do it? Please?'

The Chancellor looked at him through a curtain of rain. 'Me?'

'Yes, you.' Valens stepped forward. He was shorter by a head than the older man, and as he looked up the rain stung his eyes. 'If Father appoints you as regent before he dies, you'll be able to command the Guards. You can replace Licinius, arrest Vetranio, before they've even heard about this. With both of them out of the game, Torquatus will bide quiet and we'll be home and dry.'

'I don't know,' the Chancellor said. 'I'd be taking a hell of a risk. And besides, what if he won't do it? Appoint me, I mean. Or supposing he doesn't wake up-'

'Listen.' Valens caught him by the arm; it was thin and flabby under the heavy wool robe. 'You and I go in to see him, with the doctor and a couple of your people you can trust. We come out a minute or so later and make the announcement.' I shouldn't have to explain all this, he thought; he's supposed to be the politician. 'The doctor and your clerks will be the witnesses. It doesn't matter a damn what actually happens, if we're the only ones who know.'

The Chancellor looked away. Valens could see he was on the point of panic, like someone who's afraid of heights stuck up a ladder. Too frightened, he might well decide he'd be safer giving his support to someone with rather more power than a nineteen-year-old kid. 'It's all right,' Valens said firmly. 'This is something that's just got to be done, that's all. If we're quick and firm, there won't be any trouble. Go on; it'll all be fine.'

There was a long moment. Valens could see the Chancellor was past thinking rationally; he was waiting to fall, or be pushed, into a decision. 'Here's the doctor coming out,' Valens said. 'Get him, and two of your clerks. Go on now.'

The Chancellor nodded and did as he was told. Valens watched him talk to the doctor, saw him nod his agreement-and only then did it occur to Valens to wonder whether the doctor had any news, whether his father was alive, dead or dying. He pushed the thought out of his mind (because there was nothing he could do about that particular issue, but the succession had to be dealt with, and there wasn't anybody else to do it) and watched the Chancellor beckon over a couple of men-Valens knew them by sight, didn't know their names-and whisper to them. One of them looked worried, the other showed nothing. He went to join them.

'Ready?' he said.

The Chancellor nodded; the doctor tried to say something, but nobody was listening. Valens led the way into the tent.

His father was lying on a table; the clever folding table they took out for the after-hunt dinner, on which they laid out the best joints of newly butchered meat. From the doorway he looked like he was asleep; a step or so closer and Valens could see blood, the splintered ends of bones sticking out through incredible red gashes. For just a moment he had to fight to stay in there, with that mess.

'Dad?' he said softly.

'He can't hear you.' The doctor's voice, very nervous and strained. 'He passed out from the pain a few minutes ago. I don't know if he'll wake up again.'

Valens closed his eyes for a moment. 'What's the damage?' he said.

The doctor came a little closer. 'For a start,' he said, 'broken skull, collar-bone, three ribs, left forearm; but that's not the real problem. He's bleeding heavily, inside, and he's paralysed, from the neck down. There's several possible causes for that, but I don't yet know which it is.'

'You don't know?' Valens repeated.

'I'm sorry.' The doctor was afraid, that was it. Understandable; but it would only get in the way. 'Until I can do a proper examination.'

'I understand,' Valens said. 'And I know you're doing everything you can. Meanwhile, we need your help.' He turned to look at the Chancellor. 'Does he know what he's got to do?'

The Chancellor dipped his head slightly. 'They all do,' he said.

'Right.' Valens looked away from the body on the table. 'Then let's get on with it.'

In the event, there was no trouble at all. Count Licinius was in bed when a platoon of his own Guards brought him the letter and escorted him, gently but firmly, to a guestroom in the castle; it was perfectly pleasant, but it was on the sixth floor of the tower, and two men stood guard outside it all night. Vetranio made a bit of a fuss when the Guards came for him at his villa on the outskirts of the city. He had guards of his own, and there was an ugly moment when they started to intervene. A sword was drawn, there was a minor scuffle; Vetranio lost his nerve and came quietly, ending up in the room next to Licinius, though neither of them knew it until they were released a week later. By then, the doctors were pleased to be able to announce that the Duke had come through the dangerous phase of his injuries and was conscious again.

For Valens, that week was the longest of his life. Once Licinius and Vetranio were safely locked up and everything was quiet, he forced himself to go back down to the courtyard and into the tent. He freely admitted to himself that he didn't want to go. He had no wish to look at the horrible thing his father had turned into, the disgusting shambles of broken and damaged parts-if it was a cart or a plough, you wouldn't bother trying to mend it, you'd dump it in the hedge and build a new one.

There were many times during his vigil in the tent when he wished his father would die and be done with it. It'd be better for everyone, now that the political situation had been sorted out. He knew, as he sat and stared at his father's closed eyes, that the Duke didn't want to live; somewhere, deep down in his mind, he'd know what had happened to him, the extent of the damage. He'd never hunt again, never walk, never stand up, feed himself; for the rest of his life, he'd shit into a nappy, like a baby. He'd fought more than his share of wars, seen the terror in the eyes of men he'd reduced to nothing as they knelt before him; he'd far rather die than give them this satisfaction. In fact, Valens recognised, he could think of only one person in the world who wanted him not to die, and his reasons were just sentiment, nothing that would survive the brutal interrogation of logic. At some point in the first twenty-four hours he'd fallen asleep in his chair; he'd had a dream, in which he saw Death standing over the table, asking his permission to take his father's life away, like clearing away the dishes after dinner. It seemed such a reasonable request, and refusing it was a foolish, immature thing to do. You know I'm right, Death's voice said softly inside his head, it's the right thing to do and you're being a nuisance. He'd felt guilty when he ordered Death to go away, ashamed of his own petulance; and meanwhile, outside the door, he could near Licinius and Vetranio and Torquatus and the Chancellor and everybody else in the Duchy muttering about him, how if he couldn't even take a simple decision like this without coming all to pieces, how on earth did he imagine he would ever be fit to govern a country? He felt the leash in his hand, the thin line of rope that tethered his father's life to the tangled mess of bones and wounds on the table. If he let go, it'd all be just fine, it'd be over. He was only hanging on to it out of perversity, contrariness; they should come in, take it away from him and give it to a grown-up…

When he woke up, his father's eyes were open; not looking at him, but out through the tent doorway, at the sunlight. Valens sat up, stifled a yawn; Father's eyes moved and met his, and then he looked away.

I suppose I ought to say something, he thought; but he couldn't think of anything.

(Instead, he thought about his prisoners, Licinius and Vetranio, locked up like dogs shut in on a rainy day. Were they pacing up and down, or lying resigned and still on the bed? Had anybody thought to bring them something to read?)

He was still trying to find some words when the doctor came in; and he carried on trying to find them for the next four years, until his father died, in the middle of the night, on the eve of Valens' twenty-third birthday. But all that time Valens never said a word, so that the last thing he told his father was a lie: I won't go up to the round wood with you this afternoon, I've got a splitting headache coming on. Not that it mattered; if he'd been there, his father would still have ridden ahead after the boar, the outcome would have been the same in all material respects.

Someone had thought to have the boar flayed and the hide made into a rug; they draped it over the coffin when they carried it down to the chapel for burial. It was, Valens thought, a loathsome gesture, but Father would've appreciated it.

Valens was duly acclaimed Duke by the representatives of the district assemblies. There was a ceremony in the great hall, followed by a banquet. The Chancellor (Count Licinius, restored to favour; his predecessor had died of a sad combination of ambition and carelessness the previous spring) took him aside for a quiet word before they joined the guests. Now that Valens was officially in charge of the Duchy, there were a few niceties of foreign policy to go through.

'Now?'

'Now,' Licinius replied emphatically. 'Things are a bit complicated at the moment. There's things you should be aware of, before you go in there and start talking to people.'

Badly phrased; Licinius was an intelligent man with a fool's tongue. But Valens was used to that. 'You didn't want me to have to bother my pretty little head about them yesterday, I suppose?'

Licinius shrugged. 'The situation's been building up gradually for a long time. When it all started, you were still-well, indisposed. By the time you started taking an interest again, it was too involved to explain. You know how it is.'

'Sure.' Valens nodded. 'So now you're going to have to explain it all in five minutes before I go down to dinner.'

Licinius waited for a moment, in case Valens wanted to develop this theme. The pause made Valens feel petty. 'Go on,' he said.

So Licinius told him all about it. Count Sirupat, he said, had kept strictly to the letter of the peace treaty that had been signed when Valens was sixteen. There hadn't been any trouble on the borders, and there was no reason to suppose he wasn't entirely sincere about wanting peace. But things weren't all wine and honey-cakes; Sirupat had seven daughters-

'I know,' Valens interrupted, a little abruptly. 'I met one of them once; it was when the treaty was signed, she was here as a hostage.'

Licinius nodded. 'That was the fifth daughter, Veatriz. Anyway, shortly after your father had his accident, my predecessor made a formal approach to Sirupat for a marriage alliance. In his reply, Sirupat-'

'Just a moment,' Valens interrupted. 'Marriage alliance. Who was supposed to be marrying who?'

Licinius had the grace to look away. 'One of Sirupat's daughters. And you, obviously.'

'Fine.' Valens frowned. 'Which one?'

'I'm sorry?'

'Which one of Sirupat's daughters?'

Licinius frowned, as if this fascination with trivial details perplexed him. 'The fifth or the sixth,' he said. 'The older four had already been married off, and there's some interesting implications there, because-'

'The fifth or the sixth.'

'They're both pleasant enough, so I've heard. Anyway, Sirupat gave his agreement in principle, as you'd expect, because it's the obvious logical move. Before anybody had made any definite proposals, I took over as Chancellor; which shouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference, obviously, but suddenly Sirupat wasn't answering my letters. Next thing we hear, he's negotiating a marriage with his sister's eldest son, Orsea.'

'Orsea,' Valens repeated. 'You don't mean my cousin Orsea, from Scandea?'

'Him,' Licinius said. 'Well, you can imagine, we were a bit stunned. We all assumed it was just tactical, trying to get us to up our offer, so we decided to take no notice. I mean-'

'I remember when he came to stay, when I was a kid,' Valens said. 'I suppose he was a hostage too, come to think of it. I just assumed he was here because he's an off-relation. But we got on really well together. I've often wondered what became of him.'

'Not much,' Licinius said. 'He may be related to our lot and their lot, but really he's nothing more than a small-time country squire; spends his time counting his sheep and checking the boundary fences. But if he were to marry Sirupat's daughter, that'd make him the heir presumptive, when Sirupat goes on-'

'Would it? Why?'

Licinius pulled a face. 'It's complicated. Actually, I'm not entirely sure why; I think it's because the first three weren't born in the purple, and the fourth came along while the marriage was still nominally morganatic. Anyhow, there's a damn good reason. So in practice, Sirupat was practically appointing him as his successor.'

'Assuming the marriage goes ahead,' Valens pointed out. And if it's just a bargaining ploy…'

'Which is what we'd assumed,' Licinius said. 'But apparently we were wrong. They were married last week.'

For a moment, Valens felt as though he'd lost his memory. Where he was, what he was supposed to be doing, what he was talking about; all of them on the tip of his tongue but he couldn't quite remember. 'Last week,' he repeated.

'Bolt out of the blue, literally,' Licinius said. 'No warning, no demands, nothing. Just a report from our ambassador, not even formal notification from the Court-which we're entitled to, incidentally, under the terms of the treaty.'

'Which daughter?' Valens said.

'What? Oh, right. I'm not absolutely sure. I think it was number five; which'd make sense, because they've got rules over there about the order princesses get married in. But if it was number six, the effect'd still be the same. Now I'm not saying it was meant as a deliberate provocation or an act of war, but-'

'Can you find out?' Valens said. 'Which one it was, I mean.'

'Yes, all right. But like I said, it's not really important. What matters is, Sirupat has effectively rejected our claim-some might say the treaty itself-in favour of some nobody who just happens to be a poor relation. In basic diplomatic terms-'

'Find out which one,' Valens cut him off. 'Quickly as possible, please.'

He could see Licinius getting flustered, thinking he hadn't got across the true magnitude of the political situation. 'I will, yes. But if you're thinking that's all right, I'll just marry number six, I've got to tell you that'd be a grave miscalculation. You see, under their constitution-'

'Find out,' Valens said, raising his voice just a little, 'and as soon as you hear, let me know. All right?'

'I've already said yes.'

'That's splendid.' Valens took a deep breath. 'That'll have to do as far as the briefing goes, we can't keep all the guests waiting.'

Licinius had his answer within the hour. Yes, it was the fifth daughter, Veatriz, who'd married Count Orsea. Licinius' scribbled note reached Valens at the dinner-table, where he was sandwiched in between the Patriarchal legate (a serene old man who dribbled soup) and a high-ranking Mezentine commercial attache. Consequently, he read the note quickly, tucked it into his sleeve and carried on talking to the legate about the best way to blanch chicory.

The next day, for the first time since his father's accident, he announced a hunt. Since everybody was unprepared and out of practice, it would be a simple, perfunctory affair. They would draw the home coverts in the morning, and drive down the mill-stream in the afternoon. The announcement caused some surprise-people had got the impression from somewhere that the new Duke wasn't keen on hunting-and a great deal of anxious preparation and last-minute dashing about in stables, kennels and tack rooms. Any annoyance, however, was easily outweighed by relief that things were getting back to normal.