Devices and Desires Read Online Free PDF

the Chancellor and everybody else in the Duchy muttering about him, how if he couldn’t even take a simple decision like
     this without coming all to pieces, how on earth did he imagine he would ever be fit to govern a country? He felt the leash
     in his hand, the thin line of rope that tethered his father’s life to the tangled mess of bones and wounds on the table. If
     he let go, it’d all be just fine, it’d be over. He was only hanging on to it out of perversity, contrariness; they should
     come in, take it away from him and give it to a grown-up…
    When he woke up, his father’s eyes were open; not looking at him, but out through the tent doorway, at the sunlight. Valens
     sat up, stifled a yawn; Father’s eyes moved and met his, and then he looked away.
    I suppose I ought to say something, he thought; but he couldn’t think of anything.
    (Instead, he thought about his prisoners, Licinius and Vetranio, locked up like dogs shut in on a rainy day. Were they pacing
     up and down, or lying resigned and still on the bed? Had anybody thought to bring them something to read?)
    He was still trying to find some words when the doctor came in; and he carried on trying to find them for the next four years,
     until his father died, in the middle of the night, on the eve of Valens’ twenty-third birthday. But all that time Valens never
     said a word, so that the last thing he told his father was a lie:
I won’t go up to the round wood with you this afternoon, I’ve got a splitting headache coming on.
Not that it mattered; if he’d been there, his father would still have ridden ahead after the boar, the outcome would have
     been the same in all material respects.
    Someone had thought to have the boar flayed and the hide made into a rug; they draped it over the coffin when they carried
     it down to the chapel for burial. It was, Valens thought, a loathsome gesture, but Father would’ve appreciated it.
    Valens was duly acclaimed Duke by the representatives of the district assemblies. There was a ceremony in the great hall,
     followed by a banquet. The Chancellor (Count Licinius, restored to favor; his predecessor had died of a sad combination of
     ambition and carelessness the previous spring) took him aside for a quiet word before they joined the guests. Now that Valens
     was officially in charge of the Duchy, there were a few niceties of foreign policy to go through.
    “Now?”
    “Now,” Licinius replied emphatically. “Things are a bit complicated at the moment. There’s things you should be aware of,
     before you go in there and start talking to people.”
    Badly phrased; Licinius was an intelligent man with a fool’s tongue. But Valens was used to that. “You didn’t want me to have
     to bother my pretty little head about them yesterday, I suppose?”
    Licinius shrugged. “The situation’s been building up gradually for a long time. When it all started, you were still — well,
     indisposed. By the time you started taking an interest again, it was too involved to explain. You know how it is.”
    “Sure.” Valens nodded. “So now you’re going to have to explain it all in five minutes before I go down to dinner.”
    Licinius waited for a moment, in case Valens wanted to develop this theme. The pause made Valens feel petty. “Go on,” he said.
    So Licinius told him all about it. Count Sirupat, he said, had kept strictly to the letter of the peace treaty that had been
     signed when Valens was sixteen. There hadn’t been any trouble on the borders, and there was no reason to suppose he wasn’t
     entirely sincere about wanting peace. But things weren’t all wine and honey-cakes; Sirupat had seven daughters —
    “I know,” Valens interrupted, a little abruptly. “I met one of them once; it was when the treaty was signed, she was here
     as a hostage.”
    Licinius nodded. “That was the fifth daughter, Veatriz. Anyway, shortly after your father had his accident, my predecessor
     made a formal approach to