by K. J. Parker
Valens read the report, nodded, and left it on the side of his desk for filing. He took the hanger out of its scabbard and wiped it on his sleeve — oak sap leaves a blue stain on steel, unless it’s cleaned promptly — before sheathing it and propping it up in the corner of the room. Then he went to the reception to be polite to the Cure Hardy.
11
Ziani Vaatzes, returning to Civitas Vadanis at the head of his wagon train after the successful decommissioning of the silver mines, encountered a heavily laden cart going the other way on the northeast road. Because the road was narrow and deeply rutted, with dry-stone walls on either side, the driver of the cart tried to pull into a gateway to let Ziani’s convoy pass. In doing so, unfortunately, he ran his offside front into the stone gatepost, knocking off the wheel and swinging his cart through ninety degrees, so that it completely blocked the road.
Ziani sighed. He was tired of sleeping in the bed of a wagon on top of a sharp-cornered packing case, and he wanted to get back to the place that he was starting to think of, in stray unguarded moments, as home. He told his driver to stop, and slid off the box onto the ground, nearly turning his ankle over as he stepped on the ridge of a rut.
“All right,” he called out, “hold it there. Leave it to us, we’ll have you out of there.”
The driver of the wrecked cart looked down at him with a sad expression on his face.
“Fuck it,” he said. “I’m on a bonus if I get this lot delivered on time.”
“You might still make it if you shut up and leave it to us,” Ziani said. “This is your lucky day. I’ve got sappers, engineers and blacksmiths, with all the kit.”
The carter noticed him for the first time, stared, then grinned. “You’re the Duke’s Mezentine, right?”
“Yes.”
“The engineer, right?”
“Yes.”
The grin spread. “In that case, you crack on.”
It turned out, of course, to be considerably worse than it looked. The cart wasn’t just missing a wheel, it was also comprehensively wedged into the gateway. Daurenja, who’d sprung down off his wagon like a panther as soon as the swearing started and crawled right under the damaged cart, re-emerged with the cheerful news that the axle had splintered and two leaves of the spring had snapped. He suggested unshipping the long-handled sledgehammers and smashing the cart up into small pieces; that would get the road clear, and the carter would be able to claim the cost of a new cart from the war department.
“That’s no bloody good,” the carter snapped. Something about Daurenja seemed to bother him quite a lot. Perhaps it was the ponytail, which Daurenja had adopted while he was working in the mines; probably not. “It’s not my cart, it’s the Duke’s, I can’t take responsibility. Besides, this lot is urgent supplies. I got a special through-pass. You can see it if you don’t believe me.”
“It’s all right,” Ziani interrupted, “nobody’s going to smash up your cart.” He glanced round at the mess, looking for inspiration to help him reach a quick decision. “We’ll have to take the gatepost down, and the wall,” he said. “Meanwhile, Daurenja, I want you to take some of the men, get the busted axle off; see if you can fix it with rawhide or letting in a splice or something; if not, use your imagination and think of something. You,” he went on, turning his head, “I can’t remember your name offhand. Unload the portable forge, the one with the double-action bellows, get it set up and lay in a fire. Also, I’ll want the two-hundredweight anvil and whoever’s best at forge-welds.”
“Can’t weld the busted spring, you’ll wreck the temper,” someone muttered. Ziani looked to see who it was, but someone else’s head was in the way. “You’d have to anneal the whole unit and re-temper it.”
“I know,” he said. “And that’s what we’re going to do, so I’ll need a water barrel or something like that for a slack tub. I’m assuming there’s no oil left, so you’ll have to quench in water and go nice and steady. And if anybody wants to show his ignorance by saying you can’t butt-weld hardening steel, now’s his chance. No? Fine, carry on.” He nodded to the carter. “Let’s leave them to it,” he said. “Let me buy you a drink. So happens we’ve got a couple of bottles of the good stuff left.”
The carter had no objection to that. Ziani retrieved the bottle and led him well away from the noise of the work. “Sorry about all this,” he said, sitting on the wall and cutting the bottle’s pitch seal with his knife.
“That’s all right,” the carter said. “Just look where you’re going next time.”
Ziani passed him the bottle. “So,” he said, “what’ve you got there that’s so important?”
The carter glugged five mouthfuls, then passed the bottle back. “Sulfur,” he said.
“Sulfur,” Ziani repeated. “Seems an odd thing for the government to want shifted in a hurry. Where are you taking it?”
“Me,” the carter replied, “as far as the Eremian border. Someone else is taking it on from there, and bloody good luck.”
“Quite.” Ziani handed the bottle back untasted. “Not my idea of a quiet life, smuggling supplies into occupied territory. Specially if it’s something useless, like sulfur. I mean, you’d feel such a fool if the Mezentines got you, wasting your life for something that’s no good to anybody.”
The carter pulled a face. “I just drive the wagon,” he said. “No business of mine what the stuff ’s for.”
“That’s right,” Ziani agreed. “Trouble is, you’ve got me curious now. Tell you what; let’s have a look at that pass of yours. It might have the name of the bloke this lot’s going to.”
The carter glowered at him. “Why would I want to show you that?”
Ziani smiled pleasantly. “Because I’m asking you,” he said, “and my men have got your cart in bits all over the road. Of course, if you’d like to put it back together again on your own …”
The carter must have seen the merit in that line of argument, because he fished down the front of his shirt and pulled out a folded square of paper. Ziani took it and his eye slid down the recitals until a name snagged his attention.
“Miel Ducas,” he said aloud. “Small world.”
The hardest part, unexpectedly enough, turned out to be getting the cart unjammed. Only once the gatepost and the wall had come down was it possible to see what was really holding it; both nearside wheels, wedged deep in a rut. Because of the angle the cart stood at, there was no chance of using Ziani’s wagon teams to pull it free, which meant they had to dig it out. That proved to be no fun at all. Whoever had built the road, a very long time ago, had laid a solid foundation of rubble and stones, over which two feet of mud had built up over the years. The ruts cut through the mud into the stone, and that was what was binding the wheels. Because the cart was in the way, there was no room to swing a sledge to drive in the crowbar. One of the men had his wrist broken by a careless hammer-blow, whereupon the rest of them declared they’d had enough and reminded Ziani of the basically sound idea of smashing the cart up into little bits. He had to shout to make them calm down. After that, nothing got done for a long time. The carter got hold of the other bottle while Ziani’s attention was distracted, and went away somewhere. One of those days.
“All right.” Ziani pulled himself together. He was, after all, in charge, though he really didn’t want to be. “This is what we’re going to do. Daurenja, I want you to …” He looked round. He’d become so used to the thin man hovering a few inches away that he was surprised to find he wasn’t there. Instead, he was on his knees under the cart, peering up at something. “Daurenja,” he repeated, “leave that, for crying out loud, I want you to —”
“Sorry.” Daurenja seemed to bounce upright, a movement that no ordinary human being should have been capable of making. “I was just wondering, though.”
Ziani sighed. “What?”
“This is probably stupid,” Daurenja said, “but why did you decide against lifting the cart up out of the ruts, rather than excavating?”
It was one of those questions that makes your head hurt at the best of times. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” Daurenja said, “I was just looking at the cart chassis, and I can’t see why we can’t just raise it on levers and keep putting stone blocks underneath until we’ve lifted it up out of the rut. Presumably you considered that and saw why it wouldn’t work. I guessed it was because there wasn’t anything in the chassis strong enough to take the strain of levering, which was why I was looking at the spring mountings, which I thought looked plenty strong enough, but —”
“Fine,” Ziani said, “let’s try that.”
It worked. They raised the cart on crowbars, piled stones from the broken-up wall under it and floated it over the ruts, which they then filled with gatepost debris. The spliced axle and welded spring went back in without a hitch. It couldn’t have gone more smoothly if they’d been practicing it for months.
“There you go,” Ziani said to the carter, as he staggered across to inspect his perfectly refurbished cart. “Piece of cake. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“Took your time, didn’t you?” the carter replied. It took him several goes to get up onto the box. “If I miss my transfer at the border …”
“Drive fast,” Ziani advised him. “Don’t worry about the road surface, you’ll make it. A few bumps and jiggles never hurt anybody.”
The carter gathered his reins, whipped on the horses and set off at a rather wild trot. A minute or so later, once he’d left the Mezentine and his convoy well behind, he began to wonder whether the second bottle had been such a good idea after all. But then he hadn’t expected that they’d be able to fix the cart so quickly, or at all. So much, he thought, for the Duke’s famous Mezentine engineer. Sure, he was good at shouting and ordering people about, but it hadn’t been him who sorted it in the end. It was that long, thin, evil-looking bugger with the flat nose, and he was no Mezentine. He frowned; then a jolt shot him three inches into the air, and when he landed his teeth slammed together, and he whimpered. Maybe it’d be a good idea to slow down a little.
Screw the Mezentine, he thought. And anyway, aren’t we supposed to be at war with those buggers? So, really smart, having one of them in the government, or whatever. The Duke was all right, but he was too trusting. The creep was probably a spy, or a saboteur, and he’d seemed very interested in the cargo. The carter thought about that, as his horses slowed to an amble. He wasn’t sure who bothered him more, the Mezentine with his black face and his loud mouth, or the thin, snake-faced one with the ponytail. Nasty pieces of work, both of them, and now he was going to be late and lose his bonus.
The providence that looks after honest working men was there for him, however, and brought him to the border with a good hour to spare. They grumbled at him, claiming he’d kept them waiting and cost them money, but he couldn’t be bothered to get into an argument about it. They gave him his docket, which was what he needed to get paid, shifted the barrels from his cart to theirs, and trundled away, until the dust swallowed them. He dismissed them from his mind and went for a drink.
The team who’d undertaken to carry the sulfur from the border into Eremia consisted of an old man and his twelve-year-old grandson. Before the war they’d been held in low esteem by the authorities on both sides of the border, who’d accused them of smuggling and all manner of bad things. Now they were patriotic heroes, which they didn’t mind, since heroism paid slightly more, and the risks were roughly the same. The work was no different, and they were good at it. The thing to remember, the old man never seemed to tire of saying, is to stay off the skyline and go nice and steady; that way, you get to see the bogies long before they see you. If his grandson had any views on the subject he kept them to himself.
They reached the Unswerving Loyalty at noon on the third day of their journey; exactly on time. As usual, the place was so quiet it appeared to have been abandoned. The old man drove his cart into the stable, untacked the horse, fed and watered it and went to find himself a drink. The boy stayed with the cart as he’d been told. He felt, not for the first time, that this was both unnecessary and unjust. Nobody was going to steal the barrels, because there wasn’t anybody here, and if he was old enough to drive the cart and see to the horse, he was old enough to drink beer. He’d argued this case on several occasions with no little passion, but his grandfather never seemed to be listening.
He sat still and quiet on the box for a minute or so, until he was sure the old fool wasn’t coming back; then he jumped down, took out his penknife and started carving his initials into one of the doorposts. He was proud of his initials; a Vadani border guard had taught him how to write them, when they’d been arrested and there was nothing to do for hours. The L was easy to carve, just straight lines, but the S was a challenge, and he was never quite sure which way round the curves were meant to go. One of these days he’d meet another educated man and ask him, just to make sure. He was proud of his knife, too; it had a hooked blade and a stagshorn handle, and there was a mark on it that meant it was genuine Mezentine.
He got the L done and was scoring the outlines of the S when he heard a footstep behind him. Quickly he dropped the knife onto the ground and scuffed straw over it with his foot, at the same time leaning against the gatepost to cover up his work.
“It’s all right,” a man’s voice said. “I used to do that when I was your age.”
“Do what?” the boy said warily.
“Carve my initials on things.” The man was tall; quite old, over thirty; his face was all messed up with a scar. “Trees, mostly. If you cut your initials into a tree, they get wider as the bark grows. Bet you didn’t know that.”
The boy frowned, suspecting a trap. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “What do you want?”
The man walked past him. He was looking at the cart, but he didn’t look much like the sort of man who usually took an interest in the stuff they carried. “Is that my sulfur you’ve got there?” he asked.
“Don’t know,” the boy replied. He bent down, picked up his knife and put it away. A beam of light shone through a hole in the roof, sparkling off specks of floating dust. The man was climbing up into the cart. Duty scuffled with discretion in the boy’s mind. “You can’t go up there,” he said.
The man laughed. “It’s all right,” he said, “this lot’s meant for me, I’ve been waiting for it. Here,” he added, reaching in his pocket and taking out a coin, “have a drink on me, somewhere else.”
The coin spun in the air, and the boy caught it one-handed. It was, of course, an obvious bribe, implying that the man had no business being there. On the other hand, it was a silver quarter-thaler. The boy clamped his hand firmly around it and fled.
Miel counted the barrels. Six. He stooped, put his arms around one of them, bent his knees and lifted. Two hundredweight at least. Of course, he had no idea whether it’d be enough, since he didn’t know what Framain and his daughter wanted the stuff for. None of his business, anyway. He had owed them a debt, which he could now discharge honorably, as the Ducas should, and that’d be that. Once it was delivered, the rest of his life would be his own.
Sulfur, he thought. No earthly good to anybody, surely.
He looked round for the boy, then remembered he’d paid him to go away. No matter. He got down, left the stable and went back to the tap room.
There he saw an old man, presumably the carter. He was holding a big mug of beer, using both hands. Miel sat down opposite him and waited until he’d taken a drink.
“Is that your wagon outside?” he said.
The old man looked at him. “Who’s asking?”
“My name’s Miel Ducas,” Miel replied, “which is what it says on your delivery note.”
The old man grounded his mug, carefully, so as not to spill any. “Ah,” he said.
Miel smiled. “Let me buy you another of those,” he said.
“No thanks. This’ll do me. I got a long drive ahead of me, I need a clear head.”
“Talking of which.” Miel edged a little closer. “Are you in any hurry to get anywhere? I need someone to deliver that lot for me, and nobody around here seems to have a cart for hire. It’s not far,” he added, “five days there and back. Ten thalers.”
The old man thought about that. “All right,” he said. “Give me a couple of hours to catch my breath, mind.”
“Fine. I’ll go and get my things together. I’ll meet you back in the stable.”
Just to be on the safe side, he bought provisions for seven days. Finding the inn from Framain’s hidden combe hadn’t been a problem; all he’d had to do was keep his eyes fixed on the mountain. The return journey, by contrast, called for a higher level of navigational skill than he had any reason to believe he possessed. He’d taken note of landmarks along the way, of course, but by the very nature of the country those were few and far between. No wonder the Mezentines had left this region well alone. The map Jarnac had given him was pure fiction, needless to say. The only halfway accurate maps of these parts had been the old estate plans compiled over the years by the Ducas bailiffs, stored in the map room at the estate office at the Ducas country house. They were all ashes now. As the cart lumbered out of the inn courtyard on a half-remembered bearing into the dust and rocks of his birthright, Miel wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he thought he was playing at.
“Do you know this country at all?” he asked the old man hopefully.
“No,” the old man replied. “Not once you’re past the Loyalty. Nobody lives there,” he explained, reasonably enough. Miel stirred uncomfortably and looked across at the boy. He was cutting bits off a piece of old frayed rope with his knife, and humming something under his breath.
