that he shared directly and exclusively with his opponent, the arch-abominator and the Republic's deadliest enemy, who had once written: I saw her walking down the street. She has such small, such pretty feet. And when she turns and smiles at me I'm happy as a man can be.
A puzzle. He turned the page. Here was one he hadn't seen before. I know she loves me, but she just can't say it. It's not the sort of thing we talk about. No words or looks of hers can yet betray it But still her love for me is not in doubt.
He winced. If Vaatzes had been only twice as good at engineering as he'd been at poetry, he'd never have had to leave the city.
Someone coughed. He looked up sharply, reflexively dragging his feet off the desk before he noticed that it was only another clerk. 'Well?' he grunted.
'Message for you,' the clerk said, squinting sideways to read what was written on the spine of the book. Psellus closed it and dropped it in his lap. 'Let's have it, then.'
The clerk handed him a folded piece of paper and went away. It was an ordinary sheet of thin rag paper, universally used for internal memos, but it was folded twice and closed with the official seal of Necessary Evil. That made it important. He sat up to read it. Boioannes to his colleagues, greetings.
The abominator Vaatzes has contacted the Guild. Herewith a transcript of a letter delivered through intermediaries; Commissioner Psellus to report to me at his earliest convenience to examine the original and verify the handwriting against other documents currently in his keeping.
Text as follows…
14
It had been, everybody agreed, an efficient wedding. The necessary steps had been taken in the proper manner, the prescribed forms of words had been used in the presence of the appropriate witnesses, the register had been signed and sealed by all the parties to the transaction, and the young couple were now thoroughly married, fixed together as tightly as a brazed joint.
Unfortunate, perhaps, that neither of them had seemed particularly happy about it. More unfortunate still that both of them had made so little effort to dissemble their feelings. The Vadani people were, on the whole, fond of their duke and didn't like to see him looking miserable. Accordingly, there had been a rather strained, thoughtful atmosphere at the ceremony itself, and the scenes of public joy that greeted the departure from the chapel had been distinctly subdued. Never mind; the mortise doesn't have to love the tenon, just so long as they fit snugly together and accept the dowel.
'It's only politics, after all,' someone he didn't know said to Orsea, as they filed in to the wedding breakfast. 'Now that's all over they can stay out of each other's way and get on with their lives. Well, not entirely out of each other's way, there's the succession to think of. That aside, it's a pretty civilized arrangement.'
Orsea smiled weakly. When he'd married the Countess Sirupati, heiress to the duchy of Eremia, he had only seen her two or three times, in crowds, at functions and the like. On his wedding day, he hadn't recognized her at first-he'd known that he was going to be marrying the girl dressed in the big white gauzy tent thing, but when she lifted back the veil, it hadn't been the face he'd been expecting to see. He'd got her confused in his mind with her second sister, Baute. A few days later, of course, he'd found himself more deeply in love than any man had ever been before or since…
'No reason why they shouldn't get along quite amicably,' the man was saying. 'By all accounts she likes the same sort of thing he does-hawking, hunting, the great outdoors. So long as she's got the common sense not to disagree with him about which hawk to fly or whether to drive the long covert before lunch, they ought at least to be able to be friends; and that matters so much more than love, doesn't it, in a marriage.'
Something to do with roads, Orsea thought; deputy commissioner of highways, or something of the kind. Whatever he was, the man was extremely annoying; but the line was tightly packed and slow-moving, and he had no hope of getting away from him without a severe breach of protocol. Even so…
'Do you think so?' he said, as mildly as he could manage. 'I think love's the only thing that matters in a marriage.'
'You're a bachelor, then.'
'No.'
'Oh.' A shrug. 'In that case, congratulations and I'm delighted for you. In my case…' The annoying man looked sad for a moment. 'Pretty straightforward,' he said. 'My father had the upland grazing but virtually no water, her father had the river valley but no summer pasture. At the time I was head over heels for the local notary's daughter. Carried on seeing her for a bit after the wedding-wife didn't make a fuss, pretended she didn't know, though it was obvious she did really. I don't know what happened after that. I just sort of realized that love is basically for teenagers, and when it comes to real life for grown-ups, you're far better off with someone who's moderately pleased to see you when you're around, but who leaves you in peace when you've got things to do. When you're trying to run a major estate as well as holding down an important government appointment, you simply haven't got time to go for long hand-holding walks in the meadows or look sheepish for an hour while she yells at you for forgetting her aunt's birthday. Nowadays we get on famously: I've got my work, she messes about with tapestries and flowers and stuff, and she's got her own friends; we meet up once a day for breakfast and generally have a good old natter about things…'
They reached the table. Mercifully, the annoying man was sitting right down the other end. So, apparently, was Veatriz. He could see the top of her head over a short man's shoulder.
'You're Duke Orsea, aren't you?' There was a female sitting on his left; a nondescript middle-aged woman in green, wearing a massive necklace of rubies.
'That's right,' Orsea said, as though confessing to a misdemeanor. 'I'm sorry, I-'
'Lollia Caustina,' the woman replied promptly. 'My husband's the colonel of the household cavalry. So, what did you think?'
About what? Orsea thought; then he realized she must mean the wedding. 'Very nice,' he mumbled.
She started to laugh, then straightened her face immediately as a hand reached past her shoulder and put down a bowl of soup. 'Game broth,' she said sadly. 'I might have known. Something the Duke killed for us specially, I assume, but as far as I'm concerned he needn't have bothered. I thought it was absolutely fascinating.'
'I'm sorry?' Orsea said.
'The wedding. Fascinating. Politically, I mean.'
'Oh,' Orsea said.
'I mean, take the exchange of rings,' the woman went on. 'You saw who was carrying the tray with the bride's ring on it. Calvus Falx, of all people. If that's not a smack in the face for the moderates-'
'I see,' Orsea lied. A bowl of soup materialized in front of him, and he reached for his spoon. The woman, he noticed, slurped when eating soup.
'And don't get me started on the presents,' she was saying. 'Talk about making a statement; they might as well have built a stage in the market square and read out speeches. Chancellor Carausius' gift to the bride's uncles; you saw it, of course.'
Orsea tried frantically to remember what he'd given to who. 'Well, no, I-'
'Hunting knives,' the woman said bitterly, 'silver inlay, Mezentine. I had a good look when nobody was looking, the makers' marks were there plain as anything. Of course, it's pretty obvious what all that was about; but if he thinks he's going to convince them that easily, I'd say he's in for a nasty surprise. They may be savages, but they aren't stupid. They know as well as we do, trading at fourth hand through intermediaries for finished manufactured goods is going to cost us an absolute fortune, and with the mines all closed up…'
Luckily, she didn't seem to expect anything from him apart from the occasional interested-sounding grunt, and he was good at those. Accordingly he was able to turn his mind out to graze on the implications of something the annoying man had said. They ought at least to be able to befriends; and that matters so much more than love in a marriage. He thought about that, and wondered if it was true. Veatriz-he loved her, or he had loved her very much, but they'd never been friends, not as he understood the word. He hadn't needed her for that; he'd always had Miel Ducas.
