by K. J. Parker
Even with his eyes shut, he could feel Chaere’s horrified shock at that suggestion. He savoured it for a moment, then answered his own question. “Because,” he said, “stupid bloody Teuche wouldn’t take it. Missing the point, he’d say. Probably get offended with me for offering and not talk to me for a week.”
“Quite right too,” Chaere said quickly. “Aidi, have you any idea what that land’d be worth? You can’t just go giving—”
“So instead,” Aidi went on, “we stay here. Which should be all right, because we’ve found the richest gold strike in history. Lucky us. We’ve dug enough of the stuff out of there in a few months to make us all comfortable for life, even if we share it with the bloody servants. So, we go home, sell it, live happily ever after. Do we hell.”
“You should talk to him,” Chaere said. “Insist. Get the others on your side, then he’ll have to listen.”
Aidi turned on her, so fast she didn’t have time to flinch. “You don’t know anything about us,” he said, quiet and savagely intense. “You don’t think we came here because we wanted to, do you? Of course we didn’t. But Teuche . . .” He sighed, and leaned back in the chair. “Teuche gave us a direct order. And if he wants to stay here, we stay.” He shifted, as though the chair had suddenly become uncomfortable. “I just wish he’d make up his mind what he really wants,” he said. “Then we could see to it that he gets it. That’s all we want out of life.”
Nothing she could have said could possibly have been more informative than the silence that followed, but he really wasn’t interested. He closed his eyes again. He’d just paid four hundred thalers for that darkness. He waited until he’d heard her heels pecking furiously at the floorboards, from the fireplace right across to the door, before opening them again.
Money, he thought; one way or another, it was all about money with Teuche. Losing the farm for want of a few dozen thalers had screwed him up so tight he’d never recovered. In the army, he’d built up an immense fortune - understandable; so much money, security, he could never possibly want for anything ever again - but as soon as he leaves the service, what does he do but spend it all, wildly, recklessly, stupidly (and Teuche Kunessin had never been stupid), almost as though he was desperate to get rid of it, like a thief with his loot hearing the voices of the watch at the door. Well, he’d done that, for reasons best known to himself, and then saw what happened: more money, an even more immense fortune, and he’d never seen Teuche look so lost - so scared - in all the years he’d known him. It reminded him (he had to think to capture the memory) of a dog they’d had once, that would insist on finding dead, decaying birds and rats and bringing them into the house, sitting at your feet during dinner and offering them to you, a worshipper sacrificing to its god. So: Teuche tries to get rid of the money, throws it away, but the dog keeps bringing it back. There was something in that, but just now he couldn’t quite see what it was.
He closed his eyes, to help himself concentrate. Teuche got a huge amount of money while he was in the army. Well, that wasn’t anything unusual. There were opportunities everywhere: misappropriation of stores, corruption in the allotment of supply contracts, drawing the pay of dead men - there were whole regiments on the paymasters’ books that didn’t actually exist. A man could make a fortune in the army if he set his mind to it. The thing was, though, that Teuche hadn’t ever wanted to be rich - as in luxury, excess, ostentation, conspicuous consumption. Teuche wore his coats till they frayed apart, ate bread and cheese for preference, whined if the bed was too soft, because it hurt his back. Some people wanted money because of the power it gave them, but Teuche had been a general. If he desperately wanted money, it was because there was something he wanted to buy; which, apparently, was exactly what he’d done.
Aidi frowned. He didn’t approve of dishonesty. Shrewdness, yes, but cheating, lying for money, made him feel slightly sick. And now they had so much money it really didn’t matter, and Teuche was thoroughly miserable, and scared.
Scared; what of? Aidi twisted in his chair. It was like when he’d lost something, and he knew exactly where it should be, but when he went to look for it, it wasn’t there. Scared of losing the gold. Rule that out straight away. If that was the case, he’d evacuate immediately, sell what they’d already dug out of the river, be done with it. Scared of losing the land. So what? With the money, he could buy all the land he could possibly want. Scared of losing his four best friends. Aidi slowed his thoughts down so he could keep pace with them. Closer to the mark; something that money could-n’t buy. But the simple fact remained that when the war ended, they’d split up and deliberately stayed out of each other’s way; Teuche still in the service, the rest of them back in Faralia but scarcely ever meeting, as though by common unspoken agreement. True, all of them (except Teuche) had pretty much wasted their time since they got home; Fly and Muri barely getting by, Kudei stuck on the farm, himself playing at being a shopkeeper when by rights he should’ve founded a mercantile empire, if that had really been what he wanted to do. That could be explained by a glib generalisation: A Company, the biggest bunch of underachievers the world had ever seen. Then go on to argue that men who’d seen and done what they had simply couldn’t be bothered with the trivial business of peace and order, and as for money . . .
Money, again. He tried to clear it out of his mind, but instead, a fragment of a pattern snagged his attention. Money; they’d had money in their pockets when they came home from the war. Kudei had given his share to his brothers, who’d contrived to evaporate it on money-spinning schemes that fell through, improvements that went bad, land that turned out to be worthless. Alces had wasted his by sheer fecklessness; Aidi wasn’t entirely sure what Muri had done with his, but it hadn’t taken him long to get rid of it all. For his own part, he’d set up his shop, gone through the motions of running his business, not really bothered, but when the time had come to sell up, he’d still doubled his original stake, making him a wealthy man.
That brick wall again. Missing the point. Money in their pockets when they came back from the war; in his case, enough to buy the shop. His share; his equal share. Something to do with that, but he still couldn’t quite see what it was.
Two days after the ship left, Kunessin called a general meeting. The government, he told them, had served notice to quit. He did not intend to comply. He had lodged a formal appeal, and was confident that the notice would be withdrawn. For the time being, however, the threat had to be taken seriously. Given the possibility, however unlikely, that they could be evicted, it was essential that they increase production, to get out as much gold as possible before the government took action to enforce the notice. Since gold could only be extracted in daylight, everybody - himself and the women included - would work in the river from dawn to dusk; other tasks such as cooking, washing clothes and so forth would have to be done after nightfall, by lamp- or firelight. He was working with the other proprietors to plan an emergency evacuation, should one be necessary. That was all.
“Emergency evacuation,” Alces murmured, as they walked up the river to the workings. “Sounds very efficient and reassuring. What did you have in mind? Swimming?”
“There’s the sloop,” Kunessin replied.
“We can’t all get in the sloop,” Kudei said. “Eight of us, maximum.”
“Ten,” Kunessin said. “Us five, and the girls, and the jar.”
Kudei rolled his eyes. “It’ll sink like a stone.”
“No it won’t. It’ll be low in the water, but it can do it.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve discussed this with the servants,” Aidi said. “Let me know when you do, I’ll be interested to see how you go about it.”
“I wasn’t planning on doing that,” Kunessin said, looking straight ahead.
“All right,” Alces said. “So what are you going—?”
“I’ll tell them the ship’s coming back early,” Kunessin said. “And then we’ll have it stand by on the other side of the island, just in case we need
it.”
“Where?” Muri objected. “There’s nowhere on the far side a ship could—”
“They don’t know that, and they’ll be too busy working to go and look for themselves. It’ll be all right,” he went on. “If the government sends troops, they’ll just round them up and ship them to the mainland. No earthly reason why they shouldn’t be perfectly civilised about it.”
Aidi nodded. “Fine,” he said. “Then what? Do we all meet up in a bar somewhere and have a grand sharing-out ceremony?”
Kunessin frowned. “Not in a bar,” he said. “That’d be rather public for my liking.”
“You’re going to share it with them, though. That’s the plan, is it?”
Kunessin looked straight at him, like an archer at a target. “Of course,” he said. “The net proceeds, less our original investment. That’s what we agreed.”
Chaere didn’t like panning for gold. She didn’t like standing in water, she refused to handle a shovel and she complained bitterly about the ache in her elbows and wrists from turning the pan.
“Are you listening?” she said, as Aidi stabbed the shovel into the silt. “I’m in pain, damn you, I can’t do this any more.”
“No such word as ‘can’t’,” Aidi replied absently. “Stop whining and get on with it.”
She threw the pan down, splashing water all over Aidi’s knees. “No,” she snapped. “That’s it, I’m going home.”
She didn’t move. Aidi yawned and retrieved the pan before it could float away. “For one thing,” he said, “you’re doing it wrong. You’re turning the pan like you’re trying to wring its neck. Also, if you just let it rest on the surface, the water takes the weight out of it. I did show you, but you always have to know best.”
He shoved the pan at her; she grabbed it in self-defence. “I shouldn’t have to be doing this,” she hissed. “It’s man’s work. I’m not a man.”
“Ah,” Aidi said mildly. “That’d explain a lot.” Before she could get out of the way, he scooped up a shovelful of silt and deposited it in the pan. She scowled at him, then started twisting it viciously. “Try it like I told you,” Aidi said. “Just once, for fun.”
She carried on twisting, harder than before. Aidi watched her for a few seconds, then said: “They can do it. The rest of the girls, and the servants. If they can manage it, you can.”
She gave him a scowl that would’ve stripped bark off a log. “I don’t want to do it,” she said.
With a flick of the shovel blade, Aidi tipped the pan neatly out of her hands. “Fine,” he said. “Go and sit on the bank, where they can all see you. I’ll explain you’re too feeble to work.”
Very slowly, she stooped down and picked the pan out of the water. “Tell me again,” she said. “This time clearly, so I can understand.”
Half an hour later, she’d got it down to a fine art, as he knew she would. “It’s like peeling apples,” she said. “You’ve just got to keep turning it and turning it. Nothing to it, really.”
Aidi levered out another spit of silt and stood up, letting the water drain off the blade. “Told you,” he said.
“Once I’d figured it out for myself,” she went on. “The way you tried to show me was hopeless. That’s the trouble with you: you make everything much harder than it needs to be.”
Aidi grinned at her. “Is that right?” he said.
“Yes. Come on, the pan’s empty; don’t just stand there.”
“Sorry,” Aidi said humbly. “Oops,” he added, as he spilt muddy water off the edge of the blade down the front of her dress. “Not looking what I was doing.”
An hour later she said, “I’m going to stop now, I need a rest.”
“Fair enough,” Aidi conceded. “We haven’t done too badly. You can sit on that rock there.”
She sat and watched him as he picked up the pan and tipped the silt into it one-handed from the shovel. He was quicker and more productive on his own, of course, but that wasn’t the point.
“So,” she said, “what’s Kunessin going to do? Really?”
Aidi shrugged. “Ask him yourself,” he said.
“I’m asking you. You’re his best friend.”
He didn’t bother to correct her. “You heard what he said. He’s appealed against the notice to quit, and he’s confident—”
“I can remember what he said without you reciting it for me. What are these evacuation plans you’re supposed to be making?”
Aidi paused, looking down into the pan. “We make a run for it in the sloop,” he said.
“The five of you?”
“The ten of us.”
“And the gold?”
“No, we leave that behind for the government, with a bloody great big ribbon tied round it. Yes, and the gold.”
She scowled at him. “That stupid little boat . . .”
“It’ll be fine.”
She shrugged. “What about the servants?”
“The government’ll give them a ride back to the mainland. Saves us making arrangements.”
“Do they know—?”
“They’ll be told the ship’s come back early,” he interrupted her irritably, “and it’s anchored off the other side of the island, out of sight.”
“Will they believe that?”
“Teuche reckons they will.” He started to work the pan, but his usual dexterity seemed to have eluded him; he slopped silt over the rim, and swore. “Anyway, once they’re ashore, we all meet up somewhere and share out the takings, and that’s that. We all go home.”
“Really.” A flat tone of voice; he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. “This appeal.”
“Waste of time.”
“So we’re definitely going home? As soon as the government—”
“Yes.”
She stood up. “Here,” she said, “give me that, you’re making a complete mess of it.”
Dorun and Enyo had tossed a coin, and Dorun had lost. That meant she got the shovel.
“You’re good at this,” Dorun said, after they’d been working for a while.
Enyo nodded. “If they can do it,” she said, “so can I.” She grinned. “I grew up with three elder brothers,” she said. “Being too feeble to join in wasn’t an option.”
“I might have guessed,” Dorun said. Then, after a while, “They’re back home, then. Your brothers.”
She shook her head. “They were killed in the war,” she said. Dorun mumbled something appropriate.
“It’s all right,” Enyo replied. “They were too young to join up, so they lied about their ages. Gamous and Pinein were twins, they were seventeen, and Bia was very tall for sixteen. Besides, by that stage they weren’t fussy. Their ship sank, taking them over there. Stupid, really.”
“I lost my cousin Zeuge in the war,” Dorun said. “He was a sergeant in the Sixteenth.”
Enyo frowned. “Weren’t they . . . ?”
Dorun smiled. “That’s right,” she said. “The big battle right at the end of the war. Teuche and our lot were there, of course. He told me about it, or at least he started to, and then I made him stop. Not that Zeuge and I were close or anything. Anyway, that was the battle where Zeuge was killed. Him and a lot of other men, of course.” She furrowed her brow, as though a loose end had just dropped into place. “They never did figure out how it happened,” she said. “They think somebody must’ve told the enemy where they were headed; someone on our side, I mean. But I talked to some of the men who’d been in Zeuge’s unit, and they told me it had all been a deadly secret; they didn’t know where they were being sent, not even the junior officers. So if there was a traitor, it had to be someone pretty high up.” She shook her head. “I asked Teuche what he thought, but he didn’t want to talk about it. You can understand that, I suppose.”
Enyo shrugged. “You’d have thought,” she said. “Thouridos isn’t quite like that. Sometimes he’s all uptight about it, gets blazing mad if I ask him anything about the war. Other times the problem’s getting him to shut
up. I know he thinks about it all the time. More since your Teuche came back, I reckon. There’s something about it that really bothers him, and that’s what makes him clam up. Mind you, I think he’s like that anyway: up one moment and down the next. He’d have been like it even if he hadn’t been to the war. Oh damn,” she added, as she slopped mud over her sleeve. “And I was just thinking how easy it is.”
“We’re not doing too badly, for beginners,” Dorun replied. “I’d like to’ve seen how they got on, the first time they tried it.”
“Mud everywhere, probably,” Enyo replied. “Only they’d rather die than admit it. It’s no good, I’ve got to stop for a bit. My wrists are killing me.”
Dorun clicked her tongue sympathetically. “Would you like me to take over for a bit?”
“Not likely.” Enyo nodded at the shovel. “You were brought up on a farm, I suppose.”
“Is it that obvious?”
Enyo sighed. “When I was seventeen they wanted me to marry a farmer. Good bit older than me, but perfectly nice, I wouldn’t have minded at all. But then I thought about mucking out cow stalls and killing chickens and shearing sheep and all that constant, never-ending handling food, and that was that. My parents got really upset with me.”
“It’s not so bad,” Dorun said with a smile. “It’s like everything, you get used to it.”
“Not me,” Enyo said firmly. “Cleaning and washing and mending and three meals a day is one thing, but I draw the line at field work, or anything that involves pulling the guts out of something dead. I know about farmers’ wives. Their hair always stinks of blood.”
Dorun laid the shovel down on the bank. “We haven’t done too badly so far,” she said, lifting up the pottery cup they were using to hold the gold dust. It sparkled as she moved it. “How much do you reckon we’ve got in there? Five thalers?”
“Easily,” Enyo replied, peering. “Closer to ten.” She lifted her head and grinned. “That’s not bad,” she said. “I never earned five thalers before.”