The Wizard from Earth (35 page)

He was beginning to suspect the conversational topics had been choreographed to transition from printers to archival clones.   Minutes later, he was still reflecting on what to reply when she lifted her head to the northern horizon, stared and frowned.

“Carrot, what is it?”

“A boat heading for the island.”  She pressed to the eyepiece and added, “It is Valarion's yacht.”

“That's the guy who invaded Britan, right?  How do you know it's his yacht?”

“It flies the pennant of circle and star.  I've seen it over Governor's House in Londa.”

Matt did a keyword scan of conversations that Ivan had recorded.  “They say he's next in line to become emperor.”

“Then Long Live Hadron.”  A moment later, she said,  “The boat is mooring.  I see two people, well dressed, walking onto the dock.  It is too far to see faces.”

“Ivan can process the imaging.”

She let Matt take the scope.  A moment was all that he needed.  He retreated and stood straight and blinked.  The sun had yet to set, but he felt very cold.

“Matt, what is wrong?”

“Those people, I've seen them before.  Well, I've seen their faces.”

“Matt, you do not look well.  Whose faces?”

“Eric Roth and Athena Spencer.”

37.

It was a sunny day on Cork Lane in Londa Town, but Ral the tailor's shop was perpetually in shade, and most of the interior of the shop was dim as well, save for a skylight over the mirror.  For Ral, much of that morning had been spent in front of that mirror, with a Roman colonel, who stood admiring the fit of the formal robes that Ral prepared while chatting.

"I see you've lost some weight about the waist," Ral observed.

"General Bivera is keeping us on the march," the colonel replied.

Actually, the change in measurement was negligible, which indicated that the colonel had in truth done most of his 'marching' on horseback.  That could mean that the Romans were conducting far patrols.  But where?  Judging by the pattern and depth of the colonel's tanned features correlated with the recent weather, he was riding to the west rather than north.  But how to confirm that?

The bell over the door jingled and a Britanian entered.  "I have an acquaintance in the administration who has given you recommendation.  I would like to – "

Brusquely, Ral reached under the counter and handed over the inflated price list for Britanians.

The Britanian frowned.  "My friend told me that your charges were lower than this."

"Well, your friend might be out of date," Ral snapped.  Then he thought,
Where are my manners?
  And so he remembered to glare as well.

The Britanian frowned deeper and departed with a slam.

"Be sure to tell all your friends not to come," Ral said in a low voice.

"The times that I've been here," the colonel said, "you don't seem to get along with your countrymen."

"Yes, well, some are acceptable, but most are noxious barbarians."

"How so?"

"They don't pay their bills on time, if at all."

The colonel laughed.  "I'll remember to pay mine, lest you think I have Britanian blood!"

"Yes, well, at least it's better here in Londa than in the Westlands.  They're all reprobates on the far side of the Dark Forest, you know.  Have to watch your back at all times.  They have their tricks."

"Oh?  How so?"

His curiosity was enough to confirm Ral's suspicion that it was to the west the colonel was riding. 

"I understand that their rebels use a wolf call as signal to ambush." 
And that should keep you awake with every howl
, Ral thought. 

"What else?"

"Avoid their taverns, they bribe the waiters to poison the beer." 
And there goes the morale of your troops. 

"Anything else?"

"I've heard of a ringleader who is a merchant named Kyon, who pretends friendship with Rome."  Kyon was in fact known to the Leaf as a Roman collaborator and informant, but now the Romans would shun his wares and question his reports.   

"Fascinating.  And more?"

Regretting that his imagination wasn't in greater supply, Ral shrugged diffidently.  "I'm but a simple tailor who overhears gossip in the streets now and then.  It's not as if the rebels confide their secrets directly to me, any more than do Roman soldiers in my presence."

"Yes, but interesting.  Keep me advised when you do hear more of such things, won't you?"

They finished the fitting and Ral wrapped the robes and escorted the colonel to the door.  Once the door was shut, Ral's affable smile faded. 

More patrols to the Westlands
, he thought.  With the rebel army scattered and two legions under his command, General Bivera was wasting no time in bringing Britan to heel.     

Ral hobbled back to the counter and opened the ledger to the colonel's account, which despite the colonel's assurances was several months behind in payment.  But that was all right.  The colonel was Ral's best unwitting spy.  If only information by itself were enough to win a war!

The door bell jingled again.  Ral looked up, preparing to adjust his face according to the nationality of his customer.  But though a Roman, the visitor's clothing told Ral's experienced eye that this was no future client.  The man wore helmet and short sword, but nothing approaching the quality of standard-issue gear of a legionnaire.

Then Ral spotted the pouch brimming with envelopes. 
Ah, a courier.

"Ral the Tailor, of Cork Lane?"

Ral nodded.

The courier presented a large envelope with an ornate seal that had been tampered with.  Ral recognized the precise handwriting even before he saw the return addressee's name on the label: 
'Arcadia, Your Loving Niece.'

"Two hundred grams of silver," the courier said, "or four of gold."

Ral had given much of his gold to Carrot with the expectation the the Leaf would re-supply the deficit, but organization finances were tight with Bivera clamping down on the roads to Londa.  Now it seemed that Carrot would glean his silver too.  For a moment he weighed refusing the letter – not out of miserliness, but because he was certain that all it would likely tell him was that Geth and the others were lost or confirmed dead. 

Ral sighed and counted the coins. 

"All the way from Rome," the courier said.  "What's in there?"

"The latest fashions popular in the capital this season, I hope," Ral confabulated.  "I asked my niece to provide me with advance notice, so that I might have dresses ready for the wives of the provincial elite."

"Really," the courier said, leaning against the counter as if he could spend the day there.

A silver half-haddie for the tip, and the courier finally vanished.  Alone in his shop, Ral hobbled into the back room and poured a cup of poverty-diluted tea, and inspected the seal. 

'The House of Archimedes,' he read. 
Haven't I heard that name before?
 

Ral slit the envelope and examined the letter.  The paper was singed in spots from the attempt of the Roman inspector to detect invisible ink by heat and chemicals.  The content of the writing was fictitious drivel.  Ral had no skin rash for Carrot to inquire about, nor did she – technically – have a 'Dearest Sister Gonda' for Ral to pass on greetings.  There was no mention of Geth or the others, despite the length.  And then the letter concluded with a plea for even more funds and a promise that she would get a real job very soon now and pay him back all that she owed.

"I will bet," Ral murmured, then sighed. 

He extracted the steganographic key sheet from its hiding place and set to work marking up the letter by writing the real message between the lines.  An upward slant for a crossed 't' meant '0,' a downward slash for the dot of an 'i' meant '1' . . . when he finished transcribing the numbers, he referred to the chart on the key sheet to convert the numeric triplets into the letters of the true message.

It was tedious work, and took more than an hour.  All the time he imagined Carrot blithely writing the cipher from memory alone, as he knew she could do within that wickedly smart head of hers.  And that made his grind even worse to bare.

As the real message was unraveled, however, he lost his annoyance.  As soon as he finished reading, he hastily tossed the letter and envelope into the stove, waited for them to crisp into ash, stirred the ashes with the poker, re-hid the key sheet, put up the Closed sign, locked the door, hitched donkey to cart, and rode his cart to the docks. 

At the warehouse he presented his signature seal and was directed to several pallets with bolts of fabric that appeared water damaged and ripped in transit.

"The shipment was uninsured," the clerk said imperiously.  “We are not responsible for damaged goods.”

Ral tried to sound disappointed.  "Yes, well, I'll see if I can make do."

He had the pallets loaded onto a cart, congratulating Carrot on what surely had been a ruse to pre-damage the shipment so that no stevedore would pilfer it nor would the clerk demand a high bribe before turning it over.  If that clerk had only known – but then Ral knew, and could hardly believe it. 

Ral had noticed how the laborers had grunted at lifting the pallets and was barely able to control his trembling as he rode to the shop, barricaded the door to the shed, unhitched the donkey, and undid the straps and threw off the cover and tossed the fabric bolts onto the ground one by one with growing frenzy until he came to one that was abnormally heavy.

He unrolled the bolt and unraveled the rags, and the visage of the Emperor Hadron solemnly greeted him in silver halo.  Ral counted the coins rolled in each rag, then the number of rags per bolt.  At fifty grams per coin, two hundred coins in the bolt, it came to ten thousand grams of pure silver in all.  Just in one bolt.

"Well, Gonda!" he said to the donkey. "If this is what you carry, you deserve a better cut of oats.  Oh, and by the way, your 'sister' Carrot sends greetings."

Gonda brayed at the word 'carrot,' and Ral gave her one.

He finished unwrapping all the bolts by late afternoon.  The sunlight from the high windows had dimmed.  He lit a lantern, went to the window by the front door and turned the figurine of a Roman soldier astride a rampant stallion so that it faced left instead of right.  He poured tea and sat in the back room and paged through the books that had been included in the shipment.    

In mid-evening came a tap at the door.  Ral opened and admitted a dour Lowlander.  The same one, in fact, who had served in the 'confrontation' that morning before the colonel. 

"I hope this isn't a plea about your need of funding," Bint said.

Ral chuckled.  In the shed, however, he suppressed a full-blown laugh while he watched Bint's expression melt at the sight of all that lay on the blankets upon the floor.

"What is this?" Bint croaked.

"The liberation of Britan!" Ral replied.

Bint was, of course, immediately fixated on the silver.  "How – how much?"

"This is only part of what she says will come, but it alone is four hundred thousand grams."

"Four hundred thou – who is this 'she?'"

"My niece, Carrot.  Arcadia.”

“Isn't that the one you lent funds to?  You know, we almost stripped you of your post for that.”

“Well, now the loan has been paid back with interest.”

“Many times over.  I should like to meet this Carrot-Arcadia.”

“You met her once when she was a child."

Blint's eyebrows knitted.  "If I remember the day, she can't be much more than that now.  Where did she acquire this fortune?"

Ral laughed and threw up his hands. 

Bint pressed,  "Wasn't your brother a king up north?  Could this be her estate inheritance?"

"The only estate inheritance she received from Letos was a smoldering hut.  Anyhow, she's presently residing in Rome, so this must come from a source there."

Bint turned a coin over in his fingers.  "Are you sure these are real?"

Ral balanced a coin on his knuckle and tapped with a knife.  The ring was unmistakably pure.

Bint held the coin to his eye.  "I've never seen a stamping so crisp.  As if they've come straight from the mint."

"At that Carrot might be too good in her forgery."  Ral rubbed his chin.  "It might be best if we roughen them up a bit before they are passed in circulation, lest their gleam arouse suspicion that something out of the ordinary has occurred."

"Four hundred thousand – and more to come, Ral!  The Leaf will be wealthier than the Governor's Treasury!"

"Yes, but the coins are almost the least of the marvels, Bint."

He showed him the plans with their meticulous illustrations bearing extensive notes on the design, construction, and operation of catapults.

"How does she think we can build these devices?" Bint asked.  "Granted we can saw and peg the wooden frames, but these precision iron parts are beyond any blacksmith that I know."

"But not for much longer."

Ral showed the bags of tools and casts, and the detailed instructions on how to go about fabricating everything that was needed for the assembly of an operational catapult, and then there were the press-printed manuals that described the usage of catapults in battle.  Bint flipped through the pages breathlessly.

"Amazing!"

"Take a look at this book."

The manual was hand-printed in precise script.  Its title was,
Guerrilla Organization, Strategy, and Tactics
.  Bint gaped at the diagrams and charts and said, "Who devised this?"

"It says in the acknowledgment that credit goes to a 'Sun-Tzu' and certain others, but I would not be surprised if much originated within the mind of Carrot herself.  It has not only her handwriting but also her writing style."

“Yet she is just a girl!”

“A very bright one.  Very bright indeed.”

Bint nodded with what he must have assumed was sagacity.  "Being a princess must count for something in the Northland."

"Less than you think – but after this she should be crowned Queen of all Britan, if I may speak as her relative.  For listen to this."  He read from the letter she had written in plain language and hidden in the first pallet,  "'I suggest that you should distribute funds to each cell in frequent yet modest portions, giving the impression that they alone are receiving funding and that it is ever in danger of being cut.  No one but the Inner Circle should know of the true size of the operation, lest there be boasting in taverns and Roman spies overhear.'"