Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

him as he fell back against the support of a tree trunk. I continued, “And she’s very brave—she rode all the way to Skythorn to find us. Weltyr must have inspired you to send us to your friend so that she would know where to look.”

More of Soot’s citizens made themselves known from the trees, guided by the light of the lantern and the sounds of our voices. Rigan, the old blacksmith, appeared next. “Did you slay those little—”

“The gimlets are still around—however, because they value their lives, we don’t think they’ll be in your homes any longer.”

The old man regarded me sourly. “What gives you that idea?”

“Because their queen has fled, pursued by a magical animal; and they did not come into your town before her interference, so I would not expect them to attempt it again.”

Someone bitterly shouted, “Those little buggers have been squatting in our houses and stealing our food, and they get to just walk back into the hills?”

“That’s not what I’m proposing,” I told them as they muttered. “Look—the gimlets speak a language unintelligible to humans, but they still speak a language, and most of them at least understand the common tongue. They’re creatures of reason. Why not help them develop a neighboring settlement?”

So many villagers had gathered around by now that I could no longer keep track of the speakers. I only knew by tone and gender that they were not all the same people, but many voices addressing me in a chorus round. “Help them, after their queen destroyed our crops?”

“They could help you establish and harvest new crops to make right what was destroyed. By the same token, you could teach them the secrets of agriculture and have new neighbors to trade with. Instead of dealing with constant raids on merchants coming through the area, you could have new trading partners available to you.”

Perhaps inspired by the spiders, I further posited, “They seem skilled in the tanning and crafting of leather, and I saw at least one of them cooking. Another appeared interested in the care of animals. Perhaps, if you gave the gimlets an opportunity to learn mankinds’ ways, they would apply themselves to the tasks of living in those ways so readily that they would have no more time or interest to quarrel with you.”

“Or,” suggested someone crass, “we could obliterate them. Then they’ll certainly never be a problem again.”

“More like you’ll kill the ones you can find and leave a few behind,” I told the protester sternly. “And those surviving will grow all the more resentful, and will radicalize their children against you. Another such invasion will be guaranteed.”

With a few, somewhat more placated murmurs and still others that remained reluctant, the townsfolk considered this. One spoke up again, saying, “How do we know they won’t just take the information we give them and leave us without paying their debt?”

The weight of the scepter somehow all the heavier in my hands in that second, I reminded them all, “Weltyr is the overseer of oaths and contracts. It is a basic standard of decency for all mankinds that an individual be impeccable in their word and commit deeds in line with their actions. Introduce the gimlets to the concept of contracts and the understanding that if one breaks contracts, one cannot be trusted to do business, make trades, or engage in anything else professionally- or socially-motivated.”

A few more people seemed amenable to this. Rigan, still skeptical, looked hard at me. “And if they don’t abide by the requirements of their contracts?”

I spread my hands. “Perhaps some will and others won’t. Introduce them to the concepts of laws and courts—assuming they don’t have such things already. You can either try to introduce them to the ways of mankinds, or you can continue struggling each against the other. Each one trying to eek out separate livings until one of you truly is eradicated…and, crafty as they are, I’m not convinced it will be the gimlets.”

Contemplative silence draped over the villagers of Soot. Exchanging a few long glances, they all seemed to share variations of the same thoughts; the same awful imaginings.

Erdwud turned to me again.

“I don’t suppose you can translate to gimlet, can you?”

“Not without somebody’s help,” I said. “Luckily, I know just the fellow.”

Together, we made our way back to the village in a great procession. Yelp hurried out when we called to him, though he almost ran away when he saw the villagers moving through the darkness. After some explanation of what we wanted, however, his tail wagged and his eyes grew bright. Barking and yipping, the gimlet called his peers out of their many hiding places.

Right then and there in the town square of Soot, before the pile of objects that represented the most precious things in the town, the negotiations began.

There’s no point in boring you with the details of all this. Between all the translating and the decision-making, it took until dawn before an agreement was brokered. When it was, however, the results were heart-warming. The gimlets were very eager to learn the ways of mankinds. To them, the concept of a contract seemed the most intriguing way to start.

A treaty was signed, and in it, the gimlets agreed to integrate into various forms of work around Soot in exchange for fair wages after the first year, which would be a year of reparations to pay back the damages along with the costs of their own training. Meanwhile, in exchange for no longer helping themselves to the contents of merchant caravans, the gimlets requested the right to start a settlement on land about ten miles north of Soot. Whether the humans would help them build that settlement remained to be seen, but I suspected, as in every tentative relationship between neighbors in this world, there would be those that would assist and those that would protest. This was just the way things were.

Satisfied, the gimlets at once set about fixing the disarrayed town. While they picked through