I'm sure we can accommodate you. In fact, you could start by chipping the soot out of the furnace hearth. It needs doing, and I've been putting it off for months.'
'Fine,' Miel said. 'If that'd help.'
'Father,' the girl said angrily, then fell silent.
'That's settled, then,' Framain said. 'Though if I were you, I'd have something to eat and drink first, and change into some scruffy old clothes, if you've got any. It's pretty filthy work, chipping soot.' He shrugged. 'You can borrow some of my things, I'm sure they'll fit you. Mahaud'll find you something.'
The girl scowled, then walked quickly past them both and out of the barn, slamming the door behind her. As soon as she was gone, Framain seemed to relax.
'I find her very wearing sometimes,' he said, 'but there you are. It's natural enough, I'm sure, for fathers and daughters to get on each other's nerves if they're cooped up together for too long.' He paused, then looked at something on the opposite wall. 'I assume she's why you came back.'
Miel didn't reply.
'In which case,' Framain went on, 'you have my blessing; which, together with a tin cup full of water, is worth the cup. You have friends at Duke Valens' court?'
'Yes,' Miel said. 'For now, anyway. My cousin Jarnac…'
'Lines of supply,' Framain said carefully, 'have been a concern to me over the years. We always used to buy our food from two local farmers-I believe they thought I was either an outlaw or a lunatic hermit of some kind, but I paid well, in cash. They moved out when the Mezentines took Civitas Eremiae; sensible fellows, I don't blame them at all. Since then, I've bought supplies through the innkeeper at the Unswerving Loyalty, but that's a very dangerous arrangement. If your Vadani friends or your followers in the resistance could supply us, it'd be a great weight off my mind. And then there are certain materials.' He straightened his back, like a man lifting a heavy weight. 'Over the last month or so I've seriously considered giving up because of the difficulties the war has caused me; none of them insuperable on its own, but taken together…' He turned back and looked at Miel, as if trying to decide whether or not to buy him. 'In return, you can have pretty much anything you want from me. It's quite simple, really. If I succeed and find the formula, and start producing pottery in quantity, there'll be so much money, we won't know what to do with it. If we fail, what does any of it matter? In any case,' he went on, with a slight shrug, 'I think I'm past the point where I care about wealth and getting back what I've lost. The life I wanted to recapture has gone forever, thanks to the war. It'd be nice to be a rich man, I'm sure, but all I really want to do is solve the glaze problem, just so I can say I've done it. As I think I told you, I'm quite resigned to the fact that I'm obsessed with this ridiculous business. Lying to yourself just makes everything so dreadfully tiresome, don't you find?'
Miel found looking at him made him feel uncomfortable. 'I just want something to do,' he said. 'And working here, helping you, would make a nice change from the war.'
Framain considered him for a moment, then laughed. 'Don't be so sure,' he said. 'When you've known her as long as I have, you'll probably wish you were back in the cavalry.'
Framain was right about one thing. Cleaning out the furnace hearth was a filthy job. Miel worked at it until the lamp ran low and started guttering, at which point he realized he was too tired to carry on anyway. He'd been attacking the dense crusts of soot as though they were the enemy of all mankind, chipping and flaking them away with an old blunt chisel Framain had given him, stopping every hour or so to sweep away the spoil. As far as he could tell, the job was going to take the rest of his life in any event; his first savage onslaught had hardly made an impression on it. Like fighting the Mezentines, he thought, as he slumped against the wall and caught his breath; you get rid of a whole sackful, and still there's an infinite quantity left to do. Perhaps it was better that way. Leading the resistance, Framain's fruitless search for the formula, hacking soot out of the hearth; people doing pointless, impossible things because they felt they had to, for reasons that didn't stand up when you looked at them logically. It was pretty clear that Framain believed he was in love with the girl (Mahaud; a grim name, he'd always thought). It was entirely possible that he was right about that, but even then it was only part of the explanation. Somehow, he had no idea why, he felt at home here, in the secret house in the hidden combe in the middle of nowhere. For some reason, he felt it was the right place for him to be. As for Framain and his obsession, that was exactly right, too. Pottery, of all things; tableware. Plates, cups, vases, scent-bottles, little dishes and saucers-perfectly true, in the world he'd left behind (no idea whether it still existed), rich men like the Ducas had paid ludicrous prices for the stuff, not because they liked it or because it did a job better than wood or metal, but simply because of what it was. In the old world, it'd be like finding a vein of silver; just dig it out of the hillside and take it away and suddenly you'd be rich, and all your troubles would be over. A small thing like the world changing behind your back could easily be overlooked; and besides, what harm did fine pottery ever do anybody, compared with war and weapons, Vaatzes' scorpions, politics and diplomacy and the destruction of great cities? A man whose business that sort of thing had been might well do worse than the pottery trade. You could go to sleep at night knowing that even if you succeeded, nobody was going to die as a result (but then he thought of the look on Framain's face as he tried to decide whether or not to reach for the knife. Obsession is just another kind of love, after all).
He picked up the lamp. It flickered alarmingly; he didn't want to be stranded there in the dark all night. He went slowly and carefully, to make sure it didn't go out. It'd be easier, he decided, if he was there because he was in love with Mahaud. There were precedents for that sort of thing, it was like the stories in books, whose heroes and heroines were generally dispossessed princes and princesses anyway, which made it all perfectly acceptable and in keeping with the established rules. If he'd fallen in love with the hermit wizard's daughter, it'd be all right, he'd know why he was there and what he was supposed to be doing. In order to win her heart, he'd purify his soul by honest manual labor, purging himself of the gross and decadent superfluities of his privileged upbringing and still ending up with a suitable wife of good family. In the process, no doubt, he'd help the wizard complete his work, which would be a good thing-maybe they could use the pottery money to hire an army that'd drive the Mezentines out of Eremia; something like that.
He crossed the yard. The door to the house was open. Framain and Mahaud slept in the hayloft above the barn, so as not to waste two minutes every morning getting to work; he had the house to himself. Earlier he'd found a bed, buried under a pile of old, damp sheets that looked and smelled as though they'd been used for straining something. He didn't mind. He'd slept on the bare ground, in mud, among rocks; compared with what he'd been used to lately, this was luxury fit for the Ducas himself. He pinched out the lamp, lay back and tried to empty his mind, but he couldn't help thinking about the scavengers, wondering if Jarnac had left any of them alive, and if so, what had become of them. To them, this place really would be luxury, as remote and incomprehensible as Fairyland.
He forced them out of his mind, like a landlord evicting tenants, and fell asleep listening to the scuttling of mice.
12
'I had a letter from my man at the silver mine,' Valens said, making a point of not looking Ziani in the eye. 'He says they're finished there now, all sealed up. He says the men have been told the mine's been put out of commission for good. I hope he was lying.'
Ziani didn't say anything, and Valens didn't look at him.
'Anyhow,' Valens went on, 'the idea is, the first thing the Mezentines are likely to do is round up as many of the mineworkers as they can. Our people will tell them the mine's useless, and with luck they'll believe it and give up. Meanwhile, I've sent the men you trained to do the same at the smaller workings. Do you think they'll be able to manage?'
'I expect so,' Ziani said. 'They seemed perfectly competent.'
Valens shrugged; he was fairly sure that Ziani was watching him. 'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'By our calculations, it won't make business sense for the Republic to work the smaller mines, what with the overheads they'd be facing. One good thing about fighting a war against businessmen, we can do the same sums they do, which means we can more or less read their minds.'
'The Republic won't bother with them if they can't make a profit,' Ziani said.
'Which means the government won't be able to kid the opposition into a full-scale occupation purely on commercial grounds,' Valens said. 'I believe that surviving this war is very much about not fighting it, if that can be
