like him trying to do the right thing. He knows it's true, but he can't understand why. I think that's probably why I still love him.
Sorry; the L word. This is neither the time nor the place. Let's talk about something else. Read any good books?
I haven't. I do a lot of embroidery instead. I know you have a wonderful library full of books I'd give anything to read, but I can't, because they're yours. I used to be really jealous that you had so many books; I resented that, and you writing to me telling me things out of them. I also knew that reading the books for myself wouldn't be the same as having you quote from them in a letter. Maybe at some point I got you and your library mixed up in my mind; what's the word, I identified them with you. A bit like the way you identify a country with its ruler; you say, the Vadani did this and that when you mean the Duke did it, and the other way around. For instance, the Mezentines could say the Vadani declared war on them by attacking, when you came for me.
I have no idea what I'm saying, so excuse me. I think it's just that I'm out of practice. It seems ever such a long time since I wrote a letter.
As well as embroidery, I daydream; which is silly. I have this fantasy about a girl who writes a letter to a prince. It's pointless, because he's married; but it's all right really, they're just letters. She has an idea he doesn't really care much for his wife. The trouble is, she gets to depend on the letters; she sits waiting for them to come- and they do, but she can't help wondering what it'd be like if they stopped coming, and she was stuck out there in the middle of nowhere, stranded in a tower embroidering cushion covers for the rest of her life. Sometimes I try and talk to her; I shout, but she can't hear. I try and tell her it's a very bad idea, and if I were in her shoes I wouldn't do such a dangerously stupid thing.
The other day, I went for a walk. I don't think I'm supposed to, but there's only so much cross-stitch a woman can do before her brain boils out through her ears. I walked down some stairs and across a courtyard and up another flight of stairs and down a passage, and in through an open door. There was a maid in the room, cleaning something; as soon as she saw me, she ran away, which was a bit disconcerting. The point is, I remembered the room. It used to be my room when I first came here; you remember, when I was a hostage, during the peace talks. It was pretty much as I remembered it: same furniture, even the same mirror hanging over the fireplace. I looked in the mirror and you'll never guess who I saw there. At first I was a bit taken aback-I'd heard she was dead, or had gone away. But then it occurred to me that she must've been there all this time.
No offense, but I don't think the barbarian girl is quite right for you. She's got a nice figure if you like them springy, but you could cut yourself on that mouth. Not that I'm feeling catty or anything. Still, who needs love when you can have cavalry?
I'm sorry, that was deliberate, not just an unfortunate slip of the pen. Who needs that thing that starts with L? Not me. You see, I'm married to a dear, good man who used to love me very much, though it's rather slipped his mind lately, because of everything he's had to contend with. You don't; or maybe you do, but you can't have it if it interferes with work. You're identified with your country, remember, and countries can't go around falling in love. Imagine what'd happen if Lonazep suddenly fell madly in love with the Eivar peninsula, and Lower Madeia got jealous and died of a broken heart. There'd be chaos, they'd have to redraw all the maps.
So, there we are. Eremia sends her best wishes, what's left of her. He took a moment to fold the letter up neatly, like a man putting away a map in a high wind. He dropped it into the ivory box, turned the key and lolled back in his chair. For a little while, he stared at the tapestry on the opposite wall; the usual stag at bay, confronting the usual hounds. It was so familiar that he scarcely ever saw it these days; once it had hung in his father's bedchamber, and he'd come to know it well while he was waiting for his father to die. One of the first things he'd done when he became duke was have it brought up here.
Well, he thought, so there it is. Mind you, if this is being in love, I don't think much of it.
He glanced at the clock-beautiful, huge, Mezentine; the craftsmen of the Republic excelled at clockwork, not just timepieces but automata, gadgets, mechanical toys. In three-quarters of an hour he had to go and see his future wife. Someone had made an appointment for them to take a stroll in the herb garden. It would be at its best at this time of the evening, stinking of lavender, bay and night-scented stock. At their last encounter they'd talked quite civilly for some considerable time about sparrowhawks; a day's falconry was being arranged, or would be as soon as Jarnac Ducas came back from the wars (sulfur; why?), he being recognized as the finest falconer, apart from Valens himself, in the duchy. It was a treat he was looking forward to intensely; and once it was over, he planned on making a public announcement about leaving the city for the duration of the war.
The Mezentines would burn it to the ground, of course. Presumably they would loot it scrupulously clean first; in which case, his father's tapestry would be taken away and sold, which at least meant it would survive. He'd very nearly made up his mind to take it with him, but space on the carts was going to be very tight indeed and it'd set a bad example. He smiled; he'd seen it in passing for most of his life, but he'd never actually looked at it. That was as bad as continually dipping into a book but never actually sitting down and reading it from beginning to end; or like being in love with someone since he was seventeen but never admitting it, even to himself, until it was finally, definitively, too late to do anything about it.
But so what? You heard all sorts of good, positive things about love; they wanted you to believe that you couldn't be happy without it. That was plain stupid, like saying you could never know true happiness unless you learned to play the flute. In any event, he knew all about love. He'd learned it like a school lesson, irregular verbs or dates of coronations, when he'd sat in his father's room staring at the tapestry because he couldn't bear to look at the man lying on the bed.
So, he thought, the hell with it. He still had forty minutes.
He jumped up, opened the long triangular cupboard in the corner of the room and took out a case of practice rapiers (Mezentine, a little too heavy, with three-ring hilts and bated points). Then he clattered down the stairs into the courtyard, wondering who would be unlucky enough to be the first to meet him.
There was a special pleasure in the irony; Orsea was sitting on the stone bench, watching the sunset.
'Hello,' Valens called out cheerfully. 'I hoped I might find you. Any good at fencing?'
Orsea turned his head, saw him and stood up. Excellent manners. 'What, you mean swordfighting with rapiers?'
'Yes.'
Orsea shook his head. 'Pretty hopeless, actually. Of course, they tried to teach me when I was a kid, but I never had the-'
'Fine. Catch.' Valens threw him one of the foils; he grabbed at it, knocked it up in the air and managed to catch it on the second bounce. 'Come over to the old stable with me, we'll have half an hour's sparring.'
Orsea frowned. 'No, really,' he said. 'I'm dreadful at it.'
'I'll teach you,' Valens replied. 'I'm a pretty good instructor, though I do say so myself.'
By rights they should have worn face-masks, padded jackets and heavy left-hand gloves with the palms reinforced with chain-mail. But it would have taken time to fetch them, and there was no need. Valens was too good a fencer to get hit, or to hit his opponent dangerously. So they fought in shirtsleeves, like men trying to kill one another. Valens demonstrated the lunge, the pass, the stromazone (a flick across the enemy's face with the point of your sword, designed to cause painful superficial cuts). Orsea turned out to be every bit as bad as he'd said he was, and Valens poked him in the ribs, slapped him about with the flat, tripped him, knocked the foil out of his hand, drew blood from his ear and lower lip with little wrist-flips, and loosened one of his teeth by punching him in the face with the knuckle-bow of his hilt. There was no reason to it apart from the sheer joy of hurting and humiliating him, showing him up for the clown he was, goading him into losing his temper and thereby laying himself even more open to attack. In the last objective, Valens failed. The more he was hit, the more guilty Orsea seemed to get, the more painfully ashamed of his lack of skill and ability. At last, having knocked his foil out of his hand and across the stable ('That's called the beat in narrow measure,' he explained helpfully) and kicked his knees out from under him so that he was left kneeling on precisely the spot where Valens had had to learn the four wards as a boy-it had to be that place and no other; it took him a full minute to herd Orsea onto it-he lowered his foil, held out his other hand and pulled Orsea to his feet.
'You're getting there,' he said encouragingly, 'but there's still quite a way to go. We can make this a regular thing, if you like; once a week, or twice even, if you'd rather.'
'It's very good of you to offer,' Orsea said, wiping blood out of his fringe, 'but I know how busy you must be right now with other-'
He yelped; Valens had just stung the edge of his cheek with another flick. 'Steady on,' he shouted. 'I haven't
