Scholar

by L. E. Modesitt

  At the last sentence, Quaeryt had to nod. He unfolded the notepaper, apparently the bottom half of a larger sheet, on which were written the words “even ancient writers could see where the greatest dangers lay…” The cursive script looked feminine to Quaeryt, but it had the unnatural precision, he thought, of a young woman still under the direction of a scholar or private tutor. The very words reinforced that impression, because no truly experienced woman would leave such words in a book, even in her own library.

  Could the writer have been the Khanar’s daughter? Tyrena, was it?

  While not new, the paper didn’t look that ancient … but how many young women had access to the library over the years? On the other hand, how many would dare to leave such an incriminating scrap … unless that young woman happened to be untouchable?

  He left the paper in the book and replaced it on the shelf.

  After another quint of searching he did find a volume that recounted the history of Tilbor from the time of Nidar the Great through the time of Eleonyd’s father, who appeared moderately strong, if strangely indifferent. That tome occupied Quaeryt for several glasses, and one phrase particularly caught his attention.

  … though some thought agreeing to it a weakness, the Charter proved to be the basis of the power of the High Holders and led to the relative decline of those holders who did not agree to its terms …

  The only problem was that he couldn’t find much about the Charter, except that it was an agreement between the Khanar and some of the holders of that time. Quaeryt had the feeling that the Charter was one of those events that everyone at the time knew and therefore wrote little about it, only to have the details fade over the years. There was probably a book somewhere, but …

  He shook his head.

  Other books did provide various insights and by the time he needed to leave the library for the day, he thought he had a somewhat better grasp of Tilboran history, at least until the time of Eleonyd.

  When Quaeryt finally entered the mess for supper, he could see far fewer officers—roughly half as many as on Vendrei night—but one was Major Skarpa, who motioned for Quaeryt to join him and another major. “This is Quaeryt. He’s the scholar assistant to the princeps I told you about. Quaeryt, this is Daendyr. He’s in charge of supplies for the regiment.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” said Quaeryt as he took the seat across from Skarpa.

  “I’ve never seen a scholar attached to a regiment before.”

  “He’s on the governor’s staff,” Skarpa said. “They had to give him officer status.”

  Daendyr nodded.

  “What have you been doing today?” Skarpa handed the pitcher of amber lager to Quaeryt, who filled his mug.

  “Seeing what was in the Khanar’s library.…”

  “Who reads all that?” asked Daendyr.

  “I’ve read some of them,” admitted Skarpa. “A couple of the books on mounted tactics are good.”

  “Then why didn’t they use them?”

  “The Khanar’s Guard did. They gave us a lot of trouble, even though we outnumbered them.” Skarpa shook his head. “Then, all of a sudden, they just withdrew, and left the Khanar and his militia or whatever they were outside the palace moat and walls. We would have taken them sooner or later, but it was a lot easier that way.”

  “They didn’t have any imagers?” asked Quaeryt. “I heard…”

  “Lord Chayar did something about that. We never heard. It wouldn’t matter anyway. Imagers can only do so much, and that doesn’t change things in a pitched battle.”

  “What about the High Holders?” asked Quaeryt.

  “What about them? They really didn’t fight any more than they had to. The ones here in the south didn’t like the Khanar much. They called him the Pretender or some such.”

  “It sounds like he wasn’t very well-liked anywhere.”

  Daendyr shook his head. “The backwoods and Boran Hills holders liked him, and so did the High Holders around Noira.”

  “The High Holders in the far north don’t count for much. They never have,” countered Skarpa.

  “Where do the sisters fit in?” asked Quaeryt.

  “The sisters?” Daendyr’s face screwed up in puzzlement.

  “Oh … they’re a bunch of spinsters who supposedly poison men who beat their wives,” explained Skarpa. “Something like that, anyway.”

  “Where do you get that?” asked Daendyr.

  “You hear things.”

  “Makes me glad I didn’t wed a local.”

  “Have you all been posted here since … since the end of the fighting?”

  “We have,” said Skarpa. “They’ll rotate field-grade officers who are married after three years.”

  “If they ask, and most won’t,” added Daendyr.

  “What about the rankers?”

  “They stay for the duration of their term.”

  “When they’re mustered out…?”

  “They get their bonus and a ride on a transport wagon back to Solis or the closest large town to where they signed up. If they’ve done two ten-year terms, they get a stipend for life. It’s not much, two silvers a month, but…”

  “And the marshal sends replacement recruits?”

  Daendyr shook his head. “Tilbor’s a part of Telaryn. We have to recruit locals now. We have been for more than eight years.”

  “We haven’t had trouble that way at all,” added Skarpa. “The governor makes certain the troops get good rations, and the quarters are good. The uniforms are better than what most of them ever wore.”

  “If it weren’t for the backwoods and the northern brigands, it’d be a better life than most of them would ever have.”

  “It is anyway.” Skarpa’s tone was wry.

  At that moment, a large platter of sliced roast mutton arrived, accompanied by a pitcher of brown gravy and sliced roast potatoes, as well as a large serving dish of spiced stewed apples.

  “The mutton’s much better than squid,” observed Skarpa.

  “It’s good, but I still like the squid,” said Daendyr.

  “You’re from Thuyl. You would.”

  Quaeryt smiled and served himself healthy portions of everything before him. It had been a long day since breakfast, and the mess didn’t serve a midday meal.

  After eating, and mostly listening, as Quaeryt walked back toward his third-floor quarters, thoughts swirled through his mind. He was getting a picture of how matters were going in Tilbor, and it did appear that the troubles facing the governor and the regiment centered on the backwoods holders and the northern High Holders. In that vein, he also found it interesting that both Phaeryn and Zarxes were from backwoods holder families. He needed to find out if Straesyr or the governor knew that, but, since he wanted to avoid total destruction of the Ecoliae and persecution of scholars, he definitely couldn’t ask directly. He also wasn’t ready to reveal what he’d been doing in the days before he’d arrived at the Telaryn Palace.

  And he did need to write some sort of reply to Vaelora.

  He also couldn’t help but wonder about the note he’d found in Considerations Behind the Strategy of War. If it had been written by Tyrena, given the handwriting, it had likely been written several years before the war … and if it had been that obvious to her …

  He shook his head.

  37

  If anything, there were fewer officers at breakfast on Solayi morning than on Samedi night. Quaeryt ate alone, then made his way to the chamber in the lowest level of the palace that held the archives of the khanarate. As the princeps had said, the entry was guarded by an older ranker.

  “Good morning, sir. The assistant to the princeps said you might be here.”

  “I’m here. Do you know anything about how the records are arranged?”

  “No, sir.” The ranker paused. “Excepting that all the papers from the last year or so are in the four wooden boxes on the long table just inside. There.” He pointed. “I’d be guessing that there was no one left to
put them in proper order.”

  “That might have been difficult,” agreed Quaeryt. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure, sir. Don’t see many down here.”

  Quaeryt stepped into the chamber, a stone-walled and windowless enclosure a good ten yards wide and forty deep. The chamber was so still that he could hear the unevenness of his steps and the scuffing sound of the boot on his bad leg. There were two oil lamps lit, both near the table pointed out by the guard, but the rest of the space faded from gloom into near blackness.

  He walked to the box nearest the door and stopped. When he lifted the wooden top off the box, a container a yard long, and half a yard deep and tall, he immediately saw that, if anything, the ranker had understated the lack of organization. Papers of all sizes and types, some in leather folders, but most not, were just crammed in, side by side. Dust billowed out, as if no one had looked in the boxes for some time.

  He eased the first box to the rear of the long sturdy table and took out the first span of papers from the right end of the box and then set them on the table in front of the box. He picked up the first sheet, glanced at a cargo manifest of some sort, saw that it dealt with woolens and other types of cloth, and set it aside. The second, third, and fourth sheets comprised a petition from a town council requesting the Khanar improve the bridge over a stream because the horses of the Khanar’s Guard had damaged it beyond the ability of the town to repair and it required replacement.

  Quaeryt read through three handspans’ worth of paper before he came across the first sheet that interested him, a proclamation that declared officers of the “militia of the northern Boran Hills” bore their ranks equivalent to those of the Guard of the Khanar. The document was signed by Rhecyrd, Khanar of Tilbor. He set that aside and kept looking, not that he knew precisely what he sought.

  Shortly thereafter, he found a letter addressed to Eleonyd, Khanar and Patriarch of Tilbor, written by one Fhaedyrk, High Holder of Dyrkholm. Most of it was flattery and obfuscation, but one paragraph stood out.

  … the wealth of Tilbor lies in two sources, that of its High Holders and that combined which derives from its growers, factors, and crafters. Both create greater wealth from lesser sources, as opposed to the timber holders of the hills, who harvest what they have not grown in greater amounts than the forests will sustain in years to come, and the clans of the north who prey on all who are weaker … In all your efforts to improve Tilbor, and in regard to the revisions suggested in tariffs, you and your predecessors have kept these sources in mind, and continuing such may well be in the best interests of the khanarate …

  He’d heard the name Fhaedyrk, but he couldn’t remember where. So he set that letter aside as well and kept reading through the assorted papers. At the end of another glass, he’d found a missive from Chayar’s ill-fated envoy announcing his arrival and suggesting that Eleonyd meet with him at his earliest convenience, with the barely veiled suggestion that matters of mutual interest should be considered sooner rather than later, but there was no mention of what those matters might be.

  Then, after another few quints, he came across another letter under the crest of the Khanar, this one signed by Tyrena, as regent for Eleonyd, Khanar of Tilbor. He almost overlooked it, because it was in the back of a leather folder behind a flap, and he’d been about to replace the folder in the box when he realized there was a flap and lifted it. After he finished reading it, he nodded. Although the bulk of the text dealt with routine matters before the Khanar’s Council, there were several suggestive phrases.

  … as for consideration of tariffs on the timber road, that is a matter that will be reviewed at the next session of the Khanar’s Council …

  … at this time no funds can be spent on paying for enlarging the harbor at Noira … better funded by the High Holders and factors of the north as they are the only ones who might benefit …

  … the matter of the potential marriage of the heiress of the Khanar will also be discussed at the next Council meeting …

  … discussion of the dispatch from the Autarch of Antiago will resume …

  While the text had been written by a scrivener, the signature was different and, from what Quaeryt could recall, similar to that on the note he’d discovered in the tactics book, although the signature seemed more mature. After studying the letter again, Quaeryt checked back through the other leather folders he had already looked at, but none contained anything else hidden behind flaps, and another glass of looking revealed nothing else dealing with Tyrena.

  By midafternoon, his eyes were blurring from all of the searching through papers and documents, but he did manage to complete going through the four disorganized boxes of papers, bills of lading, proclamations, even scattered ledger sheets. The one thing that was very clear was that the last days of the khanarate, if the documents were any indication, had been hectic and disorganized. Still, he had perhaps twenty documents that might prove of interest. He slipped them into the folder that had concealed the letter signed by Tyrena, and placed that folder at the end of the third box.

  That single letter from Tyrena raised several questions. First … if she had acted as regent for her father, why was there only one letter? Or had there been more, and the others removed? That was most likely, given that the single letter he’d found had been tucked behind a flap in a folder containing other papers. But, if there had been others, who had removed them? Rhecyrd? Or one of his assistants, on the Pretender’s orders? Would Quaeryt ever know?

  He doubted it.

  As blurry as his eyes felt by then, roughly at third glass, he left the archives and walked through the gardens and back to his quarters, where he sat down and began to compose a reply to the missive Vaelora had dispatched. He tried to think out each sentence carefully before he wrote it.

  Dear Mistress Vaelora—

  I arrived in Tilbora on the twenty-seventh of Agostas and received your latest missive then. My journey took longer than I had anticipated because I had to wait for a ship sailing from Nacliano to Tilbora. Unfortunately, the ship encountered a storm and went on the rocks well south of Tilbor. It took a good week for me to recover at the holding of a kindly couple, and then more than another week to ride north to Tilbor. I regret the delay in my replying to your inquiries.

  Your last communication raised eloquently the difficulty of objectively determining what might be the most practical course of action for a ruler, given that the best possible judgments of those around the ruler might well differ, even if all had his best interests in mind. In addition, some might not have those interests in mind, and often those who are the least inclined to further a ruler’s best interests are also the most eloquent. How then should he judge whose counsel is of most value? All circumstances differ, but I would suggest that the ruler offer to those advising him a plausible course of action in dealing with the matter at hand, but one which he knows is flawed, and request their counsel. How they respond may tell him much.

  You had also commented upon the value of scholars, and you might find it of interest to learn that the fashion in which people perceive scholars varies more widely across Telaryn than one might suppose. In Nacliano, the Scholars’ House was burned and the scholars dispersed, if not subjected to worse abuse, because a scholar taught the wife of a City Patrol chief reading and mathematics because she wished to aid her husband. Unhappily, what she read and calculated so horrified the poor woman that she fled, and the Patrol chief took steps to make sure that scholars troubled Nacliano no more.

  With that much written, Quaeryt set aside his reply for the moment, since he did not want to dispatch it immediately, in any case, not until he had met with the governor.

  The mess was more crowded that evening, but Quaeryt saw that Skarpa was surrounded by other officers. He sat with several undercaptains, mainly listening and offering innocuous pleasantries or simple factual replies on the few times he was asked questions.

  After eating, he made his way to the anomen, largely because he wanted to see
who would be there and hear what Phargos might offer in his homily.

  The double doors of the gray stone anomen were of polished but well-weathered oak, and the brass hinges shone. Two lanterns, unlit, given that the sun had not yet set, also gleamed, despite the fact that the anomen lay in the shadow of the massive walls. Inside, which was larger than Quaeryt had originally judged, the wall lanterns were lit and cast a diffuse but warm glow across the officers and rankers gathered there between the oak-paneled walls. Quaeryt had never seen an anomen with paneled walls, not that he’d ever been in more than a handful of anomens, but the walls were without adornment of any sort, as was the fashion. What was strange was that there were far more officers than rankers.

  Quaeryt took a position on the east side near the rear and waited. Several undercaptains followed him inside, but no one stood that close to him.

  Shortly, Phargos moved to the center of the dais. He did not wear the vestments of a chorister, but his uniform, if with the long scarf that all choristers wore during services. The regimental chorister began with the greeting. “We gather together in the spirit of the Nameless and to affirm the quest for goodness and mercy in all that we do.”

  Quaeryt’s mouth almost dropped open, because Phargos had offered the greeting in perfect Bovarian, not Tellan, and that might well explain the scarcity of rankers among the worshippers.

  The opening hymn followed, and it was “Praise Not the Nameless,” also sung in Bovarian. Likewise, the confession was also in Bovarian, although Quaeryt could tell some of the more junior officers were stumbling occasionally, but they did seem to have the last words down. “… and deference to You who cannot be named or known, only respected and worshipped.”