on the subject he kept them to himself.
They reached the Unswerving Loyalty at noon on the third day of their journey; exactly on time. As usual, the place was so quiet it appeared to have been abandoned. The old man drove his cart into the stable, untacked the horse, fed and watered it and went to find himself a drink. The boy stayed with the cart as he'd been told. He felt, not for the first time, that this was both unnecessary and unjust. Nobody was going to steal the barrels, because there wasn't anybody here, and if he was old enough to drive the cart and see to the horse, he was old enough to drink beer. He'd argued this case on several occasions with no little passion, but his grandfather never seemed to be listening.
He sat still and quiet on the box for a minute or so, until he was sure the old fool wasn't coming back; then he jumped down, took out his penknife and started carving his initials into one of the doorposts. He was proud of his initials; a Vadani border guard had taught him how to write them, when they'd been arrested and there was nothing to do for hours. The L was easy to carve, just straight lines, but the S was a challenge, and he was never quite sure which way round the curves were meant to go. One of these days he'd meet another educated man and ask him, just to make sure. He was proud of his knife, too; it had a hooked blade and a stagshorn handle, and there was a mark on it that meant it was genuine Mezentine.
He got the L done and was scoring the outlines of the S when he heard a footstep behind him. Quickly he dropped the knife onto the ground and scuffed straw over it with his foot, at the same time leaning against the gatepost to cover up his work.
'It's all right,' a man's voice said. 'I used to do that when I was your age.'
'Do what?' the boy said warily.
'Carve my initials on things.' The man was tall; quite old, over thirty; his face was all messed up with a scar. 'Trees, mostly. If you cut your initials into a tree, they get wider as the bark grows. Bet you didn't know that.'
The boy frowned, suspecting a trap. 'No, I didn't,' he said. 'What do you want?'
The man walked past him. He was looking at the cart, but he didn't look much like the sort of man who usually took an interest in the stuff they carried. 'Is that my sulfur you've got there?' he asked.
'Don't know,' the boy replied. He bent down, picked up his knife and put it away. A beam of light shone through a hole in the roof, sparkling off specks of floating dust. The man was climbing up into the cart. Duty scuffled with discretion in the boy's mind. 'You can't go up there,' he said.
The man laughed. 'It's all right,' he said, 'this lot's meant for me, I've been waiting for it. Here,' he added, reaching in his pocket and taking out a coin, 'have a drink on me, somewhere else.'
The coin spun in the air, and the boy caught it one-handed. It was, of course, an obvious bribe, implying that the man had no business being there. On the other hand, it was a silver quarter-thaler. The boy clamped his hand firmly around it and fled.
Miel counted the barrels. Six. He stooped, put his arms around one of them, bent his knees and lifted. Two hundredweight at least. Of course, he had no idea whether it'd be enough, since he didn't know what Framain and his daughter wanted the stuff for. None of his business, anyway. He had owed them a debt, which he could now discharge honorably, as the Ducas should, and that'd be that. Once it was delivered, the rest of his life would be his own.
Sulfur, he thought. No earthly good to anybody, surely.
He looked round for the boy, then remembered he'd paid him to go away. No matter. He got down, left the stable and went back to the tap room.
There he saw an old man, presumably the carter. He was holding a big mug of beer, using both hands. Miel sat down opposite him and waited until he'd taken a drink.
'Is that your wagon outside?' he said.
The old man looked at him. 'Who's asking?'
'My name's Miel Ducas,' Miel replied, 'which is what it says on your delivery note.'
The old man grounded his mug, carefully, so as not to spill any. 'Ah,' he said.
Miel smiled. 'Let me buy you another of those,' he said.
'No thanks. This'll do me. I got a long drive ahead of me, I need a clear head.'
'Talking of which.' Miel edged a little closer. 'Are you in any hurry to get anywhere? I need someone to deliver that lot for me, and nobody around here seems to have a cart for hire. It's not far,' he added, 'five days there and back. Ten thalers.'
The old man thought about that. 'All right,' he said. 'Give me a couple of hours to catch my breath, mind.'
'Fine. I'll go and get my things together. I'll meet you back in the stable.'
Just to be on the safe side, he bought provisions for seven days. Finding the inn from Framain's hidden combe hadn't been a problem; all he'd had to do was keep his eyes fixed on the mountain. The return journey, by contrast, called for a higher level of navigational skill than he had any reason to believe he possessed. He'd taken note of landmarks along the way, of course, but by the very nature of the country those were few and far between. No wonder the Mezentines had left this region well alone. The map Jarnac had given him was pure fiction, needless to say. The only halfway accurate maps of these parts had been the old estate plans compiled over the years by the Ducas bailiffs, stored in the map room at the estate office at the Ducas country house. They were all ashes now. As the cart lumbered out of the inn courtyard on a half-remembered bearing into the dust and rocks of his birthright, Miel wondered, not for the first time, what the hell he thought he was playing at.
'Do you know this country at all?' he asked the old man hopefully.
'No,' the old man replied. 'Not once you're past the Loyalty. Nobody lives there,' he explained, reasonably enough. Miel stirred uncomfortably and looked across at the boy. He was cutting bits off a piece of old frayed rope with his knife, and humming something under his breath.
'Not to worry,' Miel said. 'I know the way.'
Two days' ride southeast of Sharra Top; true, but lacking in precision. There had been a road; he remembered that, but of course he'd had to be clever, and he'd abandoned it on the second day of his ride from the hidden combe. Well, it had always been a fool's errand. If he rode southeast for two days into the bleak, featureless moor and then gave up, turned round and headed back to the Unswerving Loyalty, would the Ducas honor be satisfied on the grounds that he'd done his best? No, but never mind.
After a long, silent day they stopped nowhere in particular. The boy jumped down, unharnessed and hobbled the horse. The old man curled up on the box like a dog and went to sleep. The boy crawled under the cart. Miel climbed down, propped his back against a cartwheel, and closed his eyes. He was weary and sore from the incessant jolting of the cart, but he'd dozed off too often during the day to be able to fall asleep. A fox barked once or twice in the distance. He tried to remember all he could about his previous visit to Framain's house, but the most vivid images had no bearing on matters of navigation. So, unwillingly, he thought about other things.
The war: well, as far as he was concerned, it was over. He had no idea how many of his men were still alive, or whether they were still trying to fight the Mezentines. It didn't really matter. According to Jarnac, Duke Valens had withdrawn his support, and without help from the Vadani, it was pointless going on. If the war was effectively over, where did that leave him? Interesting question. Under other circumstances, he'd already be in Civitas Vadanis, with Orsea, doing what little he could as a leader of the Eremian government in exile. But Orsea didn't want him. On that score he'd been left in no doubt whatever. Orsea had known for some time that he was still alive, but he hadn't recalled him, or dropped the charges against him, or written him a single letter. He'd asked Jarnac, back at the inn, if Orsea had said anything about him. Jarnac had looked unhappy and tried to change the subject, until Miel forced him to admit that Orsea hadn't mentioned him once.
That shouldn't have been a surprise. Orsea and his wretched, all-destroying sense of right and wrong, his fatal compulsion to try and do the right thing; and, needless to say, he applied the same rules to those closest to him. Apparently he was convinced that Miel had betrayed him, and therefore he could never forgive him. He'd recognize, of course, that this meant wasting an ally, a valuable one, though he said so himself; it meant that, because Miel was organizing the resistance, Orsea could have nothing to do with it. That hadn't passed unnoticed; why, his men had asked him over and over again, isn't the Duke out here with us; why hasn't he even sent us a message of encouragement? Men who'd asked him that question and received the inevitably vague and unsatisfactory replies he'd managed to cobble together generally deserted a day or so later. Why fight for their country if their country had no use for them? Poor Orsea, he thought, still trying to do the right thing.
Which left him, the Ducas, with no master to serve, no work to do, no purpose… That was an extraordinary
