by K. J. Parker
Silence again. Then Kudei said: “You reckon you could swing that?”
“If it comes to it, yes,” Kunessin replied. “For one thing, I know the general staff. They don’t just tear up legal documents, they’re far too legalistically minded. They may well want the gold works, but they don’t give a stuff about the land. And if the worst comes to the worst, I know where the bodies are buried at central command. Nobody’s going to want to pick a fight to the death with me; they know me too well. Which is more than you clowns do, if you think I came here without proper insurance.”
Muri was nodding. Alces rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger, an affectation he’d developed over many years. Kudei sat down and stared hard at his fingernails.
“Aidi?” he said.
Aidi didn’t reply for a while, until Kunessin gently said, “Well?”
“I don’t know,” Aidi said. “I’d have thought the hangings’d be just the pretext they’d need to clear us out of the picture completely, and then there’d be no question of disputed property rights. It’s what I’d do, in their shoes.”
“Just as well you didn’t try staying on in the service, then,” Kunessin replied. “Central command doesn’t do things like that. Too scared of whose fault it’d turn out to be if something went wrong. Play it by the book’s their style; that way nobody gets in trouble.”
“Maybe,” Aidi said. “But the bastards running the service when I was in wouldn’t have passed up an opportunity like a river full of gold, and I don’t suppose very much of that gold would’ve found its way through to the Treasury. You talk about them going by the book and respecting legal documents, Teuche. Maybe so. Maybe they’ve read through their copy of the transfer deed and seen where there’s no reservation of mineral rights. Which makes us a loose end.”
Kunessin smiled. “So we do a legal assignment,” he said. “Give them the rights, of our own free will; our duty as loyal citizens. Can’t say fairer than that.”
Kudei frowned. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said. “Giving up all that money without a fight. Isn’t that a sure way to make them suspect something?”
“You haven’t been listening,” Kunessin replied irritably. “They couldn’t care less about this island. They don’t want it. All it meant to them was the trivial cost of keeping a guard here, which they didn’t want to pay. If they find out about the gold strike, all right, they’ll want the gold.” He raised both hands in the air: mock surrender. “We give it to them, and keep the land. Situation back to normal. One thing they won’t want to do is make any more work for themselves than absolutely necessary.” He paused to draw breath, then looked straight at Aidi. “What do you think?” he said.
Aidi let out a long, sad sigh. “Fine,” he said. “Why not? Just promise me we’ll send the servants away as soon as the ship gets here. Provided you do that, I’ll go along with anything you want.”
The next day was the most productive so far. Quite early, an indentured man by the name of Calceo dug into a deep pocket of silt trapped between a tree root and a large stone. The silt was so rich, the gold could be seen sparkling in it as he shovelled it into the pan. He started yelling, as if something was attacking him; Kudei dashed over and saw the gleam.
“Over here,” he called out. “All of you.”
The pocket proved to be deeper than they’d first imagined. It was soon clear what had happened: a flood current had shifted the stone, and the cavity it left behind had trapped silt as it washed down and got caught in the eddy caused by the root. Further floods, common enough in winter, had lifted away the sand and sludge, but the gold’s weight had made it sink, so that in effect the river had already done most of the work of panning for them. As pan after pan came up gold-plated, the pace of work quickened; it was as if everybody expected someone to come along and stop them, and they wanted to get as much out as they could before that happened. As they dug deeper, they started finding nuggets, ranging in size from grape pips to acorns. The sock was full well before noon; Aidi pulled off his left boot, and they filled that by mid-afternoon. The pocket gave out just as it was starting to get dark; white clay from the river bed was coming up on the cutting edges of the shovels, but no colour. They gave it up by unspoken unanimous consent, but instead of washing off their tools and heading home, the entire party stood or sat round on the bank, staring into the water. They were worn out, of course; they’d been working all day at a frantic rate, without noticing the fatigue slowly building. Partly, though, there was an uneasy feeling of a ceasefire about to run out, one that could-n’t be renewed because of some technicality of the rules of war, although none of them wanted it to end.
“A couple more like that and we can all go home,” someone said; one of the indentured men, but impossible to say who in the tightening darkness. Nobody replied. Hardly a word had been spoken all day.
Eventually Aidi made a move. He walked awkwardly, with only one boot, cradling the other against his chest, like a proud father carrying a baby. Aechmaloten carried the sock, and if anybody noticed that this was the first time an indentured man had brought gold back from the river, nobody commented on it.
“You know,” Alces said quietly to Aidi as they headed the procession back along the bank, “it seems a bit feeble. Teuche’s approach, I mean.”
Aidi took a long time to reply. “Picking a fight with the government . . .” he said.
“Oh, sure,” Alces said. “Couldn’t agree more. Except it’s there in the transfer deed: we’ve got the mineral rights. If they’d wanted to keep them out, all they had to do was write in an extra clause.”
“You’re forgetting,” Aidi said quietly. “Teuche drafted the bloody thing.”
“I thought he used the standard form of words.”
“Maybe.” Aidi’s shrug dismissed the point as unimportant. “Makes no odds. We can fight them in court or on the beach, we’ll lose either way. They’re bigger than us.”
“A lot of people thought that,” Alces said quietly. “Come on, Aidi, since when were we scared of a fight?”
“Me personally? I was always scared.”
Alces frowned, as though that was the last thing he’d been expecting to hear. “It just seems a bit of a shame,” he said, “quitting, if there’s more where that lot came from. Just letting them come here and take it . . .”
“I guess it depends on how much money you actually feel you need,” Aidi said, in a neutral voice. “Got to draw the line somewhere, unless you want to spend the rest of your life here.”
“Fine,” Alces snapped. “Easy for you, your family always had money. Some of us—”
“That’s not the point,” Aidi said, and his voice was a door slamming. “For crying out loud, Fly,” he went on, his voice soft and worried. “We both of us left home when we were kids, and since then—” He broke off, then started again. “Money’s the least of our worries,” he said. “If it goes that way, by the time we have to give this lot away, there’ll be plenty for everyone. We’ll be gentlemen of leisure, sipping wine in a walled garden.”
Alces stared at him, then burst out laughing. “I bloody well hope not,” he said. “We’d all be dead from boredom inside of a week.”
“You know what I mean,” Aidi replied, good-humoured-offended. “Besides, when has Teuche ever steered us wrong?”
They saw the lights as they rounded the river bend, where the current had carved an oxbow out of the soft soil. Yellow light streamed out of both doors of the main house; but the doors were always kept shut.
“Wait here,” Aidi called out to the indentured men. “Muri, Fly, Kudei.”
As the four of them approached the back door, they could hear Kunessin’s voice; he was talking much louder than usual, not shouting, projecting his voice so he’d be heard from outside. That and the open doors meant trouble. Aidi crept forward until he could hear.
“It says it here, in clause seven,” Kunessin was saying, “and again in clause ten, look. No mention of any rights of red
emption.”
Another voice, a man’s, unfamiliar, much softer. Aidi couldn’t catch the words.
“If that’s what it’s supposed to mean, there’d need to be explicit wording,” Kunessin thundered. “You can’t just imply a pre-emption clause. I know, you’re not a lawyer, and why should you take my word for it? Fine. Go back, get your lawyers to take a look at it, and then we can have a sensible discussion. At the moment, by your own admission . . .”
Aidi had had enough. He waved the other three to join him, then sent Muri and Kudei round the front, while he and Alces came in through the back.
Two men in junior officers’ uniform were standing with their backs to the fire; they looked like they’d stopped there because they couldn’t retreat any further without getting burnt. Kunessin was confronting them, looking very much like a schoolmaster telling off a pair of troublemakers. The women were all down the far end of the house, watching the show with undisguised fascination. Fair enough; they’d probably never seen Kunessin in full flight before.
“Teuche,” Aidi said.
“There you are,” Kunessin replied without looking round. “I was wondering where the hell you’d got to. Allow me to introduce some guests. Didn’t catch their names,” he went on, overriding one of the officers, who’d tried to speak. “Apparently they’re from the government. They seem to think we’ve got no right to this island.”
Aidi heard a soft intake of breath at his side. He said, “You’ve shown them the transfer deed.”
Kunessin held up the familiar sheet of paper. “They admit it’s a perfectly valid document,” he said. “They maintain there’s no record of it back in the archive, which I know for a fact isn’t the case.”
“We’re not disputing that,” one of the officers said; he sounded very unhappy. “It’s just that we’ve got our orders, and—”
“They insist on taking possession of the island,” Kunessin went on. “They’ve given us notice to quit.”
Muri made a sort of soft growling noise (a bit melodramatic, Kunessin thought, but it made the two officers shuffle back a further inch or so). “Is that right?” Kudei said.
“There’s no specific time frame,” one of them mumbled. “We just . . .”
They know who we are, Aidi thought; or, more to the point, who we were. He felt sorry for them. “The hell with that,” he said briskly. “We’ve put our life savings into this. We’re not just going to walk away.”
“I’m sure compensation . . .” The elder of the two - they both looked like children - caught Kunessin’s eye and subsided at once. Muri and Kudei were advancing up the hall, so Aidi began to move as well. They’ve been to the College, he thought, same as us; they know about tactics. A classic encircling movement, even in miniature, wasn’t hard to recognise. He could almost smell the fear, and it made him want to grin.
“Clause seven of the transfer deed clearly states . . .” Kunessin launched into a massive, lumbering legal exposition, the sort of thing you really needed to concentrate on, or you’d lose the plot straight away. Not something you could easily grasp while watching four feral humans advancing on you from all cardinal points. The two wretched officers were frozen, leaning slightly back, desperately trying to resist the urge to look round to see what was happening behind them, or simply to run. Abruptly, Kunessin broke off his tirade, and barked, “Well?”
The younger officer tried to pull himself together. It was a splendid effort, in the circumstances. “If I could just talk to my colleague for a moment,” he mumbled.
“Of course.” Kunessin made an overdone hand gesture: calling off the dogs. “Aidi, can I have a word?”
The other three stayed in position; it was just like old times, no need to give orders.
“This isn’t so good,” Aidi said quietly, his head turned away so the officers couldn’t read his lips.
“It’s not so bad,” Kunessin replied. “They don’t know about the gold, for one thing. Send Kudei up to tell the men to stay put.”
Aidi nodded. “What’s the plan?”
“For now, get rid of them. While we’ve got them here, get Muri to take a look at their ship. I haven’t seen it. I don’t suppose they’ve got back-up, but let’s be sure.”
Aidi said: “About that. There’ll be food on the ship.”
He could see Kunessin hadn’t thought of that. “What do you reckon?”
“Remember the trouble our sloop had,” he said softly. “Ships sink. Maybe they never got here.”
Kunessin thought for a moment. “They’ll send another,” he said. “We’d have to tidy up.”
“Load it with rocks and scuttle it in the bay,” Aidi said.
“And those two, and the crew.” Kunessin frowned. “No, we’d better not.”
“All right. What about their stores, though? We need them.”
Again Kunessin paused for thought. “Let’s not make trouble for ourselves. The men’d better camp out tonight; tell Kudei to keep them out of the way till these two’ve gone. They’ll understand why. I’ll write a letter for them to take back to Command. I should be able to buy us some time.” He paused, drew breath. “Really, it’s not so bad. We knew there’d be something like this to deal with at some point. Sooner’s better than later, if you ask me.”
Aidi nodded, then added, “We found a big nest of colour today; nuggets, too. Best day so far, ironically.”
Kunessin looked bothered by that. “Tell Kudei and Muri what to do,” he said. Then he advanced on the two officers, who looked up sharply as he approached. “Well?” he demanded.
“We think it’d be best if we went back to the mainland for further orders,” the elder man said in a high voice.
“Just what I was about to suggest,” Kunessin replied. “You can take a letter for me.” His frown tightened. “Do you want to sleep here, or on your ship?”
“We don’t want to put you out,” the younger man squeaked. “We’ll go back to the ship.”
“As you like. Just hold on here while I write the letter.”
He took his time over it, to give Muri a chance to carry out his orders, though that wasn’t quite so important now. Those two weren’t going to try and take the settlement by force, even if they had the numbers. He’d never seen two men more scared, not even in a battle. On balance, he took that as a compliment.
Chapter Thirteen
When Clea Andron was fifteen years old, she’d fallen in love. Typically, both of herself and her family, she hit upon the worst possible man to fall in love with. He was ten years older than her, a soldier, a deserter, on the run, primarily interested in food and somewhere to hide, with sex a very poor second and romance nowhere. As a result he was a half-hearted, rushed, preoccupied lover (not that she knew any better), but she still managed to get pregnant, a condition which started to make itself noticeable at almost exactly the time as the military proctors caught up with him. Just in case the situation wasn’t miserable enough, he chose to make things worse. When the proctors’ men arrived at the derelict lime kiln where he’d been hiding, there was a brief, messy fight, in the course of which he somehow contrived to smash in a soldier’s skull with the poll of the axe Clea had brought him for splitting up kindling. The proctors’ men took the axe to the blacksmith, who by sheer fluke recognised it, because of a flaw in the weld between the two halves of the head. He’d made it for a customer who’d rejected it because of the flaw, and Clea’s father had taken it off his hands at half-price. When the soldiers asked him about it, Stethessi Andron told them the axe had been stolen from the woodshed; anybody could have taken it, of course, but the date was significant. When Clea heard that the soldiers had been round asking questions about an axe, she panicked and tried to poison herself with sycamore pods. She made a mess of that, too, but (as her mother told the neighbours) at least it got rid of the baby.
Everybody knew, of course; and since it was common knowledge, everybody assumed that Kudei Gaeon knew about it when he agreed to marry Clea. They assumed w
rong. The other false assumption they made was that Clea tried to kill herself because of the baby, and for fear of being arrested for giving the deserter the murder weapon. In that respect, they underestimated her. It was the news, casually imparted by the soldiers, that the deserter had been hanged the previous week, rather than the conventional shame or fear of the law, that pushed her over the edge.
“You’re mad,” Clea said. “You must be out of your heads, all of you.”
Kudei turned away. When Clea started yelling, he’d learned to ignore her until she stopped and calmed down. It was how you dealt with fractious livestock, and apparently it worked with women, too.
“That’s the decision,” he said to the wall. “Not up to me.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Clea persisted. “There’s a fortune in that river, you said so yourself. You can’t just let the army take it away from you.”
“We’ll keep what we’ve already got,” Kudei replied. “That’ll be plenty. With my share, we can buy more land, really get the farm on its feet again.”
Because he wasn’t looking at her, he didn’t see the expression on her face. “You’re going to give it all to your stupid brothers.”
“Not give,” Kudei replied.
Clea made a sort of half-swallowed shrieking noise. “For God’s sake!” she yelled at him. “Even you couldn’t be that stupid. Look what they did with your money you brought home from the war.”
“We were unlucky,” Kudei said. “Just bad luck. It could have happened to anybody.”
“In six months it’ll all be gone,” Clea said. “All gone and fuck all to show for it, just like the last time. And I’ll be stuck there on that pathetic little farm for the rest of my life, with you.”