by K. J. Parker
“Really? Do tell.”
“This factory of yours.” Furio had lengthened his stride, and Gignomai was having to make an effort to keep up. “Who do you reckon’s going to be doing all the work? I was assuming you meant to hire some of the savages, but if they’re all like that lot, you can forget about that.”
“Interesting idea,” Gignomai said. He was aware that he was using what Luso called his obnoxious voice, but so what? “I suppose you could train up completely unskilled men to do skilled work, if you had the time and the resources, and then you wouldn’t have to pay them nearly as much. On balance, though, that’s a bit too ambitious for me. I think I’ll just hire tradesmen from the colony.”
“Oh, right.” Furio was being obnoxious back. That made him feel a little better. “You seriously believe skilled craftsmen’ll walk away from their lives just because you ask them to.”
“No, of course not,” Gignomai said. “You’re going to ask them.”
“Me?”
“You do want to be involved in this, don’t you?”
There was a moment of dead silence, during which Gignomai perceived his mistake. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask Furio if he wanted to join him. Why not? Because (don’t lie to yourself, Gignomai, it only makes things worse) he didn’t really want him, but on the other hand, many of the assumptions he’d been working on were based on Furio being in it with him—such as recruiting workers, selling finished goods. Why had he made those assumptions? Because he’d taken it for granted that Furio would insist on joining him and a refusal would cause bitter offence, so he’d shaped his plans accordingly. The chore of actually asking had been lost sight of along the way, and now Furio was livid with him because he hadn’t been asked.
“I suppose so,” Furio said quietly.
“Good,” Gignomai said. “I wouldn’t dream of doing it without you. For one thing, I don’t know the first thing about buying and selling.”
“You don’t know the first thing about making things. Or building sheds.”
“Ah,” Gignomai said cheerfully, “there you’re wrong. I’ve helped Stheno botch up any number of fallen-down sheds and outhouses. And building them properly from scratch has got to be easier than waiting for them to collapse and then trying to fix them. We only do it that way round because we love making things hard for ourselves.”
Furio laughed. “That’s one family trait you’ve inherited, then,” he said. “So, what’s the plan?” He sounded completely different now—like the girl after the boy’s finally proposed. “You really think you can build the shed on your own?”
“Stop calling it a shed,” Gignomai replied austerely. “It’s going to be a thing of beauty. There’s a picture of it in Gobryas’ Mechanisms—”
“How can there be a picture if it’s not been built yet?”
Gignomai frowned. “A picture of how it’ll look when it’s finished,” he said. “Also plans and elevations, a cutting list, schedule of hardware, the lot. The whole thing, in fact, reduced to words, and I copied it all out before I left. All I’ll need to do is follow the instructions and it’s as good as built.”
Furio shook his head sadly. “Maybe that old fool was right,” he said. “Maybe you do live in a different world from the rest of us.”
No money changed hands, partly because nobody had that much in silver coin. Instead, Marzo extended a line of credit at the store to Galermo, who ran the lumber mill. In return, Galermo took Gignomai’s cutting list and transformed the words and numbers into cartloads of sawn, planed wood, a small piece of magic that greatly impressed the people of the colony and left Gignomai extremely thoughtful. The work was hindered to some extent by the defection of three of Galermo’s men, a third of his workforce, who announced they were quitting and refused to say why or what they were going to do instead. They left their homes in the middle of the night and didn’t come back. There were similar disappearances at Derio’s forge (two journeymen) and Carzo’s wheelwright’s shop (a tradesman and an apprentice). Marzo was rumoured to have loaded three wagons to axle-bowing point with food and dry goods, but nobody could be found who would admit to having taken delivery. Young Furio was seen riding round the country looking preoccupied and calling at houses where he wasn’t a regular visitor, and the met’Oc boy who’d been staying at the store vanished completely, though this was reckoned to be no great loss. If anybody was inclined to speculate about it, the logical conclusion was that he’d gone home again. On the positive side, Luso met’Oc had been quiet for as long as anyone could remember, and it was assumed that he was busy with the woodcock season. Someone reported having seen the savages breaking camp and heading off to wherever it was they went, but that was normal and not worth mentioning. The only other rumour with any substantial degree of entertainment value was a wild story about Aurelio Tazane who’d run away from the colony thirty years earlier to work as a smith for the met’Oc. Someone claimed to have seen him, late at night, going into the store with a heavy bag in one hand and a great sack on his back. This news was of interest to the Colamela brothers. There were two of them, but thirty years ago there’d been three—the youngest had died in mysterious circumstances shortly before Aurelio Tazane left home, and the two survivors declared that they were extremely interested in talking to him about the matter. However, if Tazane had visited the store he wasn’t there when the Colamelas called there, and nobody would admit to having seen him.
The next anybody heard of Gignomai met’Oc was when he turned up one night on the doorstep of Calo Brotti, who farmed the shallow valley between Greenacre and the Goose’s Neck. Calo was eating bacon and beans in the kitchen with his wife and son when someone hammered on the door. Calo hadn’t been expecting anybody, but his wife told him he’d better see who it was.
“I’m Gignomai met’Oc,” the tall, pale young man said. “Mind if we come in?”
He slid past Calo, making it plain that permission was a mere formality. Four men came in with him: two of the sawyers from Galermo’s mill, and two others Calo had never seen before. The strangers had their coats unbuttoned, though the night was cold. They had long-bladed stockmens’ knives tucked into their belts.
Calo stepped back out of the way. Gignomai said, “I’m sorry, I should’ve known you’d be at dinner. But this won’t take a minute.” At this point, Calo’s wife melted away. His son stayed where he was, in spite of a ferocious scowl from his father.
“What the hell do you want?” Calo said.
Gignomai smiled and sat down. The two men Calo didn’t know edged round the table until they were standing directly behind his son.
“I’ll get straight to the point,” Gignomai said, reaching across the table and helping himself to a slice of cheese. “About six years ago, you got hold of one of my brother Luso’s snapping-hen pistols. I have absolutely no problem with how you came by it, but I’d like to buy it from you.”
Calo glared at him, but he seemed not to notice. “I already said no to your father,” Calo said.
“Really?” Gignomai nodded. “Well, that’s understandable. If you don’t mind me asking, how much did he offer you?”
Calo hesitated. He was trying to work out a complex problem of geometry in his mind. It involved the carving knife lying next to the side of bacon, the knives in the strangers’ belts, Gignomai and his son. He ran the calculations twice but the answer was the same both times. “Not enough,” he said.
“Evidently,” Gignomai said. “Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You say how much you want for it, and then we can haggle.”
One of the men from the lumber yard didn’t look too happy about what was going on, but he was well back by the door, and couldn’t be included in the calculations. There was a back door, but it was barred and bolted; there’d be no time. “It’s not as though I’m in any hurry to sell,” Calo said.
Gignomai shrugged. “I imagine you’re aware that just having it is a criminal offence,” he said. “If the harbour master and his men came by and
took it off you, you’d get nothing for it.”
Calo didn’t think much of that. He knew the Portmaster, and the two elderly brothers who worked for him because they weren’t good for anything else. “Who says I’ve still got it?” he said. “Might have sold it already.”
“I don’t think so,” Gignomai replied. “And it’s a small house. I expect we could find it in a minute or two if we looked.”
Calo noticed a small pool on the flagstones, just under his son’s chair. He prided himself on his stubbornness, but pride was a luxury and luxury was a sin. “You make me an offer,” he said.
Gignomai smiled. “All right,” he said. “How about six barrels of white flour, fifty pounds of bacon, twenty pounds of imported nails and that harrow you’ve been to the store twice to look at but can’t afford?”
Calo haggled a little, but mostly from force of habit, and to salvage a little of his self-respect. Besides, as he told his son some time later, it wasn’t as though the stupid thing was any good for anything. There wasn’t even any fire-powder to go in it.
The harrow and the rest of the agreed price were waiting for him outside the door first thing next morning, when he went out to feed the pigs. There was also a bottle of fine white brandy and a pair of new store-bought boots.
Calo told his neighbours that the met’Oc boy had called to see him, but was uncharacteristically evasive when they asked what the purpose of the visit was. They couldn’t help noticing his beautiful new boots (nobody could remember the last time he’d had new footwear) but made a point of not mentioning them.
The place Gignomai had chosen was a narrow water meadow, where a wooded hill dropped steeply down to the river. It had, he maintained, more or less chosen itself. The river would provide power by means of a large undershot wheel for which he had plans and diagrams in his book, and in due course they’d be able to ship out finished goods on barges, which would be quicker and easier than road haulage. The wood was one of the few stands of timber not controlled by the met’Oc (when he told Furio that, it was apparently without irony). He didn’t say what he intended to use the steepness of the hill for, but he gave the impression that it was bound to come in handy for something.
For the time being, however, it was a nuisance. The lumber carts had to come down it, and since there was no road, they had to build one. Felling trees in the wood wasn’t an easy business. Mostly it was birch: thin tall straight trees crowded closely together, starving each other of light, so that nothing grew on the forest floor apart from a light cover of stunted, knee-high holly. Cut down a tree, or rather cut through it, and it had no room to fall. Instead, it flopped against its neighbours, its upper branches slotting into theirs like lovers embracing, and had to be laboriously worked free by pulling it about with ropes. The gradient made it painfully hard to drop a tree where you wanted it to fall, and none of the men he’d recruited from the colony had any experience of that sort of work. All Gignomai knew about it was what he’d learned from helping Stheno, and on the half-dozen occasions he’d done that, he’d been scared of getting crushed by falling lumber and hadn’t been paying proper attention.
At the end of the first day, everyone was quiet. The men were tired and sullen. They were craftsmen, who’d been through the misery of a traditional apprenticeship so that they wouldn’t have to do general field labour, and they clearly weren’t thrilled at the prospect of sleeping in tents, even the rather fine ones (government surplus) from Marzo’s store. Gignomai sat apart, staring into the darkness between the trees at something nobody else could see. Furio assumed it was a golden dawn and a brilliant sunlit future for the colony, or else he was worried about wolves. Furio himself stuck it out for an hour, then announced he was going home.
“What?” Gignomai said, swinging round.
“I’ll walk back to town,” Furio explained. “It’s all right, I’ll be back again at first light.”
Gignomai looked at him, analysing him. “What did you tell your uncle?” he said.
“Just said I was going to be helping you out for a few days,” Furio replied. “I thought there’d be less risk of a fuss if I sort of broke it to him in stages.”
“Tell him tonight,” Gignomai said. “Get it over with.”
That sounded like a direct order. Furio walked back in the dark (he wasn’t used to night walking). About halfway home it occurred to him that Gignomai had no business giving him direct orders, even if they were sensible as this one was. On the other hand, the breaking-the-news-in-stages idea was really just cowardice, and when he thought about it, he decided that it was pretty much essential that someone should be in charge of the venture, or it would rapidly collapse into a chaotic mess. It was Gignomai’s show, Furio told himself and, besides, I definitely don’t want to do it. So, direct order, to be obeyed.
“Where did you get to?” Teucer asked, as he limped into the kitchen and kicked off his disgustingly muddy boots. “We expected you for dinner.”
“Got held up,” Furio mumbled. “Where’s Uncle?”
She twitched her head towards the back stockroom, where Uncle Marzo often sat up in the evenings, doing the books. “Be careful,” she said. “You and your friend aren’t his favourite people in the world right now.”
Uncle Marzo greeted him with a muted snarl—where had he been, they’d been worried. That was just preliminary sparring, of course. Marzo had been adding up the cost of the supplies he’d given to Gignomai.
“It’s not just the value of the stuff,” he said, rubbing his eyelids with forefinger and thumb. “It’s the fact that everything I give him I can’t sell to paying customers. And we’ve only got so much stock, and it’s months till the next ship. I’m going to have to draw a line somewhere, or we might as well lock the doors till spring.”
“Tell him,” Furio said, “not me.”
“He’s not here,” Marzo replied. “You are. You’re going back there tomorrow, right? You tell him. I’ll carry on sending the food and basic provisions, but that’s it.”
“Fine,” Furio said. “I’ll take him the sword when I go back in the morning.”
Marzo lifted his head and scowled at him. “Like hell.”
“If the deal’s off…”
“He’s already had seventy-eight thalers’ worth of stuff,” Marzo said. “We can’t just write that off, it’d break us.”
“Remind me,” Furio said. “Twenty-five thousand, wasn’t it, or was it thirty?”
“That’s in the future,” Marzo snapped, “that’s not now. Right now, I’m down to my last two barrels of square-head nails. Also we’re running low on rope, saw blades, rosin, flux—”
“You haven’t given Gig any rosin. Or flux.”
“No, but I’ve traded them for his sawn lumber. And shirt cloth. I’ve been paying for his bacon and flour with that. Sixteen ells a barrel, which is extortion. And he’s only just started. How long’s it going to take him? Do you know that?”
Furio was completely still apart from his hands, which were squeezed tightly together. “Once he’s set up and making things, you’ll have all the stock you can sell. That’s the whole point.”
“Sure,” Marzo growled. “And when’s that going to be? He hasn’t given me a date.”
“Ask him,” Furio said, “not me. I’m going to bed.”
Furio stood up, but made no move towards the door. “Keeping him in food and tools is one thing,” Marzo said. “Financing his hobbies is another matter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Marzo reached for a cup, standing next to a half-empty bottle of cider brandy. “He used my bacon and my flour,” he said, “not to mention a harrow worth six thalers to buy something off Calo Brotti.”
“What?”
“Calo wouldn’t say,” Marzo replied. “But what the hell would he have that your pal would possibly want? Couldn’t be anything for the grand adventure. My guess is it was a falcon or a hunting dog, some sort of aristocratic crap like that.”
�
�Where would Calo get—”
“I don’t know, do I?” Marzo shouted. “That’s not the point. The point is, the supplies are supposed to be for the factory.”
“The supplies,” Furio said quietly, “are part payment on the sword, which is worth more than this whole colony put together. You might care to bear that in mind. And Gig can’t be doing with hunting and falconry, he told me so. That’s Luso’s stuff and he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
Marzo looked blankly at him for a moment, then grinned. “You know,” he said, “your pal may say he can’t stand his brother, but I reckon those two’ve got more in common than you think.”
“You don’t know anything about him,” Furio said, and left the room.
Uncle Marzo was right, of course. It had always been there, but ever since Gig had left the Tabletop it had been growing stronger. He couldn’t call it a resemblance, because he knew nothing about the rest of the met’Ocs apart from what Gig had told him, and in the circumstances his evidence was unreliable. A tendency? Playing with words.
He sat on the porch and looked out into the dark street. Fifty yards away, there was a light in the upper window of the livery; he couldn’t be bothered to speculate about what it signified. He considered the resemblance or the tendency. He’d always been aware of it, of course, but he hadn’t really thought much about it until they met the crazy old man at the savages’ camp. The old fool didn’t once look at me, Furio told himself, only at Gig. I might as well not have been there. No, amend that. Maybe that’s how the aristocracy treat their servants. They’re aware of their presence but they don’t talk to them or look at them unless they want something, and if a man shows up with his valet or his groom, you wouldn’t talk to the servant in the master’s presence, it’d probably be appalling bad manners or something. The old lunatic treated me like I was Gig’s servant. Quite likely assumed I must be. Like talking to like. Of course, the old man was off his head—hardly surprising, given his life story—but Gig… Gig accepted it. He wasn’t offended, he didn’t think it was funny, assumed I’d accept it too. The tendency. The met’Oc running all the way through him, like the core in an apple. Running away from home didn’t mean he’d changed. Basic fact of life: no matter how far you run, you always take yourself with you.