Evil for Evil by K. J. Parker Page B

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