Scholar

by L. E. Modesitt

  Straesyr smiled. “Your assumption is correct. I send a notice of tariffs due to each crafter, factor, holder, or High Holder at the end of harvest. They can pay here at the palace in the small building across from the east gate guardhouse, or at any post or outpost—or with the town council in towns that have a council, or with the council of the nearest town that has a council. That has seemed to work for all but the most recalcitrant of the hill holders.”

  “Then you’re responsible for consolidating the tariffs and providing the funds to the governor and sending whatever is left to Lord Bhayar?”

  Straesyr laughed. “Not exactly. There is a minimum amount of tariff that must be sent to Lord Bhayar. At the end of harvest, I draft and the governor approves or changes a proposed budget for the next year. He sends that to Lord Bhayar, along with the current year’s tariffs. We have always been able to exceed the minimum requirements, often by a fifth part or more.”

  “Thank you. I have no more questions, sir.”

  “I will see you later, or Vhorym will let you know about the visit to the local scholars.”

  Quaeryt returned to his study, where he spent some time reflecting upon the meeting with Straesyr. Abruptly, he recalled what the old ranker had told him when Quaeryt had been waiting for the surgeon. He nodded to himself, then rose and walked back to the princeps’s study, where he found Vhorym.

  “I’ll be in the stables for a bit. I want to check on my mare.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took Quaeryt almost two quints to find the head ostler.

  “Sir? What can I do for you?” asked the graying and not-quite-grizzled figure.

  “I just wanted a few moments of your time. I’m gathering information for Lord Bhayar, and I thought you’ve probably been one of those here the longest.”

  “Yes, sir. I came here with Marshal Fhayt.”

  “And there’s only been one regiment here, with all its horses, since then?”

  “Well, sir … there were three regiments here right after the fighting stopped, but the second regiment left within two months. The third left in the spring.”

  “Did the two regiments pretty much fill the stables, then? When both were here?”

  “Oh … no, sir. We had two empty stables, mayhap a bit more. We didn’t have so many engineers, and the companies were just four squads.”

  “You don’t do much with the other posts or outposts?”

  “No, sir.”

  “But everyone and all the mounts were stabled here for the first few years?”

  “Yes, sir. Governor Rescalyn was the one who built the outposts. Good idea. Without them, we were losing too many mounts. Too much time on the road without enough solid fodder, especially in the winter.”

  “You get all your winter fodder from growers here?”

  “Yes, sir. Good fodder and grain. Governor wants the mounts healthy.”

  “Have you ever seen any of the horses used by the hill holders?”

  “Only a few. One came back a week ago. Scrawny underfed thing. Already looking better.”

  “Are they all like that?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir. The ones I see are, but maybe those are the ones that let their riders down and get caught.”

  Quaeryt asked a few more questions before leaving and obtaining the key to the dispatch room. Between what Straesyr had said about budgets and tariffs and what he’d learned from the head ostler, he wanted to check a number of the dispatches.

  Almost three glasses later, after having combed through the dispatches, especially the early ones, and those dealing with the budget submissions, he took a deep breath and leaned back in the wooden chair. In plain sight, indeed. Or rather, the omissions were in plain sight.

  He needed to ask a few more questions of Skarpa before he could confirm what he thought he’d discovered, but that would have to wait until the evening meal—if Skarpa happened to be there. After returning the dispatch-room key, he made his way back to his study.

  He’d been back less than a glass when Vhorym knocked on his half-open door.

  “Sir? The princeps asked me to tell you that the governor approved your mission to deal with the scholars. A company from Sixth Battalion will accompany you on Vendrei.”

  “Thank you, Vhorym.”

  “My pleasure, sir.”

  Quaeryt merely nodded, since he truly doubted it was a pleasure at all to the squad leader. He spent the rest of the afternoon calculating and then thinking out what he needed to write in his next letter to Vaelora and his next dispatch to Bhayar, but he committed nothing to paper.

  Not yet.

  At dinner, Quaeryt sought out Skarpa without seeming to and ended up sitting with Skarpa and Daendyr, the major in charge of supplies. Until they were well into the meal, and both majors had downed a mug of ale, Quaeryt merely listened and bantered.

  Finally, as they were finishing the last scraps on their platters, he said, “I’m not an officer type, but the other day I heard a young ranker complaining about the number of patrols. Then an older ranker told him to stop complaining—not in those words—and that he didn’t know how much easier it was these days because the companies used to be just four squads.”

  Skarpa shook his head. “The young ones always think they have it so tough, and the old ones are always reminding them that it was tougher in the old days. But the old ranker had it right. Just four squads, and we were running our mounts into the ground. When Rescalyn took over, he stepped up recruiting and mount procurement and added a squad to every company and another company to every battalion. Made all the difference.”

  Another battalion as well?

  “That, and the outposts,” added Daendyr.

  “And your supply group,” countered Skarpa. “You could supply a whole army.”

  “Not that much…” demurred Daendyr.

  “Almost,” insisted Skarpa.

  After eating and talking a while longer, Quaeryt made his way back to his quarters, still thinking, and more worried than ever. If his calculations were correct, Rescalyn had turned his single “regiment” into a force equivalent to more than three regiments, with his own engineers and his own supply group as well. As Skarpa had inadvertently put it—a whole army—and the way the dispatches on budgets and expenditures were set up and sent to Bhayar, there had never been a mention of the increased number of squads or companies, just the costs of operating and maintaining the “regiment,” with various explanations dealing with the cost of the outposts and the like.

  All in plain sight.

  64

  Several quints before tenth glass on Mardi morning, Quaeryt was riding with Rescalyn and Captain Wraelyt from Seventh Battalion, near the head of the captain’s company.

  “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” asked Rescalyn cheerfully. “Not a cloud in the sky, but a cool breeze in our face.” He turned to Quaeryt. “How are you finding Tilbor these days, scholar?”

  “The present days are to be preferred over my first patrols in Tilbor, sir.”

  “I can’t imagine why,” replied Rescalyn with a laugh, “but it’s well that you’ve endured and recovered. Everyone is handed trials. What you do after that is what matters.”

  “And how you do it,” suggested Quaeryt.

  “Exactly. Without the regiment and good captains like Wraelyt here, Tilbor would be a far less attractive land. People here appear most pleasant, but that’s because they know the alternative would be far worse. They don’t mourn the passing of the Khanars, no matter what they say. They were always squabbling and plotting. They couldn’t even let the last true Khanar’s heir rule—and she’d run the country as well as anyone for years in her father’s name.”

  “Weren’t the ones who backed the Pretender mostly the northers, the northern High Holders, and the hill holders?” asked Quaeryt blandly.

  “That’s what they all claim, but a big part of the reason why Tilbor fell was that the Khanars never had a strong enough armed force … Let me put it another w
ay. They didn’t have a large enough strong armed force. The Khanar’s Guard was as good a force as any for its size, but it wasn’t even the size of an old-style regiment.”

  Quaeryt concealed a frown. An old-style regiment? He was fairly certain that Bhayar had not changed the size of regiments anywhere in Telaryn. He also doubted the Lord of Telaryn was even aware that Rescalyn had done so in Tilbor.

  The governor looked to Wraelyt, one of the older captains in the regiment, most likely an officer who had worked his way up through the ranks. “Wouldn’t you say that’s true, Captain?”

  “True enough, sir. If they hadn’t decided not to back the Pretender at the end, we’d have lost a lot more good men.”

  “They couldn’t even unite against Telaryn. That tells you how divided they were,” asserted Rescalyn cheerfully.

  “You do seem to have calmed them down and given them a sense of unity,” said Quaeryt. “I notice that many of the junior undercaptains are Tilborans.”

  “They make good troopers and officers. They’d be a credit to any regiment.” Rescalyn gestured ahead. “I see the gates to High Holder Freunyt’s estate.”

  The square gateposts were of dressed graystone, and behind the right post was a gatehouse with a split-slate roof. The twin iron gates were swung open, and two guards in maroon tunics and gray leather vests stood out front, one in front of each open gate.

  Beyond the gates, the graystone-paved drive swept to the left around a pond encircled by low grass, upon which swam white geese. To the left of the lane and to the right of the pond were well-tended woods. Quaeryt noted that the paving stones, while mortared securely in place, bore two hollowed pathways, signifying years and years of carriages and wagons traversing the stone. Past the pond, the drive straightened and continued up a gentle slope to a sprawling stone structure close to a hundred and fifty yards long and rising three levels from the low hill. Before the palace-like mansion was a circular drive, in the middle of which was a raised garden, surrounded by a low wall. Quaeryt could smell the mixed perfume-like scents of the flowers.

  Rescalyn turned in the saddle. “Captain, we will leave you now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Obviously, Wraelyt was following a set procedure, because he led the company to the right, down a narrower lane that led to a lower complex of buildings, while the governor and Quaeryt rode around the garden to the left and toward the front entry—with an extended roof wide enough to shade or protect two carriages and their teams end to end. The roof arched over the drive and was supported on the garden side by a series of square stone pillars.

  “In the winter,” said Rescalyn, “they put wooden panels between the pillars to keep the snow from drifting in front of the entry steps.”

  Two footmen waited to take the reins of their mounts, and no sooner had Quaeryt dismounted, not unskillfully, but with far less grace than Rescalyn, than a short man stepped out from the gilded double doors, doors that would doubtless have been covered by the folded-back shutter-doors in times of inclement weather.

  “Governor … the High Holder awaits you in the terrace salon. If you would come this way … and you, too, sir,” the functionary in maroon added to Quaeryt.

  Quaeryt nodded and followed Rescalyn through an entry foyer with a domed ceiling and polished green marble floors to a wide corridor on the left, also with the green marble floor, except that the center held a thick carpet runner of dark green edged in golden yellow. The functionary escorted them past several archways, one of which opened into a darkened but immense dining hall with fireplaces at each end, until they had walked some fifty yards, where he turned down a slightly narrower hallway to an open door. There he stepped aside and gestured for them to enter.

  Again, Quaeryt followed the governor, into what had to have been the terrace salon, a chamber almost the size of the Green Salon in the palace, although it was oblong, with wide windows centered on a set of double doors.

  “Greetings, greetings, Governor,” said the broad-shouldered and muscular figure who turned from the open doors that afforded access to the terrace beyond. High Holder Freunyt wore neither green nor maroon, but black trousers and a sleeveless black vest over a white silk shirt with wide collars. Boots and belt were also black, as was his hair, although there was little enough of that on the top of his head.

  “Greetings to you,” replied Rescalyn. “It’s been too long. Your grounds look spectacular on a day like today.”

  “They do, don’t they? They should, with all the fussing I’ve had my seneschal do for me. Come … you’ve had a dusty ride. Wine … lager … what will you have?”

  “Some of your estate white, if you still have it.”

  “And you, scholar?”

  “The white, please.”

  As the High Holder poured the wine from a decanter, Quaeryt studied the room, the walls finished in pale yellow damask with portraits of distinguished looking men and women hung at intervals. The marble floor was largely covered by a thick carpet of green with intertwined cabled designs in gold, with thin lines of black outlining the gold.

  “Here you are.” Freunyt handed a goblet to Rescalyn and a second to Quaeryt. “Come look at the garden.”

  Goblet in hand, Quaeryt trailed the two out through the doors onto the terrace, a stone-paved area that extended back a good ten yards and ran ten yards on each side of the doors. At the back of the terrace was a waist-high wall of gray stone, topped with a course of whiter stone. The wall was necessary because, beyond it, the hillside had been cut away and a formal maze garden lay below, with flowers and topiary. There were no fountains, though, Quaeryt noted.

  “What do you think?” asked the High Holder, looking to Quaeryt.

  “It’s beautiful. It’s also well laid out.” Quaeryt frowned. “The maze design…” He wasn’t about to blurt it out directly, but looked for a reaction.

  “Is it familiar? It might be, to a scholar … or a chorister.” Freunyt offered an impish smile at odds with his appearance.

  “Is that a version of the Path to Namelessness, then?”

  “Exactly. With a few alterations to make it a functional maze that children and young people can navigate.”

  Rescalyn glanced sideways at Quaeryt for a moment, then turned his attention back to Freunyt. “How have your harvests fared?”

  “Well indeed. We’ve had no drenching rains and the maize and wheat corn are mostly harvested. We’ll have a bumper crop of late apples, and even the root crops look good. But the vineyards … the best year in ages.”

  “That will be something, if the year’s vintages exceed this.” Rescalyn lifted his glass.

  “I’m hopeful…”

  Quaeryt listened, asked a few questions he hoped were innocuous, and listened more until the High Holder glanced back toward the terrace doors and a woman wearing a white lace apron over maroon trousers and tunic.

  “I see our fare is waiting.” Freunyt turned, and the three men crossed the terrace.

  Inside the salon, a moderate-sized circular table had been placed before the center window of the three located on the side of the salon toward the main entrance, and three places had been set, all facing the window. Freunyt took the center place and gestured for Rescalyn to sit to his right. After all three were seated, the server placed a plate in front of each, with a slice of greenish melon garnished with the thinnest strips of a pale meat.

  “Honeysweet melon with the tastiest of my cured ham,” explained Freunyt.

  As he did, a man in maroon refilled the diners’ goblets.

  The balding Freunyt turned and smiled at Quaeryt. “I never thought to see a scholar here.” He lifted his goblet, as if in toast.

  “A year ago, sir, I never thought I’d be in Tilbor, but why did you feel you would not see a scholar here? I know there are scholars in Tilbora, but it is as if most avoid mentioning them.”

  “I know there are good men among them … and their school provides a most needed education for the children of factors an
d … others, but … let us say that there is little affection lost between those who lead the scholars and the High Holders of Tilbor.” The High Holder smiled at Rescalyn. “That might be a matter which Scholar Quaeryt could look into … and see for himself.”

  “As a matter of fact,” replied Rescalyn, “Scholar Quaeryt brought up that matter recently, and I have authorized him to do so over the next week or so.”

  “Good for you, Governor. It’s about time.” Freunyt’s eyes fixed on Quaeryt. “I would wager that their master scholar, that scoundrel who calls himself Phaeryn, will talk so calmly that you’ll think that they’re little more than teachers and collectors of books. Don’t believe him. Ask him what his so-called Scholar Chardyn did in the fight against the Khanara.”

  “There was a battle against the Khanara? I thought Tyrena was Eleonyd’s daughter and she was acting as regent for her father.”

  “She was, and rightfully so, until that Pretender Rhecyrd showed up at the head of that mob of hill holders and the norther dissident High Holders. That Scholar Chardyn was up to his elbows in blood, and none of it was his. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one behind the flaming of Lord Chayar’s envoy.”

  Quaeryt got the strong feeling that what Freunyt had said was new even to Rescalyn, but he replied, “I’ve asked a few people about that time, and no one ever mentioned anything about a Scholar Chardyn. A shopkeeper in Tilbora said there was an armsman named Chardyn who served as a bodyguard for his father, who was a high officer in the Khanar’s Guard.”

  “Oh … that’s true enough. It’s just not the entire truth. Chardyn left the scholars for a time to serve under his father. A very short time. Traesk was the only hill-bred officer ever to lead the Guard, and it was a sad day for Tilbor when they picked him.…” The High Holder shook his head. “Enough of such. We should talk of merrier matters.”

  Now that I’ve been maneuvered to deal with the situation, I’m certain we will. But Quaeryt only smiled and took a sip from his goblet.