It was cool and pleasant in the tent, and hot and unpleasant outside; and Temrai remembered that he hadn’t stopped for a rest for almost thirty-six hours. ‘Have a drink with me,’ he said. ‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’
‘Oh yes?’
Temrai nodded as he unstoppered the jug. ‘Pancakes, ’ he said. ‘You haven’t inherited your uncle’s recipe, by any chance?’
Dassascai laughed. ‘Oh, the recipe’s plain enough – eggs, flour, water and a little goose-fat to lubricate the pan. He told me so himself, many times. Problem is, he never actually followed it himself.’
‘Oh.’
‘He was that sort of man,’ Dassascai went on, taking the cup from Temrai’s hand. ‘He never could bear the thought of anybody being able to do the one thing he was better at than anybody else. Can’t say I blame him, really; if you’re the undisputed master of a popular skill, what reason would you ever have for teaching people how to replace you?’
‘I suppose so,’ Temrai said. ‘But if I’d been him, I wouldn’t have wanted my discovery to die with me.’
‘That’s because you’re not my uncle,’ Dassascai replied. ‘I’m sure that’s exactly what he wanted, so that in years to come people would shake their heads and say, Nobody makes pancakes like the ones Dondai the fletcher used to make. People tend to remember things like that, you see; it’s a shot at immortality, like being a great poet, only more so. After all, how many people really care about poetry, as against the number who really care about pancakes?’
‘I see,’ Temrai said gravely. ‘So if I want to be remembered for ever, instead of conquering Perimadeia I should have learned to fry batter.’
Dassascai yawned. ‘Quite possibly. For one thing, it’s far less uncertain. No offence, but it’s quite possible that you’ll be remembered as the man who got comprehensively beaten by Bardas Loredan and the Empire; that’s immortality, but not a very nice sort. Whereas if they remember you for your pancakes, it’ll only be because they were the best there ever were.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Is that what you want?’ he asked. ‘To be immortal? ’
‘Not really,’ Temrai replied. ‘Oh, I’m not saying the thought hasn’t crossed my mind; like it did just now, when I was watching people working. If a hundred years from now people remember me as the man who turned our nation into craftsmen and engineers, that’d be quite pleasing, if I were here to see it. But I won’t be, of course. I’ll be dead, and past caring.’
Dassascai yawned again, and winced. ‘Very sensible attitude,’ he said, ‘in the circumstances. I wonder if Bardas Loredan thinks the same way. At the moment, he’s down as the man who lost Perimadeia; do you think he’s hell-bent on fixing that, or doesn’t he care, either?’
‘That’s twice you’ve mentioned him,’ Temrai said calmly. ‘Why?’
‘No reason.’
Temrai scratched the back of his neck. ‘You’re not trying to needle me, or anything like that?’
‘Why should I want to do that?’
‘No idea,’ Temrai replied. ‘Well, I suppose you could be probing me for weak spots, or trying to find out if I turn pale and shiver at the mention of his name – that’s the sort of thing a spy might be interested in.’
‘Not really.’ Dassascai held out his cup for a refill. ‘As far as I know, and I’m speculating here, all spies want are hard facts – you know, troop movements, disposition of forces, ground plans of the city defences, where the blind spots are in the field of fire. I can’t see that the getting-to-know-you stuff ever won any battles.’
‘That’s all right, then. Are you a spy, by the way? Really?’
‘No.’›
‘Fair enough. I’ll take your word for it.’
Dassascai dipped his head. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Just out of interest, have you got any spies in the enemy army?’
‘Not really,’ Temrai replied.
‘And if you did, you wouldn’t tell me. In case I mention it in my next report.’
‘Precisely. My turn: what made you come here, after Ap’ Escatoy? It’s obvious you don’t fit in here.’
‘Only because people won’t accept me, because they think I’m a spy.’
Temrai pursed his lips. ‘That’s partly it,’ he said. ‘But it’s true, you don’t act like you belong here. You could have gone anywhere – the Island, Colleon, Ausira; you could’ve gone east, or stayed around Ap’ Escatoy until they rebuild it. Wouldn’t you have found a city a bit more congenial?’
Dassascai laughed. ‘I don’t know where you get this could-have-gone-anywhere notion from. For a start, I lost everything in the fall of Ap’ Escatoy. I spent my last few quarters getting here, and even then I had a long walk because I couldn’t afford the fare for the last leg of the journey.’
‘All right,’ Temrai conceded. ‘But since by your reckoning getting anywhere at all was a real achievement, couldn’t you have made your way – overcoming difficulties of heroic proportions, granted – to a city; somewhere you could get a bath and a shave without having had to carry the water in a goatskin bag for two days’ march across the wilderness? What I mean is, you had to pass by several perfectly good cities to get from there to here. What was the big attraction?’
‘Ducks,’ Dassascai replied. ‘All my life I’ve secretly yearned to spend my days up to the elbows in duckshit and blood.’
Temrai nodded gravely. ‘That I can understand,’ he said. ‘This is no good. I should be out there working, setting an example. But it’s too hot.’
‘Take it easy while you’ve got the chance,’ Dassascai agreed. ‘But since you raised the subject, you should understand, because you made the same choice.’
‘Did I?’
‘Of course. You lived and worked in Perimadeia for a while; don’t tell me you hated every minute of it and couldn’t wait to finish the job and get out of there, because I don’t believe you. I mean, if you’d hated it, how come you’ve spent so much time and effort since then trying to turn our people into replica Perimadeians?’
Temrai sat still and quiet for a while before answering. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure. To begin with, it was just a side-effect – we had to learn how to build siege engines in order to take the City, so we taught ourselves the basics. Once we’d done that, though, it seemed a pity to stop there and go back to chivvying goats across the plains. And no, you’re right; I didn’t hate my time in the City, far from it. I enjoyed it, and by and large I liked the City people a lot.’
‘And then you wiped them out? No offence, just asking.’
‘It’s a fair point. I suppose it’s inevitable; if you want to harm your enemies, you’ll always end up harming your friends as well. You can’t keep war and destruction stoppered up in a little bottle, like vitriol or nitre; if you want to use them, you’ve got to slop them about.’
Dassascai shifted slightly and lay on his back. ‘True enough,’ he said. ‘But this business of imitating the people you destroyed, what about that? Is it guilt, do you think? Or did you supplant them because you wanted to take their place?’
Temrai frowned. ‘I don’t think it was anything so deliberate,’ he said. ‘I think it’s just the way things are; the more you hate an enemy, the more you come to resemble him. It’s an extremely intimate relationship, hatred; it makes you very close to the person you hate. I sometimes think you can’t really hate somebody unless you really understand them. Harming, yes; killing, even – you can do that with detachment, cold-bloodedly. But you don’t hate ducks, quite likely you don’t understand them.’
Dassascai smiled. ‘What’s to understand?’
‘Ah, well, there you are. Now, when I was a kid and my father and uncle took me out hunting the first time, they told me that a true hunter has to understand what he kills; and I honestly believe that they loved the deer and the boar we used to hunt. When they used to talk about them, it was all affection, as if they were talking about family. I suppose it’s because they’d studied and observed them for so long they’d grown attached to them. They always made a point of saying thank you to anything we killed. Once when I was quite small, I asked my father if it bothered him, killing animals like that; and he said yes, it bothered him a lot, because every time he felt he’d just lost a friend. Now I never could make any sense out of that until I went to live in the City; I still can’t explain it, but now at least I know what he meant.’