K Parker - Evil for Evil

Jarnac kept perfectly still for a moment, but his eyes were wide open. "I'm sorry," he said. "I assumed…"

"That doesn't sound very good," Valens said. "Perhaps you ought to tell me about it."

Jarnac wriggled a little, and Valens felt a moment of anxiety for the chair he was sitting in. "I assumed you'd have known," he said. "Orsea had Miel arrested for treason."

"I see," Valens said. "I'm assuming he was wrong about that."

It was almost painful to watch. "I suppose it depends on how you define treason," Jarnac said. "You see, Orsea found out that Miel had got hold of a letter he shouldn't have had."

Valens didn't move, not even to breathe. "A letter."

"Yes." Jarnac was looking at him. He had bright blue eyes. "I can't remember offhand whether it was a letter from you to Duchess Veatriz or the other way about…"

"I see."

"Anyway," Jarnac went on, speaking quickly, practically mumbling, "Orsea seemed to feel that as soon as Miel got hold of the letter, he should've given it to him straightaway, and hanging on to it like that was an unforgivable breach of trust. Which, I suppose, it was, in a way; but Miel's been crazy about Veatriz ever since they were both kids, it was always sort of understood that they'd marry each other, but then Veatriz became the heiress to the duchy, which nobody had been expecting, and everyone thought it'd be quite wrong politically for the Ducas to succeed to the duchy, because it'd mess up the balance of power." He froze for a moment; Valens nodded, very slightly. "Anyhow," Jarnac went on, "Miel couldn't bring himself to give her away, partly for her sake, partly because he knew how upset Orsea would be if he knew…" Jarnac shut his eyes. Not his forte, this sort of thing. "So yes, I suppose it was treason, strictly speaking, and I understand why Orsea had to do what he did. But in my opinion, for what it's worth, I don't think Miel did anything wrong. Frankly, if only Orsea hadn't found out it would probably all have blown over." He looked up. There was a kicked-spaniel look on his face that made Valens want to burst out laughing. "That's it," he said, "more or less. So yes, it might be awkward if Miel came here. Does that change anything?"

Valens sighed and shook his head. "For what it's worth," he said, "the one and only time I met Veatriz-before the fall of Civitas Eremiae, I mean-was years ago, when I was a sixteen-year-old kid. Yes, we wrote letters to each other. It had been going on for about eighteen months. Did you happen to see the letter that your cousin intercepted?"

Jarnac shook his head.

"Fine," Valens said. "Well, you'll have to take my word for it. They were all…" He paused. Even talking about it felt like a grotesque breach of trust. "They were all perfectly innocent; just chat, I guess. What we'd been reading, things we'd seen that happened to snag our interest." He sighed again. "I'm sorry," he said, "you really don't want to know anything about it, and I don't blame you. The fact remains that the blame for your cousin's disgrace ultimately rests with me, and it's because of it that he was out there in the first place, so naturally I have an obligation to do whatever's necessary to rescue him. The one thing I can't do is let the Mezentines get hold of him just because having him here would be embarrassing, either to Duke Orsea or myself. However," he went on, "if there's any way of keeping him out of Orsea's way once you've rescued him, I'd take it as a personal favor. Is that clear?"

Jarnac nodded. "Perfectly," he said. "Thank you."

Valens smiled thinly. "My pleasure," he said. "You have complete discretion over the details, and your choice of whatever forces and materiel you might need. I'll have a warrant ready for you by morning; you can pick it up from the clerk's office. Was there anything else?"

Jarnac stood up, back straight as a spear-shaft. "No," he said. "And thank you for your time."

"That's all right." Valens turned his head just a little so he wasn't looking straight at him anymore. "When you get back," he said, "perhaps you'd care to join me for a day with the falcons. I seem to remember hearing somewhere that you used to keep a few birds yourself."

A split second, before Jarnac realized it was meant as a joke. "One or two," he said. "Thank you, I'd be delighted. I haven't had a day out in the field-well, since the war started."

"I know," Valens replied. "That's the rotten thing about a war, it cuts into your free time."

Pause; then Jarnac laughed. "Till then," he said. "And thank you."

He left, and once he'd gone the room felt much bigger. Valens took a series of deep breaths, as if he'd been running. Well, he thought, after all that I know something I didn't know before, so it can't have been a complete disaster. He let his hands drop open and his forearms flop onto his knees. Irony, he thought. First I rescue her husband, and now her childhood sweetheart.

At the back of his mind a couple of unexplained details were nagging at him like the first faint twinges of toothache. He acknowledged their existence but resolved to ignore them for the time being. For the time being, he had other things to think about.

Obviously, then, Orsea knew about the letters. That explained a great deal about the way he'd been behaving ever since he'd arrived in Civitas Vadanis. Methodically Valens drew down the implications, the alternative courses of action open to him and their consequences. Logically-logically, it was perfectly straightforward, one move on a chessboard that would resolve everything. If Orsea was taken by the Mezentines…

He allowed himself the luxury of developing the idea. The Mezentines are sick and tired of the war in Eremia, which has dragged on long after the supposedly quick, clean victory at Civitas Eremiae. By the same token, they don't want to have to fight us, but I can't be allowed to get away with interfering as I did. A simple note, therefore, to the Mezentine commander, suggesting that he demand the surrender of Duke Orsea as the price of peace. He makes the demand; I refuse, naturally; Orsea immediately offers himself as a sacrifice-no, too melodramatic. Of course; as soon as he hears about the demand, Orsea quietly slips out of the palace and hands himself over to the enemy. Outcome: Orsea finds redemption from his intolerable guilt; my people are saved from a war we can't win; she becomes a widow.

He smiled. The frustrating thing about it was that if he sent for Orsea and asked his permission to do it, Orsea would almost certainly give it.

Instead, he was going to have to think of something else; annoying and difficult, because it's always harder to find a satisfactory answer to a problem when you already know the right answer but aren't allowed to use it. And it was the right answer; he could see that quite clearly. Further irony, that the right answer should also be cheating.

Instead…

Instead, he would have to go the long way round, and nobody would be happy, and thousands of innocent people would have to die. Query (hypothetical, therefore fatuous; another indulgence): would the answer have been different if Orsea hadn't known about the letters? He thought about that for a moment, but failed to reach a clear decision.

He pulled a sheet of paper toward him across the table, picked up his pen and wrote out Jarnac Ducas' warrant: afford him all possible cooperation, one of those nice old-fashioned phrases you only ever get to use in official documents. He frowned, tore it up, and started again. Valens Valentinianus to Ulpianus Macer, greetings.

An Eremian called Jarnac Ducas will show up in the front office tomorrow morning asking for soldiers and supplies. Give him everything he wants.

He folded the paper and added it to the pile. His knees ached from too much sitting. Somewhere in the building, she was… He frowned, trying to think where she was likely to be and what she'd be doing. Needlework, probably. She hated needlework; a pointless, fatuous, demeaning exercise, a waste of her mind, her life and good linen. She was tolerably competent at it, but not good enough to earn a living as a seamstress. There had been five-no, six references in the letters to how much she despised it. In her mother's room, she'd told him, there was a huge oak chest, with massive iron hinges. As soon as she finished a piece of work-an embroidered cushion, a sampler, a pair of gloves with the Sirupati arms on the back-it was put away in the chest and never taken out again; the day after her mother died, the chest was taken away and put somewhere, and she had no idea what had become of it. In his reply, Valens had told her about how he'd loathed hunting, right up to the day his father died. It's different for you, she'd written back, you're a man. It was one of the few times she'd missed the point completely.