The Three Lands Omnibus (2011 Edition) (43 page)

I thought a bit and realized that I hadn't; nor had I heard most of the soldiers in these headquarters discussing the subject.
"My father wanted me to work for a town council," said Carle, scratching his legs. The section of the headquarters where we are now located is filled with fleas, so we've resigned ourselves to waking up each morning with red marks on our skin. "He said that the only talent I had was in book-learning, and so he had me memorizing languages and laws from an early age – that's why I know as many laws as I do. But I wanted to join the border mountain patrol, and the only reason I learned those laws was because I knew that patrol guards were law-lovers, and I wanted to be one too."
"You
are
a law-lover," I said. "Quentin told me that you know more law than any other soldier he'd met."
"That's a compliment in the patrol, but it hardly says much in the regular army. High officials like Wystan know the law well, but how many lower-ranked soldiers do you think are interested in the law? They believe that, if you're fighting battles or spying on Koretians or carrying messages, you don't need to care about the law."
I was silent a while, biting at my knuckles. It was late night, and our tent was lit with the faint light of a brazier fire. We had the tent flap closed, since it was cool outside, and through the thick cloth I could hear nothing except the sound of several palace guards making the rounds in the headquarters.
"So do you think we made a mistake in taking up this work?" I asked finally.
"Oh, I didn't say that. One of the troubles with us Emorians is that we don't know enough about our southern neighbors. When I joined the mountain patrol, I was surprised to find out how little even the patrol guards know about Koretia. Think on Quentin. He's a borderlander, he's the lieutenant of a patrol that deals daily with Koretians, yet I doubt that he knows a single Koretian religious rite, other than the funeral rite that I taught him. And the less that Emorians know about Koretia, the more likely we are to have trouble with that land."
Carle reached over to a bag near him, bit into the blackroot nut he found there, and made a sour face. In conformity with our image as ground-poor peasants, we are now eating a steady diet of peasant food. I thought that I knew what poverty was, having come from a poor village and having lived the harsh life of patrol guard, but I'm beginning to realize how desperately hard most men's lives are. I will be glad when we travel to Koretia, and I become a nobleman's blood brother, with a style of living to match.
Carle said, "No, I'm glad that I'll have a chance to see for myself the land I spent so many years learning about, and that you'll be my guide for what I see. A few years spent in Koretia could be of great help to me in the future. But I'm beginning to think that my father is right. Perhaps my destiny does lie in a town council in the end."
"So you want to become a town councilman?" I said.
Carle laughed as he slapped a flea with the sheath of his sword. "That's being overambitious, don't you think? I'll be satisfied if I can find a position as a council clerk or porter. More likely the only position I'll be able to find is as a scribe to some village council that can't afford to hire real talent."
"Don't be foolish!" I said heatedly. "You're far better at the law than that. You know that you could be a town councilman if you tried."
Carle looked over at me then, the right side of his mouth crooking up. "Well, I'll confess that I do have a secret plot that will allow me to obtain a very honorable office."
"What is that?" I asked and undid my belt in preparation for bed.
"I have a friend whom I expect will be a council lord some day, and when that happens, I plan to see whether he can find me a job as a bottom-ranked official of the Great Council."
"Have I met this friend?" I asked curiously, pulling my tunic over my head.
"In a manner of speaking."
I froze in the ridiculous position of having my arms straight over my head, pulling up the tunic. Carle was sitting on his bed, leaning back against one of the tent posts; the shadow of my arms and tunic was just touching his bare feet. He looked back at me steadily, and after a moment I remembered to move again. Pulling the tunic off, I said, "You and Quentin. Quentin thought that I would be a mighty soldier, and look what happened to me: I nearly caused a war."
"That's the only question in my mind – whether you'll end up a captain or a council lord. You'd be equally good at both, so you mustn't let my plight influence your choice."
"Stop making silly jokes." I reached down to unlace the leather shoe-straps binding my legs. "When was the last time a lesser free-man was appointed to the Great Council?"
"Sixty-five years ago."
"There, you see? You knew the answer in an instant, just as you know the answer to any law question. If anyone's destined to become a council lord, it's you."
"May the high doom fall upon you, man . . ." Carle followed this up with a colorful string of oaths and concluded by saying, "Why should I have impossible ambitions like that when I have you as my friend? Believe me, I'm quite content to follow in your wake, wherever your talents take you. —Never mind, never mind, there's no point in arguing about the hypothetical all night. All I meant to say was that I'd like to do council work some day –
if
I survive a few years as a spy. That may be ambition enough."
And that remark brought us out of our dreams and back to reality.
The thirteenth day of September in the 941st year a.g.l.
We received a letter from Quentin today, by way of Hylas. Since Carle and I are not accepted as spies until we have completed our training, the patrol hasn't yet heard of our new assignment, but Neville wrote to the patrol and let everyone know of our disgrace.
Quentin wanted to know whether he could be of any help in finding us better jobs.
"I
told
you we'd find out who our true friends are," crowed Carle, waving the letter. "Heart of Mercy, was there ever such a man as that? We bring grave dishonor upon his patrol – or so he thinks – and he breaks the great taboo against communicating with us, in order to offer his assistance. By the law-structure itself, I can't wait to see him again. Cursed be his reticence. I'm the same rank now as he is; he's going to hear what I think of him, whether he likes it or not."
The nineteenth day of September in the 941st year a.g.l.
Any illusions I had about the life of a spy being full of excitement are now gone. Carle and I just spent a week in training, gathering information about the width of farm fields. Hylas says we'll be lucky if we receive such an interesting assignment when we go to Koretia.
We were sent to the Emorian borderland as an experiment to see whether Carle could pass as a Koretian. We were nearly required to spy on Quentin's home village, which would have been amusing, but Carle explained to Hylas that we had both met Quentin's grandfather. So I missed my chance to meet Quentin's grandfather again and to understand better why Quentin is so reluctant to be in contact with his family.
Carle and I have decided not to respond to the lieutenant's letter. Anything we wrote now would have to be a lie; we'll be able to give him the truth soon enough.
Last night, as we were sorting through the information we'd gathered and trying to decide whether the Chara needed to know which fields were covered with weeds, Carle said, "The one I feel sorry for in all this is Quentin. He was planning to retire at the end of this year, but now he'll have to wait a year or two while he trains your successor."
I was busy checking to ensure that our tent was closed tight against eavesdroppers, and so it took me a moment to realize what Carle had said. Then I replied, "What are you talking about? You were the sublieutenant; you were going to take Quentin's place when he left."
Carle was stretched along his low cot, tracing circles around the numbers we had drawn in the dirt and were trying to commit to memory in true spy fashion. He gave me one of his crooked smiles. "I told you last year that elevation of rank doesn't work that way. You're a better soldier than I am; I knew that from the moment you disarmed me. Quentin was only waiting for you to resolve matters with Fowler before he made you his partner and began training you to lead the unit."
I looked quickly down at the ground and began digging at the dust with the tip of my boot. I too had long known that I was a better soldier than anyone in the unit except Quentin, but I had not allowed myself to think about this, so confident was I that Carle would always be above my rank. Now I wasn't sure what lay behind Carle's smile, and I was afraid to ask.
Softly as the breeze whistling against the tent cover, Carle said, "No, I take it back. It's not Quentin I feel sorriest for; it's you. You could have held the most honored lieutenancy in the Chara's armies if it hadn't been for my foolishness, and I— Well, I've lost the great joy I would have had in serving under you. I suppose that I couldn't have had any worse punishment than that."
And as I looked up, I saw that he was still smiling. With a brush of the hand, he swept away the figures we had written down, and for the next hour we quizzed each other on our information.
We both proved to be equally poor at our work.
The twenty-first day of October in the 941st year a.g.l.
I've had no time to write for the past month, so busy have we been in our training. In light of what I wrote in my previous entry, I should add that I'm relieved to discover that Carle is a better spy than I am. At least, he's better at lying. I asked him once how he learned so well to lie, and he replied, "From living with my father." I quickly switched the subject.
He's also a master at being able to tell when other people are lying, and he can't explain how he acquired that talent. It did occur to me that his father has the same skill, but of course I knew better than to mention that to Carle. The only task I have any real skill at is hunting, and so Carle and I divide our duties the way we did in the beginning: he talks with people, and if there's a need to track anyone, I do the hunting. I feel as though we've become even closer partners than we were in the patrol.
It felt odd, then, when Wystan called me into his tent alone. He wanted to question me about how much danger I was placing myself in by returning to Koretia. I explained to him how my kinsmen would never visit Blackpass, and he seemed satisfied, but he said, "This war in Koretia has become so ferocious that I fear you might be in danger even if you are recognized by someone who is not kin to you. You will discover as a spy that one temptation you are constantly facing is to confess your true identity to sympathetic listeners. Any man of honor sickens of having to tell lies week after week, and you will reach a point where you think, 'What harm could it do to tell this one person?' For that reason, whenever possible I send Koretian-born spies back under their own identities. In your case, though, the possible harm of disclosure is double, since your life could be forfeit due to your broken blood vow, as well as due to your spying. Because of that, I am going to give you a command: You are not to reveal your identity to any Koretian. Do you understand my order?"
I nodded. I did not think it was necessary to add that I have no desire for any Koretian to know the truth of who I am. When I think of all the years I spent worshipping the gods, I am filled with shame, and no Koretian would ever understand that.
The twenty-eighth day of October in the 941st a.g.l.
Carle and I have finished our training. No one has told us otherwise, so I suppose we are spies now. We're awaiting our first assignment, and in the meantime we're quizzing each other so that we are sure to know our new identities if anyone should ask us.
Hylas decided in the end that it would be too dangerous to have Carle try to pass as a noble's heir; someone might know the village he came from. Instead, Carle is Calder son of Victor. His father and elder brothers were all killed in a blood feud, so he was heir to his village's barony for a short time when he was seven. But he was so ill after the murders that he went to live with another noble family, and when it became clear that he would not recover from his illness, he gave the King permission to appoint a new baron to his village. Calder stayed with the other noble family until he came of age, but because the village baron was new nobility and his father had been of the old nobility, Calder was unwilling to remain there. Since that time, he has spent his life travelling. As the former heir to a village baron, he is entitled to wear a sword.
Calder really exists; he came to live with my family when he was seven and I was four. He killed himself, though. I still remember Emlyn's face when he came to tell us that he had found Calder hanging from one of the rafters of our hall.
It was so shameful an incident that no one knows it happened except my family and the King and Calder's mother, who told everyone that she had given my father guardianship of Calder. As far as anyone else knows, Calder is still alive.
I'm my cousin Emlyn. Oh, I'm not using his name, but I based my new identity on him: blood brother to one of the old nobility, not important in my own right, but worthy of courtesy and attention. If Carle and I ask questions, the person we're talking with will feel compelled to answer two august persons such as ourselves. At least, I hope that is the case; our mission depends upon it.
The thirtieth day of October in the 941st year a.g.l.
Hylas brought us another letter from Quentin today. It was sealed, but of course Hylas knew what it said, since patrol guards are required to disclose the contents of their personal letters to the messengers who carry them. Hylas said that he heard from another royal messenger that Quentin has been sending out large batches of letters to a wide variety of people in Southern Emor for the past month, and that the letters were all aimed at securing the enclosed.
We broke the seal and looked at Quentin's message. It was a short note telling us that his grandfather had heard of our present situation and was pleased to offer us a house in his village, as well as jobs on his farm.
Carle didn't crow this time. Instead, he handed me the letter and walked rapidly out of the tent. I found him an hour later, leaning against the exterior side of the inner palace wall. He was gazing from his hilltop perch at the border mountains as he softly practiced his patrol whistles. I pretended not to notice the wet face-cloth that was thrust under his belt.