Authors: Chris Bunch
We took a tower on the river side for our own. The stone walls were fifteen feet thick, with never a iron bar or brace to be seen. Supposedly these towers had been built with wizardly assistance and the finest stonecutters in Numantia. The rooms were old-fashioned, tiny, with high ceilings. The windows were arched, coming together in a gentle V. We had the old, discolored, warped glass removed, and double layers of cleverly stained and tinted panes installed. Each pair of windows was connected with cunning rods and levers to open easily.
We decided on the upper floors for our living quarters, the lower ones for a warming kitchen, storerooms, and a tiny armory. Masons smashed through stone walls, keeping only the ceiling arches to maintain the building’s innate integrity, and turned twenty or more rabbit-warren rooms into half a dozen spacious chambers. We had false walls built of wood, and the six inches or so between the walls and the stone filled with woolen yardage. Everyone thought this was odd, but I thought if wool around my body kept me warm, why wouldn’t it do the same for a room? I was right, particularly after we’d lined the fireplaces with steel to reflect heat.
Most of this was done while I was off on the emperor’s bidding, so I always had something new to anticipate when I returned to Irrigon.
I found it possible to enjoy Irrigon twice a year — when harsh winter storms slashed down and the trees shook and bowed around our snuggery; and again in the stillest, sweatiest days of the Time of Heat, when I was grateful the searing sun didn’t penetrate the stone.
Another change made Irrigon more livable: The Agramóntes still ruled by the whip and the club, which was their right, but there were tales even harsher methods had been used without recourse to the imperial courts. I never doubted these stories, although I’d had no proof, for hard country justice was and still is common throughout Numantia, particularly in districts where the ancient nobility is the only real law. We told our overseers things would change, that no one was permitted to strike anyone else unless defending himself or herself, took away the brightly painted bamboo lashes they’d used as badges of authority, and promptly discharged those who didn’t believe we meant what we said.
Those laborers and farmers who thought we were foolish and to be taken advantage of were turned out as quickly. In some ways that was a harsher punishment than a dozen lashes, for there was no employ other than the Agramóntes for many miles. Sometimes I wondered if we should have left the system alone, and a couple of times Marán had snapped at me about it, though she’d been as much in favor of change as I. But what I am, I am, and I cannot tolerate one who feels violence is his to deal out merely because he’s larger, or has a better station in life and feels beyond the law.
I’d wondered, long ago when I’d first seen a painting of Irrigon in a museum, how many people were required for the lord and lady of the manor to be properly cosseted. Now I knew too well: 347, from gardeners, to kitchen sweeps, to guards, to musicians, to the girl whose sole duty was cutting and arranging the flowers for the castle, to the pair of silent men who moved from room to room replenishing the fires, with never a nod given to their presence. I knew well, because I paid them twice a year. Marán and I had the services of four bankers, working full-time handling our money. Once I thought I’d inquire just how much money we spent each time, but realized my heart might not handle the strain. Besides, as Marán said, there was no way anyone, no matter how profligate, could dent the Agramónte fortunes, so why concern myself?
My thoughts were drifting thus as we rode toward Irrigon. There were twenty-four of us: myself, the Seer Sinait, and twenty-one members of my hastily reformed Red Lancers, under the command of Legate Segalle. Captain Lasta, who would normally ride beside me, was in Nicias bringing the Red Lancers back to full strength. There was also Karjan. I’d decided to attempt a new tactic, and so he glowered at the slashes of a troop guide now, and I had every intention of making him a regimental guide in a time or so. I was determined to win this battle of wills that had lasted over nine years. Secretly I feared I was no more likely to win this round than any of the others.
Behind the quarter hundred of us were the three document-carrying carriages. I shuddered thinking how little I liked books and studying. But things might be different this time, for I’d tried magic. I’d had Seer Sinait prepare a spell, using bits and pieces of the material I was to study. The conjuration was an extended version of our standard Spell of Understanding. Now I could read any of the six Maisirian languages, and more importantly speak nineteen of the forty-odd dialects used in the vast kingdom. I’d need no interpreter if the emperor’s fears of war came true.
My wandering mind snapped back to the present as we reached the long, sweeping drive that led to the castle, and I saw, at the foot of the steps, someone waiting, a cloaked someone who could only be my darling Marán.
• • •
Slowly, very slowly, I returned from the stars.
“Great gods of Numantia with a dildo,” I managed. “Where did you learn that?”
Marán looked back at me over her shoulder. Both of us were sweat-soaked, in spite of the winter winds outside our tower.
“I’ll never say,” she whispered. “Let’s just say that you learned to exercise certain muscles while I was away — and I did the same.”
“You’d better tell. Or I’ll become insanely jealous.”
“Oh, all right. Amiel, last time she was here, brought some … devices with her. One was a bladder you inflate, and put where you are right now, and try to pump the air out of it with your muscles. She said you’re supposed to do that twenty times a day. There wasn’t anything else to do after she left. So I practiced … Did you like it?”
“Mmm,” I said nuzzling the back of her neck, and biting her gently. “I definitely think Countess Kalvedon is a wonderfully bad influence.”
“Oh she is, she is,” Marán whispered.
• • •
The next day I sought our chief bailiff to see who the leather-capped men might have been. He was a scarred villain named Vacomagi, one of the few overseers left from Marán’s father’s time. It wasn’t that he was any less brutal than the others we’d dismissed. But Marán noted he was scrupulously fair in his brutality, and that he worked at least as hard as any of the men and women he drove, particularly during harvest and haying times. She suggested we keep him on, and I agreed.
I’d privately had a rather nasty thought of my own: It’s not bad to have a convenient culprit around, someone whom everyone blames for any necessary evils, instead of the kindly, benevolent lord. After that thought, I wondered if I were changing, if I were starting to think like the callously bestial autocrats I so despised.
I asked Vacomagi who the men in the bush were.
“We calls ‘em th’ Broken Men,” he said. “Though there’s women, an’ younguns as well out there. Mayhap half a hunnerd, mayhap more.”
“Who are they?”
“Some are ones we drove off from th’ estates. Others’re wanderin’ outlaws. Some of ‘em are just th’ landless, th’ ones who’ll wander th’ roads, al’as hopin’ somehow somebody’ll give ‘em a real job, other’n some quick fill labor at harvest or such. I’ve even heard …” Vacomagi let his voice trail away as he glanced about.
“Go ahead.”
He was still hesitant, until I pressed him.
“Some could be Tovieti,” he said, in a low voice. “Or so I’ve heard. Like th’ ones you an’ the emperor put down.”
“
Here
? On the Agramónte lands?”
“That’s th’ talk,” Vacomagi went on. “Course, nobody’ll talk straight about ‘em. Not round me, anyways.”
“Have they killed anyone?”
“You mean strang’lated? Like I heard they do with those cords they got? Nossir. Not yet, anyway. But there’s been some disappear on th’ roads. Nobody proper, yet. Nobody what counts. Just some peddlers who never come around anymore, or folks who were dumb ‘nough t’ go about th’ roads wi’out bein’ armed or wi’out an escort. But there’s nothin’ for you t’ worry about. Th’ Broken Men’re too far down for even th’ Tovieti.”
He spat. “Seems like there’s more ‘n’ more of ‘em, every year. One of these days we’ll have t’ run ‘em down, like we do foxes an’ badgers. Sweep th’ country, an’ put those to the sword or torch that don’t have the sense t’ flee. Not t’worry, Lord. Th’ Agramóntes know how to deal with such as them. Like the name says, they’re broke, twisted, like a stook a’ grain that’s been blown over int’ th’ muck. All the soul’s been beat, or feared, out of ‘em.” That was the end of the matter for Vacomagi.
But not for me. I’d seen too many “broken” men rise up to strike hard with swords, knives, clubs, or cobblestones to dismiss these outcasts from my mind.
I wondered why there were more of them each year, as Vacomagi had said. Times were far better for everyone under the emperor than they’d been under the Rule of Ten, weren’t they? And the Tovieti were, or so Kutulu had told me, less an influence than before.
Broken Men here and there, and in other places in the kingdom I’d had to stamp out different rebellions. What was going on in Numantia?
I had no answers, not even questions, and so put the matter away.
• • •
I began my studies, hoping I’d never have to apply them.
Maisir was an ancient monarchy, its symbol a twin-lion-headed dragon, black on yellow. Its population was, and this was estimated, for the kingdom was not fully explored even by its rulers, 150 million. That was 25 million more than Numantia, but my land was more densely populated. Maisir covered more, or so the estimates have it, than 6 million square miles; Numantia, which I’d previously thought unimaginably huge, was no more than a million square miles.
Numantia stretched from just below the equator into temperate regions, and Maisir reached from the southern temperate region into the arctic. Its most prominent features were the vast deserts they called the
suebi
, wastelands whose terrain changed seasonally from ice to mud to dust to mud once more.
The land, I read, was truly vast, so large one traveler said it hurt his eyes to try to pierce the horizon, and made him want to cower like a tiny mouse hunted by an eagle. There were mountains far higher than anything in Kait, lakes one would think seas, rivers whose far bank could not be seen, farming districts as big as some of our states.
Travel was a nightmare. Outside the largest cities, roads were either dirt or nonexistent. During bad weather, they became impossible morasses. The great rivers wouldn’t help our army, since the navigable ones ran west to east, across the country.
Maisir’s capital was Jarrah, three hundred leagues south of the border, hidden in the depths of the Belaya Forest, protected to its west by
suebi
, to its north by the huge Kiot Marshes. There were some other cities, not all known to us, but none as big as Jarrah.
The enormity of Maisir also made communication between our two capitals difficult. Coded messages could be sent by heliograph south to Renan on our border. Then messages would go by heavily escorted courier into Sulem Pass and through Kait. On the Kait-Maisir border, the messages would be given to the Maisirian border guards, the Negaret, and ridden through the Wild Country until they could be passed to normal couriers, who took them on to Jarrah.
Maisir’s king was named Bairan, and he was considered a good ruler, at least by the standards of the Maisirians. One report on the thousand-year history of his family was as fascinating as any salacious broadsheet.
“The only choice to give a Maisirian,” one family proverb went, “is between the noose and the knout.” It was a proverb they obeyed exactly. Some of Bairan’s ancestors were as bloody-handed a set of demoniacs as any in legend. One, offended when a certain province didn’t offer sufficient obeisance when he journeyed through it, had his sorcerers rouse demons, and ordered them to kill every man they encountered. Not content with that, he sent a second set of nightmares against the women of the area. The children, those who hadn’t starved, were treated more kindly. The army was given a special mission: round them up for the slave markets. Finally, the province was given another name and repopulated by peasants forcibly uprooted from another province.
Another tale, and this one I had some trouble believing, was of a queen who was insatiable in her lust. She went to a great deal of trouble to select a hundred men, the handsomest and best-built of the entire army. She had them lie with her continuously for one week, and at the end of that time ordered them all returned to the Wheel, for “no one who’s experienced joy such as they must have would wish to continue on in the world.”
Bairan, in contrast, ruled well and thoughtfully, if harshly. I read of no horrors he’d yet committed, at any rate. The nobility around the throne was no better than could be expected, but Bairan seemed to have selected his advisers and cronies more for capabilities than corruption, unlike his father.
I wondered how Maisir could have existed for so long with such villains on its throne. One philosopher, who’d spent ten years in Maisir as a tutor to the royal children, offered an explanation I’m not sure I understood or understand now: “There are, for the most part, only two classes of people in Maisir,” he wrote. “There are the rulers, and there are the ruled. Those who are ruled have no rights whatsoever, and even the aristocracy, in their various stations, have no more rights than the king might temporarily grant. No man is permitted to rise above the station he has at birth. Thus life is nothing more than a struggle for power, for only with power can life continue. All power belongs to, hence may be granted by, the king. No one would ever dream of blaming the king himself for society’s injustices, since it’s obvious to them he speaks with the gods’ approval.
In another place, the man wrote: “While it appears both countries have the same religion, that commonality is purely a masquerade. It’s said we Numantians are too stoic, too accepting, feeling that our unnoticed benevolences, like our sins, will be rewarded or punished when we return to the Wheel. If this is a belief in Numantia, it is a fixation in Maisir. Their only rewards come after death, when one is judged by Saionji. Any other pleasures must be seized quickly and guiltily. Therefore, it is right to flog a peasant, for his or her sins were undoubtedly terrible in his previous life, or else he would have been born to a higher station. A nobleman, on the other hand, is not only permitted but encouraged every indulgence as a reward for a pious prior life. If he sins, that is the way of the world, and he will be punished in his next life.