Sufficiently Advanced Technology (Inverse Shadows)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  The carriages came to a halt and the guardsmen bellowed orders for the occupants to climb out. Elyria pasted a vaguely worried expression on her face and opened the door before the bodyguards could reach them, jumping down to the muddy – and smelly – ground and lifting up her skirt to ensure it didn’t get dirty. Adana followed her down; Elyria smiled inwardly as she saw the guards trying not to stare. They’d marred their skin slightly to match the local women – most people, it seemed, caught some kind of pox when they were growing up – but they were still cleaner than most. That, at least, wasn’t uncommon among local travelling merchants, for obvious reasons. They spent most of their time on the road rather than in disease-ridden cities.

  “Over here,” Adam barked, playing the proud and dominant father. The guards had offered them a small hut in which to rest and wait, while the guards searched the carriages for smuggled goods. “And stop acting like children!”

  Elyria concealed a smile and took a seat, waiting patiently for the guards to finish their search. It had been difficult to tell what was actually forbidden in Warlock’s Bane, but they’d been careful to only bring along duplications of items they’d seen other merchants taking into the city. The real secret was the concealed technology, items beyond local imagination. Even if they found them worked into the wood and iron that made up the carriages, they wouldn’t recognise them for what they were. Or so they hoped.

  The chief guardsman entered the hut a moment later, checking the bodyguard papers with surprising attention to detail. Elyria scowled, inwardly, wondering if they’d made a mistake when forging them. They had such complete coverage of most primitive worlds that it was easy to forget that they might have missed something – and they didn’t have complete coverage of Darius. The papers should have been indistinguishable from other, perfectly valid papers, but the guard was hesitating. A moment later, he grunted his approval, stamped a note on each sheet of paper and handed them back to the owners. Elyria allowed herself a moment of relief before the interrogation began.

  Being women, Gigot, Adana and herself were largely ignored, apart from glances the guardsman tossed in their direction when he thought their ‘father’ wasn’t paying attention. Adam took the brunt of the questioning, which he skilfully deflected after endless simulations on Hamilton based on what they’d overheard through the snoops. Yes, they were traders of no fixed abode; yes, they had links to the sea-folk; it was where they’d purchased their goods. And they’d come so far inland because they were looking for higher profits. A handful of questions made little sense. The guardsman wanted to know if they’d seen anything unusual on their trip. Lacking an idea of what was unusual on Darius, Adam could only say that they’d seen nothing and pray that was enough. It seemed to be, thankfully.

  Another guardsman returned with a sheet of paper, which he’d used to list their trade goods. The guardsman read it quickly and then nodded, passing it to Adam for him to read and sign. Adam held it so the others could see it too, pretending to have difficulty reading it. The guards had done a thorough job of searching the carriages, to the point where they’d included a number of items as trade goods that were nothing of the sort. They’d certainly never intended to offer sleeping blankets for sale. That would definitely raise eyebrows.

  “You will be expected to present them when you leave the city,” the guardsmen said, when Adam raised the issue. He made a mark on the paper before handing it back to Adam. “If they happen to be missing, you will be expected to pay import duty on them. For the moment, you will pay twenty gold; if you fail to sell all of your goods, you may claim a refund.”

  And should we earn more than you expect, Elyria thought wryly, we will be expected to pay additional taxes.

  It didn’t matter to the Confederation if they were taxed or not, naturally. Producing enough gold to utterly shatter the local economy would be a comparatively simple matter. But it did matter to the locals, a sign of future trouble between merchants and their rulers. Tax farming was always complicated. If the taxes were too high, local business would be strangled; if the taxes were too low, the state might not have the funds it needed to safeguard itself. And if it couldn’t protect itself, another state was likely to invade.

  She glanced at the sheet of paper in Adam’s hand and smiled to herself. There was another trap there, a subtle one that might not be noticed by the locals. Everything that was brought into the city would be registered and logged, allowing the rulers to know who bought what and why. Maybe it wouldn’t be treated as anything more than a record, but anyone who wanted to hold absolute control over a human society knew the value of keeping good records. At the very least, they’d know who should be paying more taxes next year.

  Adam signed with a flourish – learning the written language had been easy – and reached into his pouch for the gold coins. The locals had managed to achieve a remarkable unity in their coinage that wasn’t often a hallmark of First Age societies, they’d discovered. Each of the coins was precisely the same weight, stamped with the logo of one of the mints scattered across the planet. The cities might be rivals, but they maintained the same standard of weights and measures, right down to the tiniest detail. It suggested that there had been more organised settlement of Darius than was immediately apparent, which was interesting. Colony worlds that fell so far, normally, tended to fragment in all kinds of ways. They had to reinvent weights and measures from scratch and they were never identical.

  “Thank you,” the guard said. “You may move your carriages into the courtyard of the Golden Arch, where rooms have been set aside for you. And then you may start selling to the merchant factors.”

  Elyria nodded as she stood up, careful to walk behind Adam. The locals might have sounded generous when they’d organised rooms for weary travellers, but they knew that it included a sting in the tail. A set of snoops that had peered through the Golden Arch Inn had confirmed that the building had been designed to make spying on guests easy, even without modern technology. The locals clearly had no intention of allowing them to operate unobserved.

  And without constant footage from the snoops, we will have to watch our backs more carefully, she told herself. Normally, they could monitor the watchers – if there were watchers – from a distance. On Darius, that wasn’t going to be so easy. The QCC links just kept breaking down.

  They walked back to the carriages and allowed the bodyguards to mount up and drive the horses forward. Elyria chose to walk rather than climb back into the carriage, which should pass unnoticed. The locals knew that merchant women tended to have different standards of behaviour than those of city women, although they were also being escorted by their parents and Dacron, whom the locals would probably assume was pledged to one of Adam’s ‘daughters’. It would be maddening to be a local woman; indeed, she’d seen societies where women, treated as nothing more than property, developed all kinds of mental illnesses from banging their heads against a glass ceiling. The populations of those societies, given the ability to change sex, had promptly become almost all male.

  The interior of the city, once they’d moved out of the first courtyard, was familiar because they’d seen it through the snoops, but Elyria found it easy to pretend interest anyway. There was a long line of shops, including some that were owned by wealthy businessmen who would probably be among their first customers, and a handful of inns for travellers. The population looked reasonably happy and content, for their civilisation, including a small group of young girls who were being escorted from shop to shop by an elderly man. Most of the population seemed to be fairly industrious, wearing drab clothes that stood in stark contrast to Adam’s brightly-coloured outfit. A handful, clearly wealthy, wore clothes that were almost as colourful as the visitors.

  Elyria nodded to herself as they reached the inn and drove around to the back, so the carriages could be placed in the courtyard. The horses would have to be moved to the stable and fed; their trade goods could be left in the carriages until they were ready to start selli
ng them to the merchant factors. Judging from what the snoops had picked up, the City Guard would already have passed the list on to the merchants – or at least to the ones who had paid bribes – and they’d be on their way to make offers. The spices, in particular, could be sold at quite high prices.

  The interior of the inn was lightly furnished, illuminated by blazing torches and a roaring fire that warmed the entire building. Adam talked briefly to the innkeeper, a man who was quite disturbingly fat, and secured the keys to three rooms. He would be sharing a room with his wife, his daughters would get a second room and the third would be Dacron’s. The bodyguards were apparently expected to sleep in the carriages, guarding them overnight. Elyria schooled herself to show no reaction as the innkeeper offered Adam an extra lock for the second room, allowing them to lock his daughters inside, something that hadn’t been picked up by the earlier snoops. Maybe there was a local custom they’d missed, or maybe the innkeeper was just making a joke. It was difficult to be sure.

  “No, thank you,” Adam said, finally. It was a shame that standard communications implants were almost useless on Darius. They could have pulled the live feed from the snoops, rather than relying on the AIs to collect it and then summarise the information to them. The innkeeper’s reaction to Adam’s refusal might have been quite informative. Still, the AIs would pick it up later. “Please have us called if anyone arrives to discuss our trade goods.”

  They were led through a stone passageway and up to a set of wooden doors, which the innkeeper opened before passing the keys to Adam. Inside, there were large – if uncomfortable – beds, a single wash basin and a large jug of water. Darius had yet to reinvent the concept of indoor plumbing, Elyria knew, but it was always a shock when she came face to face with what that meant. The less said about the chamber pot under the bed, the better. No wonder the locals had so many problems with disease.

  She and Adana were expected to share a bed, she noted; after all, they were sisters. The locals didn’t seem sophisticated enough to consider incest as a possible perversion, something that struck her as odd. Primitive societies often knew the dangers of incest even if they didn’t understand why it was dangerous. Even the Confederation, which could have avoided the dangers altogether, frowned on incest. She shook her head a moment later, convinced that she was reading too much into the bedding. A society without any real means of heating rooms, outside fires, would probably see some advantages in siblings sharing beds. There was nothing sexual about it at all.

  There was a faint ding in her head, followed by the AI voice. “There are four people watching your rooms,” they said. The snoops would have spread out as soon as they realised which rooms would be occupied by the Confederation’s party. “The system is really very neat. They can see almost all of the room.”

  Elyria resisted the temptation to glance over at the wall that held the peepholes. They’d be almost invisible to everyone, just high enough to be out of sight. A woman from Darius would have been horrified at having a man peeking on her; Elyria knew that she couldn’t show any sign of being aware of their existence, or the spies would start wondering how they knew. At least it didn’t seem to be sexual; the locals wanted a better bargaining position and if that meant spying on their guests, that was what they would do.

  “Understood,” she subvocalised, as she lay down on the bed. They shouldn’t be able to see her lips move in this position. “And the traders?”

  “The guards sold four exclusive copies of the list of trade goods,” the AIs said, with a hint of amusement. Each of the merchants would believe that they were the only one to be given an advantage, at least until they arrived at the inn. “We believe that they are preparing to send envoys now. They may compete, or they may try to act as a united front.”

  “Probably the former,” Elyria said. If the merchants united, they could force the traders to accept a lower price for their goods than they would have otherwise received. But there were too many merchants in the city for that to work very well. There was no reason why Adam had to accept the first offer for his goods. “Monitor them; see if you can tell what they’re offering.”

  She smiled as she rolled over on the uncomfortable bed. “Tomorrow we can explore the city,” she said, out loud. Let the observers think that the girls were nothing more than unimportant women. They’d keep their eyes on Adam, allowing Elyria and Adana to research the city in peace. “That should be fun.”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  Joshua had seen the newcomers as he returned to the city on Filly, uncomfortably aware of the pain throbbing through his thigh. Filly had finally managed to unseat him, just as they were about to start heading home, and Joshua had landed badly. The protective spells had saved him from breaking something, but it still hurt. He’d used another freeze charm on the horse until he felt able to ride again, and then tied the beast to a tree until he became rather more subdued. Swearing that he would never ride again, Joshua had ridden back towards the city.

  The newcomers had passed through the detectors at the gate without incident, thankfully. There was no such thing as a group of Scions – normally, they could barely tolerate the company of other magicians – but it was quite possible that the mystery magician had decided to travel with a group of traders in hopes of slipping into the city without being identified. It would have been a false hope, Joshua suspected, yet Master Faye had warned him that detection spells could be tricked. If there was enough doubt over who was the Scion, attacking the wrong person could be very dangerous.

  Joshua scrambled off Filly as soon as he passed through the gates and handed the reins to one of the guardsmen, who would take the horse back to Master Faye’s house. There would probably be a lecture in Joshua’s future about using guardsmen as his personal servants, but his aching thigh made it hard to care. Instead, he watched from a distance as the carriages were searched, while one of the senior guardsmen worked his way through the bodyguard papers. Joshua had never fully understood why so many records had to be kept, but it was Master Faye’s command. Many of the other Pillars did the same thing.

  The guardsmen evidently found nothing illegal, so they took the list to the merchant, made him check and sign it, and then allowed him and his party to head to the inn. Joshua watched them silently; there was nothing special about their leader, or the sour-faced man who had to be an apprentice, judging from his grey clothes, but the women were beautiful. The merchant’s wife was striking and the two daughters were absolutely stunning. There was something about their beauty that looked timeless; Joshua knew, without a doubt, that every unattached man in Warlock’s Bane would be trying to court them. On impulse, he ran through the spell to detect glamours and illusions and found nothing. Their beauty was real.

  He wanted to follow them to the inn, but he had his duty – and besides, they would need to rest. Laughing at himself – he’d become pompous, at least inside his head – he walked over to the guardsmen and took the list of trade goods, scanning it with practised ease. Master Faye had forced him to read until he could do it quickly, even when the handwriting was badly scrawled. Joshua’s own handwriting wasn’t much better.

  The list was interesting, to say the least. Spices from far overseas were rare in Warlock’s Bane; they’d be sure to make hundreds of gold coins if they sold carefully. The other supplies were more mundane, although stirrups from Night Watch were better than anything produced closer to Warlock’s Bane, Joshua checked to see if they were selling swords from Caitiff, but none were listed. He’d wanted a sword from the famed city of swords for years, yet they were expensive even for a magician’s apprentice. Master Faye could have pulled strings, but he’d refused to help Joshua, pointing out that a magician shouldn’t need a sword. He should know far more powerful protections.

  “We were going to take the list to your master,” the guardsman said, quickly. Judging from his expression, a number of rich merchants were about to receive tips that would make them even richer. Master Faye would h
ave frowned on a monopoly, or a cartel, but he would tolerate a certain amount of insider trading. “And the gold coins, for verification.”

  Joshua smiled and took the bag. They’d be happier allowing him to take them, secure in the knowledge that no one would dare to rob the Pillar’s apprentice – and, of course, that the guardsmen wouldn’t miss out on any bribes through leaving the gatehouse. The demanding of bribes was something else he was resolved to change when he became Pillar... shaking his head, he walked out of the courtyard and back onto the streets. The newcomers had vanished, no doubt having headed straight for the Golden Arch. They would probably want some rest before they confronted the merchants in Warlock’s Bane.

  Thoughtfully, he took the guardsman’s report out of the bag and studied it. The newcomers had been really rather vague about where they’d come from, providing only brief and basic answers to the questions. That wasn’t too uncommon in merchant travellers; they tended to prefer to stay on the road, rather than remain permanently in a single city. Who knew when the local Pillar would decide to become a tyrant rather than a reasonably benevolent ruler?

  The girls were called Elyria and Adana, both apparently sixteen years old and unmarried, he read. Neither of them were betrothed, something that struck him as unusual. At their age, they should have had offers for their hands; their families were certainly rich enough to attract attention even if they hadn’t been beauties. And the daughters of travelling merchants could often read, write and do their sums, as well as cook, clean and carry out the rest of women’s work. They would have been attractive prospects the moment they started their feminine cycles.

  Putting the thought out of his mind, he walked back to Master Faye’s house and stepped in through the side door. Master Faye was kneeling in front of a bowl of water, trying to hunt for the mystery magician. Joshua knew that he’d been trying every day since the first hint that they were being watched and had found nothing, even when they’d shared blood and used it to power the magic. He took a seat and waited, knowing better than to interrupt his master until the spell was completed. The results of interrupting a magician could be disastrous. It had been one of the first lessons Master Faye had beaten into him.