K Parker: Evil for Evil

Orsea stayed where he was. The hunted animal runs away. The fencer steps back as his opponent advances, to maintain the safe distance between them. "Thanks," he said. "To be honest, there's nothing useful I could contribute anyway. I mean, it's not like I made a particularly good job of defending my country against the Mezentines, so I'm hardly likely to do any better with yours."

Valens looked away. "You can believe that if you want to," he said. "It's not true, of course. You beat off a direct assault, which nobody's ever done before-"

"That was Vaatzes," Orsea interrupted, "not me."

"Yes, but you chose him. That's what leaders do, they choose the right people."

"Like Miel Ducas." Orsea laughed. "He was very good indeed. But of course, I relieved him of command and had him locked up, just when we needed him most."

Valens froze, as though he'd just put his foot in a snare. "That's beside the point."

"Yes, I suppose it is." Orsea sat down. "None of it's important. What matters is that I started the war in the first place. Nobody else but me. And now it's come here. You know what? I think the war follows me around, like a butcher's dog."

Valens stifled a yawn. This was mere pointless activity, but it was his duty as a good host to carry on to the end. "You didn't start my war, Orsea," he said. "I did that."

"Because of me."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

(In his mind, he was phrasing another question for a letter: Suppose you were fencing with a man who wanted to get killed, but if you kill him, you lose the game. How would you go about it?)

"Valens." Orsea was looking at him. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

Orsea turned his head. Valens had seen people do something similar before; squeamish men who had to put a wounded animal out of its misery. "You know why I had Miel Ducas arrested?"

"I heard something about it."

"What happened was," Orsea said slowly, "I found out that he had a letter. It was something he shouldn't have had. What I mean is, as soon as it came into his possession he should've brought it to me, but he didn't." He lifted his head; he was looking into the corner of the room. "Apparently that's treason," he said. "I looked it up."

"You couldn't trust him anymore. Well, that's fair enough."

"Trust," Orsea repeated. "That old thing. You know," he went on, "I've been thinking a lot about trust recently."

"Understandably," Valens murmured. "Someone betrayed your city to the enemy."

"Several people, actually," Orsea replied briskly, "including me. But that's not what's been bothering me. I've been thinking-look, can you spare the time for all this? Listening to me rambling on, I mean. It's really self-indulgent of me, and you're a busy man."

"It's raining," Valens said. "I've got plenty of time."

"Trust." Orsea jumped up, still looking away. "Trust's important, because if you can't trust someone, there's a risk he'll do something to hurt you. So you take steps, if you're a prudent man. You take steps to make sure he can't hurt you, assuming he wants to. Isn't that right?"

"Yes."

"Well, there you go. But it's not as simple as that." He seemed to be nerving himself to do something, and failing. "It's not something you can predict, like the workings of a machine. I mean, it's not simple cause and effect. Sometimes, someone you thought was your friend does something to breach your trust, but he's still your friend really, in things that matter. And sometimes your enemy, the man you've never trusted, pops up out of nowhere and saves your life." Now he turned, and looked Valens in the eye. "Stuff like that," he said, "it sort of makes nonsense out of it all, doesn't it?"

Valens found that he'd taken a step back. Force of habit again. "I've always found," he said quietly, "that if I can't understand something, it's because I don't know all the facts."

"Ah well." Orsea suddenly smiled. "That's the difference between us, I guess. When I can't understand something, it's generally because I'm too stupid to get my head round it."

"You can believe that," Valens replied, "if you want to."

Orsea nodded. "Did you know?" he said. "About Miel Ducas, and the letter?"

"I knew there was a letter involved in it," Valens said. "But not the details."

"Not all the facts, then."

Valens shrugged. "It was none of my business," he said, "so I didn't bother finding out."

(Valens thought: my father always told me that what's wrong with lying is that it's an admission of weakness. If you're the strongest, you can afford to tell the truth.)

"Good attitude," Orsea said. "Wouldn't you like to hear the inside story?"

"Not particularly."

"Well." Orsea relaxed a little, as if a fight he'd been expecting had been called off. "Like I said, you're a busy man. No time for things that don't concern you."

"Quite."

Orsea sighed. "And you're right, of course," he said. "There's no point in me coming to meetings anymore, and you're right, they do upset me. I felt I ought to keep coming along, just in case I could be useful. But since I can't, there's no point."

"No."

"Thanks." Orsea took a few steps toward the door. "For what it's worth," he said, "I really am very grateful for everything you've done for me."

Valens let him go without saying anything else. When he'd gone, he sat down, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Unearned gratitude, he thought, just what I always wanted. More cheating, of course. I wonder: do I like the hunt so much because it's the one thing I do where it isn't possible to cheat?

He went back to the tower, changed out of his pretty clothes and put on something comfortable. Another thing his father had always told him: If you cheat, sooner or later you'll be punished for it. That was no lie. Of course, to begin with they were just letters. It was only when he'd become dependent on them that the dishonesty began. It was perfectly simple. She was married-to Orsea, of all people, Duke of Eremia, his people's traditional enemy. But because he knew they could never be together, there could never be anything except letters between them, he'd carried on writing and reading them, until he'd reached the point where he was little more than a foreign correspondent reporting back on his own life to a readership living far away, in a country he could never go to. And-of course-now she was here, never more than a hundred yards away from him, and he couldn't write to her anymore, let alone speak to her. He'd taken his country to war in order to rescue her, and thereby lost her forever.

He grinned. And Orsea thought he was stupid.

She'd be at dinner tonight. By way of exquisitely honed masochism, Valens had ordered the seating plan so that she always sat in the same place she'd been in the first time he'd seen her, seven years ago, when she'd come here as a hostage during the final peace negotiations. That reminded him of something Orsea had said about the war. Orsea had been wrong about that, but the phrase he'd used was nicely appropriate. Irony, Valens thought; irony follows me everywhere. When I was seventeen and she was here the first time, I wanted the negotiations to fail and the war to carry on, because as soon as there was peace I knew she'd go away and I'd never see her again. Now, war has brought her back to me again, like a cynical go-between. Pleasant thought: war wants us to be together so much, it'll do anything to make it happen. I never knew war and love were so close.

If my mind were a falcon, he thought, this is the point where there'd be the biggest risk of it not coming back to the lure. He pulled his shoes on and went back down the stairs to the library. It was time for the day's reports; at least he still got some letters, but these days they were all from spies and traitors.