Devices and Desires (17 page)

Talking of birds; we had to go somewhere recently, and we rode down the side of an enormous field, Orsea said it was beans
and I’m sure he was right. As we rode by a big flock of pigeons got up and flew off; when we were safely out of the way, they
started coming back in ones and twos and landing to carry on feeding; and I noticed how they come swooping in with their wings
tight to their bodies, like swimmers; then they glide for a bit, and turn; and what they’re doing is turning into the wind,
and their wings are like sails, and it slows them down so they can come in gently to land. As they curled down, it made me
think of dead leaves in autumn, the way they drift and spin. Odd, isn’t it, how many quite different things move in similar
ways; as if nature’s lazy and can’t be bothered to think up something different for each one.

Another curious thing: they always fly up to perch, instead of dropping down. I suppose it’s easier for them to stop that
way. It reminds me of a man running to get on a moving cart.

I know we promised each other we wouldn’t talk about work and things in these letters; but Orsea has to go away quite soon,
with the army, and I think there’s going to be a war. I hate it when he goes away, but usually he’s quite cheerful about it;
this time he was very quiet, like a small boy who knows he’s done something wrong. That’s so unlike him. If there really is
to be a war, I know he’ll worry about whether he’ll know the right things to do — he’s so frightened of making mistakes, I
think it’s because he never expected to be made Duke or anything like that. I don’t know about such things, but I should think
it’s like what they say about riding a horse; if you let it see you’re afraid of it, you can guarantee it’ll play you up.

Ladence has been much better lately; whether it’s anything to do with the new doctor I don’t know, he’s tried to explain what
he’s doing but none of it makes any sense to me. It starts off sounding perfectly reasonable — the human body is like a clock,
or a newly sown field, or some such thing — but after a bit he says things that sound like they’re perfectly logical and reasonable,
but when you stop and think it’s like a couple of steps have been missed out, so you can’t see the connection between what
he says the problem is, and what he’s proposing to do about it. At any rate, it seems to be working, or else Ladence is getting
better in spite of it. I don’t care, so long as it carries on like this. I really don’t think I could stand another winter
like the last one.

When you reply, be sure to tell me some more about the sparrowhawks; did the new one fit in like you hoped, or did the others
gang up on her and peck her on the roosting-perch? They remind me of my eldest sister and her friends — Maiaut sends her best
wishes, by the way; I suppose that means they want something else, from one of us, or both. I do hope it won’t cause you any
problems (I feel very guilty about it all). I suppose I’m lucky; there’s not really very much I can do for them, so they don’t
usually ask anything of me. I know it must be different for you; are they an awful nuisance? Sometimes I wonder if all this
is necessary. After all, you’re Orsea’s cousin, so you’re family, why shouldn’t we write to each other? But it’s better not
to risk it, just in case Orsea did get upset. I don’t imagine for one moment that he would, but you never know.

That’s about all I can get on this silly bit of parchment. I have to beg bits of offcut from the clerks (I pretend I want
them for household accounts, or patching windows). I wish I could write very small, like the men who draw maps and write in
the place-names.

Please tell me something interesting when you write. I love the way you explain things. It seems to me that you must see the
whole world as a fascinating puzzle, you’re dying to observe it and take it apart to see how it works; you always seem to
know the details of everything. When we saw the pigeons I had this picture of you in my mind; you stood there for hours watching
them, trying to figure out if there was a pattern to the way they landed and walked about. You seem to have the knack of noticing
things the rest of us miss (how do you ever find time to rule a country?). So please, think of something fascinating, and
tell me what I should be looking out for. Must stop now — no more room.

True enough; the last seven words tapered away into the edge of the parchment, using up all the remaining space; a top-flight
calligrapher might just have been able to squeeze in two more letters, but no more.

This isn’t love, Valens told himself. He knew about love, having seen it at work among his friends and people around him.
Love was altogether more predatory. It was concerned with pursuit, capture, enjoyment; it was caused by beauty, the way raw
red skin is caused by the sun; it was an appetite, like hunger or thirst, a physical discomfort that tortured you until it
was satisfied. That, he knew from her letters, was how she felt about Orsea — how they felt about each other — and so this
couldn’t be love, in which case it could only be friendship; shared interests, an instructive comparison of perspectives,
a meeting of minds, a pooling of resources. (She’d said in a letter that he seemed to go through life like one of the agents
sent by the trading companies to observe foreign countries and report back, with details of manners and customs, geography
and society, that might come in handy for future operations; who did he report to? she wondered. He’d been surprised at that.
Surely she would have guessed.) Not love, obviously. Different. Better…

He read the letter through three more times; on the second and third readings he made notes on a piece of paper. That in itself
was more evidence, because who makes notes for a love letter? He’d seen plenty of them and they were all the same, all earth,
air, fire and water; was it his imagination, or could nobody, no matter how clever, write a love letter without coming across
as slightly ridiculous? No, you made notes for a meeting, a lecture, an essay, a sermon, a dissertation. That was more like
it; he and she were the only two members of a learned society, a college of philosophers and scientists observing the world,
publishing their results to each other, occasionally discussing a disputed conclusion in the interests of pure truth. He’d
met people like that; they wrote letters to colleagues they’d never met, or once only for a few minutes at some function,
and often their shared correspondence would last for years, a lifetime, until one day some acquaintance mentioned that so-and-so
had died (in his sleep, advanced old age), thereby explaining a longer than usual interval between letter and reply. If it
was love, he’d long ago have sent for his marshals and generals, invaded Eremia, stuck Orsea’s head up on a pike and brought
her back home as a great and marvelous prize; or he’d have climbed the castle wall in the middle of the night and stolen her
away with rope ladders and relays of horses ready and waiting at carefully planned stages; or, having considered the strategic
position and reached the conclusion that the venture was impractical, he’d have given it up and fallen in love with someone
else.

He stood up, crossed the room, pulled a book off the shelf and opened it. The book was rather a shameful possession, because
it was only a collection of drawings of various animals and birds, with a rather unreliable commentary under each one, and
it had cost as much as eight good horses or a small farm. He’d had it made after he received the third letter; he’d sent his
three best clerks over the mountain to the Cure Doce, whose holy men collected books of all kinds; they’d gone from monastery
to monastery looking for the sort of thing he wanted; found this one and copied the whole thing in a week, working three shifts
round the clock (and, because the Cure Doce didn’t share their scriptures, they’d had to smuggle the copied pages out of the
country packed in a crate between layers of dried apricots; the smell still lingered, and he was sick of it). He turned the
pages slowly, searching for a half-remembered paragraph about the feeding patterns of geese. This wasn’t, he told himself,
something a lover would do.

He found what he was after (geese turn their heads into the wind to feed; was that right? He didn’t think so, and he’d be
prepared to bet he’d seen more geese than whoever wrote the book), put the book away and made his note. He was thinking about
his cousin, that clown Orsea. If he was in love, he’d know precisely what he ought to do right now. He’d sit down at the desk
and write an order to the chiefs of staff. They’d be ready in six hours; by the time they reached the Butter Pass, they’d
be in perfect position to bottle Orsea’s convoy of stragglers up in Horn Canyon. Losses would be five percent, seven at most;
there would be no enemy survivors. He would then write an official complaint to the Mezentines, chiding them for pursuing
the Eremians into his territory and massacring them there; the Mezentines would deny responsibility, nobody would believe
them; she would never know, or even suspect (he’d have to sacrifice the chiefs of staff, some of the senior officers too,
so that if word ever did leak out, it could be their crime, excessive zeal in the pursuit of duty). That was what a true lover
would do. Instead, he took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote to the officer commanding the relief column he’d already sent,
increasing his authority to indent for food, clothing, blankets, transport, personnel, medical supplies. His first priority,
Valens wrote, was to put the Eremians in a position to get home without further loss of life. Also (added as an afterthought,
under the seal) would he please convey to Duke Orsea Duke Valens’ personal sympathy and good wishes at this most difficult
time.

How stupid could Orsea be, anyway? (He took down another book, Patellus’
Concerning Animals;
nothing in the index under geese, so he checked under waterfowl.) If his advisers came to him suggesting he launch a preemptive
strike against Mezentia, the first thing he’d do would be put them under house arrest until he’d figured out how many of them
were in on the conspiracy; if it turned out there wasn’t one, he’d sack the whole lot of them for gross incompetence; he’d
have them paraded through the streets of the capital sitting back-to-front on donkeys, with IDIOT branded on their foreheads.
Needless to say, the contingency would never arise. He opened the door and called for a page to take the letter to the commander
of the relief column.

It was just as well he and the Eremian Duchess were just good friends, when you thought of all the damage a lover could do
in the world.

When at last the letter was finished (written, written out and fit to send; Valens had beautiful handwriting, learned on his
father’s insistence at the rod’s end), he sent for the president of the Merchant Adventurers, with instructions to show her
into the smaller audience room and keep her waiting twenty minutes. The commission cost him two small but annoying concessions
on revenue procedure; he’d been expecting worse, and perhaps gave in a little too easily. Just as she was about to leave,
he stopped her.

“Writing paper,” he said.

She looked at him. “Yes?”

“I want some.” He frowned. “First-quality parchment; sheepskin, not goat. Say twenty sheets, about so big.” He indicated with
his hands. “Can you get some for me?”

“Of course.” Behind her smile he could see a web of future transactions being frantically woven; a maze, with a ream of writing
paper at the center. “When would you be —?”

“Straight away,” Valens said. “To go with the letter.”

“Ah.” The web dissolved and a new one formed in its place. “That oughtn’t to be a problem. Yes, I think we can —”

“How much?”

“Let me see.” She could do long multiplication in her head without moving her lips. In spite of himself, Valens was impressed.
“Of course, if it’s for immediate delivery…”

“That’s right. How much?”

She quoted a figure which would have outfitted a squadron of cavalry, including horses and harness. She was good at her job
and put it over well; unfortunately for her, Valens could do mental long multiplication too. They agreed on a third of the
original quote — still way over the odds, but he wasn’t just buying parchment. “Would you like to see a sample first?” she
asked.

“Yes.”

“I’ll have it sent over in an hour.”

“Bring it yourself,” Valens replied. He noticed she was wearing a new diamond on the third finger of her right hand;
I paid for that,
he thought resentfully. Of course it should have been a ruby, to match her dress, but diamonds were worth twice as much,
scruple for scruple, and she had appearances to think of. Thank God for the silver mines, he thought.

“Certainly,” she said. “Now, while I’m here, there was just one other tiny thing…”

They were a force of nature, these traders. Even his father had had to give them best, more than once. This time he put up
a bit more of a fight (the hunter likes quarry with a bit of devil in it) and she met him halfway; most likely she was only
trying it on for wickedness’ sake, and never expected to get anything. Of course, he told himself, it’s good business all
round for them to have a way of manipulating me; otherwise they’d push me too far and I’d have to slap them down, and that’d
be bad for the economy. He was delighted to see the blood-red back of her.

Once she’d gone, however, the world changed. The brief flurry of activity, the tremendous draining effort of concentration,
the feeling of being alive, all faded away so quickly that he wondered if it had been a dream. But he knew the feeling too
well for that. It was the same at bow-and-stable, or the lowly off-season hunts, where you sit and wait, and nothing happens;
where you perch in your high-seat or cower in your hide, waiting for the wild and elusive quarry that is under no obligation
to come to you, until it’s too dark or too wet, and you go home. While you wait there, impatient and resigned as a lover waiting
for a letter, your mind detaches, you can for a little while be someone completely different, and believe that the stranger
is really you. It’s only when you see the flicker of movement or hear the muffled, inhuman cough that the real you comes skittering
back, panicked and eager and suddenly wide awake, and at once the bow is back in your hands, the arrow is notched, cockfeather
out, and the world is small and sharp once again.