Demansk saw an actual expression on the giant's face. He found the little smile rather interesting. It was not the rueful smile of a veteran acknowledging the army's inevitable 'hurry-up-and-wait.' There was a real gleam to the thing, as if the sergeant would enjoy whiling away a few hours watching the powers-that-were scrambling frantically out of the way of the powers-that-are.
From his accent, the man was another easterner, signed up for a twenty-five-year hitch in the army as the only alternative to poverty. Who, with no help at all from Emerald philosophers, had apparently drawn his own conclusions about the dialectic of Being and Becoming.
When he got there, Demansk's headquarters were just as much in frenzied semi-chaos as he'd expected. By the nature of things, a coup d'etat is a messier business than a straightforward battle in the open field. Even experienced and steady officers will get a little rattled and uncertain, at such a time. Partly because the tasks involved are somewhat new and different; mostly because the penalty for failure is certain to be worse than being defeated by a foreign enemy. A foreigner, at least with noble prisoners, will want ransom. A shaken but surviving old regime will settle for nothing less than heads on spikes on official fences-and then seize all your property for good measure.
Which, of course, was exactly what Demansk was doing himself.
'We've got most of it,' said Ulrich Bratten as soon as the Triumvir came into the room which served as the nerve center for the coup. 'The bulk of it was in the form of bullion in Willech's own mansion. We had to torture Willech's wife-tough bitch, that one-but we got the secret out of her.'
Demansk nodded. He'd hoped the woman would have yielded without resorting to torture, but hadn't really expected it. He'd known Sandru Willech since they were both very young also-she was another child of the elite-and hadn't liked her any more than he had Willech himself. But no one had ever accused the woman of being a coward. Even as a girl, Sandru had been tough as well as nasty.
'Too bad. I would have preferred returning her to her family. You killed her afterward, yes?'
Ulrich nodded.
'So be it,' said Demansk. 'It's easier to explain a cremated corpse than a mutilated but living matron.'
Since the thing was done, he dismissed it from his mind. 'How much?'
When Ulrich told him, Demansk almost whistled with surprise. He'd known that Willech had been gouging the province mercilessly, but hadn't expected to find that much in the way of hidden treasure.
'The rest of it?'
Bratten shrugged. 'Good chunks where you'd expect them, both in the Governor's Palace and the Treasury Office. I imagine more will turn up in his warehouses. Not much of that'll be bullion, of course, nor even coins and gems. Goods, mostly. Linens, spices, that sort of thing.'
'Doesn't matter. Emeralds will deal in anything without quibble, as long as they can sell it. Speaking of which-'
Bratten jerked his head toward a door on the far wall. 'Eleven of them are here already, sir. More to come, you can be sure of it. They're practically dancing in the streets out there. I told them you'd speak to them as soon as possible.'
Demansk nodded and looked to Robret Crann. The older brigade commander had been the one Demansk had selected to oversee the purely military side of the coup. He'd saved aristocratic and distinguished-looking Kirn Thatcher to settle the nerves of the Vanbert nobility resident in Solinga. By now, they'd all be as jittery as a herd of greatbeasts with the smell of predator in the air. Demansk didn't mind the jitter-within limits, in fact, he wanted the nobility nervous and unsettled. But he didn't want the mess which an authoritative elite driven to open resistance could create.
'Things went pretty smoothly,' reported Crann, 'all things considered. Neither of Willech's regiments ever left their compounds, although the Fourth Jallink did mill around outside the barracks for a bit. They'll need some watching, but I don't expect any real trouble. Not after Willech's head goes up on the fence, for sure.'
That was as good as could be hoped for. The resentment of the Fourth Jallink Regiment was inevitable, and expected. Willech's family were Jallink tribe themselves. But if the men of the regiment hadn't taken up arms by now, they certainly wouldn't do so once the news of Willech's execution reached them. Naturally, that would increase their resentment. But without a clear pole around which opposition could crystallize, all of those soldiers would start thinking about the risks involved if they rebelled and failed. Decimation was the traditional punishment for a unit which broke and ran on the field. The traditional penalty for units which rebelled and were crushed by the 'lawful authority'-that being defined by whoever emerged triumphant, of course-was the exact opposite. One man out of ten would be left alive, to spread the word concerning the penalty for mutiny.
'All right, then,' said Demansk. 'In that case, I think I'll speak with the Emerald merchants right now. The sooner we can get this behind us, and get everyone's mind focused on the money they're making, the better.'
Demansk always found Emerald merchants and guildmasters a bit ridiculous-although he was careful not to let any trace of his amusement show on his face. It wasn't that they weren't good at their business. Emerald merchants were as notorious as Islanders for their sharp and narrow trading practices-'acumen,' they liked to call it-and, in most crafts other than weaving and papermaking, their artisans were still the best in the world. Superb jewelers and metalsmiths, for a certainty.
No, it was that same old 'philosophical' penchant which made all Emeralds a bit comical to Confederates.
How many Emeralds does it take to slaughter a pig?
Eight. One to hold the beast, one to cut his throat, five-because it's a prime number and thus mystical-to convince the pig that Becoming a rasher is better than Being a swine. And the eighth, of course, to be the sophist arguing the pig's side of things.
At the moment, as it happened, the guildmaster of Solinga's shipwrights was holding forth on the significance of prime numbers. In this case, the mystical superiority of the number seven over the number five. Any resemblance to a lowly fishwife haggling in the marketplace was, of course, purely coincidental.
'It just can't be done for five thousand solingens, august Triumvir. Not a whole great ship like you're asking for, not even'-sourly, this last, since it would leave the sub-guild of decorators squealing like pigs themselves-'with such a simple and crude design.' Ponderously: 'Need at least seven thousand, and even at that'-more sourly-'a good thousand of it will have to be devoted to alms for the starving decorators.'
Demansk decided he'd been polite enough, for long enough. 'Bugger the decorators,' he growled. 'They can turn their skills just as easily to carving mantlepieces and headboards in the mansions of the soon to be rich merchants and tradesmen of the city as they can to carving useless sternposts for warships. I'll allow an extra five hundred just to tide them over the transition, that's all. Five thousand, five hundred per ship. That's assuming, of course, that you can deliver on your promise to build the size fleet I require in the time allowed. If you don't meet the schedule, the price will drop by five hundred solingens for every week you go past the deadline.'
As one voice: Per week?? ABSURD!! Pardon, august and mighty (etc. etc.) Triumvir, sir, but you just don't understand And so it went, for another four hours. At the end, feeling more exhausted than he could ever remember feeling after a battle, Demansk tottered out of the room back into his command center. By then, he was relieved to see, Prit Sallivar had arrived.
'I held them to six thousand, two hundred,' he said weakly. 'With a three hundred solingen penalty per fortnight.'
Sallivar pursed his lips. ' 'Bout what I expected. The penalty's meaningless, of course. Those swindlers will have that fleet ready a month early-you watch-and then start squalling that they deserve a bonus. Six thousand per ship, now…'
Demansk watched as his banker did some complex calculations in his head. Then Prit shrugged and said: 'It'll do, Verice. Not even that tight, really. Willech, the bastard, had a third again more treasure stored up than I'd estimated. We'll have a sizeable cushion.' He gave Demansk a wintry smile. 'Even enough to hire this bizarre new bodyguard you seem to have your heart set on. Although I hope you don't start trying to put together an entire unit of such trolls. The food bill alone would bankrupt us.'
Demansk frowned, puzzled. Sallivar pointed toward the door with his thumb. 'Forgotten already? Sad, what
