Evil for Evil (70 page)

He noticed that the blades of light had almost faded away, like the last melt of snow; so much for being bored, lying in the dark with no work to do. He felt no inclination at all to sleep, and his only regret was that his presence stopped Framain and his daughter from talking to each other. Something scuttled over his foot, but to his surprise he felt no shock of revulsion. Have I forgotten how to be afraid? he wondered. Normally I'd be halfway up the wall by now if a rat ran over me. He found that as the light died away, his vision actually improved; he found it easier to make out shapes in the gloom without the distraction of the bright glare. His two fellow prisoners were slumped heaps in the opposite corner; there was also a barrel, four or five sacks and something that puzzled him for quite a while until he worked out that it was a small log-pile. Odd, because he'd always been disappointed with his poor night vision. The obvious conclusion was that he'd been trying too hard all these years. He let his mind drift through a range of reflections and sudden perceptions; he felt both relaxed and wonderfully sharp, as though he could solve any problem just by thinking it through from first principles. It's not supposed to be like this, he scolded himself. A man facing death should be wretched, sobbing, screaming with misery and fear, or frantically trying to divert his mind with pointless trivia. He'd heard of kind-hearted jailers who sat up with their prisoners through the last night, playing chess or cards, making a point of losing. He admired the principle, but what a wasted opportunity to be alone with the thoughts that really matter, all irrelevant distractions cleared away.

At some point, they must have fallen asleep. He heard the rhythm of their breathing change. He forgave them, since they were probably going to make a deal with the Mezentines and survive. He bore them no ill will on those grounds. It would have been nice to know if the experiment to make vermilion had worked, just as he'd have enjoyed watching the men repair the wheel. If they had the vermilion formula, they'd be better placed to bargain with the Mezentines. He hoped so. In the state they were in, death would be wasted on them.

In spite of himself, he began to wander, sliding into the debatable region between asleep and awake. He was writing poetry and composing music. He had the verse and half the refrain of a wonderful song—he wasn't sure what it was about but he knew it was there, as though he had it on his lap wrapped in a sack. He knew it would evaporate as soon as he woke up. It always did. Perhaps life slips away like that at the moment of death, and the few fragments he'd manage to catch as it faded would turn out to be garbled nonsense, a dreamer's false impression of poetry and music, incomprehensible in the context of being awake again.

In his dream, something was tapping at the door. At first it was an old woman in a shawl, wanting to come in out of the cold; it was the Ducas' duty to provide hospitality, and he considered getting up to let her in. Then it was just the guard bringing them something to eat. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a nail being wrenched out of wood.

He opened his eyes. Needless to say, that fine night vision was blurry and thick, and for several seconds he couldn't make out anything. A board creaked under great stress. It sounded strangely like one of the slats of the door being prized off with a crowbar, but that made no sense at all.

"Hello," he called out in a muffled, croaky voice (not at his best when he first woke up, the Ducas). "Who's there?"

Somebody made a shushing noise. He felt properly remorseful. Maybe the guards had come to fetch him, but they didn't want to wake up Framain and his daughter. No, that didn't make sense either.

Another sort of creak; a hinge-hoop turning around a rusty, undersized pintle. In which case, someone was coming through the door, trying to be stealthy and quiet, but failing. That was completely beyond him, because why would the guards…

"Framain?"

Not a voice he knew, but whoever it was sounded painfully tense. It was the sort of whisper that comes out louder than a normal tone of voice. "Framain, are you there?"

Long silence. Miel was about to point out that Framain was asleep when he realized that the regular breathing had stopped. Framain must be awake, but he wasn't answering. The door creaked a little more, and Miel could see a rectangle of the dark blue of the night sky. Whoever it was had opened the door.

If the door was open, maybe he could get out.

Immediately, he felt that he didn't want to. It was dangerous (yes, but not nearly as dangerous as staying put). It was inconvenient. It was the middle of the night. He felt the shameful resentment that comes with getting an unwanted present. He wanted to stay where he was.

"Daurenja?"

Framain's voice; and he couldn't interpret the tone of it at all.

"Come on, for crying out loud," the unknown man in the doorway growled back. Daurenja; not a name he knew, but clearly it meant a lot to Framain, because Miel saw his shape move; he was standing up; they both were. They were leaving. In which case…

"Don't just sit there, you idiot." Framain's voice, addressing him. They wanted him to leave with them. But…

But he'd got to his feet anyway; instinct, or simply that he didn't want to give offense by declining the invitation. He wondered if the enigmatic Daurenja would mind him coming too. Shocking bad manners to gatecrash somebody else's jailbreak.

"Who the hell…?" Daurenja started to say. Framain muttered, "Later." Nothing more said by either of them. Presumably that constituted a formal invitation. Hell of a time to discover that he'd got cramp in his leg.

From sitting still for so long, presumably. He wanted to laugh, mostly because Framain and this Daurenja sounded so
serious;
as if they thought they stood a chance of getting away with it—somehow evading the guards, crossing the inn yard without being seen, retrieving or stealing horses, mounting up, riding away (and where to? He knew for a stone-cold-certain fact that the Loyalty was the only habitable dwelling within feasible reach, unless you counted Framain's house). All that, and an unscheduled, hobbling freeloader. He decided to go with them simply to see how far they managed to get.

It was like an arrowhead stuck in his calf muscle, but he made it as far as the doorway. The other three were already outside, standing perfectly still, waiting for him. Any moment now, and the guards…

He saw the guards. One lay on his face, the other on his side. Lamplight from somewhere twinkled a reflection in a dark pool that probably wasn't water. Not one but both of them; and done so quietly that he'd dozed through it. If that was Daurenja's unaided work, he must be a talented man. He tried to feel pity for the guards, but couldn't quite do it. Perhaps they really were going to escape, after all. Stepping out of the pigsty into the yard was a bit like jumping into water without knowing how deep it is. He wasn't sure he could have done it, if he'd cared about staying alive. As it was, he felt his stomach muscles tighten into a knot as painful as his cramped leg. He wished he knew what the plan was, assuming there was one. They were heading for the stables—the original block, not the new ones the Mezentines had built. It occurred to him that, since Daurenja hadn't known about him, he couldn't have provided a horse for him to ride. Was he supposed to run alongside them, like a dog, or were they proposing to turn him loose at the courtyard gate and leave him to fend for himself? If it hadn't been for the two dead guards, he'd have stopped by the mounting block and waited for the Mezentines to find him and take him back to the pigsty. He thought about them again, and about the two scavengers he'd killed with the hunting sword, when he escaped from their camp; and, for good measure, about the desperate flight of Ziani Vaatzes, who'd also killed two men in order to get out of prison.

Daurenja had stopped. A moment later, someone started to say something, but didn't get far enough for Miel to make out what he was saying. He saw Daurenja move; he seemed to have pulled a black shape out of the shadows, a man, and they were fighting. No, that was overstating the case. Daurenja had caught hold of him round the neck and was forcing him down on his knees, smoothly and effortlessly, like a man wrestling with a child. It was a remarkable display of physical strength, and Miel wished he could admire it. Daurenja's opponent must have done something to loosen that appalling grip on his neck; he wriggled and got loose for a moment. Then Miel saw Daurenja's arm outlined against the dark blue sky. It curled round the side of the man's head; it was like watching twenty years' growth of ivy in less than a second. Then there was a loud, sharp crack; the shape in Daurenja's embrace jerked and wriggled for a very short moment and was let fall, flopping on the ground like grain from a split sack.

Miel had seen so many men killed in his life—some by others, some by himself—that the sight had gradually lost its meaning, to the extent that he could no longer remember the first one he'd seen, though he'd been sure at the time he'd see it in his mind every time he shut his eyes for the rest of his life. Now it was just a process, like threshing wheat or dressing game. But the sound—a crack like a thick dry branch breaking, carrying implications of such a terrible strength exerted with such purpose—shocked him so much that he felt his guts spasm; he'd have been sick if the Mezentines had bothered to feed him, but his stomach was empty. Instead, he felt acid fluxing in his throat and into his mouth, so that he nearly choked. He couldn't have moved if someone (not Daurenja, obviously; not Framain) hadn't grabbed a handful of his shirt and tugged him so hard he overbalanced, and had to take a step forward to keep from falling. Once he was moving, he kept going, except that he shied like a horse when his toe thudded into a soft heap on the ground, and he had to be dragged again, standing on something that yielded at first to his weight and then resisted; springy, like green branches, or ribs. "What's the matter with you?" her voice hissed accusingly in the darkness. Fortunately, he could safely assume she didn't want a reply.

Daurenja was pulling the stable door open. There was light inside; it gushed out and stained the yard yellow for a moment, so Miel could see a tall, thin man who must be Daurenja slipping inside. A muffled voice, cut off short, as Framain followed him in.

Three horses stood saddled and bridled, feeding placidly from a long manger of barley and oats. They didn't seem bothered about the man's body slumped on the ground in front of them, like a drunk's clothes on the floor. In the pale lamplight, Miel could see a bizarre creature, long and thin and bony, more of an insect than a man apart from the absurd pony tail of black hair dangling down his back. He was in the act of lifting a saddle off its peg.

"Bridle," he said, and Miel realized he was being spoken to. "There, look. You do know how to bridle a horse, don't you?"

Strange voice; educated, you'd begin to say it was cultured but then think better of it. Hardly the voice you'd expect to hear from the long, thin insect. Hardly the voice of the man who'd just killed four strangers with his bare hands for the crime of getting in the way. Miel looked round for the bridle, and saw her holding it, looping the reins over her forearm. Daurenja had lowered the saddle onto the back of a nondescript bay gelding. In the middle of a desperate and bloody escape, for some reason they were stopping to tack up a horse.

For me, Miel realized. But I don't want help from the likes of him…

The horse lifted its head to avoid the bridle; he saw Daurenja's arm snake out, just like the last time, and for a moment he firmly expected to see the horse strangled. Instead, Daurenja took the bridle and gently eased the bit into the horse's mouth. As soon as he touched it, the horse became completely calm and lowered its head to the optimum height for fitting a bridle. Miel had seen grooms who could do that. A rare gift, apparently, vouchsafed to only a few.

Daurenja was handing him the reins. He took them and watched the other three mount up. Daurenja mounted like water poured from a bottle, seen in reverse. It was, Miel couldn't help thinking, the way you'd imagine the hero of the story would do it—assured, graceful, quick, and once he was mounted he seemed to merge with the horse, controlling it with the same thoughtless ease you use when moving your own leg or arm. He'd be the perfect hero, if only he wasn't a monster.

"Come
on
," she said, as if chiding him for using up all the hot water. He grabbed the reins and the cantle of the saddle, and made a complete botch of mounting, losing both stirrups and flopping forward onto the horse's neck.

Back in the yard again; there were men with lanterns; somebody shouted at them as they rode past. Miel's horse broke into a canter before he was ready, and the saddle hammered the base of his spine. Twenty years of riding; he couldn't remember what to do. It was just as well that the horse was inclined to follow the tail in front.