Evil for Evil (37 page)

"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.