Evil for Evil

14

It had been, everybody agreed, an efficient wedding. The necessary steps had been taken in the proper manner, the prescribed forms of words had been used in the presence of the appropriate witnesses, the register had been signed and sealed by all the parties to the transaction, and the young couple were now thoroughly married, fixed together as tightly as a brazed joint.

Unfortunate, perhaps, that neither of them had seemed particularly happy about it. More unfortunate still that both of them had made so little effort to dissemble their feelings. The Vadani people were, on the whole, fond of their duke and didn't like to see him looking miserable. Accordingly, there had been a rather strained, thoughtful atmosphere at the ceremony itself, and the scenes of public joy that greeted the departure from the chapel had been distinctly subdued. Never mind; the mortise doesn't have to love the tenon, just so long as they fit snugly together and accept the dowel.

"It's only politics, after all," someone he didn't know said to Orsea, as they filed in to the wedding breakfast. "Now that's all over they can stay out of each other's way and get on with their lives. Well, not entirely out of each other's way, there's the succession to think of. That aside, it's a pretty civilized arrangement."

Orsea smiled weakly. When he'd married the Countess Sirupati, heiress to the duchy of Eremia, he had only seen her two or three times, in crowds, at functions and the like. On his wedding day, he hadn't recognized her at first-he'd known that he was going to be marrying the girl dressed in the big white gauzy tent thing, but when she lifted back the veil, it hadn't been the face he'd been expecting to see. He'd got her confused in his mind with her second sister, Baute. A few days later, of course, he'd found himself more deeply in love than any man had ever been before or since…

"No reason why they shouldn't get along quite amicably," the man was saying. "By all accounts she likes the same sort of thing he does-hawking, hunting, the great outdoors. So long as she's got the common sense not to disagree with him about which hawk to fly or whether to drive the long covert before lunch, they ought at least to be able to be friends; and that matters so much more than love, doesn't it, in a marriage."

Something to do with roads, Orsea thought; deputy commissioner of highways, or something of the kind. Whatever he was, the man was extremely annoying; but the line was tightly packed and slow-moving, and he had no hope of getting away from him without a severe breach of protocol. Even so…

"Do you think so?" he said, as mildly as he could manage. "I think love's the only thing that matters in a marriage."

"You're a bachelor, then."

"No."

"Oh." A shrug. "In that case, congratulations and I'm delighted for you. In my case…" The annoying man looked sad for a moment. "Pretty straightforward," he said. "My father had the upland grazing but virtually no water, her father had the river valley but no summer pasture. At the time I was head over heels for the local notary's daughter. Carried on seeing her for a bit after the wedding-wife didn't make a fuss, pretended she didn't know, though it was obvious she did really. I don't know what happened after that. I just sort of realized that love is basically for teenagers, and when it comes to real life for grown-ups, you're far better off with someone who's moderately pleased to see you when you're around, but who leaves you in peace when you've got things to do. When you're trying to run a major estate as well as holding down an important government appointment, you simply haven't got time to go for long hand-holding walks in the meadows or look sheepish for an hour while she yells at you for forgetting her aunt's birthday. Nowadays we get on famously: I've got my work, she messes about with tapestries and flowers and stuff, and she's got her own friends; we meet up once a day for breakfast and generally have a good old natter about things…"

They reached the table. Mercifully, the annoying man was sitting right down the other end. So, apparently, was Veatriz. He could see the top of her head over a short man's shoulder.

"You're Duke Orsea, aren't you?" There was a female sitting on his left; a nondescript middle-aged woman in green, wearing a massive necklace of rubies.

"That's right," Orsea said, as though confessing to a misdemeanor. "I'm sorry, I-"

"Lollia Caustina," the woman replied promptly. "My husband's the colonel of the household cavalry. So, what did you think?"

About what? Orsea thought; then he realized she must mean the wedding. "Very nice," he mumbled.

She started to laugh, then straightened her face immediately as a hand reached past her shoulder and put down a bowl of soup. "Game broth," she said sadly. "I might have known. Something the Duke killed for us specially, I assume, but as far as I'm concerned he needn't have bothered. I thought it was absolutely fascinating."

"I'm sorry?" Orsea said.

"The wedding. Fascinating. Politically, I mean."

"Oh," Orsea said.

"I mean, take the exchange of rings," the woman went on. "You saw who was carrying the tray with the bride's ring on it. Calvus Falx, of all people. If that's not a smack in the face for the moderates-"

"I see," Orsea lied. A bowl of soup materialized in front of him, and he reached for his spoon. The woman, he noticed, slurped when eating soup.

"And don't get me started on the presents," she was saying. "Talk about making a statement; they might as well have built a stage in the market square and read out speeches. Chancellor Carausius' gift to the bride's uncles; you saw it, of course."

Orsea tried frantically to remember what he'd given to who. "Well, no, I-"

"Hunting knives," the woman said bitterly, "silver inlay, Mezentine. I had a good look when nobody was looking, the makers' marks were there plain as anything. Of course, it's pretty obvious what all that was about; but if he thinks he's going to convince them that easily, I'd say he's in for a nasty surprise. They may be savages, but they aren't stupid. They know as well as we do, trading at fourth hand through intermediaries for finished manufactured goods is going to cost us an absolute fortune, and with the mines all closed up…"

Luckily, she didn't seem to expect anything from him apart from the occasional interested-sounding grunt, and he was good at those. Accordingly he was able to turn his mind out to graze on the implications of something the annoying man had said. They ought at least to be able to befriends; and that matters so much more than love in a marriage. He thought about that, and wondered if it was true. Veatriz-he loved her, or he had loved her very much, but they'd never been friends, not as he understood the word. He hadn't needed her for that; he'd always had Miel Ducas.

(Who'd always loved her, ever since they were children, and who should have married her, except that that would've meant the Ducas getting the throne, which would have been a disaster politically; and who loved her enough to conceal the letter from Valens, who loved her as a friend, because to him there was no difference; and for that Miel had been disgraced, and Valens had come to save her, thereby bringing down ruin on his people, just as Orsea had ruined Eremia. He imagined a map, with great big areas on it hatched in red: these regions laid waste for love…)

To his unspeakable relief, as soon as the soup was taken away and replaced with a cured venison salad, the woman turned away sharply, like a well-drilled soldier, and started talking to the man on her other side. Free, Orsea ate some lettuce and a bit of meat (felt and tasted like honey-cured rawhide) until the woman on his right said, "Excuse me, but aren't you Duke Orsea?"

He hadn't even noticed her. She was wearing a dress of deep red velvet, down the front of which she'd spilled at least one full spoon's worth of soup. She was round-faced, steel-haired, with eyes that bulged slightly, like a dead rabbit.

"That's me," Orsea said. "Who're you?"

"Calenda Maea, at your service," she replied, with a short, vigorous nod. "Specializing in heavy materials. Iron ore, lumber, best prices anywhere." She grinned. "So you're the genius who thinks we should all nail sheets of tin to our carts and take to the hills."

Orsea blinked. "I'm sorry," he said. "I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"It's all right, I know it's supposed to be hush-hush, I won't embarrass you. Let's talk about something else. Your pet Mezentine, the one who's giving all the juicy orders to the Falcata sisters. Is money changing hands somewhere I don't know about, or does he actually enjoy being ripped off?"

Orsea sighed. "I think you may have got me mixed up with someone else," he said. "I haven't got anything to do with Vaatzes these days. In fact, I don't really do anything."

She frowned. "You're on the emergency council, aren't you?"

"That's true," Orsea said. "But they've stopped telling me when the meetings are, so I don't go anymore."

"Oh. So you aren't really involved with purchasing."

"Me? No."

"Ah." She shrugged. "My mistake. So, who should I be talking to about bulk consignments of quality scrap iron?"

Orsea shrugged. "No idea," he said.

"Fine." The woman frowned at him, as if to say that he had no right to be there if he wasn't any use to her. "So what do you make of it all, then?"

"I don't."

"What? Oh, I see. No comment at this time, is that it?"

"If you like."

She nodded. "Sounds like the administration's got something up its sleeve it doesn't want anybody knowing about, in that case," she said. "Playing its cards close to its chest, in case word gets out and sends materials prices rocketing. Fine, we'll find out anyway, we've got other sources of information, you know. No, what I meant was, the marriage. What do you reckon?"

"None of my business," Orsea said.

She laughed. "Politicians," she said. "Well, please yourself. Me, I think it's an absolute disaster. Good for business, of course, because all those soldiers, they're going to need feeding and clothes and boots and tents and all that. We do a lot of business with the Cure Doce-carriage is a nightmare, of course, but we manage; no such word as can't, my mother used to say-so I think we'll be getting our slice sooner or later, even if your chief of procurement is sleeping with the Falcatas. But otherwise…" She shrugged, and the contents of her dress rolled like the ocean in fury. "I hope I'm wrong, of course, but I know I'm right. Fair enough, I'm no great authority on happy marriages. You've just got to look at the idiot I ended up with to see that. But I reckon, if you're going to get married at all, it ought to be for the right reason, and well, there's only one reason for getting married, isn't there?"

"Is there?"

"Are you serious? Of course. If you're going to marry, marry for love. Not for money, not to please your family, and certainly not for cavalry. I mean," she went on with a sour expression on her face, "you've just got to look at her. Miserable, sharp-faced bitch. Oh sure, they've done a fantastic job training her, she can sit on a chair and eat with a knife and a spoon and talk just like people, but that doesn't change what she is. Still, that's the price you pay for sitting in the top chair. I guess he's done well to hold out as long as he has done."

Orsea frowned. "Valens, you mean?"

She nodded. "They've been on at him for years to get married, but he's dug his heels in and fought them like crazy, every time. Nice girls, too, some of them. They used to say he was, well, you know, but I never believed that. I mean, if that was true, he'd have married the first one they threw at him, just to get them all off his back, and then got on with his own way of doing things, so to speak, and no bother. Trouble with Valens is, though, he's a romantic."

Orsea couldn't help reacting to that. "You think so? I'd have thought he's the most down-to-earth man I've ever-"

She laughed; genuine laughter, but not kind. "You're kidding, of course," she said. "No, our dashing, moody young duke is a play-actor. He plays at being himself, if you see what I mean. He's like an artist, creating one great masterpiece: himself, of course. He's his life's work. Mostly he sees himself as Valens the Great, best duke the Vadani ever had. Other times, though, he's Valens the dark, driven, passionate lover-and that only works, of course, if you can't have the one you really want. Settle him down with a nice cheerful girl with a sense of humor, he'd pine away and die. That's what all this is about, of course. If he's got to marry someone-grand self-sacrifice to save the duchy in its darkest hour-he picks the most impossible girl anybody could imagine: Cure Hardy, dour, miserable, wouldn't know a joke if it burrowed up her bum. You can't help feeling sorry for him, though. Well," she added thoughtfully, as if she'd just remembered something. "You'd be the exception, of course. I expect you're breathing a big sigh of relief, now today's over. Though of course you never had anything to worry about. Not his way."

The temptation to pour the contents of the oil-cruet down the front of her dress was one of the strongest forces Orsea had ever encountered in his life. He resisted it-epic poems should have been composed about that battle-and instead shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know what you mean," he said. "And I don't really want to talk about the Duke's private life, if it's all the same to you."

"All right," she said, with a grin. "Let's talk about niter."

For a moment, Orsea was sure he'd misheard her. "What?"

"Niter." Big smile, revealing many teeth, all different shapes and sizes. "Stuff you get when you boil up a big load of dirt off the floor of a chicken run or a pigsty; when all the water's steamed off, you're left with a sort of white powder. They use it for preserving meat."

Orsea nodded slowly. "And you foresee a demand for preserved meat because of the war. Rations for the soldiers."

"Stands to reason," she said. "They'll be crying out for the stuff, when we evacuate. Not to mention rations for the Duke's dowry; don't suppose they eat bread, or porridge, though I suppose they may prefer their meat raw. Pull it off the bone with their teeth, like as not. Anyhow, I've got a customer who wants all the niter he can get, and I know for a fact the bloody Falcatas have got all the domestic stocks tied up-contrary to the public interest, I call it, cornering the market in essential supplies when there's a war on. So I thought, there must be loads of chicken coops in Eremia, and nobody much left to take an interest in them, if you see what I mean. And my lot, the Merchant Adventurers-well, I'm not saying we've got a relationship with the Mezentines, that'd be a gross overstatement and not very patriotic, of course; but trade's got to go on, hasn't it, or where would we all be? So what I'm saying is, the fact that any possible niter deposits may happen to be in occupied territory wouldn't be the end of the world, so to speak. Not absolutely fatal to a deal, if everything else falls into place."

Orsea shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "We probably had chickens in Eremia; in fact, I'm fairly certain of it. But where they lived and who looked after them-"

"Doesn't have to be chickens," she said. "Gould be pigs. Bats, even. You get a cave where bats have been roosting for a good many years, that's a real treasure-trove. Anywhere there's shit, basically, or other sorts of animal stuff rotting down. I heard somewhere you can make niter from the soil of an old graveyard." She smiled at him. "You must've had them in Eremia."

Orsea sighed. "I wouldn't be at all surprised," he said. "But the answer's no, I can't help you. Maybe if you got in touch with someone in the resistance-"

"Them? Oh, they're ancient history, now Valens has cut off the money. Thought you'd have known that, it being your duchy."

"So you deal in minerals, then?" Orsea said, polite and brittle as an icicle. "I thought you said you were in lumber and iron ore."

"Bulk commodities," she replied. "All the same to me. Of course," she went on, "the big thing coming up's going to be salt, thanks to the marriage. Beats me, though. Everybody's talking about salt, how these savages have got access to the salt pans and how we're going to get it all and salt's going to be the new silver. What nobody seems to have thought about, however, is the fact that there's a bloody great big desert between them and us, and nobody can get across it with a caravan or even half a dozen carts. Have you heard how many of the princess' entourage died crossing the desert on their way here? Shocking. They just don't value human life the way we do." She wiped her lips on her napkin, and picked up a partridge leg. "I mean, I reckon I'm reasonably smart, I like to think I know what's going on; but if someone's cracked that particular problem, they haven't told me about it. So," she went on, and Orsea took a deep breath, enduring each second as it came and went, "they can have the salt business and much good may it do them. Meanwhile, there's other stuff in the world that wants buying and selling, and if they want to waste their time on salt, that's fine by me. You're sure about the niter, are you? All right, how about sulfur? There's been a lot of people talking about it lately, so maybe there's a market coming up…"

Thinking back on it later, Orsea couldn't say how he survived the rest of the wedding breakfast; but he managed, somehow. Valens and his new bride got up and left the Great Hall; there was a short pause, and then the rest of the high table filed out; once they were gone, there was a general polite push-and-shove for the exits. The horrible woman in the red dress was still talking at him when the currents parted them. He didn't stop until he was safe, fifty yards down the long cloister. Then he remembered: he was invited to the afternoon hunt, which meant fighting his way back to his rooms to get changed. Praying fervently that he wouldn't bump into the dreadful woman, he turned back and forced his way upstream until he reached the arch that led to the courtyard. Then he picked up his heels and ran.

"Where did you get to?" Veatriz demanded as he burst through the door. "You'd better get ready, we'll be late."

He was already lifting the lid of the clothes press, nosing about for a clean tunic. "You're coming?"

"Well, yes. Had you forgotten?"

He looked at her. She'd changed already, into a plain, straight green gown and low-heeled red shoes. "What? No, sorry." He scowled. "I got trapped at the breakfast talking to this appalling woman, she's jangled my brains so badly I can't think. Yes, of course you're coming too. Where the hell is my suede jerkin?"

She sighed. "You won't want that," she said, "not for hawking. Besides, you'll boil. You want a light linen tunic and a silk damask cotehardie."

"Oh. Have I got…?"

"Yes. In the trunk."

He nodded, slammed the press shut and started digging in the trunk like a rooting pig. "Shoes," he said.

"Boots. You're riding, remember? Wear the ones you had on yesterday."

"They're horrible."

"They were a present from Valens."

"He won't notice if I-"

"He's just the sort who would," she snapped. "When are you going to realize, we've got to be polite to these people?"

He stood up and looked at her. There was a great deal he wanted to say, more than he'd wanted to say for a very long time. He looked away and pulled off his shirt.

"Come on," she said. "Think how it'll look if we keep the whole party waiting."

In the event, they were neither late nor early, and nobody seemed to have noticed that they'd arrived. The main courtyard was filled with horses and grooms (marry for love, not cavalry, the woman had said), falconers and austringers and the hawks themselves on their wrists, bizarre in their tasseled hoods. Orsea realized that he knew hardly anybody there.

"Who's that smiling at us?" he hissed in his wife's ear.

"Pelleus Crux," she whispered back. "Something to do with…"

He didn't hear the rest of what she said, because a hawk bated next to him, its wing slapping his face as it shot off the falconer's wrist and stopped abruptly, restrained by the jesses.

"I'm sorry," said a familiar voice. "I'm new at this, and I guess I must have…"

Orsea peered round the falcon and saw an unmistakable face; brown. "Hello," he said.

Ziani Vaatzes grinned sheepishly at him. "Would you do me a great favor," he said, "and get this stupid bird off me?"

Veatriz giggled. "Go on," she said. "The poor thing's scared out of its wits."

"The same," Ziani replied gravely, thrusting his wrist in Orsea's direction, "is probably true of the bird. Not," he added, "that I care, so long as somebody else takes it."

Orsea smiled, and nudged his finger under the hawk's claws. It stepped up onto it, and he said, "Untie the jesses, I can't take it otherwise."

"The what?"

"The leather strings round its legs. They're tied to your arm."

"Are they? So they are." Ziani fumbled for a moment, and the jesses dropped. Orsea grabbed them quickly with his left hand and tucked them into his right fist. "I'm very sorry," Ziani was saying. "Some fool came and shoved this thing at me. I got the impression it's meant to be a great honor, but-"

"It is," Orsea said. "What you've got here is a peregrine. Nice one, too."

"Peregrine," Ziani repeated. "Hang on, I know this. The peregrine is for a count-"

"Earl, actually," Orsea said. "A count would have a saker. But you're close." He frowned. "Have you been reading King Fashion?"

Ziani nodded. "Not that it's done me much good," he said. "It's hard memorizing stuff when you haven't got a clue what any of it means." He pulled a face, as though concentrating. "You're a duke, so you ought to have a falcon of the rock, whatever that's supposed to be."

Orsea laughed. "Actually, nobody knows, it's been the subject of learned debate for centuries. Most people reckon it means either a gyrfalcon or a gyrfalcon tiercel, but there's another school of thought that reckons it means a goshawk, even though they're short-winged hawks and not really falcons at all." He clicked his tongue. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm told that falconry is the second most boring subject in the world, if you don't happen to be up on it. I can't remember what the first most boring is. Hunting, probably."

Ziani shook his head. "Engineering," he said. "Trust me, I've seen the glazed look in people's eyes when I've been talking at them too long."

"Well, I won't contradict you," Orsea said sagely. "Though I reckon fencing's got to be pretty close to the top of the list, and Mannerist poetry, and estate management. All the stuff I actually know something about," he added with a grin, "which says something or other about an aristocratic education." Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Veatriz; she had that fixed smile that meant her attention was elsewhere; the men were talking, her job was to keep still and look respectably decorative. Of course, he told himself, he didn't think like that; perish the thought. On the other hand, he could have a fairly animated conversation with a relative stranger, but only ever talked to her in questions-where's my shirt, what time are we supposed to be there, did you remember to bring the keys? Well, he thought, marriage. When you know someone as well as you know your wife, there's not a great deal that needs saying out loud (he didn't believe that, but it sounded comfortably plausible). "Anyhow," he said, a little too loudly, as if he'd just caught himself nodding off to sleep, "I'll look after this beauty for you, if you don't want…"

"Please," Ziani said, with a shudder that was only mildly exaggerated for effect. "I'd only hurt it, or lose it or something."

"You don't like the idea of being an honorary earl, then?"

"Me? Not likely. I remember looking at that list in King Fashion, and there doesn't seem to be a species of bird of prey appropriate for a factory supervisor."

Orsea pursed his lips. "No," he said. "Unless a supervisor counts as a clerk, in which case you're entitled to a male sparrow-hawk. You wouldn't want one, though, they're useless."

"Orsea." Veatriz tugged very gently at his sleeve. "They've arrived."

"What? Oh." Orsea looked round, and saw a party of five, already mounted, on particularly fine matching dapple-gray palfreys. Valens was in front, looking pale and uncomfortable in gray velvet. Next to him, the savage woman-the Duchess, Orsea corrected himself-also in gray; next to her, the two uncles, overdressed in fringed, slashed buckskin over scarlet satin; bringing up the rear, the head austringer. All five carried hawks on their wrists. The Duchess looked solemn to the point of sourness, Valens looked apprehensive, and Orsea had the feeling that neither of the uncles was completely sober. Jarnac should have been here, he caught himself thinking; then he remembered that Jarnac (the frivolous, irresponsible buffoon who lived only for hunting and hawking) was still in Eremia, fighting what little was left of the war for the survival of his people. The question is, Orsea asked himself, what the hell am I doing here? To that, of course, there was no sensible answer.

Time to mount; he looked round, suddenly realizing that he no longer owned a horse; but there was a groom standing next to him (hadn't been there a second before, he could have sworn) holding the bridle of a tall chestnut gelding; for him, apparently. He handed the hawk to Veatriz, heaved himself into the saddle, kept still while the groom fussed over the stirrup leathers and the girth, then leaned forward and took the hawk back. It settled comfortably on his wrist, as though there was a socket there for it to snap into. Anybody looking at him would be forgiven for thinking he was somebody important: a duke, say.

Veatriz was mounted too; they'd given her a small, rounded bay jennet and a pretty little merlin, with a green velvet hood. He looked past her to see what they'd brought for Ziani, and was amused to see him heaped up (no other word for it) on the back of a huge, chunky black cob, with legs like tree trunks. He looked very sad, and was clearly trying not to think of how far off the ground he was. At once, Orsea thought back to the disastrous hunt that Jarnac Ducas had organized, not long before the siege of Civitas Eremiae; Ziani Vaatzes had contrived to get himself in the way of a wounded and very angry boar, and it had taken some pretty spectacular heroics from Miel Ducas to save his hide… But Orsea didn't want to remember Miel Ducas just then.

Movement. He legged his horse round to fall in with the rest of the party, looking for Veatriz; but she'd joined the column further up, and was riding next to a fat man on a huge roan mare, just behind the five dapple-grays. He frowned. He wanted to be closer to her, but it'd be a fearful breach of protocol to jump places, now that the party had set off. He glanced over his shoulder. Ziani was bringing up the rear, on his own, a few yards ahead of the hunt servants and the hawks. "Fine day for it," the man beside Orsea said.

"Not bad," he replied. "I'm sorry, I don't know…"

"My name's Daurenja," the man said; and Orsea looked at him properly. Extraordinary creature, he thought, somewhere between a rat, a toad and a spider, with a long pony tail of dank black hair. But he rode very well, with a fine upright seat, head up and shoulders back, and he wore the sparrowhawk on his wrist like some sort of ornament, the way fine ladies wished they could. "I work for Ziani Vaatzes, the engineer."

"I know Ziani," Orsea said. "He's just behind us, if you're looking for him."

"I know," the man replied. "But he's really not used to this sort of thing, and since I'm his assistant, I don't want to make him feel self-conscious. He'd feel I was showing him up."

Fair enough, Orsea thought; and if Valens saw fit to invite this character, that was entirely up to him.

"Mind you," the man went on, "I'm pretty rusty myself. Haven't been out with the hawks for years, not since I was a kid. My father kept a lanner and a couple of merlins, we used to go out quite often at one time, but…" He shrugged expressively. "Things got in the way since then, you know how it is. So this is quite a treat for me. I must say, I was surprised when I got the invitation. I'm guessing they only asked me because they assumed I'd refuse."

Orsea smiled bleakly. "Valens has got quite a reputation as a falconer," he said. "Chances are we're in for a good day."

"It's a privilege, I know," the man said. "Ever since I came here, I've been lucky enough to be associated with some exceptional people."

Orsea tried to think of something to say, but couldn't.

They rode down into the valley, along the river, past the lake toward the marshes. "Looks like we're starting with heron," the man said cheerfully. "I hope so," he went on, "that'd give your peregrine a chance to show what she's made of. That's a beautiful bird you've got there, by the way."

"Thanks," Orsea said awkwardly. "Actually, she's not mine. I think she belongs to the Duke."

The man nodded. "Conditions should be just right for her; nice warm day, the air rising. I'm not sure what I'll find for this old thing to fly at, unless we head up through the stubbles later on and put up a partridge or two. I don't think she's done much," he added sadly. "The woman I borrowed her from-merchant, down in the town-I think she only keeps her as a fashion accessory. I just hope I don't lose her as soon as I let her go. That'd be embarrassing."

"That's sparrowhawks for you," Orsea heard himself say, in the cheerful, slightly loud voice he used for being polite to people he'd taken an early, irrational dislike to. "They're as bad as goshawks for straying."

"Absolutely," the man said earnestly. "And so damn picky with their food, die as soon as look at you, out of sheer spite. My father bought one for my mother, but she couldn't stand the thing, so she passed it on to my elder brother to catch thrushes with. He'd had it six months, just starting to think he'd reached an understanding with it, and then suddenly one morning he comes down and finds it lying on the mews floor, dead as a nail. Put him right off hawks for life." He sighed, as though reliving the sadness of it all. "What I always wanted," he went on, "was a saker. Of course, there wasn't much river work where I grew up: partridges in the autumn, pheasant and woodcock in winter. A saker's much more of a moorland hawk, I always feel, though of course the best ones come from the south; I expect our new best friends favor them, for desert work."

At least, Orsea told himself, he doesn't seem inclined to talk about the wedding. Small mercies. Even so, it would be very pleasant to get back to his room later on, and bolt the door.

They were skirting the edge of the marshes, riding slowly, picking their way between tussocks of couch grass along a black, peaty sheep-trail. The sunlight glared off steel-gray pools, and the stink of bog mud was very strong. Through a curtain of reeds Orsea was sure he'd caught sight of ducks, floating in the middle of a broad pool, but apparently they weren't the quarry Valens had in mind. Orsea could just see him, well ahead of the rest of the party, riding with the master falconer at his side; they spoke to each other occasionally, a few low words. Suddenly Valens held up his hand. The column halted-Orsea had to rein in quite sharply to keep from barging into the tail of the horse in front-and Valens and the falconer went on ahead, moving slowly but with obvious purpose, as though looking for something they knew was there.

It proved to be a pair of herons, which burst out of a clump of reeds and soared upwards, pumping their wings as they gained height. Valens and the falconer were unhooding their hawks-the Duchess' goshawk, and a superb white gyrfalcon which the falconer had been carrying. By the time the hoods were off, the herons were black specks smudged by the glare of the sun, but the hawks lifted and followed their line, binding to them straightaway, overtaking them, turning them back and swooping when they were almost directly above Valens' head. The goshawk struck a second or so before the gyrfalcon, at which the Duchess' uncles cheered and clapped loudly; nobody else moved or made a sound. Presumably it was either a political point or a good omen. The falconer dismounted to break up the dead herons; he cut them open, twisted and tugged out the wing-bones, cracked them like a thatcher twisting a spar and teased out the marrow as a reward for the hawks. They ate it off the side of his hand, quickly and disdainfully, as though eating was hardly a proper activity for a well-bred hawk.

"Pretty flight," Daurenja was saying, "though the goshawk was a bit slow to bind, I thought. Still, she made up for it through the air."

Orsea nodded, since it was easier to agree than to think about what he was saying. The falconer was stringing the herons from his saddle by their necks; their heads drooped like wilted flowers. While he was busy, a dozen or so men appeared over the skyline, with four long, thin greyhounds and four spaniels at their heels: beaters, presumably, to drive the reeds.

"This is more like it," Daurenja was saying. "I guess they'd marked that pair of herons beforehand, and Valens wanted to start with them to try out the new goshawk, so he held the beaters and dogs back in case they put the ducks up early."

(There you are, then, Orsea thought. Another of life's mysteries solved.)

Valens, the falconer and the leader of the beating party were deep in conference, each of them pointing in a different direction and looking thoughtful and solemn. Evidently, there had been some unforeseen development that had thrown out their carefully framed strategy. If only we'd taken this much care over our tactical planning during the war, Orsea thought, I'd probably still be in Civitas Eremiae right now; either there or inside Mezentia, interviewing potential garrison commanders. The conference appeared to break up; then Valens must've changed his mind, because he waved the head beater back for a second round of negotiations, while three of the dogs lay down in the heather and went to sleep. The falconer came back and joined in, there was quite a bit more pointing; then Valens nodded his head decisively and everybody started to move at the same time. The dogs jumped up, their heads lifted; the beaters slipped the chokes over their necks and led them off, apparently back the way they'd just come.

"Wind direction," Daurenja commented sagely. "I don't know if you've noticed, but it's changed, coming from the south now, so I guess the beaters are having to sneak round the south edge and come up that way, in case the ducks spook and go back. We've just got to bide here till we get the signal that they're in position. Then he'll spread us out so we're surrounding the pond, and we'll all get a fair crack once the ducks get up."

"More than likely," Orsea muttered. Any pleasure he might have wrung out of the afternoon was being leached out by Daurenja's insufferable commentary. He wished he could think of some perceptive or erudite comment to make, so he could show Daurenja that he knew much more about the subject than he did. Nothing came to mind, however, and the peregrine was starting to shift about on his wrist. He yawned, and wished he was somewhere else.

"You've got to hand it to Valens, though," Daurenja was saying, "he definitely-hello, we're moving." Sure enough, the master falconer was waving his free arm in a circle, and the rest of the column was breaking formation. Orsea realized he hadn't been paying proper attention, and didn't know where he was supposed to go. Of course it'd be just typical if he ruined everything by being out of position…

He swallowed his pride. "Excuse me," he asked Daurenja, "but did you happen to notice…?"

"Where he wants us?" Daurenja nodded. "Over there, either side of that scrubby little thorn bush. Not a bad spot; we won't get any action as they're heading out, but we should get a couple when they start coming back in, if we're lucky."

"Thanks," Orsea replied, trying not to resent the us part of it. He legged his horse round and followed Daurenja, splashing through a shallow pool of brown water. He looked up; if Daurenja was right about the likely sequence of events, the sun would be in his eyes at the critical moment. Somehow, he wasn't in the least surprised.

He reached what he guessed was his assigned position, settled himself in his saddle and looked round to see what was going on. The hunting party was encircling the pool where he'd seen the ducks, standing off from it about twenty yards. He couldn't see the birds over the curtain of reeds, but he could hear the occasional reassuring quack. The stillness and quiet was familiar, at any rate, and gradually he could feel the excitement build inside him, as suspense and impatience tightened his chest. He found himself anticipating the possible flight lines of ducks leaving the pool, drawing lines and calculating angles in his mind. On these occasions he felt like a component in a machine, some part of a complicated trap, his movements directed and dependent upon the movements of the rest of the mechanism. That made him think of Ziani Vaatzes, who claimed to be able to see complicated designs in his mind; he glanced round for a sight of him, but couldn't pick him out. He looked down at the hawk on his wrist and saw it properly for the first time. His job was simple enough, though with plenty of scope for error. As soon as the ducks got up, he'd unbuckle the hood-straps and the jesses and throw the hawk, so that by the time it struck its first wingbeat, it would already have the necessary speed and be following the right line. On his day, he knew, he was very good at it. If it wasn't his day, he was perfectly capable of messing it up beyond all recovery. He hoped very much that nobody would be watching him. Then it occurred to him that he didn't know where Veatriz was. He looked round for her, and therefore was facing entirely the wrong way when a splash told him that the spaniels were in the water.

He lifted his head, trying to figure out where the angry quacking was coming from. He could hear the slapping of wingtips on water, someone was shouting angrily at a dog, the sun was blinding him and he was trying to undo the peregrine's hood-straps by feel, without looking down. One of the other sort of days, he decided, as the first duck shot directly over his head like an arrow.

Shouting, on all sides. Some of it was anger, some just loud communication. The loop under the buckle of the hood-strap was stuck; he had nothing to lever with, and his carefully trimmed fingernail was too short to pick it out. The falcon was objecting, not unreasonably, to his harsh and clumsy handling of it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daurenja making his cast-a sparrow-hawk could never bring down a duck; well, a teal, perhaps, or maybe the spaniels had put up some stupid little birds while they were crashing about among the reeds. Ducks were streaming overhead, most of them directly over him, and he was missing them all…

"Orsea, for crying out loud." He recognized Valens' voice; the agonized rage of a man who's planned a perfect treat for other people, and has to watch them waste it. "What's the matter with you? Get that bloody hawk in the air, before they all get away."

The hood came off-for a single, terrifying moment he thought he'd pulled the falcon's head off with it-and he fumbled with the jesses. Fortunately, they were more cooperative. Finding itself suddenly in a world of light and movement, the falcon spread its wings and bated, jerking sharply against the half-released jesses. One last furious fumble and he'd freed them. He started to move his arm for the cast, but the falcon had had enough. It hopped off his wrist into the air, struck a powerful beat and began to climb.

As he watched it disappear into the sky, Orsea felt overwhelming relief, as though he'd just been let out of prison. He looked round, and saw that everybody else was loosing their own hawks. I wasn't the last, then, he consoled himself, until he realized with a feeling of horror that, since he was at least nominally still a duke, protocol demanded that everybody else apart from Valens couldn't fly their hawks until he'd released his. He winced. Two or three ducks were still in the air; the rest were long gone. He'd contrived to spoil it for everyone, yet again.

Moving his head to look away, he caught Valens' eye, and winced again. It wasn't the contempt, so much as the complete lack of surprise. It occurred to him that, when they were assembling in the courtyard, they hadn't brought him a hawk; the peregrine had been entrusted to Ziani, who'd passed it on. Now he could see why.

He heard yelping: the dogs, running in to pick up ducks grounded by the falcons. That suggested that, in spite of his best efforts, it hadn't been a complete washout. He looked up at the sky. One or two ducks were coming back to the water, but he could see precious few hawks. He knew what that meant. Flown after quarry that had already gone too far, the hawks had gone looking for prey on their own account, and were unlikely to come back any time soon. The falconers would be spending the rest of the afternoon looking for them; if they'd killed and roosted, it'd mean someone would have to sit out all night under the roosting-tree, and then climb up at first light to catch the hawk before it woke up. All things considered, he couldn't have ruined Valens' wedding-day hunt more efficiently if he'd planned it all in advance.

Daurenja's sparrowhawk came back, with a thrush in its claws. That, Orsea reckoned, more or less put the seal on the whole sorry business.

No sign of his peregrine. He knew the drill: if his hawk hadn't come back within a certain time, he was obliged to notify the master falconer, who'd organize the search for it. Orsea wasn't looking forward to that. Knowing his luck, the peregrine would turn out to be a bird the master had trained himself, sitting up with it for four days and nights without rest or sleep; he wouldn't say anything, but the look in his eyes would be enough to kill a dragon. There'd be plenty of other people nearby, of course, waiting in line to report their own missing hawks; they'd be looking at him too, and not saying anything. Twenty yards or so away, he saw Veatriz, talking to her majesty, the new duchess. He could guess what they were saying. Excuse me, but do you happen to know who that bloody fool was who ruined everything? Well, yes, actually that's my husband.

Valens had joined them; Veatriz backed up her horse and moved a few steps away. He considered riding over and joining her, but decided that that would be unkind. A duck rocketed low over his head, returning to the water. Its cry sounded just like an ordinary quack, but Orsea knew it was laughing at him, and he could see the joke.

No need for clocks, sundials or counting under his breath. Orsea could feel the moment come and go, marking the time limit for the hawks to have come back before they were officially considered strayed. People were starting to look round for the master falconer. He heard Valens say, in a loud, carrying voice, "Well, I suppose we'd better forget about it for today." People murmured back, and muttered to each other. Yes, Orsea thought, just about perfect.

"That was a bit of a shambles, wasn't it?" Daurenja had materialized next to him, his sparrowhawk hooded and perfectly aligned on his wrist (no sign of the dead thrush; slung, presumably, into some bush). "What went wrong? I wasn't looking."

"It was all-" Orsea stopped. He'd caught sight of a couple of riders coming round the edge of the reeds. At first he assumed that they were the falconer's men, assembling to begin the search for the strayed hawks. Then he noticed that they didn't look right; not dressed for hawking, more like soldiers, in armor, with shiny steel helmets and lances. Also, their faces were very dark; like Ziani's.

"Who the hell are they?" someone said, close by.

Orsea looked over his shoulder, to see if Valens had noticed them, and saw five more just like them, coming up from the opposite direction. Strange, he thought; they're almost dark enough to be Mezentines, except that-

One of them nudged his horse into a slow canter, heading straight for a fat man in dark blue and his wife, who were both looking the other way. Someone shouted to them-Orsea couldn't quite catch the words-but they hadn't heard or took no notice. The dark-faced rider came up between them; the fat man's horse shied sideways, just as the dark-faced stranger lifted a hand with a sword held in it and slashed him across the back of the neck. The fat man slumped forward immediately, as though he'd been held up by a string which the sword had cut; the woman turned her head just as the dark-faced man brought his arm up and backhanded a thrust into her face. She fell sideways; her horse broke into a trot, dragging her by one stirrup, so that her head bounced up and down on the ground like a ball.

A woman screamed. The rest of the dark-faced men-Orsea didn't have time to count them, but at least two dozen-were moving forward too; the ones with lances were couching them, while the others were drawing swords. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" a man called out in an outraged voice, as if he'd caught them stealing apples.

Orsea remembered: the war. The one he'd brought here with him.

"Are those men Mezentines?" Daurenja's voice, frankly puzzled, groping for an explanation. For some reason, the sound of it stung Orsea like a wasp. I've got to do something, he thought; but that was stupid. They were soldiers, in armor; he was unarmed, in his pretty clothes, attending a wedding.

One of them crossed in front of him, no more than five yards away, stopped, and turned his head to stare at him. There was no malice in the man's dark eyes, just a flicker as he identified a legitimate quarry. He tugged lightly on his left rein, turning his horse's head.

Coming for me, Orsea thought; and then, Oh well. Then he remembered something, though even as he thought of it he doubted its relevance. He was a nobleman; except on a very few specific occasions, a nobleman doesn't leave his bedchamber without some kind of sidearm, even if it's just something decorative and stupid, such as the mimsy little stagshorn-handled hanger he'd hurriedly threaded on his belt as an afterthought, just before dashing out of the door. He felt for it and found it, as the dark-faced man closed with him. He'd actually managed to draw it halfway when something slammed very hard into the side of his head, squeezing all the light down into a pinprick.