She frowned at me, anger turned to exasperation. "It would take people from their land and flocks for too long, and why a road? The traders use the trail and they gain from it, let them build their own road!"
"But you repaired the trail each year and took a tax from the merchants who passed, so you gained from the work."
"The chieftain gained. It wouldn't be fair to steal the labour of the people to build a road for his gain and the gain of the merchants."
"But you told me he spent the money to buy grain in hard times, surely if there was a road then there would be more traders and more tax and more money for grain?"
She put her fists on her hips, still standing over me. I was okay with that. It was a nice view, actually. "I told you the men must work their lands and don't have time to spend away from their homes building a road."
She was mistaking food security for food self-sufficiency. All barbarians do, and I have no idea why. You work all year to provide enough food and still people starve the month before the harvest, and every year you're surprised. Meanwhile, thirty or forty miles away there are people pulling in bumper harvests of one crop they don't need half of and ploughing it into the ground or scattering it into the woods for wild boar to eat. I had in mind to buy all the grain I could get my hands on within a range, then let people in the Battling Plain region know there was plenty of grain to be had and have them come here with their trade goods and get it. I'd make money, we would always have grain and to spare, not to mention the gains from whatever they had brought here at their own expense to trade for it. To move the grain at a reasonable price there was a need for a good road. How complicated could it possibly be to figure this stuff out? And there she was getting mad at me and talking to me like I was the one who didn't understand... but I didn't want to get into that with Treleth in the room, so: "But one man can work land enough to feed many, not everyone is needed to grow food and nurture livestock." At least until the harvest comes, but that was off my point.
"If they don't grow their own food," she explained to me patiently, "they would have to buy food from those who do and how do they get the money to do that?"
"By doing something else, like build a road," I explained just as patiently, "or making millstones or plates and pots or knives and forks or shoes or any one of a thousand other things that people need." Generalities didn't matter; Treleth already understood this as well as I did. Well, maybe not as well... I'd read an awful lot on the subject and developed my own theories. Now was the perfect opportunity to put them into practice and see what happened.
"Most of those things they can make for themselves," her tone and speed of delivery exaggerated her extended patience with my stupidity, "and there is already one millstone, which is all that is needed."
"If there were two there would be competition and the price of flour would drop making it more affordable for everyone and freeing up money that could be spent on other things."
"And one miller would not be able to make a living for being undercut by the other and when he went out of business the other would raise his prices because he had no competition."
"Then another miller would step in and offer a better price. These problems solve themselves and are none of our business."
"There is a millstone already, everyone uses it, and why are we talking about something that isn't a problem when you were talking about using people to build a road?"
"Because it is a problem and it's all related. Right now there is a millstone that just grinds flour all day and makes no profit for anyone," I raised a hand to stop her, "and it isn't even a very good millstone and doesn't grind very fine," I hadn't looked but I just knew it was true. "Before this there was no incentive for anyone to build another until the first one breaks and then there will be no flour at all until someone replaces it and that takes time. Now anyone can commission a millstone and make finer flour and sell it at any price that people will pay and if there are two there will always be one that is working. Give me a minute and I will talk about the road," I drained my cup of wine and reached past her to pour myself another. She stepped back a little when I came close to touching her. I carefully didn't smile at the slightly flustered look on her face as she settled back into her own chair and took a sip of her wine.
"The road that Lendrin Treleth will build at his own expense," I ignored his splutter of protest, "will increase trade because passage will be easier and faster. More trade means more revenue but it also means more goods and more means cheaper and that will enhance the standard of living of the people here. Traders passing also buy goods, and the more of them there are, the more incentive to supply them."
She suddenly looked interested. "My people make..." she stopped as my hand touched her knee.
I had leaned close and my gaze locked onto hers. "It doesn't matter what your people make, but that they have free time to make it and a market to sell it into does matter."
Treleth chuckled. "I will find out anyway," he said.
"Of course you will. I want you to. But I'd like a brief moment to assess the market myself and see if I want to invest in it."
He scowled. "You intend to take advantage of your position to stop me investing?"
I shook my head and leaned back. Anista was watching me. I ignored it because I wasn't sure what the expression on her face meant and it didn't matter right now. This mattered.
"Not at all. I have received a complaint that you are using timber that you have not paid for. That is a criminal matter, Treleth, and when your accuser prosecutes I will doubtless fine you."
"These people have no status under our law; they are merely subjects, not citizens."
"He is my client," I said simply.
His face darkened. "Have you told him he can prosecute?"
I smiled. "Not yet," I said cheerfully. "But I will."
#
We walked part of the way back to Darklake in silence. I had headed out the other way around the lake out of curiosity. The two soldiers trailed along behind.
"What is the penalty for theft under your city law?"
"Confiscation of goods, a fine in fact or effect, and maybe exile for a time."
"That doesn't sound so bad, but the merchant was worried about it."
"That's for a first conviction, the second time it's confiscation of all goods and, if exiled once, a longer exile. Third time, death."
"Your laws are harsh, cityman."
"Not really. Theft is a serious business. It takes time to accumulate money; that time is your life. When you steal from someone you are taking part of their life and we recognise that. I accepted his statement that he had intended to track down the man the timber belonged to and pay him, but I made him pay for the attempt to steal it, also."
"To your own advantage," she sneered.
"Of course. No sense having power if you don't use it. I'll make money out of the contract we signed today, but I am a patron don't forget, and will pay tax and that money will go to projects that benefit everyone in the long run."
She was silent for a few slow paces. "He stole with impunity because he is rich. What if there is need? Desperate people do desperate things."
"He paid for his attempt, and it could have been worse. Still can be, in fact; the private citizen is still free to bring a prosecution. I have no legal power to stop him and wouldn't if I could. I'll merely tell him what Treleth told me, a good price is going to be paid, no real harm done and now Treleth knows he won't get away with anything."
"But if the merchant hadn't been a merchant with money, if he had been a youth and hungry and desperate, what then? Would you have cut a deal with a starving boy who stole some food?"
"How could I? He'd have nothing to bargain with. Look, Anista, nothing is perfect. We don't even try for perfection because it's impossible to achieve and all you will do is ensure that everyone is poor and downtrodden and miserable because the fact is there isn't enough wealth in all the world to make everyone wealthy; how can there be? There are only so man
y people generating money and they can only generate so much. The small surplus one man can make will pass into other hands and some hands will be full if they are in a position to skim a little from many. There is nothing to be done about that. All we try and do is make as stable and honest a structure as we can for everyone to work in and find their own level according to their own will and ability. If a man is poor, it's not my fault, or my responsibility; it is his own. As for theft..."
"I thought you had forgotten what I asked," her tone was dry.
"Anyone can fall on hard times. A drought causes crop failure..."
"You have forgotten."
"And," I was enjoying myself, I realised. "And so food prices rise and not everyone can afford as much as they need. The price will rise for a time, and there is nothing.... believe me, a hundred things have been tried in as many lands and most of the solutions beget other problems and the solutions to those, which are in fact not the problem at all, just make things worse until everyone starves... there is nothing that can be done about this. Prices rise and fall; just live with it."
"So a poor man steals when he is starving and is punished and a rich man steals when he is not starving and is not."
"If I were ever in danger of starving I would sell myself as a slave, then feeding me would be my master’s responsibility."
She was looking at me like I was mad. "You would not!"
I almost laughed. "It's not so bad. I get to keep the money; it's me I'm selling, after all. I get some free time from whatever work my master requires, and I can buy tools and materials and work for myself then, so that I can earn the money to buy my freedom. I am housed, fed, and out of danger of starvation. And I still have some rights as a slave; not so many as a freedman, and still less than a freeman, but still I cannot be killed out of hand, because that is still murder, nor can I be worked into the ground or starved." Though, to be honest, some work is hard and also dangerous. And some patrons push the limits of the law harder than others.
"But beaten, yes?"
"Yes, but I have the right to prosecute my master should I be beaten sufficient to leave permanent damage. If convicted of that crime, every slave he owns is freed without recompense to him; indeed, their value is taken in fines and paid to them. It doesn't happen often. Most lands in close proximity to the city practice slavery in more or less the same form. Have you heard of the island of Enradia?"
She looked down and shook her head, possibly ashamed of her ignorance.
"They were harsh slave masters. A child born of a slave was a slave for life, there was no chance of freedom. Then a woman escaped and made her way to the city. She had been raped; the scars of several beatings were plain on her body. She was thin, half starved. She told her story to a citizen and he took her and her story to his patron; he in turn was outraged and was the client of a more powerful patron. That man heard her story and was also angered by it. He raised an army and a fleet and sailed to Enradia within a couple of months, having determined that her story was true. He found that more than half the population were slaves and treated with brutal indifference by the free. He easily defeated them and was not kind to the free men of Enradia."
"What did he do?"
"He killed them all to the last adult man. Every woman was flogged and they and their children were transported to the city and made slaves themselves, though they were protected by city law just as other slaves are, even though he argued in the assembly of patrons that they should not ever be freed. The slaves of Enradia were liberated, ceded lands to work and eventually left to their own devices. We do not practice slavery because it is a good idea, but because we have determined that it is necessary for everyone to have a bottom line, a fall-back position, a place from which they cannot fall further. There is no excuse for theft, no excuse or justification for stealing part of someone else's life, when you can choose to spend some of your own in preference."
"You make everything about the city sound so reasonable."
"It is reasonable. It is not fair, but we recognise it cannot be that, so instead we settle for even-handed and leave fair for stories and songs."
"Everyone should be treated equally."
"Equal men are not free, and free men are not equal."
"That is just clever words."
"No it isn't. If I am a better carpenter than you, then to be equal I must pretend to be only as good as you so that people would come and view our wares and 'treat us equally.' Essentially I become a slave without my consent, enslaved to the incompetence of the lesser man."
"You make slaves of people you conquer."
"We don't ask to be attacked, and what else do you do with an enemy when you have defeated them? Leave them free to attack you again?"
"Walk with them by a lakeside in the afternoon and talk philosophy and politics?"
I recovered as best I could, but she knew and I knew that she knew. "Show them in one way or another that our way is better, either by persuasion or direct and enforced example, so that they see it every day and come to know it is true. You can squander your whole life looking after other people’s needs and all you get is more needy people. Better if every individual spends their own life trying to better themselves, even though some will fail."
"And children and the old who cannot look after themselves."
I threw her a grin. "If they are your children, you look after them, but why would you want to look after everyone else's or try and make everyone a child to be looked after? It's a woman thing, to want to look after people. It's a man thing, to want them to look after themselves. The best thing you can do for them is teach them to look after themselves and then let them get on with it, and when I have children I will do that, but I won't look after anyone else's."
"Oh," she said.
"What is that?"
We had come to a place by the lake where a seemingly perpetual whirlpool roiled near the shore. I had been watching it for a little while as I talked and had lost interest in what was being said.
"What is what, cityman? That? There is a river underground, it runs fast and pulls water down into itself and away." She gestured from the lake to the river that I knew wasn't so very far away. "It runs to the river and breaks free in a torrent so powerful it has dug a trench in the far wall of the chasm."
I hadn't seen anything like it before, or read or heard of anything similar. "Well, no wonder there aren't many fish."
She very nearly laughed.
#
"Where have you been?"
Balaran was sitting with two other men in the middle of a fiesta. Kegs of beer had been found and opened; not randomly, I noted as we came up to Balaran's table and greeted him; one man was clearly in charge, hovering over his barrels and the fire-bed where meat was cooking, skewered on withy wands. Half a dozen young girls moved among the tables and standing crowds, soliciting orders. Well, I thought, if you put money in people’s pockets someone will find beer to sell to them.
There were a good number to the crowd, drinking and talking. Most, I noticed were men or couples with children. I guessed that most would therefore be folk of Learneth. Anista was looking around and her darkened expression told me the same story.
"Ah, Sumto," Balaran looked up at me with a genuine looking smile. "Please join me. I believe we are done here for the moment, if you wouldn't mind?"
His companions got to their feet without protest and smiled a greeting and farewell as they withdrew, leaving their chairs vacant. There weren't many chairs, and as there was some good cheer to be had, we might as well take some for ourselves, I thought. My escort took up station nearby. I was getting used to their presence and hardly noticed them.
A girl joined us before we had finished sitting down and took our order. Anista denied the desire but I ordered two beers anyway; if she didn't drink hers then all the more for me. No sense wasting it.
"So," I rephrased the question, "what have you been doing with yourself?"
"Healing people, mostly. Some
nasty burns. Other than that, investigating opportunities."
"Any luck?"
He shrugged. "Early days, Sumto. Early days. And you?"
I smiled. "Too early to tell," I said.
"Then we understand each other perfectly, as usual."
Anista was sitting stiffly in her chair and made no move to drink when the beer arrived. I frowned privately, letting no hint of the expression touch my face. If she was that unhappy, why was she still here? "It is the beginning of hope," I told her, gesturing around at the people. Some of their smiles looked almost genuine, relieved. Some of them even seemed pleased to see me.
"Where are my people?"
Oh. "The free people of Darklake are women and children," I tried to sound as though I were thinking it out, which I was. "Would they be comfortable here? Outnumbered by strangers that they must as yet see as intruders?"
"There have been deaths," she said. And now she looked at me, that anger back on her face and in her eyes where I was beginning to believe it belonged.
"Tomorrow I will begin judging the accused," I told her. "I will need you there, Balaran."
"Why?"
I blinked. It was obvious. "To cast a truth spell, obviously."
He shrugged heavy shoulders and smiled in regret. "I cannot do that, Sumto. I do not have a sorcerer’s loupe."
I closed my eyes and swore. Of course. They were not usually taken from the colleges, so he would not be carrying one and he would need a loupe to see the results of the spell, else it was useless.
"Oh," I said.
"You will have to rely on your own judgement," Balaran said.
So I would. I wasn't looking forward to it. Tomorrow I would sit in judgement; I would hear stories I would probably rather not hear, weigh evidence and pass sentence. Men would die at my hand, not in response to a direct attack, not in self-defence, but in sober cold appraisal of their deeds, as a dispassionate instrument of the state carrying out the state’s laws. Government, I reflected not for the first time, was a necessary evil, with equal accent on both words. And anyone who wanted the job should be automatically barred from it. One of the benefits of a broadly class-based system was that half the people who did the job didn't want to be there; it helped keep a check on the excesses of the other half who did want control over others. Personally, I couldn't offhand think of anything I wanted less.
The Invisible Hand Page 6