Evil for Evil

11

Ziani Vaatzes, returning to Civitas Vadanis at the head of his wagon train after the successful decommissioning of the silver mines, encountered a heavily laden cart going the other way on the northeast road. Because the road was narrow and deeply rutted, with dry-stone walls on either side, the driver of the cart tried to pull into a gateway to let Ziani's convoy pass. In doing so, unfortunately, he ran his offside front into the stone gatepost, knocking off the wheel and swinging his cart through ninety degrees, so that it completely blocked the road.

Ziani sighed. He was tired of sleeping in the bed of a wagon on top of a sharp-cornered packing case, and he wanted to get back to the place that he was starting to think of, in stray unguarded moments, as home. He told his driver to stop, and slid off the box onto the ground, nearly turning his ankle over as he stepped on the ridge of a rut.

"All right," he called out, "hold it there. Leave it to us, we'll have you out of there."

The driver of the wrecked cart looked down at him with a sad expression on his face.

"Fuck it," he said. "I'm on a bonus if I get this lot delivered on time."

"You might still make it if you shut up and leave it to us," Ziani said. "This is your lucky day. I've got sappers, engineers and blacksmiths, with all the kit."

The carter noticed him for the first time, stared, then grinned. "You're the Duke's Mezentine, right?"

"Yes."

"The engineer, right?"

"Yes."

The grin spread. "In that case, you crack on."

It turned out, of course, to be considerably worse than it looked. The cart wasn't just missing a wheel, it was also comprehensively wedged into the gateway. Daurenja, who'd sprung down off his wagon like a panther as soon as the swearing started and crawled right under the damaged cart, re-emerged with the cheerful news that the axle had splintered and two leaves of the spring had snapped. He suggested unshipping the long-handled sledgehammers and smashing the cart up into small pieces; that would get the road clear, and the carter would be able to claim the cost of a new cart from the war department.

"That's no bloody good," the carter snapped. Something about Daurenja seemed to bother him quite a lot. Perhaps it was the ponytail, which Daurenja had adopted while he was working in the mines; probably not. "It's not my cart, it's the Duke's, I can't take responsibility. Besides, this lot is urgent supplies. I got a special through-pass. You can see it if you don't believe me."

"It's all right," Ziani interrupted, "nobody's going to smash up your cart." He glanced round at the mess, looking for inspiration to help him reach a quick decision. "We'll have to take the gatepost down, and the wall," he said. "Meanwhile, Daurenja, I want you to take some of the men, get the busted axle off; see if you can fix it with rawhide or letting in a splice or something; if not, use your imagination and think of something. You," he went on, turning his head, "I can't remember your name offhand. Unload the portable forge, the one with the double-action bellows, get it set up and lay in a fire. Also, I'll want the two-hundredweight anvil and whoever's best at forge-welds."

"Can't weld the busted spring, you'll wreck the temper," someone muttered. Ziani looked to see who it was, but someone else's head was in the way. "You'd have to anneal the whole unit and re-temper it."

"I know," he said. "And that's what we're going to do, so I'll need a water barrel or something like that for a slack tub. I'm assuming there's no oil left, so you'll have to quench in water and go nice and steady. And if anybody wants to show his ignorance by saying you can't butt-weld hardening steel, now's his chance. No? Fine, carry on." He nodded to the carter. "Let's leave them to it," he said. "Let me buy you a drink. So happens we've got a couple of bottles of the good stuff left."

The carter had no objection to that. Ziani retrieved the bottle and led him well away from the noise of the work. "Sorry about all this," he said, sitting on the wall and cutting the bottle's pitch seal with his knife.

"That's all right," the carter said. "Just look where you're going next time."

Ziani passed him the bottle. "So," he said, "what've you got there that's so important?"

The carter glugged five mouthfuls, then passed the bottle back. "Sulfur," he said.

"Sulfur," Ziani repeated. "Seems an odd thing for the government to want shifted in a hurry. Where are you taking it?"

"Me," the carter replied, "as far as the Eremian border. Someone else is taking it on from there, and bloody good luck."

"Quite." Ziani handed the bottle back untasted. "Not my idea of a quiet life, smuggling supplies into occupied territory. Specially if it's something useless, like sulfur. I mean, you'd feel such a fool if the Mezentines got you, wasting your life for something that's no good to anybody."

The carter pulled a face. "I just drive the wagon," he said. "No business of mine what the stuff's for."

"That's right," Ziani agreed. "Trouble is, you've got me curious now. Tell you what; let's have a look at that pass of yours. It might have the name of the bloke this lot's going to."

The carter glowered at him. "Why would I want to show you that?"

Ziani smiled pleasantly. "Because I'm asking you," he said, "and my men have got your cart in bits all over the road. Of course, if you'd like to put it back together again on your own…"

The carter must have seen the merit in that line of argument, because he fished down the front of his shirt and pulled out a folded square of paper. Ziani took it and his eye slid down the recitals until a name snagged his attention.

"Miel Ducas," he said aloud. "Small world."

The hardest part, unexpectedly enough, turned out to be getting the cart unjammed. Only once the gatepost and the wall had come down was it possible to see what was really holding it; both nearside wheels, wedged deep in a rut. Because of the angle the cart stood at, there was no chance of using Ziani's wagon teams to pull it free, which meant they had to dig it out. That proved to be no fun at all. Whoever had built the road, a very long time ago, had laid a solid foundation of rubble and stones, over which two feet of mud had built up over the years. The ruts cut through the mud into the stone, and that was what was binding the wheels. Because the cart was in the way, there was no room to swing a sledge to drive in the crowbar. One of the men had his wrist broken by a careless hammer-blow, whereupon the rest of them declared they'd had enough and reminded Ziani of the basically sound idea of smashing the cart up into little bits. He had to shout to make them calm down. After that, nothing got done for a long time. The carter got hold of the other bottle while Ziani's attention was distracted, and went away somewhere. One of those days.

"All right." Ziani pulled himself together. He was, after all, in charge, though he really didn't want to be. "This is what we're going to do. Daurenja, I want you to…" He looked round. He'd become so used to the thin man hovering a few inches away that he was surprised to find he wasn't there. Instead, he was on his knees under the cart, peering up at something. "Daurenja," he repeated, "leave that, for crying out loud, I want you to-"

"Sorry." Daurenja seemed to bounce upright, a movement that no ordinary human being should have been capable of making. "I was just wondering, though."

Ziani sighed. "What?"

"This is probably stupid," Daurenja said, "but why did you decide against lifting the cart up out of the ruts, rather than excavating?"

It was one of those questions that makes your head hurt at the best of times. "What are you talking about?"

"Well," Daurenja said, "I was just looking at the cart chassis, and I can't see why we can't just raise it on levers and keep putting stone blocks underneath until we've lifted it up out of the rut. Presumably you considered that and saw why it wouldn't work. I guessed it was because there wasn't anything in the chassis strong enough to take the strain of levering, which was why I was looking at the spring mountings, which I thought looked plenty strong enough, but-"

"Fine," Ziani said, "let's try that."

It worked. They raised the cart on crowbars, piled stones from the broken-up wall under it and floated it over the ruts, which they then filled with gatepost debris. The spliced axle and welded spring went back in without a hitch. It couldn't have gone more smoothly if they'd been practicing it for months.

"There you go," Ziani said to the carter, as he staggered across to inspect his perfectly refurbished cart. "Piece of cake. Sorry for the inconvenience."

"Took your time, didn't you?" the carter replied. It took him several goes to get up onto the box. "If I miss my transfer at the border…"

"Drive fast," Ziani advised him. "Don't worry about the road surface, you'll make it. A few bumps and jiggles never hurt anybody."

The carter gathered his reins, whipped on the horses and set off at a rather wild trot. A minute or so later, once he'd left the Mezentine and his convoy well behind, he began to wonder whether the second bottle had been such a good idea after all. But then he hadn't expected that they'd be able to fix the cart so quickly, or at all. So much, he thought, for the Duke's famous Mezentine engineer. Sure, he was good at shouting and ordering people about, but it hadn't been him who sorted it in the end. It was that long, thin, evil-looking bugger with the flat nose, and he was no Mezentine. He frowned; then a jolt shot him three inches into the air, and when he landed his teeth slammed together, and he whimpered. Maybe it'd be a good idea to slow down a little.

Screw the Mezentine, he thought. And anyway, aren't we supposed to be at war with those buggers? So, really smart, having one of them in the government, or whatever. The Duke was all right, but he was too trusting. The creep was probably a spy, or a saboteur, and he'd seemed very interested in the cargo. The carter thought about that, as his horses slowed to an amble. He wasn't sure who bothered him more, the Mezentine with his black face and his loud mouth, or the thin, snake-faced one with the pony-tail. Nasty pieces of work, both of them, and now he was going to be late and lose his bonus.

The providence that looks after honest working men was there for him, however, and brought him to the border with a good hour to spare. They grumbled at him, claiming he'd kept them waiting and cost them money, but he couldn't be bothered to get into an argument about it. They gave him his docket, which was what he needed to get paid, shifted the barrels from his cart to theirs, and trundled away, until the dust swallowed them. He dismissed them from his mind and went for a drink.

The team who'd undertaken to carry the sulfur from the border into Eremia consisted of an old man and his twelve-year-old grandson. Before the war they'd been held in low esteem by the authorities on both sides of the border, who'd accused them of smuggling and all manner of bad things. Now they were patriotic heroes, which they didn't mind, since heroism paid slightly more, and the risks were roughly the same. The work was no different, and they were good at it. The thing to remember, the old man never seemed to tire of saying, is to stay off the skyline and go nice and steady; that way, you get to see the bogies long before they see you. If his grandson had any views on the subject he kept them to himself.

They reached the Unswerving Loyalty at noon on the third day of their journey; exactly on time. As usual, the place was so quiet it appeared to have been abandoned. The old man drove his cart into the stable, untacked the horse, fed and watered it and went to find himself a drink. The boy stayed with the cart as he'd been told. He felt, not for the first time, that this was both unnecessary and unjust. Nobody was going to steal the barrels, because there wasn't anybody here, and if he was old enough to drive the cart and see to the horse, he was old enough to drink beer. He'd argued this case on several occasions with no little passion, but his grandfather never seemed to be listening.

He sat still and quiet on the box for a minute or so, until he was sure the old fool wasn't coming back; then he jumped down, took out his penknife and started carving his initials into one of the doorposts. He was proud of his initials; a Vadani border guard had taught him how to write them, when they'd been arrested and there was nothing to do for hours. The L was easy to carve, just straight lines, but the S was a challenge, and he was never quite sure which way round the curves were meant to go. One of these days he'd meet another educated man and ask him, just to make sure. He was proud of his knife, too; it had a hooked blade and a stagshorn handle, and there was a mark on it that meant it was genuine Mezentine.

He got the L done and was scoring the outlines of the S when he heard a footstep behind him. Quickly he dropped the knife onto the ground and scuffed straw over it with his foot, at the same time leaning against the gatepost to cover up his work.

"It's all right," a man's voice said. "I used to do that when I was your age."

"Do what?" the boy said warily.

"Carve my initials on things." The man was tall; quite old, over thirty; his face was all messed up with a scar. "Trees, mostly. If you cut your initials into a tree, they get wider as the bark grows. Bet you didn't know that."

The boy frowned, suspecting a trap. "No, I didn't," he said. "What do you want?"

The man walked past him. He was looking at the cart, but he didn't look much like the sort of man who usually took an interest in the stuff they carried. "Is that my sulfur you've got there?" he asked.

"Don't know," the boy replied. He bent down, picked up his knife and put it away. A beam of light shone through a hole in the roof, sparkling off specks of floating dust. The man was climbing up into the cart. Duty scuffled with discretion in the boy's mind. "You can't go up there," he said.

The man laughed. "It's all right," he said, "this lot's meant for me, I've been waiting for it. Here," he added, reaching in his pocket and taking out a coin, "have a drink on me, somewhere else."

The coin spun in the air, and the boy caught it one-handed. It was, of course, an obvious bribe, implying that the man had no business being there. On the other hand, it was a silver quarter-thaler. The boy clamped his hand firmly around it and fled.

Miel counted the barrels. Six. He stooped, put his arms around one of them, bent his knees and lifted. Two hundredweight at least. Of course, he had no idea whether it'd be enough, since he didn't know what Framain and his daughter wanted the stuff for. None of his business, anyway. He had owed them a debt, which he could now discharge honorably, as the Ducas should, and that'd be that. Once it was delivered, the rest of his life would be his own.

Sulfur, he thought. No earthly good to anybody, surely.

He looked round for the boy, then remembered he'd paid him to go away. No matter. He got down, left the stable and went back to the tap room.

There he saw an old man, presumably the carter. He was holding a big mug of beer, using both hands. Miel sat down opposite him and waited until he'd taken a drink.

"Is that your wagon outside?" he said.

The old man looked at him. "Who's asking?"

"My name's Miel Ducas," Miel replied, "which is what it says on your delivery note."

The old man grounded his mug, carefully, so as not to spill any. "Ah," he said.

Miel smiled. "Let me buy you another of those," he said.

"No thanks. This'll do me. I got a long drive ahead of me, I need a clear head."

"Talking of which." Miel edged a little closer. "Are you in any hurry to get anywhere? I need someone to deliver that lot for me, and nobody around here seems to have a cart for hire. It's not far," he added, "five days there and back. Ten thalers."

The old man thought about that. "All right," he said. "Give me a couple of hours to catch my breath, mind."

"Fine. I'll go and get my things together. I'll meet you back in the stable."

Just to be on the safe side, he bought provisions for seven days. Finding the inn from Framain's hidden combe hadn't been a problem; all he'd had to do was keep his eyes fixed on the mountain. The return journey, by contrast, called for a higher level of navigational skill than he had any reason to believe he possessed. He'd taken note of landmarks along the way, of course, but by the very nature of the country those were few and far between. No wonder the Mezentines had left this region well alone. The map Jarnac had given him was pure fiction, needless to say. The only halfway accurate maps of these parts had been the old estate plans compiled over the years by the Ducas bailiffs, stored in the map room at the estate office at the Ducas country house. They were all ashes now. As the cart lumbered out of the inn courtyard on a half-remembered bearing into the dust and rocks of his birthright, Miel wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he thought he was playing at.

"Do you know this country at all?" he asked the old man hopefully.

"No," the old man replied. "Not once you're past the Loyalty. Nobody lives there," he explained, reasonably enough. Miel stirred uncomfortably and looked across at the boy. He was cutting bits off a piece of old frayed rope with his knife, and humming something under his breath.

"Not to worry," Miel said. "I know the way."

Two days' ride southeast of Sharra Top; true, but lacking in precision. There had been a road; he remembered that, but of course he'd had to be clever, and he'd abandoned it on the second day of his ride from the hidden combe. Well, it had always been a fool's errand. If he rode southeast for two days into the bleak, featureless moor and then gave up, turned round and headed back to the Unswerving Loyalty, would the Ducas honor be satisfied on the grounds that he'd done his best? No, but never mind.

After a long, silent day they stopped nowhere in particular. The boy jumped down, unharnessed and hobbled the horse. The old man curled up on the box like a dog and went to sleep. The boy crawled under the cart. Miel climbed down, propped his back against a cartwheel, and closed his eyes. He was weary and sore from the incessant jolting of the cart, but he'd dozed off too often during the day to be able to fall asleep. A fox barked once or twice in the distance. He tried to remember all he could about his previous visit to Framain's house, but the most vivid images had no bearing on matters of navigation. So, unwillingly, he thought about other things.

The war: well, as far as he was concerned, it was over. He had no idea how many of his men were still alive, or whether they were still trying to fight the Mezentines. It didn't really matter. According to Jarnac, Duke Valens had withdrawn his support, and without help from the Vadani, it was pointless going on. If the war was effectively over, where did that leave him? Interesting question. Under other circumstances, he'd already be in Civitas Vadanis, with Orsea, doing what little he could as a leader of the Eremian government in exile. But Orsea didn't want him. On that score he'd been left in no doubt whatever. Orsea had known for some time that he was still alive, but he hadn't recalled him, or dropped the charges against him, or written him a single letter. He'd asked Jarnac, back at the inn, if Orsea had said anything about him. Jarnac had looked unhappy and tried to change the subject, until Miel forced him to admit that Orsea hadn't mentioned him once.

That shouldn't have been a surprise. Orsea and his wretched, all-destroying sense of right and wrong, his fatal compulsion to try and do the right thing; and, needless to say, he applied the same rules to those closest to him. Apparently he was convinced that Miel had betrayed him, and therefore he could never forgive him. He'd recognize, of course, that this meant wasting an ally, a valuable one, though he said so himself; it meant that, because Miel was organizing the resistance, Orsea could have nothing to do with it. That hadn't passed unnoticed; why, his men had asked him over and over again, isn't the Duke out here with us; why hasn't he even sent us a message of encouragement? Men who'd asked him that question and received the inevitably vague and unsatisfactory replies he'd managed to cobble together generally deserted a day or so later. Why fight for their country if their country had no use for them? Poor Orsea, he thought, still trying to do the right thing.

Which left him, the Ducas, with no master to serve, no work to do, no purpose… That was an extraordinary concept. The Ducas can't exist without duty, just as a flame can't burn without air. Take it away and you're left with a man-thirty-odd, moderately bright but with no skills or abilities relevant to his own survival; thinner, permanently cured of any dependence on his customary affluence and luxury, an adequate rider, swordsman and falconer, just about capable of boiling an egg. Worse specimens of humanity managed to stay alive and make some sort of living, but why would anybody bother to live without a function? The Ducas without duty was no more than a mechanism for turning food into shit and water into piss, and a cow or a pig could do that just as well, if not better.

But here I am, he reflected; here I am, sitting beside a cart in the middle of a desert I used to own, in company with an old man, a boy and a quantity of powdered sulfur, trying to find a man called Framain and his daughter. I owe my life to Framain, who found me and pulled me out of a bog. The sulfur is my way of repaying the debt. But I wouldn't have been alive to contract that debt if the scavengers hadn't found me after the battle, and I repaid them by killing two of them and stealing their only horse. Ah, but they were going to sell me to the Mezentines, so that makes it all right. Except that it doesn't. I was theirs to sell, and I stole myself from them; and now it's too late to make it up to them, because Jarnac slaughtered them for daring to lay violent hands on the Ducas. It's a funny old world.

At one point he slid into a doze; woke up some time later to find it was still dark, and he had a crick in his neck. The problem, however, had managed to solve itself while he'd been asleep. Silly, really; it was as plain as the nose on his face. If he was no longer the Ducas, then nothing he did mattered anymore. There were no more rules. When he'd fallen asleep he'd still been an Eremian nobleman and the slave of duty, but he'd woken up a free man, worthless and burdened by no obligations of any kind.

The first thing he did was feel in his pocket and count his money. Twenty-seven Vadani thalers, not counting what he owed the old man and the boy for the cart-ride. Hardly a fortune, but most people in the world start off their lives with considerably less. He also owned a stolen horse (but that was back at the Unswerving Loyalty; he doubted whether he'd ever see it again), some clothes, two boots and a hanger. Not entirely without value, therefore; not, at least, until someone crept up and robbed him in his sleep.

For no reason, he remembered the book he'd glanced at, back in Framain's house. A technical manual of some kind; lots of different formulae for mixing up paint.

His brief nap might have played hell with his neck, but apparently it had done wonders for his brain. Paint recipes; the locked barn, and other buildings with chimneys, all hidden away in a dip in the ground where nobody would think of looking. Eremia had fallen to the Mezentines, but Framain hardly seemed to have registered the change of management. Miel laughed out loud, and into his mind drifted a memory of the pantry at the Ducas house in Civitas Eremiae, at any time before the siege and sack. Also the table in the main hall, set for a formal dinner, or any of the bedrooms that had a window-seat, which would always be decorated with a vase of fresh flowers. Every morning, someone had got up before dawn with a basket and walked down to the market to buy them-no, not a basket, there were twenty-seven windows facing the inner courtyard, they must've had to take a wheelbarrow, or a small cart, to shift all those flowers. He tried to call to mind the occasions on which he'd noticed the flowers in his house, and managed to think of four. The rest of the time they'd been there-they must have been, because it was a rule of the house-but presumably nobody had noticed them, once the chambermaid had pulled the dead stalks out of the vase and replaced them with the fresh ones. So much duty done, so little notice taken.

Never mind; he was through with all that now, and at least he had an idea what Framain and his daughter were up to in their secret lair, and why they needed sulfur. The only annoyances were that it had taken him so long to figure it out, and that he'd never find the place again and have the satisfaction of knowing he'd been right.

But if he did manage to find them… Well, he had power over them, simply by virtue of having guessed their secret. It was a thing of value in itself; quite possibly valuable enough to the Mezentines to buy him his life, if he chose to sell it to them, as the scavengers had proposed selling him. Alternatively… Well, he was a tolerably quick learner, and he had nothing better to do.

As he turned the possibility over in his mind, he became aware of someone standing over him. He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Not yet broad daylight, but enough to see the old man by.

"Soon as you're ready," he said.

"I'm ready," Miel replied.

"Fine." The old man didn't move. "Which way?"

Miel grinned. "Look for smoke," he said.

It was as though he'd told the old man to keep a sharp eye out for dragons. "Why?" he said. "Nobody lives here."

Miel shook his head. "Yes they do," he said. "And every morning they light a big furnace. My guess is they burn peat mostly, because it costs them money to bring in charcoal, so they save it for special occasions. I'm guessing that you can't see the smoke from Sharra; that's why they live where they do. But we're a day closer, so we're in with a chance."

The old man looked rather taken aback, and Miel could sympathize; something of a shock to the system to realize that you've been dragged out into the middle of nowhere on the whim of a lunatic. But he was under no obligation to consider their feelings, as the Ducas would have been. He was paying them to do as they were told, and that was all there was to it.

It was the boy who saw the smoke. At first, he muttered the news to the old man, who assumed he was making it up and ignored him. It was probably only pique at not being believed that induced him to mention it out loud. What mattered was that he was right. Just the faintest smeared line, like a woman's smudged eyeliner. Miel looked at it for a moment, then grinned.

"That's the place," he said.

As they got closer, Miel started to recognize things that had imprinted on his mind the first time: a shallow, dusty pit scraped out of the heather by sheep rubbing their necks against a large stone; a thorn tree wrenched sideways by the wind, its roots standing out of the soil on one side like fingers; a brown pool in a dip fringed with bog cotton; a single wooden post, gray with age, leaning at an angle, tufts of wool lodged in the splinters of its gaping grain. For some reason, all these were as familiar as sights he'd seen since childhood but somehow depressing, so that he felt like a man returning to a home he'd been glad to leave, many years earlier.

When they were half a mile from the smoke, it began to rain. It was no more than a few fat wet drops, but the wind slapped them into his face so that his eyes fogged as though he was crying, and he had to keep wiping them with his fingers. The old man pulled his collar round his face and shrank back into his coat-he reminded Miel of an animal in a field, stoically miserable. The boy scrabbled about with some old, bad-smelling sacks and crawled under them. They, of course, would be turning round and going back this way as soon as the barrels had been unloaded. They'd have the rain on their backs, if it settled in, tapping them on the shoulder like an annoying acquaintance you'd prefer to ignore.

Just like last time, the house came as a complete surprise, standing up out of the combe as though the creaking of the wagon had startled it. Miel smiled. This time, he had a fair idea what the man and his daughter were so busy with that strangers could creep up on them without them noticing. He told the old man to pull up outside the barn and wait, then jumped down and ran up the broad stone steps. The door was shut but not padlocked; he thumbed the latch and walked in.

Framain was standing on the other side of a long, massive plank bench, covered with jars, pestles, trays, pots and small metal tools. For a moment he froze, a stunned look on his face, as though Miel had walked straight through the wall instead of the door.

"You again," he said.

"I've brought your sulfur," Miel said quickly.

Framain stared at him. Not anger, or fear, hatred or suspicion. Horror. "What do you know about sulfur?" he said quietly.

"What's he doing here?" Miel hadn't noticed the girl, in the shadows at the back of the barn. She came forward like an animal preparing to defend her young from a predator, and Miel had taken a step back before he realized he'd done it.

"The sulfur you asked for," he said to her. "I brought it, just like I said I would."

Framain didn't say anything, but the silence wasn't hard to interpret. Now it was the girl's turn to look horrified.

"You brought it," she repeated.

"Yes." Miel grinned. Too late now to worry about being popular. "Not the three cartloads you asked for, I'm afraid, because there wasn't that much to be had, but there ought to be enough to be going on with."

"You asked him to get us sulfur?" Framain said.

"I didn't think he'd actually…"

Just a slight adjustment of his shoulders, but Framain conveyed with exquisite precision the information that as far as he was concerned, his daughter no longer existed. "That was very kind of you," he said, his eyes fixed, as far as Miel could gather, on his throat. "But really, you shouldn't have gone to so much trouble," he went on, in a voice that made Miel want to get out of there as quickly as possible. "My daughter is inclined to prattle away when we have visitors, says the first thing that comes into her head. People who know us have learned to ignore her. I suppose I should have warned you, but I was hoping you wouldn't run into her."

Miel had to remind himself that in his time he'd faced down charging boar and Mezentine heavy cavalry. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to intrude. But I was sure you'd be glad of the sulfur. I assume you need it for making the glaze."

There was a knife on the bench, about eight inches from Framain's hand. It was short, with a blade hooked like an eagle's beak and a plain bone handle. Miel watched Framain look down at it and think for a moment.

"What are you talking about?" he said.

"The glaze," Miel repeated, his eyes fixed on the knife. "I know what it is you're doing here. She didn't tell me," he added quickly, "I figured it out for myself. You're trying to work out the formula for the glaze the Mezentines use on their translucent white pottery, the stuff that sells for twice its weight in silver." As well as the knife, he could see Framain's hand on the bench. It was perfectly still. "I'm guessing that you discovered a deposit of the right kind of china clay somewhere on the lower slopes of Sharra. That's why you stayed here, even when the war came and anybody with any sense cleared out. Nobody anywhere in the world can make that stuff except the Mezentines, because they control the only source of the clay. If you've found another deposit, or something that'll do instead, I can well understand why you wouldn't leave here, no matter what the risk. But of course it's no good being able to make the pottery if you can't glaze it, and that's what you haven't quite figured out yet; which is why you're still tinkering with ingredients rather than churning the stuff out by the cartload from that huge, expensive kiln you had built out the back there."

"Actually, I built it myself." Framain had a crooked smile on his face. "Just me and my son, who's dead now, and the man who used to be my business partner. It took us five years. I don't think there's a better one anywhere, not even in the Republic."

Miel nodded toward the knife. "Are you going to kill me or not?" he asked.

Framain slumped a little against the bench, and sighed. "It crossed my mind," he said. "Actually, it was quite close for a moment. If the knife had been longer or a bit closer to hand, I'd definitely have been tempted. But I weighed up the relevant factors. You're younger than I am, probably quicker and better at fighting; and by then, I realized killing you would undoubtedly cause more problems than it'd solve, because if you managed to get sulfur you must have friends, probably among the Vadani, and…" He shrugged. "I contemplate a lot of things I never actually do," he said. "I'm not sure whether it's a strength or a weakness."

Miel could feel the moment draining away, and allowed himself to relax a little. "So I was right, then," he said. "Good. I'd have felt rather stupid if I'd made that speech and it turned out I'd jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion."

The girl took a step forward, but Framain shifted just a little and she stopped, as if the line of his shoulder was a barrier she knew she wasn't allowed to cross. She stepped back, and her father's shadow obscured her face. "Quite right," Framain said. "And you're right about the other thing, too. It's an obsession with me, I admit it. Actually, I'm surprised you didn't recognize my name; I'd have thought the Ducas would know such things."

"Sorry," Miel said.

Framain smiled. "That puts me in my place. We were never nobility, you understand. My father was really just a farmer, though he'd have hated to admit it." He leaned forward until his elbows were resting on the bench, his head hanging down as if in shame. "When he died we lost the farm as well; there was some money left, enough for a reasonable man, but not for me. My father had a Mezentine dinner service; it was about the only decent thing he had left, at the end. When I sold it, I was amazed at how much it was worth; I found out how valuable the stuff was, and I thought, if only I could discover how it was made, I could get some money and buy back our inheritance. Typical muddle-headed thinking, just what you'd expect from a spoiled middle-aged man suddenly taken poor; nothing would've come of it, except that I met a man who told me he'd worked out the formula and found a deposit of the clay." Framain scowled, and waited for a moment, as though he had heartburn. "When he was able to prove he was telling the truth, we became partners; we came here, built this place, everything was going beautifully well. Within a few months we'd fired our first batch. It came out perfect; all we needed was the glaze, and we'd be in business. But…" He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "We gave up trying to find the glaze formula and built the kiln; we were still experimenting, of course, but failure was so frustrating that we felt the need to accomplish something tangible, and building a kiln was hard work but at least we could do it. And then…" He stopped. The girl turned away. "My partner and my son quarreled about something; it was trivial, a technical matter to do with our experiments. I'd always known my partner was a vicious man with a murderous temper, but I was sure he'd learned to control it. Apparently not. He killed my son and nearly killed me, and then he went away. Unfortunately…" Framain smiled. "Unfortunately, he was the clever one, the scientist. He taught me a great deal, a very great deal, but probably not enough; either that or I simply don't have the spark of genius that he had, and all the hard work in the world won't make up the deficiency. My daughter, however, shows promise, even if she hasn't learned discretion-for which, of course, I have only myself to blame." Framain yawned, and Miel got the impression that it had been a long time since he'd talked so much; he seemed tired, the sort of fatigue that comes from unaccustomed exertion. "And there you have it," he said. "You can understand why it'd be plain foolishness to kill you, just to preserve a secret that isn't really worth anything."

"And the sulfur," Miel said quietly. "It's one of the ingredients for the glaze."

"Not even that." Framain grinned sourly. "We've been using it as a kind of flux, to draw impurities out of the compound. I found a deposit of the stuff not far away, many years ago, but it's all used up now. I told my daughter; apparently she got the idea that without it we couldn't continue our work, but that's not really true. There are better fluxes. It's quite possible that using sulfur's been holding us back, even." He lifted his head. "But I'm sure you aren't interested in technical details. I have an idea you'd already worked out our secret before you came here. What are you going to do?"

Miel looked at him. "I don't know," he said.

Framain shook his head. "It could well be that the Mezentines would give you safe conduct in return for it," he said. "I confess, I've assumed so, ever since the start of this ridiculous war. I told myself that if the worst came to the worst and they happened to find us, or if we were betrayed, I could save myself and my daughter. To be honest, I'm not so sure. The clay makes good fabric, you need to know what you're looking for in order to tell it apart from the real thing; but I'm sure you know how fussy they are about their precious specifications. It could be that using a different clay would count as a mortal sin, and they'd never countenance it. Or else it'd cost too much to mine it and cart it to make it worth their while; I really don't know."

"I could stay here," Miel said, "and join you."

There was a long silence. Eventually the girl said, "Doing what?"

Framain turned his head and said, "Be quiet."

"But Father," she said, "he'd be no use, he doesn't know anything about it, and we can't spare the time to teach him, he's useless. He'd just get under our feet."

Framain looked Miel in the eye and grinned a rather sardonic apology. "My fault," he said. "I taught her metallurgy when I should have been teaching her manners."

"She's right," Miel said. "I don't know the first thing about making glazes. I don't really know much about anything, apart from how to fight wars and manage an estate. But…" He pulled a sad, ridiculous face. "There must be something I can do to help, digging peat or shoveling clay or sweeping the floors. I probably wouldn't do it very well, because I haven't had much experience, but I could try. I'm no use to anybody else, myself included."

"That still doesn't explain-" the girl started to say, but Framain shut her up with a gesture.

"It's entirely up to you," he said. "Stay here, if you want to. There's usually plenty of food, and no doubt you can find somewhere to sleep in the house. In fact, you can have it; we don't use it very much, as you've probably gathered for yourself. And if you really feel that fetching and carrying and cleaning for us is what you want to do, I'm sure we can accommodate you. In fact, you could start by chipping the soot out of the furnace hearth. It needs doing, and I've been putting it off for months."

"Fine," Miel said. "If that'd help."

"Father," the girl said angrily, then fell silent.

"That's settled, then," Framain said. "Though if I were you, I'd have something to eat and drink first, and change into some scruffy old clothes, if you've got any. It's pretty filthy work, chipping soot." He shrugged. "You can borrow some of my things, I'm sure they'll fit you. Mahaud'll find you something."

The girl scowled, then walked quickly past them both and out of the barn, slamming the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, Framain seemed to relax.

"I find her very wearing sometimes," he said, "but there you are. It's natural enough, I'm sure, for fathers and daughters to get on each other's nerves if they're cooped up together for too long." He paused, then looked at something on the opposite wall. "I assume she's why you came back."

Miel didn't reply.

"In which case," Framain went on, "you have my blessing; which, together with a tin cup full of water, is worth the cup. You have friends at Duke Valens' court?"

"Yes," Miel said. "For now, anyway. My cousin Jarnac…"

"Lines of supply," Framain said carefully, "have been a concern to me over the years. We always used to buy our food from two local farmers-I believe they thought I was either an outlaw or a lunatic hermit of some kind, but I paid well, in cash. They moved out when the Mezentines took Civitas Eremiae; sensible fellows, I don't blame them at all. Since then, I've bought supplies through the innkeeper at the Unswerving Loyalty, but that's a very dangerous arrangement. If your Vadani friends or your followers in the resistance could supply us, it'd be a great weight off my mind. And then there are certain materials." He straightened his back, like a man lifting a heavy weight. "Over the last month or so I've seriously considered giving up because of the difficulties the war has caused me; none of them insuperable on its own, but taken together…" He turned back and looked at Miel, as if trying to decide whether or not to buy him. "In return, you can have pretty much anything you want from me. It's quite simple, really. If I succeed and find the formula, and start producing pottery in quantity, there'll be so much money, we won't know what to do with it. If we fail, what does any of it matter? In any case," he went on, with a slight shrug, "I think I'm past the point where I care about wealth and getting back what I've lost. The life I wanted to recapture has gone forever, thanks to the war. It'd be nice to be a rich man, I'm sure, but all I really want to do is solve the glaze problem, just so I can say I've done it. As I think I told you, I'm quite resigned to the fact that I'm obsessed with this ridiculous business. Lying to yourself just makes everything so dreadfully tiresome, don't you find?"

Miel found looking at him made him feel uncomfortable. "I just want something to do," he said. "And working here, helping you, would make a nice change from the war."

Framain considered him for a moment, then laughed. "Don't be so sure," he said. "When you've known her as long as I have, you'll probably wish you were back in the cavalry."

Framain was right about one thing. Cleaning out the furnace hearth was a filthy job. Miel worked at it until the lamp ran low and started guttering, at which point he realized he was too tired to carry on anyway. He'd been attacking the dense crusts of soot as though they were the enemy of all mankind, chipping and flaking them away with an old blunt chisel Framain had given him, stopping every hour or so to sweep away the spoil. As far as he could tell, the job was going to take the rest of his life in any event; his first savage onslaught had hardly made an impression on it. Like fighting the Mezentines, he thought, as he slumped against the wall and caught his breath; you get rid of a whole sackful, and still there's an infinite quantity left to do. Perhaps it was better that way. Leading the resistance, Framain's fruitless search for the formula, hacking soot out of the hearth; people doing pointless, impossible things because they felt they had to, for reasons that didn't stand up when you looked at them logically. It was pretty clear that Framain believed he was in love with the girl (Mahaud; a grim name, he'd always thought). It was entirely possible that he was right about that, but even then it was only part of the explanation. Somehow, he had no idea why, he felt at home here, in the secret house in the hidden combe in the middle of nowhere. For some reason, he felt it was the right place for him to be. As for Framain and his obsession, that was exactly right, too. Pottery, of all things; tableware. Plates, cups, vases, scent-bottles, little dishes and saucers-perfectly true, in the world he'd left behind (no idea whether it still existed), rich men like the Ducas had paid ludicrous prices for the stuff, not because they liked it or because it did a job better than wood or metal, but simply because of what it was. In the old world, it'd be like finding a vein of silver; just dig it out of the hillside and take it away and suddenly you'd be rich, and all your troubles would be over. A small thing like the world changing behind your back could easily be overlooked; and besides, what harm did fine pottery ever do anybody, compared with war and weapons, Vaatzes' scorpions, politics and diplomacy and the destruction of great cities? A man whose business that sort of thing had been might well do worse than the pottery trade. You could go to sleep at night knowing that even if you succeeded, nobody was going to die as a result (but then he thought of the look on Framain's face as he tried to decide whether or not to reach for the knife. Obsession is just another kind of love, after all).

He picked up the lamp. It flickered alarmingly; he didn't want to be stranded there in the dark all night. He went slowly and carefully, to make sure it didn't go out. It'd be easier, he decided, if he was there because he was in love with Mahaud. There were precedents for that sort of thing, it was like the stories in books, whose heroes and heroines were generally dispossessed princes and princesses anyway, which made it all perfectly acceptable and in keeping with the established rules. If he'd fallen in love with the hermit wizard's daughter, it'd be all right, he'd know why he was there and what he was supposed to be doing. In order to win her heart, he'd purify his soul by honest manual labor, purging himself of the gross and decadent superfluities of his privileged upbringing and still ending up with a suitable wife of good family. In the process, no doubt, he'd help the wizard complete his work, which would be a good thing-maybe they could use the pottery money to hire an army that'd drive the Mezentines out of Eremia; something like that.

He crossed the yard. The door to the house was open. Framain and Mahaud slept in the hayloft above the barn, so as not to waste two minutes every morning getting to work; he had the house to himself. Earlier he'd found a bed, buried under a pile of old, damp sheets that looked and smelled as though they'd been used for straining something. He didn't mind. He'd slept on the bare ground, in mud, among rocks; compared with what he'd been used to lately, this was luxury fit for the Ducas himself. He pinched out the lamp, lay back and tried to empty his mind, but he couldn't help thinking about the scavengers, wondering if Jarnac had left any of them alive, and if so, what had become of them. To them, this place really would be luxury, as remote and incomprehensible as Fairyland.

He forced them out of his mind, like a landlord evicting tenants, and fell asleep listening to the scuttling of mice.