Limits of Power

by Elizabeth Moon

  “From the north maybe,” Arcolin said, treading carefully around his king’s prohibitions. “There was a necklace stolen from Fin Panir—from the Girdish treasury.”

  “Necklace … doesn’t sound like what I was hearing.” Clart wiped his mouth.

  “Someone was killed for the necklace,” Arcolin said.

  “That bastard Alured’s after it, whatever it is. Can’t see him so interested in just a necklace. It’s a crown he wants, clear enough. And if he gets control of the Guild League, he can afford whatever crown he wants.”

  “Think he’d really move on the north?” Arcolin asked. Clart raised his brows but said nothing. “I’m a peer of Tsaia now; I owe my king fealty. He’s worried.”

  “He should be,” Clart said after a cautious glance around. “The man’s mad, I think. Surely Immer’s a big enough prize for anyone … but he wants it all. You know; you were here last year and ran into more than you expected over in Vonja, isn’t that right?”

  “Indeed,” Arcolin said.

  “He’s stirring up trouble between the cities; I’m sure he’s behind the counterfeiting. There’ve been disappearances—even murders—over the winter, more than usual. Guildmasters, traders and city-bound both. Lot of suspicion all around. Your contract’s with Foss, I hear—”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re with Sorellin, mobile patrols. We expect trouble. If he can wear us all out with one little war after another—”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said, cutting him off with a flick of one finger. He had seen another mercenary captain approaching.

  Clart looked up and scowled. “Blues,” he said under his breath. The commander of Blue Company gave them both a bleak glance and walked past without a word. Clart watched him; Arcolin didn’t turn around. “He’s gone into the back,” he said. “He’s still angry with you. More about your hiring his former captain than about winter quarters, I hear.”

  “Arneson’s a good man,” Arcolin said. “He’s taken over as recruit captain up north.”

  “It was a bad business,” Clart said. “I’m glad you took him on.” He sipped from his mug of sib, then said, “I hear the Blues have contracted east this year.”

  “How far east?”

  “East of Cilwan. One of his soldiers told one of mine they’re not coming back to Valdaire next winter, either. Nothing definite, but I’d guess hiring to the pirate lord.”

  Arcolin thought back to Siniava’s War and the long pursuit … the marches, the battles, the ambushes. “Alured tried to bully Andressat, you know.”

  Clart snorted. “Andressat? Nobody bullies him. He might as well be a king, for his pride.” He stretched and pushed back from the table. “You’ll pardon me, Arcolin, but we’ve got a long exercise today and new mounts to train. I must go.”

  “Of course,” Arcolin said. He laid his hand on the meal-tag an instant before Clart touched it. “Mine, this time,” he said. “For your kindness.”

  “Least I could do,” Clart said. He paused. “If I learn anything that doesn’t breach contract—I’ll send word.”

  “And I the same.” On his way out, Arcolin thought of others who might be willing to share news of Immer. M’dierra of Golden Company. Other commanders he’d known over the years. Perhaps a visit to the Mercenaries’ Hall.

  The next time Arcolin met with Dattur and Arvid, he asked Dattur about uniforms for the gnomes in the north. “I did not realize I had that responsibility,” he said. “I gave them cloth, but it was not gray.”

  “They were kteknik; that was appropriate,” Dattur said. His accent had softened, Arcolin noticed, with familiarity.

  “But now, if I am their prince, are they still kteknik?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “Then I need to supply them with gray cloth, do I not?”

  “It is own weave.”

  “But … they did not ask for sheep.” Arcolin considered the number of sheep on his northern lands and the wool production, all of it presently used by his human vassals. How would he afford more sheep? Did gnomes ever have sheep, or would he need to provide more sheep herders?

  Dattur’s face contorted in what Arcolin now recognized as a stifled grin. “It is not needed, sheep.”

  “But the design,” Arcolin said. “I know there’s a difference, from princedom to princedom—”

  “It is prince’s name, in gnomish. What was name before?”

  “My name?”

  “Their clan name.”

  “Karginfulk,” Arcolin said.

  “Karginfulk!” Dattur jerked as if he’d been stabbed, and a long jabber of gnomish, too fast for Arcolin to follow, came out. Just as Dattur threw himself on the floor and kissed Arcolin’s boot, Arvid opened the door.

  “What’s this?” Arvid said, in a drawl that sounded faintly dangerous.

  “I’m not sure,” Arcolin said. “Is he—Dattur, are you Karginfulk?”

  “Kteknik … but before, yes. It is—” Another jabber of incomprehensible gnomish followed. Then Dattur took a long breath and shifted back into Common. “Prince made kteknik for—for not having respect. Said Lawbreaker. Said go and learn Law among the Lawless; return only when make Lawless Lawful.” He glanced at Arvid.

  “You were supposed to make him lawful?” Arcolin asked.

  “Is not my master Arvid, to start,” Dattur said. “Prince meant all—it is that impossible. He knew. He knew … meant … forever. But now—it is prince’s word. It is prince must know of life debt owed to my master Arvid, for my blade in another’s hand drew his blood, and he also saved my life, twice. It is prince’s word: this one kteknik, not kteknik.”

  “You saved my life, too, Dattur,” Arvid said. “I told you—”

  “It is what prince says,” Dattur said. “Prince is Lawspeaker.” He bowed to Arcolin again.

  Arcolin felt the responsibility on his shoulders like an iron bar. “I would hear exactly what you did, that the former prince called you Lawbreaker,” he said. What he really wanted to know was whether that gnome prince had been under Achrya’s influence at the time.

  Dattur’s tale made it clear that his crime—his Lawlessness—came from challenging the prince and that alone. “Prince said messengers went for help. No help came. Prince said messengers failed. But would not say who was sent. I found body in the rock, dead, broken.”

  Chills ran down Arcolin’s back. “So you asked him about that?”

  “Yes. He said, ‘Kteknik: silence him,’ and they bound me and put me in wagon that went a long distance. I could not see; I could not talk. Then blow to head. Then day, another day, tracks on ground beside me, no one.”

  The rest of the story covered Dattur’s journey to the center of Tsaia and his meeting a dwarf—the one Arvid had killed—in Vérella. Arcolin listened attentively, though some of it he still did not understand—why, for instance, Dattur’s blade, even wielded by another while he was unconscious, could create an obligation for him.

  Girdish law, with its emphasis on generosity as well as fairness, laid no formal obligation on the recipient of a gift, even of life. Certainly Dattur’s actions—helping Arvid out of the cellar and saving them both from the thief-enforcers with his rock magery—would more than balance the other, to any human.

  But Dattur wasn’t human. And when he finished his story, he stood perfectly still, looking at Arcolin’s face, awaiting his fate.

  “Dattur is no longer kteknik,” Arcolin said. “But until return to the clan, Dattur is not obliged to wear the clan’s pattern.”

  “May wear?”

  “May wear, but may choose not to, if proper cloth not available.” Arcolin shook his head; he was beginning to sound gnomish. “However: Dattur owes Arvid life-debt. Dattur will serve Arvid until Midsummer, when life-debt will be paid in full. After that, Dattur may choose to take wages or return to the north alone.” He hoped that was close to something a real gnome prince might have said.

  “I stay with my prince,” Dattur said.

  “You ca
n’t,” Arcolin said, appalled at the thought. “I am a soldier. I will be in the field, with troops. It is not the place for a rockbrother.”

  Dattur made a sound in his throat that Arcolin knew he himself could never make. “Gnomes know war,” he said then in Common. “Gnomes train Gird.”

  That story was well known. “Yes, but—that’s different.” Dattur in the Company would cause comment. Questions. Bad enough that he would have to tell King Mikeli by letter, not in person, that the gnomes in the north now considered Arcolin their prince. What would his employers think, when word got out that the man they’d hired as a minor peer and mercenary captain was also prince of a tribe of gnomes?

  Yet as one of the former Karginfulk, accepted by Arcolin as such, Dattur was legitimately his problem, as much as any of his other oathbound vassals. Which meant that Arvid Semminson was also his problem, even as Marshal Steralt had suggested, but for a different reason. He himself had just told Dattur to serve Arvid until Midsummer, but Dattur said his Law—honored by the Code of Gird—required him to be with his prince.

  Asking himself “What would Kieri Phelan do?” wouldn’t help at all. Kieri had never faced this, and he could not imagine Kieri being any less dumbfounded than he was himself. A thief—or former thief in the throes of spiritual crisis—and a gnome traveling with the Company?

  He thought in silence for a few moments; neither Dattur nor Arvid spoke as he felt his way toward some decision that might work. He looked at Arvid first. “Marshal Steralt—and you—think you should become Girdish. But if you stay here, you are in danger from the Guild. You’ve been doing work for Fox Company. If you came with us—” Arvid opened his mouth, but Arcolin shook his head and went on talking. “Do you know what a sutler is?” Arvid shook his head. “A merchant who buys supplies for a military unit,” Arcolin said. “It would take work off my staff to have someone we could send to buy supplies.”

  “But I’m—you know my background—”

  “And both Captain Selfer and the innkeeper here say you’ve been honest the whole winter. I don’t expect you’ll cheat me. Every Foss Council city has at least one grange; you could start your Girdish training there. That way Dattur—” He looked at the gnome. “—could serve you until Midsummer and not have to make a solitary journey to find me thereafter, since Dattur wishes to stay with his … prince. You will live in the camp, both of you. I will stand sponsor for you to the grange.” He looked hard at Arvid, who nodded.

  “I will come, then. I can see no better alternative.”

  Dattur nodded when Arcolin looked at him. “It is that it is a good plan. Worthy of prince. Is prince willing to learn Law?”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said. “Though I will have little time to study, I will study Law and language both, with your aid.”

  “When do we leave?” Arvid asked.

  “Day after tomorrow,” Arcolin said. “You can ride in one of the supply wagons.”

  Arcolin wrote a long letter to King Mikeli that night and next morning sent it off with the fastest courier he could hire. “All I meant to do was save them from starvation and freezing,” he concluded. “My liege, when I come to Autumn Court, I will bring with me the gnome Dattur, who can testify to my surprise when he told me that to these gnomes I am accounted their prince because of the gift of stone-right.”

  Marshal Steralt nodded when Arcolin told him what he had done about Arvid. “Good. It gets him out of the city. I will give you a letter of reference to any Marshal in Foss Council.”

  When the column came past the Dragon in the dim predawn light, on its way at last, Arcolin paused; Arvid and Dattur were waiting there, little encumbered by their bundles. “First wagon,” he said. “Teamster’s let the tailboard step down for you. Once you’re in, pull up the tailboard and stay under the canvas.” Spies lurked everywhere, and no company marched without rousing them, but the Dragon’s windows were shuttered tight, and the street empty. He did not wait to see if the two made it into the wagon, but rode on at the head of the column as usual.

  Once through the city’s east gates, the Guild League road stretched out, ever more visible in the growing light. To either side, scouts paralleled the column of three full cohorts and the supply wagons. Two rode well ahead, and two more came behind. Arcolin and two of the five captains took the lead. The other three captains stayed with their cohorts; they would change positions at midday.

  Farmers coming in with loaded carts gaped at them; children waved. By the time the sun hit them, they were well out of sight of Valdaire’s walls and the outlying buildings, and Arcolin’s eager chestnut had given up jigging, with only an occasional toss of the head to indicate a need to run. To his right Cracolnya rode the dun he favored, half-nomad bred to look at, and on the left Selfer’s new junior captain, Garralt, rode a leggy bald-faced black.

  “Ah, the wonderful South,” Cracolnya said. “Hot already. Fruit almost ripe.”

  “Missed it, did you?” Arcolin asked.

  “This much,” Cracolnya said, his fingers a hazelnut’s width apart. “But for the profit in it. Which I hope, my lord Count, we still see. You’ve heard the rumors, I’m sure.”

  “Indeed. And told you what I knew back north.”

  “Well, we knew that lad was trouble when we worked with him before. What bothered me—” He glanced around and then, satisfied, went on. “What bothered me was not finding Sobanai or Vladi—or at least their agents—in Valdaire.”

  “Or Sofi?” Arcolin asked.

  “Or Sofi, yes, but since he’s said to be married into Fallo, not as much. But if the Blues have gone to the pirate, and Vladi’s still sheep-dogging Sofi—”

  “Which we never knew for certain,” Arcolin said. “Though I grant it made sense.”

  “And Sofi’s in Fallo, then they’re both in reach of the pirate. I can’t see Vladi, at least, going that way—”

  “No. Nor Sofi Ganarrion either, really. Maybe Fallo got sense and hired them both … even Sobanai.”

  Garralt spoke up. “My lord—there was rumor of the winter that Sobanai’s troop disbanded. A fever, I heard.”

  “Sobanai was always careful of his camps,” Arcolin said. “Did you hear where?”

  “They’d been at Lûn, downriver, and never made it back to Valdaire in the fall. Others said they’d decided it was too far to come.”

  “I think we can take it that the pirate’s planning to take Lûn,” Cracolnya said.

  Up ahead, Arcolin saw the forward scouts signal: caravan coming. He glanced back. The cohorts had spread a little as the morning warmed. Now he waved twice, and the command passed down; the files closed up, and supply wagons moved to the edge of the road.

  One of the forward scouts rode back to report. The caravan was out of Sorellin, traveling under its pennant and bound for Tsaia. The caravan master wanted to speak with “the commander” and would halt his caravan when they were closer.

  “Tell him yes,” Arcolin said; the scout wheeled his mount and rode away. He turned to Cracolnya. “The man might have news out of Immer. Lead them on; I’ll catch up.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Then Cracolnya grinned. “And I would suggest—your helmet.”

  Arcolin laughed, shaking his head. “Old joke, Captain. If you had eyes, you’d know it was on my head.”

  He turned aside when they met the other caravan, greeting the caravan master. They both backed their horses almost to the ditch, watching as Fox Company marched by.

  “There’s trouble ahead,” the caravan master said. He wore a broad sash in Sorellin’s colors. “You’ve heard of this new Duke of Immer?”

  “Yes. We knew him as Alured the Black in Siniava’s War.”

  “You remember Rotengre, then: brigands’ city it was then, preying on trade and causing trouble all around. Full of evil magicks.” The caravan master chewed his lip a moment. “It’s gone bad again. We’ve had refugees coming in from there, starting last autumn, and the tales they tell—well, it’s clear to us it’s Immer. We hired Cla
rt this year.”

  Arcolin nodded. “I met Nasimir in Valdaire; he told me.”

  “We’d have hired Sobanai as well, if we could have got them—sent word downriver to Lûn last summer we wanted to talk contract. Word came back they were interested, but in autumn we had a courier from Koury not to let anyone from Lûn into the city for fear of the black fever. Koury shut the gates to anyone from downriver. Never heard more from Sobanai until early spring, this time from Cilwan, saying half the city had died, and Sobanai Company lost its commander and more than half the soldiers.”

  “Bad business,” Arcolin said.

  “Filthy business,” the caravan master said. “They’re calling him the Black Duke now all over the east, from Cilwan on. Worse than Siniava. It’s said he has the old magery and can kill with a glance. That he has fever demons in his service—though I expect it’s as like to be jugs of foulness poured into wells. We know he has assassins; we’ve lost two of our Council to assassins this past year. One admitted he was pressured to speak with Immer’s voice and was killed within the same day’s round. The brigands on the road between Koury and us are grown bolder.”

  “The trouble we had in Vonja’s outbounds,” Arcolin said, “I lay to Immer’s account. Did Vonja tell the other cities?”

  “Not us.”

  Arcolin quickly recounted the evidence for some outside power.

  “And you found counterfeiters’ dies—just for Vonja?”

  “Yes. But I’m sure the same exist for every city in the League, a way to create distrust among you.”

  The caravan master nodded. “Distrust there is, for certain. Koury has spoken of leaving the League, since it cannot keep the road between us free of brigands; Merinath the same, and blames Sorellin for dangers. We lack the means to patrol all that. We found counterfeit among our own coins, summer before last. Cost us a contract renewal with Golden Company. I am not even sure I trust everyone in my caravan, though I spoke to each, even the least.” He shook his head, his expression gloomy, as he stared at the Fox Company wagons now trundling past. “It’s good you’re here; the Foss Council Speaker told me they’d hired you. I’m sure they’ll tell you what I reported, but I thought you’d rather have it from me.”