(Who'd always loved her, ever since they were children, and who should have married her, except that that would've meant the Ducas getting the throne, which would have been a disaster politically; and who loved her enough to conceal the letter from Valens, who loved her as a friend, because to him there was no difference; and for that Miel had been disgraced, and Valens had come to save her, thereby bringing down ruin on his people, just as Orsea had ruined Eremia. He imagined a map, with great big areas on it hatched in red: these regions laid waste for love…)
To his unspeakable relief, as soon as the soup was taken away and replaced with a cured venison salad, the woman turned away sharply, like a well-drilled soldier, and started talking to the man on her other side. Free, Orsea ate some lettuce and a bit of meat (felt and tasted like honey-cured rawhide) until the woman on his right said, 'Excuse me, but aren't you Duke Orsea?'
He hadn't even noticed her. She was wearing a dress of deep red velvet, down the front of which she'd spilled at least one full spoon's worth of soup. She was round-faced, steel-haired, with eyes that bulged slightly, like a dead rabbit.
'That's me,' Orsea said. 'Who're you?'
'Calenda Maea, at your service,' she replied, with a short, vigorous nod. 'Specializing in heavy materials. Iron ore, lumber, best prices anywhere.' She grinned. 'So you're the genius who thinks we should all nail sheets of tin to our carts and take to the hills.'
Orsea blinked. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.'
'It's all right, I know it's supposed to be hush-hush, I won't embarrass you. Let's talk about something else. Your pet Mezentine, the one who's giving all the juicy orders to the Falcata sisters. Is money changing hands somewhere I don't know about, or does he actually enjoy being ripped off?'
Orsea sighed. 'I think you may have got me mixed up with someone else,' he said. 'I haven't got anything to do with Vaatzes these days. In fact, I don't really do anything.'
She frowned. 'You're on the emergency council, aren't you?'
'That's true,' Orsea said. 'But they've stopped telling me when the meetings are, so I don't go anymore.'
'Oh. So you aren't really involved with purchasing.'
'Me? No.'
'Ah.' She shrugged. 'My mistake. So, who should I be talking to about bulk consignments of quality scrap iron?'
Orsea shrugged. 'No idea,' he said.
'Fine.' The woman frowned at him, as if to say that he had no right to be there if he wasn't any use to her. 'So what do you make of it all, then?'
'I don't.'
'What? Oh, I see. No comment at this time, is that it?'
'If you like.'
She nodded. 'Sounds like the administration's got something up its sleeve it doesn't want anybody knowing about, in that case,' she said. 'Playing its cards close to its chest, in case word gets out and sends materials prices rocketing. Fine, we'll find out anyway, we've got other sources of information, you know. No, what I meant was, the marriage. What do you reckon?'
'None of my business,' Orsea said.
She laughed. 'Politicians,' she said. 'Well, please yourself. Me, I think it's an absolute disaster. Good for business, of course, because all those soldiers, they're going to need feeding and clothes and boots and tents and all that. We do a lot of business with the Cure Doce-carriage is a nightmare, of course, but we manage; no such word as can't, my mother used to say-so I think we'll be getting our slice sooner or later, even if your chief of procurement is sleeping with the Falcatas. But otherwise…' She shrugged, and the contents of her dress rolled like the ocean in fury. 'I hope I'm wrong, of course, but I know I'm right. Fair enough, I'm no great authority on happy marriages. You've just got to look at the idiot I ended up with to see that. But I reckon, if you're going to get married at all, it ought to be for the right reason, and well, there's only one reason for getting married, isn't there?'
'Is there?'
'Are you serious? Of course. If you're going to marry, marry for love. Not for money, not to please your family, and certainly not for cavalry. I mean,' she went on with a sour expression on her face, 'you've just got to look at her. Miserable, sharp-faced bitch. Oh sure, they've done a fantastic job training her, she can sit on a chair and eat with a knife and a spoon and talk just like people, but that doesn't change what she is. Still, that's the price you pay for sitting in the top chair. I guess he's done well to hold out as long as he has done.'
Orsea frowned. 'Valens, you mean?'
She nodded. 'They've been on at him for years to get married, but he's dug his heels in and fought them like crazy, every time. Nice girls, too, some of them. They used to say he was, well, you know, but I never believed that. I mean, if that was true, he'd have married the first one they threw at him, just to get them all off his back, and then got on with his own way of doing things, so to speak, and no bother. Trouble with Valens is, though, he's a romantic.'
Orsea couldn't help reacting to that. 'You think so? I'd have thought he's the most down-to-earth man I've ever-'
She laughed; genuine laughter, but not kind. 'You're kidding, of course,' she said. 'No, our dashing, moody young duke is a play-actor. He plays at being himself, if you see what I mean. He's like an artist, creating one great masterpiece: himself, of course. He's his life's work. Mostly he sees himself as Valens the Great, best duke the Vadani ever had. Other times, though, he's Valens the dark, driven, passionate lover-and that only works, of course, if you can't have the one you really want. Settle him down with a nice cheerful girl with a sense of humor, he'd pine away and die. That's what all this is about, of course. If he's got to marry someone-grand self-sacrifice to save the duchy in its darkest hour-he picks the most impossible girl anybody could imagine: Cure Hardy, dour, miserable, wouldn't know a joke if it burrowed up her bum. You can't help feeling sorry for him, though. Well,' she added thoughtfully, as if she'd just remembered something. 'You'd be the exception, of course. I expect you're breathing a big sigh of relief, now today's over. Though of course you never had anything to worry about. Not his way.'
The temptation to pour the contents of the oil-cruet down the front of her dress was one of the strongest forces Orsea had ever encountered in his life. He resisted it-epic poems should have been composed about that battle-and instead shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said. 'And I don't really want to talk about the Duke's private life, if it's all the same to you.'
'All right,' she said, with a grin. 'Let's talk about niter.'
For a moment, Orsea was sure he'd misheard her. 'What?'
'Niter.' Big smile, revealing many teeth, all different shapes and sizes. 'Stuff you get when you boil up a big load of dirt off the floor of a chicken run or a pigsty; when all the water's steamed off, you're left with a sort of white powder. They use it for preserving meat.'
Orsea nodded slowly. 'And you foresee a demand for preserved meat because of the war. Rations for the soldiers.'
'Stands to reason,' she said. 'They'll be crying out for the stuff, when we evacuate. Not to mention rations for the Duke's dowry; don't suppose they eat bread, or porridge, though I suppose they may prefer their meat raw. Pull it off the bone with their teeth, like as not. Anyhow, I've got a customer who wants all the niter he can get, and I know for a fact the bloody Falcatas have got all the domestic stocks tied up-contrary to the public interest, I call it, cornering the market in essential supplies when there's a war on. So I thought, there must be loads of chicken coops in Eremia, and nobody much left to take an interest in them, if you see what I mean. And my lot, the Merchant Adventurers-well, I'm not saying we've got a relationship with the Mezentines, that'd be a gross overstatement and not very patriotic, of course; but trade's got to go on, hasn't it, or where would we all be? So what I'm saying is, the fact that any possible niter deposits may happen to be in occupied territory wouldn't be the end of the world, so to speak. Not absolutely fatal to a deal, if everything else falls into place.'
Orsea shook his head. 'Sorry,' he said. 'We probably had chickens in Eremia; in fact, I'm fairly certain of it. But where they lived and who looked after them-'
'Doesn't have to be chickens,' she said. 'Gould be pigs. Bats, even. You get a cave where bats have been roosting for a good many years, that's a real treasure-trove. Anywhere there's shit, basically, or other sorts of animal stuff rotting down. I heard somewhere you can make niter from the soil of an old graveyard.' She smiled at
