Scholar: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio (50 page)

“Are there any particular groups of factors who seldom attend … or who never have?”

“There are a handful whose appearance is less frequent, but they’re the ones who are located farther away.”

After several more questions, Quaeryt smiled. “I do have another question, sir, but not about the reception.”

“What is it?”

“I’m curious about how tariffs are actually collected.”

“Why?” Straesyr’s voice remained pleasant, almost jovial.

“In most places, factors and others complain about tariffs. Here the only complaints seem to be from the hill holders.”

The princeps frowned. “I don’t understand the point of your question.”

“I’m probably not being as clear as I could be. The captains and majors all talk about how dangerous it is to do anything in small groups in the hills and how so often holders have to be reminded of their … obligations … by a visit by a company or more. I had the impression that such a show of force was unnecessary elsewhere, but I never asked.”

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 way. 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.