The Redemption of Althalus (73 page)

“May I ask a few specialists to sit in, Arya Andine?” Aidhru asked.

“Certainly, my Lord,” she replied quickly. “You and Dhakan and I could sit around and speculate all day and not really get anywhere. That’s why we have experts in the first place, isn’t it?”

“You lucky devil,” Aidhru said to Dhakan. “Not only is your Arya pleasant to look at, but she’s also got her head on straight. You wouldn’t
believe
how unpleasant things were here in Kanthon after Pelghat ascended the throne. If I could find out exactly who arranged that maniac’s death, I’d fall down and lick our benefactor’s feet.”

Andine lifted one of her tiny feet and looked at it critically. “They aren’t really that clean right now, Lord Aidhru,” she told him with a coy little smile. “Maybe after I bathe, we could talk about that.”

Aidhru blinked, and then he suddenly laughed. “I should have guessed,” he said. “Why don’t we find a nice, soft chair in a warm room for our cranky old friend here? Then we can talk about assassinations, forms of government, and just how the devil we’re going to feed the people of Treborea until next spring.”

The conference room to which Chamberlain Aidhru led them was large and well appointed. “I could send for some ale,” Aidhru suggested, glancing at the hulking Arums.

“None for me, thanks all the same,” Chief Twengor said shortly. “Maybe something to eat, though.”

“Aren’t you well, Uncle?” Chief Laiwon asked in a startled voice.

“Actually, I am, Laiwon,” Twengor replied, “and I plan to stay that way. I’m not sure exactly how Althalus here boiled all the residue of ten years of heavy drinking out of my blood, but I haven’t felt this good since I was a boy—and I’m not going to take any chances with it.”

“Would you be offended if
I
had some?” Laiwon asked.

“It’s your belly—and your head. If you want to tear them apart, that’s up to you.”

They all took seats around a long conference table. Althalus opened the discussion. “I think we’re going to need some precise numbers. We’ll want a fairly accurate count of how many mouths we’ll have to feed
and
just how much wheat’s stored in the granaries of Kanthon, Osthos, and all the other cities in Treborea. Once we start putting those numbers together, we’ll know just how short we are.” He looked at Aidhru. “Our little mother has already taken some steps to get things rolling,” he advised.

“
Will
you all stop that!” Andine’s voice soared. “I am
not
anybody’s ‘little mother’!”

“She might spank you,” Leitha noted, “but probably not too hard.”

“Getting back to the point,” Althalus said, “Arya Andine has already dispatched a certain Duke Olkar to Maghu over in Perquaine. Olkar’s a merchant himself, and he’s acquainted with most of the grain merchants in Maghu. Once I know just how much of a shortfall we’re facing, I’ll run on over to Maghu and tell Olkar how many tons of wheat we’re going to need. I don’t think we’ll want to buy this year’s
entire
crop.”

“Lord, no!” Aidhru said. “That’d wipe out every treasury in Treborea.” He looked nervously at Andine. “Before I make too many more of these imperial announcements, Arya Andine, just exactly what’s my status here? Am I a prisoner of war, a captive being held for ransom, a potential slave, or what?”

“We’ll invent a title for you, Lord Aidhru,” she replied.

“ ‘Imperial Advisor’ sounds sort of nice,” Leitha suggested. “Our Andine’s quite fond of the term ‘Empress of Treborea,’ aren’t you, dear?”

“Not anymore, Leitha,” Andine said. “That particular delusion wore off rather quickly. For the time being, let’s just say that Kanthon’s a ‘protectorate.’ It’s a suitably vague term that won’t hurt too many feelings—and it’s only a temporary sort of thing. Let’s get through the coming winter and root out all of Ghend’s underlings before we move on into a more permanent arrangement. The ‘protectorate’ isn’t going to last, of course. It’s just something interim—until things settle down.”

“Which probably won’t take more than a couple of centuries,” Chief Twengor murmured to his nephew, Laiwon.

“Or maybe three,” Laiwon amended. “Five at the very most.”

C H A P T E R     T H I R T Y - S I X

I
t’s not quite as bad as Andine seems to think it is, Em,” Althalus told the Goddess when he and Eliar stopped briefly in the tower on their way to Maghu to speak with Duke Olkar. “Dhakan evidently keeps a running inventory in his head every year. When we added the wheat in the granaries of Kanthon, we’re not as short as everyone seems to have believed we were. Would it be all right if I stopped by our private gold mine to help buy what we’ll need?”

“Why would you want to do that, pet?” she asked.

“A fair number of Andine’s people will starve if I don’t, Em, and she’ll weep and wail about that for years if
somebody
doesn’t lend her a hand.”

“And?”

“What do you mean, ‘and’?”

“It’s not entirely Andine’s concerns that moved you to suggest this, was it, love?”

“The money’s right there in that hole, Em, and it isn’t doing anything useful. It’s not exactly as if it
meant
anything to me.”

“You absolutely
refuse
to come right out and admit it, don’t you, Althalus?”

“Admit what?”

“You’re as concerned about the well-being of the ordinary people of Treborea as Andine is. Compassion’s not a sin, Althalus. You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”

“Aren’t we getting just a little syrupy here, Em?”

She threw her hands in the air. “I give up!” she said. “I was trying to compliment you, you dunce!”

“I’d take it as a favor if you didn’t noise it around
too
much, Em,” he told her. “I
do
have a reputation to maintain, after all, and soft-heartedness could ruin people’s opinion of me.”

“Is Bheid starting to get his senses back at all?” Eliar asked.

“It varies,” Dweia replied. “Sometimes he seems almost normal, then he flies apart again for no particular reason.”

“Where
is
Bheid, by the way?” Althalus asked.

“He’s gone into seclusion—in an empty room. I suppose I could tamper with him, but I’d really rather not do that. If he can work his way through this on his own, it’ll be better in the long run. Sooner or later, he’s going to have to face what happened in Osthos and come to grips with it. If I start smoothing things over for him, his problems might sink below the surface and then pop up again right in the middle of some emergency.”

“How long is it likely to take for him to get well?” Eliar asked. “Leitha
really
misses him, and she can’t even feel his thoughts anymore.”

“He’s doing that on purpose, Eliar,” Dweia explained. “He’s going through something that’s fairly awful right now, and he doesn’t want it to involve her. I’ve more or less suspended time for him. If all he needs to recover is time, I can give him all he needs.” Then she straightened and looked at Althalus. “Keep your eyes and ears open when you get to Maghu, love,” she instructed. “There’s something going on in Perquaine that’s not quite natural. See if you can get some specifics.”

“Duke Nitral said something about religious arguments, Emmy,” Eliar recalled. “Could that have anything to do with what’s got everybody there all stirred up?”

“It’s possible. Where are the rest of the children, Althalus?”

“They’re going up into Arum with the Clan Chiefs for the wedding of Albron and Astarell,” he replied.

“That’s nice,” she said approvingly.

“Weddings mean a lot to you, don’t they, Em?”

“You haven’t forgotten who I
am,
have you, Althie?”

“Not
too
likely,” he said. “Let’s go to Maghu, Eliar. I need about ten thousand tons of wheat, so we’d better get to buying before the price goes up.”

“It’s a manageable number, Althalus,” Duke Olkar conceded. “If I spread my purchases and delivery times out a bit, I should be able to acquire that much without causing a sudden rise in price—
and
if I buy in thousand-ton lots, I should probably even be able to get a discount.”

“You’re an even bigger thief than I am, Olkar,” Althalus accused the Duke of Kadon.

“Thank you,” Olkar replied with a shrewd smirk.

“Is there something going on here in Perquaine?” Althalus asked. “Duke Nitral was saying that there’s some kind of religious controversy boiling to the surface.”

“I hadn’t heard that religion was involved in it,” Olkar replied. “There’s a certain amount of unrest among the peasantry, I’m told, but that crops up every ten years or so. It’s the fault of the property owners, when you get right down to it. Perquaines tend to be egomaniacs who spend millions building palaces. The peasants live in hovels, and the differences between ‘your palace’ and ‘my hovel’ are very obvious. The notion of ‘comfortable but not showy’ hasn’t occurred to the Perquaines yet. The property owners show off, and the peasants resent it. There’s nothing new about that.”

“I’ll nose around a bit,” Althalus advised him. “If there’s likely to be an all-out peasant rebellion before long, we’d better buy our wheat and get it across the border before the fires break out.”

Olkar scoffed. “It never goes quite
that
far, Althalus.”

“Let’s not take any chances, Duke Olkar. If we happen to blunder on this one, Arya Andine’s going to talk to us about it—and I’m sure we’ll hear her even if she doesn’t bother to leave her throne in Osthos.”

“You could be right about that,” Olkar agreed. “Maybe I’d better go hire a few hundred wagons.”

“I would, if I were you. Eliar here can lend you a hand. I think I’ll do some snooping around. I want to find out what’s
really
going on here in Perquaine.”

“My great-great grandfather was probably one of the best burglars in the world in those days,” Althalus boasted to the other patrons in the seedy tavern near the riverfront, “but he was a country boy from up in the mountains, and he’d never seen paper money before. Where
he
came from, money was round, yellow, and it went
clink.
He didn’t have any idea at all that he had
millions
right there in his hands, so he just turned around and walked away from it.”

“Tragic,” one of the professional men in the tavern observed, shaking his head.

“Indeed it was,” Althalus agreed. “According to my father, nobody in our family’s done an honest day’s work in ten generations—except for one black-sheep great uncle, who was a carpenter—and the incident here in Maghu was the one time in hundreds of years that any of my relatives
ever
came that close to real money. It’s a stain on the family honor, so I’ve come to Perquaine to pull off something that’ll sponge that stain away.”

“What line do you follow?” a nimble-fingered pickpocket asked.

“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. I’m fairly ecumenical. I know that most businessmen believe they should stick to one trade, but if the authorities are looking for a daring highwayman and they’ve got hanging on their minds, it’s time for the highwayman to sell his horse and plumed hat, and move into some city where he can pick pockets for a while.”

“That
does
sort of make sense,” a wiry burglar with a long nose agreed. “You might have picked a bad time to come to Perquaine, though. Things are sort of stirred up just now.”

“That’s what somebody was telling me when I first got here. He wasn’t altogether sober, though, so I couldn’t make much sense out of what he was saying. He kept going on about religion. Does anybody take religion
that
seriously?”

“Not anybody who’s got his head on straight,” the burglar agreed, “but on down to the south there seems to be some kind of new order in the priesthood. We’ve all seen White Robes, Brown Robes, and Black Robes, but from what I’ve heard, this new order of priests wears red robes, and they’re preaching sermons about ‘social justice,’ ‘oppressive landowners,’ and ‘starving peasants.’ It’s all absolute nonsense, of course, but the peasants are lapping it up. But then, peasants don’t have much in the way of brains, or they wouldn’t keep on being peasants, would they?”

“
I
certainly wouldn’t,” Althalus agreed. “It’s probably the same here in Perquaine as it is everywhere else. The landowners gouge the peasants, the merchants gouge the landowners, and
we
gouge the merchants. That’s why
we
stand at the very top of the social order.”

“I
like
his way of thinking,” the long-nosed burglar said to the other thieves. “If we look at it that way, wouldn’t you say that pretty much makes us the true noblemen?”

“Not in front of strangers, I wouldn’t,” the pickpocket replied.

“Is anything significant likely to come out of this peasant unrest?” Althalus asked.

“Some fancy houses are probably going to burn down, and a few fat landowners will get their throats cut,” the burglar said with a shrug. “Then there’ll be quite a bit of looting—but the Red Robes will eventually preach all the loot away from the peasants. Every priest alive believes that about half of all the wealth in the world rightfully belongs to him, so you won’t find very many priests in poor countries. This so-called ‘peasant revolt’ is nothing more than a hoax. The Red Robes will preach the peasants into a frenzy; the peasants will run around yelling, and waving shovels and rakes, and stealing everything that isn’t nailed down; and then the Red Robes will cheat the peasants out of everything they’ve stolen.”

Althalus shook his head sadly. “Where will it end?” He sighed.

The long-nosed burglar laughed cynically. “The nobility will see which way the wind’s blowing, and they’ll buy off these new priests,” he predicted. “Then the sermons will change. ‘Social justice’ goes out the window at that point, and ‘peace and tranquility’ becomes all the rage. ‘Getting your fair share’ gets replaced by ‘getting your reward in heaven.’ It’s the same old swindle it’s always been, my friend. Then the priests will quietly point out each and every leader of the revolt to the authorities as a ‘civic duty,’ and before long, every tree in all of Perquaine’s going to be decorated with dangling peasants. Revolutions always end that way.”