Eric Flint's Blog, page 244

The Seer – Snippet 26

The Seer – Snippet 26

“Make more sense now?” Tayre asked.

The man attempted a nod, though Tayre was confident that he had no idea what he was agreeing to. Tayre nodded back.

“My name is Tayre,” he said, careful to enunciate, loudly and clearly. He grabbed the man’s hair again, but this time instead of resistance he was given a whimper of agonized anticipation. He lifted the head as high off the ground as it would go, holding the man’s gaze with his own.

“No, no,” the man whispered, eyes wide. “Please.”

“Much better. What’s my name?”

A croaking sound.

“Say it again.”

“Tayre,” the man whispered.

“Louder.”

“Tayre.”

“You won’t forget, will you? I wouldn’t like that.”

“No, no, no.”

“Good.” With that, Tayre released the man’s head a third time. It fell with a crack. The man exhaled once and was silent.

Nothing like the finesse and subtlety he preferred, this, but Innel’s uncertainty meant that he needed to build a reputation quickly.

Tayre stood, brushed off his trousers, and gave the watching crowd a modest shrug and a friendly wave.

Their eyes were open very wide as they watched him. He’d made an impact, all right. They’d talk about him.

As he walked away, the tall man rolled over onto his side, moaning, seeming content to lie in the street awhile.

It began to rain.

#

In the sky a three-quarter moon broke the dark of night. Tayre greeted the stable woman and handed her the reins of his horse. He knew her; she was the owner’s adult daughter whom he had entrusted with his horse many times across many years, but she treated him like a stranger. It was not just his stance, expression, and clothes that caused her to fail to recognize him. Had he come with the same horse as last time, she would have looked at him twice. She cared about horses. People, less so.

After entering the eatery, he stood inside the door as if absorbed in thought, adjusting cuffs, collar, shirt folds. He would seem a wealthy trader, clothes new and light in color, with only a few splatters of mud.

By the time he looked up from this distracted fussing, all the eyes in this crowed room were on him.

The owner approached, a woman with gray streaks in the braid down her back. She wiped her hands on her apron.

“Season’s blessing to you, ser,” she said. “You can sit, let me see, right there.” She pointed.

“Corner table, Kadla,” he said, too softly for anyone else to hear.

She looked back, mouth opening to tell him what she thought of his correction. But she hesitated, gave him another look. This was one of the many things he liked about Kadla.

“You,” she said, her tone as much amused as annoyed. “There.” She indicated the table he’d asked for, as if it had been her decision.

He went where she pointed and sat. When she came back a few minutes later, he passed her two palmed falcons, which saw no light before they went into her pocket.

“Call me Enlon. Trading from Perripur.”

Kadla smile a little. “I watch for you all year, then you stride in and I’m surprised. All over again. Fancy clothes this time, too. Didn’t you have a beard before?”

“You look younger every year, Kadla. What rare herbs do you use?”

She snorted. “Mountain air, good water. That’s what keeps me young.”

He chuckled.

“Don’t you laugh,” she added. “I’m as strong as my best mare.”

“And she’s a looker, I admit. But you’re far prettier. Smarter, too. Anyone tells you otherwise, I’ll find them and explain their mistake to them. Then I’ll come for you.”

“You and your fancy tongue.” She leaned down close to his face. “Still charming the young ones, are you? I’ve seen you work. They fall like cut grain, don’t they? Rumor is you’re worth washing the bedclothes for, but I don’t think you’re enough for me.”

“What would be enough?”

Even though they had some version of this conversation every year, he could see her slight blush.

“You’re a boy to me.”

“Then teach me to be a man.”

She stood back, made a tsking sound. “Go find yourself an anknapa. You won’t get better food or drink this way. Your silver’s good enough.”

“Kadla,” he said, mock-wounded, “you underestimate me. Come to my room tonight and I’ll show you how much.”

Her smile faded a bit. He could see her wondering how serious he was.

“A lot of food,” she said. “And water. If I remember right.”

“You do.”

“And a room.”

“Yes.”

“Same room as last time,” she said.

“Good. You’ll have no trouble finding me tonight.”

“Give it up.”

He raised his eyebrows, met her eyes, held the look. “You sure?”

She inhaled as if to speak, thought better of whatever witty thing she had in mind, and said, with an expression uncharacteristically open, “You keep asking, one of these times I’ll say yes. Then you’ll have to deliver. Careful, boy.”

“I’m always careful.”

“Hmm.”

“If anyone asks about me, under any name, I want to know about it.”

“Call me shocked to the bone.”

He chuckled at this teasing. He wondered if she would still feel this comfortable talking to him after the stories he was building for Innel made it back to her.

“I have messages I need delivered.” He would ask his contacts if they had seen any unusual travelers.

“Can’t imagine what you’ll do,” she said, making a show of confusion. “Oh, perhaps you’ll give them to me and I’ll have them sent for you.”

“Perhaps I’ll even pay you well to do it.”

“That would be wise.”

“Are your children well?”

“You want a story, wait for the harper. I have work.”

As she walked back to the kitchens, he could that she knew he was watching.

When she returned a few minutes later with thick stew topped with a stack of hardbread dripping in fat, she was a little less smooth in her movements. She was thinking about it.

“Ah,” she said in frustration as the fat dripped off the bread onto the table. She pulled out a rag and gave the table a cursory wipe.

“The best meals are messy,” he said with a smile.

She smirked, put the rag back in her apron. No, he judged: she would not come to his room tonight. She wanted to, and he could have convinced her, but he wanted to see what she would be like when she came to him without influence. One of these years she would. He was in no rush.

At the side of the room, tables and chairs were cleared. A woman descended the steps from the rooms above, a large cloth case in her arms. As she scanned the room, Tayre recognized the expression. A horse master evaluating a new mare. A shepherd assessing a flock.

Or himself looking across a crowded room, deciding where to sit.

She perched on a table and unwrapped the harp. She set up a quick, playful tune. The room fell silent. She brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes that fell back immediately. Giving the audience a wolfish grin, she strummed a single, loud, attention-getting chord.

“Blessings of the season,” she said into the sudden silence. “I’m Dalea. I’ll give you my stories, and you leave me what you’ve got to spare. We could both go home happy.” Her fingers did a quick dance across the strings, producing a sound like laughter.

There was a scattering of chuckles.

“Isn’t this warm weather sweet?” Sounds of assent. “Don’t get too used to it. How long is your summer up here? A tenday?” Chuckles.

Tayre studied her words, stance, and the small movements of her face. They were alike, the two of them, both making their way through the world by choosing what others saw.

 

1635: A Parcel of Rogues – Snippet 19

1635: A Parcel of Rogues – Snippet 19

Chapter 10

“Praise be for a real bed,” said Gayle Mason. Examining the item of furniture in question and then her two companions, she added: “It’ll be a tight fit, though. That’s without adding any extraneous males, you understand.”

Julie Mackay and Vicky Short both grinned, albeit for different reasons. The down-timer’s grin was cheerful, recalling instances in which her bed had been shared with a male whom she did not consider extraneous at all, one Darryl McCarthy. She wouldn’t be enjoying his company this night, though, because the town they were staying at — say better, village; better yet, hamlet — lacked an inn and the only cottage they’d found with an extra room the inhabitants were willing to rent had nothing more than a bed any American would have called a single bed.

The bed was normally shared by two young daughters — neither more than ten years old — who would contribute to the family’s finances tonight by sleeping on the floor of the main room. The men in their party got to sleep in the barn. Which was at least a lot roomier.

The up-timer, Julie, whose enjoyment of marital privileges had now lasted long enough — three years, almost — that she took them for granted, had a grin on her face that was more resigned than anything else.

“Praise be,” she muttered, remembering less seventeenth-century times when she and Gayle, dyed-in-the-wool Americans, would have said Thank God without even thinking about it. But both of them were now romantically linked to Calvinists, who took the third commandment dead seriously.

Vicky left the room to bring in the few supplies they’d want for the night. Julie and Gayle exchanged a rueful smile.

“Look on the bright side,” said Julie. “Most of what we grew up hearing about up-tight fun-hating straight-laced Puritans turned out to be bullshit.”

Gayle chuckled. “Complete bullshit, at that. But” — she glanced around quickly, to make sure they were still alone — “dear God, they take their theology seriously, don’t they?”

Julie sat down on the bed and bounced up and down on it a couple of times. “Well, at least it isn’t too soft. With three of us in it, a soft bed would leave the middle one buried beneath the other two. Ain’t it the truth about the theology? But I will say this: it works mostly in our favor, when it comes to dealing with the menfolk. At least of the husband variety. The Calvinists are so bound and determined to pick a fight with the Catholic church that if the pope frowns on sex, they approve of it, and if the bishops and priests yap about the virtues of celibacy your good Calvinist — sure as hell my husband — is bound and determined to prove the papist bastids is full of crap.”

The smile what came to her face this time wasn’t rueful in the least. “Which is fine by me.”

She then bestowed upon Gayle a look that might be called speculative.

Gayle shook her head. “I can’t say from personal experience one way or the other. Oliver’s no prude, that’s for sure, but he is… what’s the word?”

“Serious?”

“Yeah, that’s it. When it comes to some things, anyway. And it’s not as if opportunity is knocking. It’s one thing for married couples like you and Alex — even Darryl and Vicky, for that matter — to figure out ways to squeeze in a little nookie here and there. But when you’ve got two people like me and Oliver who are groping around trying to figure out…”

Gayle shrugged. “Everything. How we feel about each other. What he’s going to do with his life now — and do I want to fit myself into that? Because whatever he does you can be sure and certain it’s going to involve a grim determination to shorten one Charles Stuart by about eight inches — and let’s kick over the whole damn rotten applecart while we’re at it. Not to mention that he’s got a bunch of kids to deal with if and when we can find them.”

She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Like I said. Everything. And while we’re doing so there is no way that Mr. Serious Cromwell is going to dally with my affections. As they say. Which… I have to admit, just makes him that much more attractive to me. The more time I spend in his company, the more time I want to spend in it. Which my hard-headed grandma once told me is the only definition of ‘falling in love’ that’ll stand the test of time. I think she was probably right.”

She went to the room’s one tiny window and peered out. As bad as the glass was, she couldn’t see much. In the seventeenth century, except for palaces and the homes of the wealthy, through a glass, darkly was a simple statement of fact.

“The truth is,” Gayle said quietly, “if Oliver and I do get married — and that’s all that man would ever settle for — the only big problem I see is that Puritans seem to find a theological justification for the wife being subordinate to the husband. And that’s sure not something I agree with. I’m no feminist, but –”

Julie laughed. Gayle turned to give her an inquisitive look. “What’s so funny?”

“You.” She waved at herself. “I guess I should say, us. I once said that except same thing to Melissa Mailey. ‘I’m no feminist, but — ‘”

Gayle smiled. “She must have reamed you a new one.”

“No, actually, what she did was worse. She just made fun of me. Ridiculed me, dammit. What she said was that every working-class American woman — girls, too — said exactly the same thing. ‘I’m no feminist, but.‘ And then we proceed to follow the ‘but’ with the entire litany of feminist demands that we’re in favor of. Each and every one.”

Julie raised her hand and began counting off her fingers. “Lessee, now. Right to vote. Check. Right to hold property. Check. Right to get paid the same for the same work. Check. Right to divorce the bum when he turns out to be a bum. Check. Right to make contracts in your own name. Check.”

She dropped her hands. “Melissa challenged me to come up with a single feminist demand I didn’t agree with. Best I could come up with was that I thought burning bras was stupid.”

Gayle chuckled. “Same thing I would have said.”

“Yeah — and then Melissa explained to me that that was a bunch of bullshit invented by assholes. Turns out no feminist ever burned a bra.”

“Really?”

“Nope. Melissa told me the myth got started when a group of women protested the Miss America contest in Atlantic City — that was in 1968, if I remember right — by tossing bras along with girdles, cosmetics and high-heeled shoes into a big trash can. They also crowned a sheep. But they never actually set fire to the can.”

“Ha!” said Gayle, shaking her head again. “You learn something new every day.”

She looked back through the window. “I wish I could see the future better than I can see through this thing. I have no idea — well, okay, that’s not true; I have an idea, you bet I do — what’ll happen between me and Oliver. But…”

“Don’t sweat the wifely obedience business too much, Gayle,” Julie said. “Alex will swear by the same silly crap.” Her voice got a little sing-songy and picked up a Scottish burr: “It says right here in the Good Book that — prattle, prattle, prattle. But in the real world? He never pushes it. Men who are sure of themselves — which is part of what makes them attractive to us, let’s face it — just don’t seem to feel the need to keep proving who’s wearing the pants in the family.”

She and Gayle both looked at Gayle’s clothing. Which consisted of a bodice, ankle-length skirt and a bonnet — the same thing Julie was wearing herself.

“I sure do miss blue jeans,” said Gayle. “Although I admit this stuff isn’t as uncomfortable as I would have thought seeing it in movies. By now, I’m used to linen instead of cotton. Don’t even notice the difference anymore.”

Julie nodded. “That’s pretty much how it is being married to a seventeenth century fella, too — as long as you pick the right one. There are some differences, even a few big ones, but after a while you hardly notice anymore. But I emphasize the part about picking the right one.”

Gayle turned away from the window and cocked her head slightly. “So what do you think about Oliver? Think he’d be a right one for me?”

Julie pursed her lips. “Well… He’s a little… Well. Scary, I guess.”

Gayle snorted softly. “We are talking about Oliver Cromwell, girl. The Oliver Cromwell. Cut off a king’s head, ruled England like a dictator for years. Not to mention, if you listen to Darryl, slaughtered half the Irish.”

“Darryl hasn’t said that in a long time. I don’t think he even still believes it. The truth is — he won’t admit, at least not yet — but he likes Oliver. A lot, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” said Gayle. “Darryl’s a real hillbilly and when you get down to it, for all the obvious differences there’s something very hillbillyish about Oliver Cromwell too. If nothing else, they’re both bloody-minded in that scary-as-all-hell practical way they have about them.”

There was silence in the room, for a moment. Then Julie said: “But I’m not trying to duck the question. He’s a little scary, but the truth is I like Oliver myself. A lot, by now. And, yeah, I think he’d do okay by you, Gayle.”

A grin came back to her. “Keeping in mind that some people — whole lot of people, being honest about it — would say that you and me are pretty hillbillyish ourselves.”

Vicky came back into the room, carrying a bundle in her hands. She studied the bed for a moment.

“How’ll we do it?” she asked. “Decide which of us has to sleep in the middle, I mean. Draw straws? Flip a coin — assuming either of you has one, because I don’t.”

Gayle and Julie looked at each other.

“We could fight for it,” said Gayle.

Vicky sneered. “Me — against a couple of hillbillies? Do I look mad? I’d as soon wrestle a bull. No, we’ll do it civilized.”

In the end, they settled on rock-scissors-paper, after they explained the rules to Vicky.

Vicky won right off and picked the side away from the wall. Julie lost the runoff to Gayle.

“I’m fucked,” she grumbled.

“Not tonight,” said Vicky. “There’d be no room even if you weren’t in the middle.”

 

The Seer – Snippet 25

The Seer – Snippet 25

“Maybe more.”

Binak pressed lips together. He inhaled to speak.

“Be content, Binak. Don’t ask for more. Or less.”

Binak swallowed, nodded. “I’ll bring you food.”

“In my room.”

“As you say.”

Tayre stood and followed the large man upstairs, where he unlocked the first door, handing Tayre a long iron key.

“Next time someone asks you about me,” Tayre said softly, “tell them I’m looking for a girl, a woman, and a baby. Usually I like you to keep silent, but now say that much. Understand?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Also tell them I’m not a good man to cross. I think you can make people believe that.”

Binak’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly. Finally he swallowed and looked down.

“Food, Binak.”

#

A month later, Tayre sat in a corner of a smaller, half-full public house of dock workers called the High Tide. Midday sun shone down through upper windows in columns, casting pale, smoky triangles across the floor and tables. The room smelled of cheap twunta, cut with pressweed and salted with cinnamon. Also heavy spice, the sort used to cover the taste of sour meat.

Sour meat. Impure twunta. Girls and boys wandering the streets in too few clothes for the weather, looking lost and hungry, cloaked figures lurking behind, prodding them forward. All signs of tightening times.

It was not only the rumors of the king’s health weakening, not merely the uncertainty of the succession. Something was shifting oddly in the markets.

Arunkel metals had made the empire powerful for centuries, giving the Anandynar royals and their Houses enviable wealth and an uninterrupted monarchy, but it was a vulnerability, too; as the price of metals went up, the lines of influence across the aristos and Houses and royals shifted.

Tayre’s morning’s walk through this village’s market had told him nothing about where the girl and her family might have gone, but much about the new taxations. Muttering and looks tracked him as he played the early season merchant, but the open talk about what unsanctioned goods could be bought without levy surprised him.

When the black market took over the gray, the king’s rule was weakening. He wondered if the princess knew, or if Innel had any idea. If the king were smart, he’d hand the reins over to his daughter before she was left with a ship taking on seawater in the open ocean.

In any case, changing times meant opportunity. Even in his search.

As he sipped from a mug of tea, a tall man sat down across from him. The man held his arms and shoulders in a way that spoke of hard labor and fast reflexes. Dock work, perhaps. Tayre knew the type: he liked to fight, and his few scars indicated that he was used to winning.

Good; it was far easier to take down those who expected to win.

Tayre raised his eyebrows in question.

“Hear you’re looking for someone.”

“That’s right.”

“A girl.”

“Right again.”

“How much?”

“Depends on what you tell me.”

“I’m muscle on a coast trade vessels. I get around. I like girls.”

Tayre put a silver falcon on the table between them, falcon side up. On the coin, the raptor held a smaller, dead bird in its talons. Finch, if he recalled correctly. House Finch had been lobbying the crown to change the coin’s design for some time.

“Southern Arunkel features,” Tayre said. “Broad face, green eyes, clear skin. She travels with a woman and a yearling baby.”

The other man reached for the coin, but Tayre’s hand covered it.

“Sure, I’ve seen her,” the man said, pulling back his hand.

Tayre searched the man’s face a moment, then slid the coin into his pocket. “No, you haven’t.”

“I have,” the man insisted, his chin jutting aggressively. “I can tell you where she went. And the woman, too.”

“What sex is the baby?”

The man’s pause gave him answer enough. Tayre pushed back from the table, standing while keeping the man in sight, then turned his back on him, walking to the door.

“Hey. You don’t walk away from me when I’m talking to you.”

Now they had the attention of everyone in the room. How to best use it?

He was unsurprised when the man darted between him and the door, facing him, arms spread wide to block his way. Sidestepping, Tayre slipped by, the man’s fingers brushing him without gaining hold. He stepped through the open door just in front of the man’s next grab.

In the middle of the cobbled street he turned to face him. Overhead the sky threatened rain.

“Around here,” the tall man said, walking toward him, “you don’t offer coin and then take it back. Rude, that. Guess you don’t know, having been raised in a shit-pen. Give me the coin and we’ll call it a pig’s apology.”

Behind the man, the tavern was emptying into the street to watch, hoping for good entertainment. Tayre would make sure that they got it.

“Why would I pay for your lies? Worthless, just like you.”

At this, the man’s face went red. He lunged forward, grabbing for Tayre’s neck, a foolish move at best, telling Tayre how much this man depended on his size and strength. A quick but slight step to the side, a grab and a shift of weight sent the man forward in the direction he’d already been traveling, but faster. He stumbled forward, yelped once in surprise, caught his balance, and danced sideways, circling back, a grin on his face.

Turning his back on him, facing the audience, Tayre held his hands out in a gesture of mock confusion, giving the collected crowd a warm, humorous, and slightly self-deprecating smile.

These people would know the other man and not Tayre, but when this was over, they would remember Tayre and his modest, warm smile. Across cultures, people liked winners, but they always preferred the ones who didn’t think too highly of themselves.

He watched their eyes track the man coming closer behind him. As his arm circled around Tayre’s neck, Tayre dropped and stepped back, slamming his elbow into the other man’s sternum, letting the motion carry his fist into his groin.

As the man grunted heavily and began to fold, Tayre spun in place, hands on the man’s head, easily directing it into his rising knee. There was a gratifying crunch as his nose met Tayre’s knee.

Then a gentle push with his foot on the man’s less-weighted knee and the large fellow went sprawling onto the stony street.

Tayre followed him down, dropping atop him, straddling torso and arms. Taking his time, he wrapped a hand around the man’s neck, a move that was more for the audience than the man under him, who seemed, for the moment, to have had the fight taken out of him.

The man squinted upwards at him and gurgled, a bubble of blood coming from his nose.

“You should take more care who you choose to annoy,” Tayre said, making sure that his voice was loud enough to reach the gathered crowd.

The man struggled. Anger flickered across his features. Tayre’s grip on his throat tightened, and the expression went back to confusion.

Clearly he didn’t have much experience losing.

He tried to sit up, but Tayre held him pinned easily. Still, the effort implied a general lack of attention, so Tayre grabbed the top of the man’s head by his curly dark hair, raised it slightly, and let it drop to the stone. The man gave a pained yelp.

“And it would be smart of you to show me some respect. You see how that might be wise?”

The man blinked a bit, then struggled again to try to get free, so Tayre repeated the motion with the man’s head, raising and dropping it to the stone. The man’s jaw went slack, eyes unfocused.

 

Come The Revolution – Snippet 31

Come The Revolution – Snippet 31

Chapter Nineteen

“So, Captain Prayzaat, we’re in a tough situation here,” I said once the two of us sat down across a small table in a back room. “Much as we’d like to give you and your men shelter and protection, we have no legal authority to resist the Army if they come for you.”

“The mutineers,” he said without any life in his voice. “Call them what they are.”

I had a cup of hot tea and the Varoki police captain had a mug of redroot soup. He’d made sure his three men had theirs before he would take any. That said something about him. I looked at him carefully. He slouched in his chair, worn down, and not just physically but emotionally as well. Even his ears drooped. I think he figured he’d come to the end of his road.

“Army, mutineers: they are whatever they are, and legally that’s going to be decided later, after the fighting is all over. What we call them now won’t change that.”

He looked away, fear and despair and anger all working over his face, sending weak flashes of color across his skin. “We protected you Humans from the mobs,” he said without looking at me. “I lost men fighting our own kind to protect your miserable lives. We killed Varoki.” He turned and looked me in the eye. “Do you understand? We killed our own people to protect you. If we had not done so, if we had just let them murder you all, I do not believe the Army would have acted against us.”

I figured he was right. Hell, I knew he was right, and it shamed me to sit there and drive a bargain for his and his men’s lives when they’d already paid such a heavy price for us. But theirs weren’t the only lives at stake, so I kept my face cold.

His face tightened with remembered pain and he looked away again. “I have no idea how many of my men the army killed, how many are being held, how many are still hiding somewhere out there. All I have left are those three patrolmen out there. My entire life has come down to keeping those three people alive, and you talk to me about legal technicalities.”

“Well, they won’t be technicalities when the Army comes for us and demands an accounting. But there may be a way.”

He turned and looked at me and for a moment his eyes flickered with hope, but then he remembered who he was talking to, and his lips pressed together in distaste.

“I will not break my oath,” he said. “I will not break the law. The law and the safety of three patrolmen, these things are the only meaning left to me For all I know, I am the senior surviving officer of the Sakkatto Municipal Police not in rebel captivity. I will not finish my career, and probably my life, with an act of dishonor.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” I said. “Deputize us.”

He sat up, looked me in the eye, his own eyes suddenly wide with understanding. The anger and shame colors drained from his face and his ears fanned out wide. “Deputize you?” Then he smiled. “Of course! But you understand that would give me direct authority over your armed fighters.”

“Well, if you insist on being a hands-on commander, we may have a problem. See, I think you’re probably a hell of a cop, but this isn’t primarily a law enforcement issue.”

He drew back, suspicion replacing the optimism of a moment earlier in his eyes, but I pushed on.

“This is going to turn into a really tough fight, and it’s probably going to start any time now. We have a lot of folks here who have actually soldiered. Sometimes, like with me when I was a youngster, it was the Army or a few years in detention over something. Even for more honest Humans, the Army or mercenary gigs are fall-back employment. It’s second nature for us, you know?”

He nodded reluctantly. Everyone knew about Humans and their proclivity for violence — ferocious as tigers, but very useful tigers. It was just a stupid stereotype, but right now it might work in our favor.

“Besides,” I went on, “I have an idea how we can get communications out of Sakkatto City, even with the jamming. We can tell our story, and that includes your story.”

That got his attention. “How can you penetrate the jamming? The Army’s electronic assets are far more numerous and capable than those to which even we had access.”

“I don’t think we can penetrate their jamming, but there may be a way to get around it. But here’s the problem: if we start broadcasting your appeals to police in other cities to resist the coup, and to foreign powers to intervene against it, and we advertise the fact that you’re here with us, the Army is going to throw everything they have at us to shut you down, and we’ll just get plowed under.”

He leaned back and nodded. “You would not mention this problem unless you believed you had a solution to it as well.”

“Yeah, we dummy up an office and have you speak from it, claim it’s a remote site. What I got in mind they won’t be able to trace very easily. So let them turn the city upside down. Who says you’re even in the city? We’ll transmit your messages straight to the e-nexus codes of police, public information sites, and some well-known feed heads outside of Sakkatto, and who knows where they’re originating?”

“Yes, that could work,” he admitted, “provided you can actually conjure your miracle with the jamming.”

“Yeah, but it also means you can’t be giving orders here, or even showing your face. This is going to get very scary, and there will be plenty of folks who lose heart. If they think they’ve got a juicy enough bit of information for the Army, they may try to use it to buy their lives, or the lives of their families.”

“You have a low opinion of your own species,” he said.

“No I don’t. You guys have stacked the deck against us, screwed us over for a hundred Earth years, given us the end of the stick that’s so shitty, sometimes the only win that’s possible is just staying alive. We were always survivors, but you made us absolute masters of the art. Next time you feel like clucking your tongue at someone about that, take a look in the mirror.”

We stared at each other for a few seconds but eventually he nodded.

“Your rather insulting argument notwithstanding, the practicalities of the arrangement you propose are undeniable. I agree, provided you can actually arrange communication with the outside world. How will you accomplish that?”

I leaned forward and put my good elbow on his desk. “Can you keep a secret?” I asked in a low voice.

He nodded.

“Good. So can I.”

*****

Once the outlines of the deal were firmed up between Zdravkova, Katranjiev, and Captain Prayzaat of the Munies, I headed over to my first logistics staff meeting, a necessary preliminary to getting part two of my plan working.

The meeting was short because all five of my chiefs were anxious to get back to their work. That was encouraging. Each one turned in a resource list and outline plan, but in terms of accomplishments they were mostly still in the staff recruiting phase.

I went through their priority lists briefly and didn’t see anything crazy, so I approved them and told them to work on that basis for now and we’d fine tune as we went along. I’d see what I could do about resources, but for the most part our philosophy would be to take what we needed, so long as we understood that our key goal — only goal, really — was to give the combatants what they needed to fight and give the noncombatants what they needed to stay alive. Nothing else mattered.

Dolores Wu (rations) and Petar Ivanov (fabrication) took off right away and Doctor Mahajan asked Billy Conklin to stay after and talk about arrangements for an enlarged trauma ward. I buttonholed Moshe Greenwald outside the clinic where he’d stopped to roll a cigarette.

“Greenwald, wait a minute. You were an electrician on a starship, right? You know anything about hard-fiber communication and data transfer systems?”

He gave me a sour look. “Know anything? It’s my specialty. I ran power lines when I needed to, but that’s all brute force stuff. Data flow is art.”

“Okay, suppose somebody had a local hard-fiber comm/data system already up and running. How hard would it be to cut it into the city-wide network?”

He finished rolling the cigarette and then licked the paper before answering. “Impossible,” he said.

 

Come The Revolution – Snippet 30

Come The Revolution – Snippet 30

“I don’t know you,” he said, “but I work for Bogo Katranjiev, head of the Citizen’s League. He told me to get a working LENR generator and bring it back to his office, which is what I’m doing.”

“Can you dismount that thing without screwing it up?”

His face twisted in a sour expression. “For three years I crewed on a deep space C-lighter, engineering department. Then eighteen months I spent grounded here, waiting for another lift ticket. Seven days ago I got one, seven days! I was scheduled to ride the needle to orbit tomorrow, and then all this tsuris breaks loose! Can I dismount an LENR generator? One time I bypassed a burned-out power junction, ran carbon cable by hand to pump a SMESS from a half-gig fusion reactor so we could make jump. You even know what a SMESS is?”

“No.”

“Then shut up and let me work.” He leaned over and picked up his power wrench.

“You think this is the best use of your time,” I asked, “pulling one little LENR generator to run an office suite?”

“Not my department.”

“Turn around and put your hands up,” I ordered.

He looked like he might argue the point, but when Ivanov took a slow step toward him he laid down the wrench and did as I’d told him.

“You’re gonna be sorry,” he said.

“Hope not,” I answered as I sprayed “LOG” on his back in big bright letters.

“Hey! What the hell?”

“Turn around,” I ordered and I did his front.

He touched it with his fingers, looked at the still-wet streak of paint.

“See, now it is your department,” I said. “You still work for Katranjiev, or rather the Emergency Citizens Troika, but from now on you report to me. I’m Sasha Naradnyo, head of logistics, and you’re now head of the power division. We’re gonna need lots of it. There are solar panels, vehicle skins, LENR generators lying around all over. What do we need to do to get them concentrated, secured, and on a grid?”

He thought for a couple seconds, looked around the street half-filled with nervous people hurrying here and there, trying to make their own preparations. He looked back and opened his mouth but I cut him off.

“Not now. Two hours from now at the clinic. Between now and then recruit whatever technicians you can find. Here’s two spray bottles. Have an outline plan of action by then and a list of what resources you need. No telling what I can actually give you, but it’ll be nice to have a wish list. You got any questions?”

He looked around some more and then nodded to the LENR generator in the van.

“What about that?” he said.

“It’s your call. If you decide that generator needs to be in that office suite, then get somebody else on it. But if I catch you turning a wrench anytime in the next two hours, my friend Ivanov here is going to break both your arms, just so you won’t be distracted from your real job any more. Understand?”

To my surprise, he laughed and nodded.

“By the way, what is a SMESS?” I asked.

“Super-conducting Magnetic Energy Storage System. It’s like a big donut only made from superconducting cables. You know, no resistance, so you put electricity in, it just goes round and round until you need it.”

“Sounds like maybe we could use one of those. Any around here?”

He just laughed.

*****

Fifteen minutes later I stopped back at the dilapidated wood frame and sheet metal building which housed the offices of the Merchants’ and Citizens’ Association and was also becoming the headquarters of the Sookagrad Emergency Citizens’ Troika, which made sense as, of the three groups that made it up, only the Merchants’ and Citizens’ Association was actually legal. I wanted to check in before my department head meeting and see how everyone was dealing with my sudden promotion from Traitorous Running Dog to Chief of Logistics. I wasn’t sure what sort of working relationship I could manage with Katranjiev, or with Dragon Lady for that matter, but it was time I found out.

As Ivanov and I turned the corner on the winding, narrow street a short block from the headquarters, I saw a sight which excited and scared me at the same time: a group of four Varoki Munies, looking a little roughed up but not really injured as far as I could tell. They still had their sidearms but they hadn’t drawn them, and they were under the guard of a half-dozen citizens, assorted firearms raised and pointed.

“Let’s not scare anyone,” I told Ivanov. “We don’t want this to turn ugly. Those four Varoki could be very important to us.”

He looked at me. “You like leatherheads,” he said, in his rumbling bass voice.

“Most of my life I was a criminal, and I spent most of that time ducking the Munies on Peezgtaan. I got no love for them, but times change. These guys could solve some problems for us.”

I tried to find out what was up but the civilian guards didn’t know anything useful. They were just covering the Munies until word came back from inside what to do with them. Three of the Munies were patrol officers, looking scared and way out of their depth. The fourth one was older and wore the rank stars of a police captain. He looked more depressed than scared — maybe resigned to his fate was a better description. None of them really wanted to talk to me, at least not yet.

“Keep an eye on things out here, would you?” I said to Ivanov. “Wouldn’t want anything stupid to happen.”

“Because may be more useful alive than dead,” he said.

That was a very utilitarian way of looking at it, and there was a lot to be said for utilitarianism. But there was something to be said for being on the side of the angels as well, not that it was ever easy to figure out which side that was. I sometimes think that the cause you back has less to do with where the angels roost than how you go about backing it. That said, I also think some causes can stain you so deeply that no quantity of good deeds will ever cleanse your karma. So if you’re looking for simple answers, some universal formula that will get you through life with your soul intact, try looking where the light’s better.

Inside the offices I found Dragon Lady and Katranjiev arguing about what to do with the Munies. They made an interesting physical contrast: Katranjiev tall and skinny, fair-haired and long-faced, the Dragon Lady none of those things.

She was fiftyish — which was older than I’d have thought from her voice — and a little stocky, but she moved as if she was in good shape. She wasn’t beautiful, but I’d call her distinguished-looking. “A handsome woman,” people might have said once upon a time, or would have if it weren’t for her eyes, which were stricken and angry-looking at the same time, as if they had seen too much and now disliked seeing anything at all. Other than being a former legal councilor, the current head of a Humanist resistance cell, and ill-tempered, I didn’t know much about her. I’d at least found out her name: Desislava Bogdanovna Zdravkova, which as names go would have been a mouthful if my own folks hadn’t been Ukrainian. She was second generation Bulgarian like Katranjiev and a lot of the folks in Sookagrad.

Between all those Bulgarians, Nicolai Stal the Russian, and me the Ukrainian, this was starting to look like a reunion of the Slavic diaspora.

Zdravkova and Katranjiev both glared at me when I walked in.

“What do you want, Naradnyo?” Katranjiev demanded. “I only went along with Stal’s idea of giving you a job because I thought it would keep you too busy to cause trouble.”

“Boy, were you wrong.”

“I imagine you’re here to plead for the lives of those four leatherheads,” Zdravkova said.

“As it happens, you’re exactly right, although since the Munies haven’t done anything but get themselves whacked for protecting us Humans, I’m not sure why their lives would need pleading for. But here’s my thing: have either of you given any thought to what’s going to happen to us in the unlikely event that we actually survive all this?”

“What do you mean?” Zdravkova asked.

“That would be a ‘no,'” I said and she scowled even harder at me. “I heard you’re a lawyer, or at least used to be. We’re grabbing everything in the district which isn’t nailed down, confiscating supplies, ripping apart cars, demolishing buildings to close routes of approach, knocking new doors–”

“Actually, you’re doing most of those things,” she said.

“A distinction which will be lost on the authorities. My point is, what will the owners say when it’s all done? Have we got a legal leg to stand on? Or are we just a bunch of vandals and looters?”

“Legally we’re vandals and looters,” she said and shrugged. “If we live, we can worry about explaining it.”

“By then it will be too late. If we want outside help soon enough to make a difference, our legal status could be the deal breaker. But I got an idea. I know it goes against both of your better instincts, but hear me out on this one. Please.

“I think I’ve come up with an interesting angle.”

 

The Seer – Snippet 24

The Seer – Snippet 24

Chapter Eight

As Tayre and his horse ascended the road to the mountain town of Sennant, he considered the many things worse than the freezing rain now finding its way around wraps and oilskin, under leather, to his skin, until only his toes deep in his boots were truly dry.

Many things worse. With a good fire and a little time, the chill he was now experiencing could be banished.

But doing his work in the open, for show — that could follow him for years. And that was worse.

They were proud of their name, the townspeople of Sennant. It gave them a sense of importance, of being part of the empire’s mighty trade route up and down the river from which they took their name. That the village was not on the river and indeed could only be reached by twisting mountain roads did not seem to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm; they were happy to visit the barge port once a week anyway, to trade furs, cider, jars of maple syrup, gossip.

Which was why it was here that Tayre would start creating the rumors about himself that would circulate back to Innel, to quell his doubts as to Tayre’s capability.

He’d considered ending the contract. Innel was sufficiently annoyed — and Tayre sufficiently expensive — that turning the conversation in a direction that would release him from the bond would have been easy.

However, he had no intention of allowing the contract to end. There was something about the girl that was still beyond his understanding. That she was a true seer he doubted, but something about her did not make sense. She was a puzzle that needed solving.

Find the unknown. His uncle had taught him. And make it known to you.

He rode past the town, circling First Hill, passing by Garlus Lake, the patter of frozen rain hard on the water’s surface. Whatever fell from the sky, the lake would endure. Reputation was just one more tool, and his would endure this, too.

From the lake he entered the dripping canopy of forest and went to one of his hollowed-out cache trees. Suitably replenished, he found the Flute and Drum, where he knew they would take good care of his horse, who was certainly as tired of the chill rain as he was.

It would slow his work, planting stories intriguing enough to get back to Innel’s informants. The best work left no trace.

But so be it. The job had simply become more expensive. Not entirely unexpected when dealing with the monarchy.

The next time he found the Botaros girl, he would watch her as long as it took him to arrange the best circumstances for her acquisition, assure himself that she was alone, with no transportation opportunities handy. Learn her movements, isolate her, take her.

And if magic were involved, he would find a way around it. He had done it before.

He entered the Flute and Drum, pulled the door tight behind him.

A handful of people sat at tables around a central fire, quietly eating. He limped a little as he made his way to a wall-backed table and chair, taking in the room as he went. Who faced whom, cut and fabric of clothing, how they stood, skin tone variations, blemishes, hand positions. He made quick assessments about history, wealth, and agendas.

The limp was a small thing, like the way he held his head a bit off-center and the mud ground into his worn clothes. Enough to make him seem unlike the man who had come through a nearby village a few days ago. People watched strangers who came through, especially in these cold months, and they talked about them. Now to make sure they said what he wanted them to.

At the fire sat men and women eating bits of bread from a greasy communal plate, drinking from mugs, naked feet up on the stones clustered near the flames. On the floor were short-boots and turn shoes propped up to dry, socks draped between them like makeshift tents.

Glances came his way. As he sat, he lifted his hand in a brusque, demanding motion to the innkeeper across the room. The large man shuffled toward him on the unswept wood floor.

“Time preserve the king’s health,” the innkeeper said in an exhale. A traditional greeting, but also a warning that he was a law-abiding citizen and was not looking for black-market action. “What can I get you?”

Tayre knew that Binak was easily startled and would be obvious about it. Rolling his voice with a slight accent from the southeast, with a little Perripin thrown in and a tug toward the lilting tongues of the desert tribes, he spoke slowly, precisely. “Something with no dirt. Resembling food, if you have any.”

The big man spat air through his teeth. “If you don’t like it here, go somewhere else.”

“Don’t know yet. Bring it and I’ll tell you if it’s food. Hurry up.” With that, Tayre spread a handful of nals across the table.

Shaking his head, annoyed, Binak turned away.

“Binak,” Tayre said in another, quiet voice.

The man turned halfway back. Tayre let his expression change and turned his head a little.

“Seas and storms,” Binak said softly, his shoulders hunching slightly, hands together in anxiety, mouth opening and shutting. “I didn’t recognize you. What do I call you this time?”

“Call me Tayre.”

“Sausage and fried bread, is that what you want? We have wine. Something from the north. Let me check, I –”

“Bring me whatever you would bring a stranger.”

“Of course,” the other man said, his eyebrows drawn together.

“I’ll be here a few nights. Also messages up the coast and inland.”

“I don’t have –”

Tayre’s hands met, back of one hand to the palm of the other. Hard currency. The big man’s eyes flickered around the room.

“No one knows me here yet, Binak. Or our history. And won’t unless you continue to fret, or mention other names by which you might know me. I trust that hasn’t occurred to you.”

“No, no,” Binak said, seemingly horrified by the very idea. “The one man asking, I swear I told him nothing. Didn’t even say I knew you.”

“When was this?”

“Tenday and five ago.”

“I will ask you about that later,” Tayre said, gesturing to the other chair. “Join me.”

The big man reluctantly folded himself into the chair across the table. He hunched over, head down.

“Your wife,” Tayre said. “Tharna, isn’t that her name?”

“Yes.”

“Children. Four, if I recall. All healthy?”

“Yes.”

“You had another, didn’t you?”

“Died in childbirth.”

“And the fishing?”

“Ah.” Binak raised a hand, let it drop palm down on the table with a heavy sigh. “The river nets are empty two years now. The fish have found other places to swim, I think.” A sudden glance at Tayre, worry laced with fear. “Please,” he said softly. “I obey the king’s laws now. I can’t do what you had me do before.”

“I don’t remember any before.”

Binak paled. “Of course not. I didn’t mean, I –”

“Settle,” Tayre said, his hands in a calming gesture. “I won’t ask anything difficult. Nothing to offend the laws.”

“I hear that in some lands, a debt dies with the owner.”

“In some lands, the people have no honor.”

“I don’t need honor. I need fish in my nets. I need to be able to buy grain and wine for what it’s worth, not five times that. Everything is too expensive all of a sudden. I can hardly feed my children.”

“I could pay someone else in Arunkel silver instead of you. Shall I leave?”

“No, no. Forgive me. The times. The taxes. How can they expect us to pay more than we make? Whatever you need. I’ll make up a room for you. A few nights, you say?”

 

1635: A Parcel of Rogues – Snippet 18

1635: A Parcel of Rogues – Snippet 18

He spent the afternoon in the taproom of the Falcon in Huntingdon composing his letter to the earl. He didn’t think he’d have to argue too hard to get himself appointed as a justice; the mere fact that it would jam sideways in the throat of every one of the country gentlemen who got in the way of the king’s plans for the country would be argument enough. Still and all, he’d learned proper rhetoric in the grammar school and it wasn’t in him to make less than the best case he could.

Mulligan returned just about as he was done, smelling faintly of smoke and grinning. “Sure and it felt good to do that, fair put me in mind of us getting evicted when I was a little boy. I ran the family off from town a ways, since I thought you’d want to get to the justices before they did.”

“You thought right, Mulligan, and before you sit down to your supper after a good day’s work, you get to pick who rides back to London with my letters to the earl. Charge him to bring back an answer as quick as he can.”

Mulligan nodded and took the packet, and Finnegan set out to see the local justice.

****

“Mister Pedley, Esquire, I presume,” Finnegan said, when he was let in to the man’s house.

“I am,” said the old fellow who’d risen from his seat by the fire to greet his visitor, “and who might you be?”

“William Finnegan, of County Waterford, in service to the Earl of Cork and His Majesty the king, squire. I’ve fetched my letter of commission for you to see. I’m after the man that broke out of the Tower of London last month, and I’ve cause to believe he’ll come here within the next few days.”

“I’d heard talk of questions being asked. You’re in charge of that lot of Irishmen about town, then?”

“They are indeed my sworn men, sir, and in the course of executing my commission this morning two of them were wounded. By the grace of God and His providence, sir, not grievously, but I’m after laying information before you all the same as soon as I have names to give. There’s also the matter of me and my men being given false information regarding the fugitive, sir, and so soon as I can find time to furnish full particulars there’s information to be laid in that matter too. In furtherance of my commission” — he paused to lay the document on the side table beside Pedley’s chair, noting the while that he’d not been invited to sit at all — “I exacted punitive measures on those most directly responsible for the misprision, sir.”

Pedley regarded him levelly. “Am I to understand that this commission, sir, is like to the French carte blanche?”

Finnegan reached the obvious conclusion that here was a man who’d have been for parliament in the future that never was. “I’d know nothing of the French, sir,” he said. “It is a plain commission from the king to take a felon and a traitor in flight wheresoever he may be found. And if you care to tell me, sir, that when he was arrested he was no felon, by his prison-break he became one.”

Pedley harrumphed. “I dare say there’s a lawyer who’d make a pretty mess of that case, and likely another who’d make a pretty present of it. My duty, sir, is to keep the peace, and since I hear not a quarter hour since that your brigands have burnt a farmhouse and barn, showing mercy only to the lives of the family therein, I have to wonder what best to do for that duty. And now you tell me the king commands it? That’s a color for your actions, sir, but not the color of law.”

Finnegan smiled gently. “I am in pursuit of a felon and a traitor, sir. Hot pursuit, if you will, for all I’ve got ahead of my man. And while it may be that there’s a bench somewhere that might convict me for my actions, I’m told His Majesty is much fond of exercising his prerogatives, one of which is the prerogative of pardon. Things would have to change greatly in London before I’ll face gallows or gaol for anything I might do short of murder in my commission, sir.”

“I suppose, in these times, a man should be grateful for fair warning before the royal tyranny buggers him again?” Pedley’s tone was acid, sour and sharp. Finnegan had to give him credit; he had an armed man in his home explaining that he’d been given license to do all short of killing and he wasn’t acting the craven.

“Ah, now tyranny I understand, sir, and tyranny this is not. Rough and ready justice for a traitor and a felon, and all those who aid him, but not tyranny.” He was careful to keep his tone soft. He knew what had happened to his country under the plantations, and had some idea of what would have happened to it over the next few years. For his own part, he cared nothing for it, so long as he and his suffered little or nothing. But it struck him as monstrous that this fat old fool in his fine warm house with, yes, his bottle of sack, could complain of tyranny. “I’ll take my leave of you, sir, and ask you to expect my information laid within the week. In the meantime I await further commands from the king.”

“As you say. See yourself out, commissioner,” Pedley said, handing the king’s letter back to Finnegan unread. “I’m sure I’ll be hearing more from and about you.”

“Just until I have my man in hand, squire Pedley, just until I have my man in hand.”

Tully was waiting outside, minding the horses. There might be a surprising lack of thievery hereabouts, but old habits died hard. “From the face of you I take it that went as poorly as could be expected?”

Finnegan shrugged. “We knew the Cromwells were a big family hereabouts, and before he was arrested our man was making himself popular with the bog folk. Something about drainage schemes, as I recall. Seems he was a known man with the gentry as well, because that man wouldn’t have given me the steam off his turds without I had the king’s letter in my hand. Which he troubled not to read, mark you.”

Tully snorted. He’d stopped groaning hours before, so Finnegan supposed the buffet to his head wasn’t so bad as all that. “The talk of you after you’ve spoken to gentry is always such a delight to hear, so.”

Finnegan rolled his eyes. “I had the learning of it at school, it never leaves a man. And it pays to talk to the bastards the way they expect or you’re just another fucking bog-trotter they can safely ignore, king’s letter or no king’s letter. Well, we’ve been handed a fine opportunity to shove the bog firmly up their arses, one way or another, doubled if the earl persuades the king. More than one of the boyos will welcome the chance to have at the Saxons, torai though they be. It’s one thing to have your countrymen to chase you for the sake of stolen cattle, quite another to be run off your land by foreign soldiers for the sake of other foreigners.”

Memories of the confiscations and plantations of colonists after the Nine Years’ War were still raw. Boys who’d grown up dirt poor, paying hard rent on good land their grandfathers had owned — in some cases were still around to complain bitterly about — could and did turn to thieving to keep body and soul together. Caught, and offered a pardon by the earl, they carried on as the enforcers of the order that had broken their families. It put money in a man’s pocket, but in the small hours of the night he could be excused a certain amount of resentment. Oh, indeed, there’d be some relish in getting the whip hand over the Saxons. Tully, for example, was from around Kinsale. His grandfather had died the year after the siege there was broken, driven off his land entirely for plantation as punishment for a rebellion he’d had no part in, or so he insisted. Tully’s father had fought through the courts for years to recover the land, only to have the title he’d recovered called into question because he was a Catholic. He’d gotten something of a price for it from the earl, who’d been plain Richard Boyle back then, and probably more than he’d have had from any other buyer. The poor old fool had been pathetically grateful.

The younger Tully had been less impressed with the deal, but he could at least see that Boyle was the best of a bad lot among plantationers — he’d got his first stake in Ireland by marrying an Irish lady, or at least one of the Old English, who’d come over in peace and settled. The fact that he’d been imprisoned several times on suspicion of aiding the rebel side in the Nine Years’ War helped, too.

That had never impressed Finnegan overmuch. Any man on the rise as Boyle had been would make enemies, and collusion with rebels and foreigners was a useful handful of mud to throw at such.

Still, Tully was grinning in the last light of the day. “That will be a true nightmare for the Saxons, to be sure. An Irishman with a constable’s warrant set over them? We’ll have to hold their reins tight, so we will.”

 

Come The Revolution – Snippet 29

Come The Revolution – Snippet 29

Chapter Eighteen

What was I good for?

That was a really good question. What I’d told Stal about my background was all true: I was a pretty good administrator, and a good judge of people’s abilities, but that wasn’t the secret of my success. I had risen as high as I had in the criminal underworld because I could kill without hesitation and without any genuine remorse. That is a much rarer ability, even in violent criminal gangs and the military, than most people imagine. Train soldiers to shoot and stick bayonets in dummies all you want. When it actually comes down to aiming at a living being and pulling the trigger, you would be astonished how many hesitate, or shake uncontrollably, or don’t fire, or deliberately miss.

But I never hesitated and I hardly ever missed, and that was my edge. After a while I understood what that meant, that there was something wrong inside me, or something missing, but that realization did not change anything. I wanted to escape that life, wanted to become something different. It wasn’t lost on me that my escape from violence involved the single most murderously violent episode of my life.

So I died and I was reborn. Not hard to attach some sort of spiritual significance to that, huh? But now what? What was I good for now? The idea of picking up a gun and discovering that I could still kill without hesitation, that that was still what I was good for, would mean it had all been for nothing, wouldn’t it? And that thought haunted my dreams like a dark reaper, waiting, waiting.

I was twenty-two and zero.

So far.

Not that I had a wealth of time for introspection. I figured we had maybe a day or two to get ready and at least a week’s worth of work to do. Everyone in Sookagrad wanted to do something, but nobody knew where to start, and sure as hell didn’t want to take orders, so you mostly ended up with a lot of people standing around talking and waving their arms.

I had an advantage: for that first morning, Nicolai Stal loaned me his personal shtarker gonef, a big bruiser of a guy named Petar Ivanov. Ivanov made it easier to get people’s attention. At a shade over two meters tall, and well over one hundred kilos of bone and grotesque, bulging muscle, he walked around in no shirt and very baggy pants tucked into low boots. With his oily black hair and swarthy complexion, he looked like something that had materialized out of an old lamp.

I got up before dawn and had an idea. I scrounged a dozen spray bottles of bright yellow-orange glow paint and then, as the district came to life at sunrise, Ivanov started showing me around, searching for people who looked like they knew what they were doing.

At the first food warehouse I visited I found a middle-aged woman of Chinese ancestry, Dolores Wu, arguing with the guards, trying to persuade them to help her move a hydroponics setup to the warehouse. She was painfully slender and took odd little steps from side to side as she listened to the guards, her hands gesturing as if to reinforce or sometimes contradict what she heard. But when she spoke she froze in place, arms slightly out to the side, only moving her head from one side to the other between sentences. I found her physical mannerisms oddly bird-like, but her arguments to the guards were pragmatic, coherent, and forcefully delivered. After a five-minute job interview I sprayed the front and back of her shirt with the big letters “LOG” for Logistics, and did the same for the two armed guards. Ivanov stood with his arms folded staring at them the whole time, so they didn’t argue about being drafted.

The spray paint was their uniform and authority: she was acting head of rationing for Sookagrad Logistics, and the guards were her muscle. I told her to round up a work gang and move the hydroponics unit wherever she thought best, and then start looking for more. If she could find a reliable assistant, get him or her to work on an inventory. The guards at the other warehouse were under her as well. One of the two guards at this building said he knew them and he’d explain. I gave her one of the spray bottles to make it official. The sooner people started seeing a bunch of folks with those markings, the sooner they’d accept their official status.

There were probably better-qualified people, technically speaking, than the ones I drafted that morning, but I didn’t have a lot of time. Mostly I concentrated on grabbing people with loud voices and aggressive attitudes. That’s how you fill a power vacuum: noise and motion.

Within two hours I had a good start on a senior team, all of them recruiting work gangs to get the most pressing, immediate needs addressed. Ivanov didn’t say much, but when he did it was worth listening to. He would also take over fabrication himself, once we finished our morning round of drafting people into the organization. Despite his looks, he was actually a software guy and he knew his way around the hardware as well. He didn’t fit my mold of loud and aggressive, but he knew where every fabricator in the district was, who knew how to run them, what software was available, and where the raw materials were stored. I told him to work on finding a loud-mouthed assistant.

I hadn’t listed billeting on my original to-do list, but Billy Conklin, a local building contractor, convinced me we needed someone to honcho space management. He wore cowboy boots under his work pants and a cowboy hat so stained, worn, and crumpled it was hard to tell what it was right away, and he sported an accent to match. I got the feeling he had a lot of experience convincing people they really needed things they’d never thought of before, which was just the sort of skill set I needed, right? He was smooth alright, with his feigned bumpkin act, but I suspected I might have to keep an eye on him. I have an instinct for guys who are so sure they’re smarter than everyone else in the galaxy, they always have a couple extra things going on the side.

He was right about space management, though; we had too much critical material looking for a place to live, and would probably have a lot of people fighting for that space as well pretty soon. A couple of the outlying residential buildings would have to be evacuated to make the perimeter more defensible. Where would we put those people? Billy got a spray-painted jacket for his trouble and a new job. He already knew carpenters, welders, plumbers, finishers he’d hired or worked with. I gave him two spray bottles and told him to draft anyone he needed.

I found our head medic on my own. Dr. Tanvi Mahajan was the director of the community clinic and pitched in with the doctoring as well. Her appearance stuck me immediately: well-dressed, trim figure, hair neatly pulled back, and face bearing the prominent scars of childhood acne. If anyone had access to cosmetic surgery, especially something as simple as this, it would be a doctor, but she’d never fixed it. I got the feeling she was pretty comfortable with who she was. She was also the only person I met that morning who didn’t seem flustered or a bit overwhelmed. She took five minutes and told me exactly what shape the clinic was in, what she expected would be the things they’d have a hard time dealing with, and what she needed to take care of it all. She got to keep her job with some new challenges. She’d need a lot more space for trauma patients, preferably adjacent to the current clinic. Talk to Billy Conklin about that. She’d also need to secure whatever medical supplies she could, and get Petar Ivanov working on fabricating more.

Moshe Greenwald was my last acquisition that morning. Moshe was short, thick, and balding, at least ten years older than me, and his coveralls stretched taut across his broad belly. A hand-rolled lit cigarette dangled from his lips. The sleeves of his coveralls were rolled up and I spotted a tattoo on his right forearm: a big gold and red spaceship. Not a real spacecraft, mind you, but what people through they would look like a hundred or so years ago — a sleek torpedo-shaped hull sporting big swept-back fins and a fiery exhaust. I figured either he had a strange sense of humor or he was drunk when he got that ink.

I found him unbolting the LENR generator from an abandoned Munie van. LENR stood for Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, what they used to call cold fusion. An LENR generator didn’t kick out a lot of power, but it was steady and low-maintenance.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I asked him.

He looked up and squinted at me over the forward chassis of the van. “I’m paintin’ my nails. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“We’re going to need that generator you’re stealing.”

He carefully took his cigarette out and balanced it on the hood of the van, straightened up, hefted the power wrench, and looked at Ivanov. After a couple seconds he put the wrench back down and picked up the cigarette.

 

The Seer – Snippet 23

The Seer – Snippet 23

“You may go if you wish,” the king had then said.

Only two years in the Cohort then, but the young Innel knew perfectly well that these words were far from true. He tightened his stomach, clenched his jaw, and forced his gaze back to the man on the table, who was twitching and taking a very long time to die.

“You think we’ll find gold inside, Innel?” the king had asked.

What was the right answer? He desperately wished Pohut were here to give even so much as glance for guidance.

He knew the story, of course: how the pale-headed northerners had gold inside them, like pearls in oysters, which accounted for their pale hair. But was it true?

“I don’t know, Sire.”

Steady, he told himself. This would be over soon.

But it was not. The servants first cut the man’s golden hair at the scalp. The long locks were closely inspected, offered to the king, then laid aside. Next they cut into the dead man’s face and scalp, pulling skin away, digging out the eyeballs, handing each part to others who stood by to take it, making careful examination, often cutting it apart further on another table, before dropping the bits into buckets.

The slave’s fingers were cut off, skin stripped away in small segments, ligaments pulled off bone, bones crushed with mallets against the stone floor. Each piece again meticulously reviewed, given to the king at a word to inspect. Blood dripped off the table, sluiced with water onto the sloped stone floor, oozing redly into a central drain beneath. They cut into the stomach and pulled out organs trailing intestines, dicing them into small bits on another side table. As one might prepare sausage for a stew. All the bits were then strained through a weave in a careful search, liquid dripping through.

Innel felt sick.

There was very little talk. The sounds of bones being ground. Bits of wet meat dropping into buckets. The room stank of blood, offal, and emptied bowels.

It took hours. Innel held himself as still as a statue, not daring to even look away from the table, terrified he might find the king watching him.

When at last the body had been completely taken apart, the table empty but for the tiniest bits, and soaked in blood, buckets of meat and pulverized bone lined the wall.

Nothing that remained was recognizable as the man who had walked beside him in the corridor.

Servants then hefted the buckets and left to take the remains to feed the royal pigs.

The young Innel found himself wondering if the blond man had known this was coming as he walked here so proudly. If he had, surely he would have fought it, even knowing that it would do no good.

Or perhaps he had indeed known, and knowing was what had given him the bearing that had so impressed Innel.

“Now,” the king said. “We are finally and completely certain.” And then he had laughed, a sound that haunted Innel for many nights after.

There was no gold inside. Not a single flake.

With a bow to the king, a servant offered him the long strands of gold-colored hair. Long, long locks of shimmering hair.

Much like the long, long locks that Innel now held in his hand as he sat in the royal bath room, under the king’s close scrutiny from the tub.

Restarn snapped a finger, motioned, and both slaves stood quickly, the woman’s long tresses flowing through Innel’s hands as she pulled away. The two of them left through a side door.

Innel exhaled softly, finally daring a look at Restarn, finding his expression unfathomable.

“You seem distracted, Innel. Not getting enough sleep?” The king grinned widely. Of course he knew that Innel was sleeping with Cern.

“No, Sire, I am not.” Innel gave a small smile in return to show he shared the king’s amusement and met his gaze, but broke away first.

Just like with the dogs: show strength, but not dominance, not until you’re absolutely sure you can win.

That would come.

“Innel, we must talk about the wedding.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Innel responded, relieved to be discussing the future rather than remembering the past.

“I need someone to go to Arteni.”

“Arteni, Sire?” Innel frowned. A town along the Great Road, a central collection point for grain in the surrounding fertile lands. Contracted directly to the crown in the last Charter Court, as he recalled.

“They’ve made the poor decision to sell some of their harvest to traders in Munasee. Maybe they thought they could get a better price there. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice.” He gave Innel an unpleasant smile. “An insult to me, personally, and an affront to our hungry citizens. I need someone to go and sort it out. Someone I can trust not to be soft about it.”

Innel could see where this was going. “It would be a great honor, Your Majesty. But with the wedding –”

“Exactly. I can’t marry my daughter to a captain. It would be embarrassing.” At this Innel felt a chill down his spine. “I could promote you, of course, but not without –” Restarn waved his hands as if searching for words, splashing a little water — “some demonstration of your capability to the generals. They think you’re unproven.”

“Unproven? They’ve been testing me for years. The Lord Commander in particular.” He still had the scars.

“Yes, yes, I know. But they’ll say pretend battles make for pretend soldiers.”

It was one of the king’s favorite maxims. Of course they would say it.

“I’ve been out on campaign repeatedly, Sire, and –”

“Not in command,” said sharply. “I have to give them something if I’m going to give you a higher rank.”

There — he’d said it twice. The prize of advancement now dangled irresistibly in Innel’s mind. Were it bestowed on him by the king, it would say a great deal about the monarch’s faith in him. Given his lack of bloodline and House, that could matter, once he was wed to Cern. Could matter a great deal.

But Arteni was many days south. It would take him time to mobilize an armed force, even a small one. And how long would this sorting out take?

Innel could easily be gone months. That would delay the wedding. Take him from the palace. Away from all his plans, which might unravel quickly if he were not here to oversee them.

Away from Cern, whose interest might cool if he could not regularly remind her why she liked him.

No; there must be another way.

“You’ll need to install a new town council,” the king said. “Make sure they observe what you do to the old one — you understand. And the mayor, I don’t have to tell you how to handle him, do I?”

“Sire, the wedding –”

“We’ll put it off. Short delay, but for good cause. Midwinter, most likely.”

Midwinter?

Innel thought furiously, quickly turning over what he might prudently say next. Not a time for missteps.

“Or,” said the king, drawing the word out, “I could send Sutarnan. He’s eager for the chance to prove himself. At times I think Cern might still hold some fondness for that boy, cheeky as he is. And Mulack — I still wonder if he might be a bit of a late-blooming rose.”

Mulack was nothing like a late-blooming rose. He was eparch-heir to House Murice, and had no interest in getting his hands dirty.

But the point was now more than clear. He was being played on the king’s board. To resist would mean being taken out of the game.

He had no choice.

“It will be my great honor to serve, Your Majesty.”

“Yes, it will. Better get to it, then.” He motioned, and servants came running to give Innel back his boots and jacket.

He’d been dismissed to what promised to be a sizable task. Standing, he bowed deeply, keeping his seething entirely on the inside.

Again his mind went to the Botaros girl. If he had her in hand, all this would have been avoided. Even now, she could advise him how to achieve a fast victory south.

Where in the many hells was Tayre?

 

1635: A Parcel of Rogues – Snippet 17

1635: A Parcel of Rogues – Snippet 17

Chapter 9

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” Mulligan was busily kicking in the wattle walls of the tiny house, bellowing his rage at the innocent timber and daub.

Finnegan had to admit that, crude as the sentiment was, he could see the point of it. They’d come on the place just before dawn, barely a murmur in the morning dew. Every man in Finnegan’s band had got his start as a livestock thief in country far better guarded than this. Or at least, far better guarded than they thought this was.

They’d taken their time around Huntingdon, split up, tried not to act like an organised search party, watched carefully until they got the right place — old hand off Cromwell’s farm, right part of the world, right ages of children, answering the meagre descriptions they had. Questions, innocent enough, were asked and answered wherever folk grew expansive over their beer.

Finnegan himself had found and talked to a man who’d worked for Cromwell on the farm he rented out toward St. Ives a way, and visited the place. New tenants now, it seemed, and they’d been perfectly happy to talk with him about the famous fellow who’d been hauled away the year before last.

More questions, more patient watching, more careful hiding of the attachment of one group of men to another. Finnegan had made sure, or so he thought, that no one lot of them looked like they were getting close. It would take a cunning fellow to add up all that was being seen and learnt and deduce that they were getting closer day by day to whoever had given Cromwell’s children shelter.

He’d even let two groups of the lads blow off steam in a tavern brawl one night, trying to make a show of them being rival groups of mercenaries after the same bounty. If it looked like they were working across each other, they might not scare away their prey. Finnegan and Tully had laughed together at how over-careful he was being as he finally narrowed the search step by step to a fensman’s cabin seven or eight miles out of town down the local river, the Great Ouse it was called, and into the edges of the real fens.

Slipping by night through the fringes of the fen country, boggy as it was, proved no great hardship. The height of the growth, even this early in the summer, would have covered regiments.

Finnegan had been sure he’d had the place properly surrounded, and blown his whistle as soon as he could be sure of enough light to rush the house properly. With the door kicked in and the place surrounded, five men in, and seven to stand watch around would be enough to make sure nobody showed fight. The last thing he wanted was dead children; corpses were poor hostages and wonderful for provoking a man to revenge, so every man had gone in with bata in hand in place of sword or pistol. A cracked head would put the fight out of a man or woman and wouldn’t kill a child, and he’d sent in the five best stick-fighters in the band.

Except it had turned out that whoever had been left inside that hut had had a gun, a dubious-looking old matchlock, probably a fowling piece older than its owner. The ambush-party-of-one had let drive with a load of bent nails, chips of gravel and cheap, sulphurous powder and then run in the confusion. It was a miracle that nobody had lost an eye to the thing; O’Halloran was missing a tooth and a piece of moustache where one of the bits of stone had taken him in the top lip.

That had been the signal for slingers — slingers! in this day and age! — to rise from the undergrowth and start pelting Finnegan’s men with rocks. Even the smaller ones had been enough to raise painful welts through buff-coats. There were a couple of broken fingers and Tully wouldn’t be seeing much out of his left eye nor standing up without an attack of dizziness for a week or two. A volley of stones, and the slingers had vanished altogether. How they’d done that in very near plain sight was between them and the devil, that was for sure.

Finnegan had had his lads out into the smallholding that surrounded the cabin, and beyond into the fens all morning and half the afternoon, but caught sight of nobody. From time to time a stone would hurtle out of nowhere and knock one of them arse-over-end into the muck. No smoke, no noise, just sudden pain. Occasionally they’d catch sight of some ragged figure whirling his sling. Of course, they’d be vanished by the time anyone reached the spot. Finnegan had, eventually, fallen them back on the cabin.

“Sure and we were spotted coming,” Tully said, holding a wet kerchief to the side of his head, the linen slightly pink where the cut was still oozing. “And we should’ve brought helmets and breastplates.”

“Spotted before that,” Finnegan growled. “They’re not as soft nor as foolish as we fooled ourselves they were. Burn this. We lay up and wait for Cromwell back near town. He’s to come here to start finding his children, we’ll have him then.”

Finnegan wasn’t one who gloried in the wreck and destruction of war, but there was a satisfaction in watching the cabin go up, the thatch tinder-dry in the warm breezes of summer. It might’ve been a little more fun to do it at night, but you took your entertainment where you found it.

“Mulligan!” Finnegan called the man over. With O’Hare up at York, and no word from him yet, Mulligan was his best for sending off for independent action. “Take six fellows and get over to Cromwell’s old farm and put that to the torch as well. Turn out the people before you burn it, it’s them that led me here, so it must be them that warned of us. See Cromwell’s friends suffer for aiding him. I want that man with no safe place when he comes here.”

Mulligan frowned. “We’ve to leave witnesses alive? Arson, that they hang a fellow for?”

Finnegan waved it aside. “I’m away to find a justice of the peace. I’ve a letter of commission from the king, given me by the earl. He’ll not have constables after us for what’s done at the command of the king, not without us being able to go before a court, at least. I’ve money for lawyers and the king has more, to attend that matter for us. Even if they can find a judge who’ll hear it quickly, we can be gone before it comes to gaols and rope. Just see there’s no dead, a hue and cry for murder we don’t need at all.”

“I’ll be about it. Consider the place burnt before sundown.” Mulligan turned to pick his usual cronies for such things, and Finnegan left him to it. Now he thought on the matter, there were other things a king could commission besides a manhunt. Was it the king who appointed constables, or the justices? Or, and here was a simple next step for you, get himself appointed justice of the peace for this locality and the boyos — or at least the smarter of them — as constables and he could go about his manhunt with no need for lawyers at all. For, when all was said and done, prison-breaking, escape and rescue were all felonies, and all of the concealment that was going on was misprision. If he got a commission as justice of the peace he could arrest, and sentence for that himself. The fines would help cover his expenses, and the threat of a whipping, branding or the pillory might loosen a few tongues. The earl would like that as a solution, since he’d complained bitterly about the lawyers and the courts hampering things he wanted to do. Finnegan could turn that on its head and make them regret all their careful precedent and argument while it served the king’s need.

“You look like you’re thinking,” Tully said, still with the cloth clamped to his head. “And not about anything pleasant, either.”

“Nor am I,” Finnegan replied. “I think some of you boyos are going to have to be constables for a time.”

Tully laughed, a bark before he stopped, wincing. “Don’t make jokes, man, my head’s fit to murther me. This lot, constables?”

“Constables. There’s a lot of blather in this land about tyranny, Tully, and I think it’s time they learned the meaning of the word from Irishmen, that know it.” Finnegan stamped his soggy boots to try and fit them a little better. “I’ll pay a call on a squire or two this evening after I’ve sent to the earl for the commission I’ll need. We’ll see how badly the king wants this Cromwell brought to justice for his prison-breaking, when the earl asks him to commission a lot of torai as constables and their chief as a justice of the peace.”

Tully barked again and winced, and the other boyos around laughed too. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Finnegan, have mercy on a wounded man. It’s like a spike in my head to laugh right now. You, a fuckin’ justice of the peace?”

Finnegan grinned. “Let’s be back to that fleapit we’re staying in, I’ve letters to write.”