hear. On your word of honor,' he added, with a faintly mocking smile, 'as the Ducas.'
Miel shrugged. 'If you like,' he said.
'In that case…' Framain sighed, and sat down on the ground, gesturing for Miel to do the same. 'It's a long story,' he said.
You already know about me (Framain said). We used to be a fairly dull, respectable family, nobility of the middling sort, in Eremia. We were tenants-in-chief of the Bardanes, with just short of a thousand acres of low-grade pasture on either side of East Reach. When all our land and money was gone, I promised myself I'd get it back, somehow or other; for her sake as much as mine, because I loved her and I felt it was my duty. With hindsight it'd have been kinder to cut her throat, but it didn't seem that way at the time.
Now, Daurenja here; he's quite a character. Most of what I know about him is what he told me himself, so I can't vouch for the truth of it. I'd be inclined to assume anything he ever said was a lie, but bits of information I picked up over the years from more reliable sources bear some of it out, so I've had to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least in part. You'll have to judge for yourself, I think.
Gace Daurenja was born about forty years ago in a large manor house at Combe Vellein; it's a smallish place just across the border from Tollin. That's right; by birth he's Cure Doce, though he'll tell you his mother was Eremian, of good family. He mentioned her name once, but it's slipped my mind. Not a family I'd ever heard of, but I'm hardly an authority.
He says he left home when he was fourteen to go to the university at Lonazep. That's partly true, from what I gather. He was fourteen when he left, and he did go to the university. That wasn't his main reason for leaving, though. The details are a bit hazy, understandably. It was something to do with an attack, one of his family's tenants. I haven't been able to find out if it was a girl or a boy he attacked, or whether it was rape or just his normal vicious temper. I don't think the child died, but it was a wretched business; anyway, he was packed off to Lonazep with books and money. I imagine the intention was that he'd stay away for good.
I've got no problem with conceding that Daurenja's a brilliant man, in his way. He can learn anything, in a fraction of the time it'd take a normal man. He's exceptionally intelligent, an outstanding craftsman, remarkably strong and agile, and I've never seen him get tired. When he first came to live with us, we didn't have any water; we had to carry it half a mile from the nearest stream. Daurenja dug a well; his own idea, we didn't ask him to do it. To be honest, the thought hadn't even occurred to me. I came out into the yard one morning and there he was; or at least, there was his head, sticking up out of a hole in the ground. He had to go down over seventy feet before he struck water, and he only stopped working when it got too dark to see. I wish I could show you that well. It's faced inside with stone-not mortared, just shaped and fitted together. He picked the stones out of the river and carted them back all by himself, and the winch he made for drawing up the bucket is a wonderful piece of work. You can lift a ten-gallon bucket with your little finger. So you see, he had the potential to do anything he wanted. His appearance was always against him, of course, but he made up for it with charm; he could lay it on when he wanted to, but perfectly judged, not too heavy-handed with it. His main problem, I believe, has always been his temper; or rather, his lack of self-restraint.
At first, he was a model student at Lonazep. He studied everything they were prepared to teach him, four or five courses simultaneously, which was unheard of, needless to say. He had plenty of friends, and when he wasn't studying he was a little on the rowdy side, but certainly no worse than most. Students at Lonazep are supposed to be a little bit boisterous, it's their tradition. But something happened. Again, I don't know the facts, but this time there definitely was a death; either a fellow student or an innkeeper's daughter. Luckily for him, the university has jurisdiction over its students, and they couldn't bring themselves to do anything too much to someone with such a brilliant mind. The story was that he transferred to Corlona to continue his researches there.
The name doesn't ring a bell, I take it. Corlona's on the other side of the sea; I believe it's one of the places where the Mezentines recruit their mercenaries. In any event, it was held to be far enough away, and by all accounts it's a very fine university, far better than Lonazep for mathematics and the sciences. When he got into trouble there, he moved on to another university a long way inland, and I believe he managed to stay there for several years. When he had to leave there, however, he was pretty much at the end of his resources. It was simply too far away for money to reach him from home, and his reputation was starting to precede him. Understandable: he was probably the only white face on the continent, outside of the coastal towns, so he was somewhat conspicuous. Really, he had no choice but to risk it and come back over here. Not that home had much to offer him. He didn't want to be recognized in Lonazep or the Cure Doce country; he was cut off from his family's money, because of course all the bankers and commercial agents were on notice to look out for him. If he came back he'd be on his own, no money, ill-advised to stay in any one place for very long, I imagine it took a certain degree of courage to make the decision; but courage is a quality he's never lacked.
As luck would have it, he wound up in Eremia just about the time I discovered the clay deposits, which I recognized as being suitable for making porcelain. My problem at that time was that I had no money at all. I needed to pay the premium for a lease on the land itself, not to mention buying all the equipment. The irony was that the man who owned the head lease only wanted a stupid little bit of money for it; my father would cheerfully have spent that much on a good hawk, or a book. But at the time I was making my living as a copyist; oddly enough, that was where I came across the book that helped me recognize the clay for what it was. You know the sort of money a copyist gets. I was cursing my bad luck and thinking I might as well forget all about it, when Daurenja came in to our shop to sell a book.
When I say sell, what I mean is, he'd lend us the book to copy, and we'd pay him a few thalers. It was the usual arrangement. Apparently, Daurenja had hung on to a few of his books from his university days. The book we borrowed from him was an artist's color-book, of all things. Come to think of it, you've seen it often enough. Of course, as soon as I saw it I was fascinated. I knew that if I was going to make porcelain I'd have to learn how to make the colors to decorate it with; so I made a secret copy of it for myself. Unfortunately, I didn't stop there. I assumed that anybody who owned a book like that must know a thing or two about the subject. That's how I got to know Daurenja.
I told him about my plans for making porcelain. At first I didn't let on about the clay, but it was stupid to think that someone like that wouldn't put two and two together. He quickly figured out that I must have found a supply of suitable material, and one evening he asked me straight where my clay deposit was.
Well, I'd more or less given up hope of being able to get my hands on that clay seam, so I reckoned I had nothing to lose. I told him, yes, I knew where to find the right clay, but I didn't have the money to buy the land. He went all thoughtful for a while, then said that money shouldn't be a problem, if I was interested in forming a partnership.
I console myself with the thought that it's not just stupid people who do stupid things. I agreed; he said he'd go away and raise the money. I imagined that'd be the last I saw of him. What he did, though, was go home, all the way back to the Cure Doce. It was a terrible risk, in the circumstances. Things had changed since he went away. Rumors of his various adventures had filtered through, and nobody was willing to cover up for him or risk themselves to keep him out of trouble. But he got home somehow, and persuaded his family to give him at least part of his inheritance. I think it was done through land exchanges and letters of credit; basically, they bought him an estate in either Eremia or the Vadani country, all done in the names of secret trustees, with cunning ways of routing the income through to him without anybody finding out. A lot of merchants were involved at various stages, so I imagine a fair proportion of the money got used up in commissions and expenses. Even so, all the time I knew him he had more than enough for his needs-books, tools, materials, and all the funding I required for my work. He never spent more than he could possibly avoid on food or clothes or anything like that. As far as I can tell, that sort of thing's never mattered to him. Everybody's idea of the unworldly scholar, in fact.
He stopped and looked round. Daurenja, trussed like a bull calf for castration, was stirring. His eyes were closed but his lips were moving around the gag, and his throat quivered slightly.
'Dreaming,' Framain said. 'If it wasn't for the gag, he'd be talking in his sleep. He does that. I'm told it's quite normal-talking in your sleep, I mean. Loads of people do it. My son did, and my father, too.' He frowned, as though annoyed with himself. 'When I was a kid, it used to scare me. Most nights he'd fall asleep in his chair, and after a while he'd start talking-quite normal tone of voice, like he was having a pleasant conversation, but none of it made sense. It wasn't gibberish. It came out as real words, proper sentences, but completely meaningless. He's not like that, though,' he added, and the frown tightened into a scowl. 'He always says the same thing. Probably he's saying
