Evil for Evil (25 page)

"Herons are very rare in our country." One of the uncles was speaking. "I'm told they taste a little like partridge, only a bit stronger. Is that right?" Fine, Valens thought; the hell with diplomacy, and if it means starting a war, so be it. "Please forgive me if this is an awkward question," he said, "but aren't you people vegetarians?"

The bald man, the girl and one of the uncles looked at him blankly; the other uncle whispered a translation. The bald man looked mildly surprised. The girl raised both eyebrows.

"No," the bald man said, "certainly not. Whatever gave you that idea?" For a moment, all Valens could think about was the huge amount of cheese, yogurt, sour cream, curds, watercress and biscuits currently stockpiled in the kitchens. Bloody hell, what are we going to give them to eat? He also wished very much that he could remember who'd told him these people didn't eat meat, so he could console himself by planning a sufficiently elaborate form of retribution. "Fine," he said, "that's all right, then. Some fool told me you eat nothing but cheese."

"Cheese." The girl was frowning.

"But you don't," Valens said quickly, "so that's—Carausius, you'd better…" Carausius already had; one of the minor courtiers was halfway to the door, moving well.

"I take it dinner will be late," said one of the uncles. "Pity. We missed breakfast."

"I'm sure we can find something," Carausius said, his voice brittle, as if he could already feel the rasp of hemp fiber on his neck.

"We're not fussy," the other uncle said. "Something cold will do fine." The girl laughed, and Valens realized he wanted to laugh too. "I know where there's a rack of smoked venison," he said, "if anybody's interested. I sent it for curing about a week ago, so it ought to be just right."

"Perfect," said an uncle, with the sort of heartfelt sincerity Valens had never expected to hear in a diplomatic exchange. "There wouldn't happen to be any pickled cabbage to go with that, would there?"

"Don't be silly, Uncle." She was looking straight at him; in fencing it would be the imbrocata, the thrust angled down from a high guard. "These people aren't savages, of course there's pickled cabbage. Please excuse him," she went on, "he forgets his manners when he's hungry."

"Carausius," Valens said, and another courtier took off for the doorway. "Well," he went on, "so far we don't seem to have covered ourselves in glory." The bald man shrugged. "It's understandable that we know so little about each other," he said. "Fortunately, ignorance is easily cured."

"In that case," Valens said, steepling his fingers in front of him, "is it really true that you believe fish are the devil incarnate?"

One thing the intelligence reports had got right. It wasn't the business about long hair and beards (that, the bald man explained, was the Rosinholet) or the stuff about being someone else's dream (a minority belief among the Flos Glaia, the girl explained, who also believed that the earth orbited the sun, rather than the other way about) or the carpets—the Aram Chantat bought all their carpets from the Lauzeta, during rare truces in their otherwise incessant wars—or ravens being unlucky or women holding their reins in both hands. But it was absolutely true that the Aram Chantat weren't much good at metalwork or carpentry, and that in consequence they had to buy anything made of metal or wood from the Perpetual Republic.

"It wouldn't be so bad," one of the uncles was saying, "if we could trade with them direct, but we can't, none of their traders will come out that far, obviously, because of the impossibility of crossing the desert with wagons. So we have to get what we need from the Flos Glaia, who get it from the Rosinholet, who get it from someone else; it all comes through Lonazep, and we think that some of it's carried by sea at some point, because we're sick of opening barrels and finding everything inside's been spoiled by soaking in salt water. Anyhow, the whole thing's ridiculous, and of course by the time it reaches us, the price…" He sighed passionately. "It's lucky we've got something that people want," he said, "or I don't know how we'd manage."

"Salt," the other uncle explained, before Valens could ask. "Which we dig out of the ground every fourth year when we cross the salt flats on our way back from summer pasture. Unfortunately, though, the Lauzeta have taken to mining the same deposits; there're a lot more of them than there are of us, and they've got more transport, so the surface deposits are pretty well all worked out. Obviously, that means we're going to have to go down deeper, but if we do that, it'll change everything; it'd mean leaving a permanent presence there, not to mention fighting off the Lauzeta when they go by that way every third year. And it goes without saying, we don't know the first thing about underground mining."

"
We
do," Valens said crisply. "In fact, we're very good at it." Someone he didn't recognize was standing next to him, pouring wine into a glass. "But I'm sure you know all about that."

"The silver mines, yes," the bald man said. "And we would, of course, be grateful for any advice or help you may care to offer us." He paused, and Valens guessed he was trying to judge whether the time was right to ask for something else; something, presumably, that he wanted rather more. Maybe he decided against it, because he shrugged his shoulders and went on, "But we're getting ahead of ourselves. We haven't decided yet whether increasing our salt production and continuing to depend on trading with the Republic is the right course for us to follow. There are other options we could explore."

"Like leaving where you are now and settling somewhere else." Valens nodded.

"Which is why you're here, I suppose."

The bald man and the uncles exchanged glances. "Indeed," the bald man said.

"Though I should stress that we're still keeping an open mind about it. But yes, Eremia would suit us very well."

"I've been thinking about that," Valens said, "ever since Carausius told me what you had in mind, and there are a couple of things—I'm sure you've already considered them, but…"

The bald man nodded slightly. "Go on, please."

"All right. First, if you occupy Eremia, you risk starting a fight with the Mezentines; second, will Eremia be big enough? Moving around all the time as you do—"

"You're right," the girl interrupted him. The bald man lifted his head but said nothing. One of the uncles looked away. "We have considered both of them," she went on, "and we don't see a problem. If the Mezentines want to mess with us, let them try. And yes; Eremia on its own would be too small. But there's plenty of empty space here, in your country, where nobody lives. And then there's the plain that separates you from the Mezentines—"

Sharp intake of breath; Valens couldn't tell whether it came from the bald man or an uncle. She frowned. "Anyway," she said, "there are possibilities. And we're planning for the long term, after all."

Valens leaned back a little in his chair. "You do realize," he said, "that my country is at war with the Republic. If you're dependent on them for all your manufactured goods, like you say, maybe you ought to be a bit circumspect about forming an alliance with us."

"We don't trade with them, though," she replied crisply. "Not directly. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they only had a very sketchy idea of who we are or where we live. The impression I get is that they can't be bothered to differentiate between savages."

The word made Valens want to smile. Time, he decided, to change the subject.

"At any rate," he said, "I'm glad we managed to sort out the business about the fish. Talking of which, it's about time we had something to eat. Carausius, can you possibly find out what's taking them so long?"

During the meal (smoked venison, cold roast lamb; acceptable) he sat between the bald man and an uncle. The bald man wanted to talk about Mezentine Guild politics, and the uncle seemed fascinated by the technicalities of deep-level mine-working.

"I'm not the man you should be asking," Valens said, during a brief lull in the barrage of artfully phrased questions. "It just so happens we've got a topflight Mezentine engineer with us, he'd know all about that sort of thing. Carausius," he said, leaning across the table, "where's Ziani Vaatzes? I haven't seen him for a day or so."

"He's not here," Carausius replied with his mouth full (and him a diplomat; for shame). "If you remember, he's away at the mines, looking into that thing we were discussing."

"Ah." Valens caught himself before he frowned. Probably not a good idea to let their guests know that the celebrated Vadani mines, in which they were clearly deeply interested, were just about to be sabotaged to stop them falling into Mezentine hands. "Any idea when he'll be back?"

So much for showing off his rare and valuable possessions; he wondered whether he should keep Vaatzes in a glass cabinet, mounted on a little rosewood stand, for visitors to admire.

"Excuse me," the uncle said. "If you're at war with the Mezentines, why have they sent you a mining engineer? I hadn't realized they were so altruistic."

"Defector," Carausius explained.

"The only specimen in captivity," Valens added, realizing as he said it that the joke wasn't very good. "He came to us after the fall of Civitas Eremiae." The bald man was very interested in that. "I wasn't aware that the Mezentines allowed defection," he said. "In fact—"

"They don't," Carausius said. "It was the Eremians' decision to grant this Vaatzes asylum that led to the war."

"And you've allowed this man to come here." It was the first thing she'd said for some time. She was wedged in between Carausius and a fat soldier whose name Valens could never remember, and she'd been eating with a single-minded ferocity that Valens couldn't help finding impressive. "Not a good idea, surely."

"We'd already declared war by the time we picked him up," Valens explained,

"so we had nothing to lose by it. He's worth having, I'm sure of it. He organized the defense of Civitas Eremiae, made one hell of a good job of it. For a while, it looked like they were going to win."

"
You
declared war." She was looking at him past Carausius' arm and shoulder. "I thought they attacked you."

Valens froze. The unspoken question wasn't one he wanted to answer to anybody, but her least of all. "It was only a matter of time," he said briskly. "A preemptive strike seemed worth trying; they were weak after the losses they took during the siege, the political will seemed to be failing. I miscalculated. I don't think it made much difference, one way or another."

That was a cue for the bald man to resume his interrogation about Guild politics, and this time Valens was only too happy to talk. She carried on looking at him for some time, then went back to savaging the smoked venison.

She eats like a dog, she thought. She holds the meat still with her claws, grips it with her teeth and tears it.

It was hard to see the top table from where she was sitting; harder still to observe her in a proper, scientific fashion without being caught staring. Orsea's head was in the way, and the man next to her, some buffoon, kept trying to talk to her about music. Watching out of the corner of her eye was giving her a headache. Stupid, she thought. "Orsea," she said, "is there any bread?" He looked round, moving his head just enough so that she could see. "It's migrated up the other end of the table," he said. "Hang on, I'll try and catch someone's eye."

It was stupid, of course, because she wasn't the one who should be making these observations. He was up there with the subject; it should be his job to observe, and report back to her in a long, detailed letter. Instead, she was down here, among the other ornamental courtiers, having to crane her neck and grab fleeting glimpses. Not scientific.

At least she wasn't wearing authentic tribal costume. Actually, they'd done a pretty good job of dressing her up as a human being, and to her credit she carried off the imposture well. Training, probably, hours of patient coaching, like the manning of a hawk; teaching her to sit still, to keep quiet, not to jump up and run about the room. Someone had told her that they'd sent her away to somewhere quite grand and exotic to be schooled in civilized behavior—reasonable enough, when you thought about it, and considering what they had to gain from the deal. But they hadn't managed to stop her ripping up her food like an animal.

Veatriz smiled at that, and made a point of cutting the last of her cold roast lamb with the utmost precision; thumb and two fingers only on the back of the knife, just as she'd been taught when she was little.
A young lady doesn't saw, your grace, she
slices
. Not that perfect table manners had done her much good in the long run. Orsea had shifted in his seat again, and now all she could see was the wretched woman's shoulder. Red; the color suited her fishbelly complexion, but hadn't anybody thought to tell her what a red dress meant in these parts? She smiled, thinking of women in red dresses; women in red dresses who brought letters, once upon a time.
I would give good money
, she said deliberately to herself,
to know if
that face came out of a pot
. Must have, she decided. If it was her natural color, they must've been keeping her in a dark cellar for the last six months, like blanching chicory. Nice metaphor, if only she had a use for it; the forcing, blanching and bringing on of vegetables for the table.