Devices and Desires (65 page)

He read the rest of the letter, folded it carefully and put it in his inside pocket. Until everything was ready and he needed
it, it was only fitting that he should carry it next to his heart, as lovers are supposed to do.

It was some time before Miel Ducas remembered that he was still in his bathrobe, and the hot water was going cold. Not that
that mattered — he was the Ducas, and he could do what he liked in his own house — but the last thing he wanted to do was
make a scene. The eccentricities of the nobility were valuable commodities in the town. The usual fabricated variety commanded
a high enough price in alcohol, entertainment or sexual favors; he didn’t like to think about the market value of a genuine
Ducas story. Needless to say, Orsea wouldn’t set any store by tavern gossip, but he was probably the only person in the duchy
who didn’t.

He opened the solar door slowly and carefully, and walked out into a corridor crammed with servants, all of them standing
perfectly still and looking at him. It was worse than the scorpion bombardment, far worse than facing the wounded boar, because
all his princely qualities of valor and dash were useless; he couldn’t grab a falchion off the wall and massacre the lot of
them. All he could do was walk straight past them, pretending he hadn’t seen them. As soon as he turned the corner, he broke
into a run.

As he’d anticipated, his bathwater was cold. He lowered himself in, washed briskly, clambered out and scrubbed himself dry
with the towel (he couldn’t remember having seen it before; it was a pale orange color with embroidered lilies and snowdrops,
one of the most revolting things he’d ever seen. He remembered that the Duchess had recently sent him some linen as a thank-you
present for arranging the hunt, but he couldn’t believe for an instant that she could deliberately have chosen to buy something
like that. Thinking about Veatriz reminded him of the letter; he closed his eyes and shuddered, as though a surgeon was pulling
an arrowhead out of his stomach).

There had to be a perfectly rational explanation. He’d considered hiding it there, but had changed his mind or never got round
to doing it. It had fallen out of the crack and was lying on the floor, hidden by the hem of the tapestry. He’d put it there,
but changed his mind, moved it, and forgotten he’d done so. It had been completely devoured by moths.

Or someone had found it and taken it. He noticed something strange, and experimented by holding his arm straight out in front
of him. His hand was shaking.

Should’ve burned it; should’ve given it to Orsea straight away; should have given it to her.
But he hadn’t. He’d tethered it, it had slipped the hobbles and escaped, and now it was loose. He tried to think who might
have taken it, but his mind couldn’t grip on the question, like cartwheels on thick ice. Nothing ever disappeared in the Ducas
house, even though it was jammed and constipated with the accumulated valuable junk of generations. A light-fingered servant
could steal a fortune in gold and silver plate, fabrics, ornaments, and be over the border free and clear before anybody noticed,
but it had never happened in living memory; so why should anybody steal a small piece of parchment? Half the servants couldn’t
even read (but if they’d been told what to look for, that didn’t signify). Maybe someone had taken it to light a fire (but
why go looking for kindling behind the tapestry nobody was allowed to touch, when there was a cellar full of dried twigs and
brush?). The truth had him at bay, and he had nowhere to run to. Someone had known what to look for and where to look. It
was self-evident; but it was also impossible, because nobody else in the house knew about that place.

He could burn the house down; but it stood to reason that the thief would’ve got rid of the loot as quickly as possible, so
that wouldn’t achieve anything.

Without knowing what he was doing, he dressed in the clothes laid out for him. The only sensible course of action would be
to go to Orsea, straight away, and tell him the whole story. But if Orsea hadn’t been given the letter yet, he’d refuse to
believe it; he’d fly into a rage and burst into tears, and everything would get worse. He should go to Veatriz (and what would
he tell her? I intercepted your letter. Why did you do that, Miel?). He should leave Eremia tonight and defect to the Mezentines.
It depressed him utterly to think that that was probably the best idea he’d had so far.

He realized he was looking in a mirror. It was an old one, spattered with patches of dark gray tarnish, and in it all he could
see was the face of an idiot. But that was all very well. It was also a reasonably lifelike portrait of the Ducas; and if
it came to his word against somebody else’s, who was Orsea going to believe?

He looked away; because on any other subject there could be no possibility of a doubt, but where Veatriz was concerned, he
had to admit that he simply didn’t know. Orsea had a memory too; he could remember when it was unthinkable that the Sirupati
heiress would marry anybody except the Ducas, and wasn’t it a bizarre but wonderfully convenient coincidence that the Ducas
should be completely besotted with the girl? He knew Orsea better than anybody else, far better than she did. It was highly
unlikely that a day passed when Orsea didn’t remember that.

Or he could kill himself, and slide out of the problem that way. On balance, it’d be better than defecting to the enemy, but
he didn’t want to. Besides, what became of him really didn’t matter; it wasn’t nearly as simple as that. He couldn’t think
of escaping, by treachery or death or running away and joining a camel-train to the Cure Hardy, if it meant leaving her in
mortal peril.

(Mortal peril; hero language again. He cursed himself for an idiot. Heroism wouldn’t help here, because this wasn’t a last-ditch
battle against the forces of evil, it was a bloody stupid mess. You can’t defeat messes with the sword, or by feats of horsemanship,
endurance or strategy. You’ve got to slither your way out of them, and slithering simply wasn’t part of his armory of skills.)

Or I could simply wait and see what happens; and as and when the letter shows up, I can tell the truth.

He stared at that thought for a long time; it was also a mirror, in which he saw himself.
I’m Miel Ducas. I tell the truth, because I’m too feckless to lie.
He shook his head; that was too easy, and he didn’t believe it.
I can’t lie in the same way a fish can’t breathe air. I was bred to do the right thing, always.

The right thing would be to tell Orsea the truth, if the letter comes into his hands. But the right thing would mean that
the disaster falls on Veatriz, who did the wrong thing, and that can’t be allowed to happen. I did the right thing concealing
the letter — it’d have been wrong to burn it straight away, because that would have been a betrayal of Orsea. Bloody shame
I hid it where someone could find it, but that’s simply incompetence, not a moral issue.

I’m Miel Ducas, and for the first time in my life I don’t know what to do.

She found him in the cartulary, of all places. He was standing on a chair, tugging at a parchment roll that had got wedged
between two heavy books. If he tugged any harder, she could see, half the shelf would come crashing down.

“Orsea,” she said.

He jumped, staggered and hopped sideways off the chair, which fell over. She wanted to laugh; he’d always had a sort of catlike
grace-in-clumsiness, an ability to fall awkwardly off things and land on his feet. As he turned and saw her, he looked no
older than sixteen.

“You startled me,” he said.

“Sorry.” She smiled; he grinned. He’d never quite understood why she seemed to like him most when he did stupid things. He
felt like a buffoon, nearly falling off a chair, but her smile was as warm as summer. “What were you doing up there, anyway?”

He frowned. “Your father had a map of the Cleito range,” he said. “I remember him showing it to me once, years ago. I thought
it might be in here somewhere.”

The Cleito; that was where Miel had ambushed the Mezentines. “It wouldn’t be here,” she replied. “Have you looked in the small
council room? He always used to keep his maps there.”

The expression on his face told her it hadn’t occurred to him to do that. “Thanks,” he said. “That’s where it’ll be. Good
job you told me, or I’d have pulled the place apart looking for it.”

That had come out sounding like an accusation rather than praise, but they both knew what he’d meant by it. She carried on
smiling, but she was doing it deliberately now. “Have you got a moment?” she asked.

“Of course.” As he looked at her his face was completely open; and she was planning on leading him — not into a trap exactly,
but to a place he probably wouldn’t want to go. For a brief moment she hated herself for it. “Let’s go into the garden,” he
said, as she hesitated. “I think it’s stopped raining.”

He led the way down the single flight of stairs. He always scampered down stairs, there was no other word for it. A duke shouldn’t
scamper, of course. She smiled again, at the back of his head, without realizing she was doing it.

The garden glistened after the rain, and she could smell wet leaves. That was almost enough to choke her.

“So?” he asked briskly. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing.” The answer came out in a rush, instinctive as a fish lunging at a baited hook. “Only,” she went on, rallying
her forces into a reserve, and paused for effect. “Orsea, I’m worried. About the war.”

The look on his face was unbearable; it was guilt, because he’d let war and death come close enough to her to be felt. He
was going to say, “It’s all right,” but he didn’t, because he didn’t tell lies.

“Me too,” he mumbled. “That’s why I was looking for that stupid map. General Vasilisca thinks —”

The hell with General Vasilisca. “Orsea,” she said (she used his name like a rap across the knuckles). “What’s going to happen
to us if they get past the scorpions?”

He took a deep breath, put on his serious face, which always annoyed her. “In order to do that,” he said, slowly, looking
away; he always looked so
pompous
doing that, “they’d have to mount a direct assault, with artillery support. But our artillery would take out their artillery
before they could neutralize the walls, which means their infantry would have to attack in the face of a scorpion bombardment.
Basically, we’d be killing them until we ran out of bolts. It’d be thousands, maybe tens of thousands —” He stopped. He looked
like he wanted to be sick. “Their army wouldn’t do it, for one thing. They’re mercenaries, not fanatics. They’d simply refuse.”

“Orsea,” she said.

“And even if they were crazy enough to do it,” he went on, ignoring her, “they’d still have to conduct a conventional assault
— scaling ladders and siege towers, against a full garrison, and the best defensive position in the world. There’s every likelihood
that we’d beat them off, provided they don’t have artillery control. It’s simple arithmetic, actually, there’s tables and
formulas and stuff in the books; the proper ratio of attackers to defenders necessary for taking a defended city. I think
it’s five to one, at least. And of course, we’ve got much better archers than they have.”

“Orsea,” she said again, and the strength leaked out of him. “What’d happen to us, if they won?”

He looked away, and she knew he was beaten already, in his mind. Part of her was furious at him for being so feeble, but she
knew him too well. He didn’t believe they could win, because he was in command. In a secret part of her mind, she offered
thanks to Providence for Miel Ducas, who was twice the man Orsea was, and who (on balance) she’d never loved. “I don’t know,”
he said. “That’s the really horrible thing about this war, I don’t actually know why they’re doing it. You’d think they might
have the common good manners to let us know, but apparently not.”

(He knew why, of course. The huntsman doesn’t send heralds or formal declarations of war to the wolf, the bear or the boar.
Their relationship is so close, there’s no need to explain.)

She came closer to him, but there was no tenderness in it. Instead, she felt like a predator. “I want you to listen to me,”
she said.

He looked bewildered. “Sure,” he said.

“If the war goes badly,” she said, and stopped. Her mouth felt like it was full of something soft and disgusting. “If things
go wrong, I don’t want to stay here and be killed. I don’t. I was a hostage all those years, because Father had to play politics
to keep us going when the Vadani were closing in all the time, and every day when I woke up and realized where I was, I knew
that if something went wrong, I could be killed and that’d be that. I was just a child, Orsea, and I had to live with that
all the time. I was
frightened.
I can’t stand being frightened anymore. It’s not noble and strong to be brave when you can’t fight and defend yourself. I
was brave all those years, for Father and the Duchy, and I won’t do it again. If the Mezentines are going to take the city,
I don’t want to be here. I want to run away, Orsea, do you understand? Me getting killed won’t make anything better for anybody.
I want to
escape.
Can you understand that?”

He was staring at her, and she thought of the old fairy tale where the handsome young hunter marries a strange, wild girl
from outside the village, and on the wedding night she turns out to be a wolf-spirit disguised as a human. “You want to leave,”
he said, very quietly. “Fine.”

Most of all she wanted to hit him, for being so annoying. “I want
us
to leave,” she shouted at him. “You don’t think I’d go without you? Don’t be so stupid. I want
us
to get out of here before it’s too late. Leave the Ducas and the Phocas and the great lords to defend the city, if they really
feel they have to. I care about the people, of course I do, but there’s nothing you or I can do to help them, and if we’re
killed, we’re dead. That’d be
pointless.
” She took a deep breath, ignoring the look on his face. “Orsea, I want you to care about us for once, for you and me. Two
more dead bodies rotting in the sun won’t make any difference to the world, but we could escape, go somewhere. I don’t care
about not being the Duchess anymore. I don’t care what I do. But staying here just because —”