Evil for Evil (21 page)

Apparently Framain wasn’t interested in gratitude. “Anyway,” he interrupted briskly, “you can stay here and feed yourself
up until you’re ready to move on, no problem there. You can call it repayment for arrears of rent, I suppose, since technically
I’m a trespasser on your property. If you’ve finished your water, you might like a drop of the wine. You’ll like it, it comes
out of sealed bottles.”

Miel laughed awkwardly, and Framain knelt down and scrabbled about under the table for a while, finally emerging with a glass
bottle wound round with swathes of filthy black cobweb. It turned out to be very good wine indeed.

“Wasted on me,” Framain said. “Actually, it’s stuff my father laid down, about forty years ago. There were a dozen cases or
so left when I came here, and I brought them with me. I don’t tend to drink the stuff myself. I don’t like the taste much,
and it gives me heartburn.”

Miel smiled politely, wondering how Framain’s clothes came to be clean and respectable when he lived in such squalor. Then
he remembered the barn, newly thatched and carefully locked.

“Can I ask what you do here?” he said.

“Can you ask?” Framain laughed. “No, you can’t. Here, have some more of this stuff. They tell me it doesn’t keep once it’s
been opened.”

“I’m sorry,” Miel said. “I didn’t mean to cause offense.”

“Of course you didn’t, and you haven’t.” He stood up. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, time’s getting on and I’d better get started.
Help yourself to anything you want,” he added, gesturing vaguely at the surrounding squalor. “Feel free to roam around the
place if you want to stretch your legs. I’d stay put here for a day or so if I were you, but if you’re in a desperate hurry
to get somewhere, carry on. I’ll see you this evening, if you’re still here.”

Miel nodded. “Thank you again,” he said. “If you hadn’t come along when you did —”

“Well, there you go,” Framain snapped, “generous impulses and so forth. Tell you what: when the Mezentines have been driven
out and you get your land and your money back, you can make it up to me. All right?”

He left, and a little later Miel caught sight of him through the window that looked out onto the yard; he was standing at
the top of the barn steps, opening the massive padlocks with keys he carried on a chain round his neck. Miel looked away,
in case Framain noticed him watching. The Ducas does his best to avoid information that he shouldn’t have, and forgets it
straightaway if he stumbles across it accidentally.

The food and the wine (he finished off the bottle, as instructed) made him feel sleepy, and he woke up with his head cradled
on his arms on the table. As he stirred, he startled a rat, which scuttled away into a castle of abandoned, heaped-up sacks
and boxes. To his mild surprise, he felt a little stronger, though his neck hurt and his knees were cramped. Feel free to
roam about the place; well, it might ease the cramp.

He stood up, wobbled and grabbed the edge of the table. When he released it again, his hands were grimy with black dust, which
didn’t brush off easily. He made an effort and went exploring.

In the far corner of the room was a staircase, narrow and twisted into a tight spiral, so that Miel had to climb part of the
way on his hands and knees. Upstairs there was only one small room, about the size of a hayloft. Apart from dust, and a carpet
of crisp brown beech leaves, it was empty. The only other room in the house was back downstairs, at the opposite end of the
main room: a pantry with a stone-flagged sunken floor, presumably used for storing root vegetables in the cool. It was empty
too; there was a small pool of black water at the far end, where the floor wasn’t level. Evidently, then, Framain didn’t sleep
in the house, unless he curled up under the table like a dog, and Miel couldn’t picture him doing that.

A mystery, then; but the world is full of mysteries. Generous impulses, Framain had said; someone who pulled strangers out
of quagmires and gave them food and water (albeit mixed with dust) couldn’t be a total misanthropist. True, he’d figured out
who Miel was with depressing ease, but he wouldn’t have known that when he made the decision to rescue him, so it was unlikely
that his actions had been prompted by hope of ransom, as the scavengers’ had been. The bottom line was that Miel was probably
safe, for now, provided that he kept to the rules and didn’t go poking about and annoying his host. Small price to pay. That
said, he found the place depressing and vaguely revolting. It would be nice to leave and go somewhere else.

That reminded him; he dragged himself out into the fresh air. It was just starting to get dark. The barn door was shut up
and locked again, all three padlocks in place in their hasps. Beyond it, he saw a thick column of black smoke rising from
the chimney of the overgrown-beehive building he’d noticed earlier. Conceivably it could be a smokehouse, for curing hams
and bacon and sausage. Perhaps that was what Framain did for a living. Perhaps.

His horse wasn’t where he’d left it; after a rather draining search (still a very long way from a full recovery, then) he
found it in a stable, along with the horse Framain had been riding and two others. The stable was much cleaner and tidier
than the house: fresh straw, full mangers, clean water in the drinking troughs. His saddle and bridle had been hung neatly
on a rack at the far end. The hanger was there too.

That was a comfort; he still had transport and defense, which implied that Framain was sincere about letting him go if and
when he wanted to. Not, he realized, that he’d be likely to get very far if he saddled up and left immediately. Quite apart
from his sad lack of strength, he had no food and nothing to carry water in. Maybe Framain would provide them, too, but that
remained to be seen. Until the issue was resolved, their absence would keep him here just as effectively as a shackle and
chain.

Suddenly realizing how weak he was feeling, he stumbled back into the house and flopped awkwardly onto the bench, banging
his knee hard on the edge of the table in the process. It took him a while to recover from the strain of his excursion, and
when he was alert enough to take an interest in his surroundings, he saw that the light was fading fast. He hadn’t seen anything
in the way of lamps, candles or tapers, but more or less anything could be buried in among the trash on the table. Gritting
his teeth, he reached out and explored, mostly by feel. To his relief, he found a candle, or at least the stub of one; then
he looked at the fireplace and saw that at some point the fire had gone out, so he had no means of lighting it. He sighed
wearily, and realized that his right hand was resting on something flat and rectangular that felt as though it could almost
be a book.

It
was
a book. Miel felt almost absurdly pleased; something to read — not tonight, obviously, but tomorrow, when he’d be spending
the whole day in this horrible room. He turned in his seat and held the book up, so that the last rays of the sun glowed on
its spine. Nothing to see there, however, so he opened it at random.

It was written in a proper clerk’s hand, so it wasn’t just some homemade effort, but the letters were painfully, frustratingly
small. He wriggled round a little further, screwed his eyes up, and read:

To make green. Take thin sheet copper, soak in warm vinegar in an oak box, allow to stand for two weeks, remove and scrape
when dry. To make vermilion …

Oh well, Miel thought, and decided that on balance it could wait until the morning, when he could steep himself in it without
torturing his eyes. Vermilion, he thought; wasn’t that some kind of fancy word for red? Maybe the reclusive and mysterious
Framain would turn out to be nothing but a painter, a churner-out of court scenes and hunting scenes on limewood panels or
a prettifier of manuscripts. He heard himself laugh; it took him a moment to identify the sound.

Maybe he closed his eyes, just for a moment. When he opened them again, it was broad daylight. No sign of Framain, but someone
had left another bottle of the good wine and a plate of bread and rawhide-pretending-to-be-bacon next to him on the table.
Thankfully, no birds or rodents this time. He yawned and stretched. He was feeling much better. Good.

He ate his breakfast. Chewing up the bacon should’ve counted as a full day’s work for a healthy man, but Miel managed to do
it with only three breaks for rest. That, he reckoned, was a sign that he was well on the road to recovery; in which case,
he was fit enough to get out of this strange place and be on his way, wherever that was. There remained, however, the matter
of provisions for his journey, and containers to carry them in. He looked round. Yesterday’s empty wine bottle was still where
he’d left it, and there was a full one to go with it. The remains of the loaf stood on the small table. The bacon was presumably
back up in the rafters, but as far as he was concerned it could stay there. He rummaged for a while through the trash on the
table, but about the only thing he didn’t find there was anything capable of holding water. He took another look at the room
and decided to risk it. He didn’t feel comfortable here.

Manners demanded that he say thank you and goodbye to his host, but he’d got the impression that his host really wouldn’t
mind if he neglected that duty. He picked up the empty bottle and walked out into the blissfully clean, fresh air, heading
for the well.

Bright morning; the damp grass and the smell of wet foliage told him it had rained earlier, while he was still asleep. He
found the well easily enough. It hadn’t been there very long, if the color of the mortar between the stones was anything to
go by. He wound down the bucket; it took a long time for it to reach the water.

“Who the hell are you?” A woman’s voice, right behind him. He turned and saw a tall, slim woman wearing man’s clothes (linen
shirt, cord breeches, gaiters; almost identical to those Framain had been wearing). She had dark hair, pulled back tight into
a bun. He guessed she was his own age or a few years younger, but it was hard to tell because her face was so dirty.

Soot, he realized; there were pale rings round her eyes, and white patches on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. The rest
was dull matt black, like a well-leaded stove. Her hands were filthy too, though the cuffs of her shirt were merely grimy.
She was scowling at him, as though he was a servant she’d caught stealing cheese from the larder.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, before he’d had time to figure out what he was apologizing for. “My name’s Miel Ducas.” Obviously
that didn’t mean anything to her. “The, um …” (Couldn’t remember the wretched man’s name.) “Tropea Framain let me stay here
last night. Actually, he saved my life; I’d got stuck in a quagmire up on the —”

Clearly she wasn’t interested in anything like that. “He didn’t say anything about guests,” she said.

“Oh.” Come on, Miel chided himself, you’re a trained diplomat, you’ve negotiated trade agreements with the Cure Doce and extradition
treaties with the Vadani, you can do better than
oh.
“Well, I’m sure if you were to ask him …”

“He’s busy.” Statements didn’t come more absolute than that. “What’re you doing?”

He held out the bottle. “I was just getting some water from the well.”

“What for?”

“Well, my journey,” he said. “Actually, I’m just leaving.”

Her scowl deepened. “What’re you doing round here?”

“I got lost,” he said. “I was heading for the inn at Cotton Cross, but I must’ve —”

“Where were you coming from?”

Now that, he had to concede, was a very good question. He had no idea, beyond the fact that the scavengers lived there.

“Merebarton,” he said, in desperation. (It had been the name of one of the fields behind the house when he was growing up
at the Ducas country seat at Staeca. Why it should’ve been the first name to come into his head, he had no idea.)

“Never heard of it.”

“Small place,” Miel said casually. “Just a farmhouse and a few outbuildings in the middle of nowhere, really. About a day
and a half ’s ride the other side of the Finewater.”

“You were heading from the Finewater toward Cotton Cross and you got lost?”

“Lousy sense of direction.”

“You just head straight for Sharra Top. It’s the only mountain on the moor. You’d have to be blind —”

“My mother always said I wasn’t fit to be let out on my own,” he said wearily. “But it’s all right, Framain’s given me clear
directions. Just head straight for the mountain, like you said.”

She was still frowning at him. “You won’t get much water in there,” she said.

“It was all I could find.”

“You should’ve asked Father. He’d have given you a water-bottle or a jug.”

“He went out before I woke up,” Miel said. “And I didn’t want to bother him.”

She thought about that; weighed it and found it didn’t balance. “What were you doing in — what was that place you said?”

“Merebarton.” He trawled his brains, even toyed with telling her the whole truth. “Visiting relatives,” he said.

“I see.” Without thinking or not caring, she dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, plowing white furrows in the
soot. Miel (trained diplomat) kept a straight face. “Well, if you’re leaving, don’t let me stop you.”

Miel dipped his head in a formal bow, cursory-polite. Someone familiar with Eremian court protocol would have recognized it
at once as the proper way to acknowledge a statement or reply from a person of considerably inferior social standing. It was
(he trusted) completely lost on her, but it just about constituted honorable revenge. “Nice to have met you,” he said, and
he concentrated his mind on the job of filling the wine bottle from the bucket. But the edge of the well surround was narrow,
and he obviously wasn’t concentrating enough, because the bucket toppled out of control and slopped nearly all its contents
down the front of his trousers.

There was a snigger somewhere behind him, but he didn’t turn round. Still enough water in the bucket to fill the bottle, provided
he could just balance …