Devices and Desires

Chapter Eleven

'Auzida Razo,' Orsea repeated. 'I know the name.'

One of the drawbacks to sending your enemy a head by way of a gesture is that you're left with the rest of the body. Orsea had insisted on seeing it. Miel wasn't sure why; he believed it was because Orsea had always had a tendency to be squeamish. Since he'd ordered the wretched woman's execution, he felt he should punish himself by viewing her decapitated trunk. If that was the reason, it was confused, irrational, hard for anyone else to understand and quite in character.

'You've met her,' Miel said. 'Several times. You'd remember her if-' He stopped.

Orsea grinned; he was white as milk and shaking a bit. 'Of course,' he said. 'That's me all over. Not so good with names, but an excellent memory for faces. In this case, however…'

Miel frowned. 'Can we go now?' he said.

'Yes, why not?' Orsea turned away abruptly. He'd seen worse, to Miel's certain knowledge, but the fact that he was directly responsible, having given the order, presumably made it more immediate. Of course Orsea would argue that he'd also given the order to attack Mezentia. 'I've never had anybody put to death before,' he said, all false-casual. 'What's the procedure? Can it just be buried quietly somewhere, or does it have to be nailed to a door or strung up off a gateway somewhere?'

Miel nearly said, Well, that's up to you, but stopped himself just in time. 'I'd leave it to the guard commander if I were you,' he said. 'There's no set protocol, if that's what you mean.'

They walked through the arch into the main courtyard of the guardhouse. 'So,' Orsea said, 'I met her a couple of times. When and where?'

'She used to call at the palace,' Miel said, carefully looking ahead.

'Call,' Orsea repeated, as though it was an abtruse foreign loan-word. 'What, on business, you mean?'

'That's right,' Miel said. 'She mostly dealt in luxury stationery-ivory writing sets, antique Mezentine ink bottles, signet rings, that kind of stuff. Come to think of it, I bought a silver sand-shaker from her myself last spring.'

'She did a lot of business with the court, then?'

'Like I said, luxury goods. Not the sort of thing most people can afford.'

'Yes,' Orsea said, as though Miel was being obtuse, 'but what I mean is, she knew people here in the palace, and she was spying for the Republic. Aren't you worried about that?'

Only Orsea could ask such a question. 'Of course I'm worried,' Miel said. Just not surprised, like you, he didn't add. 'Obviously there's a serious problem.'

'Glad you can see that,' Orsea snapped. 'What are you proposing to do about it?'

Miel stopped, frowning. 'Thank you,' he said.

'What are you thanking me for?'

'The promotion. Apparently I'm head of security now, or captain of the palace guard, or something. I'm honoured, but you might have told me earlier.'

'I'm sorry.' And he was, too; sincerely sorry for being nasty to his friend. That was why Miel loved him, and why he was such a bad duke. 'It's because I've come to rely on you so much since-well, since the battle. I got wounded and you had to get us all out of that ghastly mess; and since then I've turned to you first for everything, loaded it all on your shoulders without even asking if you minded, and now I automatically assume you're dealing with it all, like a one-man cabinet.' He sighed. Miel felt embarrassed. 'You should be doing this job, Miel, not me. I just can't manage it.'

Miel forced a laugh. 'Only if you wanted a civil war on your hands,' he said. 'A Ducas on the throne; think about it. Half the people in this country would rather see Duke Valens get the crown than me.'

Orsea turned his head slightly, looked him in the eye. 'You wouldn't have invaded Mezentia, though.'

'You don't know that.' Miel shrugged. 'This isn't getting us anywhere. In answer to your question-'

'What question? Oh, yes. Slipped my mind.'

'What do we do about the spy,' Miel said. They started walking again. 'Well,' he said, 'you don't need to be a doctor of logic to figure out that the likeliest place to find spies is the Merchant Adventurers. They go everywhere, know people here and abroad, they haven't got the same loyalties as us. Nobody else has the opportunities or the motive like they have.'

Orsea frowned. 'So what are you saying?' he said. 'Round them all up and have them all killed?'

Miel clicked his tongue. 'No, of course not,' he said. 'But we're looking at this the wrong way. Asking ourselves the wrong questions.'

'Such as?'

'Such as why,' Miel said. 'Think about it for a moment. Why is Mezentia spying on us, after they've just beaten us so hard we won't be a threat to them again for a hundred years? Before, now, that'd make sense. But after?'

Orsea was quiet for a moment. 'I don't know,' he said.

'Nor me,' Miel said. 'I mean, there could be several reasons.'

'Such as?'

'Well.' Miel ordered his thoughts. 'It could be that this Razo woman had been spying for them for years, and we only just found out. Like, she was a fixture, permanently stationed here as part of a standing intelligence network.'

'You think that's what she was doing?'

'It's a possibility. There's others. For instance, they could've been alarmed because they didn't have as much advance notice of the invasion as they'd have liked-'

'Didn't seem to trouble them much.'

'Yes, but they're a nation of perfectionists,' Miel said, slightly wearily. 'So they decided to set up a long-term spy ring here, to give them more warning next time.'

Orsea looked worried. 'So that's what you reckon…'

Miel succeeded in keeping the irritation out of his face. No point in setting up a string of straw men if Orsea took them all seriously. 'Another possibility,' he said, 'is that they're planning to invade us.'

This time Orsea just looked bewildered. 'Why would they want to do that?' he said.

Miel shrugged. 'To save face,' he said. 'To punish us for daring to attack them. To make sure we never pose a threat again. There's all sorts of possible reasons. Most likely, it'd be internal politics inside the Republic-'

'Do they have politics?' Orsea interrupted. 'I thought they were above all that sort of thing.'

Miel actually laughed. 'Do they have politics?' he said. 'Yes, they do. Quite apart from ordinary backstabbing and dead-mens'-shoes-filling and in-fighting for who gets the top jobs, they have a number of factions; started as ideological differences over doctrine, nowadays it's just force of habit and an excuse for taking sides. It's not politics about anything; just politics.'

'Oh.' Orsea looked mildly shocked. 'Is that good or bad?'

'For us?' Miel made a vague gesture with his hands. 'Depends on the circumstances. Bad for us if someone wants a quick, easy war to gain popular support; good for us if the opposing faction outplays them. It'd be really nice if we could find a way of influencing them, playing off one faction against another. But we can't.'

'Why not?'

'We haven't got anything any of them could conceivably want,' Miel replied. 'Except,' he added, 'if the Didactics or the Consolidationists want a war for the approval ratings, we're a handy target.'

Orsea pulled a face. 'Bad, then.'

'Probably'

'You know all this stuff.' There was bitterness in Orsea's voice, and guilt, and other things too complex to bother with. 'I feel so stupid.'

'I'm an adviser,' Miel said, trying not to sound awkward. 'It's an adviser's job to know stuff, so you don't have to.'

Orsea laughed. 'Yes, but look at me. Clueless. What did I ever do to deserve to be a duke, except marry someone's daughter?'

Miel frowned, ever so slightly. 'Orsea, this isn't helping. You wanted to know the implications of this Razo woman being a spy.'

'I'm sorry,' Orsea said. 'Go on, you were saying.'

'That's right.' Miel pulled a face. 'Forgotten where I'd got to. Right; we know she was spying for the Republic, because she admitted it. We can guess why, but that's about all. To go back to your original question: what are we going to do about it?'

'Yes?'

Miel rubbed his eyes. He'd been up all night, and he felt suddenly tired. 'I don't know what to suggest, right now,' he said. 'That was all we managed to get out of her, that she was spying for the Mezentines. We tried to get names of other spies, contacts, the usual stuff, but she died on us. Weak heart, apparently.'

Orsea nodded. 'So really,' he said, 'we need to find out some more background before we make any decisions.'

'I think so. I mean, we've sent a pretty clear message to the Republic that we know what they were up to and there won't be any more reports from that particular source; so that's probably the immediate problem taken care of. Next priority, I would suggest, is finding out who else was in on the spy ring, and making our peace with the Merchant Adventurers. After that, it depends on what we come up with.'

Orsea was satisfied with that, and they parted at the lodge gate. Miel went away with mixed feelings; a large part of them guilt, for having misled his friend. It wasn't a significant act of deception. All he'd done was steer the conversation away from one particular topic, and the amount of effort he'd had to put into it, given Orsea's naivety, was practically nil. Still, he felt uneasy, guilty. Must be catching, he thought.

He went back to the turret room in the west court that he'd appropriated for an office (me, he thought, needing an office. If cousin Jarnac ever finds out I've got an office, he'll wet himself laughing). He shut the door and bolted it, then pulled out a key on a chain from under his shirt. The key opened a strong oak chest bound with heavy iron straps and hasps. All it contained was one very small piece of paper, folded many times to make it small. He unfolded it, for the tenth or eleventh time since it had come into his possession. As he did so, he read the words, tiny but superbly elegant, on the outside fold:

Valens Valentinianus to Veatriz Sirupati, greetings. 'Shouldn't we wait,' Ziani said, 'until your husband gets here?'

The woman in the red dress looked at him. 'You'll be waiting a long time,' she said. 'I'm not married.'

'You're…' Ziani could feel the brick fall. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Only it's different where I come from.'

'Oh yes.' There was a grim ring to her voice. 'But you're not in the Republic any more.'

'I'm beginning to see that,' Ziani said. 'Look, I didn't mean anything by it. Can we forget-?'

'Sure,' the woman replied, her tone making it clear that she had no intention of doing so. 'So, you're the new great white hope-well, you know what I mean-of Eremian trade. Everybody's talking about you.'

'Are they?' Ziani said. 'Well, there's not much to see yet, but I can take you round and give you an idea of what we're going to be doing here, once we're up and running.'

She looked at him again. She seemed to find him fascinating; he wondered, has she ever seen a Mezentine before? He'd have expected her to, being a merchant and an Adventurer, but it was possible she hadn't. Not that it mattered.

'Fine,' she said. 'I'll try and use my imagination.'

'Right,' Ziani said. He put her out of his mind-not easy to ignore something quite so large and so very red; it was like failing to notice a battle in your wardrobe-and engaged the plan. It had grown inside his head to the point where he could see it, quite clearly, with his eyes open, superimposed over the dusty, weed-grown yard like a cutter's template.

'Well, where we're stood now, this is where the foundry's going to be.'

'I see.'

'The plan is to do all our own casting,' Ziani went on. 'Mostly it'll be just small components, but I'm going to build a fair-sized drop-bottom cupola so we can pour substantial lost-wax castings as well as the usual sandbox stuff. It sounds like a big undertaking, but really it's just four walls, a hearth, ventilation and a clay-lined pit. Next to it, so we can share some of the pipework, I want to have the puddling mill-'

'Excuse me?'

Ziani smiled. 'For smelting direct from ore,' he said. 'Back home we can get sufficient heat to melt iron into a pourable liquid, but it'll be a while before I'm ready to do that here. Until then, we'll have to do it the old-fashioned labour-intensive way. The best we'll be able to do is get the iron out of the ore and into a soft, malleable lump-that's called puddling. Then it's got to be bashed on with big hammers to draw it out into the sections we want: sheet, plate, square bar, round bar and so on. Quite high on the list of priorities is a big triphammer, so we won't actually have to do the bashing by hand, but we can't do that until we've got the water to drive it. Three months, maybe, assuming everything runs to schedule.'

'Water?' the woman said.

'That's right. Like a water-mill for grinding flour. The first big mechanical project will need to be a pump-wind-driven, God help us-to get water up in a tower to a sufficient height. Once we've done that, life will be a lot easier.'

She stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. 'Right,' she said. 'Go on.'

'Over here,' Ziani continued, 'I want the main machine shop-it makes sense to have the shop right next to the foundry and the smelting area, it saves on time and labour hauling big, heavy chunks of material about the place. So basically we'll have a big open square area, for fabrication and assembly; the machine shop on the north side, foundry and smelter on the south side, main forge on the east, I thought, because we don't need the light there so much…'

He knew it was all passing her by, soaring over her head like the white-fronted geese in spring. He was a little surprised by that; a trader ought to be able to understand technical matters, well enough at least to grasp the implications: that this was an enterprise on an unprecedented scale, never seen outside the Republic; an astounding opportunity, therefore, for anybody with an instinct for business. She didn't seem to have picked up on that. She was bored. She looked as if she was being introduced to his large, tiresome family, none of whom she'd ever meet again, not if she could help it. Annoying, he thought; can she really be the person in charge, or had they just sent down a junior?

But he didn't mind giving her the tour of his hidden realm (wasn't there a fairy-tale about a magical land that only the pure in heart could see?); saying it out loud helped him make it ever more solid in his own mind, gave him another chance to pick up any flaws or omissions that had slipped past him. He was, as usual, talking to himself for the benefit of an eavesdropper.

'And that,' he concluded, 'is all there is to it, more or less. So, what do you think?'

She was silent, frowning. Then she said, 'Fine. Just one thing.'

'What's that?'

'You haven't actually said what you're planning on making here.'

'But-' Stupid woman, hadn't she been listening? No, he realised, she hadn't. He'd assumed she'd be able to work that out for herself. Apparently not. 'Pretty much anything, really,' he said. 'If it's made of metal, of course. Anything from a siege catapult to an earring back.'

'Really.' The look in her eyes said, You still haven't answered my question.

'Furthermore,' Ziani went on, 'and this is the real point of it, we can make machines that'll make anything at all: pottery, cloth, furniture, glass, you name it. What's more, it'll be made to Mezentine standards, faster and cheaper than anywhere else in the world, and every single item will be exactly the same as all the others. Can you begin to understand what that'll mean?'

He had an idea that she was struggling to keep her temper. 'That's fine,' she said. 'I'm impressed, truly I am. But you haven't told me what you're planning to make. I need something I can load in the back of a cart and sell. All you've shown me is a derelict yard with thistles growing in it.'

Ziani took a deep breath. 'You don't quite understand,' he said. 'Here's the idea. You tell me what you want; what you think you can sell a thousand of, at a good profit. Anything you like. Then you go away and come back a bit later, and there it'll be. Anything you like.'

The look she was giving him now was quite different. She'd stopped thinking he was boring. Now she thought he was mad. If only, he thought, I had something I could actually show her, some little piece of Mezentine magic like a lathe or a drill, so she could see for herself. But it didn't work like that.

She was saying something; he pulled himself together and paid attention.

'When you were back in Mezentia,' she said. 'That place where you used to work. What did you make there?'

Ziani grinned. 'Weapons,' he said.

She looked at him. The final straw, obviously. 'Like those machines they killed our army with?'

He nodded. 'The scorpion,' he said. 'Lightweight, mobile field artillery. We built twelve hundred units while I was at the ordnance factory. They used to leave the production line at the rate of a dozen a day.' He couldn't read the expression on her face, which was unusual. 'Quite a straightforward item, in engineering terms,' he went on, filling time. 'Tempering the spring was the only tricky bit, and we figured out a quick, easy way of doing that. Machining the winding mechanism-'

'Why don't you make them?' she asked, and he thought she was probably thinking aloud. 'Orsea'd buy them from you, no doubt about that.'

Ziani shrugged. 'If he could afford them,' he said. 'It's a question of setting up. It'd take a long time before the first one was finished, and in the meantime there'd be workers and material to pay for. I was thinking of something nice and simple to begin with. Spoons, maybe, or dungforks. We'd have to start off doing a lot of the operations by hand, till we'd made enough money to pay for building the more advanced machines.'

She shook her head. 'Orsea doesn't want spoons,' she said. 'And nobody else in this country's got any money-not the sort of money you're thinking of. These are poor people, by your standards.'

'I know,' Ziani said. 'That's-' He stopped. She wasn't invited into that part of the plan; it wasn't in a fit state to receive visitors yet. 'What would you suggest?' he said.

'Make weapons,' she told him, without hesitation. 'Orsea would buy them, he'd give you the money, if you could show him a finished-what's the word?'

'Prototype.'

'That's it. If you had one he could see. He'd feel he had to buy them, to make up for losing the war and putting us all in danger.' She hesitated, then went on. 'We'd put up the money to make the first one, in return for a share in the profits.'

'You're forgetting,' Ziani said. 'I offered to work for him. He turned me down.'

She shook her head. 'I know all about that,' she said. 'You just went at it from the wrong angle; head on, bull-at-a-gate. You've got to be more like twiddling a bit of string under a cat's nose. You get Orsea up here and show him one of these scorpion machines, tell him, this is what wiped out your army, how many of them do you want; he wouldn't be able to refuse.' She frowned thoughtfully. 'Then you could give him your speech, the one you gave me: furnaces and trip hammers and piddling mills-'

'Puddling.'

'Whatever. He wouldn't be listening, of course. He'd be looking at the war machine. And then he'd say yes.'

Ziani nodded slowly. 'And you, your Merchant Adventurers, would put up the money'

'Yes. Within reason,' she added quickly. 'For just one. You can make just one without all the machinery and everything?'

'I could,' Ziani said. 'Hand forging and filing, it'd be a bit of a bodge-up. But I don't suppose your Duke Orsea would know what he was looking at.'

'So long as it worked,' she replied. She took a deep breath. 'So,' she went on, 'roughly how much are we talking about?'

She couldn't hear it, of course, the soft click of the component dropping into place. Ziani kept the smile off his face, and answered her question. As he'd expected, she looked rather unwell for a moment; then she said, 'All right.' After that, they talked about timescales and materials and money for a while; then she went away. She was looking tired, Ziani reckoned, as though she was carrying a heavy weight.

He went back to the tower after she'd gone. There was something about it that appealed to him; the view, perhaps, or the confined nature of the space, maybe just the fact that it was a comfortable temperature in the fierce midday heat. In an hour or so, when it was cool enough for work, the builders would be arriving to start work on the footings for the foundry house. Something tangible, even if it was only a hole in the flagstones, a pile of sand, a stack of bricks: something he could see with his eyes rather than just his mind, to confirm that the design was starting to take shape.

Starting; there was still a long way to go. The factory, the Duke's involvement, making scorpions, all the individual components that were also intricate mechanisms in themselves; if only, he couldn't help thinking, all this inventiveness and ingenuity could be spent on something truly worthwhile, such as a modified dividing head for the vertical mills at the ordnance factory in Mezentia; if only his talent could be used for something other than abomination.

He'd heard a story once; about the old days, the very early days of the Guilds, before the Specifications were drawn up and the world was made fixed. Once, according to the story, there lived in the City a great engineer, who worked in the first of the new-style factories as a toolmaker. One day there was a terrible accident with one of the machines, and he lost both his hands. It happened that he was much afflicted by an itch in the middle of his back, something he'd lived with for years. Without hands, he couldn't scratch; so he summoned his two ablest assistants and with their help designed and built a machine, operated by the feet, which would scratch his back for him. It was frighteningly complicated, and in the process of getting it to work he thought up. and perfected a number of mechanical innovations (the universal joint, according to some versions of the story; or the ratchet and escapement). When it was finished, all the cleverest designers in the Guild came to look at it. They were filled with admiration, and praised him for his skill and cunning. 'Yes,' he replied sadly, 'that's all very well; but I'd much rather use my hand, like I did before.'

All that invention and application, to make a machine to do a task a small child could do without thinking; there was undoubtedly a lesson there (all stories from the old days had morals, it was practically a legal requirement) but he'd never been sure till quite recently what it was. Now of course he knew, but that wasn't really much comfort to him.

When the men eventually showed up-the Eremian nation had many virtues, of which punctuality wasn't one-he went down to show them what to do and where to do it, then escaped back to his tower, the shade and the coolness of the massive stone blocks it was built from. He should have been down below-he had work to do, a machine to build, he ought by rights to be alive again, not a ghost haunting himself-but there were issues to be resolved before he could apply an uncluttered mind to the serious business of cutting and bending steel. He summoned a general parliament of his thoughts, and put the motion to be debated.

It could be argued (he opened, for the prosecution) that he'd come a long way-away from the ordnance factory, the City, his home. Now he was in a place that was in many respects unsatisfactory, but which he could survive in, more or less. It might be hard to live here, but he could work, which was what really mattered. So long as he could work, he could exist. In a tenuous sort of a way (but the only one that mattered) he could be happy. A proverb says that the beating of the heart and the action of the lungs are a useful prevarication, keeping all options open. He'd lost everything he'd ever had, but he was still on his feet, able to move, able to scribe a line and hold a file. The world hadn't ended, the day they came for him-Compliance, with their writ and their investigating officer and the armed men from the Guildhall. Now he was here, and there wasn't any real need (was there?) to build and set in motion the enormous machine that so far existed only in his mind. He was here; he could stay here, settle down, start a business. A lot of people did that, lesser men than himself. So could he.

But (replied the defence) he could only do this if he was still, at heart, the man he'd been the day before they came for him. If leaving there and coming here had changed him, damaged him (that was what he was getting at, surely), then the absolute priority must be to put the damage right; and only the machine could do that.

Query (the prosecution rejoined) the motivation behind the machine. Consider the man in the story; did he build his machine just to scratch his back, or because he was an engineer, because he could? Consider himself; was the purpose of the machine as simple, small and pure as he wanted this court to believe, or was it something darker and vaguer? An inevitable result of engaging the machine would be the end of the world; he'd admitted and regretted it as an unavoidable piece of collateral damage, but what if it was really his principal motive? What if he was building the machine out of a desire to punish them, or (punishment sublimated) to destroy an evil? What if the real reason for the machine was just revenge?

What nonsense (the defence replied). He could only desire revenge against the Republic if he hated it, and he didn't; nor did he want to change it, except in one very small way. He had no quarrel with the Guilds, or Specification, or anything big and important; the constitution, operating procedures and internal structures were as near perfect as they could be, given that the Republic was built from fallible human flesh rather than reliable materials like stone and steel. One small adjustment was all he was after; a little thing, a trifle, something a fourth-level clerk in Central Office could grant with a pen-stroke. It was only because he was out here, outside, unable to follow the ordained procedure, that he had need to resort to the machine. Since his exclusion wasn't his fault, the damage the machine would do wouldn't be his fault either. It was a shame that it had to be done this way, but that one little adjustment wasn't negotiable. He had to have it; and if it meant the end of the world, that wasn't his problem.

I've changed, he recognised. Something has happened to me. I never used to be like this. On the other hand, I was never in this situation before. Maybe I've simply grown to fit, rather than changed.

Nevertheless; the machine, the overthrow of nations, the deaths of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, just so I can scratch my itching back; I have to ask myself whether it's justified.

He thought about it, and the little thing he wanted to achieve; and he realised that the debate was irrelevant. He had no choice, as far as the little thing was concerned. He could no more turn his back on it than a stone dropped from a tower could refrain from falling. Most men, desiring this thing, wouldn't build the machine, but only because they wouldn't know how to. He knew; so he had to build it. He couldn't pretend it was beyond him, because he knew it wasn't. The little thing-the most powerful, destructive force in the world, the cause of all true suffering, the one thing everybody wants most of all-was pulling on him like the force that pulls the falling stone, and there was nothing he could do to resist it.

Debate adjourned.

He stood up; his back was slightly stiff, from leaning up against the wall as he squatted on the tower floor. He narrowed the focus of his mind, crowding out the bigger picture until all he could see was the frame, cycle parts and mechanism of a scorpion. First, he said to himself, I'll need thirty-two feet of half-inch square section steel bar… Valens Valentinianus to Veatriz Sirupati, greetings.

I have read your letter.

I know what you want; you want me to tell you how sympathetic I feel, how I know how difficult it must be for you, how brave you're being, how awful it is, you poor thing. I'd really like to be able to oblige, but that's not how my mind works, unfortunately. I read your letter, and at once I start thinking about ways and means; things you could do, things I could do, things to be taken account of in deciding what's the best thing to be done. Only a few lines in, and already I have a mind full of things.

Which is the difference between you and me. You live in a world of people, I live in a world of things. To you, what matters is thoughts, feelings, love and hurt and pain and distress, with joy squeezing in wherever it can, in little cracks, like light; in small observations, which you are kind enough to share with me. I, on the other hand, was brought up by my vicious bastard of a father to play chess with my life; a piece, a thing, manipulated here and there to bring about a desired result; an action taken, a move made, and I get what I want-the wolf driven into the net, the boar enfiladed by archers in covert, the enemy driven off with heavy losses, the famine averted, the nation saved. When I was a boy-when all men were boys, they lived from one toy to the next, their lives were charted out by a relay of things longed for (a new bow, a new horse, a new doublet, a new girl, an education, enlightenment, a crown), laid out alongside the desert road like way-stations to get you home at last to wherever it is you're supposed to be going.

I've always lived for things; some of them I can touch, some of them are abstracts (glory, honour, justice, prosperity, peace); all of them are beads on a wire with which to tally the score. I have, of course, never married; and it's a very long time now since I was last in love. Accordingly, I've never brutalised myself by turning love into another thing-to-be-acquired (I've brutalised myself in lots of other ways, mind you, but not that one); so there's a sort of virginal innocence about me when I read your letter, and instantly start translating your feelings into my list-of-things-to-be-done, the way bankers convert one currency into another.

Put it another way. Having read your letter, I'm bursting like a cracked dam with suggestions about how to make things better. But, because I am more than the sum of my upbringing and environment, I am managing, just about, not to. Congratulate me.

You poor thing. It sounds absolutely awful. I feel for you.

The trouble is, when I write that, I mean it; buggered if I know how to say it so it sounds sincere. When I was a boy I learned hunting, fencing and how to rule a small country. Self-expression was optional, and I took self-pity instead. It was more boring, but I liked the teacher better.

Poor Orsea. I wish he and I weren't enemies; in fact, I have an idea that we'd have got on well together, if we'd met many years ago, and all the things had been different. He and I are very different; opposites, in most respects. I think I would have liked him. I believe he can see beyond things to people; it's a blessing to him, and a curse. If he plays chess and sacrifices a knight to gain a winning advantage, I expect he can hear the knight scream as it dies. There are many wonderful uses in this world for a man like him; it's a pity he was forced into the wrong one.

We took out the new lymers today; we found in the long cover, ran the boar out on to the downs, finally killed in a little spinney, where he turned at bay. I ran in as soon as he stopped running and turned his head; I was so concerned about the dogs not getting hurt (because I've only just got them; they're my newest things, you see) that I went at the boar front-on, just me; staring into his eyes, with nothing between us except eight feet of ash pole with a spike on the end. As he charged, he hated me; because he hated me, he charged; because he charged, he lost. I'm not strong enough to drive a spearblade through all that hide, muscle and bone, but he is. His hate was his undoing, so it served him right. The hunter never hates his quarry; it's a thing which he wants to get, to reduce into possession, so how could he hate it? The boar only hated me because he recognised he'd been manipulated into an impossible situation, where he couldn't win or survive. I can understand that. I made him hate me; but hate is unforgivable, so it served him right. It was my fault that he was brought to bay, but he was responsible for his own undoing. I think. It's hard to be sure. I think it's the grey areas that I find most satisfying.

(Molyttus, too, used the hunt as an allegory for human passions and feelings. Strictly speaking, he was more a neo-Mannerist than a Romantic, I feel, but that's a largely subjective judgement.)

Poor Orsea. I feel for him, too. If there's anything you'd like me to do, just say. That made the tenth time he'd read it, and it still said the same.

Miel folded the letter up again and put it back in the chest; he turned the key, took it out, put it away. There, now; nobody but he knew where it was, or even that it existed (but he could feel it, through an inch of oak, as though it was watching him and grinning).

A sensible man would burn it, he told himself. Get rid of it, pretend he'd never seen it, wipe it out of his life and hope it'd go away for ever. That was what a sensible man would do.

He went down the stairs and walked briskly to the long solar, where Orsea would be waiting for him. His clothes felt clammy against his skin, and his hands itched where he'd touched the parchment.

'Miel.' Orsea was sitting in a big chair with broad, flat arms; he had his feet up on a table, and he was reading a book.

'Sorry I'm late.'

'You aren't.' Orsea put the book face down on his knee. 'Against an unarmoured opponent, the common pitchfork is a more effective weapon than a conventional spear; discuss.'

Miel raised both eyebrows. 'Good heavens,' he said, 'let me think. Well, you've got the advantage of the bit in the middle, I suppose, where the two arms of the fork join; you can use it for blocking against a sword or an axe, or binding and jamming a spear or a halberd. Or you could use it to trap the other man by the neck without injuring him.' He paused; Orsea was still looking at him. 'You can't overpenetrate, because the fork stops you going too far in, so you can disengage quicker. How'm I doing?'

Orsea nodded. 'This man here,' he said, waggling the book, 'reckons the pitchfork is the ideal weapon for hastily levied troops in time of emergency. Actually, he's full of bright ideas; for instance, there's the triple-armed man.'

'A man with three arms?'

'No.' Orsea shook his head. 'It's like this. You've got your bow and arrow, right? Strapped to your left wrist-which is extended holding the bow-you've got your pike. Finally, you've got your sword at your side, if all else fails. Or there's a really good one here; you've got your heavy siege catapults drawn up behind your infantry line, and instead of rocks you load them with poisonous snakes. As soon as the enemy charge, you let go, and down come the snakes like a heavy shower.'

Miel frowned. 'Who is this clown?'

Orsea lifted the book so Miel could see the spine. 'His name,' Orsea said, 'isn't actually recorded; it just says, A Treatise On The National Defence, By a Patriot.' He held the book out at arm's length and let it fall to the floor. 'The snake idea is particularly silly,' he said. 'I can see it now; you spend a year poking round under rocks to find all these snakes, you pack them up in jars or wicker baskets or whatever you keep snakes in; you've got special snake-wardens, hired at fabulous expense, and a separate wagon train to carry them, plus all their food and fresh water and God knows what else; somehow or other you get them to the battle, along with two dozen huge great catapults, which you've somehow contrived to lug through the mountain passes without smashing them to splinters; you wind back the catapults and you're all ready, the enemy's about to charge, so you give the order, break out the snakes; so they open up the jars, and find all the snakes have died in the night, just to spite you.' He sighed. 'I won't tell you what he said about the military uses of honey. It's one of those things that gets inside your head and lies dormant for a while, and then you go mad.'

Miel shrugged. 'Why are you wasting your time with this stuff?' he said.

'Desperation, I think,' Orsea replied. 'I asked the librarian to look out anything he could find that looked like a military manual or textbook. So far, that was the pick of the bunch.'

Miel frowned. 'The spy business,' he said. 'You're worried they're planning to invade.'

'Yes,' Orsea said. 'It's the only explanation that makes any sense. Say what you like about the Republic, they don't waste money. If they're spying on us, it must mean they're planning an attack. And when it comes, we don't stand a chance.'

Miel shifted slightly. 'There are other explanations,' he said. 'We've been through all this.'

Orsea slid his face between his hands. 'There ought to be something we could do,' he said. 'I know this sounds really stupid, but I've got this horrible picture in my mind; one of those fancy illuminated histories, where you get charts of kings and queens; and there's one that says, "The Dukes of Eremia", and there's all the names, with dates and who they married, and right at the bottom, there's me: Orsea Orseolus, and nothing to follow. I hate the thought that it's all going to end with me, and all because-'

'Pull yourself together, for God's sake,' Miel said. He hadn't meant to say it so loud. Orsea looked up at him. 'I'm sorry,' he said.

'Don't worry about it,' Orsea said wearily. 'Maybe you're right. Maybe we can still get out of this in one piece. But if we don't, whose fault will it be? I can't seem to get past that, somehow.'

Miel took a deep breath, and let it go slowly. 'Think about it, will you?' he said. 'Like you said yourself, the Mezentines don't waste money. We aren't a threat to them, not now; it'd take a fortune in money and God knows how many lives to take the city. They aren't going to do it. What would it achieve for them, apart from wiping out thousands of customers for all that useless junk they churn out?'

But Orsea shook his head. 'This isn't what we were going to talk about,' he said.

'No, it isn't.' Miel tried to recall what the meeting was supposed to deal with. 'Ambassadors from the Cure Hardy,' he remembered. 'Arriving some time next week.'

'Yes,' Orsea replied. 'Well, they're early. Turned up this morning. Suddenly appeared out of nowhere, according to Cerba.'

'Who?'

Slight frown. 'Cerba Phocas, the warden of the southern zone. Your second cousin.'

Miel shrugged. Practically everybody above the rank of captain was his second cousin. 'Right,' he said. 'Sorry, you were saying. Hang on, though-'

'In fact,' Orsea continued, 'one of his patrols took them for bandits and arrested them, which is a great way to start a diplomatic relationship.'

Don't laugh, Miel ordered himself. 'Well, at least it shows our border security's up to scratch,' he said. 'But what were they doing on Cerba's patch? I thought they'd be coming up the Lonazep road.'

'Don't ask me,' Orsea said, standing up. 'I suppose they must've wandered off the road and got lost. I don't think it'd be tactful to ask them. Anyhow, I've rescheduled the meeting for just after early vespers; we can go straight in to dinner as soon as it's over. God knows what we're going to give them to eat.'

They discussed the agenda for the meeting for a while. Miel did his best without being too obvious about it, but Orsea refused to cheer up. A pity; establishing proper grownup diplomatic relations with the Cure Hardy was easily the biggest success of Orsea's reign so far, and he'd mostly brought it about by his own efforts; choosing and sending presents, writing letters, refusing to be put off by the lack of a reply or even the disappearance of his messengers. Also, Miel couldn't help thinking (though he'd made himself promise not to entertain such thoughts), if the Republic actually was considering an invasion of Eremia, a rapprochement with their barbarous southern neighbours couldn't come at a better time. Given the Mezentines' paranoia about the Cure Hardy, it wouldn't take much in the way of dark hints and artful suggestion to persuade them that Orsea had concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the savages, and that war with Eremia would open the door to limitless hordes of Cure Hardy tribesmen, poised to flood down out of the mountains like volcanic lava. That alone might be enough to avert an invasion, provided that the Mezentines didn't think too long or too hard about how such hordes might be expected to cross the uncrossable desert.

As soon as he could get away without being rude, Miel left the long solar and crossed the quadrangle to the east apartments. At least, he thought, the Cure Hardy had taken his mind off the letter for a while.

'It's all right,' Miel whispered to Orsea, as they took their seats in the lesser day-chamber, behind a table the size of a castle door. 'I sent the kitchen steward to the market, and he bought up all the game he could find: venison, boar, hare, mountain goat, you name it. Also, he's doing roast mutton, guinea fowl, peahen and rabbit in cider. There's got to be something in that lot they'll eat.'

'Marvellous,' Orsea said. 'And plenty of booze too, I hope.'

Miel shuddered slightly. 'Enough to float a coal barge. Wine, beer, porter, mead, cider…'

'Then we should be all right,' Orsea said, with a faint sigh of relief. 'At least something'll go right. Are you nervous?'

'Petrified.'

'Same here. Right, we'd better have them in and take a look at them.'

Miel nodded to the chamberlain, who slid noiselessly away and returned with the fascinating, exotic guests. Miel and Orsea stood up; Miel bowed slightly, Orsea nodded.

There were five of them. Miel's first impression was simple surprise. He'd been expecting-what, savages in animal skins with rings through their eyebrows, something like that. Instead, he saw five old men in identical plain brown robes, loose at the neck and full in the sleeve, some kind of coarse wool; they had sandals on their feet, and rather splendid silk sashes round their waists. Their faces reminded him irresistibly of hawks, on the bow-perch in a mews; the same bright, round eyes, the stillness of the head, the set expression. All five of their faces were tanned and deeply lined; they all wore short white beards, and their hair was cropped close; one of them was bald, with a slightly pointed head. They bowed too; if pressed, Miel would have said they were trying to copy their hosts' manner of greeting.

Translator, he thought. We need a translator, or how the hell are we going to understand each other?

While he was cursing himself for overlooking this vital point, the bald man cleared his throat with a soft cough and said, 'Thank you for agreeing to see us.' His pronunciation was excellent received Mezentine; his voice deep, his accent noticeable but not in the least intrusive. He had a little stub of a nose and small, almost translucent ears. 'We apologise,' he went on, 'for arriving early; we had already embarked on our journey when our guide pointed out to us a more direct road, which we followed. We hope we have not inconvenienced you.'

'Not at all.' Orsea was sounding nervously cheerful; at least, Miel could construe nerves in his tone of voice. He'd known Orsea too long to be able to judge whether anybody else would pick up on it. The savages didn't seem at all apprehensive, as though they did this sort of thing every day before breakfast. 'We're delighted to meet you, and thank you for coming. My name is Orsea Orseolus, and this is my adviser Miel Ducas.'

The bald man dipped his head, and recited his name and those of his colleagues. They slipped through Miel's mind like eels, but he'd never been good with names; he fancied the bald man was called something like Garlaregion; he didn't have a clue what it'd look like written down.

Orsea bowed again; they bowed back. Orsea tried some vague gestures to get them to sit down, which eventually they did. Something about the chairs bothered them, but they didn't say anything.

'Perhaps,' the bald man said, 'we should get down to business. You would like to establish a formal diplomatic mission to the Biau Votz.'

Miel blinked. Surely they hadn't got the wrong savages, after all? Or was Biau whatsit the name of their capital city; except nomads don't have cities. In that case, what was the whatever he'd just said? Some name they called their leader?

Orsea said, 'Yes, absolutely' Miel knew he was confused too, and trying hard not to show it. Was one of the savages smiling?

'We would, of course, be happy to forge this historic link,' the bald man went on. 'However, there are various issues that we should perhaps address at this stage; matters you may not be aware of, which might influence your decision. If you have already considered these points, please forgive us.'

He paused. Really, Miel thought, they're far more polite than I expected. 'Please go on,' Orsea said. The bald man nodded, then looked at the man on his left, who said: 'We must confess, we are a little puzzled why you should have chosen us, rather than, say, the Flos Glaia or the Lauzeta. Not that we do not appreciate the honour of being the first sect of the Cure Hardy to open a dialogue with your people; but our circuit brings us to the edge of the desert only once every twenty years, and in the interim we spend most of our time in the Culomb and Rosinholet valleys-by our calculations, some eight hundred miles from the nearest point on your border. With the best will in the world, communications between us and yourselves would be difficult. We should point out that the sects through whose circuits your envoys would need to pass are nearly all hostile to us, and accordingly we would not be able to guarantee their safety outside our own circuit. Furthermore,' the man went on, frowning slightly, 'although naturally we have only a sketchy and incomplete knowledge of your economic position, we have to ask whether any regular trade between yourselves and us would be worth the effort. The cost of transporting bulk foodstuffs, for example, would be prohibitive; likewise heavy goods such as metal ores or timber. As for luxury goods…'

Sects, Miel thought; he must mean tribes, something like that. We thought the Cure Hardy were all one tribe, but maybe there's loads of them, all different; and we've picked the wrong one.

'Your points are well made,' Orsea was saying; the savage had stopped talking, there had been a brief, brittle silence. 'However, I must confess, we hadn't really thought as far ahead as trade and so on. Really, all we're trying to do at this stage is, well, get to know each other. One step at a time is what I'm getting at.'

'Of course.' The savage nodded very slightly. 'Forgive us if we were unduly forward. Naturally, we welcome any overtures of friendship, and of course our two nations have much to offer each other above and beyond mere material commerce. In any event, we have clarified the position as far as we are concerned.'

As the afternoon wore on, Miel found it increasingly hard to concentrate. Reading between the lines, he was fairly certain that his earlier guess had been right; there were any number of different tribes of Cure Hardy, and they'd somehow managed to get in touch with the wrong one. That was annoying, to say the least, but the thing needn't be a complete disaster. If they were tactful and managed not to give too much away, they ought at the very least to be able to get some useful background information, enough to help them figure out which tribe they really wanted to talk to. From what he'd managed to glean so far, Miel thought either the Lauzeta or the Aram Chantat-although, confusingly, the Lauzeta were apparently mortal enemies of the Biau Votz, the Aram Chantat hated the Lauzeta like poison (not, as far as he could make out, vice versa), and both the Biau Votz and the Aram Chantat were best friends with the Rosinholet, who hated everybody else in the whole world. It might, Miel decided, be a good idea to find out a whole lot more before venturing on any serious diplomatic initiatives.

At least the invitation to dinner went down well. At the mention of food, the savages became quite animated, and one of them even smiled. A good feed and a few drinks might liven them up a bit, Miel thought, loosen their tongues and get them to relax a little. So far they'd been so stiff and formal that he wondered if they were really savages at all.

'May we venture to ask,' one of them was saying as they made their way to the great hall, 'how matters stand between yourselves and the Republic of Mezentia? Our own relations with the Mezentines have been few and perfunctory, but cordial nonetheless.'

Miel didn't manage to hear Orsea's reply to that, because at that moment the bald man asked him something about Eremian horse-breeding. Apparently, the horses he'd seen since he crossed the border were quite like the ones back home, which were different from the horses raised by most of the other sects. Miel answered as best he could, but he didn't know the technical stuff the bald man seemed to be after. He tried to remember if his cousin Jarnac had been invited to the dinner; he'd know all about it, if he was there. Meanwhile, the bald man was telling him a lot of stuff he didn't really want to know about horse-breeding back home; he let his attention wander as they crossed the front courtyard, until the bald man said, 'Of course, we are only a small sect, we muster barely nine hundred thousand men-at-arms, and so our pool of brood mares is far smaller than that of the larger sects, such as the Lauzeta or the Doce Votz-'

'Excuse me,' Miel said. 'Did you say nine hundred thousand?'

The bald man nodded. 'It is our small size that enables us to follow such a wide circuit. The larger sects are confined to more circumscribed areas, since they need to graze eight, even ten times that number. We can subsist, therefore, where they cannot, and they are not tempted to appropriate our grazing, since it would be of no use to them. Accordingly-'

'This is the great hall,' Orsea interrupted. 'If you'd like to follow me.'

There was something vaguely comic about the savages' reaction to being inside it; from time to time, when they thought no one was looking, they'd crane their necks and snatch a quick look at the roof-beams, as if they were worried it was all about to come crashing down on their heads. Fair enough, Miel reckoned, if they lived their entire lives in tents. If anything else about their surroundings impressed them, they gave no sign of it, and that made Miel wonder if their ingenuous remarks about their few but cordial contacts with the Republic were the truth and the whole truth. They'd be forgiven for regarding the great hall of the castle as no big deal if they were familiar with the interior of the Guildhall…

Before Miel took his place at the table, he made a show of beckoning to the hall steward. When the man came over to him, he leaned in close and whispered, 'Get me something to write on.' Luckily, the steward knew him well enough not to argue; he disappeared and came back a moment later with a dripping pen and a scrap of parchment, hastily cut from the wrapping of a Lowland cheese. Resting against the wall, Miel scribbled, Orsea, there are millions of them. 'Give this to the Duke when the guests aren't looking,' he muttered to the steward; then he sat down next to the bald man.

'This is a most impressive building,' the bald man said, without much sincerity. 'Are the cross-pieces of the roof each made from a single tree, or are they spliced together in some way?'

Miel had no idea, but he said, 'A single tree, they were brought in specially from the north,' because he reckoned that was what the man would want to hear. Maybe it was; he didn't pursue the subject further. Instead, he asked what sort of timber the table was made out of. Miel didn't know that either, so he said it was oak; at which point, the servers started bringing in the food.

'We have a serious shortage of timber,' the bald man said. 'Traditionally, we cut lumber from the forests of the Culomb valley in the seventh year of our circuit. Recently, however, the Doce Votz have laid claim to that part of the valley and forbidden us to fell any standing timber. This leaves us in an unfortunate position. Dogwood, hazel and ash, in particular…'

Miel nodded politely, while scanning the incoming dishes. The steward had done a good job at short notice. As well as the venison, boar, hare, mountain goat, roast mutton, guinea fowl, peahen and rabbit in cider, there was partridge, rock grouse (just coming into season), collar dove and whole roast goose. He nodded to the steward, who nodded to the servers.

'Excuse me,' said the bald man. He looked embarrassed. So did his colleagues. 'Excuse me,' he repeated, 'but we do not eat meat.'

'But-' Orsea said; then he checked himself, and went on: 'What can we get for you?'

'Some cheese', perhaps.' The bald man stressed the word, as if he wasn't sure his hosts had ever heard of it. 'And some plain bread and fruit, if possible.'

'Of course.' Credit where it was due, Orsea was taking it in his stride. 'What would you like to drink? We've got wine, beer-'

Just a trace of a frown. 'We do not drink intoxicants,' the bald man said. 'Plain water would suit us very well.'

'Plain water,' Orsea repeated. 'Fine.' He waved to the steward, and said, 'Take all this away, fetch us some bread and cheese, apples and some jugs of water.'

'Certainly, sir,' the steward said, and handed him the scrap of parchment. Miel wasn't sure, because the bald man partly obstructed his view, but he had an idea that Orsea flinched when he read it. He dropped it beside his plate. Some time later, Miel noticed, while Orsea was talking to the man on his other side, the savage quietly picked it up, glanced at it and tucked it into his sleeve.

The dinner didn't last long, since there wasn't much to eat and the visitors didn't care for music or dancing, either. Orsea himself took them to their quarters, allowing Miel to escape from the great hall and beat a hasty retreat to the security of his office, the main attraction of which was a tall stone bottle of the distilled liquor the Vadani made from mountain oats. It went by the curious name of Living Death, and Miel reckoned it was probably the only thing in the world that might do some good.

He'd swallowed three fingers of the stuff and was nerving himself for another dose when Orsea came in, without knocking; he crossed to the empty chair, dropped into it like a headshot doe, and groaned.

'Come in,' Miel said. 'Take a seat.'

'Thanks,' Orsea replied. 'Miel, have you still got any of that disgusting Vadani stuff that tastes like etching acid?'

Miel pushed the small horn cup across the table; he was a loyal subject, and could drink straight from the bottle when he had to.

'I'm fairly sure,' Orsea said slowly, after he'd taken his medicine, 'that there wasn't anything else we could've got wrong; I mean, as far as I can see, we've got the complete set. If I missed anything, though, we could have a stab at it tomorrow morning early, before they set off.'

Miel thought for a moment. 'We didn't actually kill any of them,' he said, 'or set fire to their hair.'

'True.' Orsea leaned forward and reached for the bottle. 'But that'd just be gilding the lily. We did enough, I reckon.'

'It didn't go well.'

'Not really' Orsea passed the bottle back, and they sat in silence for a while.

'What bugs me, though,' Miel said, 'is why they came up from the south, instead of down the Lonazep road.' He had a certain amount of trouble with the word Lonazep. 'It's all very well saying they got lost, but they were early. If they'd got lost, they should've been late.'

'Wish they had got lost,' Orsea said. 'Permanently'

Another silence; then Miel said: 'Well, now we know what the Cure Hardy look like.'

'Miserable lot,' Orsea said. 'Always complaining. Didn't like their rooms much, either. Oh, they didn't say anything, but I could tell.'

Miel suggested various things they could do. 'And besides,' he went on, 'it doesn't actually matter, does it? You heard them. Won't be back this way for another twenty years. By which time,' he added brightly, 'we'll all've been massacred by the Mezentines.'

'There's that,' Orsea conceded. 'No, I won't, thanks,' he said, as Miel threatened him with the bottle. 'Got to be up early tomorrow to see 'em off, don't forget, and I'd hate for us to give a bad impression.'

'One thing,' Miel remembered. 'That bald man. He asked me if we could sell them some wood.'

Orsea frowned, as if the concept was unfamiliar to him. 'Wood.'

'That's right. For immediate delivery, before they move out of range. Dogwood, cornel wood, ash, hazel. Willing to pay top thaler for quality merchandise.'

'Well, he's out of luck,' Orsea said. 'Besides, after the way they behaved, I wouldn't sell them wood if they were the last men on earth. Screw them, in fact.'

'Absolutely.' Miel thought for a bit, but all the edges were getting blurred. 'What's dogwood?' he asked.

'No idea.'

'Doesn't matter.' Miel waved away dogwood in perpetuity. 'Sure you won't have another?'

'Revolting stuff. Just a taste, then.'

Just a taste was all that was left in the bottle; odd, Miel thought, because it was nearly full a moment ago. Evaporation, maybe. 'I'll say this for them,' he said, 'if I hadn't known they were savages, I'd never have guessed.'

Orsea concentrated. 'Insidious,' he said. 'Get under your guard pretending to be not savage.' He looked at the tips of his fingers for a long minute, then said: 'So let's get this straight. Nearest to our border are the Doce Votz. Next to them are the Rosinholet.'

Miel shook his head; an interesting experience. 'No, you're wrong,' he said. 'Next to the Doce Votz you've got the Lauzeta. Next to them's the Aram Chantat.'

'The Aram Chantat? You sure?'

Miel shrugged. 'Something like that. Anyhow, now we know what they're like, these barbarians-'

'No meat. And no drink.'

'Exactly. Now we know what they're like, we can talk to them. Bloody useful initiative. Good men to have on your side in a fight, I bet.'

For some reason, Orsea thought that was terribly funny. So, after a moment, did Miel. 'No, but seriously,' Miel went on. 'If only we knew why they didn't come up the Lonzanep road-'

'Lonazep.'

'That too. Can't figure that out. Bloody great big desert in the way if you're coming from that direction. Should've starved and parched ten times over before they got here.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Orsea objected. 'I mean, they don't eat a lot, or drink.' He reached for the bottle, just in case there was a drop lurking inside it somewhere, and knocked it off the table on to the floor. 'Bloody Vadani,' he said. 'Can't even make a bottle that stands upright.'

Not long after that he fell asleep. Miel, who knew about protocol, struggled to his feet, called a page and had him carried back to his apartments; then he flopped back into his chair and closed his eyes. That was one of the good things about not being a duke: he could grab forty winks in his chair without having to be carried home like a drunk.

Someone he didn't know woke him up in his chair the next morning with a message from Orsea. The Cure Hardy had gone home, the message said (Miel asked the stranger what time it was; just after noon, the man replied); the Duke's compliments, and it would've been nice if Miel could have been there to see them on their way. A little later, he found Orsea in the small rose garden and apologised. His head hurt and his digestion wasn't quite right-that was what came of eating bread and cheese for dinner, Orsea said-which probably explained why he forgot to tell Orsea about the letter. He considered mentioning it then and there, but decided not to.

Since he wasn't feeling his best, he reckoned he might as well go home. On his way, he ran into Sorit Calaphates, who thanked him for inviting him to meet the Cure Hardy at dinner. It was news to Miel that he'd done so, but he accepted the thanks in the spirit in which they were given.

'So,' Miel said, 'haven't seen you around much lately. Been busy?'

Calaphates nodded. 'My new business venture,' he said with a slight roll of the eyes. 'I'm starting to wonder what I've got myself into.'

'Remind me,' Miel said.

'The Mezentine,' Calaphates said. 'You suggested it, remember.'

'Oh yes,' Miel said. 'Him. Going well?'

'You could say that,' Calaphates muttered. 'Going to cost me an absolute fortune by the time he's done. Still, clever man, can't deny that. This morning he was on about some new way of smelting iron ore; reckons it'll be better than how it's done in Mezentia, even. Anyway, that's what I need to talk to you about sometime. Not now,' he added, because he was a reasonably perceptive man. 'Later, when you've got a moment. I'll send my clerk, and he can fix up a time.'

'Splendid,' Miel said. 'I'll look forward to that. So, what did you think of the savages?'

'Not what I'd been expecting,' Calaphates admitted. 'Quiet. Can't say I took to them.'

'They've gone now,' Miel said. 'Still, we had some useful discussions.'

Calaphates nodded. 'Wonder what they'll make of the Merchant Adventurers,' he said. 'Don't suppose they've got anything like them back where they come from.'

'Merchant Adventurers?' Miel repeated. 'What've they got to do with anything?'

'The man I was talking to last night said they were meeting them this morning, on their way home. Didn't they mention it?'

'Possibly,' Miel said. 'Can't think why, though, they live too far away.' He shrugged. He'd had enough of the Cure Hardy. 'Can't do any harm,' he said.

'Probably want to sell them something,' Calaphates said, reasonably enough. 'In which case, bloody good luck. Strange people, though. All those different tribes.'

'Sects,' Miel corrected.

'As you say, sects. The man I was talking to did try and explain, but I'm afraid I lost the thread. Apparently they're all descended from one tribe, but they split up hundreds of years ago over religious differences; they stopped believing in the religion long since, but they still keep up the differences. Charming, though, about the names.'

'What about the names?' Miel asked.

'The names of the sects. Let's see.' Calaphates' narrow forehead crinkled in thought. 'Their lot, the Biau Votz; that means Beautiful Voice in their language. The Rosinholet are the Nightingales, the Aram Chantat are the Voices Raised in Song, the Flos Glaia are the Meadow Flowers or something of the sort, and so on. Apparently they believe that when they die, they're reborn as songbirds.'

'Good heavens,' Miel said, mildly stunned.

Calaphates nodded. 'People are curious, aren't they? Well, I won't keep you.' He dipped his head in formal salutation and scuttled away.

The Beautiful Voice and the Meadow Flowers… Miel gave that a great deal of thought on the way home, but in spite of his best endeavours he was unable to arrive at any meaningful conclusion.