by K. J. Parker
“I see,” Miel said. “And have you been doing it long?”
“Six years. Before that, I was a toolmaker.”
“Like I said,” Miel put in. “A blacksmith.”
“If you like. Actually, my job was to make the jigs and fixtures for the machines that made the various products. It was all about knowing how things work, and how to make them do what you want.”
“That sounds more like my job,” Miel said; and he realized that he wasn’t being nearly as polite as he’d intended. “But I’m supposed to be telling you things, not the other way round. What would you like to know?”
“Well.” Vaatzes paused. “We could start with geography and put in the history where it’s relevant, or the other way round. Whatever suits you.”
“Geography. All right, here goes.” Miel cast his mind back a long way, to vague recollections of maps he’d paid too little attention to when he was a boy. “Your city stands at the mouth of a gulf, on the east coast of the continent. On the other three sides you’ve got plains and marshes, where the rivers drain down from these mountains we’re walking up. You’ll have observed that the eastern plain — where the battle was — separates two distinct mountain ranges, the north and the south. Eremia Montis is a plateau and a bunch of valleys in the heart of the northern mountains; in the southern range live our closest neighbors and traditional enemies, the Vadani. There’s not a lot of difference between us, except for one thing; they’re lucky enough to have a massive vein of silver running through the middle of their territory. All we’ve got is some rather thin grass, sheep and the best horses in the world. With me so far?”
“I think so,” Vaatzes said. “Go on.”
Miel paused for breath; the climb wasn’t getting any easier. “South of the Vadani,” he said, “is the desert; and it’s a wonderful thing and a blessing, because it forms a natural barrier between us and the people who live in the south. If it wasn’t for the desert we’d have to build a wall, and it’d have to be a very high one, with big spikes on top. The southerners aren’t nice people.”
“I see,” Vaatzes said. “In what way?”
“Any way you care to name,” Miel replied. “They’re nomadic, basically they live by stealing each other’s sheep; they’re barbaric and cruel and there’s entirely too many of them. If I tell you we prefer your lot to the southerners, you may get some idea.”
“Right,” Vaatzes said. “That bad.”
“Absolutely. But, like I said, there’s a hundred miles of desert between them and us, so that’s all right. Now then; above us, that’s to the north of Eremia Montis, you’ve got the Cure Doce. They’re no bother to anybody.”
“I know about them,” Vaatzes interrupted. “That’s where most of our food comes from.”
“That’s right. They trade wheat and beans and wine and God knows what else for your trinkets and stuff. We sell them wool and horses, and buy their barley and their disgusting beer. To the best of my knowledge, they just sort of go on and on into the distance and fade out; the far north of their territory is all snow and ice and what’s the word for it, tundra, until you reach the ocean. I have an idea the better quality of falcons come from up there somewhere, but you’d have to ask my cousin Jarnac about that sort of thing. Anyway, that’s geography for you.”
“Thank you,” Vaatzes said. “Can we stop and rest for a minute? We don’t have mountains where I come from, just stairs.”
“Of course,” Miel said; he’d been walking a little bit faster than he’d have liked, so as to wear out the effete City type, and his knees were starting to ache. “We can’t stay too long or we’ll get left behind, but a minute or two won’t hurt. History?”
“Please.”
“History,” Miel said, “is pretty straightforward. A thousand years ago, or something like that, the mountains were more or less empty, and the ancestors of the Eremians and the Vadani were all one people, living right down south, other side of the desert. When the nomads arrived, they drove us out. It’s one of the reasons why we don’t like them very much. We crossed the desert — there’s lots of good legends about that — and settled in the mountains. Nothing much happened for a while; then there was the most terrific falling-out between us, meaning the Eremians, and the Vadani. Don’t ask me what it was all about, but pretty soon it turned into a civil war. We moved into the north mountains and started calling ourselves Eremians, and the civil war stopped being civil and became just plain war. This was long before the silver was discovered, so both sides were pretty evenly matched, and we carried on fighting in a force-of-habit sort of way for generations.”
Vaatzes nodded. “Like you do,” he said.
“Quite. Then, about three hundred years ago, your lot turned up out of the blue; came over the sea in big ships, as you presumably know better than I do. To begin with, our lot and the Vadani were far too busy beating each other up to notice you were there. It was only when your traders started coming up the mountain and selling us things that we realized you were here to stay. No skin off our noses; we were happy to buy all the things you made, and there was always a chance we could drag you in on our side of the war, if the Vadani didn’t beat us to it. Really, it was only — no offense — only when you people started throwing your weight about, trying to push us around and generally acting like you owned the place, that we noticed how big and strong you’d grown. Too late to do anything about it by then, needless to say.”
“When you say throwing our weight about…”
Miel stood up. “We’d better be getting along, or they’ll be wondering where we’ve got to. Throwing your weight about; well, it started with little things, the way it always does. For instance: when your traders arrived — they came to us back then, we didn’t have to go traipsing down the mountain to get ripped off by middlemen — the first thing they had a big success with was cloth. Beautiful stuff you people make, got to hand it to you; anyhow, we’d say, That’s nice, I’ll take twelve yards, and the bloke would measure it off with his stick, and we’d go home and find we hadn’t got twelve yards, only eleven and a bit. Really screws it up when you’re making clothes and there’s not quite enough fabric. So we’d go storming back next day in a fine old temper, and the trader would explain that the Mezentine yard is in fact two and a smidge inches shorter than the Eremian yard, on account of a yard being a man’s stride, and the Eremians have got longer legs. Put like that, you can’t object, it’s entirely reasonable. Then the trader says, Tell you what, to avoid misunderstandings in the future, how’d it be if you people started using our measurements? We’d say we weren’t sure about that, and the trader would explain that he buys and sells all over the place, and it’d make life really tiresome if he had to keep adapting each time he came to a place that had its own weights and measures; so, being completely practical, it’d be far easier for us to change than it’d be for him; also, if he’s got to spend time consulting conversion charts or cutting a special stick for Eremian yards, that time’d have to be paid for, meaning a five or ten percent rise in prices to cover additional costs and overheads. Naturally we said, Fine, we’ll use your yard instead of ours; and next it was weights, because there’s eighteen ounces in the Eremian pound, and then it was the gallon. Next it was the calendar, because a couple of our months are a few days shorter, so we’d arrange to meet your people on such-and-such a day, and you wouldn’t show up. You get the idea, I’m sure.
“Didn’t take long before everything was being weighed and measured in Mezentine units, which meant a whole lot of us didn’t have a clue how much of anything we were buying, or how much it was really costing us, or even what day of the week it was. Sure, all just little things, one step at a time, like a man walking to the gallows. But the time came when we stopped making our own cloth because yours was cheaper and better; same for all the things we got from you. Then out of the blue the price has shot right up; we complain, and then it’s take it or leave it, we’ve got plenty of customers but you’ve only got one su
pplier. So we gave in, started paying the new prices; but when we tried to even things up by asking more for what we had to sell, butter and wool and so forth, it’s a whole different story. Next step, your people are interfering in every damn thing. The Duke appoints someone to do a job; your traders turn round and say, We can’t work with him, he doesn’t like us, choose someone else; and by the way, here’s a list of other things you do which we don’t approve of, if you want to carry on doing business with us, you’d better change your ways. We’re about to tell you where you can stick your manufactured goods when suddenly we realize that your people have been quietly buying up chunks of our country; land, live and dead stock, water rights, you name it. Investment, I believe it’s called, and by a bizarre coincidence you use the same word for besieging a castle. So there we were, invested on all sides; we can’t tell you to go and screw yourselves without getting your permission first. Throwing your weight around.”
Vaatzes frowned. “I see,” he said. “Honestly, I had no idea. Come to that, before I ran away from the City, I didn’t even know you existed.”
“Oh, your lot know we exist all right.” Miel sighed. “Give you an example. My family, the Ducas, have been landowners and big fish in little ponds and selfless servants of the commonwealth for longer than even we can remember. We’ve done our bit for our fellow citizens, believe me. About a third of the men in the Ducas over the last five hundred years have died in war, either killed in a battle or gone down with dysentery or infected wounds. We pay more in tax than any other family. In our corner of the country we run the justice system, we’re the land and probate registry; we say the magic words at the weddings of our tenants, we’re godfathers to their children, we run schools and pay for doctors. We take the view that a tenant deserves to get more for his rent than just a strip of land and a side to be on when there’s a feud. That’s what I was talking about when I said we do our bit for our fellow citizens; and that’s over and above stuff like fighting in wars and being chancellors and ambassadors and commissioners. Do you see what I’m driving at?”
Vaatzes nodded. “You’re the government,” he said. “But it’s different in the City, of course. The big men who do all the top jobs in the Guilds are our government; but they get to make policy, not just carry it out. They can decide what’s going to be done, and of course that means they have loads of opportunities to look out for their own Guilds, or their neighbors and families, or themselves. You can only do what the Duke tells you. You’ve got all the work, but without the privileges and perks.”
“That’s right,” Miel said. “You’ve certainly got a grasp of politics.”
“Like I said, I know how things work. A city or a country is just a kind of machine. It’s got a mechanism. I can see mechanisms at a glance, like people who can dowse for water.”
“That’s quite a gift,” Miel said, frowning slightly. “Anyway, the way we’ve always done things is for the landowning families to be the government, as you call it. But then along come your City people, investors, buying up land and flocks and slices of our lives; and of course, they don’t take responsibility, the way we’ve been brought up to do. They don’t think, how will such and such a decision affect the tenants and their shepherds, or the people of the village? They don’t live here, and when they make a decision they’re guided by what’s best for their investment, what’ll produce the best profit, or whatever it is that motivates them. So, when two tenants fall out over a boundary or grazing rights on a common or anything like that, they can’t do what they’ve always done, go and see the boss up at the big house and make him sort it out for them. The boss isn’t there; and even if they were to go all the way to Mezentia and ask to see the directors of the company, or whatever such people call themselves, and even if those directors could be bothered to see them and listen to them, it wouldn’t do any good, because they wouldn’t understand a thing about the situation. Not like we would, the Ducas or the Orphanotrophi or the Phocas. See, we’re their boss, but we’re also their neighbor. They can go out of their front door and look up the mountain and see our houses. You can’t see Mezentia’s Guildhall from anywhere in Eremia.”
Vaatzes nodded. He seemed to be an intelligent man, and quite reasonable. Perhaps that was why they’d put him in prison, Miel decided. “I guess it’s a question of attitude,” he said. “Perspective. We’re concerned mostly with things — making them, selling them. You’re concerned with people.”
Miel smiled. “That puts it very well,” he said. “And maybe you can see why I don’t like your City.”
“I’ve gone off it rather myself,” Vaatzes said.
“Fine.” Miel nodded. “So perhaps you’d care to explain to me why you think it’d be a good idea to turn my country into a copy of it.”
It was a neat piece of strategy, Miel couldn’t help thinking. He’d have derived more satisfaction from it if he found it easier to dislike the Mezentine; but that was hard going, like running uphill, and the further he went, the harder it got. But he’d laid his trap and sprung it — there was one mechanism the Mezentine hadn’t figured out at a glance — and sure enough, for a while Vaatzes seemed to be lost for words.
“It’s not quite like that,” he said eventually. “Like I told you, I’m an engineer. I know about machines, things.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Let’s see,” he said. “Suppose you come to me and ask me to build you a machine — a loom, say, so you can weave your wool into cloth instead of sending it down the mountain.”
“Right,” Miel said.
“So I build the machine,” Vaatzes went on, “and I deliver it and I get paid. That’s my side of the bargain. What you do with it, how you use it and how the use you put it to affects your life and your neighbors’; that’s your business. Not my business, and not my fault. It’d be the same if you asked me to build you a scorpion, an arrow-thrower. Once you’ve taken it from me, it’s up to you who you point it at. You can use it to defend your country and your way of life against your worst enemy, or you can set it up on the turret of your castle and shoot your neighbors. All I want to do,” he went on, “is make a new life for myself, now the old one’s been taken away from me. Now I’m lucky, because I know a secret. It’s like I can turn lead into gold. If I can do that, it’d be pretty silly of me to get a job mucking out pigs. From your point of view, I can give you the secrets that make the Mezentines stronger than you are. With that power, you’ve got a chance of making sure you don’t have to go through another horrible disaster, like the one you’ve just suffered. Now,” he went on, stopping for a moment to catch his breath, “if I were to sell you a scorpion without telling you how it works, or how to use it safely without hurting yourself, that’d be no good. But that’s not the case. You seem to understand just fine what’s wrong with the City and how it works. I can give you the secret, and you know enough not to hurt yourself with it, or spoil all the good things about your way of life. Does that make any sense to you?”
It was a long time before Miel answered. “Yes, actually, it does,” he said. “And that’s why I’m glad it’s not my decision whether we take you up on your offer. If it was up to me, I’d probably say yes, now we’ve had this conversation, and I have a feeling that’d be a bad thing.”
“Oh,” Vaatzes said. “Why?”
“Ah, now, if I knew that I’d be all right.” Miel smiled suddenly. “I’d be safe, see. But it’s all academic, since it’s not up to me.”
Vaatzes scratched his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re a senior officer of state, if you went to the Duke and said, for God’s sake don’t let that Mezentine start teaching us his diabolical tricks, he’d listen to you, wouldn’t he?”
“You were there when I told him to have you hanged,” Miel replied cheerfully. “And here you still are.”
“Yes, but you didn’t press the point. I was there, remember. It’s not like you made any effort to use your influence; and when he said no, let’s not, you didn’t argue.” He lifted his eyes a
nd looked at Miel. “Are you sorry you didn’t?”
“Like I said, it wasn’t my decision. It never is.”
“Would you like it to be?”
Miel shivered, as though he’d just touched a plate he hadn’t realized was hot. “We’re falling behind,” he said. “Come on, don’t dawdle.”
They walked quickly, past men supporting their wounded friends on their shoulders, others hauling ropes or pushing the wheels of carts over the rims of potholes. “Of course,” Miel said abruptly, “if he decides to let you teach us, common courtesy requires that we teach you something in return.”
“Does it?”
“Oh yes. Reciprocity is courtesy, that’s an old family rule of the Ducas. We pay our debts in kind.”
“Really. We’ve got money for that.”
Miel shook his head. “That’s wages,” he said. “And wages are a political statement. If I pay you, that makes you my servant, it’s a different sort of relationship. Between gentlemen, it’s a gift for a gift and a favor for a favor.”
“I see,” Vaatzes said. “So if you teach me something in return, that’s instead of money.”
“Of course not, you’re missing the point. I’m a nobleman and you’re a whatever you said, foreman. Therefore, courtesy demands that I give more than I get.”
Vaatzes thought about that. “To show you’re better than me.”
“That’s it. That’s what nobility’s all about. If you want to be better than someone socially, you’ve got to be better than them in real terms too; more generous, more forbearing, whatever. Otherwise all the transaction between us proves is that I’m more powerful than you, and that wouldn’t say anything about me. Hence the need for me to give more than I get. Simple, really.”
There was a pause while Vaatzes thought that one through. “So I get the money and something else?”