K Parker: Devices and Desires

She blinked at him. 'What's a cam?' she asked.

'Ah.' What indeed? 'Well, it's sort of…' Three hours a week with a specially imported Doctor of Rhetoric, from whom he was supposed to learn how to express himself with clarity, precision and grace. 'It's sort of like this,' he went on, miming with his hands. 'The wheel goes round, you see, and on the edge of the wheel there's like a bit sticking out. Each time it goes round, it kind of bashes on a sort of lever arrangement, like a see-saw; and the lever thing pivots, like it goes down at the bashed end and up at the other end-that's how the arm lifts-and when it's done that, it drops down again under its own weight, nicely in time for the sticky-out bit on the wheel to bash it again. And so on.'

'I see,' she said. 'Yes, I think I understand it now.'

'Really?'

'No,' she said. 'But thank you for trying.'

He frowned. 'Well, it was probably the worst explanation of anything I've ever heard in my life.'

She nodded. 'Maybe,' she said. 'But at least you didn't say, oh, you're only a girl, you wouldn't understand.'

He wasn't quite sure what to make of that. Tactically (four hours a week on the Art of War, with General Bozannes) he felt he probably had a slight advantage, a weak point in the line he could probably turn, if he could get his cavalry there in time. Somehow, though, he felt that the usages of the wars didn't apply here, or if they did they shouldn't. Odd; because even before he'd started having formal lessons, he'd run his life like a military campaign, and the usages of war applied to everything.

'Well,' he said, 'I'm a boy and I haven't got a clue. I suppose it's different in Mezentia.'

'Oh, it is,' she said. 'I've been there, actually.'

'Really? I mean, what's it like?'

She withdrew into a shell of thought, shutting out him and all the world. 'Strange,' she said. 'Not like anywhere else, really. Oh, it's very grand and big and the buildings are huge and all closely packed together, but that's not what I meant. I can't describe it, really.' She paused, and Valens realised he was holding his breath. 'We all went there for some diplomatic thing, my father and my sisters and me; it was shortly before my eldest sister's wedding, and I think it was something to do with the negotiations. I was thirteen then, no, twelve. Anyway, I remember there was this enormous banquet in one of the Guild halls. Enormous place, full of statues and tapestries, and there was this amazing painting on the ceiling, a sea-battle or something like that; and all these people were in their fanciest robes, with gold chains round their necks and silks and all kinds of stuff like that. But the food came on these crummy old wooden dishes, and there weren't any knives or forks, just a plain wooden spoon.'

Fork? he wondered; what's a farm tool got to do with eating? 'Very odd,' he agreed. 'What was the food like?'

'Horrible. It was very fancy and sort of fussy, the way it was put on the plate, with all sorts of leaves and frills and things to make it look pretty; but really it was just bits of meat and dumplings in slimy sauce.'

To the best of his recollection, Valens had never wanted anything in his entire life. Things had come his way, a lot of them; like the loathsome pointy-toed poulaines, the white thoroughbred mare that hated him and tried to bite his feet, the kestrel that wouldn't come back when it was called, the itchy damask pillows, the ivory-handled rapier, all the valuable junk his father kept giving him. He'd been brought up to take care of his possessions, so he treated them with respect until they wore out, broke or died; but he had no love for them, no pride in owning them. He knew that stuff like that mattered to most people; it was a fact about humanity that he accepted without understanding. Other boys his age had wanted a friend; but Valens had always known that the Duke's son didn't make friends; and besides, he preferred thinking to talking, just as he liked to walk on his own. He'd never wanted to be Duke, because that would only happen when his father died. Now, for the first time, he felt what it was like to want something-but, he stopped to consider, is it actually possible to want a person? How? As a pet; to keep in a mews or a stable, to feed twice a day when not in use. It would be possible, of course. You could keep a person, a girl for instance, in a stable or a bower; you could walk her and feed her, dress her and go to bed with her, but… He didn't want ownership. He was the Duke's son, as such he owned everything and nothing. There was a logical paradox here-Doctor Galeazza would be proud of him-but it was so vague and unfamiliar that he didn't know how to begin formulating an equation to solve it. All he could do was be aware of the feeling, which was disturbingly intense.

Not that it mattered. She was going home tomorrow.

'Slimy sauce,' he repeated. 'Yetch. You had to eat it, I suppose, or risk starting a war.'

She smiled, and he looked away, but the smile followed him. 'Not all of it,' she said. 'You've got to leave some if you're a girl, it's ladylike. Not that I minded terribly much.'

Valens nodded. 'When I was a kid I had to finish everything on my plate, or it'd be served up cold for breakfast and lunch until I ate it. Which was fine,' he went on, 'I knew where I stood. But when I was nine, we had to go to a reception at the Lorican embassy-'

She giggled. She was way ahead of him. 'And they think that if you eat everything on your plate it's a criticism, that they haven't given you enough.'

She'd interrupted him and stolen his joke, but he didn't mind. She'd shared his thought. That didn't happen very often.

'Of course,' he went on, 'nobody bothered telling me, I was just a kid; so I was grimly munching my way through my dinner-'

'Rice,' she said. 'Plain boiled white rice, with noodles and stuff.'

He nodded. 'And as soon as I got to the end, someone'd snatch my plate away and dump another heap of the muck on it and hand it back; I thought I'd done something bad and I was being punished. I was so full I could hardly breathe. But Father was busy talking business, and nobody down my end of the table was going to say anything; I'd probably be there still, only-'

He stopped dead.

'Only?'

'I threw up,' he confessed; it wasn't a good memory. 'All over the tablecloth, and their Lord Chamberlain.'

She laughed. He expected to feel hurt, angry. Instead, he laughed too. He had no idea why he should think it was funny, but it was.

'And was there a war?' she asked.

'Nearly,' he replied. 'God, that rice. I can still taste it if I shut my eyes.'

Now she was nodding. 'I was there for a whole year,' she said. 'Lorica, I mean. The rice is what sticks in my mind too. No pun intended.'

He thought about that. 'You sound like you've been to a lot of places,' he said.

'Oh yes.' She didn't sound happy about it, which struck him as odd. He'd never been outside the dukedom in his life. 'In fact, I've spent more time away than at home.'

Well, he had to ask. 'Why?'

The question appeared to surprise her. 'It's what I'm for,' she said. 'I guess you could say it's my job.'

'Job?'

She nodded again. 'Professional hostage. Comes of being the fifth of seven daughters. You see,' she went on, 'we've got to get married in age order, it's protocol or something, and there's still two of them older than me left; I can't get married till they are. So, the only thing I'm useful for while I'm waiting my turn is being a hostage. Which means, when they're doing a treaty or a settlement or something, off I go on my travels until it's all sorted out.'

'That's…' That's barbaric, he was about to say, but he knew better than that. He knew the theory perfectly well (statecraft, two hours a week with Chancellor Vetuarius), but he'd never given it any thought before; like people getting killed in the wars, something that happened but was best not dwelt on. 'It must be interesting,' he heard himself say. 'I've never been abroad.'