The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) Page 3

  “Not particularly,” Ian shrugged, mostly telling the truth. “And I don’t think it would be a good idea. Getting to chase all of you once was fun, good exercise. But I wouldn’t be so well humored to do it again. I imagine you’re all familiar with buzzing around the local authorities without any trouble, but I doubt any of you have ever seen the inside of a Bevish Glasshouse. That’s the sort of experience you’d be best to avoid.”

  The lead boy was staring hard at the ground just in front of Ian. One of the smaller boys near him called out something uncertainly in a sing-song Dervish dialect. The lead boy said quiet in Dervish without looking at him.

  “You couln’t catch us,” the lead boy decided, raising his nose up.

  “I would catch one of you,” Ian said. “I promise.”

  For a moment, the tension changed, and Ian realized he was about to lose the situation as the leader looked angrily at the boy who was still sitting on the ground.

  “But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of alternatives,” Ian said, shifting his weight a bit, “and some of them would be beneficial to both of us.”

  “Yes?” the boy said, not sounding all that hopeful.

  “I need to be somewhere soon,” Ian said. “However, I don’t know the best way to get there. I also don’t know much about the city in general, and would like to learn more about it.”

  The boy made some sort of sound with his throat and waved his hand in a particular way up and off to the side of his face, which Ian guessed was meant to convey an apathetic sentiment.

  “I would be willing to pay one sovereign if you would show me the best way there,” Ian said, “and I would be inclined to pay another if you were to also properly inform me about the city.”

  An excited ripple ran through the loose ring of Chax around Ian. It was doubtful that they knew all that many Bevish words, but they certainly knew that one. And while neither of the boys that Ian had spoken to would probably ever be able to manage the King’s Bevish, he was quite thankful that they knew common Bevish at all, which was probably in addition to the local Dervish dialect as well as their own languages. This was fairly impressive to Ian—getting a better grasp of Dervish, beyond the bitter basics that Ian knew, was one of his overarching goals. The language itself wasn’t particularly appealing to him, but it would reap bounds of practicality if he could learn it. Especially on planets like Orinoco—of which the Dervish had many.

  “Lotta hope in you making that,” the boy scoffed, evidently not as moved by the notion of a sovereign as his compatriots.

  “I will,” Ian scoffed back, only needing to slightly exaggerate his offended airs, even though he wouldn’t really expect the other to just believe him. “You have my word on it, and by my proxy, the word of the king.”

  A slight, negative change ran through Ian’s audience that the leader promptly voiced, though his reaction was probably stronger than the group’s true average.

  “Kin’s, queens,” the boy said, derisively snapping his hands down off at the ground in some manner that Ian wasn’t able to catch, “emper’s. Zhey’e all the ‘osser same.”

  “No,” Ian said, shaking his head calmly, “not the same at all. And you have my word. Here,” he took a moment to withdraw one of the sovereigns from inside his jacket, “a fair trade. A sovereign for my regulator and an escort. A good trade.”

  “One for zhe ‘lator,” the boy said, holding Ian’s regulator up, “one to go, last one to tell about zhe city.”

  “No,” Ian said firmly. “Don’t push what you don’t have. Only two, or nothing at all.”

  The boy looked as though he very much wanted to push the math, but he had a quick and insistent mutiny on his hands at the hesitation. A good fraction of the boys were boldly coming closer to Ian, trying to peer at the sovereign that was a dull yellow in the alley’s shade.

  “You swear on kin’?” the boy asked.

  “Yes,” Ian said.

  “Swear on Chris’?” the boy asked more pointedly, his face showing confusion, as if Ian was some daunting logic problem.

  “Yes,” Ian said gently, holding out the sovereign. “And by all His host. A fair trade.”

  The boy pursed his lips, as though facing the bitterest remnants of his doubts, before his shoulders relaxed, and he nodded his head in a very deliberate way.

  Walking across the dirty street between them, the boy reflexively wiped at the dirt on his cheek as he held up Ian’s regulator. He slowed a few feet from Ian again, then hesitated as the regulator and sovereign came abreast of each other.

  Ian carefully but confidently pushed the sovereign into the boy’s other hand, and then waited a beat before taking his regulator back from the other.

  Ian smiled. “A good trade.”

  * * * *

  For their part, the lead boy, whose name was Sawlti, and the two other Chax boys that accompanied them, were happy to uphold their end of the bargain once underway. Several times they stopped, Ian being engrossed in what Sawlti was saying. The trip was too short to otherwise accommodate everything that Sawlti was evidently eager to tell him. Their deal seemed to have invigorated the Chax boy in a way that surpassed even Ian’s mildly optimistic hopes.

  They spoke of the people, the buildings, the roads, the governments, all the things that had an effect on everything that made Carciti in that moment what Ian was seeing. And while either one of the sovereigns would have been a lot of money to pay for what he was getting, Ian took a great pride in knowing that almost any other person would have found such a deal foolish. But it would be their fault for not seeing what Ian did. He was trading something of fair but fleeting worth, something he didn’t bother all that much about. It was true his family needed money, but what money Ian carried on him was what was left over from that. It was his own spending money, and there wasn’t all that much that he cared to spend it on. The army supplied him with almost everything he needed. And on the other hand, he was gaining something not nearly so materially discernible in its compensation, but which was far more reaching if managed properly. Good will, change in dispositions, perceptions, and all for the better.

  How many others within Carciti had a good grasp of all these things Ian didn’t know, but he suspected very few did. He suspected very few of the Dervish, or even the Bevish, had utilized such resources. The viewpoints of the Chax—though this telling consisted almost entirely of Sawlti, the others only filling in where Sawlti wanted them to—were startlingly informative of both the turbulent climate that Carciti was experiencing as well as the reactions to it. The climate was the foreign, external forces that were acting upon the planet, and the reactions mostly belonged to the native population. The Chax were only allowed to react, and only to themselves, to the things that were shaping their planet. All this Ian strongly suspected he would have missed entirely if he’d been given a similar tour by any other source.

  “The Derv so scared of Hallmer rising again,” Sawlti was saying, gesturing with a wave that was unconsciously non-identifying to the east, where he always waved when he referred to the Hallmer. “Zhey’e not, but zhe Derv always scared of that. But even worse now cause of zhe Bevish being in charge. Zhe Derv feel like they have no charge like they used to, and of zhe Bevish don’t know what zhey’e doing.”

  Hallmer, Ian had quickly surmised, and was hopefully not mistaken, was the original name that the Chax actually used to refer to themselves. Ian was able to deduce this from what little prior knowledge he had of the subject and what Sawlti occasionally implied. Chax was the name the natives had been given by the Sesachs, thousands of years before the Dervish had colonized the planet. And while all the Chax probably actually felt much closer to their original name, in the last couple hundred years or so the term Hallmer had become strongly identified with the temporary alliances that the Chax tribes would call together to revolt against the Dervish. And even though there hadn’t been a Hallmer uprising for nearly twenty years, Chax had become the safe word for themselves,
especially within Carciti where most of the Dervish population resided.

  “Zhe Chax in Carciti only really want to eat and live by,” Sawlti continued, wrapping up his summary of the section of the city they were overlooking. “Most only come here because zhey’e ca’t feed zhemself.”

  Just down the hill Ian could see the building that his yeoman had marked as his destination. Despite being excited to meet the men he was assigned with, he felt no rush to go down quite yet. His assignment had read to check in today, but had given no particular time. So they stood there talking in the late afternoon sun, the traffic slack and the city transitioning to its early evening mannerisms. The breeze was merely warm now, tugging lazily at the corners of his clothes, his hair stiff but dry against his skin.

  Yes, Ian thought. This was definitely worth waiting for.

  “And zhe Bevish,” Sawlti said, jerking his shoulders in a way that must have equaled a shrug, “no one knows what zhey want. Zhey seem to only want to live by, but zhey have plenty to eat.”

  “We do,” Ian said, smiling, “but there’s far more to want than just food. Carciti will soon hopefully be able to want the same things as well.”

  “Truly?” the youngest of the three Chax asked. “What kind of things?”

  “There are many,” Ian said, “a more perfect sense of justice among the governing bodies, a greater joy in the people through art and education. Prosperity, peace, a better pursuit of religion and philosophy. All these will soon come to all of Orinoco.”

  “When will the Bevish give them to us?” the youngest Chax asked, not sounding entirely sure what all of those were. “Will they give us all the food we need first?”

  Ian hesitated. And Sawlti tried to hush the younger boy.

  There of course didn’t seem to be any reason why Orinoco wouldn’t quickly prosper under Bevish rule, but it also seemed foolish to guarantee anything. Ian thought of his own family in Wilome, who struggled and had food, but not a lot. With the empire prospering so greatly, it wouldn’t seem to be long before such problems were improved, but the Bevish people would always eat before their subjects. That was just the way of things.

  “Yes,” Ian said carefully, “Orinoco will eat before they get those things. But hopefully,” he nodded to the boy, “hopefully someday soon it will have both.”

  “Chi,” Sawlti said to the other two, gesturing back the way they’d come.

  The two younger boys—lieutenants-in-training, as Ian categorized them—nodded at Sawlti, clasped their hands to their foreheads to Ian in respect, then hurried away, quickly disappearing into the street.

  “Thank you for showing me all of this,” Ian said to Sawlti. “I am greatly indebted.”

  And before the awkwardness of the issue could arise, Ian pulled out another sovereign and gave it Sawlti, who only rubbed it between his fingers for the briefest of moments before it disappeared.

  “Saylung,” Sawlti said, repeating a slightly less pronounced version of clasping his hands at his forehead that the other two had. “We stay in your debt.”

  “No, we’re even,” Ian said softly, not wanting to refute the other’s expression of thanks too strongly. He hesitated, not knowing what exactly to say. The pull to offer some sort of warm promise was strong, but something told him that wouldn’t be wise. Guilty whispers were already running through his gut, like he’d already promised too much. As strongly as he wanted to believe, did believe, that such things would come true, he also knew that it wasn’t in his control.

  So instead he said what he really wanted the most.

  “Take care of them,” he said.

  Sawlti regarded him and gave no affirmation, and none was really needed. When he left, Ian was able to follow him with his eyes for a long time, until the distance was too great and he became another dark back in the early evening traffic.

  Ian turned and stood regarding the nondescript, pink-stone building where at least some of his company was waiting. It wasn’t an extraordinary threshold of change he was at, given all the ones he’d recently experienced, but this one he could meet with some small but wonderful success as he started down the hill. Ian readjusted his regulator and other peripheral items so as to hopefully avoid any other incidents like this one, but in another way he hoped he’d contributed to the easing of the problem. That money, as somewhat superfluous as it had been in his own pockets, would buy bread for a long time, even for how many boys Sawlti was responsible for. Although, even as good as that was, it would be a fleeting matter of small consequence compared to what he had done for Baldave. There was much more work to be done on Orinoco in that vein, but it felt good that he’d been able to contribute even this little bit.

  And a good work for Christ, Ian thought.

  Though with a little guilt, he wondered how he might have handled all of it better as he reached the front of the building and rang for his company.

  Chapter 2

  “Let us set forth then, as brothers in arms in this era of new beginnings, striving to serve God and King … to protect the weak and the helpless, holding onto the light and virtues as our fathers before us.”

  —Hollimer Tanser, excerpt from the Royal Arsmen Reconnaissance inaugural address, April 20th, 4747 UI

  Ian had plenty of time for trepidation as the door’s answer was late in coming. The first minute or so was understandable—a mild exercise in patience and for Ian to try to imagine what kind of person would open the door. But he had rung twice more, with plenty of room to start to be worried as the directions in his yeoman were presently all he had to go on. But that was nonsense, this was the correct address.

  His self-assurance was finally answered not by a Chax servant, as he had half-guessed, but a young Bevish man, dressed in the same uniform that he was. Only it was almost immaculately conditioned to such a degree that their present differences in climate couldn’t completely account for it. Ian could feel the building’s cooler air leaking out by his hands, which he raised into a prompt low salute as soon as he had ascertained that the other man was also a private, equal to Ian’s rank.

  “‘Bout time,” the other said as he blearily rubbed at one eye. Somewhere in the middle of it the other grudgingly returned the low salute.

  “Private Ian Kanters,” Ian said, ignoring their mismatched attempts at politeness, “reporting to 143rd Split, Captain Marsden.”

  “This way,” the other private said, giving an extremely brief look out into the evening street before turning and starting down the dark hall beyond the door.

  Ian followed, switching off his regulator as soon as he was inside the entrance, and made sure to carefully shut the door behind him. It was exceptionally murky inside—the only light being far down the hall and somewhere around the corner. Ian quickly got a rough impression of the immediate footing before he finished closing the door, which turned out to be a good idea as he could only make out the rough form of the other man walking past a stairway and on toward the light. The most visible part of him was his yellow hair, which was a bit longer and topped his fairly angry demeanor, as it seemed to Ian, who knew a rough previous night when he saw one.

  Ian almost asked the man’s name, but he decided he could wait on questions that had a chance of irritating temperaments already not in the mood for questions. Past experience assured him that he would learn everyone’s name soon enough; it had been one of his more insistent habits as a boy to want to know everyone’s name as soon as possible. It had been important to him to be able to use someone’s name when conversing, as he’d noticed that it had an effect on them. And if used carefully, it could yield positive reactions that would have been unavailable otherwise.

  Ian hadn’t gone very far after the other man before just barely missing the low table that was scooted against the stairway wall. However, in the follow-up, he tripped a bit on a thick rug and ended up hitting the same low table he’d initially missed anyway.

  “Careful,” the other private snapped, as if it was something significant, a
healthy case of condescension in his voice.

  Ian bit his tongue and moved past the table. Watching up ahead, he saw a thin line of light appear on the wall, illuminating where the private was running his finger along the stone. There was a gentle delay, and then a dim light grew within the ceiling above them, revealing a simple but rich hallway just beyond the stairs. After seeing what many of Carciti’s buildings looked like on the outside, Ian was easily impressed. Not that his own family’s home could compete with much to begin with, but his mother had always wanted V-lighting, even a basic setup like this one evidently was. A quick look around revealed that the lighting wasn’t ubiquitous but had various holding points scattered around on the ceiling and walls where light could be used. There had been no sounds, so it was probably only touch activated. The strength of the light depended on how many fingers were placed against the wall.

  They continued on through a doorway and around a corner to the back parlor where the light was coming from. The room was fairly simple, the more formal dining area being elsewhere. It held assortment of furniture, consisting mostly of a wooden table and chairs. The light had been coming from the far corner and wasn’t all that strong. Upon inspection it actually turned out to be a display unit sitting on the table. Ian’s eyes were beginning to adjust to the dimness, so it was hard to see past the glowing regional map of Orinoco and various text and data displays that the device was projecting. He knew a man was sitting on the other side, but Ian could only make out his rough outline through the light until Ian got much closer.

  “This is Private Kanters reporting in,” the other private announced, a noticeably higher degree of diligence in his voice.

  Ian came beside the other private and first made sure to ascertain that the man sitting was a corporal and not a commissioned officer. Standing at attention and offering a crisp honor salute that was reserved for higher ranking individuals below the rank of lieutenant, Ian finally was able to see the third man, dim and shifting though the light was.