The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) Page 4

  This man was decidedly taller, well-defined but not angular. His hair was sharply slicked back and his uniform immaculate. But it wasn’t really what he was wearing—they were all wearing the same thing, after all—but how he was wearing it. A calm demeanor, perhaps even cold, or—

  “Good evening, Private Kanters,” the corporal said. His voice was surprisingly deep but almost agonizingly measured, methodical. The corporal kept his eyes on the display, slowly scanning the text he was moving through. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, finally. Was there any difficulty in getting here?”

  Ian tried not to smile as he realized this corporal was the only obvious reason the private who had showed him in was as well-dressed as he was.

  “No,” Ian said, “no trouble.”

  “Indeed,” the corporal said, looking up for the first time from his information to measure Ian up, an idle curiosity in it. For a moment, Ian thought the corporal was going to press the matter and ask why exactly it had taken Ian so long to arrive, as in all probability they knew when his shuttle had landed.

  “But manners are wanting,” the corporal said, turning to face them and lounging slightly in his chair. “Corporal Arran Wesshire. And presumably you two have been introduced.”

  “No,” the private beside Ian said, irritated.

  “Private Kieran Anglas, in that case,” Corporal Wesshire said, eyeing the other private. “You’ll forgive him. For the obvious reasons.”

  There was a pause that might have been awkward, but Corporal Wesshire was just giving Ian an opportunity to ask what that meant, in case he didn’t know.

  “Are you standing at attention?” Corporal Wesshire asked after a few seconds as he stood and stretched his neck. “You mustn’t keep that sort of behavior up, or you’re liable to be promoted. You may leave, Private Anglas, though it would be convenient if you would remain available in case the door needs to be answered again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kieran said, throwing together an honor salute before leaving the room.

  “Please excuse Private Anglas,” Corporal Wesshire said as he shut down his display and folded it up inside one of his pockets. “While many often forget their manners, he does his best to misplace them when the captain isn’t present.”

  “Captain Marsden is gone, then?” Ian asked, somewhat afraid of it sounding like an obvious—rather than a necessary—question.

  “Yes,” Corporal Wesshire said. “He’ll be away on business until probably much later tonight. Our company is to leave tomorrow morning for Alcatel where we’ll rendezvous with our charges.”

  “Good,” Ian said, stepping aside as Corporal Wesshire walked toward the small counter and set of cabinets that ran along one side of the parlor.

  Ian was unashamedly impressed. It always thrilled him to discover a new kind of person that a few minutes before he would have never imagined. And this man, only a few years older than Ian as far as he could tell, certainly fit that bill. As Ian stood there, watching the corporal, he was slightly self-conscious of his reaction, but excited. He’d dreamed a long time about joining the army and meeting incredible people, but he hadn’t known that any person could exude such a concentration of confidence and composure. Corporal Wesshire didn’t strike him for some reason as the kind of person born into the higher classes, but rather one who found no difficulty compensating through his own means. The few times Ian had previously interacted with people of considerably higher social standing hadn’t been too much trouble, but he felt a bit awkward now. All Ian could think of, as he was trying to think of what to say next, was that this man wasn’t going to remain a corporal for very long.

  “Are we to eat at a specified time?” Ian asked, paying close attention to the impression of his words.

  “No,” Corporal Wesshire said, not turning from what he was preparing on the counter.

  “Oh,” Ian said, waiting until it was clear that the other wasn’t going to say anything else. “Where shall I put my gear?”

  Corporal Wesshire finished with his food and put the rest into the cupboards. He turned back toward Ian, saucer and small sandwich in hand as he considered him for a moment.

  “Are you from the Laxley Borough of Wilome?” the corporal asked.

  “Yes,” Ian said, accepting the change of subjects. A different subject where they were both involved was better than none at all.

  “Your dialect is very slight, but distinctive,” Corporal Wesshire said. “Do you know how to hide it?”

  “Perhaps only a little.” Ian frowned, doing his best to ignore the embarrassment that was rising up his neck. “But I know that sometimes it’s appropriate.”

  “Indeed,” Corporal Wesshire said. He walked back to the table and sat down, taking a thoughtful bite, considering it. “And have you ever been off world?”

  “No,” Ian said, stopping at that. There was quite a long list of things he’d never been. “Have you ever been to Orinoco?”

  “No,” Corporal Wesshire said, “it is quite fortuitous that this assignment has come here. It seems much has been happening on this world … and perhaps still is.”

  “Like what?” Ian asked eagerly, and not only because the conversation was off of him.

  “There is evidently more to the changing of hands for a colony than the Bevish Empire has realized,” Corporal Wesshire said. “A good deal of … anxiety is present. In many places. Rumors have been spreading that Lord Chamberlain and his host are on Orinoco as well.”

  “The ranger lord?” Ian sat down across from the other. “He’s here?”

  “If rumors are to be believed,” Corporal Wesshire said, not sounding convinced that they were. “A fortuitous first posting for you, indeed.”

  “And we have to spend it escorting a royal holiday,” Ian said, glancing at one of the parlor doors as something creaked behind it.

  “Would you have preferred something else?”

  “I don’t know,” Ian said, shifting. “No, I suppose not. It would’ve only been more exciting, I suppose, to have been charged with something more important.”

  “The margrave and his family are very important,” Corporal Wesshire corrected, though not sounding as if he cared either way.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Ian said.

  “As a marcher lord, Lord Wester is not a socially boisterous man,” Corporal Wesshire said. “His ties to the crown as a margrave are not necessarily prominent, but they are tangible.”

  “It would’ve been nice to have been here otherwise though,” Ian maneuvered, gauging by now that Corporal Wesshire wasn’t all that mad about questions.

  “That depends on what it is you wish most of your career in His Majesty’s Service,” the corporal said, giving no indication that he’d neatly countered Ian’s probing non-question.

  Ian shrugged. “Well, I hope to gain as much experience as possible and hopefully to work up through the ranks as much as opportunities allow. And also to get to serve the Empire to the best of my ability. The same as everyone else, I suppose.”

  “That’s more than most men ever hope for,” Corporal Arran Wesshire said dryly. “It will no doubt be easy to observe where the rest of the company’s priorities are around the lord’s family. It’s difficult to believe that they will be solely for the Empire.”

  Ian smirked, not sure if the other man had any sort of humor or if his sentences occasionally just made it sound that way.

  “Indeed,” Ian said as he stood again. “I’m hungry. Is the food here worth having, or would you recommend going out for something else?”

  Arran didn’t immediately answer.

  “I imagine it depends on one’s tastes,” the corporal said, considering his food. “But the city undeniably has far more to offer.”

  “All right, then.”

  “Carciti has many aspects of itself to be shown, if you’d like,” Corporal Wesshire said.

  “I would,” Ian grinned.

  “The sleeping quarters are through that door,” Corporal Wesshire
said, “as well as your second.”

  “Really?” Ian asked, surprised no one had mentioned that his reloading partner was just in the next room.

  “You can even meet him,” Corporal Wesshire said, “to some extent.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Ian said, hurrying toward the door.

  Looking back, Ian only caught a glance of Arran slowly throwing his food away.

  It was completely dark in the next room, forcing Ian to switch on a low entrance light after he shut the door. The sleeping quarters were relatively rough, originally built, no doubt, for the building’s servants. The center of the room held a small table, but the rest consisted of double bunks around the walls.

  Peering around for a second, Ian checked them over twice to make sure all of them had gear except for an upper bunk at the far right corner. Upon first inspection, it appeared the room was otherwise empty, but then he noticed a still form in the bed just below his. Ian quietly moved closer. The man was softly snoring, and as Ian carefully put his pack up on his bed, he noted how ragged the fairly large man looked.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Ian muttered, realizing he’d taken it for granted that he’d be assigned a highly estimable second man—seconds being responsible for covering their partners while they were reloading in action. As contrary as Private Anglas had been, and obviously cut from the same sort of coarse stock as this man, he at the very least had been conscious.

  Even the loftiest of Ian’s expectations for his first meeting with his second aside, Ian couldn’t imagine what sort of night this man might have had to still be asleep at this hour. Or maybe it wasn’t so much that Ian couldn’t, but that he wouldn’t.

  He didn’t waste any more time there. Corporal Wesshire was waiting at the front of the parlor, and they silently made their way back outside. The shadows were beginning to swallow the streets, and the worst of the day’s heat was grudgingly dissipating.

  Ian walked at the corporal’s side and stayed slightly behind him; his objective was to make an especially impressive kind of impression on the corporal. The other ranger didn’t strike him as a routinely friendly person, but Ian was hoping this little excursion would give him enough opportunity to demonstrate his competency to the corporal.

  Corporal Wesshire moved with a detachment that wasn’t exactly distracted, and his cool scrutiny didn’t seem liable to miss much as it roved over the thinning streets.

  “Keep your regulator close,” Corporal Wesshire commented at one point when a small band of street urchins passed, who looked much harder than the ones Ian had encountered. “They’re attractive to thieves, which Carciti has no shortage of.”

  Ian nodded and made the motions of adjusting his regulator in tighter, though he’d already made those corrections.

  “It seems like there are actually more Ellosians out now than there were earlier,” Ian commented, as another assorted group of noisy Dervish men passed them. “I wouldn’t have thought that there would be that many people out after dark.”

  “Many of the Dervish prefer the evening temperatures,” Wesshire said, not bothering to look at them. “Several of the markets that cater to them also do not open until after dusk.”

  Ian didn’t say anything, looking up at the second story balconies that ran along their street. A growing amount of conversation was coming through the doors that were opening to let in the evening’s coolness. And different kinds of people than before were being let out into the last bits of daylight—women, one young Dervish woman in particular who smiled down at him. She made small gestures with her hands like the Chax did that may have been unconscious. Not knowing how he was supposed to respond to that, Ian smiled back politely and then purposely brought his eyes back down to the street.

  Ian checked his yeoman and saw that the corporal was skirting them along the edges of one place in particular that Sawlti had pointed out as being best to avoid. Corporal Wesshire didn’t seem all that worried though, so Ian didn’t see much reason to be either.

  As the corporal had hinted, an entirely different market was coming alive the further on they walked, being directed far less toward material needs as toward material wants. More and more groups that talked with the lilting tones of disposable incomes appeared, including those Bevish regulars that were of the off-duty persuasion.

  Increasingly more sources of interest were also appearing and doing their best to hail them. Ian was indifferent to most of these, though the amount of briefly entertaining vendors increased substantially. For a shilling or two, a person could be treated to a complex display of light juggling. The entertainer used either electric gloves to manipulate patterns of light or the more difficult job of using energy balls to cast changing colors that interacted with the lights that the other balls were projecting as they passed. For a ranging variety of pence, someone could buy demonstrations of the impossible from a street magician, optical illusions, and slights of hand. The music was also more prominent than it had been during the day, its conflicting movements running in harmony with the activity rather than trying to interrupt it as it had earlier. There was something of a riskier selection as the musicians pulled from different styles from various planets and sensibilities in their ongoing jockeying for attention and street space.

  None of this impacted their pace much, but Ian was able to enjoy brief tastes of what other people were paying for as they passed. The sound of it all was indescribable, and Ian closed his eyes for a moment, trying to take it all in and categorize it, break it down into definable pieces. He of course couldn’t, and this was all just Carciti, an incomprehensible convulsion of incredible happenings and opportunities, all performing a delicate dance of what could be and what actually happened. And even visibly tinged as it was by things that Ian didn’t want to think about, it was wonderful.

  “It’ll take a lot,” Ian suddenly said, “quite a lot to make this place work, but it’ll be worth it.”

  Corporal Wesshire glanced at him. “You mean aside from the silks and fines.”

  Ian swallowed. Talk about the fines also accompanied conversations about Orinoco, fines being the rare resources the planet offered that were desirable in many markets. They were greatly sought after as one of the purest substances that could be used to make calosos natrium, the principal firing element in modern firearms, along with a host of other minor products.

  “I mean all of it,” Ian said. “The people, the government, all of it. It’s good that it won’t have to be mismanaged under Dervish rule any longer.”

  “What do you believe has to be done?” Corporal Wesshire asked, his eyes sweeping the crowds around and occasionally behind them as well.

  “The administrative bodies all need to be nearly redone,” Ian said. “It seems like the Dervish had set them up with differing aims. Most of the officials should be immediately removed, most of them are Dervish anyway, and new ones should be put in. If the current ones are good enough, then that’s fine, but incentives should be used to encourage qualified Bevish people from other places to come, to encourage moving out of the various local corruptions and toward better impartiality. A total redrawing of local standards as well, based after a real version of the Dervish code civil.”

  “Indeed?” the corporal said. He looked the closest to being surprised that Ian had managed yet. “There aren’t many Bevish who are fond of the Haspian Code.”

  “I do think that Haspial was right,” Ian shrugged. “While it is Dervish, it is very practical, and it’s only to Bevish advantage if we can accomplish it. The rangers are a perfect example of the logic in rewarding genuine ability instead of social position.”

  Corporal Arran Wesshire’s mouth moved in a way that wasn’t quite a smile. “That’s all very ambitious. It would seem to be difficult, however, to implement it even in stable times, which are certainly not what Orinoco is currently experiencing. Do you believe it wise to attempt it immediately?”

  Ian hesitated, feeling a distinctive urgency for carefulness.

&n
bsp; “Perhaps not,” he said, “I’d have to have more information, but I would move for it as soon as possible. It might be good to move in additional troops to ensure stability, but I think a change in administration needs to happen. After all, you can’t polish mold.”

  All this reminded him very much about old Peter’s long discourses on the tasks of holding Narcapoli. It had been a favorite topic of his family’s old friend, and a difficult one that Ian was suddenly very glad to have discussed so many times, eager as he had often been to talk about battles and wars or anything else more kinetic.

  “No,” Corporal Wesshire said. “However, much more change than what has already occurred seems unlikely as those that the Bevish government sent to assess the situation have quickly fallen into Carciti’s cares. Those in power here are deeply rooted, and to disturb them too greatly could risk an uprising. So for the present, at least, it seems the Bevish are approaching change slowly.”

  “It’s too bad that it’s so difficult to get here, that even communication is so hard to maintain,” Ian said, feeling rebutted. “Hopefully in the future that will improve so that things can be managed more efficiently. That would speed up change.”

  “Perhaps,” Corporal Wesshire allowed.

  It was probably a kind allowance on the other’s part, but it felt like Ian had been talking too much. He realized that it was because his ideas felt childish in light of Corporal Wesshire’s appraisal. Ian did indeed have a sizeable gap in his ignorance of the politics surrounding Orinoco. But even if it would be exceedingly difficult to dramatically change things without causing the wrong sort of accompanying drama, that didn’t mean it was impossible.

  “Our destination,” Corporal Wesshire said as they turned onto a street dominated by meal vendors.

  It was much louder here, even more than some of the other streets that had multiple music entertainers. Lined along both sides of the street, and some even in the middle, were dozens of small vendors interspersed by a handful of much larger ones. They were mostly Dervish, and shouted out to the thick inflow of people, argued with them, laughed and cursed at them in Dervish.