The Marcher Lord (Over Guard) (3 page)

“It will,” the boy said defiantly, “but maybe I keep it. Han’t decided yet.”

By this time
, some of the other young Chax that Ian had suspected were present also began to come out from the crevices of the alleyway. Ian could only spare brief glances to keep a rough idea where they were since he knew it was important to maintain eye contact with the lead boy. He wasn’t particularly worried about the others trying anything though, so it was more a matter of curiosity, like it was for them.

“What if we run now again?” the boy went on. “You fery tired look.”

“Not particularly,” Ian shrugged, mostly telling the truth. “And I don’t think it would be a good idea. Getting to chase all of you once was fun, good exercise. But I wouldn’t be so well humored to do it again. I imagine you’re all familiar with buzzing around the local authorities without any trouble, but I doubt any of you have ever seen the inside of a Bevish Glasshouse. That’s the sort of experience you’d be best to avoid.”

The lead boy was staring hard at the ground just in front of Ian. One of the smaller boys near him called out
something uncertainly in a sing-song Dervish dialect. The lead boy said quiet in Dervish without looking at him.

“You couln’t catch us,” the lead boy
decided, raising his nose up.

“I would catch one of you,”
Ian said. “I promise.”

For a moment
, the tension changed, and Ian realized he was about to lose the situation as the leader looked angrily at the boy who was still sitting on the ground.

“But
it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of alternatives,” Ian said, shifting his weight a bit, “and some of them would be beneficial to both of us.”

“Yes?” the boy said, not sounding all that hopeful.

“I need to be somewhere soon,” Ian said. “However, I don’t know the best way to get there. I also don’t know much about the city in general, and would like to learn more about it.”

The boy made some sort of sound with his throat and waved his hand in a particular way up and off to the side of his face, which Ian guessed was meant to convey a
n apathetic sentiment.

“I would be willing to pay one sovereign if you would show me the best way there,” Ian said, “and I would be inclined to pay another if you were to also properly inform me about
the city.”

An excited ripple ran
through the loose ring of Chax around Ian. It was doubtful that they knew all that many Bevish words, but they certainly knew that one. And while neither of the boys that Ian had spoken to would probably ever be able to manage the King’s Bevish, he was quite thankful that they knew common Bevish at all, which was probably in addition to the local Dervish dialect as well as their own languages. This was fairly impressive to Ian—getting a better grasp of Dervish, beyond the bitter basics that Ian knew, was one of his overarching goals. The language itself wasn’t particularly appealing to him, but it would reap bounds of practicality if he could learn it. Especially on planets like Orinoco—of which the Dervish had many.

“Lotta hope in
you making that,” the boy scoffed, evidently not as moved by the notion of a sovereign as his compatriots.

“I will,” Ian scoffed back, only needing to slightly exaggerate his offended airs, even though he wouldn’t really expect the other to just believe him. “You have my word on it, and by my proxy, the word of the
king.”

A
slight, negative change ran through Ian’s audience that the leader promptly voiced, though his reaction was probably stronger than the group’s true average.

“Kin
’s, queens,” the boy said, derisively snapping his hands down off at the ground in some manner that Ian wasn’t able to catch, “emper’s. Zhey’e all the ‘osser same.”

“No,” Ian said, shaking his head
calmly, “not the same at all. And you have my word. Here,” he took a moment to withdraw one of the sovereigns from inside his jacket, “a fair trade. A sovereign for my regulator and an escort. A good trade.”

“One for
zhe ‘lator,” the boy said, holding Ian’s regulator up, “one to go, last one to tell about zhe city.”

“No,” Ian said firmly.
“Don’t push what you don’t have. Only two, or nothing at all.”

The boy looked as though he very much wanted to push
the math, but he had a quick and insistent mutiny on his hands at the hesitation. A good fraction of the boys were boldly coming closer to Ian, trying to peer at the sovereign that was a dull yellow in the alley’s shade.

“You swear on
kin’?” the boy asked.

“Yes,” Ian said
.

“Swear on Chris’
?” the boy asked more pointedly, his face showing confusion, as if Ian was some daunting logic problem.

“Yes,” Ian said gently, holding out the sovereign. “
And by all His host. A fair trade.”

The boy pursed his lips, as though facing the
bitterest remnants of his doubts, before his shoulders relaxed, and he nodded his head in a very deliberate way.

Walking across the dirty street between them, the boy reflexively wiped at the dirt on his cheek as he held
up Ian’s regulator. He slowed a few feet from Ian again, then hesitated as the regulator and sovereign came abreast of each other.

Ian carefully but confidently pushed the sovereign into the boy’s other hand, and then waited a beat before taking his regulator back
from the other.

Ian smiled.
“A good trade.”

*              *              *              *

For their part, the lead boy, whose name was Sawlti, and the two other Chax boys that accompanied them, were happy to uphold their end of the bargain once underway. Several times they stopped, Ian being engrossed in what Sawlti was saying. The trip was too short to otherwise accommodate everything that Sawlti was evidently eager to tell him. Their deal seemed to have invigorated the Chax boy in a way that surpassed even Ian’s mildly optimistic hopes.

They spoke of the people, the buildings, the roads, the g
overnments, all the things that had an effect on everything that made Carciti in that moment what Ian was seeing. And while either one of the sovereigns would have been a lot of money to pay for what he was getting, Ian took a great pride in knowing that almost any other person would have found such a deal foolish. But it would be their fault for not seeing what Ian did. He was trading something of fair but fleeting worth, something he didn’t bother all that much about. It was true his family needed money, but what money Ian carried on him was what was left over from that. It was his own spending money, and there wasn’t all that much that he cared to spend it on. The army supplied him with almost everything he needed. And on the other hand, he was gaining something not nearly so materially discernible in its compensation, but which was far more reaching if managed properly. Good will, change in dispositions, perceptions, and all for the better.

How many others within Carciti had a good grasp of
all these things Ian didn’t know, but he suspected very few did. He suspected very few of the Dervish, or even the Bevish, had utilized such resources. The viewpoints of the Chax—though this telling consisted almost entirely of Sawlti, the others only filling in where Sawlti wanted them to—were startlingly informative of both the turbulent climate that Carciti was experiencing as well as the reactions to it. The climate was the foreign, external forces that were acting upon the planet, and the reactions mostly belonged to the native population. The Chax were only allowed to react, and only to themselves, to the things that were shaping their planet. All this Ian strongly suspected he would have missed entirely if he’d been given a similar tour by any other source.

“The
Derv so scared of Hallmer rising again,” Sawlti was saying, gesturing with a wave that was unconsciously non-identifying to the east, where he always waved when he referred to the Hallmer. “Zhey’e not, but zhe Derv always scared of that. But even worse now cause of zhe Bevish being in charge. Zhe Derv feel like they have no charge like they used to, and of zhe Bevish don’t know what zhey’e doing.”

Hallmer, Ian had quickly surmised, and was hopefully not mistaken, was the
original name that the Chax actually used to refer to themselves. Ian was able to deduce this from what little prior knowledge he had of the subject and what Sawlti occasionally implied. Chax was the name the natives had been given by the Sesachs, thousands of years before the Dervish had colonized the planet. And while all the Chax probably actually felt much closer to their original name, in the last couple hundred years or so the term Hallmer had become strongly identified with the temporary alliances that the Chax tribes would call together to revolt against the Dervish. And even though there hadn’t been a Hallmer uprising for nearly twenty years, Chax had become the safe word for themselves, especially within Carciti where most of the Dervish population resided.

“
Zhe Chax in Carciti only really want to eat and live by,” Sawlti continued, wrapping up his summary of the section of the city they were overlooking. “Most only come here because zhey’e ca’t feed zhemself.”

Just down the hill Ian could see the building that his yeoman had marked as his destination. Despite being excited to meet the men he was assigned with, he fe
lt no rush to go down quite yet. His assignment had read to check in today, but had given no particular time. So they stood there talking in the late afternoon sun, the traffic slack and the city transitioning to its early evening mannerisms. The breeze was merely warm now, tugging lazily at the corners of his clothes, his hair stiff but dry against his skin.

Yes,
Ian thought. This was definitely worth waiting for.

“And
zhe Bevish,” Sawlti said, jerking his shoulders in a way that must have equaled a shrug, “no one knows what zhey want. Zhey seem to only want to live by, but zhey have plenty to eat.”

“We do,” Ian said, smiling, “but there’s far more to want than just food. Carciti will soon hopefully be able to
want the same things as well.”

“Truly?” the youngest of the three
Chax asked. “What kind of things?”

“There are many,” Ian said, “a more perfect sense of justice among the governing bodies, a greater joy in the people through
art and education. Prosperity, peace, a better pursuit of religion and philosophy. All these will soon come to all of Orinoco.”

“When will the Bevish give them to us?” the youngest
Chax asked, not sounding entirely sure what all of those were. “Will they give us all the food we need first?”

Ian hesitated
. And Sawlti tried to hush the younger boy.

There of course didn’t seem to be any reason why Orinoco wouldn’t
quickly prosper under Bevish rule, but it also seemed foolish to guarantee anything. Ian thought of his own family in Wilome, who struggled and had food, but not a lot. With the empire prospering so greatly, it wouldn’t seem to be long before such problems were improved, but the Bevish people would always eat before their subjects. That was just the way of things.

“Yes,” Ian said carefully, “Orinoco will eat before they get those things. But hopefully,” he nodded
to the boy, “hopefully someday soon it will have both.”

“Chi,” Sawlti said to the other two, gesturing back the way they’d come.

The two younger boys—lieutenants-in-training, as Ian categorized them—nodded at Sawlti, clasped their hands to their foreheads to Ian in respect, then hurried away, quickly disappearing into the street.

“Thank you for showing
me all of this,” Ian said to Sawlti. “I am greatly indebted.”

And before the awkwardness of the issue could arise,
Ian pulled out another sovereign and gave it Sawlti, who only rubbed it between his fingers for the briefest of moments before it disappeared.

“Saylung,” Sawlti said, repeating a slightly less pronounced version of clasping his hands at his forehead that the other two had. “We stay in your debt.”

“No, we’re even,” Ian said softly, not wanting to refute the other’s expression of thanks too strongly. He hesitated, not knowing what exactly to say. The pull to offer some sort of warm promise was strong, but something told him that wouldn’t be wise. Guilty whispers were already running through his gut, like he’d already promised too much. As strongly as he wanted to believe, did believe, that such things would come true, he also knew that it wasn’t in his control.

So instead he said
what he really wanted the most.

“Take care of them,” he said.

Sawlti regarded him and gave no affirmation, and none was really needed. When he left, Ian was able to follow him with his eyes for a long time, until the distance was too great and he became another dark back in the early evening traffic.

Ian turned and stood
regarding the nondescript, pink-stone building where at least some of his company was waiting. It wasn’t an extraordinary threshold of change he was at, given all the ones he’d recently experienced, but this one he could meet with some small but wonderful success as he started down the hill. Ian readjusted his regulator and other peripheral items so as to hopefully avoid any other incidents like this one, but in another way he hoped he’d contributed to the easing of the problem. That money, as somewhat superfluous as it had been in his own pockets, would buy bread for a long time, even for how many boys Sawlti was responsible for. Although, even as good as that was, it would be a fleeting matter of small consequence compared to what he had done for Baldave. There was much more work to be done on Orinoco in that vein, but it felt good that he’d been able to contribute even this little bit.