The Zero Equation

by Christopher Nuttall

  Sandy Brian shook his head, the gesture shivering his brown house coat, the coat’s plainness relieved by the golden sheaves of grain embroidered on each collar tab. “Another lot of sheep stolen in the east, this time near Shieldhill, right on the border with Barony Gunn. The shepherd was tied while he slept, the dogs were drugged, and the sheep disappeared. There were traces leading across the border, but Gunn’s local shire authorities say nothing was seen, certainly no extra flock of sheep. They were remarkably fast to be denying everything.”

  Torquil Simon mouthed ‘No news.’ His tabard and layered housecoats shaded from innermost, the palest dawn-pink to the outermost, a deep rose-red, that colour chain ending with the blinding sky-blue of his outermost coat. Across his chest, his outermost coat was embroidered with the traditional symbols for the twelve manufactures, the lumber and cotton and silk that the MacDonald Domain sold to the rest of the Hundred Isles.

  “The month’s foreign tariffs are down. Again.” Edmund Finlay frowned more deeply. He did not quite slap the table, but his right hand pressed firmly on the papers in front of him. The other men and women had worn their meeting-day best. He wore the classic grey coat of a Minister of the Purse, its sleeves embroidered with the abacus and scales that signified his post.

  “Once again, pirates struck a small village – really a dozen huts – on Seaforth Island.” Arthur Lachlan glowered at the Council. His silver hair and neatly trimmed moustache stood brilliantly against the blood-red of his padded tabard. “Men and children were killed. Women and girls disappeared. Homes, boats, and the temple were burned.” Susan MacDonald stiffened. Counsellors straightened on their stools. Temple burning was a vile act, not something expected from young men disputing a border . “I am failing at my responsibilities, and see not what to do. If pirates died, they took their dead with them.”

  “The Bervie Avon is again in flood,” Magnus Taylor announced. His family name let him wear a half-dozen layers of silk robes, their colours spanning the rainbow. “Hardly surprising, given the rain, but now Strathmoor Bridge is completely overtopped and perhaps the High Road is washed out.”

  “Our Library has no bad news,” Margaret Rachel announced. Her robes were a solid ink-black.

  Susan MacDonald shook her head.

  “No bad news,” Ian Gunn said quietly.

  “How charming,” Angus said. Some meetings had only good news. This one had much more than its share of bad. “Has our Shieldhill Administrator done anything about the sheep?”

  “He wrote a report,” Sandy said, “demonstrating that he can do nothing. He says there is dissension among the shepherds and peasants. They wonder why they are not protected. He asks for instructions.”

  “Each lost sheep costs the Treasury money,” Edmund Finlay complained. “There is a tax, so much per head of sheep, but only on sheep presented at a market for shearing or slaughter. Now these sheep are gone, and their tariffs with them.”

  “Can we send soldiers to protect Shire Shieldhill? Aren’t there Shire Bailiffs?” Angus leaned back in his seat. Father’s instructions were lamentably clear. The One MacDonald had ordered that Angus’s Council of Elders had to propose the solutions, which he could only choose between, at least until a war broke out.

  “The Barony Authorities could be ordered to send out bailiffs to protect the flocks in their hills,” Arthur Lachlan remarked. “It is unlikely that they have enough bailiffs. And if you give each shepherd one bailiff, well, the poachers have numbers on their side and will kill the bailiff. Shire soldiers are there to keep the One Gunn from occupying our towns.”

  “MacDonald Castle has a large garrison. Couldn’t we send some of it to Shieldhill?” Angus asked. “Set it to ambush the poachers? Send enough men to each of some of the flocks, so if sometimes the poachers met no resistance, sometimes they would be outnumbered and captured? Of course, I am only asking questions to understand your possible solutions between which I must choose.” The Council nodded in amused agreement. They all knew that Angus often did exactly as his father had ordered, making choices. Sometimes he asked questions, questions that might as well have been orders, but questions were of course not orders. If his questions had been stupid, they would have been treated as questions. During the short period when Number Three Son had sat on the One Chair, the questions had been treated as being barely worthy of notice.

  “There are only so many horsemen in the garrison. Most are needed to defend Castle MacDonald, should it be attacked.” Arthur Lachlan shrugged. He affected not to notice the alarmed look on Edmund Finlay’s face. “We could safely send, say, fifty.”

  “We could also send none and accept the losses,” Edmund Finlay said.

  “I see I am now given a choice.” Angus sat straighter in his chair. Edmund had put both feet in his mouth, because now all would have to agree that Angus had two choices. “Send the fifty. Ten groups of five with ten flocks? That’s not every flock, but with luck the bandits strike a defended flock. Take prisoners. Question them rigorously. That was what you said, wasn’t it, Arthur?”

  “Precisely,” Arthur said. “Though groups of three should be more than enough.”

  “Surely you are the Minister of the Sword, and can set these details without us all telling you your business for you? Next topic. Can we say more of the tariff issue?” Angus pointed at Edmund Finlay.

  “We continue to receive ships from Seria,” Edmund Finlay muttered. “There are far fewer ships that there were last year from Mercia. They bear confused reports of civil war, or foreign invasion, or, Goddess preserve us, an infestation of demons. I now speak to each visiting merchant. Shipmaster Parlegrecco – he is always the best informed -- tells me that junks that sail the southern route sometimes disappear, more than weather can explain. Mercian traders now avoid the Mercian sea, preferring to send their ships north along the coast of the Lunarian Empire toward the Lands of the Khan and the Mountain Kingdoms. His fellows mostly then take the northern route, which leads them to land in Barony Kinkade and not here. He also reports that trade with Spiceland and the Flower Archipelago has long been greatly disrupted by wars and invasions…he is imprecise as to who is invading. The Teak Isles are similarly disturbed, from what he terms One-Godder invaders and sailors of the accursed Pyramid People, leading to shortages of fine hardwoods. In accord with Himself’s instructions, I have memorialized the One MacDonald Himself about this.”

  “If tariffs fall, our remittances to the Emperor and the Generalissimo will decline,” Angus observed. This was actually a serious problem, and not one that was necessarily easy to solve. “There will be repercussions. My father’s quest to be elevated to the Council of the Sun might be hindered. My sisters might marry less well. My brothers might be rejected by potential brides-to-be. We here would be blamed.” Angus bit his tongue, not remarking out loud that if his father’s quest were shelved, and his lavish establishment in the Imperial Capital very considerably reduced to something more reasonable for what was, after all, a modest domain of the outermost South, revenues would be better than satisfactory. For several centuries, Clan MacDonald had been viewed as dubiously loyal to the All-Conquering Generalissimo, so father’s quest seemed unlikely to succeed. Also, if Father did less to flaunt the minor detail that MacDonald Domain was in fact quite wealthy, much more wealthy than other domains its size, the tax collectors of the Generalissimo and the Emperor might be less vigorous in their searches. However, Angus was the fourth son, and would never be placed to act on the difficulty.

  “It is our good fortune,” Edmund Finlay answered, “that our major ports all appear to have an Imperial Secret Police Inspector observing the comings and goings of ships. As a result, the Imperial Courts know that our count of ships is accurate. More important, most of our tariffs are from shipping rice, wheat, and millet north towards the Imperial Capitals. Thanks to Sandy Brian and our farmers, those shipments continue to improve.” Sandy smiled. Angus nodded politely, knowing full well that Sandy was Edmund’s protégé, n
ot to mention that Sandy had hardly been in office long enough to have affected agriculture.

  “Angus,” Margaret Rachel said quietly, “I have also been speaking with many of these foreign merchants. After all, they are a fine source of books from the Lunar Empire, not to mention they have much to tell about foreign lands. They describe events in southern Mercia. There are pirate attacks. Strange foreigners and strange ships. Foreigners capturing Lunar cities. Foreign products.” She wrinkled her nose. “Foreign religions.” Susan MacDonald ground her teeth. “But there is a historical precedent for this. Decades ago, many of the Flower Islands were invaded and conquered by foreigners. Seemingly, the same foreigners. There is a book on this, from Baron Nihilo — he’s a Baron of the Pen in the Generalissimo’s court — with details. Most readers think his account is a fantasy. However what he describes matches well reports from southern Mercia. Also he mentions pirate attacks like those Arthur Lachlan laments. Those happened very early on in the Flower Islands.”

  “I am always amazed,” Arthur Lachlan said, “that you can immediately call from memory these historical precedents that I’ve never heard of. Margaret Rachel, can you again find that book for us?”

  “I spent a week,” Margaret said, “looking for that book. The relevant scrolls are on the rack,” she gestured to her left, “by my writing table in the library, waiting for anyone interested.”

  “I believe we will all want to read that. Soon.” Angus rapped his knuckles on the table. “If these attacks are an omen of a future invasion, we need to know how to respond. It would be good to garrison all of our fishing villages so that the pirates may soon be presented their heads. After they have been suitably tortured. Also, we should like to learn from whence they come. The Seaforthton Interlocutor and Captain together sent us a strange knife and some coins. Smiths say that the steel is inferior. No one has ever seen such a coin.”

  “I have only so many horsemen.” Arthur spread his arms in resignation. “We have no idea how many pirates there are in an attack. They get to choose where they land, and attack without warning. To garrison every village I would need an impossible number of horsemen. The problem appears to be insoluble, at least one of my feeble wits.” Counsellors looked at each other. Angus considered that Arthur was quite old, so that robes contrasted brilliantly with his silver hair, and that he had earned his title through skill with the sword, not from any knowledge of military methods.

  “We have a truly large number of horsemen,” Edmund Finlay said, “as I should know because I must find money to pay all of them. How many horsemen can we conceivably need to protect those villages?”

  “Most of those are the hereditary horsemen.” Arthur stared up at the ceiling. “The One MacDonald rusticated many of them, because the Generalissimo hinted that Barony MacDonald seem to have an excessive number of warriors. They are all supposed to have arms and armour. Assuredly, they all have dress robes and the two swords of their rank.”

  “However,” Minister of Works Magnus Taylor remarked, “they also mostly have two eyes. They owe us service, so many lunar cycles in a three-year. Send two or three of them to each fishing village. During the day, they may wander the beaches or play stones or chess, and at night they hide in the dunes or woods or whatever and watch the village until the pirates attack. Fortunately, most of them will never see anything. The ones who do will tell us who the pirates are, how many of them are in an attack, and whose sigil they are wearing. Once they take a prisoner, we will know with whom we are entitled to go to war. After we build adequate fortresses to protect our borders.” Magnus’s colleagues nodded in agreement until he reached his final sentence. He had just proposed that his Ministry needed a vast increase in its budget.

  “Perhaps we should endure and do nothing, rather than acting.” Finlay shifted on his stool. “The cost of sending out all these soldiers surely exceeds the loss in taxes from a few destitute fishermen.”

  “Doing nothing is an action,” Angus said. “My father said this, so it must be true. I again have a choice. Doing nothing is less sound as an action than what Magnus has proposed to us. I choose Magnus’s action. I humbly request that my Minister of the Sword draw up a detailed plan for this and present to me. Tomorrow morning at second breakfast.” When Angus said ’tomorrow’, there was a tone of steel in his voice. Counsellors looked up in surprise. Angus had always been affable if quick-witted and thoughtful in his decisions. After a few moments, most of them smiled in approval. “Also, while my father’s horsemen, and if I recall correctly a good number of horsewomen, have been rusticated, that does not excuse them from being skilled in arms, as my father doubtless said on this topic. Perhaps more training is needed. I will memorialize the One MacDonald on this question.”

  “That will cost a lot of money. It will take much work. Surely we can trust our horsemen to see for themselves that they are properly trained,” Arthur Lachlan grumbled. When Arthur complained about spending money, Edmund Finlay nodded in vigorous agreement. Angus was sure that ‘work’ meant ‘work for me’.

  “The steel of the sword is the backbone of the Empire,” Angus said. “My father said that, too. I have heard rumours that many young horsemen are unhappy with their lack of duties and their lack of preparation for a glorious war in which they may die heroically for the Domain or better yet the Imperial Presence and the Generalissimo. Let us find the most vociferous of these and invite them to volunteer to protect our villages. Remind them that they may have a chance to die in battle. Also, have a bailiff take the coins and visit all of our merchant houses. Perhaps one of them can tell us where the coins came from.”

  Today was as close, Angus considered, as he was ever going to reach to being Baron. He was the unlucky seventh and last child, so his three brothers and then perhaps his three sisters would all inherit the Barony before he could. Some of his sisters might marry upward, and choose to abdicate, but there was hardly any likelihood that he would be the heir. Soon enough, his brothers, who were all at the Imperial Capital being presented to society, looking for wives, and of course serving as hostages to his father’s good behaviour, would have children of their own, children who might be entitled to inherit before he would. He would be left here. Indeed, when last he had visited his parents, they suggested that he might consider finding and marrying the pretty daughter of a wealthy merchant household. Merchants, they had agreed, were of course the lowest social class, but if you could not marry well marrying into money would leave you with a comfortable estate for the rest of your life. The Merchant House knew they now had a direct tie to the Baronial family. Angus had actually made considerable progress toward carrying out his parents’ suggestion. For today, though, he was actually the Grand Marshal of the MacDonalds, sending his troops toward battle.

  “Finally, the Great Captain of Seaforth Isle issued, on his own responsibility, military orders. That is an acceptable emergency action. A copy of his rescript was sent to us. Do we have any issues with it?” Angus looked around the room.

  “There are expenses,” Edmund Finlay said. “Arms and armour might be lost. Commerce will be interrupted. Conscript soldiers standing watch must be paid their wage for being on duty.”

  “That wage is small,” Arthur Lachlan said. “It is properly paid by each town out of the town treasury, hence, not our problem.” Edmund Finlay smiled at that observation. “The loss associated with having a town burned to the ground, its inhabitants being killed or disappearing, is very large. I endorse this as a military decision. There is even a fair chance that it saves us money.”

  “How can I differ with a colleague preaching thrift that works?” Edmund Finlay said.

  “The choice is whether or not to send Captain Constantine Joseph a missive saying we endorse his decision. Shall I send one, or not? Send?” The councillors nodded supportively. “There was also a problem with the bridge,” Angus said. “Is there a solution?”

  “Add more spans.” Magnus spread his arms expansively. “It’s just a matter
of money. If we do it right, we never have to do it again, so in the long run we even save money. I will propose an estimate as soon as we find out what the actual damage is.” Edmund Finlay gnashed his teeth when he heard ‘just a matter of money’.

  “Is there good news?” Angus looked hopefully at his counsellors.

  Ian Gunn smiled. He looked Angus in the eye until Angus nodded. “The Free Port of Saint Morag, noting its crowding and the increase in its transhipment business, intends to exercise its rights over Shire Morag to expand its city walls and build additional docks and warehouses. Of course, this cost will be entirely borne by the Free Port and its Commission of Merchants and Factors, but in accord with its charter the resulting tariffs and taxes will be shared with the Barony, the Emperor, and the Generalissimo. The Nunnery of Saint Brenda, which is included within the proposed expansion, has agreed to be presented with a new and considerably more capacious set of buildings that are more pleasantly located. That construction will necessarily advance first.”