K. J. Parker - Devices and Desires

Copyright 2005 by K. J. Parker

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Orbit

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First eBook Edition: June 2009

ISBN: 978-0-316-07747-7

Orbit is a trademark of Little, Brown Book Group Ltd.

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

As soon as Duke Orsea realized hed lost the battle, the war, and his countrys only hope of survival, he ordered a general retreat. It was the only sensible thing hed done all day.

One hour had made all the difference. An hour ago, when hed led the attack, the world had been a very different place. Hed had an army of twenty-five thousand men, one-tenth of the population of the Duchy of Eremia. He had a commanding position, a fully loaded supplies-and-equipment train, a carefully prepared battle plan, the element of surprise, the love and trust of his people, and hope. Now, as the horns blared and the ragged lines crumpled and dissolved into swarms of running dots, he had the miserable job of getting as many as he could of the fourteen thousand stunned, bewildered, and resentful survivors away from the enemy cavalry and back to the relative safety of the mountains.

One hour to change the world; not many men could have done such a thorough job. It took a particular genius to destroy ones life so comprehensively in so short a time.

Praise for
K. J. Parker

A richly textured and emotionally complex fantasy. Highly recommended.

Library Journal (starred review)

When so many fantasy sagas are tired, warmed-over affairs, a writer like K. J. Parker is more of a hurricane than a breath of fresh air.

Dreamwatch

By K. J. Parker

THE FENCER TRILOGY

Colours in the Steel

The Belly of the Bow

The Proof House

THE SCAVENGER TRILOGY

Shadow

Pattern

Memory

THE ENGINEER TRILOGY

Devices and Desires

Evil for Evil

The Escapement

For Tim Holman, for letting me swim out of my depth,
and for Kester, who I knew before he was infamous

The quickest way to a mans heart, said the instructor, is proverbially through his stomach. But if you want to get into his brain, I recommend the eye-socket.

Like a whip cracking, he uncurled his languid slouch into the taut, straight lines of the lunge. His forearm launched from the elbow like an arrow as his front leg plunged forward, and the point of the long, slim sword darted, neat as a component in a machine, through the exact center of the finger-ring that dangled from a cord tied to the beam.

It was typical of Valens father that he insisted on his son learning the new fencing; the stock, the tuck, the small-sword and the rapier. It was elegant, refined, difficult, endlessly time-consuming and, of course, useless. A brigandine or even a thick winter coat would turn one of those exquisite points; if you wanted to have any chance of doing useful work, you had to aim for the holes in the face, targets no bigger than an eight-mark coin. Against a farm worker with a hedging tool, you stood no chance whatsoever. But, for ten years, Valens had flounced and stretched up and down a chalk line in a drafty shed that hadnt been cleaned out since it was still a stable. When he could hit the apple, the instructor had hung up a plum, and then a damson. Now he could get the damson nine times out of ten, and so the ring had taken its place. Once hed mastered that, he wondered what hed be faced with next. The eye of a darning-needle, probably.

Better, the instructor said, as the point of Valens sword nicked the rings edge, making it tinkle like a cow-bell. Again.

It was typical of Valens that he suffered through his weekly lesson, face frozen and murder in his heart, always striving to do better even though he knew the whole thing was an exercise in fatuity. Fencing was last lesson but one on a Monday; on Wednesday evening, when he actually had an hour free, he paid one of the guardsmen four marks an hour to teach him basic sword and shield, and another two marks to keep the secret from his father. He was actually quite good at proper fencing, or so the guardsman said; but the tuck had no cutting edge, only a point, so he couldnt slice the grin off the instructors face with a smart backhand wrap, as he longed to do. Instead, he was tethered to this stupid chalk line, like a grazing goat.

Thatll do, the instructor said, two dozen lunges later. For next week, I want you to practice the hanging guard and the volte.

Valens dipped his head in a perfunctory nod; the instructor scooped up his armful of swords, unhooked his ring and left the room. It was still raining outside, and he had a quarter of an hour before he had to present himself in the west tower for lute and rebec. Awkwardly it was too small for him at the best of times, and now his fingers were hot and swollen he eased the ring off his right index finger and cast around for a bit of string.

Usually, he did much better when the instructor wasnt there, when he was on his own. That was fatuous too, since the whole idea of a sword-fight is that theres someone to fight with. Today, though, he was worse solo than hed been during the lesson. He lunged again, missed, hit the string, which wrapped itself insultingly round the sword-point. Maybe it was simply too difficult for him.

That thought didnt sit comfortably, so he came at the problem from a different angle. Obviously, he told himself, the reason I cant do it is because its not difficult enough.

Having freed his sword, he stepped back to a length; then he leaned forward just a little and tapped the ring on its edge, setting it swinging. Then he lunged again.

Six times out of six; enough to prove his point. When the ring swung backward and forward, he didnt just have a hole to aim at, he had a line. If he judged the forward allowance right, it was just a simple matter of pointing with the sword as though it was a finger. He steadied the ring until it stopped swinging, stepped back, lunged again and missed. Maybe I should have been a cat, he thought. Cats only lash out at moving objects; if its still, they cant see it.

He cut the ring off the cord with his small knife and jammed it back on his finger, trapping a little fold of skin. Rebec next; time to stop being a warrior and become an artist. When he was Duke, of course, the finest musicians in the world would bribe his chamberlains for a chance to play while he chatted to his guests or read the days intelligence reports, ignoring them completely. The son of a powerful, uneducated man has a hard time of it, shouldering the burden of all the advantages his father managed so well without.

An hour of the rebec left his fingertips numb and raw; and then it was time for dinner. That brought back into sharp focus the question hed been dodging and parrying all day; would she still be there, or had his father sent her back home? If shed left already if, while hed been scanning hexameters and hendecasyllables, stabbing at dangling jewelry and picking at wire, shed packed up her bags and walked out of his life, possibly forever at least he wouldnt have to sit all night at the wrong end of the table, straining to catch a word or two of what she said to someone else. If she was still here. He cast up his mental accounts, trying to figure out if he was owed a miracle. On balance, he decided, probably not. According to the holy friars, it took three hundred hours of prayer or five hundred of good works to buy a miracle, and he was at least sixty short on either count. All he could afford out of his accrued merit was a revelatory vision of the Divinity, and he wasnt too bothered about that.