Read Evil for Evil for Free Online

the first time) that that was never going to be possible. He might be winning, but his people weren't. They didn't stand a chance.
    But they weren't alone, of course. Silly of him to have forgotten that: the Vadani were helping him, or rather the other way about. His job (the Vadani agent had explained all this) was to keep up the pressure, make a nuisance of himself, cost the enemy money. The purpose of this was to undermine the enemy's political will, to give the Mezentine opposition a chance to bring down the government. Excellent strategy, and the only way to beat the Perpetual Republic. So, you see, we can still do it, and it doesn't really matter how many villages get burned or how many people get killed; we're just one part of someone else's greater design…
    He frowned. The smoke was stinging his eyes. That morning, he'd been able to see the design quite clearly, as though it was a blueprint unrolled on a table. Since then, he'd been bashed on the knee and left for dead, and somehow that had made a difference. It was almost as though a ship had sailed away and left him behind. He'd heard stories about men who'd been stranded on islands or remote headlands. A simple thing, the unfurling of sails, the raising of an anchor; a few minutes either way, the difference between boarding a ship and not making it. In his case, a bash on the knee and another one on the head. In the stories, the castaways accepted that the world had suddenly changed; they'd built huts on the beach, hunted wild goats and cured their hides for clothing, until the world happened to come by again, pick them up and take them home. Those were the ones you heard about, of course. The ones who were never rescued by passing ships, or who simply lay on the beach and waited to die, were never heard from again and therefore ceased to exist. Miel thought: I've lost everything. I was the Ducas, the head of the family, the Duke's principal adviser, Orsea's best friend. I had land and houses and money, hawks and hounds, clothes and weapons. Thousands of people depended on me. They lived their lives through me, I was the one who made their decisions for them, decided what they should be doing. I wasn't just one man, I was thousands; I was Eremia. Now I can't even walk on my own, and I've got nothing, not even a pair of boots.
    I was…
    Perhaps it was just the sting of the smoke. He rubbed his eyes, and thought about it some more.
    Well, he thought, I suppose it's because I was born to it. Orsea wasn't, and that's probably why he did so very badly. All my life I've been aware of it, the responsibility for other people, the knowledge that I can't just do what I want, because so many people depend on me. I could argue that that makes me a good man—except that I had the houses and the land, the hawks and hounds, and I never had to lean on plow-handles in the baking sun or stoop over all day hoeing onions. But I never chose anything, not for myself. I have always tried to do the right thing, because people depended on me.
    Someone was standing over him; he looked up. He couldn't make out a face, only a shape. Someone leaning forward a little, holding out a bowl.
    "Thanks," he said, and took it. The man walked away.
    Well, it was porridge, or maybe very thick soup; something cheap you could boil up in bulk; something that someone had had to work for, and which he'd done nothing to earn. He scooped a wodge of the stuff onto his fingers and poked it into his mouth. It didn't taste of anything much, which was probably just as well. There are different sorts of dependence. There's the social contract between the lord and his people, and there's the man who feeds barley mash to his pig. He thought about that too, while he was at it. Without the farmer, the pig would starve; without him, the pig would never have been born. The pig owes the farmer its life, and in due course the debt is called in, just as my bailiffs collect the rents from my tenants. He finished the