by K. J. Parker
They sat on the bank and watched for a while. The frantic pace had slowed down, and was holding steady, brisker than usual but realistic. Dorun looked around until she found Kunessin. He was shovelling for Muri, further upstream than anybody else. He looked slow compared with the others, but she soon realised that wasn’t the case. He looked slow because his movements were short, efficient, unhurried, the minimum effort and the maximum effect. There was something faintly disturbing, frightening even, about it. He reminded her of a predator, a lynx or a hawk: economy of effort, concentration of force. So different, she thought; quite unlike a human being. Certainly not a farmer. Maybe he’d been one once, but he could no more go back to it than he could be twelve years old again.
“I hope we do go home soon,” she said, her voice a little shaky. “After all, we’ve got everything we could possibly want. There’s no earthly reason to stay here.”
A week later, and they’d been forced to start another jar. It was already nearly a quarter full. The indentured men had asked four times for a slower pace, and Kunessin had got angry with them. Now they hardly spoke, not even to each other. Muri and Kudei had taken to sleeping on board the sloop, just in case anybody took it into their heads to use it for an early private evacuation. There was plenty of food now, but nobody was particularly hungry: too tired to eat, or simply not bothered. Menin hadn’t said a word to Muri for a week; she worked with Terpsi Cerauno - she was a first-rate panner - did her share of cooking and cleaning but barely spoke to the other girls, and slept in the corner of the main house furthest from the fire, wrapped up in six blankets and a discarded greatcoat of Kudei’s. Chaere, by contrast, had suddenly turned cheerful. She’d taken to panning in a big way, easily keeping pace with the men in both technique and stamina; ever so much better than weaving or embroidery, she told anybody who’d listen, and not all that much harder physically. True, she complained about how being soaked in water all day was playing havoc with her hands; she spent most of the evening massaging sheep’s-wool grease into them, from a pot of the stuff that had been intended for waterproofing boots. She got up early to wash her hair every morning, and spent half an hour every evening combing it. Clea argued with Kudei all the time, though nobody was quite sure what about, even though they couldn’t help hearing every word. Aidi and Kunessin had taken to wearing swords, catsplitters, on their belts under their coats. They took them off when they were in the river, but put them on again as soon as they stopped work. Aechmaloten went down with a fever, but nobody seemed interested in looking after him. A stomach bug did the rounds for a day and a half. A Company were disdainfully immune, but the women and the indentured men most decidedly weren’t. Kunessin refused to suspend work; and, as Alces pointed out, since they were working in a river, a perfect combination of latrine and bath, there really wasn’t anything to complain about, except possibly for those working downstream. Production wasn’t greatly affected, so that was all right.
“Maybe,” Menin said to Cerauno, as she tipped dust into the cloth bag he was holding for her, “they aren’t coming after all.”
Cerauno shook his head. “It hasn’t been that long,” he said. “Since the general got the letter, I mean. And he’s appealed, hasn’t he? I expect all that takes time.”
“I suppose,” Menin said. “Really, I wish it was all over and done with. Either we go or we stay, I mean. Hanging around like this . . .” She angled the pan to shift the last few speckles. “I’m worn out,” she said sadly. “This is hard work.”
Cerauno grinned. “You can see the general’s point, though,” he said. “Might as well make the most of it while we can. Every day extra we’re here means hundreds of thalers.”
“I guess.” Menin stepped back, and Cerauno nudged the blade of his shovel into the silt. “How are you feeling now? Any better?”
“Oh, I’m fine,” Cerauno said. “It must just’ve been one of those things that goes round. Surprised we haven’t had more like it, actually; this many of us, cooped up in one place.”
“There was that thing a while back,” Menin said vaguely. “You remember. And everyone said it was the wild mushrooms.”
He looked at her; something in her voice. “Oh, I don’t think anybody blamed you.”
“Yes they did.” She shot the words straight back at him, like a swordsman countering a failed lunge. “They all thought it was me.”
Cerauno didn’t reply, and neither of them spoke again until Menin needed the cloth bag once more. “Have you thought what you’re going to do,” she asked. “With your share?”
He shook his head. “Go home,” he replied. “Buy a place of my own. Maybe I’ll start a lumber mill. There isn’t one for miles where we live; people have to go right up the valley to Sharf and it’s a long way with wagons. Plenty of good timber up the top; old beech and holm oak mostly, and some birch on the south side. I don’t think I’m cut out for farming,” he added. “Too much work.”
She nodded. “A sawmill’s a good idea,” she said. “Is there a fast river where you are?”
“Oh yes.” He was smiling. “The Redwater. Comes down off the moor at a hell of a lick, specially in the spring. But if you dug leats and put in gates, you’d have good pressure all year round.”
“Sounds like you’ve figured it all out already,” she said gravely. “I thought you said you hadn’t thought about it.”
“I haven’t. Well, not really. It’s an idea I’ve had for years, actually, but I never thought I’d be able to do anything about it: too much money. Now, though . . . Well,” he went on, heaving the shovel out of the water, “we’ll wait and see what happens. No point getting all excited about it yet.”
Menin slopped off the excess water and began to twist. “I think a mill’s a really good idea,” she said. “People always want lumber, and it’s a real business if you’ve got to plank it up yourself by hand. I watched some men sawing out planks in a sawpit once; it took hours.”
“It’s bloody hard work,” Cerauno agreed. “Specially if you’re the one down in the pit. Working above your head, see. After a bit, you get this horrible cramp in your shoulders.”
She was looking into the pan, as if it was a mirror. “And once you’ve got the mill,” she said, “there’s all sorts of other things you can do as well. In the summer and autumn, I mean, when people aren’t building and don’t want timber. There’s a mill just outside town where I used to live. Winter and spring they sawed lumber, and in the autumn they put up a couple of big stones and ground everybody’s corn for them, so there was always something to do. I’m sure we could do that. I wish I could remember how the stones were rigged up. It wasn’t a big job to change them round, I know that.”
He’d heard the word, one little word. At first he’d assumed it was a mistake. Then he realised it wasn’t. We, she’d said. We could do that.
“Terpsi? I need the bag. Come on.”
He came to with a shudder, leaned the shovel against the bank, let it slip so it fell in the water; fished it out, stood it upright, fumbled for the bag and dropped it. Gold dust flopped out and heaped up round the roots of the grass, like snow.
“Terpsi . . .”
He stood quite still, suddenly unable to think what to do. She pushed past him and started scooping up dust with her fingers. “Sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right,” she said; patient, forgiving voice. “Hold the bag for me.” She was scrabbling in the soil with her fingernails, like a dog digging. “That’s most of it,” she said. “If you dig up that chunk of turf, we can put it in the pan and wash the dust out.”
He made his mind up. His instinct had been to pretend it hadn’t happened, but he knew that would only make things worse. He had no idea what he was going to say.
“Menin.”
She was busy with the pan, and didn’t look up. “Yes?”
“A moment ago.” He hesitated. Things were going to be bad whatever he did or said. “I think you said, when you were talking about grinding corn . . .”
He couldn’t think how to put it, but he couldn’t leave it now. “You made it sound like, well, we’d be running the mill together.”
Her head was bent over the pan. She was twisting it; strong wrists and forearms. The last stage of the movement made the muscles stand out.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That was what you said, wasn’t it?”
“Well?”
As if he was making a fuss about something that didn’t really matter. “Menin,” he said, and he could feel the fear in his voice. “Your husband . . .”
“Don’t worry about him,” she said.
“Menin . . .”
She stood up straight, turned and looked at him. “What about it?” she said.
“Menin, I can’t . . .”
An impatient look. No such word as can’t. “You know why he married me. Because they were all going to be farmers, and farmers need wives. But we’re all going home now, so they won’t need wives any more. I’ll just tell him, and that’ll be that.” She studied him for a moment, as if deciding whether to pick him or tread on him. “You’re not scared of him, are you?”
“That’s not the point,” he said awkwardly; he wasn’t a good liar. “It’s not right, Menin; you’re his wife.”
A hard look, scornful, disappointed. “You should’ve thought about that before, shouldn’t you?”
He felt as if he’d just put his foot through a rotten floorboard. He wanted to say: but nothing’s happened, I never . . . but he knew it’d just make things worse. In her mind, things were different, things had happened differently. Then she said, “Leave it all to me, I’ll deal with Muri,’ and he knew that something was badly wrong. They all thought it was me, she’d said; he could hear her voice in his head, aggrieved, because it wasn’t fair. Because . . . (she was waiting for the next shovelful of silt, impatient; quickly he stabbed the bright edge of the shovel into the red water) . . . because she’d thought about it, and decided not to, and still they’d blamed her, which really wasn’t fair at all, no way to reward her for being good and doing the right thing. So, if they were going to blame her anyway, why not do it?
For a moment, it crossed his mind that he could swing the shovel, while she was looking down at the pan; she wouldn’t see it coming. One swing; the thin edge would split her skull and she’d be dead, nipped in the bud, stop it before it gets out of control. And he’d explain, tell them all the truth; and of course, nobody would believe a word of it, and they’d hang him. So, that was no good; and the moment passed, and from then on he knew he wouldn’t be able to find that quick spurt of courage again. She’s going to murder her husband, he thought, and I can’t stop it, there’s nothing I can do about it. The only thing that might possibly keep it from happening would be if the soldiers came, right now, and pushed us all on to a ship.
He waited, as if he actually expected soldiers to jump up out of the clumps of briars. They didn’t. It was settled, then.
His fault.
They couldn’t actually be certain until they got back to the settlement and weighed up, but they were pretty sure it had been the best day yet. A fat bar in midstream, which Alces and Kudei had spent all day on; a deep pocket where a boulder had been washed away; nuggets the size of hazelnuts in an undercut hollow of the bank. They crowded round to empty their cups and bags and socks into Aidi’s sack; he made a show of buckling at the knees as he took the weight, and they laughed. The best day yet, almost certainly.
They didn’t talk much on the way back down the river, but it was an easy silence rather than a strained one. Someone started to whistle a tune. Aidi and Chaere were holding hands, which made Kudei smile; he nudged Alces and nodded at them, and Alces rolled his eyes.
It was dark by the time they reached the yard, which explained why they didn’t see the soldiers.
Chapter Fourteen
There were twenty-three of them: two platoons comprising twenty men-at-arms, each with a sergeant, making up a full-strength company and led by a second lieutenant. As politely as was possible in the circumstances, they herded the settlers into the main house. Five men and a sergeant took position in front of the door, while the rest fanned out round the walls. They wore half-armours of munition plate, with cabasset helmets, steel bucklers and Type Nineteen swords. They were quite obviously terrified.
(‘Stands to reason,” Alces muttered to Aidi. “After all, we outnumber them by nearly minus five to one.”)
There was also a civilian; a short, stocky man with curly grey hair and cheeks like a pig, who didn’t look the least bit scared. He cleared his throat and asked for their attention.
“My name,” he said, slowly and clearly, as though dictating notes to students, “is Garana Straton. I’m an assistant commissioner in the enforcement directorate of the department of public lands and property. Could I speak to General Teuche Kunessin?”
Dead silence, and Aidi could have sworn Kunessin hesitated before walking through the scrum towards him. He stopped seven feet away, and said, “I’m Kunessin.”
Straton looked at him, then down at a piece of paper in his hand; a description of Kunessin, Aidi guessed, to make sure the man in front of him wasn’t an impostor. Pause while he glanced through the paper, then he lifted his head and took another long look. “General Kunessin,” he said, “I have here a warrant for your arrest and immediate removal to the mainland. You have the right to remain silent and to be represented by counsel.”
“No thank you,” Kunessin said quietly. “What’s the charge?”
Straton shuffled the papers in his hand until he found the one he wanted. “Unlawful occupation of government land,” he said. “Unlawful damage to public property. Unauthorised use of military stores, equipment and facilities. Making unauthorised landfall at a restricted naval installation. Failure to secure appropriate permits before crossing a restricted maritime area. You are not obliged to enter a plea at this time; however, a guilty plea and early co-operation with the authorities may be taken into account in sentencing.”
Kunessin looked at him, as though trying to decide if he was real. “This is all nonsense,” he said. “I’ve lodged an appeal.”
Straton nodded. “Your appeal in the eviction proceedings has been noted. Those proceedings are, however, in the civil jurisdiction and have no direct bearing on the criminal charges you now face.” He cleared his throat, looked quickly round the room, then went on: “You and your associates will be shipped to the mainland first thing in the morning. Until then, nobody is to leave this building without my express permission. Anybody granted such permission will be closely attended by two guards.” He paused for a moment, then raised his voice a little and continued: “I must ask all of you to keep away from the door and walls. Any attempt to leave and any disturbance will be met with appropriate force.” He paused again, said, “Thank you for your attention,” and took a step backwards; two soldiers immediately stood in front of him, covering his retreat to the far corner. Apart from Straton, everybody in the room was perfectly still and quiet, watching Kunessin; and Aidi thought: they don’t know about the gold. This is all about something else, and they’ve got no idea what’s in the two big jars.
Kunessin was moving again, and Aidi felt his muscles tense (not at his command; it was as though the brain controlling his movements was Kunessin’s, not his own. Ah, he thought. Back in the army again). The soldiers reacted too; they seemed to shrink away without actually moving, a sort of speeded-up desiccation. “Commissioner,” Kunessin said; his parade-ground voice. “Can we discuss this in private?”
Straton slowly turned round. He was frowning slightly. “I don’t see that there’s anything to discuss.”
And then Kunessin seemed to grow, just as the soldiers had shrunk. “I’m sure we can think of something,” he said. He wasn’t smiling.
Straton was thinking. He reached a decision. “If you like,” he said, and raised his left hand, with the thumb folded inwards. Four soldiers stepped away from the wall and closed in round him, like
a glove round a hand. “Outside?”
Kunessin nodded, and Straton and his guards advanced through the room towards him. Two guards took position behind him (Aidi saw him not-move, a deliberate act in response to the tactical disadvantage), and then Straton led the way.
It was cold outside, and Straton had taken off his coat. Kunessin saw him tense up against the chill. “Well?”
“Commissioner,” Kunessin said. “What the hell’s going on?”
Straton took a moment to reply; choosing his persona like someone deciding which shoes to wear. When he spoke, he sounded almost human. “The government needs this facility, I’m afraid. You’ve got to go.”
“What for?”
Not quite so human: “I can’t tell you that.”
“Yes you can. I’m a general.”
“Retired.”
“But still on the active list.”
Clearly Straton hadn’t been told that. He frowned.
“Which means,” Kunessin went on, “I’m not subject to civilian criminal jurisdiction. If you want to bring charges against me, they’d have to come through the provost marshal’s office, and I’d need to see a proper warrant. Without which,” he added smoothly, “I’d be within my rights to resist arrest, as a matter of prerogative. Well?” he snapped. “Is that right?”
Straton thought about it, then nodded.
“Good,” Kunessin said. “Glad we’ve got that straight. Now,” he went on, and his voice was softer and richer. “What’s all this really about?”
Straton changed; a complete metamorphosis, from head to foot. Now he was one important, put-upon man talking to another. “They want Sphoe for a dockyard,” he said. “At least, the navy does, but the joint chiefs don’t; they want to expand the base at Krinoisin, which means it’d come under the army, and the army could control the budget.”
Kunessin nodded briefly; a tiny movement, like a close-in stab.
“To cut a long story short,” Straton went on, “Central Command refused to authorise repossession, so the only way the navy can get Sphoe is if it’s forfeited land following a criminal conviction. Then it’ll pass to the Treasury—”