Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

On the way back east from the border, Siferval said in his report, he had followed an informer’s tip and found the two runaway soldiers living together at an abandoned farm. They had been executed on the site, with one of them—the appropriate one, Siferval had reported— castrated first, so that he could die as he’d lived. Alberico sent his commendations.

It was an unsettling winter though. Things seemed to be happening to him instead of moving to a measure he dictated. Late at night, and then at other times as well, more and more as the Palm gradually turned towards a distant rumour of spring, Alberico found himself thinking about the ninth province that no one yet controlled, the one just across the bay. Senzio.

The grey-eyed merchant was making a great deal of sense. Even as he found himself reluctantly agreeing with the man, Ettocio wished the fellow had chosen someone else’s roadside tavern for his midday repast. The talk in the room was veering in dangerous directions and, Triad knew, enough Barbadian mercenaries used the main highway between Astibar and Ferraut towns. If one of them stopped in here now, he would be unlikely in the extreme to indulge the current tenor of the conversation as merely an excess of springtime energy. Ettocio’s licence would probably be gone for a month. He kept glancing nervously towards the door.

‘Double taxation now!’ the lean man was saying bitterly as he pushed a hand through his hair. ‘After the kind of winter we’ve just had? After what he did to the price of grain? So we pay at the border, and now we pay at the gates of a town, and where in the name of Morian is profit?’

There were truculent murmurs of agreement all around the room. In a tavern full of merchants on the road, agreement was predictable. It was also dangerous. Ettocio, pouring drinks, was not the only man keeping an eye on the door. The young fellow leaning on the bar looked up from his crusty roll and wedge of country cheese to give him an unexpectedly sympathetic look.

‘Profit?’ a wool-merchant from northern Ferraut said sarcastically. ‘Why should Barbadior care if we make a profit?’

‘Exactly!’ The grey eyes flashed in vigorous agreement. ‘The way I hear it, all he wants to do is soak the Palm for everything he can, in preparation for a grab at the Emperor’s Tiara back in Barbadior!’

‘Shush!’ Ettocio muttered under his breath, unable to stop himself. He took a quick, rare pull at a mug of his own beer and moved along the bar to close the window. It was a shame, because the spring day was glorious outside, but this was getting out of hand.

‘Next thing you know,’ the lean trader was saying now, ‘he’ll just go right ahead and seize the rest of our land like he’s already started to do in Astibar. Any wagers we’re servants or slaves within five years?’

One man’s contemptuous laughter rode over the snarling chorus of response triggered by that. The room fell abruptly silent as everyone turned to confront the person who appeared to find this observation diverting. Expressions were grim. Ettocio nervously wiped down the already clean bar-top in front of him.

The warrior from Khardhun continued laughing for a long time, seemingly oblivious to the stares he was receiving. His sculpted, black features registered genuine amusement.

‘What,’ said the grey-eyed one coldly, ‘is so very funny, old man?’

‘You are,’ said the old Khardhu cheerfully. He grinned like a death’s head. ‘All of you. Never seen so many blind men in one room before.’

‘You care to explain exactly what that means?’ the Ferraut wool-merchant rasped.

‘You need it explained?’ the Khardhu murmured, his eyes wide in mock surprise. ‘Well, now. Why in the name of your gods or mine or his should Alberico bother trying to enslave you?’ He jabbed a bony finger towards the trader who’d started all this. ‘If he tried that, my guess is there’s still enough manhood in the Eastern Palm—barely—that you might take offence. Might even . . . rise up!’ He said that last in an exaggerated parody of a secretive whisper.

He leaned back, laughing again at his own wit. No one else did. Ettocio looked nervously at the door.

‘On the other side of the coin,’ the Khardhu went on, still chuckling, ‘if he just slowly squeezes you dry with taxes and duties and confiscations he can get to exactly the same place without making anyone mad enough to do anything about it. I tell you, gentlemen’—he took a long pull at his beer—‘Alberico of Barbadior’s a smart man.’

‘And you,’ said the grey-eyed man leaning across his own table, bristling with anger, ‘are an arrogant, insolent foreigner!’

The Khardhu’s smile faded. His eyes locked on those of the other man and Ettocio was suddenly very glad the warrior’s curved sword was checked with all the other weapons behind the bar.

‘I’ve been here some thirty years,’ the black man said softly. ‘About as long as you’ve been alive, I’d wager. I was guarding merchant trains on this road when you were wetting your bed at night. And if I am a foreigner, well . . . last time I inquired, Khardhun was a free country. We beat back our invader, which is more than anyone here in the Palm can say!’

‘You had magic!’ the young fellow at the bar suddenly burst out, over the outraged din that ensued. ‘We didn’t! That’s the only reason! The only reason!’

The Khardhu turned to face the boy, his lip curling in contempt. ‘You want to rock yourself to sleep at night thinking that’s the only reason, you go right ahead, little man. Maybe it’ll make you feel better about paying your taxes this spring, or about going hungry because there’s no grain here in the fall. But if you want to know the truth I’ll give it to you free of charge.’

The noise level had abated as he spoke,