Evil for Evil

by K. J. Parker

  “Me?” He shook his head. “Not in my nature. But I think that if I had solid information to go on, I could get some money out of the Duke. I’ve got a living to earn, after all. It looks like I’m going to be stuck here for a long time, maybe the rest of my life. It’s about time I settled down and got a job.”

  She breathed out slowly. “Like I said,” she replied, “there’d have to be a written agreement. You come back with that and I might have something for you.”

  Vaatzes tried not to be too obvious about taking a breath. “A map?”

  “Who said anything about a map?”

  “The Duke would want there to be a map,” Vaatzes said. “A genuine one,” he added sternly, “not one that smudges as soon as he opens it.”

  “There might be one,” she said slowly. “I’d have to look. There’s loads of his old junk up in the roof. Maybe not a map, but there could be a journal. Bearings, number of days traveled, names of places and people. Better than a map, really.”

  Vaatzes dipped his head. “As you say.” He stood up. “If you happen to come across it, don’t throw it away.”

  She looked up at him, like a dog at table. “You’ll see about a contract?”

  “Straightaway.”

  She thought for a moment, then smiled. It wasn’t much, but it was the only smile she had. “Sorry if I came across as a bit distant,” she said. “But you’ve got to be careful.”

  “Of course. Thank you for the wine.”

  She looked at his cup. “You hardly touched it.”

  “I don’t drink.”

  He left her without looking round and closed the door behind him. As he walked up the hill, he tried to think about money. He didn’t have any, of course, and he had no way of getting any, except by asking for it. Were he to do so, assuming he asked the right people, he was sure he could have as much as he wanted; but that would be missing the point. Obviously Valens was the one man he couldn’t ask (later, of course; but not now); that still left him a wide range of choices. Better, though, if he could get money from somewhere else. Under other circumstances, that wouldn’t be a problem. But with time pressing …

  He stopped. He hadn’t seen her (hadn’t been expecting to see her, so hadn’t been on his guard) and now they were face to face, only a yard or so apart. She was coming out of a linen-draper’s shop, flanked on either side by a maid and an equerry. She’d seen him, and there was no chance of her not recognizing him, or taking him for someone else.

  “Hello,” she said.

  He couldn’t think what to say. For one thing, there was the horrendous business of protocol and the proper form of address. How do you reply to a greeting from the duchess of a duchy that no longer exists (but whose destruction has not been officially recognized by the regime whose hospitality you are enjoying)? There was probably a page and a half on the subject in one of Duke Valens’ comprehensive books of manners, but so far he hadn’t managed to stay awake long enough to get past the prefaces and dedications. Other protocols, too: how do you address the wife of a man you betrayed by telling him half the truth about his wife and his best friend? How do you respond to a friendly greeting from someone whose city gates you opened to the enemy? There was bound to be a proper formula, and if only he knew it there wouldn’t be any awkwardness or embarrassment at this meeting. As it was, he was going to have to figure something out for himself, from first principles.

  “Hello,” he replied, and bowed; a small, clumsy, comic nod, faulty in execution but clear enough in its meaning. Cheating, of course.

  “I haven’t seen you for a long time,” she said. “How are you settling in here?”

  He smiled. “It’s one of the advantages of being an exile,” he said. “Everywhere you go is strange to you, so getting used to somewhere new isn’t such a problem.”

  She frowned very slightly. There were people behind her in the shop, wanting to leave but too polite to push past her, her ladies-in-waiting and her armed guard. “In that case, it ought to be like that for me too, surely.”

  He shook his head. “Not really,” he said. “You’re not an exile, you’re a refugee.”

  “Same thing, surely.”

  “No.” Should he have qualified that, or toned it down? No, my lady? “There’s quite a difference. You left because your country was taken away from you. I left because my country wanted rid of me. I suppose it’s like the difference between a widow and someone whose husband leaves her for somebody else.” He shrugged. “It’s not so much of a difference after all, really. Are you going back to the palace?”

  She pulled a face. “I’ve only just managed to escape,” she replied. “It’s a wonderful building and everybody’s very kind, but …” She nodded at the basket one of the maids was carrying. “Embroidery silk. Vitally important that I choose it for myself.”

  “I can see that,” Vaatzes replied. “Hence the cavalry escort. Which way are you going?”

  She thought for a moment. “Downhill,” she said. “So far I haven’t managed to get more than six hundred yards from the palace gates, but I’m taking it slowly, by degrees.”

  The shopkeeper was standing behind her, looking respectfully tense, with her bottled-up customers shifting from foot to foot all round her. “In that case,” Vaatzes said, “might I recommend the fabric stall in the little square off Twenty-Ninth Street? I seem to remember seeing a couple of rolls of genuine Mezentine silk brocade which might interest you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Twenty-Ninth Street?”

  “At the bottom of Eighth Street and turn left. I know,” he added, “I tried to work it out too. I tried prime numbers, square roots and dividing by Conselher’s Constant, but I still can’t make any sense of how the numbers run.”

  “And you an engineer,” she said. “I’d have thought you’d have worked it out by now.”

  “Too deep for me. There must be a logical sequence, though. You’ll have to ask Duke Valens. He must know, if anyone does.”

  “I’m sure.” Not the slightest flicker of an eyelid, and the voice perfectly controlled, like a guardsman’s horse in a parade. “I gather it’s just the sort of thing that would interest him.”

  She nodded very slightly to the maid on her left, and she and her escort began to move at precisely the same moment, down the hill, toward the Eighth Street gate. At a guess, the little square off Twenty-Ninth Street was a good eight hundred and fifty yards from the palace. It reminded him of the section in King Fashion, the unspeakably dull hunting manual that everybody was so keen on in these parts, about the early stages of training a falcon; how much further you let it fly each day, when you’re training it to come back to the lure.

  They didn’t speak to each other all the way down Eighth Street; but at the narrow turning off the main thoroughfare she looked at him and asked, “So what are you doing? Are you managing to keep yourself occupied?”

  As he answered her (he was politely and unobtrusively evasive, and told her nothing), he thought: between any other two people, this could easily sound like flirtation, or at the very least a preliminary engagement of skirmishers as two armies converge. But I don’t suppose she’s ever flirted in her life, and (he had to make an effort not to smile) of course, I’m the Mezentine, so different I’m not quite human. Flirting with me would be like trying to burn water; couldn’t be done even if anyone wanted to. I think she’s got nobody to talk to; nobody at all.

  “You should set up in business,” she was saying. “I’m sure you’d do very well. After all, you got that factory going in Eremia very quickly, and if it hadn’t been for the war …”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” he replied gravely. “But I get the feeling that manufacturing isn’t the Vadani’s strongest suit, and I haven’t got the patience to spend a year training anybody to saw a straight line. Besides, I quite like a change of direction. I was thinking about setting up as a trader.”

  She laughed. “You think you’d look good in red?”

  “I forgot
,” he said, as lightly as he could manage. “Your sister’s a Merchant Adventurer, isn’t she?”

  “That’s right.” Just a trace of chill in her voice.

  “I wonder if she’d be prepared to help me,” he said, increasing the level of enthusiasm but not piling it on too thick. “A bit of advice, really. I imagine she knows pretty well everybody in the trade. It seems like a fairly small world, after all.”

  “You want to meet her so she can teach you how to be her business rival? I’m not sure it works like that.”

  An adversarial side to her nature he hadn’t noticed or appreciated before. She liked verbal fencing. He hadn’t thought it was in her nature; perhaps she’d picked the habit up somewhere, from someone. “I was thinking more in terms of a partnership,” he said.

  “Oh.” She blinked. Arch didn’t suit her. “And what would you bring to it, I wonder?”

  “I heard about a business opportunity the other day,” he replied. “It sounds promising, but I’m not a trader.”

  She nodded. “Well,” she said, “I owe you a favor, don’t I?” She paused. Something about her body language put her maids and equerries on notice that they’d suddenly been struck blind and dumb. Impressive how she could do that. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you,” she went on, somewhat awkwardly.

  “What for?”

  She frowned. “For getting me out of Civitas Eremiae alive,” she said.

  He nodded. “What you mean is, why did I do that?”

  “I had wondered.”

  He looked away. It could quite easily have been embarrassment, the logical reaction of a reticent man faced with unexpected gratitude. “Chance,” he said. “Pure chance. Oh, I knew who you were, of course. But I happened to run into you as I was making my own escape. It was just instinct, really.”

  “I see.” She was frowning. “So if you’d happened to run into someone else first …”

  “I didn’t, though,” he said. “So that’s all right.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I made it sound like I was afraid — I don’t know, that you were calling in a debt or something.”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Fine.” She lifted her head, like a horse sniffing for rain. “Such as?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How are you settling in?”

  “What?”

  “Well, you asked me.”

  She hesitated, then shrugged. “There are days when I forget where I am,” she said. “I wake up, and it’s a sunny morning, and I sit in the window-seat and pick up my embroidery; and the view from the window is different, and I remember, we’re not in Eremia, we’re in Civitas Vadanis. So I guess you could say I’ve settled in quite well. I mean,” she added, “one place is very much like another when you stay in your room embroidering cushion covers. It’s a very nice room,” she went on. “They always have been. I suppose I’ve been very lucky, all my life.”

  The unfair question would be, So you enjoy embroidery, then? If he asked it, either she’d have to lie to him, or else put herself in his power, forever. “What are you making at the moment?” he asked.

  “A saddle-cloth,” she answered brightly. “For Orsea, for special occasions. You see, all the other things I made for him, everything I ever made …” She stopped. Burned in the sack of Civitas Eremiae, or else looted by the Mezentines, rejected as inferior, amateur work, and dumped. He thought of a piece of tapestry he’d seen in Orsea’s palace before it was destroyed; he had no idea whether she’d made it, or some other noblewoman with time to fill. It hardly mattered; ten to one, her work was no better and no worse. The difference between her and me, Vaatzes thought, is that she’s not a particularly good artisan. I don’t suppose they’d let her work in Mezentia.

  “It must take hours to do something like that,” he said.

  She looked past him. “Yes,” she said.

  “Let me guess.” (He didn’t want to be cruel, but it was necessary.) “Hunting scenes.”

  She actually laughed. “Well, of course. Falconry on the left, deer-hunting on the right. I’ve been trying really hard to make the huntsman look like Orsea, but I don’t know; all the men in my embroideries always end up looking exactly the same. Sort of square-faced, with straight mouths. And my horses are always walking forward, with their front near leg raised.”

  He nodded. “You could take up music instead.”

  “Certainly not.” She gave him a mock scowl. “Stringed instruments chafe the fingers, and no gentlewoman would ever play something she had to blow down. Which just leaves the triangle, and —”

  “Quite.” He looked up. “Here we are,” he said. “Twenty-Ninth Street. The square’s just under that archway there.”

  She nodded. “Thank you for showing me the way,” she said.

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “Vermilion,” she replied. “And some very pale green, for doing light-and-shade effects on grass and leaves.”

  “Best of luck, then.” He stood aside to let her pass.

  “I expect I’ll see you at the palace,” she said. “And yes, I’ll write to my sister.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t go to any trouble.”

  “I won’t. But I write to her once a week anyway.”

  She walked on, and he lost sight of her behind the shoulders of her maids. Once she was out of sight, he leaned against the wall and breathed out, as though he’d just been doing something strenuous and delicate. There goes a very dangerous woman, he thought. She could be just what I need, or she could spoil everything. I’ll have to think quite carefully about using her again.

  Money. He straightened up. A few heads were turning (what’s the matter? Never seen a Mezentine before? Probably they hadn’t). Almost certainly, some of the people who’d passed them by on the way here would have recognized the exiled Eremian duchess, and of course he himself was unmistakable. Just by walking down the hill with her, he’d made a good start.

  He started to walk west, parallel to the curtain wall. Obviously she’s not stupid, he thought, or naive. Either she’s got an agenda of her own — I don’t know; making Valens jealous, maybe? — or else she simply doesn’t care anymore. In either case, not an instrument of precision. A hammer, rather than a milling cutter or a fine drill-bit. The biggest headache, though, is still getting the timing right. It’d be so much easier if I had enough money.

  A thought occurred to him, and he stopped in his tracks. The strange, weird, crazy man; him with all those funny names. What was it he’d said? I have certain resources, enough to provide for my needs, for a while. Well, he’d asked to be taken on as an apprentice, and in most places outside the Republic, it was traditional for an apprentice to pay a premium for his indentures.

  He shook the thought away, as though it was a wisp of straw on his sleeve. Money or not, he didn’t need freaks like that getting under his feet. For one thing, how could anyone possibly predict what someone like that would be likely to do at any given moment?

  Embroidery, he thought; the women of the Mezentine Clothiers’ Guild made the best tapestries in the world; all exactly the same, down to the last stitch. A lot of their work was hunting scenes, and it didn’t matter at all that none of them had ever seen a deer or a boar, or a heron dragged down by a goshawk.

  He smiled. Hunting made him think of Jarnac Ducas, who’d never had a chance to pay him for the fine set of boiled leather hunting armor he’d made. Of course that armor was now ashes, or spoils of war (much more valuable than the Duchess’ cushions and samplers); but Jarnac had struck him as the sort of nobleman who took pride in paying all his bills promptly and without question. Where was Jarnac Ducas at the moment? Now he came to think of it, he hadn’t seen his barrel chest or broad, annoying smile about the palace for what, days, weeks. The important question, of course, was whether he had any money. No, forget that. He was a nobleman; they always had money, their own or someone else’s. They had t
he knack of finding it without even looking, like a tree’s blind roots groping in the earth for water. With luck, though it wasn’t of the essence, he’d run into Jarnac well before the city was packed up on carts and moved into the wilderness; in which case he’d be able to establish his foothold in the salt business, and everything would lead on neatly from that. Besides, he reflected, it would be appropriate to build Jarnac into the design at this stage; good engineering practice, economy of materials and moving parts.

  He sighed. Time to get back to the palace for another of those interminable meals. Why they couldn’t just eat their food and be done with it, he couldn’t begin to guess. It wouldn’t be so bad if the food was anything special, but it wasn’t: nauseating quantities of roast meat, nearly always game of some description, garnished with heaps of boiled cabbage, turnips and carrots. They were going to have to do better than that if they were planning on seducing him from his purpose with decadence and rich living.

  Jarnac Ducas, though. He smiled, though there was an element of self-reproach as well. So ideally suited for the purpose; he remembered a glimpse of him on the night when the Eremian capital was stormed, a huge man flailing down his enemies with a long-handled poleaxe, an enthralling display of skill, grace and brute strength. A good man to have on your side in a tight spot. Well, yes.

  (Another thing, he asked himself as he climbed the steps to the palace yard gate; why so many courses? Soup first, then an entrée: minced meat, main meat, cold meat, preserved meat in a paste on biscuits, fiddly dried raw meat in little thin strips, followed by the grand finale, seven different kinds of dead bird stuffed up inside each other in ascending order of size. There were times when he’d have traded all his rights and entitlements in the future for four slices of rye bread and a chunk of Mezentine white cheese.)

  They were ringing a bell, which meant you had to go and change your clothes. Another thing they had in excess. He’d counted fifteen tailors’ shops in the lower town that day, but nobody in the whole city knew how to make a kettle. He thought about the Vadani, instinctively comparing them with his own people and finding them wanting on pretty well every score. Their deaths would be no great loss. When their culture and society had been wiped out and forgotten, the world would be poorer by a few idiosyncratic methods of trapping and killing animals and a fairly commonplace recipe for applesauce. Of course, that didn’t make it right.