Evil for Evil (30 page)

Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.

Only myself to blame, he thought. Getting engaged to be married to someone else could only be construed as a hostile thing,
an act of war. Besides, it’s not as though we were ever …

Just letters. Nothing more.

And here was a letter, its integrity guaranteed by the flawed stag he’d just snapped in half. He thought, unexpectedly, of
Miel Ducas, the sulfur enthusiast, disgraced by another of these small packets of thought and feeling. Our fault; my fault.
If Miel Ducas had commanded the defense of Civitas Eremiae … Wouldn’t have made any difference, since the city fell by treachery,
and I’d still have done that one bloody stupid thing, which in turn led inevitably to the war, my desperate need for allies
and manpower, a political marriage, this letter.

Courage is a virtue best not taken to excessive extremes; someone brave enough to stick his hand in a fire is an idiot by
any criteria. I could leave this letter unread. Wouldn’t have to destroy it; just put it back in the ivory box and turn the
little silver key.

(She’s got no right, in any event. She was the one who got married in the first place, not me. I, on the other hand, am paying
the price for saving her life.)

Veatriz Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.

I guess congratulations are in order.

It’s none of my business, in any case. Orsea explained it all to me; apparently, it’s mostly to do with light cavalry, and
the Mezentines being scared stiff of the Cure Hardy, because there’re so many of them. He feels guilty, by the way, because
he says he told you they’re all vegetarians, and they turned out not to be. It was, of course, exactly the sort of mistake
he would make. The ones he met were, you see, so he was sure that what he told you was true. He was trying to be helpful.
He told me once, there’s nothing causes more harm in the world than men like him trying to do the right thing. He knows it’s
true, but he can’t understand why. I think that’s probably why I still love him.

Sorry; the L word. This is neither the time nor the place. Let’s talk about something else. Read any good books?

I haven’t. I do a lot of embroidery instead. I know you have a wonderful library full of books I’d give anything to read,
but I can’t, because they’re yours. I used to be really jealous that you had so many books; I resented that, and you writing
to me telling me things out of them. I also knew that reading the books for myself wouldn’t be the same as having you quote
from them in a letter. Maybe at some point I got you and your library mixed up in my mind; what’s the word, I identified them
with you. A bit like the way you identify a country with its ruler; you say, the Vadani did this and that when you mean the
Duke did it, and the other way around. For instance, the Mezentines could say the Vadani declared war on them by attacking,
when you came for me.

I have no idea what I’m saying, so excuse me. I think it’s just that I’m out of practice. It seems ever such a long time since
I wrote a letter.

As well as embroidery, I daydream; which is silly. I have this fantasy about a girl who writes a letter to a prince. It’s
pointless, because he’s married; but it’s all right really, they’re just letters. She has an idea he doesn’t really care much
for his wife. The trouble is, she gets to depend on the letters; she sits waiting for them to come — and they do, but she
can’t help wondering what it’d be like if they stopped coming, and she was stuck out there in the middle of nowhere, stranded
in a tower embroidering cushion covers for the rest of her life. Sometimes I try and talk to her; I shout, but she can’t hear.
I try and tell her it’s a very bad idea, and if I were in her shoes I wouldn’t do such a dangerously stupid thing.

The other day, I went for a walk. I don’t think I’m supposed to, but there’s only so much cross-stitch a woman can do before
her brain boils out through her ears. I walked down some stairs and across a courtyard and up another flight of stairs and
down a passage, and in through an open door. There was a maid in the room, cleaning something; as soon as she saw me, she
ran away, which was a bit disconcerting. The point is, I remembered the room. It used to be my room when I first came here;
you remember, when I was a hostage, during the peace talks. It was pretty much as I remembered it: same furniture, even the
same mirror hanging over the fireplace. I looked in the mirror and you’ll never guess who I saw there. At first I was a bit
taken aback — I’d heard she was dead, or had gone away. But then it occurred to me that she must’ve been there all this time.

No offense, but I don’t think the barbarian girl is quite right for you. She’s got a nice figure if you like them springy,
but you could cut yourself on that mouth. Not that I’m feeling catty or anything. Still, who needs love when you can have
cavalry?

I’m sorry, that was deliberate, not just an unfortunate slip of the pen. Who needs that thing that starts with L? Not me.
You see, I’m married to a dear, good man who used to love me very much, though it’s rather slipped his mind lately, because
of everything he’s had to contend with. You don’t; or maybe you do, but you can’t have it if it interferes with work. You’re
identified with your country, remember, and countries can’t go around falling in love. Imagine what’d happen if Lonazep suddenly
fell madly in love with the Eivar peninsula, and Lower Madeia got jealous and died of a broken heart. There’d be chaos, they’d
have to redraw all the maps.

So, there we are. Eremia sends her best wishes, what’s left of her.

He took a moment to fold the letter up neatly, like a man putting away a map in a high wind. He dropped it into the ivory
box, turned the key and lolled back in his chair. For a little while, he stared at the tapestry on the opposite wall; the
usual stag at bay, confronting the usual hounds. It was so familiar that he scarcely ever saw it these days; once it had hung
in his father’s bedchamber, and he’d come to know it well while he was waiting for his father to die. One of the first things
he’d done when he became duke was have it brought up here.

Well, he thought, so there it is. Mind you, if this is being in love, I don’t think much of it.

He glanced at the clock — beautiful, huge, Mezentine; the craftsmen of the Republic excelled at clockwork, not just timepieces
but automata, gadgets, mechanical toys. In three-quarters of an hour he had to go and see his future wife. Someone had made
an appointment for them to take a stroll in the herb garden. It would be at its best at this time of the evening, stinking
of lavender, bay and night-scented stock. At their last encounter they’d talked quite civilly for some considerable time about
sparrowhawks; a day’s falconry was being arranged, or would be as soon as Jarnac Ducas came back from the wars (sulfur; why?),
he being recognized as the finest falconer, apart from Valens himself, in the duchy. It was a treat he was looking forward
to intensely; and once it was over, he planned on making a public announcement about leaving the city for the duration of
the war.

The Mezentines would burn it to the ground, of course. Presumably they would loot it scrupulously clean first; in which case,
his father’s tapestry would be taken away and sold, which at least meant it would survive. He’d very nearly made up his mind
to take it with him, but space on the carts was going to be very tight indeed and it’d set a bad example. He smiled; he’d
seen it in passing for most of his life, but he’d never actually looked at it. That was as bad as continually dipping into
a book but never actually sitting down and reading it from beginning to end; or like being in love with someone since he was
seventeen but never admitting it, even to himself, until it was finally, definitively, too late to do anything about it.

But so what? You heard all sorts of good, positive things about love; they wanted you to believe that you couldn’t be happy
without it. That was plain stupid, like saying you could never know true happiness unless you learned to play the flute. In
any event, he knew all about love. He’d learned it like a school lesson, irregular verbs or dates of coronations, when he’d
sat in his father’s room staring at the tapestry because he couldn’t bear to look at the man lying on the bed.

So, he thought, the hell with it. He still had forty minutes.

He jumped up, opened the long triangular cupboard in the corner of the room and took out a case of practice rapiers(Mezentine,
a little too heavy, with three-ring hilts and bated points). Then he clattered down the stairs into the courtyard, wondering
who would be unlucky enough to be the first to meet him.

There was a special pleasure in the irony; Orsea was sitting on the stone bench, watching the sunset.

“Hello,” Valens called out cheerfully. “I hoped I might find you. Any good at fencing?”

Orsea turned his head, saw him and stood up. Excellent manners. “What, you mean swordfighting with rapiers?”

“Yes.”

Orsea shook his head. “Pretty hopeless, actually. Of course, they tried to teach me when I was a kid, but I never had the
—”

“Fine. Catch.” Valens threw him one of the foils; he grabbed at it, knocked it up in the air and managed to catch it on the
second bounce. “Come over to the old stable with me, we’ll have half an hour’s sparring.”

Orsea frowned. “No, really,” he said. “I’m dreadful at it.”

“I’ll teach you,” Valens replied. “I’m a pretty good instructor, though I do say so myself.”

By rights they should have worn face-masks, padded jackets and heavy left-hand gloves with the palms reinforced with chainmail.
But it would have taken time to fetch them, and there was no need. Valens was too good a fencer to get hit, or to hit his
opponent dangerously. So they fought in shirtsleeves, like men trying to kill one another. Valens demonstrated the lunge,
the pass, the stromazone (a flick across the enemy’s face with the point of your sword, designed to cause painful superficial
cuts). Orsea turned out to be every bit as bad as he’d said he was, and Valens poked him in the ribs, slapped him about with
the flat, tripped him, knocked the foil out of his hand, drew blood from his ear and lower lip with little wrist-flips, and
loosened one of his teeth by punching him in the face with the knuckle-bow of his hilt. There was no reason to it apart from
the sheer joy of hurting and humiliating him, showing him up for the clown he was, goading him into losing his temper and
thereby laying himself even more open to attack. In the last objective, Valens failed. The more he was hit, the more guilty
Orsea seemed to get, the more painfully ashamed of his lack of skill and ability. At last, having knocked his foil out of
his hand and across the stable (“That’s called the beat in narrow measure,” he explained helpfully) and kicked his knees out
from under him so that he was left kneeling on precisely the spot where Valens had had to learn the four wards as a boy —
it had to be that place and no other; it took him a full minute to herd Orsea onto it — he lowered his foil, held out his
other hand and pulled Orsea to his feet.

“You’re getting there,” he said encouragingly, “but there’s still quite a way to go. We can make this a regular thing, if
you like; once a week, or twice even, if you’d rather.”

“It’s very good of you to offer,” Orsea said, wiping blood out of his fringe, “but I know how busy you must be right now with
other —”

He yelped; Valens had just stung the edge of his cheek with another flick. “Steady on,” he shouted. “I haven’t got my sword.”

“So you haven’t,” Valens replied. “I’d go and fetch it if I were you.”

Orsea backed away a couple of steps, then turned his back as he crossed the stable and retrieved the sword. I could do it
now, Valens thought; I could put the tip of my sword under my boot and snap off the button and stab him through the neck.
There’s nobody to see, everybody would believe it was a horrible accident. There’d have to be at least a month of formal mourning;
we’d postpone the wedding, and then maybe there’d be a hitch; and she’d be a widow …

“Ready?” he called out.

Orsea turned to face him. He looked very pale and rather scared, and he was holding the foil all wrong. “Ready,” he said.

“Right. Now,” Valens went on, lowering his foil until the tip rested on the flagstones, “I want you to lunge at me. Straight
at my face’d be best. There’s an old saying in fencing; the way to a man’s heart —”

Orsea lunged. At least, he took a giant stride forward at the same time as he stuck his arm out in front of him, but his foot
caught in a crack where the damp had forced up a flagstone, and he stumbled forward, off balance, all his weight in front,
windmilling both arms to keep from going over. Valens took the regulation step back and left, preparing for the volte he’d
been planning, but Orsea’s wildly swishing foil came out of nowhere, and the tip smacked on the flagstones, knocking off the
button, before hitting him in the mouth. Valens felt the jagged edge of the broken foil slice along the length of his bottom
lip like a knife.

Orsea, balance regained, was staring at him. “I’m so sorry,” he was saying. “I think I tripped on something, I didn’t mean
…”

Valens stepped back a pace — force of habit, to maintain a wide distance — and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “Perfectly
all right,” he muttered. “In fact, I’d have been filled with admiration if you’d done it on purpose.” But you couldn’t have,
he didn’t add. “That’s the stromazone, by the way, what I was telling you about earlier. Nothing like a bit of pain to break
the other man’s concentration.”

Orsea lowered his sword. “Maybe we should …”

“What, when you’re just starting to get the hang of it?”Valens lunged; a slow, lazy move, slovenly, better signposted than
the main road to Mezentia, but Orsea didn’t move or parry or do anything. The button hit him in the hollow between the collar-bones,
the softest and surest target of all on an unarmored man; the blade, being a foil, bent like a bow. “On the other hand,”Valens
said, moving the sword away, “that’s probably enough for one day. If you fence when you’re starting to get tired, accidents
can happen.”