Waln had thought he would make his return home in some sort of ambassadorial role, protected by his importance to the Liglimom. That would have been marvelous. The Isles needed a trading partner who would neither enslave them or dominate them.
The Liglimom needed a solid contact point in the north. Waln could have negotiated both—and while doing so negotiated his return to power as well.
Now he realized that unless he could get some leverage over the Liglimom themselves, this wasn't likely to happen. For one thing, his plans had been based on a quick return and himself as one of the sole speakers of both languages. Barnet would have been his only threat, and the minstrel could have been paid off—literally—for a song or two.
However, although Waln now understood that the Liglimom were refusing to honor their bargain, he was far from giving up hope. The last few days had revealed several very interesting possibilities. One was the instability with the seemingly monolithic theocracy that ruled the land. Another were the promising hints as to what might still be found on Misheemnekuru.
As much as Waln longed to race ahead with his plans, the Liglimom's deliberate nature forced him to act in much the same fashion. Shivadtmon—and any others Waln might win over with the aridisdu's assistance—would go as limp as a sail in a dead calm if pressed too quickly. Because of the unpredictability of these foreigners, Waln also realized that he needed to win the few Islanders over to his way of thinking. They must be ready—eager, even—to follow when he led, even if it meant abandoning their comfortable situation.
Waln wasn't sure he could win over Barnet. Up there in Heeranenahalm, the minstrel was pretty much out of his reach. He was also probably getting access to a far richer wealth of stories than Waln could offer. Winning over Barnet would have to wait, though Waln did hope to eventually gain him as an ally. As a cousin, no matter how many removes were involved, of King Harwill, Barnet would bring a degree of legitimacy to any action Waln took.
However, the other six should be easier to convince. They might not be feeling cooped-up yet, but while no minstrel, Waln was a merchant. A merchant's job—especially one collecting support for a chancy sea voyage—was to sell people an idea, rather than a solid item like a barrel of wine or length of rope. He didn't see how this would be much different. What he needed to sell first was an idea that things could be better. When he had done that, the move to making them take action against their current situation should be easy.
Waln considered where he should start. Rarby and Shelby had said only a few days before that they were enjoying their current situation. Very well, they could continue enjoying it. If they started wondering what they could be missing, they might start enjoying it less.
Nolan the ropemaker was a touch under the weather, and was feeling grateful to the Liglimom for the nursing he was getting. He wouldn't be a good target quite yet, though Waln thought he might eventually hint that the Liglimom's food or climate or clothing or something was responsible for Nolan's illness.
Elwyn was too stupid to be a real asset. In any case, he'd follow the herd. Hopefully his luck would come with him.
That left Wiatt, the cook, and Tedgewinn, the carpenter's mate. Each presented certain advantages. Wiatt was well liked and affable, possibly the most popular of the survivors. His popularity had only grown during the past year, for whenever he had the opportunity he would use his skills to create meals more after the northern style. In a sense, he had literally become the taste of home.
However, Waln wasn't quite certain what argument would best sway Wiatt. He had left no one important back in the Isles, and like Rarby and Shelby, he seemed to have no particular hankering for a greater degree of freedom. He seemed to have adopted the building in which they had been given quarters as his current vessel—a vessel rather better supplied than most, and therefore not stirring him to a desire for shore leave.
Tedgewinn had also fallen into this shipboard frame of mind, but unlike Wiatt, Waln knew Tedgewinn had left behind a younger sister of whom he was very fond. His parents were alive, too, but Waln had a vague memory that Tedgewinn didn't particularly care for at least one of them… his father, perhaps. Best to avoid mentioning parents.
Waln deliberately approached Tedgewinn just after the carpenter had finished giving a lesson to a middle-aged kidisdu who rather resembled the bears with which she worked. This kidisdu had a rather bearish temperament as well, playful one moment, growly and irritable the next. Whichever temper she was in, she was intensely focused, and Waln knew Tedgewinn found her exhausting.
Announcing himself with a tap on the doorframe, Waln strolled into the outer section of Tedgewinn's suite. It was similar in size and shape to Waln's own suite, but Tedgewinn's art made it unique. Lithe, vaguely feminine shapes adorned the legs of tables and chairs. Carved figurines stood on most flat surfaces. An elaborate scene of a ship at sea was being worked onto the top of a clothes chest. Tedgewinn knelt in front of it, a narrow rasp in one hand, apparently about to deepen the curl of a wave.
Waln waited in respectful silence while Tedgewinn finished, then hefted the pitcher he held in one hand.
"I brought some beer," he said. "Thought the bear lady had probably dried you out."
Tedgewinn rose and thanked Waln with a lopsided grin. He was an odd contrast of traits: broad and muscular above, lean and sturdy below. He wore a coarse black mustache and beard trimmed to a finger's width below the line of his jaw, and a long braid that touched the top of his belt.
"Talking with her's dry work," the carpenter admitted, taking two tankards from a scrollwork cabinet. "I wish I'd never taught her how to ask questions. It was easier when all she did was repeat stuff and see if I understood her."
Waln filled the tankards and then sat uninvited in one of the comfortable high-backed chairs. Looking at the room from the point of a common sailor, he had to admit that life here must seem an improvement. Shipboard, even a skilled hand like the carpenter's mate would be lucky to get a portion of a narrow berth. These two rooms with all their attendant furnishings—even to private dishware—must seem like astonishing luxury.
Very well, Waln thought. My job is to make him long for more. Shouldn't be hard. Greed's as natural as sucking down mother's milk.
"You've been doing nice work here," Waln said, picking up the nearest carving—one of a seal sprawled asleep on a rock. "I'd buy this for one of my better students but… "
He shrugged. None of them had been paid for their work. It wasn't much of a sore point… yet.
"Take it," Tedgewinn said, waving his hand. "I can make more. Once the servants found I liked carving, they made sure I was kept in wood." He laughed. "Probably wanted to save the furniture. Gave me some nice tools, too, far better than my knife."
"Give them any of the carvings in return?" Waln asked, sensing an opening.
"Not so much in return," Tedgewinn replied, "but if they like a piece, I usually give it to them. I like the making more than looking at stuff afterwards. After, it seems all I can see are the places where I could have done better. Look at that seal, for example. I'm sure I could have done a better job around the eyes."
Before the conversation could get sidetracked into the niceties of carving, Waln cut in.
"You used to sell some of your carvings, didn't you?"
"Sell or trade," Tedgewinn agreed.
"Got a good price?"
"Fair, fair… " Tedgewinn sounded complacent. "Did better with commissioned pieces. Did a little study from the waist up of a girl Shelby was taken with once. I swear he kept it with him everywhere he went that trip. Didn't do him much good. He got home and found she'd married an apothecary who didn't go off to sea. I think he took the berth on the Explorer to soothe an aching heart."
Waln had heard something about his, and thought that Shelby's emotion had been less tender. Shelby had wanted to make the girl sorry for not waiting for him. He'd have to remember that. It could come in handy later.
"I bet the servants are getting a go
od price for your carvings," Waln said, masking a pretended yawn behind the heel of his hand. "Not only are they wonderfully lifelike, but they've novelty value as well. 'Get a carving of your special animal, made by the demon from the north!'"
"You think so?" Tedgewinn seemed genuinely astonished.
"Sure," Waln said. "Your animals do everything but eat and shit. These people are nuts about animals. Add in the novelty value that the carvings are made by one of the northern demons and I'd bet the servants are getting their weight in gold for them."
"Naw… " Tedgewinn sounded so uncertain that Waln knew he had pushed too hard. "These people don't have money like that."
"Well," Waln said, "maybe I exaggerate. I bet some of them are keeping them and are the envy of all the neighbors. What happens when a neighbor says 'Can you get me one of a cat?' or a bear or something? Just wait."
Tedgewinn's expression held a mixture of pleasure and annoyance, just as Waln had hoped it would.
"Think I can sell them?" Tedgewinn asked. "I can't quite get whether these people even use money or if everything's barter. There's not much I need to barter for, but it would be nice to have a nest egg for when we go home."
Waln swallowed a whoop of triumph.
Carefully… carefully, he reminded himself. Reel him in slowly or he'll snap the line. You don't want him swimming off to go into business as a small-time carver. You want him yearning to go home with his duffel filled with gold.
"They use money," Waln said. "I asked one of my students about it—trying to hint we should be getting paid for our time."
Tedgewinn nodded, his gaze focused.
"Well," Waln continued, "they told me that within the temples, money isn't much used. The temples take care of their own and no one gets paid for working for the temples. Apparently, we're considered part of the temple system."
Tedgewinn snorted. Like all the survivors, he found the Liglimom religious system—especially its reliance on omens—questionable, even laughable.
"That's how he told me it works," Waln said. "Outside of the temples, though, they use money. The system's different, but not too different. They value gold, silver, and gems, as well as paying honestly for honest labor."
"I wonder how much they'd pay for one of my carvings?" Tedgewinn mused aloud. "I'm not much good at pricing things when I can't even stroll in the market square and see what's the going rate."
Waln nodded. "I know what you mean. For all they call us guests and treat us nicely—very nicely—we're prisoners. Not until I have the key to the front door in my pocket and can come and go as I choose will I believe I'm a guest. Until then I'm just a dancing bear wearing a pretty collar."
He knew that his big, burly frame reminded many of a bear, so the comparison wasn't inopportune, but he also hoped to remind Tedgewinn of his most annoying student. Judging from the scowl that knit the other man's brow as he scanned the room, he had succeeded.
"I hadn't thought of it that way, Waln," Tedgewinn said slowly, "but you're right. Even at sea we have our chests and the right to kick the crap out of anyone who goes in without our leave. What do we have here? Pretty rooms, good clothes, but not the privacy or freedom a man would give his five-year-old son."
Waln didn't argue with the logic of this. What mattered was that Tedgewinn was suitably annoyed.
"We could try for freedom of the marketplace," he said. "I'd be happy to help you get a fair price for your carvings—and charge no commission at all. It would be a pleasure to use my skills for a countryman rather than slave for these foreigners."
Tedgewinn grunted shy thanks. Waln leaned forward and lowered his voice. Tedgewinn leaned forward to match his posture and Waln knew the conspiratorial closeness would do as much as any words to sway the other.
"I think," Waln said, "I know a better way to build that nest egg you were mentioning. We'd need to get out of here, first, but once we were out. I think I know where we'd find treasure heaped up for the taking—and better yet, not one of these Liglimom would dare follow us and interfere."
"What are you talking about?" Tedgewinn asked. There was doubt in his voice, but he didn't pull away.
"Have you heard talk of Misheemnekuru?"
"The Sanctuary Islands?" Tedgewinn nodded. "A little from the sailors on Fayonejunjal when we were outfitting her. They said it was a holy place, that only a few of their disdum lived there."
"That's true as far as it goes, but there's more." Waln glanced with affected nervousness toward the door. "How long until your next student comes?"
"Bear-lady was my last for the day," Tedgewinn said eagerly. "How about you?"
"I'm done for the day, too."
Waln rose and closed the door into the suite, an unnecessary gesture, since the only ones likely to understand their conversation—which was in Pellish, after all—were those he eventually hoped to bring into the scheme. If the servants understood anything, he'd just be relating a local legend. Still, the motions toward secrecy would convince Tedgewinn this was important.
"Misheemnekuru was where their Old Country rulers made their first base, and where they continued to have palaces even after u-Seeheera was built," Waln began.
Choosing his words as carefully as if he were a ship's minstrel with a crew about to mutiny, Waln spun out the tale of Misheemnekuru, emphasizing that it had remained without human inhabitants since the Plague, while playing down that the beasts to which it had been given were yarimaimalom.
It wasn't hard to make Tedgewinn discount the yarimaimalom's importance. Even in Liglim, none of the northerners had seen more than one or two of the supposedly intelligent animals. The only Wise Beast they'd had extensive acquaintance with was the wolf Blind Seer. That had been shipboard, where he had done nothing more extraordinary than hang close to his pathetically seasick mistress.
When Waln finished, Tedgewinn looked at him, his eyes bright with conjecture.
"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Tedgewinn said. "You're thinking that if their Old Country rulers dropped dead or ran away, that they left all their good stuff behind?"
"That's a thought," Waln agreed, acting as if the man had originated the idea, rather than been led to it. "In our own land, the palaces and castles were looted, the wealth the rulers didn't take with them was used to found fortunes. Here the islands were made into an animal preserve. Sure stuff will be buried under leaves and fallen trees, but it should all be there."
"For the taking," Tedgewinn breathed, "just for the taking. And since these people are crazy superstitious about their omens, they won't dare chase us. We'll be like kids in a berry patch."
Waln didn't think it would be quite that easy, but he didn't see any advantage to dissuading Tedgewinn now. Enough time later, when they were planning, to speak of the difficulties.
"As I see it," Waln said, "we have two things we have to do to get ourselves over there."
"What?"
"We need to get the others on our side," Waln said. "We aren't going to be able to sail out of here without help, and anyhow, they're our buddies. I wouldn't leave them impoverished slaves when they can go home wealthy as lords."
Tedgewinn nodded, though his lips thinned momentarily at the idea of sharing. Doubtless, though, like Waln he realized that getting home without help would be impossible—and what good would their wealth do them here?
"What's the other thing?" Tedgewinn asked.
"We're going to need a few locals on our side," Waln said. "We need out of this prison and some freedom to move about if we're to get to Misheemnekuru."
"Right," Tedgewinn said, "we can't swim over. We'll need a boat and, more importantly, someone to cover for us. I don't think we can tell any locals what we plan, though."
"Absolutely not," Waln agreed. "They'll get all superstitious on us. I think I can bring them around without letting on just what we're doing. One of my aridisdum isn't really happy with how things are going, and I think he'd be glad of an opportunity to challenge his bosses."
"Sounds good," Tedgewinn said. "You want my help talking to the others from the ship?"
"Not all at once," Waln said, "but you get along well with Wiatt. Can you work on him?"
"Consider it done," Tedgewinn said. "He's often talked about wanting to start an inn with a fine dining hall back on his home island—the kind of place nobles would be proud to visit. I'll work him up on that, then hint that I might know a way to make it possible."
If Tedgewinn felt any resentment at being worked on himself in a similar way, he didn't show it. Doubtless, Waln thought, he was flattered to have been the first chosen.
"I'll take Shelby," Waln said, "and he'll probably bring Rarby around. Remember, though, we've got to take this slowly and carefully. We need to have a ship ready for our escape even before we go to Misheemnekuru and collect our goods."
Tedgewinn nodded. "Maybe one of those local allies you mentioned can help you set that up."
"Good idea," Waln said, adding a touch of flattery, "though I'd want you to check its soundness."
"No problem," Tedgewinn promised. "I'll do anything you'd like if it will get me out of here and make me rich."
"Even continuing to teach the bear-lady," Waln said with a laugh. "We're going to need to continue teaching, you know, otherwise they'll get suspicious."
"Even teaching the bear-lady," Tedgewinn promised.
Chapter XX
Since this was only the second time in her life that Firekeeper had beaten an adult wolf in a serious fight, her pride in her accomplishment was pardonable. However, she quickly came to realize that it was not so much that she had beaten Moon Frost that counted with the Wise Wolves, but something far more subtle.
Wolf Captured Page 35