Devices and Desires (18 page)

(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, agonizing 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 apologized. 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 traveling 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 authorized 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 realize…”

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 Vaaztes 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 covers, 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.

Duke Valens’ letter rode with an official courier as far as Forza; there it was transferred to a pack-train carrying silver
ingots and mountain-goat skins (half-tanned, for the luxury footwear trade), as far as Lonazep. It waited there a day or so
until a shipment of copper and tin ore came in from the Cure Doce, and hitched a ride with the wagons to Mezentia. There it
lay forgotten in a canvas satchel, along with reports from the Foundrymen’s Guild’s commercial resident in Doria-Voce and
one side of a fractious correspondence about delivery dates and penalty clauses in the wholesale rope trade, until someone
woke it up and carried it to the Guildhall, where it was opened in error by a clerk from the wrong department, sent on a long
tour of the building, and finally washed up on the desk of the proper official like a beached whale.

The proper official immediately convened an emergency meeting. This should have been held in the grand chamber; but the Social
& Benevolent Association had booked the chamber for the day and it was too short notice to cancel, so the committee was forced
to cram itself into the smaller of the two chapter-houses, on the seventh floor.

It was a beautiful room, needless to say. Perfectly circular, with a vaulted roof and gilded traces supported by twelve impossibly
slender gray stone columns, it was decorated with frescos in the grand manner, briefly popular a hundred and twenty years
earlier, when allegory was regarded as the height of sophisticated taste. Accordingly, the committee huddled, three men to
a two-man bench, between the feet and in the shadows of vast, plump nude giants and giantesses, all delicately poised in attitudes
of refined emotion — Authority, in a monstrous gold helmet like a cooper’s bucket, accepted the world’s scepter from the hands
of Wisdom and Obedience, while a flight of stocky angels, their heads all turned full-face in accordance with the prevailing
convention, floated serenely by on dumplings of white cloud.

At ground level, they were way past serenity. Lucao Psellus, chairman of the compliance directorate, had just read out the
Vadanis’ letter. For once, nobody appreciated the exquisite acoustics of the chapter-house; the wretched words rang out clear
as bells and chased each other round and round the cupped belly of the dome, when they should have been whispered and quickly
hushed away.

“In fact,” Psellus concluded, “it’s hard to see how things could possibly be any worse. We take a man, a hard-working, loyal
Guild officer who happens to have made one stupid mistake, and in trying to make an example of him, we coerce him into violence
and murder, and drive him into the arms of our current worst enemy; a man whose technical knowledge and practical ability
gives him the capability of betraying at least thirty-seven restricted techniques and scores of other trade secrets. Result:
it’s imperative that he’s caught and disposed of as quickly as possible, but now he’s in pretty much the hardest place in
the world for us to winkle him out of. I’m not saying it can’t be done —”

“I don’t see a problem,” someone interrupted. “We know the Eremians’ve got him, surely that’s more than half the battle. It’s
when you don’t have a clue where to start looking that it’s difficult to process a job. Meanwhile, I’m prepared to bet, after
what’s just happened I don’t see this Duke Orsea giving us much trouble, provided we put the wind up him forcefully enough.
He’s just had a crash course in what happens to people who mess with us. And besides, what actual harm can he do? The Eremians
are primitives; if Vaatzes was minded to betray Guild secrets, how’s he going to go about it? They’re in no position to exploit
anything he tells them, they’ve got no manufacturing capacity, no infrastructure. They can barely make a horseshoe up there
in the mountains; Vaatzes would have to teach them to start from scratch.”

Psellus scowled in the direction the voice had come from; because of the annoying echo he couldn’t quite place the voice,
and the speaker’s face had been lost against a background of primary colors and pale apricot. “For a start,” he said, “that’s
entirely beside the point. If we don’t deal with this Vaatzes straight away, it sets a dangerous precedent. Troublemakers
and malcontents will see that here’s a man who broke the rules and got away with it. Furthermore, you know as well as I do,
a trade secret is a negotiable commodity. The Eremians may not be able to use it, but there’s nothing to stop them selling
it on to someone who can. No, we have to face facts, this is a crisis and we’ve got to take it seriously. This is exactly
the sort of situation we were put here for. The question is, how do we go about it?”

There was a brief silence, just long enough for his words to come to rest in the vaulting, like bees settling in a tree full
of blossom.

“Well,” someone said, “it’s obviously not a job we can tackle ourselves, not directly. Any one of our people’d stick out a
mile among the tribesmen. I say we put a tender out to the traders. It wouldn’t be the first time, and they’ll do anything
for money.”

That was simply stating the obvious, but at least they were getting somewhere; no small achievement, in a committee of political
appointees. Psellus nodded. “The Merchant Adventurers are clearly the place to start,” he said. “We’ve got a reasonable network
of contacts in place now; at the very least they can do the fieldwork and gather the necessary intelligence: where he is exactly,
the sort of security measures we’ll have to face, his daily routine, the attitude of the Duke and his people. As regards the
actual capture, I’m not sure we can rely on people like that; but let’s take it one step at a time. Now, who’s in charge of
running our contacts in the company?”

Manuo Crisestem stood up; six feet of idiot in a purple brocaded gown. Psellus managed not to groan. “I have the file here,”
Crisestem said, brandishing a parchment folder. “Anticipating this discussion, I took the trouble to read it through before
we convened. There is a problem.”

There was a grin behind his words. Crisestem (Tailors’ and Clothiers’) had only joined the committee a few months ago, replacing
one of Psellus’ fellow Foundrymen as controller of intelligence. If there was a problem, it’d be the Foundrymen’s fault, and
Crisestem would be only too delighted to make a full confession and abject apology on their behalf. “I regret to have to inform
this committee,” he said, “that our resources in Eremia Montis are unsatisfactory. We have agents in the cheese, butter and
leather trades and among the horse-breeders, but at relatively low levels. Furthermore, our resources are such that, after
the recent incursion, they can no longer be relied on. It won’t take the Duke long to figure out who gave us advance warning
of his adventure; those agents will be exposed and presumably dealt with, and it will be exceedingly difficult to recruit
replacements as a result. The fact is that all our people in Eremia have been used up — in a good cause, needless to say;
but now that they’re gone, we have nothing worth mentioning in reserve.”