Corsair Princess Read online

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  Was it I who said Trace was ripe for such a thing as a bank? I am endeavoring still to prove that my father did not sire a fool.

  * * *

  Your true and faithful bondsman,

  Reeve Selt Sestar, Overseer Almidi Branch, Bank of the Pinnion

  “What is Selt thinking?” she asked. “Those East Almidi thugs are going to skin him alive and make little purses out of his ears.”

  “I worry for him as well. Not everyone can be as successful as Leger—” I stopped there, but it was too late. Sadness and rage seized me. I slammed my fists down upon the table and spat curses from the pain.

  “What success?” Fana asked. “I’ve not heard an accounting yet of the Accord.”

  I’d tried to say a few words at the funeral. All I’d managed was a small growl. I could find no more than that as my most thoughtful scribe tried to coax a conversation from me. I found and handed her the Accord, instead.

  She read, smiled at what he had wrought for us, and then, without warning she started to cry. They were silent, angry tears. She slapped them away savagely.

  She tried to turn us toward the man’s successes, asking, “Did Soma know how many men of the Oreol Lieutenant Bohn will sign?”

  “Thousands, she’d said. If he got half their men-at-arms to take the deal, it could be closer to 6,000. It is why I made Soma Admiral of the Pinnion and gave her command of all the new ships. She is going to bring all the families north.”

  Fana started swearing. The string of expletives was venomous. She thrust the copy of the Mertone Accord at me and pointed at a passage.

  “This … this …” she tried to say. She sat back down and began to shed tears.

  “What is wrong, Fana?”

  “This is the work of the census a thousand-fold over. We’ll have to document and create house books for every single family. Leger, rot your eyes and rot your bones. You have killed us.”

  “Fana,” I shouted. “You go too far. What is the problem?”

  She continued cursing, so I reread the clause.

  Clause five ~ Any auxiliary candidate, regardless of previous commitments of services or fealty, may choose during the twenty days following the signing of this accord to step away from all previous claims to their person and enter into martial service of the lessor. Upon making greencoat muster, said man will be given hereditary title to one unoccupied hide of land of his choosing within the northern third of Enhedu. Title to said land will remain free and clear of all tax and tithe so long as, 1) he or a member of his family makes muster; and 2) the stewardship of the land can be demonstrated by the proper production of a house book.

  “Wait …” I said with growing alarm. “House book? I’d not caught that. It is a legal word, yes, referenced in the Laws?”

  “Yes,” she moaned. “The eleventh law. Property and its keeping. It is a specific kind of house book he has required of them. The kind my father kept for Urnedi. It took him years to learn how to do it properly—took me all winter.”

  “But isn’t that a good thing? Don’t we want these 6,000 new families to all be able to keep the same kind of books?”

  “Barok,” she said, “I am shocked by your ignorance. Where are you going to find 6,000 blank books, 6,000 ink stones and brushes? Who is going to set them up? Who is going to review them? And how, by the Spirit, did Leger think I was going to teach 6,000 wives how to keep double-entry books?”

  “We are not so alone as we once were,” I said. “The craftsmen’s consortium is salivating at the prospect of so much additional labor and so many new customers.”

  “Then they can help with the bookkeeping!” she shouted.

  “That’s what I am suggesting. We draft Nace and the consortium into the effort to secure the required materials and assist with the setup. There must be many in Urnedi who can keep this kind of book. It is a good clause Leger wrote for us. Let’s make those who will most benefit from it pay the freight.”

  This did not satisfy her, and she continued to fume about the work she would have to do. I chuckled at her, which earned me a hard look.

  “No offense intended, Fana,” I explained. “I’m laughing at myself.”

  “Oh?” she asked.

  “You understand me—more than most, I would guess. Do you recall when I switched from rushing around on horseback trying to be ten places at once to managing Urnedi without moving?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, let me tell you what you are doing wrong. You are trying to complete each task given to you yourself. But you are not a worker anymore. You need to start giving the work to others who can do it just as well.”

  “Envoys need envoys?” she asked with a bit of a laugh.

  I shrugged. “Soma has four captains reporting to her now. They will each be in charge of their own ship and crew. Soma will not need to attend to those details.”

  “Easy for you to say,” she replied. “You still quite happily and unalterably agonize over every detail of every report I prepare for you.”

  “Then we shall resolve together to grow up and learn to lead,” I said. “Come. I want to hear you order Nace to recruit fifty men to the task for you.”

  This idea won her over utterly, and so we went.

  An army of Fana’s bookkeepers began to move about our streets taking care of one delivery of immigrants after another. The Cynt and Raydau were washed through Urnedi’s administrative gears before being sent north to join one of my labor-hungry villages.

  Alsman Errati, I learned much later, acquitted himself admirably by not only suggesting to Fana that a small group of professional bookkeepers could be trained for the general use of each family, he went so far as to select students from the best educated of the immigrants and made himself available as a tutor every free moment of his day.

  Nace’s professional bookkeepers introduced the requirements and advantages of keeping a house book to every arriving family. The thousands that went north took this very basic notion of the importance and power of numbers and accounts with them.

  All because my dead friend put two words upon a page.

  54

  Crown Prince Evand Yentif

  The Beginning of the Spring Campaign

  Getting out of Alsonbrey with fed and rested men was easy. After watching the 5th make camp, I was convinced it was the last easy thing I would ever do.

  We could not even manage a staff meeting. My chief was attending a group of upstart nobles in my tent, my stablemaster was running down a string of Akal-Tak, and Colonel Feseq arrived late trailing a man dressed for a night at the theater.

  “Colonel,” I said, “no civilians in camp. Get him out of here and get those breastworks finished. We’ll have them wandering in all night.”

  “This one says he is a general with several thousand men under his pennant. He’s a noble from Alsonbrey.”

  “Very well. Put him in my tent with the rest.”

  He went, and I said, “Now, Captain—Colonel Grano, what is the issue with my—with your brigade? The rest of the regiments are waiting on you.”

  “We’ve not done division camp in a long time, sir. The boys got busy making regimental …” He stopped there. I hated excuses, and he knew better than most men how much.

  “Too late to correct,” I said. “General Ubroshor’s diagram of division camp is asinine anyway. It was meant for units of mixed infantry and cavalry and discards what the men know of regimental camp, all to satisfy the general at its center. Have the other regiments follow your example. Four regimental camps in a square, if you please, gentlemen. We’ll relocate my command tent in the center on a riser starting tomorrow. And let’s get it done before the sun goes down altogether, shall we?”

  Grano said, “Sir, Ubroshor says—”

  “Ubroshor can kiss my ass with his cold dead lips, Colonel.”

  Grano looked offended but only for the time it took him to figure out the amount of work this decision would save him. I left my
colonels to sort themselves out and stalked toward my tent.

  The view above the camp made me laugh, despite my mood. We’d barely gotten off the long slow slope of the approach to Alsonbrey. The wide butte and the tan walls along its rim were still visible. So were the celebrating crowds. I’d gone from a nimble 2,000 to a sluggish 8,000 dragging an anchor of 110,000 more. A herd of sheep could be moved faster.

  In my tent I found not one, but six hypothetical generals of this burgeoning mass: a priest, four noblemen, and a militiaman.

  The jokes this scene inspired were quashed by the icy silence and stillness of the gathering.

  The proper-looking levy militia officer had his hand on his sword. The priest was angry, and the rest eyed the red hat like children cowed by a bully. Okel stood in the middle, looking very unsure. One of them was my cousin from Gheem. He stood back from the rest as if offended to share the same air with the priest.

  “Ahh,” I said and smiled at the practical beauty of Barok’s letter. We had a common enemy now.

  “Good idea, sir,” I said to the militiaman. “I’ll go first. Leave your sword alone, though. If you are going to cut yourself, it is better to use a knife.”

  I drew my long dagger, cut my forefinger, and smeared the red blood along my palm. I handed the knife to the militia officer. “Your turn.”

  He and the rest stared at me.

  The priest asked, “You do not take those letters that Prince Barok’s sent seriously, do you?”

  “You should know better than the rest of us the evils of the Hessier that plague Zoviya. And, yes, I take it as seriously as I do any communication from my divine bloodline. You should also know that I have fresh pikes waiting for any man who refuses.”

  The dagger went around the room. My aging cousin was happy to do it and went to so far as to kiss my knife and say a prayer. The priest was last and hesitated. He sneered at the bloody dagger.

  I said to him, “One way or the other, Your Grace, I will see the color of your blood. Must I dirty one of my pikes?”

  It took him three tries, but he eventually broke the skin. I took my dagger away from him, and with the mood sufficiently changed, I got to the business that mattered most to me. I skipped introductions.

  “How many men do you command, Your Grace?”

  “They are mine to command, not yours, and I’ll not discuss such matters with a man who lies with a Ludoq.”

  I clasped my hands behind my back. “I can see that you took offense at the sight of blood. Perhaps you need refreshment?”

  “You deny it? You deny being seduced by the Ludoq princess?”

  The Kaaryon had bought every single word of the tale. The ramifications of Liv’s new status soothed me. The woman I loved was a royal now, and that suited me just fine. It was time to claim my place in the world.

  “Deny it? The very opposite, Your Grace,” I said. “The mob wants little Yentif grandchildren running up and down the Deyalu. Liv Ludoq bears my child now. I will conquer the East, take her as my bride, and claim all the lands of Havish as my prize. Our child will be Exaltier after me, and your son will bow before him, same as you will lay your forehead upon the earth when I am crowned.”

  “Your father prohibits you from marrying,” he sputtered as though I had confessed to murder.

  “You are quite mistaken, Your Grace,” I said. “My father decreed last year that Dagoda girls were fit for his sons to marry. Barok was wed to a fine girl last summer. And who ever heard of marriage without children?”

  I clasped Hetlanti by the shoulders warmly and said to him, “But you must know all of this already as the senior servant of Lord Bayen in this great assembly that I command. Now, all of you, let’s not make this night any longer. Go see to your men and be ready to move in the morning. My chief of staff will have questions. Answer him. He will also assign a troop of bluecoats to each of you so that I may relay messages to you. And a reminder for you all about the rules of a camp of war: there is only one punishment for failure to obey the orders of its commanding officer.”

  On the way out I said to Okel, “Get force statuses from them, chief.”

  I waited outside and listened for a note of defiance. One after another exited, saluted me, and returned to their commands. Even the priest managed it, though his gesture was more of a limp wave.

  Okel handed me the numbers I needed.

  “As many as this? We did not seem so great marching out.”

  “This is the report I was bringing you. The counts are right—ours, not theirs. Only the militia commander gave me accurate numbers. The rest exaggerated.”

  “Thank you, chief. Tell the man from Alsonbrey to take his men back until he is serious about this war. He does not have enough food to reach Havish. And tell the rest that they may not cross the border without twenty days food and water in their train.”

  “How long before one of them tries to take command?”

  “I’ve no intention of allowing any of them enough time to consider it. Send word we are moving at dawn and that rank will be determined by the order in which they are ready to move.”

  “What rank?”

  “I have no idea—something sufficiently superlative—the title of First Commanders of the Army of Bayen. Award it to the fastest each morning. They’ll exhaust themselves competing for it.”

  “We’ll struggle to break camp ourselves. Just look at them.”

  “A walking horse can outdistance a marching man. We’ll stay in front of them. And leave scouts here at Alsonbrey. It was surprise enough to see my cousin. I don’t want Disand showing up without warning.”

  “You mean to stay ahead of him? His three battalions of pikemen are worth far more than that great mob of zealots that priest has saddled us with.”

  “If I can. I don’t like the price.”

  He saluted me and went. I found what sleep I could. It came to a dirty end with a racket of yelling that had me reaching for my sword.

  “Okel,” I yelled.

  “Sorry, sir,” the chief said from beyond. “Sloppy show this morning. We’ll have it sorted momentarily.”

  I gave them until I was properly dressed. What I emerged to find was a comedy. Some tents were still up. One paddock was still full of horses. Some of the men nearby were searching for their kit. Any one of these delays prevented a man from joining his troop, his troop from joining its company, and the company to its brigade. And my division could only move when all four brigades signaled their readiness.

  The only thing that prevented wrath was the bedlam behind us on the road. They had dust and each other to contend with, as well as greater numbers. I stood, instead, stoically and watched my division draw itself up onto the road like a drunken bear. It got there, but when it chose to.

  We pushed northeast. The levy militia was the first to move up after us that day and each of the days that followed. My estimation of their value grew.

  We managed on that clownish march to feed, camp, and water ourselves. The noblemen were squabbling for position behind the ready militia. The priest and his herd of armed pilgrims stumbled along north of the road in an endless and useless attempt to get around the levies. They were a shambles, but the rudimentary requisites of order and habit were slowly setting in. It took us six days to reach the Havishon border, and I did not mind the extra seasoning this time allowed. We were no army, but the frothing mix of fervent pilgrims, farmhands, and ambitious nobles would have to do. And whatever could be said about them, their one redeeming quality was their number. Noblemen from across the Kaaryon joined us each day with their house slaves, mismatched recruits, and sellswords.

  It was the 44th of Spring when I invaded Havish, and behind me were 300,000 men. Not that you could tell one side of the border from the other. The rocky place was known for nothing except the view it had of the vast forests we rode down toward, and no one witnessed this grand move except perhaps a few salt miners in the hills around Gritshaw. The border was there somewhere, a line aimed north and
south that no one cared to debate except the shepherds on the odd year when there was rain enough to turn the yellow grasses green.

  That afternoon we came upon a blue and white pennant at the side of the road. A notice was tacked to it.

  These are the lands of the royal Ludoq.

  You may travel this road in peace to

  Hida and pay your respects to his

  royal person Sahin Ludoq.

  War awaits all others.

  I moved us across, sent scouts out in force, and called a halt for the day.

  Word of the notice spread, and the priest and his pilgrims built a bonfire around it that evening. Their zealotry made my teeth ache. So did the beehive of petty noblemen. Every one of them wanted an audience, favor, and status. Every night some idiot thought he could ride his force around and attach his camp to mine.

  The forest solved these problems for me. By the end of the next day’s move, the trees crowded close enough to force everyone into a line on the road, one after the other.

  The forest itself was nice enough, if a bit in need of rain. It was comprised chiefly of big leaf maples covered with licorice ferns. The leaves of the trees were thin, and the typically vibrant ferns were brown and rustled in the breeze. Here and there along the tithe road, a thin cart path led out to an orchard or farmstead. They were poor attempts. The soil was too dry most years. The sturdier roads all led out to fields of rapeseed. They were a poor crop but consistent, and there was always a demand for lamp oil. I did not like the reek of the oil presses.

  But it proved a ghostly ride. Each place we passed was deserted. My scouts found nothing. The men of Havish had withdrawn the same way the men of Berm had at Doctrice. This was very unlike easterners. As far back as such things were recorded in Bessradi’s libraries, the men of the East preferred to charge out, throw themselves bodily at their enemies, and then vanish before the fight was through. It was a great way to steal wives, but a very poor way to make war.