Evil for Evil (46 page)

"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.