The Empire Stone Read online

  “An astonishing turnout,” Peirol said honestly.

  “But you, a man far more experienced at practical gunnery than any of us, must have observed something not quite right,” Niazbeck pressed.

  Peirol wanted to groan, was about to beg off again, when he noticed the hard, examining look in Niazbeck’s eye. He hastily scanned the assembled troop and their guns, casting back in his mind for more of Quipus’s mad wisdom. The guns looked like small culverins — demi-culverins, he thought they were exactly named. The bore was about the size of his fist, which meant they would probably fire a stone shot of about nine pounds. Ah.

  “You chose to buy wrought iron, instead of bronze guns?”

  Niazbeck made a face. “The best foundry I located who would cast my culverins in bronze was on the Manoleon Peninsula, which I disliked, plus it required full payment in front, and a two-year wait.”

  Peirol echoed his grimace, turned his attention again to the guns. Something else came.

  “Ah, but I see your wisdom,” he said, “in that even though you couldn’t get the best metal, you did have your reinforces made stronger than is the general custom.”

  “You noticed that,” Niazbeck said proudly. “Yes, the master founder suggested that, and for a few more silver coins, I could have better safety. You are a true cannoneer, Peirol, with an eye for the piece. Would you care to call the firing order?”

  Peirol’s mind scrabbled back — remembered the drills aboard the galley.

  “Gunners, take your stations,” he shouted, and the six men per gun scrambled forward.

  “Load your guns and report!”

  “We use the order to load your guns and stand back,” Niazbeck said. “But continue.”

  “I said, report!”

  Four men shouted the guns were loaded.

  “Target — ” and Peirol turned, looked out to sea. “That floating log, one hundred yards distant! Gunners, take aim, and report!”

  Metal bars were used to move the guns from side to side, then to elevate them, one man peering along the cannon barrel.

  “Do you have your targets?” Shouts. “Stand away from the guns … gunner, you may fire when ready!”

  The gunner picked up a length of smoking fuse from a bucket, touched it to the hole. The cannon crashed and rolled back on their single trails, and the air smashed at Peirol’s eardrums. Four splashes rose, neatly bracketing the log.

  “Good, very good shooting indeed,” Niazbeck said. “I assume Guallauc told you that you’re also to be a guest at the family table for dinner?”

  Peirol brightened. Now that might actually mean something, instead of this freezing and dancing around chunks of metal.

  • • •

  Peirol was very curious as to how a magnate dined. He hoped the stories were right and Niazbeck didn’t make guests share in his dyspepsia, serving naught but soft-boiled eggs, buttered toast, and milk. After all this time as a slave, if he had to eat another bowl of gruel, this time at a rich man’s table, he was sure he’d burst into tears.

  Niazbeck wasn’t that sort. While he, indeed, had bread soaked in milk and a barely boiled, buttered egg, the dinner consisted of a spiced vegetable soup, baked fish with nut stuffing, asparagus with vinegar and oil dressing, cherry tomatoes in cream, and a spring berry tart. Niazbeck selected and poured a different wine with each course, seeming to take as much enjoyment in other people’s pleasure as if he were able to drink himself. Peirol cautiously sipped the wine, not because he didn’t want to swill like a hog, but because he’d been sober so long, he feared its consequences.

  At the table were half a dozen household members, of which Peirol knew Guallauc, Tejend the sorcerer, Niazbeck, his wife Ellena, and Reni. Peirol had instinctively moved to sit with the servants, but Niazbeck told him no, he was being honored this night and should sit above the salt with Tejend and the family.

  Niazbeck’s wife was tall, stately, a trifle imperious, and it was clear she came from a noble line. She was quite curious about Peirol’s history. The dwarf couldn’t figure if it was because she’d never been around someone like him, or if everyone at the table had heard everyone else’s stories time and again and desperately wanted something new. Maybe the vaunted country estate could be a trap, seeing the same faces, hearing the same voices, day after day. Perhaps he was right in hewing to the city. When he’d made his millions, maybe Peirol wouldn’t want something like this. Or perhaps he would.

  Niazbeck started a story from his early years, when he’d been unfortunate enough to take in, as collateral, a notorious gem which half a dozen men had died for. Peirol, interested, asked for the full story and, when that one came to a rather dull climax, for other tales. The magnate told them eagerly, and Peirol looked about, gauging the reaction, trying to find a key to his situation. Reni acted as if she hadn’t heard some of them, Ellena as if she had heard them all twice, was being incredibly polite in listening yet again, and wanted everyone to know it. Tejend, who’d been polite if little more through the meal, excused himself as quickly as possible. The servants listened raptly, as if nothing so clever and exciting had ever been told.

  Niazbeck looked at the decanter with the dessert wine as if it held his soul, and his pink, catlike tongue licked his lips every time he poured another glass.

  Reni kept Peirol’s glass full, and insisted he drink with her, in spite of his protests. She poured another, and Peirol knew it must be his last, for there was a slight bitterness to it, and when drink changed its taste, it was time to end the evening.

  Niazbeck was in the middle of what was actually quite an interesting story, about the bandits to be found on the trading routes on the upper reaches of the Manoleon Peninsula, when the room around Peirol gently lifted and moved back and forth in a rather stately rhythm. Peirol blinked, squinched an eye until the room stabilized, managed to make it until the end of Niazbeck’s story.

  He stood, keeping one hand firmly on the table. “Magnate, I’m desperately sorry, but the conshtraints of the day sheem … seem …” The room spun once, in an unexpected direction, and dumped Peirol backward. He missed his chair and sat down firmly on the carpet.

  Ah gods, now I’ve done it, he thought, and it’s all that bitch Reni’s fault, I should’ve said I drink not at all …

  If his legs and eyes weren’t in full order, at least his ears were:

  “Taken drunk.” That was Guallauc’s voice. Sneering a bit. A giggle. Reni? Ellena?

  “That’s all right,” Niazbeck’s voice came heartily. “He’s made us near a million with just those two pieces of jewelry, so he can drink half my cellar, throw up on the table, and earn no shame, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I’ll call servants, take him back to his quarters.” Guallauc.

  “No need,” and that was Reni. “Here, summon servants and have him taken him to one of the spare guestrooms. Let him have a final bit of honor before he goes back to the slave quarters with a thick head.”

  “Why not?” That was Ellena. “Especially since you think so highly of him, my lord.”

  “Why not, indeed?” Niazbeck laughed again, and Peirol’s ears decided it was all right to go to sleep like the rest of him had.

  • • •

  Peirol woke slowly, in a great, soft bed with silken sheets. He expected to be sick and was pleased to note his stomach was still in place, even if the world was a bit swimmy. He was also in a state of great arousal, he noted.

  Lips swept across his stomach, and he realized this wasn’t the first time he’d been kissed. His eyes snapped open. He was in a richly furnished room. He was naked, and there was a single candle burning. There was red hair piled on his chest, and the lips continued moving downward. He snorted in surprise, and the head lifted.

  “I thought that would wake you,” Reni purred.

  “We can’t be doing this,” Peirol whispered hoarsely.

  “Why not?”

  “Because … because your father’ll turn me into a eunuch if he finds
us!”

  “So I shouldn’t scream, and say I was merely checking on you, to make sure you weren’t sick, and you leaped upon me?”

  “Uh … no. No, I wouldn’t like that at all.”

  “Do you like this?” Reni kissed him again, lingeringly, well below where he’d discovered her.

  “I … of course I do. But — ”

  “Hush, then. Save your energies, for you’ll need them in a bit.”

  Just before Reni’s body swallowed him, he remembered Tejend complaining about love philtres, and the bitterness of that final glass of wine.

  • • •

  Someone was pulling at Peirol’s ankle. “You’re insatiable,” he murmured.

  “What’s that?” The voice was grating, if female. Peirol’s eyes slid open. It was daylight, and the woman pulling at his leg was middle-aged, fat, and had a mustache that would’ve made a soldier proud. “Get your unspeakable ass out of this bed,” the maid said, sounding as if she were gargling broken glass. “And get back to your quarters. Damned work slaves get one night of privilege, dining with the master, and there’s no damned telling what liberties they’ll want next!”

  • • •

  Peirol hoped the night with Reni was no more than an impulse but was proven very wrong the next day, when she came through the shop and passed him a note, to meet her after evening meal in one of the greenhouses. He obeyed, seeing no other option.

  She was naked, lying on a bed of flower petals, quite lovely in the light from the setting sun. “Come here,” she whispered. “Prove to me it wasn’t the philtre.”

  And so their affair began. Reni was not only fairly insatiable, but wanted to make love in hazardous situations. Twice she ordered Peirol to evade the night guards and climb up to her bedroom; three times in the cove just out of the guards’ earshot; once standing up in the great house’s main hallway, minutes before her father returned home. Peirol assumed all the slaves and servants knew what was going on, knew they wouldn’t tell unless there would be some great advantage to them, little caring, in common with most slaves, what their masters did, considering it all bad and evil.

  It appeared no overseers knew, especially not Guallauc. Peirol worried less about discovery than what had happened to his predecessors. He wasn’t Reni’s first, nor, he guessed, twentieth lover. When she became bored, what would happen then? He spent hours remembering bawdy tales, scatological engravings, trying to constantly surprise Reni with a new position, a further bit of exotica. His real work, his jewelmaking, was suffering, but no one else seemed to notice.

  Peirol knew this situation could not continue forever. He was quite right.

  • • •

  At first, he thought the drumming was his impassioned blood as he moved in Reni’s body. Then he realized the thunder came from outside. They broke apart, hastily dressed, and left the gardens by different paths.

  The drummers were from the artillery battery, and Magnate Niazbeck stood in front of them, waiting for everyone on the estate to assemble before squeaking out the news in a triumphant voice.

  War had been declared on Arzamas an hour ago.

  8

  OF WAR AND OTHER COMPLICATIONS

  Word came that an expeditionary force was being mounted; would Magnate Niazbeck consider allowing his artillery battery to be part of this first incursion across the straits? Niazbeck was ecstatic.

  Klek heard of the magnate’s joy, made a face. “I was in a war once,” he said. “And I was lucky enough not just to be on the winning side, but to get into it very late in the proceedings. All those eager young fools who rushed off when the trumpets first started singing had gotten themselves dead or maimed by then.” He spat into the small crucible hissing beside him, and lowered the bucket of gold scraps into it.

  Peirol thought it was all very well for Niazbeck to rush toward the sound of the guns — but did he have to take other people with him? Particularly other people he thought were master gunners. But Niazbeck didn’t summon Peirol, and the dwarf was quite ignored in the flurry of preparation.

  Three days later, Magnate Niazbeck was hoisted into his carriage, already heavy-laden with viands for his delicate constitution, with promises more would be sent on every boat that went from Beshkirs to supply the army. Everyone, slave, free, family, went to the port to see him off, and the men and women from Niazbeck’s other estates joined them. Peirol looked for a chance to break away, but the guards were most alert.

  Niazbeck went up the gangplank of the ship he and his cannoneers had been assigned to, and the transport was hauled away from the jetty by a galley.

  Guns boomed, kites flew, women wept, and children old enough to understand sobbed with their mothers or if younger played happily, wondering what the excitement was about. Ellena and Reni cried more loudly than most, and waved frantically.

  Guallauc had been told to stay behind and help Ellena with the household, and so he took charge as Niazbeck’s ship sailed out of the harbor, marching the slaves and servants back to the estate.

  Peirol was completely lost. If Niazbeck had bought him for his supposed ability as a gunner, why wasn’t he aboard that ship? Had he done something to anger the magnate? Or, he thought hopefully, had he so proven his ability as a moneymaker that Niazbeck had no choice but to keep him at home to defray the costs of the battery?

  He decided the morrow might provide answers. At least, he thought wearily, massaging his feet after the long walk in what were little better than house slippers, Reni hadn’t summoned him when they got back to the estate. But the next morning, as he was going from first-meal to the workshops, she was waiting along a path.

  “With father gone,” she whispered, “we’ll be able to have more time together.” Peirol pretended eagerness. “Tomorrow night then? In the orchid house?” She especially liked to make love there, liked the humidity and heat, the way sweat oiled their bodies as they moved together.

  “But of course,” Peirol said heartily, and blew her a kiss, grateful for another evening to rebuild his strength and devise new gymnastics.

  Just before second-meal, Guallauc came to him. “My mistress, the Lady Ellena, would like your opinion on whether we should take advantage of this crisis and stockpile our precious metals. After dinner, in her chambers.” Peirol blinked, nodded.

  “I know nothing of the current market,” Peirol complained to Klek after Guallauc left. “Why would she want to consult me? I’d guess, wars being what they are, it’d be a good idea to stockpile almost anything. But anybody could’ve told her that.”

  “Perhaps Magnate Niazbeck told her to consult a well-traveled man such as yourself,” Klek said, grinning.

  “Why the humor?” Peirol asked suspiciously.

  “Just remember what I told you about corners.”

  Peirol quizzed other workers about what they knew about precious metal prices, left his bench early, ate a hasty meal of bread and cheese, then bathed, sweetened his breath, and put on clean tunic and breeches. A servant took him upstairs to Ellena’s apartments.

  Niazbeck’s wife met him at the door, told the servant there’d be no further need of her services, and ushered him inside. He heard the lock click behind him. Ellena’s apartment contained four rooms: the sitting room he was in, a lavish bedroom, an equally large dressing room, and, connecting the bedroom and dressing room, a bathroom. There was a table in the sitting room, but none of the paperwork and account books Peirol had expected.

  Just as he realized how awfully naive he was, just what Klek had meant by corners, he also noticed Ellena’s garb: a silver mesh dress extending only to mid-thigh. The meshes were very widely spread as well. It appeared there was nothing under it. She was barefoot, and her blonde hair came down in carefully brushed waves. She smelt of woodland flowers and musk and was very beautiful. Perhaps Peirol’s appreciation showed, for Ellena laughed, a low, sultry chuckle.

  “Sit down, Peirol of the Moorlands.”

  He obeyed, at the only chair at the table.
r />   “Would you care for a glass of wine?” He nodded dumbly. She poured wine from a chilled bucket into two glasses, gave one to Peirol. “Do you like being served by the lady of the house?”

  “I just wonder,” Peirol managed, “what I’ve done to deserve such an honor.”

  Ellena curled on a lounge, tucked her feet under.

  “Try your wine,” she said. It was not a suggestion. Peirol sipped it, licked his lips. It was a little bitter for his tastes, and he suddenly remembered another such glass, a dessert wine.

  “The honor?” Ellena mused. “Perhaps because you’ve been able to satisfy my unbelievably randy stepdaughter for over a Time. That is why I asked my darling Niazbeck to let you remain behind with Klek for a while, to make sure the business was well supplied, since you knew about wars and scarcities. I didn’t mention what scarcity is uppermost in my mind.”

  Peirol choked a little. Ellena laughed again. “Reni is very poor at hiding things, especially when she has a secret longing, I think, to be caught in an embarrassing situation by her father. When I discovered she was lifting her skirts for you on an almost nightly basis, I was intrigued. Not that I wasn’t … interested in you when you first appeared here. I’ve always been drawn to the unusual.

  “Generally Reni’s infatuations last a week, maybe a bit longer before the poor man — or woman — is so exhausted he cares little what happens, or else my stepdaughter’s learned his repertoire. Once there are no surprises, she has no use for him, so he finds himself sent to one of the outer estates, or sold. There are a few exceptions who’ve managed to remain here, and are brought back to perform on sentimental occasions, but not many.

  “Tell me, Peirol, what is your secret? Are you equipped like a stallion, perhaps?”

  “I … I don’t think so,” he said, blushing furiously, and feeling even more like a fool.

  “Hmm,” Ellena said. She went to him, gently pulled him to his feet. “You have,” she said amusedly, “an expression very much like a yearling deer I once saw, trapped in nets.”

  Peirol found anger and his voice. “Wouldn’t you, my lady, if you were decoyed into a situation like this, fed what I suspect is one of Wizard Tejend’s love potions, and had wit enough to look into the future and see the best that can happen is being returned to Jirl’s slave pens?”