by K. J. Parker
Once they were back out in the street, Fly said, “Don’t look at me. My dad threw me out when I was fifteen, never darkened my door again, so we can’t go there.”
“We’ll go to the farm,” Kudei said. “You never know, maybe they’ve all pissed off too. Fingers crossed, right?”
No such luck. The Gaeon boys were still there, still more or less the same, except that three of them were now married; tidy, sullen women, rarely seen and never heard, who made up three beds in the barn for Kudei’s army friends and gave them their dinner in the kitchen. The next morning, they appeared to have forgotten that Kudei had ever been away. It was, as Fly pointed out, scarcely a hero’s welcome, but it was better than sleeping in a ditch. The day after that, the remainder of A Company split up, for the time being. Fly went into town for a drink and didn’t surface again for two years. Muri was unlucky in his investments. Aidi bought the old Proiapsen house under a false name, started a business from scratch and prospered hugely, somehow never finding the time to write to his father and let him know he was back. Kudei worked on the farm and quickly became invisible.
The next time A Company met was at Fly’s wedding, three years after their return. The first thing they asked each other was: heard from Teuche lately? In each case, the answer was the same.
Eventually, Aidi Proiapsen wrote to his father; or at least, to his father’s agent. He wanted detailed figures for the family’s speculations in war salvage.
First things first. Aidi and Muri buried Dorun’s body in a small hollow near the stock pen, out of sight of the house. The women hung round while they filled in the grave. Nobody said anything.
Kunessin, Kudei and Alces, meanwhile, hurried across the island to the inlet where the sloop was moored. Getting the jars off the ship was much easier, a simple matter of rolling them across the deck and down the beams-tied-together plank.
“Now what?” Kudei asked.
Kunessin frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Best thing would be to break it up into small chunks. Easier to handle.”
Alces shook his head. “Gold’s soft, not brittle,” he said. “What we need is a saw.”
“What we need,” Kunessin corrected him, “is Aidi. He knows about this stuff.”
Aidi, when consulted, gave it a few minutes’ thought and decided the best thing would be to melt the gold down again and draw it off into ingots. He made it sound easy.
“Not here,” he said, looking down the beach. “Over there.”
Over there was a stretch of white sand, a bald patch in the shingle. They knew better than to ask questions, so they helped him roll the jars the hundred yards or so up the beach, a long, hard job that took all their strength, even when Muri joined them later. Then Muri was sent back to the settlement for the bellows from the forge, the carpenter’s augur, axes and a cartload of charcoal (‘We haven’t got nearly that much,” Muri protested. Aidi looked grim. “Yes we have. Rafters and floorboards from the burnt house. Charcoal”), while the others built an improvised hearth out of middling-sized stones, and Aidi scratched about in the sand with a stick.
“The idea is,” Aidi explained, once Muri had come back, “we’ve got our fire here” - he pointed to the charcoal heaped up between two flat rocks - “blown by the bellows here - Muri, your job - and we put the jar on top, just resting in its own weight. The jar is the crucible. First, though, we bore a hole in the bottom of the jar and block it up with a stone bung. When the gold’s melted, we knock out the bung, and the melt pours out of the jar and runs along this channel in the sand, and into these here.” He indicated the brick-sized trenches that branched off the main channel. “Technical term is pigs,” he said, “because to an active imagination they look like piglets suckling a sow. Once it’s all cooled down, all you do is break the pigs off the sprue, and you’ve got your ingots, then chop up the sprue and that’s the job done. And that’s all there is to it.”
Aidi’s productions were always spectacular. There was the breathy roar of the fire, the deep, pale glow of the molten gold, the cloud of steam as the hot melt running down the channels evaporated the residual damp in the sand, the occasional crackle and lethal spit as a droplet of condensation landed on the surface of the molten metal; a feast of sensations, sound, colour and movement, like a masque or a pageant. Everything went according to plan and Aidi was in complete control, anticipating each development in good time, giving his orders calmly and clearly, warning of the dangers, conducting the whole affair like an orchestra. When at last the great golden frame had cooled to solid, they set about butchering it with axes, hacking the ingots off the sprue, like soldiers dispatching the enemy wounded on a battlefield. The result was a shining stack of bars with gashed ends, a fortune, a king’s ransom.
“Now what?” Alces said.
“Good question,” Kunessin replied. “Not sure, to be honest with you.”
Muri looked at him. “We’ve got to get it back on the sloop,” he said. “In case those buggers come back early and start searching for it.”
Aidi pulled a face. “And then the sloop slips its anchor or sinks, and that’s two hundred and fifty thousand thalers lost and gone for ever. No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s obvious, surely,” Kudei said. “Get it across to the mainland, quick.”
“And run into Commissioner Straton on the way to the assay office.” Alces shook his head. “I’m not too keen on that idea. We want to get this lot back to Faralia, where it’ll be safe. Then we can get rid of it discreetly, without starting an almighty fuss.”
“There’s nothing discreet about a quarter of a million thalers,” Kunessin said. “Even in Csiphon City you’d have a job disposing of that much all at once without making yourself a bit conspicuous. No, we need to stash it somewhere safe and get rid of it nice and gradually. Otherwise, we’re going to attract a lot of attention.”
“Not here on the island,” Aidi said.
“Agreed.” Kunessin closed his eyes; the utmost concentration. “The logical place would be Kudei’s farm; bury it up in the small copse, say, somewhere nobody goes. But we’d never get that far in the sloop, so that’d mean waiting for the ship to get back, and we haven’t got that long. And we can’t leave it here, as Aidi says, because of Straton, so it’s got to be on the mainland, as close as possible, really: somewhere we can get to in the sloop and be back in time for when the government people show up.” He shrugged. “It’s a tricky one, and I don’t know the coast opposite here nearly as well as I’d like. All in all,” he said, turning and scowling at the stack of bricks, “this stuff is turning out to be a bloody nuisance.”
“We’ve still got the quarter-jar to deal with, don’t forget,” Aidi said.
Kunessin shook his head. “Don’t worry about that for the moment,” he said. “I’ve got an idea about that. Let’s concentrate on the matter in hand.”
Suddenly, Aidi smiled. “What we need,” he said, “is a house.”
Pause. Then Alces said, “Say that again.”
“We need to buy a house,” Aidi said, “on the mainland. Small cottage would do. Look, the main problem with just burying it somewhere is if some bastard comes along and digs it up. So, we buy a house, dig down deep under the floor, bury it there; then we board the place up and walk away. Nobody’s interested in an old cottage gradually going to rack and ruin; there’s any number of them everywhere you look since the war ended.”
Kudei nodded. “Safe as houses, you might say. It’s not a bad idea. Teuche?”
“Money,” Kunessin replied, after a pause. “Even an old ruin’s going to cost at least a hundred thalers.”
“I’ve got that,” Muri said.
“It’s not a problem,” Aidi said. “I can cover a couple of hundred. What do you reckon?”
“It’s better than just dumping it in the corner of a field somewhere,” Kunessin said. “Yes, why not? We’ll need to get a move on, though. Talking of which: Kudei, what’s the supply position like?”
Kudei
shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “We just got rid of a lot of hungry mouths. So we won’t need to go shopping while we’re over there.”
“Good. In that case, you and Muri get provisions for two weeks loaded on the sloop. Aidi, we’ll need your wife. Fly, if you wouldn’t mind clearing up here, just in case Straton knows a foundry site when he sees one.” He hesitated; frowned as though considering some loose end he couldn’t quite call to mind. “Right,” he said. “Let’s get on with it.”
The stranger and his wife were clearly nice people, well-spoken, good manners, though obviously fallen on hard times, which they couldn’t be induced to talk about, no matter how hard the farmer’s wife tried to put them at their ease. Understandable, she felt. Probably something to do with the war: he was of an age to have been in it, and so many dreadful things had happened. She was confident they’d make good neighbours; not that her husband really cared too much about that. He was too excited at the prospect of getting good money for the fallen-down old stockman’s cottage. Just as well, he told her, that he’d never got around to knocking it down and using the stones to patch up the Long Reach barns. Ninety-five thalers, and the man had hardly haggled at all. Of course, he and his wife were both townies, you could tell soon as look at them.
“I’ve got some friends coming in to help make the place habitable,” the stranger said apologetically. “That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
Of course it would, the farmer assured him, and mentally absolved himself of his resolution to offer the services of a couple of his men. No trouble at all. And help yourself to any sand or lumber; there’s a nice stand of ash just on the corner there you could use, but not the beech. The stranger thanked him politely, and would it be all right if they got started straight away? His friends were in a hurry to get finished and go on to the city. That’d be fine, the farmer said; and yes, the hire of a cart and a team wouldn’t be a problem either. Say, five quarters a day?
When they’d packed up and gone, the farmer and his wife took a stroll up that way and peeked in through a crack in the shutters. They’d made a fine job of putting in a new floor, and so quickly, too. Shame they hadn’t had time to do the thatch, or the door frames, or that crack in the east wall where the water came through.
Thoroughly nice people, they agreed, and forgot all about them.
Just the three of them, on Sphoe.
It’ll be all right, Kudei had told Clea; we’ll only be gone a few days, and nothing’s going to happen while we’re away. There’s plenty of food and logs. Just take it easy till we get back.
But Clea had an imagination, and she didn’t mind sharing it with the other two. What if the soldiers returned? What if the sloop sank? They’d be stranded, and nobody would know they were there; the food would run out, and—Enyo reminded her about the ship, from Faralia. Yes, but what if the ship sank too? Well, it could. It happened. Ships sank all the time. Her grandad’s brother had drowned at sea, and nobody ever found out what had happened. A sudden storm, pirates . . .
The ship won’t sink, Enyo told her. And even if it does, we’re not going to be stranded here to starve to death. The government men will be here soon enough. Yes, Clea replied, and that’s another thing. Government men and soldiers, and everybody knows about soldiers.
“Well, yes,” Enyo said. “I married one. So did you.”
That, Clea pointed out, wasn’t what she meant. Enyo knew what she meant. And what if pirates showed up, before the men got back or the soldiers arrived? What the hell could they have been thinking of, swanning off like that and leaving them? What if something happened? What if there was another fire?
“There won’t be,” Enyo said firmly. “I promise, there won’t be another fire.”
Clea scowled at her warily. “That’s easy said,” she replied. “There’s been two already, so why shouldn’t there be another one? What if the sheds catch fire and all the food gets burnt up?”
“There won’t be another fire,” Enyo said. “Now, why don’t you stop trying to scare yourself to death and make a start on the cornmeal.”
“Do it yourself,” Clea snapped. “You’re not in charge round here.”
“Fine.” Enyo got up and walked away, out of the barn and into the sunshine. As soon as the daylight warmed her skin, she felt herself relax, and not a moment too soon. Clea, she told herself, had been right about one thing. She was indeed in grave danger, and more likely than not to die a violent death, though not at the hands of pirates. The man must be a saint, she thought, or stone deaf.
Something to do. Well, there was always something to do. She looked round, and saw the patch of turned-over earth, fifteen yards by ten, next to the pigsties. Muri and Kunessin had dug it, not long before the gold strike, with the intention of sowing vegetables. Nobody had so much as looked at it since the gold rush started, and there was a soft, lush cover of weeds; also, it was a bit late to start sowing now. Even so, a few rows of peas, turnips, cabbages might just come to something, and she had a feeling the season started a bit later here than it did at home. She’d missed the garden when she’d lived in town. It’d be something to do.
She scrabbled about in the sheds until she found the tools: a rake, a long-handled shovel for scraping off the weeds. Never been used and rusty already; the sea air, of course, and a not particularly marvellous roof. A ball of twine. It occurred to her to wonder, not for the first time, where Menin had got to. Off in the woods again, presumably. There was something wrong with that girl.
The fire, she thought. Her hair stank of the smoke, even though she’d washed it four times, and her clothes, her one dress (because she’d rather wear rags than the horrible mildewed things Kunessin had issued her with, creased and damp and greasy to the touch, hauled out of a crate and flung at her; what had she done to deserve that? she wondered). Poor Dorun. Clea was shocked because Kunessin had acted as though nothing had happened; she was wrong about that: he was acting as though Dorun had never existed, which was entirely different. Of course, you couldn’t imagine a man like the general being in love, the same way you couldn’t picture a bull making an omelette. Even so, Clea was quite wrong if she thought he didn’t care. There’d be trouble there somewhere along the line.
What Enyo couldn’t quite figure out (she’d done her best, but it wouldn’t unravel, like badly tangled wool) was whether they were going home or not. The government men had come to throw them out. Kunessin had outsmarted them, she was pretty sure of that, but surely they’d been planning to leave anyway; the decision had been taken before the soldiers turned up. Which reminded her. What on earth had become of the big pot of gold? It had been there the night of the fire, but in all the panic and fuss it seemed to have disappeared, until the general made his accusation against the indentured men; which the soldiers had taken at face value, but she wasn’t so sure. At any rate, the gold had gone, and the government had taken the mining rights; so did that mean they were staying now, and if so, why?
I’ll ask, she thought; then laughed at herself. Asking would be a waste of time. Thouri - how she hated the name Fly; she couldn’t help thinking of flies and maggots and rotting food, but he evidently preferred it, thought of himself as Fly; sometimes she said his name and there was a brief pause before he realised she was talking to him - Thouri had never been the sort of man who answered questions. A hangover from the war, she’d always assumed; so many things that weren’t to be talked about there, and after a while he’d got into the habit of dodging any sort of question. Also, she considered, there was the real possibility that he didn’t know - that Kunessin either hadn’t made his own mind up, or held that the others didn’t need to know what he’d decided. It’d be so easy for her to start hating the general, holding him responsible for everything that’d gone wrong. Clea obviously did. She hadn’t got the faintest idea what Menin thought, about Kunessin or anything else.
On balance (not, of course, that she’d have any say in the matter), she’d rather they gave up now and went home, even th
ough they’d have lost all their money and had nothing to show for it. Not as though they’d had anything worth losing to begin with. Staying here - well, the idea had always been to have a farm: hard work but a good life; she’d always believed deep down that that was how people were meant to live, not piled in on top of each other in towns. Different here, though. A farm - she frowned, refining the thought out of vague feelings - a farm isn’t something you can just call into being, by marking out fields and buying tools and livestock. In order to be a real farm, a proper farm, it needs to have been there for at least two hundred years. You need old buildings, old ways of doing things, tried and tested, everything done the way your grandad used to do it. That was the only way a farm could work. Everything new, everything being done for the first time. That’s not what the general wants.
She frowned. The truth is, she realised, he doesn’t actually know what he wants. Fine; his problem, except they all get dragged in too. Wouldn’t have mattered so much if Dorun hadn’t died; she was the only one outside of their little closed gang who could say anything he’d actually hear. She was the sort of person who tried hard to make things work. Now he’s on his own again, and it’s not like it was when they were in the army.
She thought about that: why isn’t it the same? Answer, because there’s no enemy. The gang, A Company, needs an enemy; but the general’s too smart to try fighting the government, and the indentured men are gone, so he can’t fight them. The thought disturbed her; for A Company, everything would always be sharply divided: them, and everybody else the enemy. Does that, she asked herself, include us?
You can’t be a soldier without an enemy. Kunessin’s gang can only be soldiers; they can’t cope with being anything else. But we’re on an island; so if they won’t fight the government, who does that leave?
(She thought about the stories: shipwrecked sailors drifting in an open boat, no food. Starving. Unless they get food, they’ll all die. So they draw lots, and so on until there’s just one left . . .)