by K. J. Parker
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“This is the bit I’m not sure about,” Miel said. “What I think happened is that the Mezentine somehow found out about the letter; what’s more, he figured out where I’d hidden it and bribed one of my servants to take it to him. Then he gave it to Orsea, who had me arrested. Anyway, that’s what the Mezentine told me he did, and I can’t see why he’d make something like that up.”
“Oh. Why did he want to get you in trouble?”
Miel shrugged. “You tell me,” he said. “Sucking up to Orsea, presumably; though why he should want to do that, I have no idea. He was the national hero and our blessed savior already, because of the war-engines. Not that it did him a lot of good, because not long afterward the city was betrayed and that was the end of Eremia. I got out of prison in the confusion at the end and sort of strolled into the fighting, presumably with some half-witted idea about dying a hero’s death just to spite the lot of them. I got a bump on the head and when I woke up it was all over. I wandered away and tried to get up some sort of resistance against the occupation. When that failed — well, here I am.” He looked away. “The simple fact is, I like it here better than I ever liked being the Ducas, back in Civitas Eremiae.”
She clicked her tongue, as if she’d caught him stealing biscuits from the jar. “That’s not true,” she said.
“Actually, it is.” He was staring at a mark on the wall. “Which isn’t to say that this is the earthly paradise, or that all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life is carry sacks of charcoal up a dark, winding staircase. It’s just better than being who I used to be, that’s all.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You have the right not to.” He sighed, shifted a little. “Not that it matters a hell of a lot. Actually, I think that’s the key to it — to this whole industrial-idyll business, I mean. For the first time in my life, what I do doesn’t matter to anybody except me. You can’t possibly imagine what a weight that is off my shoulders.”
She thought for a moment. “Responsibility makes you feel uncomfortable.”
Her tone of voice annoyed him. “Yes,” he said. “But putting it like that’s like saying an arrow through your forehead can sometimes cause slight discomfort. Back home, I was …” He groped for a word. “I was this strange creature called the Ducas. I owned half the country, for pity’s sake. When you think about that, you can see just how ridiculous it is. I owned this place, and I’d never even been here. I didn’t know it existed. How can a man own a place? It’s not possible. It’s only since I came here that I realized it was really the other way about. The Ducas owned me. And a lot of other people as well,” he added, surprised at his own bitterness. “The truth is, I never liked the Ducas much. Now he’s gone away, it’s really much more pleasant.”
She grunted; a mocking, disapproving noise. “My heart bleeds,” she said.
“You asked.” He realized he was grinning. “I know, it sounds pretty lame. Maybe it’s just something really trite, like everybody wants to be the opposite of what they are.”
“That’s true,” she said. “For example, I’d like to be someone who doesn’t live in a hovel and spend her life grinding up bits of rock in a mortar. Unfortunately, I don’t think the world’s going to turn itself upside down just so I can get out of here and discover my true identity. I think the world only does handstands for you if you’re rich and famous.”
Miel laughed at that. “You mean I’m just shallow and self-centered; the original human gyroscope, in fact. You could be right, at that. If the city hadn’t fallen, and the Mezentines hadn’t slaughtered us like sheep, I’d probably still be in my cell in the prison, waiting for some bastard to tell me what I was being charged with.”
“You knew what you’d done,” she said.
“Yes, but I wanted someone to tell me.” Again, the intensity of his feelings took him by surprise. “You’re quite right,” he said, “shallow and self-centered. It was my own stupid fault; not Vaatzes’, or the Perpetual Republic’s, or Orsea’s. Burning down a city just so I can get out of jail is excessive no matter how you look at it.”
“You didn’t do that, though.”
“No, but …” Miel sighed. “If I hadn’t got myself locked up in the first place, I’d have been there to conduct the defense of the city, instead of leaving Orsea to make a hash of it, and maybe things would’ve come out all right, maybe the city wouldn’t have fallen after all. I don’t know.”
“The city was betrayed, wasn’t it? Someone opened the gates and let them in. That wasn’t your fault.”
“No, but that was …” He lifted his head. “I was just about to say, that was just lucky; like whoever opened the gates somehow saved me from bearing the guilt of losing us the war. Your case proved by admission, I think.”
This time, she laughed. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “Carrying sacks of charcoal’s about all you’re fit for.”
He smiled. “Thank you,” he said politely. “I think so too.”
“Good.” She tutted again. “But if you think you’re some kind of disaster — you know, carrying death and destruction about with you wherever you go, like a snail with its shell — I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced. I think the world can go to rack and ruin quite well enough without you.”
“You don’t …” Again, the right word had strayed from his mind, like the cow that insists on getting out through the gap in the bank. “You don’t approve of me, do you?”
That amused her, at any rate. “No, I don’t,” she said.
“Why?”
Pause. She was giving his question serious thought. “We came here when I was sixteen,” she said. “I was just getting ready to have the time of my life — well, you know what upper-class women’s lives are like. The first sixteen years are strict training; you’re taught to be fascinating, beautiful, accomplished, desirable, like it’s a trade. I was good at it. I studied really hard, it’s my nature to want to do well at things. Then, after you’ve learned all that stuff — you know, deportment, accomplishments, literature, singing, playing at least two fashionable musical instruments — you’ve got three years of being frantically pursued by eligible suitors, like you’re the most desirable thing in the world, and they’ll die of broken hearts if they can’t have you; then you’re married, and it’s a lifetime of being pregnant and doing needlework, while your husband’s out running the estate or hunting or fighting wars. I was all set for my three years. I knew the score. Those three years were going to have to last me the rest of my life, so I was going to do them very well indeed. And then, out of the blue, my father told me we’d lost all our money and my three years were canceled. Or,” she added, frowning, “postponed. That was actually worse, I think. He said it’d be all right, because he knew a way to make us rich again, much richer than we’d ever been before. I’d be a great heiress, so it wouldn’t matter that I was a year or so older than the other girls in the cattle market. The handsome young lovers make allowances if you’re as rich as we were going to be. Meanwhile, he said, there’d be a slight delay, and we were going to have to move to a rather boring place out in the sticks; and he was going to have to work very hard at the project, and I’d have to help him, because he couldn’t trust anybody, except his business partner and me.” She was still and quiet for a while. “And here I am,” she said. “I know more about ceramics and industrial chemistry than any woman in the history of the world, and I can carry one of those hundredweight sacks up those stairs as easily as you can, or easier. I tell myself it’s been a better life than embroidering cushion covers and gossiping about the latest scandals; and it has, I suppose. That’s the sad thing, if you stop and think about it. But you come here and tell me that the life I used to dream about, all the things we’ve worked so hard for, isn’t worth having anyway, and you’re happier here lugging fuel and scraping out furnaces … No, I don’t approve of you at all. Just think,” she added, and her voice was sharp enough to shave with. “Back
then, you’re the suitor I’d have dreamed of: the Ducas. I’d have worked so hard …” She laughed, a sound like grating steel. “Some people just don’t like work, but not me. My father says I can’t relax, I haven’t got the knack, I’ve always got to be working, and it’s got to be just right or I get miserable. You can imagine what it’s been like, getting it wrong year after year, not being able to find the right stuff to make the pots turn exactly the right color.” She stood up. “So there you are,” she said, her voice a little shriller. “Obviously, this is the place where all our dreams come true. You’ve found the true peace of menial labor, and Fate has brought me the Ducas. That probably explains why we’re all so bloody happy.”
He watched her go, wondering what he’d said.
Next morning, they made a start on true vermilion.
Framain had brought the book in from the house. He carried it in both hands, as if it’d shatter if he dropped it. He swept a patch clear of dust and ash with his sleeve and laid it down, like someone carrying an injured child.
“We tried it before,” she told Miel, as they waited for Framain to find the right place, “about five years ago, with the bog sulfur. Didn’t work. But Father thinks that sulfur you brought us might be different. No reason to think it’ll work where the other stuff didn’t, but I suppose it’s worth trying. Of course,” she added, “it was useless for making sweet spirits of vitriol with, so it’ll probably be useless for this too. But you never know.”
“There are actually three kinds of sulfur,” Framain said, not looking up from the book. “As well as the yellow variety, there’s the black and the white. Unfortunately,” he lifted his head and looked at them, “the wretched book doesn’t say how you tell them apart, or which one’s suitable for the job. Presumably you’re just meant to know, by light of nature. I’ll need the scales.”
Miel knew where they lived; he darted forward to fetch them, a bit too eagerly. He heard her tutting as he took the rosewood box out of the drawer under the bench. She was bashing something in the big stone mortar; a vicious chipping noise, like a thrush pounding a snail against a stone.
“Quicksilver,” Framain said, with distaste. “Have we got any left?”
“Yes,” she replied, not stopping her onslaught. “Wear your gloves, it’s filthy stuff.”
Framain didn’t put his gloves on, but he handled the thick-walled glass bottle as though it was a live snake or a huge poisonous spider. “Hold the scales,” she told Miel, as she scooped a spoonful of yellow dust out of the mortar into the left-hand scale pan.
“Two parts of quicksilver, by weight.” Framain said. “Hold the spoon, would you?”
She held the spoon steady while he tilted the bottle. The stuff that came out was a silvery-gray liquid, the color of polished and burnished steel. Both of them winced a little at the sight of it. He trickled it from the spoon into the right scale pan, a shining silver droplet at a time, until the beam stopped swaying and the little needle above the pivot was dead center. Very carefully, he lifted the right-hand pan, as she hurried to put a clay saucer underneath it; he tipped the pan out, and she put the saucer down on the bench.
“Fine,” Framain said. “And the same again.”
They repeated the procedure, and Framain emptied the saucer into a different thick-sided glass bottle. “Get that stuff tidied away before we spill it,” he said, to nobody in particular. Before Miel could move, she’d stoppered the quicksilver bottle and put it back on the long shelf. “Now we need fresh clay. I dug some this morning, you’ll find it in the bucket by the door.”
Like a sculptor with an important commission,Framain scooped and molded the wet brown clay all round the bottle — trickles of brown water squeezed back over the webs between his fingers, and down the back of his hands to his wrists — until it was completely covered. “Mustn’t let any of the vapor get out,” he explained. “The book doesn’t say why, but for all I know it could be deadly poison. It’s wise to assume that anything with quicksilver in it is out to get you. Blow the fire, would you?”
Miel worked the bellows until Framain said, “Fine, that’s enough”; then he put the clay-covered mess down on the steel grille over the fire. “Once the clay’s dry, we’ve got to blow up a good heat. Apparently we’ve got to listen out for a cracking noise, which means the sulfur’s combining with the quicksilver. When the noise stops, it should be ready.” He pulled a face. “Let’s hope so, anyway.”
“The last time we did this, it came out a disgusting brown sludge,” she said. “And the bottle cracked.”
“We let it get too hot,” Framain said mildly.
(Outside, it had started to rain, a tapping on the thatch, blending with the hiss of the fire; every few seconds a soft plink, as a drip from the roof hit a tin plate on the bench. Miel had to make an effort not to wait for the next one.)
“It was the wrong sulfur,” she replied. “It says in the book there’re three kinds, doesn’t it?”
“The book isn’t always reliable,” Framain said with a sigh. “But it’s the only one we’ve got, so we just soldier on.” He bent down to peer at the clay mess. “Open the vent a touch, will you? The fire’s starting to run away a bit.”
Nothing much could be done while the clay was drying.Framain went back to the bench, leafed through the book, fetched a couple of jars but didn’t open them, went back and checked the fire, put one of the jars back and got out two more, looked something else up in the book, scraped rust off a spoon with the back of a chisel. “He’s always nervous,” she said, as though he wasn’t standing only a few yards away, “ever since he let a crucible get too hot and it shattered. Burning pitch everywhere. I got burned — look, you can still see, on the back of my arm here — and some embers got in the underside of the thatch, we nearly lost the roof and —”
“Accidents happen,” Framain said to a sealed jar. “Only to be expected, since we don’t really have a clue what we’re doing. Because, of course, if anybody’d done it before, there’d be no point doing it again. That’s what discovery means.”
Miel took a step back out of instinct. He had a feeling this conversation, or others just like it, had been going on for many, many years. Two people talking at each other with intent to wound, like overcautious fencers probing each other’s flawless guards. Just another manifestation of love, he decided. He’d seen the same sort of thing with married couples. For something to do, he went and looked at the fire.
“If we can produce a true vermilion,” Framain told the jar, as if explaining his scheme to a crowd of skeptical investors, “we stand a chance of being able to make the soft white for backgrounds; it’s a mix of the white lead tarnish cooked yellow, vermilion and ordinary flake-white, with green-earth to balance out impurities. We need to get the background right before we can start on the colors themselves, of course, because otherwise we won’t know how the colors will react with the background. For example, viridian —”
“It’s ready,” she interrupted.
“Are you sure? If we give it the full heat before it’s thoroughly dried —”
“Look for yourself.”
And yet, what closer bond of love could there be than between a father and his daughter? Miel had been watching closely for some time now; everything one of them did seemed to irritate the other beyond measure. There’d been days when both of them had talked to him, as if to an interpreter, rather than acknowledge the other one was actually there in the room. He wondered about the mysterious business partner, the one who’d absconded or been thrown out. Had they talked through him this way? If so, no wonder the poor man left.
“Ready.” Framain’s voice was unusually tense. “Blow up the fire a bit, will you? More coal.”
A drip hit the tin plate, making Miel jump. Was it his imagination, or was something about to happen? Probably just the atmosphere between Framain and his daughter, making him nervous. He dug the scoop into the charcoal scuttle.
“We’re running low on fuel,” she said. “A
nd when that’s gone, with the war and everything …”
Framain didn’t bother to reply; he shushed her. They were supposed to be listening out for a cracking noise, Miel remembered. He could smell damp, a hint of moldy straw. I’m just in the way here, he thought, they don’t need me for anything. For no real reason, he drifted over to the bench and glanced down at the book, remembering the first time he’d seen it.
… To make flake-white, place sheets of lead beaten thin in a wooden box, cover with vinegar mixed equally with urine, leave for a month. To convert flake-white to red lead, grind fine and heat in a new pot. To make Mezentine green, place thin copper foil …
“The book,” he heard himself say. “Where did you get it from?”
“It belonged to my former partner,” Framain said, not looking round. “He had quite a library.”
“Half the things in that book simply don’t work,” she put in. “Whoever wrote it must’ve made them up and stuck them in just to fill it out.”
“It’s the only book we’ve got,” Framain said wearily. “And some of it —”
“There’s a perfectly ridiculous thing in there,” she went on, ignoring him, “about hardening chisels by quenching them in the urine of a red-headed boy; or, if you don’t happen to have one handy, goats’ wee filtered through dry bracken will do almost as well. For all we know, the whole book could be a spoof; you know, a parody, in-jokes for colormen and engineers. And here we are, following it religiously as if it’s gospel.”
