by David Weber
“I’m not sure I do, really,” Duke Delthak said, and one of Merlin’s eyebrows rose.
“Nezbyt doesn’t have a lot of hands-on experience in the boardroom, Ehdwyrd,” he pointed out. “He’s a bureaucrat. A pretty good one, based on his record during the Jihad, but basically an Exchequer weenie. I don’t know how good a job he’s going to do riding herd on something like this.”
“At least he’s a reasonably honest bureaucrat,” Nahrmahn observed. “He could’ve made a ton of money managing that contract portfolio for Stohnar and Maidyn during the war. God knows enough other government officials did!”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t honest, Nahrmahn,” Merlin replied. “Although he did scarf off a few feathers for his nest, you know. It was all small change, but he managed to rake off a little.”
“But Nahrmahn has a point,” Nynian countered. “Since the Jihad, all of his accounts have balanced almost perfectly. He’s still a little too friendly with some of the manufactory owners and bankers he worked with during the war—Hahraimahn’s a case in point, as a matter of fact—but I think he’d feel genuinely insulted if anyone offered him any kind of overt payoff. And the main point in his favor is that Myllyr knows and trusts him.”
“And the same thing is true about Hahraimahn,” Delthak added. “That Myllyr knows and trusts him, I mean. And to be fair, Myllyr’s obviously aware Nezbyt’s a bean counter and not a fearless captain of industry. That’s why he paired him and Hahraimahn in the Board’s two top slots. Nezbyt’s the guy who’s going to represent the government’s—that is to say, Myllyr’s—position and Hahraimahn’s as much his technical advisor as his second in command.”
“Maybe, but Hahraimahn’s not exactly a hotbed of innovation, either, Ehdwyrd,” Merlin noted.
“No, he’s not, but maybe that’s not what we need right now. I wish Myllyr hadn’t held out for this approach in the first place, but if we’re going this route, it may not hurt to have someone who’s more ‘slow and steady’ at the helm.”
“Ehdwyrd may have a point,” Nahrmahn put in from his computer. “Two of them, actually. We could’ve had a much bigger footprint out of this if we’d gone with the same sort of ‘Ahrmahk Plan’ we used in the United Provinces. But if we’re not going that route, somebody like Nezbyt and Hahraimahn are more likely to instill confidence in the more … skittish members of the Siddarmarkian business community.”
Merlin pursed his lips and looked at Nynian. She was curled on the couch, a glass of wine on the end table at her elbow, her legs folded under her, and the book she’d been reading while they waited for the rest of the conference to assemble facedown in her lap. Now she looked down at it, tracing the cover’s embossed title with an index finger, and her expression was thoughtful. After a moment she looked up and nodded slowly to him.
“The thing that bothers me the most in the first place,” he said to the other members of the conference, “is that Myllyr is going to go ‘slow and steady.’ The clock’s ticking.”
“And if we blow up the Siddarmarkian economy all over again, the clock will stop where the Republic’s concerned,” Delthak pointed out. “I don’t like this approach either, and like Nahrmahn says, I’d like to have a bigger footprint, with something more like the United Provinces, but it’s remotely possible he knows his business better than we do.”
“It’s possible he doesn’t, too,” Cayleb said a bit acidly, then inhaled deeply. “But, either way, it was his decision and none of us could find a way to change his mind.”
Merlin smiled in sour agreement, then treated himself to another swallow of the beer a PICA didn’t really need.
Henrai Maidyn’s Central Bank was working … after a fashion at least. Not without a lot of pain and resentment, but working.
The act which had established the Bank had also created the Asset Guarantee Trust, a special account within the Exchequer, funded jointly by the Central Bank and the trust’s member banks, and authorized the Bank to guarantee the deposits of any member bank. In return, any bank which associated itself with the trust and accepted the guarantee had to meet certain criteria. They had to maintain a mandated ratio between debt and actual deposits and they also had to open their books to the Exchequer and the Central Bank’s auditors.
The AGT didn’t have to accept a bank, and if a member bank’s debt-asset ratio looked too bad, the Central Bank could liquidate it entirely, but there’d been several carveouts within the legislation which created the new institution. If the Central Bank ordered a bank liquidated, the Exchequer had to absorb the difference between its assets and what it owed all of its creditors, not just its deposit holders. If a member bank of the AGT actually failed, the Exchequer actually made out better; it had to pay depositors, if any, but other creditors were reimbursed only out of the bank’s assets—and only after all depositors had been paid—under the terms of a new, more draconian bankruptcy law. That created a disincentive on the part of the Central Bank to order the liquidation of shaky banks as a first option, which had been exactly what some of the legislation’s sponsors had wanted, and meant the preferred solution was to manage mergers between weaker banks and stronger ones.
The same legislation gave the Central Bank pretty draconian authority over banking and loan activities in general. Even banks which opted not to join the AGT—and they had the right not to; that was another carveout provision of the Act—were still required to abide by the new banking regulation. That was vastly irritating to some of the wheelers and dealers—not to mention the fly-by-night speculators—who had dominated far too much of the Siddarmarkian stock market after the Jihad and the collapse of the House of Qwentyn. They weren’t required to maintain the same ratio between debt and assets as the members of the AGT, but the revamped bankruptcy laws and the efforts to rein in the more extravagant practices were having an effect even there. And, unpopular as the Central Bank remained with large segments of the Siddarmarkian business community, depositors loved the AGT. Banks which opted out of the Guarantee Trust had seen a steep decline in deposits, which exerted a steady pressure on more and more of them to bite the bullet and sign on.
With that process underway, and after a year in office in his own right, Myllyr had decided the Republic was finally turning the corner. At least some of the groundswell of anti-Charisian sentiment had faded as the Siddarmarkian economy seemed to be stabilizing, and the lord protector had been far more amenable to Cayleb and Sharleyan’s offer of a Siddarmarkian Ahrmahk Plan. But he’d remained leery of the sort of individual loans the House of Ahrmahk had made in the United Provinces. He’d been afraid a sudden influx of Charisian money might undo some of the stability the banks had achieved, especially since it would have been seen as direct competition to those banks at a time when the Central Bank was already restricting their activities. Indeed, some would see—or claim to see—the new regulations as having been designed to create a fresh opportunity for those nefarious Ahrmahks. As he’d pointed out, that might well kick up the embers of that anti-Charisian resentment, not to mention the potential negative consequences for the economy in general.
And so the Trans-Siddarmarkian Railroad had been born as a joint private-government enterprise. Its ambitious charter was to build a rail net which would connect every major Siddarmarkian city and stretch from Siddar City itself through Tarikah and the Border States all the way to Zion. That was a gargantuan task. “Just” the line from the capital to Lake City in Tarikah would require over two thousand miles of track, several hundred miles longer than the original “Transcontinental Railroad” of Old Terra between Nebraska and California. The rest of the proposed network would require many times that trackage, which would take years and cost millions upon millions
of marks to lay, and both of those were good things from Klymynt Myllyr’s perspective. It would funnel all those marks into employment and the expansion of the Republic’s domestic steel industry, and it would provide that economic engine for a long time.
It was a bit too much like Emperor Mahrys and Zhyou-Zhwo’s “five-year plans” for Merlin’s tastes, though. And it was focused on only one aspect of the overall Siddarmarkian economy, unlike the situation in the United Provinces where the Ahrmahk Plan had made loans available to entrepreneurs pursuing a broad spectrum of opportunities. Myllyr’s proposal lacked much of the synergistic effect which both the United Provinces and Dohlar were exploiting to such good effect.
He’d been quietly, stubbornly adamant, however, and so the TSRR had come into existence. Behind the scenes, Cayleb and Sharleyan—operating through Delthak Enterprises—had provided over seventy percent of the corporation’s initial capitalization. Keeping that “behind the scenes” had been another of Myllyr’s suggestions, since it kept Cayleb and Sharleyan officially out of the public eye and helped play down the inevitable “puppet master” allegations, but the Mohryah Lode had underwritten much of Delthak Enterprises’ investment. The rest of the capitalization had been raised from Siddarmarkian investors and government bond issues, and the General Board’s membership was heavily skewed in the Republic’s favor. Despite the amount of Charisian money involved, Charis held only two of the seven voting seats on the board. Myllyr appointed the chairman and the vice-chairman, as well as the non-voting secretary-treasurer. He’d selected Zhasyn Brygs for the latter position, in addition to his duties as the Governor of the Central Bank, which struck Merlin as a bit cumbersome. Myllyr’s theory was that it would ensure both that the Bank’s view was represented and that it knew precisely what was happening at all times but without exerting overt control. Merlin’s theory was that Brygs was likely to be badly overworked … at best.
Time would tell about that, however, and the other three voting members were elected by the Siddarmarkian investors. In theory, that gave the united front of the Charisian members and Myllyr appointees a four-to-three advantage, but if the time came when Myllyr (or his successor) differed with the Charisian perspective, things could get … messy, Merlin thought.
“You’re right about whose decision it had to be in the end, Cayleb,” he said. “And you have a point, too, Ehdwyrd. We’ve been looking in from the outside, and the SNARCs give us more reach than Myllyr’s got, but he’s a Siddarmarkian, and we aren’t. So maybe he does know best. And either way, we’re going to be laying a lot of track. Not as much as we might otherwise, and I do wish the Republic was going to be looking at other opportunities—they’ve got all those potential oil fields in Westmarch and Thesmar, for example. But at least it looks like their economy’s going to be growing again. That has to be a good thing.”
“It’s a lot better than what we had before, at any rate,” Nahrmahn agreed. “And this is going to bolster the industries we’ll need most when the time comes to actually start building the canal in Silkiah.”
“Which is the name of the game, really,” Cayleb pointed out. “And, since it is, and since there isn’t a lot more we can do about Siddarmark at the moment, I’d like to take a look at what’s going on in Desnair and South Harchong. Have you had an opportunity to review Owl and Nahrmahn’s latest projections, Merlin?”
“I’m afraid not,” Merlin admitted. “I’ve been focused on the Republic and North Harchong, I’m afraid.”
“I figured.” Cayleb’s com image shrugged. “We can cover a lot more ground now that we have so many people to delegate stuff to, but it does mean none of us can stay as on top of everything as we used to.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty,” Owl said, “but I’m very much afraid that you couldn’t ‘stay on top of everything’ the way you once did under any circumstances. In many ways, the Nahrmahn Plan is much more complex than managing the Jihad was.”
“And our poor protoplasmic brains have neither the computing power nor the memory storage you and Nahrmahn do,” Cayleb agreed. “Although I noticed you’re too tactful to point that out.”
“Actually, Your Majesty,” the AI replied, “I believe I did point it out. Tactfully and only inferentially, of course.”
Cayleb chuckled and shook his head.
“Point taken,” he said, then turned back to Merlin. “What I wanted to discuss with you is the way the two of them, and especially Zhyou-Zhwo and Snow Peak, are starting to get that army of theirs armed with modern weapons. They’re still awfully light in artillery, but small arms production is climbing, and—”
MAY YEAR OF GOD 911
.I.
Ironhill Mountains, Barony of Deep Valley, Kingdom of Old Charis, Empire of Charis.
“This is nice, Braiys,” Cayleb Ahrmahk said.
He looked up at the patches of cloudless blue sky visible through the occasional hole in the canopy of nearoaks as the winding trail snaked its twisty-turny way through the thick woodland of Deep Valley. They were five hours from Tellesberg by train; the air was cool and refreshing for Old Charis, this high in the Ironhill Mountains’ foothills, especially in the dense shade, and he inhaled deeply, swelling his lungs.
“I don’t get out enough,” he added a bit wistfully.
“I believe that comes with the Crown, Your Majesty.”
Sir Braiys Sohmyrsyt, Baron Deep Valley, was a small, wiry man, ten years older than Cayleb, with an infectious smile. He was also one of Cayleb and Sharleyan’s staunchest supporters, although he’d never heard of anyone named Nimue Alban or something called the Terran Federation. He did know a thing or two about his emperor, however, and when word of the slash lizard stalking his barony’s flocks of sheep reached him, he’d known exactly what to arrange as a belated birthday gift to his crown princess.
“If I’d known I’d be spending so much time in offices and council chambers, I wouldn’t’ve taken the job,” Cayleb replied now. He lifted the canteen from his saddle bow and swallowed appreciatively, then recapped it and looked at Deep Valley. “There was a time, you know, when I spent every minute I could steal hunting.”
“I think someone mentioned that to me, once,” Deep Valley said dryly. Saying Crown Prince Cayleb had been an avid hunter was like saying Howell Bay was a bit damp. “Maybe even twice, now that I think about it. And I wouldn’t want to say anything unbecoming or undutiful about daughters and chips off the old block.”
“But at least Alahnah has a modicum of good sense,” Major Athrawes put in from the other side of Cayleb’s horse.
“You only say that because she’s prettier than I am,” Cayleb said with a grin, and Merlin shook his head.
“I only say that because she’s smarter than you are,” Merlin shot back. “The day I met you, you’d just finished killing another slash lizard—with a spear, if I recall correctly.” Merlin gestured at the massive double-barreled, over-and-under rifle in Cayleb’s saddle scabbard. Handbuilt by Taigys Mahldyn, it fired a massive .625 caliber round at a velocity of almost two thousand feet per second. “That’s a far better choice, believe me!”
“But much less satisfying,” Cayleb said with a devilish glint. “I’m a traditionalist at heart, you know!”
“That’s not how people like Zhyou-Zhwo put it, Your Majesty,” Deep Valley said.
“Well, in some ways,” Cayleb amended. “In other ways, change is good.”
“And Sharleyan’s comment about ‘little boys with toys’ didn’t have anything to do with this sudden onset of sanity?” Merlin inquired, pointing at the rifle again.
“She may have said a little something on the subject,” Cayleb conceded. “And something else about daughters and setting good examples, now that I think about it. Or I think she did, anyway. I wasn’t really paying attention at the time, you know.”
“It’s fortunate no one present for this conversation would dream of recounting it to Her Majesty,” Earl Pine Hollow said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “It would
make interesting blackmail material the next time the debate on the Council gets a bit heated, though, wouldn’t it?”
“Trahvys, it would pain me deeply to imprison you in a lonely tower somewhere for the rest of your days, but if push came to shove, I would do it.”
All four men laughed, and Merlin shook his head. It truly was rare these days for Cayleb—or Sharleyan—to get away from the daily grind of their imperial duties. But while Sharleyan was just as avid a shooter as he was, she preferred target ranges to hunting. She never had understood the appeal of waiting all day in a rain-drenched shooting blind for a prong buck or a jungle lizard that might never happen by anyway. She did enjoy horses, though, and she would have come along today, if only for the ride, if Prince Domynyk Maikel hadn’t decided to catch the flu. At three and a half—in Safeholdian years; he was barely thirty-eight Standard Months old—he remained six or seven Safeholdian months too young for the nanotech which protected the older members of his family. The rest of the Federation’s pharmacopeia could be deployed in his defense, of course, but it worked considerably more slowly, and at the moment he was a very unhappy toddler. Cayleb had almost stayed home with her, but she’d shooed him out the door. Officially that was because today had been organized for Alahnah, not him, and she’d announced she was staying home if her father was. Actually, it was a joint wife-and-daughter conspiracy to get him out into the open air.
And he deserved it. There were still traces of the impetuous teenager Merlin Athrawes had met twenty-one years ago, in woods very like the ones around them today, but he reminded Merlin more every day of his father. Haarahld Ahrmahk had taken his responsibilities seriously—more seriously than even Merlin had realized, until after King Haarahld’s death—and he’d taught his son to do the same. Emperor Cayleb would never have considered Crown Prince Cayleb’s tendency to play truant. Although, to be fair, Cayleb had been discharging his responsibilities the day he and Merlin met. The fact that he’d chosen to discharge them with a lizard-hunting spear—on foot—might have been just a tad irresponsible, but he had been acting to protect his future subjects.