Evil for Evil (56 page)

"How long have you been there?"

"All night," Cannanus replied. "Can you get me out of this? Please? I'll do anything…"

"Just keep still and don't thrash about, or we'll both be in trouble." The man's voice had something about it, unfamiliar yet acting directly on him, as though the words didn't really matter. Authority, he supposed, but not the stern, brutal voice of a man giving orders. Rather, it was someone who naturally and reasonably expected to be obeyed when he told you what to do; it reminded him a lot of Duke Valens, but without the edge.

"It's perfectly simple," the man was saying. "We just go back the way I came. You can see my footprints, look. Easiest thing would be if you followed them exactly, put your feet on them. Oh, and don't let me leave without my sack." For a moment, Cannanus didn't recognize the word. "Sack?"

"Sack. Come on, you know what a sack is."

Sure enough, there was a sack; two-thirds empty, but the man grunted as he lifted it onto his shoulder. "Mineral samples," he explained, unasked. "Sulfur. That's what I came here for, though it's pretty well picked clean now. One of the few places you can still find clean, pure sulfur crystals; I got some mined stuff the other day, loads of it, but it turned out to be filthy, full of crud, no use at all." He paused to let Cannanus catch up; he was racing ahead, as though there was no danger. "I expect you're wondering," he went on, in a cheerful voice, "why an Eremian should risk his neck to fish a Mezentine out of a bog."

Cannanus hadn't, as it happened. He'd had other things on his mind.

"Well, if you aren't, I certainly am." The man turned back and grinned at him, twisting the scar into a thin, angry line. "I don't know, really. Well, the fact is, it's not long since a passing stranger risked his neck to drag me out of one of these wretched bog-pools—not this one, another one a couple of miles further on. When I saw your tracks, I guessed you might be in trouble. It was only after I'd figured out a safe way in—you can see it, if you've been shown what to look for, it's a certain way the light shines off the mud; pretty metaphysical stuff, though I guess there's a perfectly reasonable explanation. Anyhow, I'd already done all the waiting around for the light to come up so I could see those special reflections, and then the dodgy part, charging in and finding out if I'd read the signs right, before I realized you're actually one of the enemy; and by then it seemed a bit silly, really, to turn round and walk away. The fact is, the bloke who rescued me had every reason to leave me there, but he didn't; so I guess I'm under a sort of obligation to repay the favor vicariously, if you follow me; even if you are a Mezentine. Stupid, really; if we'd met in a battle rather than a bog-pit, I'd have done everything I possibly could to kill you. Just goes to show how arbitrary the rules we make for ourselves really are." The man certainly liked the sound of his own voice, although Cannanus charitably decided it was part of the rescue, keeping him distracted with cheerful chatter so he wouldn't suddenly panic and trip into the mud; a wise, resourceful man who thought of everything. He prattled about minerals and where to find them, their properties, the difficulties that lay in refining them, the time and labor… One thing he said, however, was very interesting. "My name's Miel, by the way. Miel Ducas." Pause.

"Quite likely you've heard of me."

Cannanus said nothing, though that in itself constituted a clear admission.

"Fine," Ducas said. "You know who I am. I don't suppose there's any point telling you I'm through with the resistance—well, the resistance is more or less done for anyway, it's just that I chucked it in before it withered away and died, and I don't think that was cause and effect, either. Truth is, I was in one fight too many. Oddly enough, I only realized that was the reason after I'd decided to give up. I got separated from them—well, lost, actually; the irony is, all this used to be my land, though I'd never even been out this far before. Well, I had my chance to hurry back and carry on with the noble struggle, but instead I thought, the hell with it, I'll stay here. Now I'm in business with…" Just the slightest hesitation as he considered his choice of words. "With some people, and I'm doing something useful for once. Crazy, really. I spent most of my life ignoring all the good things I was born to, pursuing what I believed to be my duty to my country and my people. Plain fact is, when it really mattered I only ever did them more harm than good. Now I've lost everything, but found something I actually want to do—for myself, I mean, not because it's expected of me. And no, I don't know why I'm telling you all this, except maybe because you're a complete stranger, and sometimes you need to talk to someone."

Suddenly he stopped. Cannanus froze in his tracks, terrified that Ducas had come the wrong way, led them both into horrible danger. Instead, he turned round and said, "Well, here we are. Safe from here on; you can run up and down like an overexcited dog if you want to and you won't suddenly disappear into a bog-pool. Which means," he added, breathing in deeply, "that if you want to carry on going, get back to the Republic and tell your intelligence people you've found where the rebel leader's hiding out, now's as good a time as any. Just keep straight on up that mountain—Sharra, it's called—and you'll come to an inn, about a day and a half's walk from here. Last I heard, your people don't come out to the inn; too far for them to patrol and still be back in camp by nightfall. Even so, you ought to be able to send word to the nearest garrison camp to come and fetch you. If that's what you want to do, I mean."

Cannanus could hear his own breathing. "You won't…" Ducas laughed. "Now that really would be silly," he said. "I risk my life to save you, and then risk it again killing you. No, the hell with it. You're bigger than me, I don't suppose I could subdue you by force and drag you back to our place. If anything, it'd be the other way round, you'd take me to the Mezentines. So, let's avoid the issue, shall we? If you want to go, go."

Cannanus remembered something: practicalities. Not so long ago, he'd been resigned to a miserable death, and that was before he'd wandered into the bog. "I can't," he said. "I've got no water, or food."

"I told you," Ducas replied, with maybe a hint of impatience for feebleness. "Day and a half straight up the mountain, you'll come to the Unswerving Loyalty. Basic home cooking and they won't give you water, you'll have to make do with beer, but it'll keep you alive."

"I'd get lost," Cannanus said wretchedly.

"Probably you wouldn't."

"Possibly I might." As he heard himself say the words, he understood for the first time just how terrified he'd been, ever since the horse threw him and he became aware of how dangerous the world was for a mere pedestrian. In a way, it was a bit like what Ducas had said, about losing all his wealth and power, only in reverse. When he'd still had a horse, he could have done anything. It was all the horse's fault—stupid Vadani thoroughbred—and it had got no less than it deserved. Ducas scowled. "If I take you back with me," he said, "my partners are going to be so angry."

It hadn't occurred to him that Ducas didn't want him. He'd assumed…

Unreasonable assumption, that just because someone rescues you, he's prepared to put himself out even further on your behalf. "Straight up the mountain, you say."

"Follow your nose, you can't miss it." Ducas was bending over his sack, taking something from it. "Here," he said, holding up a two-pint leather bottle. "If you're so worried. I'll have to tell them I dropped it somewhere. Hardware doesn't grow on trees, you know." He lobbed the bottle; Cannanus caught it clumsily on the second attempt, terrified it'd fall on the stones and split.

"I can get home without a drink, assuming I don't trip and do my ankle or something stupid. No food, I'm afraid, but you'll last out, you don't look exactly emaciated to me. Of course," he added slowly, "a good man, someone with a bit of something about him, wouldn't tell the authorities where he got that bottle from; who gave it to him, I mean. He'd feel a sort of obligation. At least, he would where I come from. I don't know how duty works in the Republic."

Cannanus didn't say anything.

"Well, anyway." Suddenly Ducas seemed in a hurry. "Straight up the mountain. If you hit a road you've gone too far west, but don't worry, just follow it and go easy on the water, it gets you there eventually. If you go too far east you'll come to a river, so that's all right." He grinned, as if at some private joke. "If I'd known that a few months ago, I'd be in Civitas Vadanis right now, with my cousin, paying off a few old scores of my own. Duty, you see. Horrible thing, but they tell you it's important when you're a kid, and like a fool you believe them. That was the motto of our family, you know: Masters of North Eremia, Slaves of Duty. Fifty generations of idiots, and then came me." He turned and started to walk away.

Cannanus hesitated; Miel Ducas, the rebel leader, his savior. "Thank you," he said.

"My pleasure," Ducas said, without looking back.

17

It was as though a volcano had erupted in the middle of Civitas Vadanis, and was blowing out carts instead of lava and ash. The streets were jammed with them, their tailgates crushed against the necks of the horses behind, their wheel-hubs jammed against gateposts and thresholds. Lines of backed-up carts flowed down the gate turnpikes like frozen rivers, while soldiers and gatekeepers strained to lift, push and drag the stranded and the stuck, to clear the bottlenecks. Under the thin, high-arched promenade bridge, which carried the elevated walkway over the main street, two hay wagons coming from opposite directions had tried to pass each other and had ended up fixed as tight as hammer-wedges; a group of hopeless optimists from the rampart watch were trying to lift one of them up out of the way, using ropes lowered from the bridge boardwalk. A free spirit who'd tried to jump the line by taking a short cut through the yard of the ducal palace was being taken, much against his will, to explain his reasoning to the duty officer.

"We should've told them to muster in the long lists, under the east wall," someone said gloomily, as Valens watched the mess from the top of the North Tower.

"We did," someone else replied. "But that's the public for you, always got to know best."

Valens leaned his elbows on the battlements. "What we should have done," he observed sourly, "is stagger the arrivals, so they didn't all arrive at once; assemble them down in the valley, then send them up in batches of a dozen."

"We did that too," said a young, dough-faced man, with a sheepish grin.

"Unfortunately, the steelyard crews seem to have underestimated the time they'd need, so they're way behind and all our careful timetabling's gone out of the window. You can't blame the yard workers, though. I went down to check on progress about an hour ago, never seen men work so hard."

Valens lifted his head. "Who did you get the time estimates from?" he asked.

"That creepy chap, the thin one with the ponytail. He told me, half an hour per cart, start to finish. But it's not all his fault, either. Apparently, they were kept hanging about waiting for a consignment of bolts from the forge." Valens yawned. "I see," he said. "In that case, we'll hold up on the beheadings until we can be absolutely sure whose fault this is. Meanwhile, would it help if we sent some more men down to the yard, to clear the backlog?"

The young man sighed. "Not really," he said. "I offered earlier, but the creepy bloke said that extra bodies would just be in the way. Apparently, the problem is, they've only got a limited number of those drill things—sorry, I don't know the right word. Curly steel thing like a pig's tail, and you turn a handle like a wheel spoke."

"Augers," Valens said.

"That's them," the young man said cheerfully. "They've only got two dozen of the things, so Mister Creepy told me, and drilling the holes is the bit that takes all the time. Once that's done, offering up the plates and bolting them down is a piece of cake. That Mezentine's rigged up cranes and winches and things to move the plates about, and wooden frame things to show them where to drill the holes—"

"Jigs," Valens said.

"Is that the word? Anyway, all highly ingenious stuff, but I guess he's used to this sort of thing."

Valens shrugged. "We'll get there in the end," he said. "But I want Orchard Street cleared and kept open; we need one way in and out of the town, even if all the rest are blocked solid."

Someone nodded, accepting the commission, and disappeared down the spiral staircase. Valens groped for his name; an Eremian, from one of the leading families. Surprisingly knowledgeable about falconry, for an Eremian. "Who just left?" he asked.

"Jarnac Ducas," someone said. "You put him in charge of the day watch, remember?"

"Did I?" Valens shrugged. "I've lost track of who's doing what these days."