by Guy Antibes
He waited for Ari to catch up. “Are you excited to spend a week with me?” Jack asked.
“Excited isn’t quite the word I’d use, but the food will be free,” Ari said.
“We gave you a purse to pay for your stay in Bristone. Do you need more?”
Ari chuckled. “No. I’m just griping that we have to follow these dunderheads around. You are going to get your head filled with a lot of self-serving descriptions of how wonderful the herders and the farmers have it.”
“That is why I wanted you to come with me,” Jack said. “We can have some frank discussions with the common people.”
Ari smiled. “That we can, although we might have to teleport away from whatever inn or lord’s house the rest of our party is using.”
Jack looked ahead. Their party consisted of two carriages with four occupants each. Anne LaForce was not one of them. Ari had called them all lackeys. There were eight guards and three more men riding in the all-male inspection tour. At least one of the riders was Pol Asoule. Jack or Ari wouldn’t have considered him a lackey.
“Are all the Antibeaux women incapable of making the tour?”
Ari shook his head. “I suspect they don’t want to be subjected to the cold weather. It will get colder. You did bring warm clothing.”
Jack nodded. “I even brought my leather shorts, although they won’t keep me warm.”
Ari laughed. “If you are dressed right, they will be warm enough with suitable layers. You watch how the commoners dress, especially the herders.” Ari said. “They have to spend time outside during the winter. They are also more honest with their answers, especially around these folks. Farmers are more regulated by the agricultural ministry. Keep your ears and eyes open, and you will learn a bit about what not to do. A government should help people succeed, not collect taxes and impose its will.” Ari shook his head. “Here I’ve already jaded you. That isn’t my intent, but there it is.”
“You haven’t had to persuade me to your point of view. I already agree with it. My father works in Raker Falls, far away from Dorkansee for similar reasons, at least that was what he told me.”
“You believe him?”
“I never thought about it until I spent time in Masukai,” Jack said. “Everything is regulated there. If a farmer isn’t ranked high enough, he can never leave his farm. Even a street vendor is ranked. I didn’t see that helping people to succeed. The way I looked at it, their ranking system, and all the other regulations, made a mess of their society. I found I couldn’t sail my own boat across the Riftsea but had to hire a group of ranked sailors. I didn’t find that out until Grigar, our experienced wizard, told me when we reached Lajia.”
“I’m familiar enough with Masukai,” Ari said. “I’m glad you learned that. Most of our world is freer unless you live close to the capitals. That is why I live in Chancey, and things became better once Charl Masson left town to become the prime minister.” Ari pursed his lips. “A little better, anyway.” He looked ahead at the riders. “Don’t be excessive in your criticisms of Antibeaux rule with Pol Asoule. You could put him in a difficult position if we are overheard.”
“Is that why he isn’t riding with us?”
Ari smiled. “It is. Everyone probably knows he is an acquaintance of yours, but not many know about me yet. Pol is going to mention that we know each other a bit, but not until we are away from Bristone.”
“Until then, we eat their dust?”
Ari grinned. “Delicious, isn’t it?”
They continued to ride over a rise at the end of the valley that held Bristone and descended into the next valley. Pol finally joined them.
“Are you having a good time?” Pol asked.
“Ask me once the sun has gone down,” Ari said, with a bit of a grumble in his voice.
Pol laughed. “We will be snug in a local lord’s castle before that happens. I have stayed there before. It is a little quaint compared to Bristone, but I’m sure you will love it, Ari.”
“I wouldn’t mind quainter, either,” Jack said. “I’m along for the local flavor.”
“You might be sick of that by the time we return to Bristone, or you may not, depending on what kind of flavor you seek. The good news is the cold spell is going to let up for a while. Autumn in Antibeaux is not one long slide into ice. It moves fitfully.”
Jack understood Pol’s meaning about seeking flavors, but following Ari’s advice, he let Pol’s comment go unanswered. “What trades will you be inspecting?” Jack asked.
“The usual. Anything requiring a craftsman’s touch. We will talk to Blacksmiths, wheelwrights, cartwrights, textile makers, and furniture makers. There is plenty to keep me busy. The rest will be inspecting farmers and herders,” Pol said.
“We can spend more time together, then. My father is a furniture maker.”
“So you said,” Pol smiled as he adjusted himself in the saddle. “You can blend your observations between the others and me all you want. I’m sure Ari will want you to visit a few farmers and herders. You should spend some time apart from the rest of us and get a feel for Antibeaux. Even a trip inside one of our local temples might be illuminating.”
“I think that would be good for both Jack and me,” Ari said.
“I have to join my colleagues. They aren’t the most open people to strangers, and they consider you to be strangers.”
“After all my time in Antibeaux?” Ari said, playfully.
Pol nodded with half a grin. “Especially you, Bornan.” He urged his horse to go faster, and soon Jack and Ari were alone again.
“Are you going to look at blacksmiths making horseshoes and watch kilns baking ceramics?” Ari said.
“I am interested in the furnaces and ceramic blocks that act as heaters. That is interesting how the Antibeaux craftsmen devised a way to heat houses without having to have fireplaces.”
Ari laughed. “A unique thing about Antibeaux. You will see plenty of those in one form or another during your tour. I won’t mind tagging along. I need a new dress belt, and leathermakers make distinguished belts that have your name. I have an interest in how they craft their buckles, as well. You’ll see.”
Ari launched into a description of what Jack might see on tour both with Pol Asoule and the agricultural people riding in the carriages.
The first night was spent in a noble’s manor house at the end of a winding road a half-mile more or so up the side of a mountain. Jack thought it looked more like a castle. The buildings were four stories high with tiny windows on the outside, but there was a courtyard surrounded by the square of buildings. Covered walkways went around the walls inside the courtyard at each level. Jack had seen murals on the way into Bristone, but here the painting made the plain walls look like they were more opulent than they were.
The lord greeted the visitors, and his demeanor improved once a purse was placed in his hands.
“Your rooms are on the second floor.” The lord pointed to the side of the house on his right. The carriage was emptied, and the horses were removed to an outside stable. Jack and Ari were shown to a small room without one of the ceramic block heaters. Their beds were rolled up mats covered in black canvas.
“With black, you won’t notice the dirt, most likely,” Ari said. “I suppose we use our bags as pillows.”
Jack laughed. “I’ve slept on worse in Masukai. Everyone sleeps on mats except for the nobles. Are we being discriminated against?”
Ari nodded. “Of course. Expect it throughout the trip, and I’m not surprised since you were thrust on them by Anne Laforce. I’m glad Pol came with us. At least we can get a clear picture of things from him.”
Jack hoped so, but only if Pol wasn’t around the other men. He had only spent a few minutes with them the entire day.
A knock came to the door. “Dinner is being served,” a woman’s voice came from behind the door. “I am here to take you to the dining room.”
Jack didn’t have the opportunity to unroll his bed, but he was hungry.
He took what he didn’t want to be stolen and walked behind Ari, who engaged the servant in a question and answer session all the way to the dining room. Jack kept up, listening to the answers. Ari did a great job of extracting information from the woman in a non-defensive way.
The dining had already started before Ari and Jack arrived. The servant set them down on the opposite end of the table from the lord. Even Jack knew that to be a slight, but it didn’t matter. Food was food.
He looked around the room. The lord had woodcarvers create hunting scenes set up around the walls. There was even a figure that looked just like the lord, except a bit slimmer, shooting an arrow at a boar on the adjacent wall. The work was well done as far as Jack could tell. He wanted to ask Pol about it, but Ari’s friend was much closer to the lord on the long table.
The food was a bit rougher than he expected. Maybe rough was the wrong word. Hearty and less precisely presented, Jack thought, not that he was picky. The wine didn’t really go with the meal, and it wasn’t the best quality, as far as Jack was concerned. He had spent plenty of meals in the open eating meat that his party had killed. Ari didn’t seem picky either.
No one looked their way, and when the pair of them finished their meal, they stood and left. On their way out, Jack and Ari were ignored and found their way to their room on their own. Ari pulled a small purse out of his saddlebags. “Time to meet some folks,” he said. “Want to come along?”
“Sure,” Jack said. He buckled on his sword and followed Ari out the door. They approached the gate to the house’s courtyard.
“We have to attend to our horses,” Ari said to the lone guard.
“Suit yourself. If you are gone for too long, I won’t be here to let you back in,” the guard said.
“Don’t worry about us,” Ari said to the guard. “Follow me, Jack,”
They walked for a quarter-mile down the road, and then Ari took him along a side path in the darkness to a small village tucked away in the woods.
“The servants and guards live here,” Ari said.
“Not in the house?”
Ari shook his head. “We could have been sent here for the night if the lord wanted. Count yourself lucky. I want to speak to the folks, and you’ll want to listen.”
The village wasn’t far from the road leading to the house. The place consisted of ten or fifteen huts. He doubted if the fancy ceramic heaters were in these huts. They all had tall chimneys, smoking in the chilly evening.
Ari walked toward one of the larger huts. He knocked once and opened the door. It was a large single room, and Jack could smell that it was a tiny tavern.
“Can my friend and I have a sip of your finest?” Ari said.
“It isn’t too fine,” a tall, aproned woman said. “You are from the house, of course.”
“Of course,” Ari said. “We rode from Bristone today, and your lord put the party up, but they didn’t invite us to any after-dinner activities.”
Jack looked at Ari. “There really were some?”
Ari nodded his head. “They will still be drinking the lord’s best wine, not the swill served to us.”
Jack hadn’t expected to be ignored, but evidently, they were. Ari didn’t seem to be bothered.
“If you think you might have been invited if I hadn’t come along, you’d be right.”
“I’m not here to get drunk with a local lord,” Jack said.
Ari laughed. “Good. Let’s find a place to sit.”
The room was half full, so they found a small round table next to a plastered wall. Jack could hear about every word spoken in the room. It might have seated twenty or so.
Am I here to listen? Jack said, using telepathy.
That is the plan. We will have to talk a little so as not to seem too rude. We will be included in a conversation at some point, just wait. Rural villagers are a curious lot. Ari looked up at the tavernkeeper and smiled as she put ceramic mugs of ale in front of them.
“Don’t worry, we don’t make this here. It comes in a wagon every week from the next village, which has a proper brewer.”
Jack took a sip of the ale. “A craftsman, to be sure,” he said.
“Craftswoman,” the tavernkeeper said, wiping a hand on her apron. “You like it?”
“I do. Just the right level of lightness, flavor, and strength.”
Ari took a long pull from his mug. “I concur, my lady.”
The woman smiled. “The lord doesn’t get this brew. He likes it darker.”
“That is his loss,” Jack said.
“I’ll get another round for you.”
They drank the first mugs quickly, but Jack didn’t want his head to spin, so he sipped the next mug.
“The castle isn’t good enough for you?” One of the patrons asked. “Why are you here?”
“For this ale,” Ari said, “but we didn’t expect such a treat. We were shoved in a servant’s room, and I can see why there are empty places in the manor house.”
“Didn’t use to be that way,” another man said. “I don’t mind living in the village until it snows, but then it takes a long time to get to the castle in the middle of the winter.”
“Is the lord new?” Ari asked.
“New enough. The old one died and was replaced by one of those Double P goons.” The man’s eyes went wide. “You aren’t Double P, are you?”
“We are both foreigners,” Ari said. “I am unattached, but I’ve lived in Chancey for a while. Jack is from Corand.”
“What is Corand like?” one of the men said.
“Flatter,” Jack said, “warmer, and the politics are less complicated, at least they are right now.”
“What brings you to Antibeaux?” Now everyone in the room seemed to be listening to the conversation. It really wasn’t that big of a common room.
“I’m with a lady who has decided to winter in Bristone. I’m along for the ride,” Jack said. “I’ve already had a taste of your factions. I had to fend off a Double P attack on the queen’s sister not long ago.”
“I find that hard to believe. You aren’t that far from being a lad, lad,” the tavern keeper said.
Jack shrugged. “It is true. Do I have to prove it?” Jack said, pulling his Masukaian sword from its sheath. “Look at the nicks on the blade.”
A few of the men examined the sword. “I haven’t seen anything like that before,” one of the villagers said.
“It is from Masukai. I recently spent two years there learning the language and how to fight.”
“I’m a guard up at the house,” a burly villager said. “Show me that you can use that thing.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t want to boast, but I am pretty good.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“How about I toss something into that beam,” Jack said, pointing to a bare wooden beam running underneath the ceiling.
“With the sword?”
“No,” Jack said, pulling out a throwing star. “With this. Where do you want me to put it?”
“The knot there,” the guard pointed to a tiny knot in the beam.
Jack touched the void and guided the star so that a point plunged exactly into the knot.
The guard blinked. “I couldn’t even follow your throw. Is that how they fight?”
Jack nodded. “I’ll leave that star in the beam as a reminder.” He turned to the tavern keeper. “Is that all right?”
“Fine by me. I’ve never had a customer give me a souvenir.”
Jack smiled. “Now that I’ve shown you something about me, I’m interested in learning about you. How does the government or the factions or both treat you?”
The occupants flooded Jack and Ari with information. Jack wished Penny had come with him to remember all that they said. There wasn’t one faction they could rely on. Commoners were generally excluded from the factions but had to endure the demands of each kind.
“If you had your choice, what would the government be like?” Jack asked.
The consensus was they all wanted to be left alone, but then they started saying what they wanted from the government. Jack was left with the impression that they wanted government, but not a self-serving aristocracy. The ostensible policies of the Double P came the closest, but they were the cruelest and the greediest of the lot. They had already had their fill with the lord in the house up the road.
“What about the WWS?”
“They are aristocrats as well as wizards,” the tavernkeeper said. “The church has never looked out for us, even though most of us believe in Yvessa. Do you believe in the gods?”
“I do,” Ari said, “although in Bornan they worship a lost god.”
Jack nodded. “I can tell you for sure gods and goddesses exist,” he said.
“You’ve seen one?” the guard said, laughing.
Jack nodded. “I’ve seen Eldora just like I can see you. She gave me these magical cuffs. This one produces water, and the blue-cuffed one makes ice.”
The people in the tiny tavern all laughed.
“Prove it,” the tavernkeeper said, putting out an emptied mug from Jack’s table.
“Water first.” Jack produced a dribble of water from the red cuff. “Now, ice.” A shower of ice, more like tiny pellets of hail, trickled out of the blue cuff.
“I’ve never seen a spell that could do that, have you?” one of the men said, “but I don’t know what good a few tiny chunks of ice will do when we get all the ice we need during the winter.
The room was silent. “A goddess really gave you those?”
Jack nodded. “Eldora, the goddess of Tesoria.”
“None of us are as well-traveled as you, lad. I think it is a bit of a hoax, but I can’t see how you did it,” the guard said. He looked at the throwing star in the beam. “I can’t deny you have wizardly talent, and I must admit you seem to have listened to our griping about Antibeaux with a fair mind, far as I can tell.”
“I’m glad about that,” Jack said. “I truly am unaffiliated, but I enjoy learning about Antibeaux, all of it, not just how the nobles live in Bristone.”