Devices and Desires

Chapter Five

Unlike his father, the young Duke hunted three days a week, always following the same pattern. On Tuesdays he rode parforce, with the full pack, drawing the upland coverts for roe (in season), boar, bear and wolf. On Thursdays the hunt was bow-and-stable, the hunters on foot and stationary while the pack flushed the valley plantations and the moors on the forest perimeter. Saturday was for hawking, unless the weather was too wet and cold, in which case they'd work the warrens with terriers, or try their luck walking up rabbits around the orchards. The great battues were a thing of the past now; the young Duke didn't hold with the disturbance they caused, or the scattering of game from their regular beats.

Duke Valens took the hunt very seriously. The rule was, no business on a hunt day unless it's a genuine emergency; and even then, the court knew better than to expect him to be good-tempered about it. Accordingly, Chancellor Delmatius was in two minds, possibly three, about passing on the message from the north-eastern frontier. He spent a couple of tormented hours contemplating the true meaning of the words genuine emergency, evaluated the risks to a hair's weight, and was just in time to intercept Valens before he left for the stables.

'It's probably nothing,' he said, pausing to catch his breath. 'I thought I'd mention it, but I don't think we need do anything about it.'

Valens wasn't looking at him; he was scowling at a square of blue sky beyond the window. 'Shit,' he said (Valens very rarely swore). 'And I was hoping we'd work through the long drive this morning. Pranno reckons there's a twelve-pointer just moved in there.'

Delmatius didn't sigh with relief, but only because he'd learned how not to. 'Do you want to see the messengers first, or should I call the council?'

'I suppose I'd better see the messengers,' Valens answered, looking thoughtfully at the gloves in his hand. 'I don't need you to sit in, I'll get Strepho to take notes for you. You get on and call the meeting. We'll use the side-chamber off the east hall'

Delmatius scuttled away like a mouse who's left half his tail in the cat's mouth; as soon as he'd gone, Valens relaxed his scowl and perched on the edge of the table. It was a pity; if there really was a twelve-pointer in the narrow wood, it'd be long gone by next week, most likely heading downhill towards the lusher grass. Either the Natho clan would get it, or some poacher who'd take the meat and bury the rest, and that superb trophy would go to waste.

Even a twelve-pointer, however, didn't justify spitting in the face of opportunity. He'd already heard about the battle itself, of course. The scouts (his personal unit, not the regulars who reported to the chiefs of staff) had brought him the news a fraction less than twenty-four hours after the last scorpion-bolt pitched. By the time the joint chiefs and the council knew about it, Valens had already read the casualty reports (both sides' versions, naturally). Predictably, they were split into two irreconcilable factions: attack now, kill them all, worry about the treaty later; or leave well alone and hope the wolves tidy up the stragglers.

Instead, Valens had given orders for a modest relief column: food, blankets, doctors of course. The council were used to him adopting the one course of action they were sure he wouldn't take, and listened meekly to their assignments. As usual when he gave an incomprehensible order, Valens didn't stop to explain the rationale behind it. The most favoured theory was that he wanted the doctors to bring him back extremely detailed reports of what state the Eremians were in, the exact strength of the vanguard and rearguard, so he could make the attack, when it came, as effective as possible. Other theories included an unannounced illness, a sudden conversion to some new religion that preached nonviolence, or that old catch-all, lulling the enemy into a false sense of security.

In fact, he was allowing himself the luxury of savouring the moment. It had been a long time coming; but now, at last, his proper enemy and natural prey had made the mistake of bolting from cover at the first horn-call, so to speak. It'd be fatally easy to take the obvious course of action and lay into them, kill as many as possible and scatter the rest. Any fool could do that. Valens, on the other hand, knew the value of waiting just a little longer and doing a proper job. He'd heard a saying once; maybe it was from a Mezentine diplomat, boasting insufferably about how wonderful his people were at making things. The easiest way to do something is properly. When he'd heard it first, he'd been unable to make up his mind whether it was terribly profound or utterly banal. The moment of revelation had been when he realised it was both.

He knew what the people said about him, of course; he was the best Duke in living memory, he was a bastard but a clever bastard, he was ten times the ruler his father had been.

Well, he knew the third one was lies. The second one he was prepared to acknowledge, if put to it. The first one he dismissed as unlikely. It was good that they said it, however. If they admired him, they were likely to do as they were told,' just so long as he stayed successful. But there was no reason why he shouldn't. If the hunt had taught him anything, it was the inestimable value of thinking in three dimensions. To hunt successfully, you must know your ground, your pack and your quarry. You must learn, by fieldwork and reconnaissance, where the quarry is likely to be and what it's liable to do once disturbed. You must know the capacities and weaknesses of the resources-men, dogs, equipment-at your disposal. You must be able to visualise at all times where everybody is, once you've sent them to their stations to do their assigned tasks. You must be aware of the interplay of time and distance, so you can be sure that the stops and the beaters are in position when you loose the pack. You must be able to judge allowances-the angle to offset a drive so as to head off the quarry from its customary line of escape, how far ahead of a running stag to shoot so as to pitch your arrow where it's going, not where it's just been. Above all, at all times you must be in perfect control, regardless of whether things are going well or badly. A brilliant mind is not required; nor is genius, intuition, inspiration. Clarity and concentration are helpful; but the main thing is vision, the ability to draw invisible lines with the mind's eye, to see round corners and through walls. It's a knack that can be learned fairly readily; slightly harder than swimming, rather easier than juggling or playing the flute.

Well; if he wasn't going to hunt today, he'd better go to the council meeting. Nothing useful would be achieved there-he would do all the work himself, it'd take him just under half an hour-but it was necessary in order to keep his leading men, his pack, alert and obedient. He'd been at pains to train them over the last few years, encouraging, rewarding, culling as needed, and they were shaping well; but time had to be spent with them, or they'd grow restive and wilful. He swung his legs off the table on to the ground, a brisk, almost boyish movement that he certainly wouldn't have made had anybody been watching, and walked quickly across the yard, composing the agenda for the meeting as he went. On the stairs he met the master cutler, who told him the new case of rapiers had finally arrived from the City. He thanked the man and told him to bring them along to his study an hour after dinner.

The meeting lived down to his expectations. The council had wanted to debate whether or not to launch an attack on the Eremians while they were vulnerable and desperate. When he told them he'd already sent food and doctors, they had nothing left to say; they hadn't thought ahead, and so the buck had slipped through the cordon and left them standing. As it should be; it was easier to tell people what to do if they didn't interrupt. He delegated to them the simple, unimportant matters that he hadn't already provided for, and sent them away with a sense of bewildered purpose.

To his study next, where he had a map of the mountains. It was big, covering the whole of the north wall (there was a hole for the window in the middle of the Horsehead Ridge, but that didn't matter; the ridge was sheer rock capped with snow, and you needed ropes and winches to get there); it was a tapestry, so that he could mark positions with pins and tapes if he chose to, but that was rarely necessary. He fixed his eye on the place where Orsea's army had last been seen, and calculated where they were likely to be now.

An attack would be feasible-not straight away, there were two possible escape routes and he couldn't get his forces in place to block both of them before the Eremians moved on; tomorrow evening or the morning of the next day would be the right time. He could bottle them up in the long pass between Horn Cross and Finis Montium, and it ought to be possible to wipe them out to the last man without incurring unacceptable losses. It could be done; now he had to decide whether he wanted to do it.

That was a much bigger question, involving a complex interplay of imperatives. His father, or his grandfather, greatgrandfather and so back four degrees, wouldn't have thought twice: kill the men, absorb the women and children, annex the land. They'd been trying to do just that, through war, for two hundred years. The hunt had, however, moved on; thanks to the long war, and the recent short interval of peace, Valens knew he didn't have the resources, human or material, to control the aftermath of victory to his satisfaction. He'd be occupying a bitterly hostile country, through which his lines of communication would be stretched and brittle. Facts duly faced, there wasn't actually anything in Eremia that he hadn't already got an adequate sufficiency of. Get rid of the Eremians and take their land, and he'd find himself with two frontiers abutting the desert instead of just one; two doors the nomad tribes might one day be able to prise open. A preemptive massacre would cause more problems than it solved.

He considered a few peripheral options. He could secure Orsea himself and keep him as a hostage. The advantages of that were obvious enough, but they didn't convince him. Sooner or later he'd either have to kill his cousin or let him go; at which point he could expect reprisals, and the Eremians had just proved themselves capable of gross overreaction. They would send an army; which he could defeat, of course, but then he'd be left with heavy casualties and the same undesirable situation he'd have faced if he'd taken this opportunity to wipe the Eremians out in the Butter Pass. Forget that, then; forget also bottling them up in the pass and extorting concessions. A republic or a democracy might do that, trading a vote-winning triumph in the short term against a nasty mess at some time in the future (hopefully when the other lot were in government). Valens was grateful he didn't have to do that sort of thing.

Decided, then; if he wasn't going to slaughter them, he must either ignore them or help them. Ignoring them would be a neutral act, and Valens found neutrality frustrating. Helping them would create an obligation, along with gratitude and goodwill. He who has his enemy's love and trust is in a far better position to attack, later, when the time is right. The cost would be negligible, and in any event he could make it a loan. It would send the right signals to the Mezentines (mountain solidarity, the truce is working); if he made a show of siding with the Eremians against them, it'd incline them to make a better offer when they came to buy his allegiance.

He sat down and wrote seven letters. As anticipated, it took him just under half an hour-admirably efficient, but not quick enough. It was far too late for hunting today, and the twelve-pointer would be three quarters of the way to the river valley by now. Best not to dwell on wasted chances.

(And then there was the real reason. If he sent food and blankets and doctors, she'd be pleased. If he sent cavalry, she'd hate him. So; he had no choice in the matter, none whatsoever.)

He spent the rest of the day in the small, windowless room at the top of the north tower, reading reports and petitions, checking accounts, writing obstreperous notes to exchequer clerks and procurement officers. Then there was a thick stack of pleadings for a substantial mercantile lawsuit that he'd been putting off reading for weeks; but today, having been cheated of his day in the fresh air, he was resigned and miserable enough to face anything, even that. After the snakelike meanderings of the legal documents, the diplomatic mail was positively refreshing in its clarity and brevity: a letter of introduction for the new ambassador from the Cure Doce, and a brusque note from a Mezentine government department he'd never heard of requiring him (arrogant bastards!) to arrest and extradite a criminal fugitive with a difficult name, should he attempt to cross the border. Neither of them needed a reply, so he marked each of them with a cross in the left-hand corner, to tell his clerk to send a formal acknowledgement. Dinner came up on a tray while he was making notes for a meeting with the merchant adventurers (tariffs, again); when at last he'd dealt with that, it was time to see the new rapiers. Not much of a reward for a long, tedious day, but better than nothing at all.

The rapiers had come in their own dear little case, oak with brass hinges and catches. They were superb examples of Mezentine craftsmanship-the finest steel, beautifully finished and polished, not a filemark or an uncrowned edge-but the balance was hopeless and the side-rings chafed his forefinger. He told the armourer to pay for them and hang them on a wall somewhere where he wouldn't have to look at them. Then he went to bed.

The next day was better; in fact, it was as good as a day could be, because, after the servants had taken away his bath and he was drying his hair, a page came to tell him that a woman was waiting to see him; a middle-aged woman in a huge red dress with sleeves, the page said, and pearls in her hair. Valens didn't smile, but it cost him an effort. 'Show her into the study,' he said.

He hadn't met this one before, but it didn't matter; the huge red dress was practically a uniform with the Merchant Adventurers these days, and the delicate, obscenely expensive pearl headdress told him all he needed to know about her status within the company. He gave her a pleasant smile.

'You've brought a letter,' he said.

She started to apologise; it was late, because she'd been held up at the Duty Diligence waiting for a consignment of five gross of sheep's grease that hadn't arrived, and by the time it finally showed up it was too late to go on that night so she cut her losses and took her twenty-six barrels of white butter to Lonazep instead, because in this heat they wouldn't keep as far as the Compassion Grace, and of course that meant it was just as quick to go on up the mountain to Pericordia where she'd made an appointment to see some bone needles, two hundred gross at a good price but the quality wasn't there, so rather than go back down the mountain empty-handed she nipped across to Mandiritto to buy more of that nine-point lace, and that was when it decided to rain-

'That's quite all right,' Valens said. 'You're here now. Can I have the letter, please?'

She looked blank for a moment, then nodded briskly. 'Of course, yes.' From her satchel (particularly magnificent; tapestry, with golden lions sitting under a flat-looking tree) she took out a stiff packet of parchment about the size of her hand, and laid it down on the table.

'Thank you,' Valens said, and waited.

She smiled at him. 'My pleasure, of course,' she said. 'Now, I don't suppose you've got a moment, I know how terribly busy you must be…'

He wanted to say yes straight away and save having to listen, but that wouldn't do at all; his hands were itching to get hold of the letter-not open it, not straight away, just hold it and know it was there-but he folded them in a dignified manner on the table and listened for a very long time, until she finally got to what she wanted. It turned out to be nothing much, a licence to import Eremian rawhide single bends, theoretically still restricted by the embargo but nobody took any notice any more; he got the feeling she was only asking so as to have a favour for him to grant. He said yes, had to repeat it five times before she finally accepted it, and once more to get her out of the door without physical violence. He managed not to shout, and kept smiling until she'd finally gone. Then he sat down and looked at the letter.

It had started eighteen months ago, pretty much by accident. A trader had been caught at the frontier with contraband (trivial stuff; silver earrings and a set of fine decorated jesses for a sparrowhawk); instead of paying the fine, however, she'd claimed Eremian diplomatic immunity and pleaded the peace treaty, claiming she was a special envoy of the Duchess, and the trinkets were privileged diplomatic mail. Probably, it was her ingenuity that impressed the excise inspector. Instead of smiling and dropping hints for the usual bribe, he decided to call her bluff; he impounded the goods and sent to the Duke for verification through the proper diplomatic channels. Valens' clerk wrote to the proper officer in Eremia Montis, and in due course received a reply from the keeper of the wardrobe, enclosing a notarised set of diplomatic credentials and a promise that it wouldn't happen again. It wasn't the sort of thing Valens would normally expect to see, even though the original request had been written in his name, and he supposed he must have signed the thing, along with a batch of other stuff. But the reply was brought for him to see by a nervous-looking clerk, because there was something written in at the bottom, just under the seal.

The handwriting was different; it was, in fact, practically illegible, all spikes and cramped squiggles, not the fluent, graceful hand of a clerk. It was a brief note, an unaccountable impulse frozen in ink, like a fly trapped in amber; are you, it asked, that boy who used to stare at me every evening when I was a hostage in Civitas Vadanis? I've often wondered what became of you; please write to me. And then her name; or he assumed it was her name, rather than two superimposed clawmarks.

It had taken him a long time to reply, during which he considered a wide range of issues: the possibility of a trap designed to create a diplomatic incident, the real reason he'd never married, the paradox of the atrocious handwriting. Mostly, however, he hesitated because he didn't know the answer to the question. He remembered the boy she'd referred to, but the memory brought him little except embarrassment. He thought of the boy's strange, wilful isolation, his refusal to do what was expected of him, his reluctance to ride to the hunt with his father; he resented all the opportunities the boy had wasted, which would never come again.

So; the correct answer would be no, and the proper course of action would be to ignore the scribbled note and the breach of protocol it represented, and forget the whole matter. That would have been the right thing to do. Luckily, he had the sense to do the wrong thing. The only problem now was to decide what he was going to say.

He could think of a lot of things, enough for a book; he could write for a week and only set out the general headings. Curiously, the things he wanted to write about weren't anything to do with her. They were about him; things he'd never told anybody, because there was nobody qualified to listen. None of those things, he knew, would be suitable for a letter from one duke to another duke's wife. So instead he sat down one morning in the upper room with no windows, and tried to picture the view from the battlement above the gatehouse, looking west over the water-meadows toward the long covert and the river. Once he'd caught the picture, flushed it from his mind and driven it into the nets of his mind's eye, he thought carefully about the best way to turn it into words. The task took him all morning. In the afternoon he had meetings, a lawsuit to hear, a session of the greater council postponed from the previous month. That evening he tore up what he'd written and started again. He had no possible reason to believe that she'd be interested in what he could see from his front door, but he worked through four or five drafts until he had something he was satisfied with, made a fair copy, folded it and sent for the president of the Company of Merchant Adventurers. To make his point, he entrusted the request for a meeting to six guards, suggesting they deliver it some time around midnight.

The wretched woman came, fully expecting to die, and he asked her, as sweetly as he could manage, to do him a favour. Members of her company were forever popping (good choice of word) to and fro across the border-yes, of course there was an embargo, but there wasn't any need to dwell on it; would it be possible, did she think, for one of them to pass on a letter to one of her Eremian colleagues? It was no big deal (he said, looking over her head towards the door, outside which the armed guards were waiting) but on balance it'd probably be just as well if the whole business could be treated with a certain amount of the businesslike discretion for which the company was so justly famous. And so on.

The woman went away again, white with fear and secretly hugging herself with joy at securing a royal mandate to smuggle at will across the border; a month later, she came back with a letter. She was, she stressed, only too pleased to be able to help; while she was there, however, there were one or two silly little things she'd like to mention, if he could spare the time. Luckily, she had the sense not to push her luck too far. He agreed; the mechanism was set up.

He never knew when she was going to write. He always replied at once, the same day, cancelling or forgetting about all other commitments. Letter days were long and busy. First, he would read it, six or seven times, methodically; the first reading took in the general tone and impression, each subsequent reading going deeper. Next, he would think carefully about everything she'd said, with a view to planning the outline of his reply. The actual writing of it generally took the afternoon and most of the evening, with two pauses in which he'd read her letter again, to make sure he'd got the facts and issues straight. Last thing at night, he'd read the letter and his reply over once more, and make the fair copy. From start to finish, sixteen hours. It was just as well he was used to long periods of intense concentration.

Valens reached out slowly towards the letter on the table, like the fencer in First advancing on an opponent of unknown capacity. This might, after all, be the letter that said there would be no more letters, and until he'd looked and seen that it wasn't, he daren't lower his guard to Third and engage with the actual text. His fingers made contact, gentle as the first pressure of blade on blade as the fencers gauge each other by feel at the narrow distance. Applying a minute amount of force through the pad of his middle finger, he drew it towards him until his hand could close around it. Then he paused, because the next movement would draw him into an irrevocable moment. He was a brave man (he wasn't proud of his courage; he simply acknowledged it) and he was afraid. Gentle and progressive as the clean loose of an arrow, he slid his finger under the fold and prised upwards against the seal until the brittle wax burst. The parchment slowly relaxed, the way a body does the moment after death. He unfolded the letter. Veatriz Longamen Sirupati to Valens Valentinianus, greetings.

You were right, of course. It was Meruina; fifty-third sonnet, line six. I was so sure I was right, so I looked it up, and now you can gloat if you want to. It's simply infuriating; you're supposed to know all about hounds and tiercels and tracking, and how to tell a stag's age from his footprints; how was I meant to guess you'd be an expert on early Mannerist poetry as well? I'm sure there must be something you haven't got the first idea about, but I don't suppose you'll ever tell me. I'll find out by pure chance one of these days, and then we'll see.

I sat at my window yesterday watching two of the men saw a big log into planks. They'd dug a hole so one of them could be underneath the log (you know all this); and the man on top couldn't see the other one, because the log was in the way. But they pulled the saw backwards and forwards between them so smoothly, without talking to each other (I wonder if they'd had a quarrel); it was like the pendulum of a clock, each movement exactly the same as the last; I timed them by my pulse, and they were perfect. I suppose it was just practice, they were so used to each other that they didn't have to think or anything, one would pull and then the other. How strange, to know someone so well, over something so mundane as sawing wood. I don't think I know anybody that well over anything.

Coridan-he's one of Orsea's friends from school-came to stay. After dinner one evening, he was telling us about a machine he'd seen once; either it was in Mezentia itself, or it was made there, it doesn't really matter which. Apparently, you light afire under an enormous brass kettle; and the steam rises from the spout up a complicated series of pipes and tubes into a sort of brass barrel, where it blows on a thing like a wheel with paddles attached, sort of like a water-mill; and the wheel drives something else round and round and it all gets horribly complicated; and at the end, what actually happens is that a little brass model of a nightingale pops up out of a little box and twirls slowly round and round on a little table, making a sound just like a real nightingale singing. At least, that's the idea, according to Coridan, and if you listen closely you can hear it tweeting and warbling away; but you need to be right up close, or else its singing is drowned out by all the whirrings and clankings of the machine.

Talking of birds; we had to go somewhere recently, and we rode down the side of an enormous field, Orsea said it was beans and I'm sure he was right. As we rode by a big flock of pigeons got up and flew off; when we were safely out of the way, they started coming back in ones and twos and landing to carry on feeding; and I noticed how they come swooping in with their wings tight to their bodies, like swimmers; then they glide for a bit, and turn; and what they're doing is turning into the wind, and their wings are like sails, and it slows them down so they can come in gently to land. As they curled down, it made me think of dead leaves in autumn, the way they drift and spin. Odd, isn't it, how many quite different things move in similar ways; as if nature's lazy and can't be bothered to think up something different for each one.

Another curious thing: they always fly up to perch, instead of dropping down. I suppose it's easier for them to stop that way. It reminds me of a man running to get on a moving cart.

I know we promised each other we wouldn't talk about work and things in these letters; but Orsea has to go away quite soon, with the army, and I think there's going to be a war. I hate it when he goes away, but usually he's quite cheerful about it; this time he was very quiet, like a small boy who knows he's done something wrong. That's so unlike him. If there really is to be a war, I know he'll worry about whether he'll know the right things to do-he's so frightened of making mistakes, I think it's because he never expected to be made Duke or anything like that. I don't know about such things, but I should think it's like what they say about riding a horse; if you let it see you're afraid of it, you can guarantee it'll play you up.

Ladence has been much better lately; whether it's anything to do with the new doctor I don't know, he's tried to explain what he's doing but none of it makes any sense to me. It starts off sounding perfectly reasonable-the human body is like a clock, or a newly sown field, or some such thing-but after a bit he says things that sound like they're perfectly logical and reasonable, but when you stop and think it's like a couple of steps have been missed out, so you can't see the connection between what he says the problem is, and what he's proposing to do about it. At any rate, it seems to be working, or else Ladence is getting better in spite of it. I don't care, so long as it carries on like this. I really don't think I could stand another winter like the last one.

When you reply, be sure to tell me some more about the sparrowhawks; did the new one fit in like you hoped, or did the others gang up on her and peck her on the roosting-perch? They remind me of my eldest sister and her friends-Maiaut sends her best wishes, by the way; I suppose that means they want something else, from one of us, or both. I do hope it won't cause you any problems (I feel very guilty about it all). I suppose I'm lucky; there's not really very much I can do for them, so they don't usually ask anything of me. I know it must be different for you; are they an awful nuisance? Sometimes I wonder if all this is necessary. After all, you're Orsea's cousin, so you're family, why shouldn't we write to each other? But it's better not to risk it, just in case Orsea did get upset. I don't imagine for one moment that he would, but you never know.

That's about all I can get on this silly bit of parchment. I have to beg bits of off cut from the clerks (I pretend I want them for household accounts, or patching windows). I wish I could write very small, like the men who draw maps and write in the place-names.

Please tell me something interesting when you write. I love the way you explain things. It seems to me that you must see the whole world as a fascinating puzzle, you're dying to observe it and take it apart to see how it works; you always seem to know the details of everything. When we saw the pigeons I had this picture of you in my mind; you stood therefor hours watching them, trying to figure out if there was a pattern to the way they landed and walked about. You seem to have the knack of noticing things the rest of us miss (how do you ever find time to rule a country?). So please, think of something fascinating, and tell me what I should be looking out for. Must stop now-no more room.

True enough; the last seven words tapered away into the edge of the parchment, using up all the remaining space; a top-flight calligrapher might just have been able to squeeze in two more letters, but no more.

This isn't love, Valens told himself. He knew about love, having seen it at work among his friends and people around him. Love was altogether more predatory. It was concerned with pursuit, capture, enjoyment; it was caused by beauty, the way raw red skin is caused by the sun; it was an appetite, like hunger or thirst, a physical discomfort that tortured you until it was satisfied. That, he knew from her letters, was how she felt about Orsea-how they felt about each other-and so this couldn't be love, in which case it could only be friendship; shared interests, an instructive comparison of perspectives, a meeting of minds, a pooling of resources.

(She'd said in a letter that he seemed to go through life like one of the agents sent by the trading.companies to observe foreign countries and report back, with details of manners and customs, geography and society, that might come in handy for future operations; who did he report to? she wondered. He'd been surprised at that. Surely she would have guessed.) Not love, obviously. Different. Better…

He read the letter through three more times; on the second and third readings he made notes on a piece of paper. That in itself was more evidence, because who makes notes for a love letter? He'd seen plenty of them and they were all the same, all earth, air, fire and water; was it his imagination, or could nobody, no matter how clever, write a love letter without coming across as slightly ridiculous? No, you made notes for a meeting, a lecture, an essay, a sermon, a dissertation. That was more like it; he and she were the only two members of a learned society, a college of philosophers and scientists observing the world, publishing their results to each other, occasionally discussing a disputed conclusion in the interests of pure truth. He'd met people like that; they wrote letters to colleagues they'd never met, or once only for a few minutes at some function, and often their shared correspondence would last for years, a lifetime, until one day some acquaintance mentioned that so-and-so had died (in his sleep, advanced old age), thereby explaining a longer than usual interval between letter and reply. If it was love, he'd long ago have sent for his marshals and generals, invaded Eremia, stuck Orsea's head up on a pike and brought her back home as a great and marvellous prize; or he'd have climbed the castle wall in the middle of the night and stolen her away with rope, ladders and relays of horses ready and waiting at carefully planned stages; or, having considered the strategic position and reached the conclusion that the venture was impractical, he'd have given it up and fallen in love with someone else.

He stood up, crossed the room, pulled a book off the shelf and opened it. The book was rather a shameful possession, because it was only a collection of drawings of various animals and birds, with a rather unreliable commentary under each one, and it had cost as much as eight good horses or a small farm. He'd had it made after he received the third letter; he'd sent his three best clerks over the mountain to the Cure Doce, whose holy men collected books of all kinds; they'd gone from monastery to monastery looking for the sort of thing he wanted; found this one and copied the whole thing in a week, working three shifts round the clock (and, because the Cure Doce didn't share their scriptures, they'd had to smuggle the copied pages out of the country packed in a crate between layers of dried apricots; the smell still lingered, and he was sick of it). He turned the pages slowly, searching for a half-remembered paragraph about the feeding patterns of geese. This wasn't, he told himself, something a lover would do.

He found what he was after (geese turn their heads into the wind to feed; was that right? He didn't think so, and he'd be prepared to bet he'd seen more geese than whoever wrote the book), put the book away and made his note. He was thinking about his cousin, that clown Orsea. If he was in love, he'd know precisely what he ought to do right now. He'd sit down at the desk and write an order to the chiefs of staff. They'd be ready in six hours; by the time they reached the Butter Pass, they'd be in perfect position to bottle Orsea's convoy of stragglers up in Horn Canyon. Losses would be five per cent, seven at most; there would be no enemy survivors. He would then write an official complaint to the Mezentines, chiding them for pursuing the Eremians into his territory and massacring them there; the Mezentines would deny responsibility, nobody would believe them; she would never know, or even suspect (he'd have to sacrifice the chiefs of staff, some of the senior officers too, so that if word ever did leak out, it could be their crime, excessive zeal in the pursuit of duty). That was what a true lover would do. Instead, he took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote to the officer commanding the relief column he'd already sent, increasing his authority to indent for food, clothing, blankets, transport, personnel, medical supplies. His first priority, Valens wrote, was to put the Eremians in a position to get home without further loss of life. Also (added as an afterthought, under the seal) would he please convey to Duke Orsea Duke Valens' personal sympathy and good wishes at this most difficult time.

How stupid could Orsea be, anyway? (He took down another book, Patellus' Concerning Animals; nothing in the index under geese, so he checked under waterfowl.) If his advisers came to him suggesting he launch a pre-emptive strike against Mezentia, the first thing he'd do would be put them under house arrest until he'd figured out how many of them were in on the conspiracy; if it turned out there wasn't one, he'd sack the whole lot of them for gross incompetence; he'd have them paraded through the streets of the capital sitting back-to-front on donkeys, with IDIOT branded on their foreheads. Needless to say, the contingency would never arise. He opened the door and called for a page to take the letter to the commander of the relief column.

It was just as well he and the Eremian Duchess were just good friends, when you thought of all the damage a lover could do in the world.

When at last the letter was finished (written, written out and fit to send; Valens had beautiful handwriting, learnt on his father's insistence at the rod's end), he sent for the president of the Merchant Adventurers, with instructions to show her into the smaller audience room and keep her waiting twenty minutes. The commission cost him two small but annoying concessions on revenue procedure; he'd been expecting worse, and perhaps gave in a little too easily. Just as she was about to leave, he stopped her.

'Writing paper,' he said.

She looked at him.' Yes?'

'I want some.' He frowned. 'First-quality parchment; sheepskin, not goat. Say twenty sheets, about so big.' He indicated with his hands. 'Can you get some for me?'

'Of course.' Behind her smile he could see a web of future transactions being frantically woven; a maze, with a ream of writing paper at the centre. 'When would you be-?'

'Straight away,' Valens said. 'To go with the letter.'

'Ah.' The web dissolved and a new one formed in its place. 'That oughtn't to be a problem. Yes, I think we can-'

'How much?'

'Let me see.' She could do long multiplication in her head without moving her lips. In spite of himself, Valens was impressed. 'Of course, if it's for immediate delivery…'

'That's right. How much?'

She quoted a figure which would have outfitted a squadron of cavalry, including horses and harness. She was good at her job and put it over well; unfortunately for her, Valens could do mental long multiplication too. They agreed on a third of the original quote-still way over the odds, but he wasn't just buying parchment. 'Would you like to see a sample first?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'I'll have it sent over in an hour.'

'Bring it yourself,' Valens replied. He noticed she was wearing a new diamond on the third finger of her right hand; I paid for that, he thought resentfully. Of course it should have been a ruby, to match her dress, but diamonds were worth twice as much, scruple for scruple, and she had appearances to think of. Thank God for the silver mines, he thought.

'Certainly,' she said. 'Now, while I'm here, there was just one other tiny thing.'

They were a force of nature, these traders. Even his father had had to give them best, more than once. This time he put up a bit more of a fight (the hunter likes quarry with a bit of devil in it) and she met him halfway; most likely she was only trying it on for wickedness' sake, and never expected to get anything. Of course, he told himself, it's good business all round for them to have a way of manipulating me; otherwise they'd push me too far and I'd have to slap them down, and that'd be bad for the economy. He was delighted to see the blood-red back of her.

Once she'd gone, however, the world changed. The brief flurry of activity, the tremendous draining effort of concentration, the feeling of being alive, all faded away so quickly that he wondered if it had been a dream. But he knew the feeling too well for that. It was the same at bow-and-stable, or the lowly off-season hunts, where you sit and wait, and nothing happens; where you perch in your high-seat or cower in your hide, waiting for the wild and elusive quarry that is under no obligation to come to you, until it's too dark or too wet, and you go home. While you wait there, impatient and resigned as a lover waiting for a letter, your mind detaches, you can for a little while be someone completely different, and believe that the stranger is really you. It's only when you see the flicker of movement or hear the muffled, inhuman cough that the real you comes skittering back, panicked and eager and suddenly wide awake, and at once the bow is back in your hands, the arrow is notched, cockfeather out, and the world is small and sharp once again.

(Hunters will tell you that patience is their greatest virtue, but it's the other way about. If they were capable of true patience, they could never be hunters, because the desire for the capture wouldn't be enough to motivate them through the boredom, the suffering and the cramp. They would be content without the capture, and so would stay at home. The hunter's virtue lies in being able to endure the desperate, agonising impatience for the sake of the moment when it comes, if it comes, like an unreliable letter smuggled by a greedy trader in a crate of nectarines.)

One of the doctors, his tour of duty completed, reported in on his return. The Eremians, he said, were a mess. It was a miracle they'd lost as few people as they had, what with exhaustion and exposure and neglect of the wounded, and starvation. For a while the second-in-command, Miel Ducas, had managed to hold things together by sheer tenacity, but he was shattered, on his knees with fatigue and worry, and with him out of action there wasn't anybody else fit to be trusted with a pony-chaise, let alone an army. Duke Orsea? The doctor smiled grimly. It had been a real stroke of luck for the Eremians, he said, Orsea getting carved up in the battle and put out of action during the crisis that followed. If he'd been in command on the way up the Butter Pass… The doctor remembered who he was talking to and apologised. No disrespect intended; but since Ducas' collapse, Duke Orsea had taken back command; one had to make allowances for a sick man, but even so.

Now, though; now, the doctor was pleased to report, things were practically under control. The Eremians had been fed, they had tents and blankets and firewood. As for the wounded, they were safe in an improvised mobile hospital (twenty huge tents requisitioned from markets, the military, and travelling actors) and nine-tenths of them would probably make some sort of recovery. It was all, of course, thanks to Valens; if he hadn't intervened, if he'd been content to let the Eremians stumble by on their side of the border, it was more than likely that they'd all be dead by now. It had been, the doctor said in bewildered admiration, a magnificent humanitarian act.

'Is that right?' Valens interrupted. 'They'd really have died? All of them?'

The doctor shrugged. 'Maybe a few dozen might've made it home, no more than that,' he said. 'Duke Orsea would've been dead for sure. One of my colleagues got to him just in time, before blood-poisoning set in.' The doctor frowned. 'Excuse me for asking,' he went on, 'but they're saying that they didn't even ask us for help. You authorised the relief entirely off your own bat. Is that really true?'

Valens nodded.

'I see,' the doctor said. 'Because there's terms in the treaty that mean we've got to go to each other's assistance if formally asked to do so; I'd sort of assumed they'd sent an official request, and so we had no choice. I didn't realise…'

Valens shrugged. 'To start with, all I was concerned about was the frontier. I thought that if they were in a bad way for food, they might start raiding our territory, which, would've meant war whether we wanted it or not. I didn't want to risk that, obviously'

'Ah,' the doctor said. 'Because I was wondering. After all, it's not so long ago we were fighting them, and if they hadn't made a request and we'd just let well alone…' He sighed. 'My son fought in the war, you know. He was killed. But if it was to safeguard our border, of course, that's a different matter entirely.'

Valens shook his head. 'Just, what's the phrase, enlightened self-interest. I haven't gone soft in my old age, or anything like that.'

The doctor smiled weakly. 'That's all right, then,' he said.

Other reports came in. The Eremians were on the move again; Valens' scouts had put them back on the right road, and they were well clear of the border. The mobile hospital had been disbanded, the serious cases taken down the mountain to a good Vadani hospital, the rest judged fit to rejoin the column and go home. Miel Ducas was back in charge; the Vadani doctors had warned Duke Orsea in the strongest possible terms of the ghastly consequences that would follow if he stirred from his litter at all before they reached the capital-not strictly true, but essential to keep him out of mischief. Details of what had actually happened in the battle were proving hard to come by. Some of the Eremians were tight-lipped in the company of their old enemy; the vast majority would've told the Vadani anything they wanted but simply didn't have any idea what had hit them out of a clear blue sky. They hadn't known about the scorpions, still didn't; but (said a few of them) that'll all change soon enough, now that we've got the defector.

The what?

Well, it was supposed to be a dark and deadly secret; still, obviously we're all friends together now, so it can't do any harm. The defector was a Mezentine-some said he was an important government official, others said he was just a blacksmith-and he was going to teach them all the Mezentines' diabolical tricks, especially the scorpions, because he used to be something to do with making them. He was either a prisoner taken during the battle or a refugee claiming political asylum, or both; the main thing was, he was why the whole expedition had been worthwhile after all; getting their hands on him was as good as if they'd won the battle, or at least that was what they were going to tell the people back home, to keep from getting lynched.

Valens, meticulous with details and blessed with a good memory, turned up the relevant letter in the files and deduced that the defector was the Ziani Vaatzes whom he was required to send to Mezentia. The old resentment flared up again when he saw that fatal word; but he thought about it and saw the slight potential advantage. He wrote to the Mezentine authorities, telling them that the man they were looking for was now a guest of their new best enemy, should they wish to take the matter further; he wished to remain, and so forth.

And then there were the hunt days; days when he drove the woods and coverts, reading the subtle verses written on the woodland floor by the feet of his quarry better than any paid huntsman, always diligent, always searching for the buck, the doe, the boar, the bear, the wolf that for an hour or two suddenly became the most important thing in the world. Once it was caught and killed it was meat for the larder or one less hazard to agriculture, no more or less-but there; the fact that he'd caught it proved that it couldn't have been the one he was really looking for. He'd been brought up on the folk tales; a prince out hunting comes across a milk-white doe with silver hoofs, and a gold collar around its neck, which leads him to the castle hidden in the depths of the greenwood, where the princess is held captive; or he flies his peregrine at a white dove that carries in its beak a golden flower, and follows it to the seashore, where the enchanted, crewless ship waits to carry him to the Beautiful Island. He'd been in no doubt at all when he was a boy; the white doe and the white dove were somewhere close at hand, in the long covert or the rough moor between the big wood and the hog's back, and it was just a matter of finding them. But his father had never found them and neither had he, yet. Each time the lymers put up a doe or the spaniels found in the reeds he raised his head to look, and many times he'd been quite certain he'd seen it, the flash of white, the glow of the gold. Sometimes he wondered if it was all a vast conspiracy of willing martyrs; each time he came close to the one true quarry, some humble volunteer would dart out across the ride to run interference, while the genuine article slipped away unobserved.