Suddenly realizing how weak he was feeling, he stumbled back into the house and flopped awkwardly onto the bench, banging his knee hard on the edge of the table in the process. It took him a while to recover from the strain of his excursion, and when he was alert enough to take an interest in his surroundings, he saw that the light was fading fast. He hadn't seen anything in the way of lamps, candles or tapers, but more or less anything could be buried in among the trash on the table. Gritting his teeth, he reached out and explored, mostly by feel. To his relief, he found a candle, or at least the stub of one; then he looked at the fireplace and saw that at some point the fire had gone out, so he had no means of lighting it. He sighed wearily, and realized that his right hand was resting on something flat and rectangular that felt as though it could almost be a book.
It was a book. Miel felt almost absurdly pleased; something to read-not tonight, obviously, but tomorrow, when he'd be spending the whole day in this horrible room. He turned in his seat and held the book up, so that the last rays of the sun glowed on its spine. Nothing to see there, however, so he opened it at random.
It was written in a proper clerk's hand, so it wasn't just some homemade effort, but the letters were painfully, frustratingly small. He wriggled round a little further, screwed his eyes up, and read: To make green. Take thin sheet copper, soak in warm vinegar in an oak box, allow to stand for two weeks, remove and scrape when dry. To make vermilion…
Oh well, Miel thought, and decided that on balance it could wait until the morning, when he could steep himself in it without torturing his eyes. Vermilion, he thought; wasn't that some kind of fancy word for red? Maybe the reclusive and mysterious Framain would turn out to be nothing but a painter, a churner-out of court scenes and hunting scenes on limewood panels or a prettifier of manuscripts. He heard himself laugh; it took him a moment to identify the sound.
Maybe he closed his eyes, just for a moment. When he opened them again, it was broad daylight. No sign of Framain, but someone had left another bottle of the good wine and a plate of bread and rawhide-pretending-to-be- bacon next to him on the table. Thankfully, no birds or rodents this time. He yawned and stretched. He was feeling much better. Good.
He ate his breakfast. Chewing up the bacon should've counted as a full day's work for a healthy man, but Miel managed to do it with only three breaks for rest. That, he reckoned, was a sign that he was well on the road to recovery; in which case, he was fit enough to get out of this strange place and be on his way, wherever that was. There remained, however, the matter of provisions for his journey, and containers to carry them in. He looked round. Yesterday's empty wine bottle was still where he'd left it, and there was a full one to go with it. The remains of the loaf stood on the small table. The bacon was presumably back up in the rafters, but as far as he was concerned it could stay there. He rummaged for a while through the trash on the table, but about the only thing he didn't find there was anything capable of holding water. He took another look at the room and decided to risk it. He didn't feel comfortable here.
Manners demanded that he say thank you and goodbye to his host, but he'd got the impression that his host really wouldn't mind if he neglected that duty. He picked up the empty bottle and walked out into the blissfully clean, fresh air, heading for the well.
Bright morning; the damp grass and the smell of wet foliage told him it had rained earlier, while he was still asleep. He found the well easily enough. It hadn't been there very long, if the color of the mortar between the stones was anything to go by. He wound down the bucket; it took a long time for it to reach the water.
'Who the hell are you?' A woman's voice, right behind him. He turned and saw a tall, slim woman wearing man's clothes (linen shirt, cord breeches, gaiters; almost identical to those Framain had been wearing). She had dark hair, pulled back tight into a bun. He guessed she was his own age or a few years younger, but it was hard to tell because her face was so dirty.
Soot, he realized; there were pale rings round her eyes, and white patches on her cheeks and the tip of her nose. The rest was dull matt black, like a well-leaded stove. Her hands were filthy too, though the cuffs of her shirt were merely grimy. She was scowling at him, as though he was a servant she'd caught stealing cheese from the larder.
'I'm sorry,' he said quickly, before he'd had time to figure out what he was apologizing for. 'My name's Miel Ducas.' Obviously that didn't mean anything to her. 'The, um…' (Couldn't remember the wretched man's name.) 'Tropea Framain let me stay here last night. Actually, he saved my life; I'd got stuck in a quagmire up on the-'
Clearly she wasn't interested in anything like that. 'He didn't say anything about guests,' she said.
'Oh.' Come on, Miel chided himself, you're a trained diplomat, you've negotiated trade agreements with the Cure Doce and extradition treaties with the Vadani, you can do better than oh. 'Well, I'm sure if you were to ask him…'
'He's busy.' Statements didn't come more absolute than that. 'What're you doing?'
He held out the bottle. 'I was just getting some water from the well.'
'What for?'
'Well, my journey,' he said. 'Actually, I'm just leaving.'
Her scowl deepened. 'What're you doing round here?'
'I got lost,' he said. 'I was heading for the inn at Cotton Cross, but I must've-'
'Where were you coming from?'
Now that, he had to concede, was a very good question. He had no idea, beyond the fact that the scavengers lived there.
'Merebarton,' he said, in desperation. (It had been the name of one of the fields behind the house when he was growing up at the Ducas country seat at Staeca. Why it should've been the first name to come into his head, he had no idea.)
'Never heard of it.'
'Small place,' Miel said casually. 'Just a farmhouse and a few outbuildings in the middle of nowhere, really. About a day and a half's ride the other side of the Finewater.'
'You were heading from the Finewater toward Cotton Cross and you got lost?'
'Lousy sense of direction.'
'You just head straight for Sharra Top. It's the only mountain on the moor. You'd have to be blind-'
'My mother always said I wasn't fit to be let out on my own,' he said wearily. 'But it's all right, Framain's given me clear directions. Just head straight for the mountain, like you said.'
She was still frowning at him. 'You won't get much water in there,' she said.
'It was all I could find.'
'You should've asked Father. He'd have given you a water-bottle or a jug.'
'He went out before I woke up,' Miel said. 'And I didn't want to bother him.'
She thought about that; weighed it and found it didn't balance. 'What were you doing in-what was that place you said?'
'Merebarton.' He trawled his brains, even toyed with telling her the whole truth. 'Visiting relatives,' he said.
'I see.' Without thinking or not caring, she dragged the back of her hand across her forehead, plowing white furrows in the soot. Miel (trained diplomat) kept a straight face. 'Well, if you're leaving, don't let me stop you.'
Miel dipped his head in a formal bow, cursory-polite. Someone familiar with Eremian court protocol would have recognized it at once as the proper way to acknowledge a statement or reply from a person of considerably inferior social standing. It was (he trusted) completely lost on her, but it just about constituted honorable revenge. 'Nice to have met you,' he said, and he concentrated his mind on the job of filling the wine bottle from the bucket. But the edge of the well surround was narrow, and he obviously wasn't concentrating enough, because the bucket toppled out of control and slopped nearly all its contents down the front of his trousers.
There was a snigger somewhere behind him, but he didn't turn round. Still enough water in the bucket to fill the bottle, provided he could just balance…
He swore. It was at least a second and a half before he heard the splash that told him his bottle was now at the bottom of the well.
'Don't you hate it when that happens?' said the voice he was rapidly coming to loathe.
He considered the feasibility of crossing the moor with nothing to drink except one bottle of fine vintage red wine, and reluctantly dismissed it. 'Do you think your father would let me have a bottle or a jug?' he said plaintively.
'I expect so.'
