"You should set up in business," she was saying. "I'm sure you'd do very well. After all, you got that factory going in Eremia very quickly, and if it hadn't been for the war…"
"The thought had crossed my mind," he replied gravely. "But I get the feeling that manufacturing isn't the Vadani's strongest suit, and I haven't got the patience to spend a year training anybody to saw a straight line. Besides, I quite like a change of direction. I was thinking about setting up as a trader."
She laughed. "You think you'd look good in red?"
"I forgot," he said, as lightly as he could manage. "Your sister's a Merchant Adventurer, isn't she?"
"That's right." Just a trace of chill in her voice.
"I wonder if she'd be prepared to help me," he said, increasing the level of enthusiasm but not piling it on too thick. "A bit of advice, really. I imagine she knows pretty well everybody in the trade. It seems like a fairly small world, after all."
"You want to meet her so she can teach you how to be her business rival? I'm not sure it works like that."
An adversarial side to her nature he hadn't noticed or appreciated before. She liked verbal fencing. He hadn't thought it was in her nature; perhaps she'd picked the habit up somewhere, from someone. "I was thinking more in terms of a partnership," he said.
"Oh." She blinked. Arch didn't suit her. "And what would you bring to it, I wonder?"
"I heard about a business opportunity the other day," he replied. "It sounds promising, but I'm not a trader."
She nodded. "Well," she said, "I owe you a favor, don't I?" She paused. Something about her body language put her maids and equerries on notice that they'd suddenly been struck blind and dumb. Impressive how she could do that. "I haven't had a chance to thank you," she went on, somewhat awkwardly.
"What for?"
She frowned. "For getting me out of Civitas Eremiae alive," she said.
He nodded. "What you mean is, why did I do that?"
"I had wondered."
He looked away. It could quite easily have been embarrassment, the logical reaction of a reticent man faced with unexpected gratitude. "Chance," he said. "Pure chance. Oh, I knew who you were, of course. But I happened to run into you as I was making my own escape. It was just instinct, really."
"I see." She was frowning. "So if you'd happened to run into someone else first…"
"I didn't, though," he said. "So that's all right."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I think I made it sound like I was afraid-I don't know, that you were calling in a debt or something."
"It's all right," he said. "Let's talk about something else."
"Fine." She lifted her head, like a horse sniffing for rain. "Such as?"
"Oh, I don't know. How are you settling in?"
"What?"
"Well, you asked me."
She hesitated, then shrugged. "There are days when I forget where I am," she said. "I wake up, and it's a sunny morning, and I sit in the window-seat and pick up my embroidery; and the view from the window is different, and I remember, we're not in Eremia, we're in Civitas Vadanis. So I guess you could say I've settled in quite well. I mean," she added, "one place is very much like another when you stay in your room embroidering cushion covers. It's a very nice room," she went on. "They always have been. I suppose I've been very lucky, all my life."
The unfair question would be, So you enjoy embroidery, then? If he asked it, either she'd have to lie to him, or else put herself in his power, forever. "What are you making at the moment?" he asked.
"A saddle-cloth," she answered brightly. "For Orsea, for special occasions. You see, all the other things I made for him, everything I ever made…" She stopped. Burned in the sack of Civitas Eremiae, or else looted by the Mezentines, rejected as inferior, amateur work, and dumped. He thought of a piece of tapestry he'd seen in Orsea's palace before it was destroyed; he had no idea whether she'd made it, or some other noblewoman with time to fill. It hardly mattered; ten to one, her work was no better and no worse. The difference between her and me, Vaatzes thought, is that she's not a particularly good artisan. I don't suppose they'd let her work in Mezentia.
"It must take hours to do something like that," he said.
She looked past him. "Yes," she said.
"Let me guess." (He didn't want to be cruel, but it was necessary.) "Hunting scenes."
She actually laughed. "Well, of course. Falconry on the left, deer-hunting on the right. I've been trying really hard to make the huntsman look like Orsea, but I don't know; all the men in my embroideries always end up looking exactly the same. Sort of square-faced, with straight mouths. And my horses are always walking forward, with their front near leg raised."
He nodded. "You could take up music instead."
"Certainly not." She gave him a mock scowl. "Stringed instruments chafe the fingers, and no gentlewoman would ever play something she had to blow down. Which just leaves the triangle, and-"
"Quite." He looked up. "Here we are," he said. "Twenty-Ninth Street. The square's just under that archway there."
She nodded. "Thank you for showing me the way," she said.
"I hope you find what you're looking for."
"Vermilion," she replied. "And some very pale green, for doing light-and-shade effects on grass and leaves."
"Best of luck, then." He stood aside to let her pass.
"I expect I'll see you at the palace," she said. "And yes, I'll write to my sister."
He shook his head. "Don't go to any trouble."
"I won't. But I write to her once a week anyway."
She walked on, and he lost sight of her behind the shoulders of her maids. Once she was out of sight, he leaned against the wall and breathed out, as though he'd just been doing something strenuous and delicate. There goes a very dangerous woman, he thought. She could be just what I need, or she could spoil everything. I'll have to think quite carefully about using her again.
Money. He straightened up. A few heads were turning (what's the matter? Never seen a Mezentine before? Probably they hadn't). Almost certainly, some of the people who'd passed them by on the way here would have recognized the exiled Eremian duchess, and of course he himself was unmistakable. Just by walking down the hill with her, he'd made a good start.
He started to walk west, parallel to the curtain wall. Obviously she's not stupid, he thought, or naive. Either she's got an agenda of her own-I don't know; making Valens jealous, maybe? — or else she simply doesn't care anymore. In either case, not an instrument of precision. A hammer, rather than a milling cutter or a fine drill-bit. The biggest headache, though, is still getting the timing right. It'd be so much easier if I had enough money.
A thought occurred to him, and he stopped in his tracks. The strange, weird, crazy man; him with all those funny names. What was it he'd said? I have certain resources, enough to provide for my needs, for a while. Well, he'd asked to be taken on as an apprentice, and in most places outside the Republic, it was traditional for an apprentice to pay a premium for his indentures.
He shook the thought away, as though it was a wisp of straw on his sleeve. Money or not, he didn't need freaks like that getting under his feet. For one thing, how could anyone possibly predict what someone like that would be likely to do at any given moment?
Embroidery, he thought; the women of the Mezentine Clothiers' Guild made the best tapestries in the world; all exactly the same, down to the last stitch. A lot of their work was hunting scenes, and it didn't matter at all that none of them had ever seen a deer or a boar, or a heron dragged down by a goshawk.