Back in the house, in the light, he examined his trophy. Oh well, he thought, better than nothing. By all accounts the savages thrived on it.
"Well?" she said.
She had a blanket, Vadani military issue, over her shoulders, her hair tucked in under it. Her eyes were red from the smoke of the peat-fed fire and its thoroughly inadequate chimney. She couldn't understand why he kept making excuses instead of fixing it. He was ashamed to admit he was scared to death of fooling about up ladders,
"Cheese and smoked meat," he said cheerfully. A sort of truth.
Her eyes narrowed. "Oh," she said. "The savages again."
Of course she had every right to complain. Mares'-milk cheese and wind-cured smoked horsemeat; you wouldn't feed it to a dog, and if you did, the dog would just look at you. But it was the way she said it, and the look on her face. "I can't help it," he snapped (the Ducas is always courteous and polite, especially to ladies). "I was lucky to find anything at all, and even luckier to get away with it. I can't just send a runner down to the market and tell them to send me up a colonel's wife and a couple of merchants."
"It's all right," she said, meaning the exact opposite. "Get any horses?"
"One."
She didn't sniff, but the effort cost her dear. "It's not branded, is it? You did check."
Of course he hadn't, and he should have. The savages branded their horses, quite a complex vocabulary of dots, dashes and squig-gles. Nobody would dare buy a branded horse, not even for the bones and hide. "I didn't have time," he replied lamely. "It wasn't exactly straightforward."
Her expression told him she was in no mood for hunting stories. Needless to say, Cousin Jarnac wouldn't have taken any notice. If he really wanted to tell you, nothing short of feigning a stroke would get you off the hook. "Oh well," she said. "We'll get something for the boots, at any rate."
They ate the mares' cheese and horsemeat in solemn silence, apart from the grimly resigned sound of chewing. One good thing about horse jerky: it left the jaws too weary for talking afterwards. When he went out to fetch more fuel for the fire, he noticed the peat stack was getting low again. Another of his favourite jobs to look forward to.
That night, in bed, she said: "We can't go on like this much longer."
He'd be hard put to it to disagree with that, on several levels. "Got any better ideas?"
She appeared not to have heard him. "It's five days before the buyer's due back again, assuming he's still coming. He said last time it wasn't really worth his while coming out this far."
"That's just bargaining talk."
"And quite apart from that, there's the risk. He said he can talk his way round Eremians, and Vadani take bribes, but if he gets stopped by the savages, he doesn't want to think what'd happen. And fairly soon, of course, the war's going to start up again and then the market'll be flooded. And if it's true the Cure Doce have sided with the Mezentines, will their buyers still be able to cross the border? And if they close off the Lonazep road-"
"All right," Miel grunted, "you've made your point. There's no future in it, I entirely agree. But what the hell else am I supposed to do?"
"I'm not blaming you, I'm just saying." That flat tone of voice, more corrosive than any reproaches. "We aren't making ends meet now, and it's only going to get worse. That's all."
"I'm not doing this because I enjoy it, you know. It's bloody hard work, and most of the time I'm scared out of my wits. I'd love to do something else, it's just that there isn't anything. Well, is there?"
Silence. If such a thing were possible, her silences were worse than anything she could find to say. Well, fine, he thought. If that's the end of the discussion, I'll go to sleep now.
"By the way," she said, "I think I'm pregnant."
The Ducas is always positive, upbeat and optimistic. Even when he has personal misgivings, he's under an obligation to uphold the morale of those around him and put the best possible interpretation on any given turn of events.
"Well? Aren't you going to say anything?"
"Are you sure?"
"Not yet." A slight sharpening of the voice, as she added: "But I thought I'd better let you know there's a distinct possibility. Just in case you give a damn."
The Ducas is always positive; the Ducas is always courteous; the Ducas is always considerate of the feelings of his household and inferiors. "Of course I give a damn," he snapped. "It's just… well, I don't know what to say. I wasn't expecting anything like this."
"Really?" Now it was a voice he could've shaved with. "You surprise me. I'd have thought at some point someone would've briefed you on where little aristocrats come from. I thought it was such a big deal, ensuring the succession."
Mere vulgar chiding; he was under no obligation to reply to that. He lay still in the dark, trying to think. Correction: trying to care.
"We could go to the Vadani," she said.
He was too tired to be angry. "No we can't."
"We can. It's the only-"
"For crying out loud, they were going to kill us."
Patient sigh. He found her patience almost unendurable. "First, they won't remember me. Second, things are different now. The duke's married her." Pause. "Your girlfriend."
"She was never-"
"You were going to marry her. You were best friends when you were kids. You got arrested because you hid that letter, for her sake. She's not going to let him have you killed." Another pause. Perfect timing, like a great actor. "We'd be safe," she said. "You wouldn't have to stay with me if you don't want to."
"It's not like that, of course I want to stay with you, that's not the point…"
She ignored him. "If we stay out here, we're going to starve to death. Or one day a soldier's going to kill you, instead of the other way round. Or the savages will catch us with a branded horse. There's loads of ways it could all go wrong. But if we go to Duke Valens, at the very least he'll feed us, he'll give us a place to sleep, even if it's in a prison. It's got to be better."
He felt like he was choking on feathers. "I can't go to the Vadani," he said. "For God's sake, I've been murdering their soldiers for the last four months."
"They don't know that."
"Maybe not, but what if one of the buyers shows up and recognises me? I don't suppose Duke Valens is going to be very impressed, do you?"
"That's hardly likely, is it?" He felt her move beside him. "And even if it did happen, she could protect you. She could, I'm sure of it. Think about it, will you? He had her husband killed, that's got to be a really serious issue between them. You were her husband's best friend, you and she were going to get married, it was because of that bloody letter he wrote that you nearly got killed then. If you deny it, say you never killed any soldiers and it's all a mistake, he'll have to pretend to believe you, for her sake." Even in the dark, he could feel her tears coming. When she started crying, all he wanted to do was hit her. "If you're going to let your stupid pride stand between us and our only chance of staying alive…"
"All right," he said. "All right, I'll think about it."
"I know what that means. It means no."
"No it doesn't. I'll think about it. There may be another way, something else we could-"
"No there isn't. You said there isn't. You said so yourself."
"For pity's sake," he groaned, "have we got to do this now, when I'm completely exhausted? You always do this, start on me when I've had enough, when I'm too tired to think."
She laughed. "The only time I ever see you is when you're worn out," she said. "The rest of the time you're out, hunting soldiers. God almighty," she added, "will you just listen to that? Out hunting soldiers, what a bloody ridiculous way to make a living. All right, my husband used to go round battlefields robbing bodies, but at least they were already dead. And look what happened. They caught him and cut his head off for it. You're killing live soldiers just to get their boots, and you're saying we can't go to the Vadani because it's too dangerous."