One damn thing after another. 'Go on, I'm listening.'
He listened, and when the ensign had finished, he said, 'Orsea told you that? Himself?'
The ensign nodded. 'He reported it to the duty officer-'
Valens wasn't interested in any of that. 'All right,' he said, 'here's what I want you to do.'
He fired off a list of instructions, detailed and in order of priority. He could see the ensign forcing himself to remember each step, his eyes terrified. Fear of failure; must be an Eremian characteristic. 'Have you got that?'
'Yes.'
'Repeat it all back to me and then get on with it.'
It all came back at him like an echo; it sounded very impressive, as though Duke Valens was on top of the situation. It'd be nice if he was, since the lives of everybody in the column depended on him. If only the warning hadn't come from Orsea; anybody else, a soldier, a half-blind crippled shepherd, a twelve-year-old boy, and he'd be comfortable with it. But no, it had to be Orsea. Still, the risk was too great. If he ignored it, and the Mezentines came…
The ensign darted away, swift as a deer pursued by hounds, born to be hunted, inured to it. Valens stopped to take a deep breath and clear his mind, then went to find the duty officer.
21
His third visit to the Unswerving Loyalty; Miel Ducas was starting to feel at home there. Mind, he wasn't sure he liked what the Mezentines had done with the place. Rows of hastily built sheds crowded the paddock behind the original stable block, and the yard was churned and rutted from extreme use. Stacks of crates and barrels masked the frontage; it hadn't been a thing of beauty, but the supply dumps hadn't improved it. Mezentine soldiers everywhere, of course; definitely an eyesore. He wondered if he ought to point out to someone in charge that the inn was, properly speaking, his property, and he hadn't authorized the changes.
They let him out into the yard for half an hour, for exercise. They were punctilious about it-probably because they were cavalrymen, used to the need to exercise horses. The degree of joy he felt at being allowed into the open air disturbed him. Something so trivial shouldn't matter, now that his life was rushing to its end. He'd wanted to achieve a level of tranquility; how could it possibly matter whether or not he saw the sun one last time before he died? But the light nearly overwhelmed him, after a sleepless night in a stone pigsty. Perhaps it wasn't the light so much as the noise. Out here, people were talking to each other. Not a word had been spoken in the dark; his fellow prisoners' silence had been harder to bear than anything they could have said to him. As soon as they'd left the pigsty, Framain and his daughter had walked away from him, crossed to the other side of the yard. He could see them talking to each other, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. Probably just as well.
He watched a Mezentine groom leading a horse across the top of the yard, passing a man sharpening a bill- hook on a big wheel grindstone. The horse tried to shy as it passed the shower of orange sparks, but the groom twitched its headstall and it followed him, resigned rather than calm. Someone else was forking hay out of a cart into a hayloft. A sack of grain rose into the air on the end of a rope, as a winch creaked. A boy, not Mezentine, raked up horse dung into a barrow. Nobody seemed interested in Miel Ducas, apart from the two guards who watched him as though he was the only thing in the world. He felt mildly ashamed that he hadn't given any serious thought to trying to escape; properly speaking, it was his duty, but he simply couldn't be bothered. If he tried to get away, they'd only kill him. It was less effort to stay where he'd been put, and he was enjoying watching the people.
They brought in a cart-he was treating it as a show put on for his benefit-and took off one of the wheels. Enter a wheelwright, with tools and helpers; they struck off the iron tire with cold chisels and cut out a damaged spoke. Miel wondered how they were going to fit the replacement; would they have to dismantle the whole wheel, and if so, how were they going to get the rim off? They were bringing out strong wooden benches. Miel tried to remember; he'd seen wheels made and mended before but hadn't bothered to observe, assuming in his arrogance that it wasn't any of his business. Now, he realized, he urgently wanted to know how it was done. If they took him back inside, and he missed the exciting part, it'd be like listening to most of a story and being cheated of the ending. Felloes, he suddenly remembered; the rim of a wheel is made up of six curved sections, called felloes, dowelled together, held rigid by the spokes, restrained by the tire. Where had he learned that; or had he been born knowing it?
'Are you going to move?' one of his guards said.
That struck Miel as a very odd question. 'I'm sorry?'
'You're supposed to be exercising,' the guard explained. They'd put the wheel on its side on top of a large barrel. It had taken three men to lift it into place. 'But you're just standing still.'
Fair enough. 'I was watching them mend the wheel,' he explained. 'Is that all right?'
The guard shrugged. 'You're supposed to be walking about,' he said.
'Have I got to?'
'You please yourself,' the guard replied. Clearly he didn't approve. 'It's just some men fixing a wheel.'
'I know,' Miel said.
The wheelwright was tapping carefully on the inside of the rim, easing the felloe off the dowels. Obviously you'd have to be careful doing that. Too much force and you'd snap off a dowel. How would you cope if that happened? Drill it out, presumably; not the end of the world, but a nuisance. 'I wish I could do that,' Miel said. The guard didn't reply. They'd got the felloe off; now the wheelwright was flexing the damaged spoke in its socket, the way you waggle a loose tooth. Were all the spokes on Mezentine carts interchangeable, so that you could simply take out a broken one and replace it with a brand-new spare from the stores? But perhaps it wasn't a Mezentine cart.
'That's enough,' the guard said. 'You've got to go back inside now.'
Miel didn't argue, though he couldn't really see why a few minutes more would make such a difference. But it wouldn't do to get stroppy with the guard, who was only doing his duty. Miel realized that he felt sorry for him, because he still had duty to do.
She didn't look at him as they were herded back into the pigsty. Framain gave him a blank stare, then looked away. The door closed, shutting out all but a few splinters of light. Miel found the corner he'd sat in before. The wall he leaned his back on was damp and crusted with white powder, like fine salt. There was a strong smell of mold, wet and pig.
'I'm sorry,' he said aloud.
He might as well have been alone. He could barely see them in the dark. Nevertheless, he felt he ought to apologize. He hadn't done so before, and it was an obligation, possibly the last one he'd ever have to discharge. He wasn't particularly bothered whether they accepted his apology or not. Still; if it was his last duty, he might as well do it properly.
'It was my fault,' he said. 'Obviously that Mezentine I rescued led them to us. I knew at the time it was a bloody silly thing to do. I guess it was self-indulgence, me wanting to do the right thing.' He smiled, though of course they wouldn't see. 'Really, I should've learned by now, as often as not doing the right thing makes matters worse. Mind you,' he added, 'you were just as bad as me in that respect. You should've left me in the bog where you found me, it wouldn't have made any real difference in the long run.'
Silence. Perhaps they'd both fallen asleep-exhausted, maybe, by their exercise session.
'Anyway,' he went on (now that he'd started talking, he found that he was afraid to stop, because of the silence that would follow), 'I'm very sorry it turned out like this. I hope you can make a deal with the Mezentines and get away. Of course, all that work you did will be wasted, as far as you're concerned.' He stopped himself. There was a fair chance they didn't need to be told that. 'If it means anything, I really am sorry you got caught up in the bloody mess I've made of my life. I wish there was something I could do, but there isn't.'
If they'd been asleep, he'd have heard them breathing. To stay that quiet, they had to be awake. There, he thought, duty done. The rest of my life's my own.
He breathed out and relaxed his back and neck, letting his head droop forward. Irony: at last he was free to do what he chose, except there wasn't anything to do. He wished they'd let him back out in the yard, so he could watch the wheelwright for a little longer. He contemplated crawling up next to the door, in case there was a crack
