merely their independence as free crafters that was threatened but their survival.
Now the storm had arrived—sooner than anyone anticipated and with the peer still living. The prince was behaving as though the power of the peerage was already hers. She hadn’t merely disobeyed her mother; she had defied her, and the peer’s own power to rule trembled in the balance. If she failed to act quickly, the prince might depose her.
Whatever the peer decided to do, the peerdom’s one-namers would lose. The prince would exact full retribution from them the moment her mother died. A revolt seemed inevitable to Arne—but so was an outside invasion, either by Lant or by some unknown force. An invasion might make the prince an ally of her one-namers while it lasted. Temporarily they would need each other. Arne wondered which would come first. Either way, the future held nothing but conflict and bloodshed.
Arne hadn’t yet made up his mind about Egarn’s plan— whether it would work, whether it would be a wise thing to do in any case. It was difficult to calmly review human history and make decisions about it when one’s own fragile world was about to crash in ruin, but he continued to support Egarn because he could think of no alternative.
To the young Arne, as to the old Egarn, it seemed that there had never been a better time and place for a conspiracy to save humanity.
10. ARNE (2)
Once the one-namers recovered from the shock of the lasher raid, the village buzzed with anger. Word quickly reached the mills and workrooms. All work halted. Men and women gathered in the streets, and each incident of the raid was discussed wrathfully while the children raced about making the most of this impromptu holiday.
Arne found himself an embarrassed object of admiration and sympathy. The villagers were ecstatic over the way he had faced the prince and brought the raid to an end with a few quiet words. Half the adults of the village sought him out and volunteered to dress his cut back with poultices made from cherished family recipes.
He urged them to put their experiences in writing while the details were still vivid, to clean up any mess the lashers had made, to return to work. He knew this would be another test for him. He had stopped the raid, which was wonderful. He had asked for written descriptions of what happened, which certainly was wise. Now the village wanted to know what he intended to do about it.
By evening, apprehension developed that he intended to do nothing, and the village council, which villagers called the Three, marched to his home on High Street to demand a hearing. These elderly crafters constituted the only local government the village had. Usually they were far more government than it needed, and on this occasion they were determined to do something if Arne did not. Their anger had been festering since morning. Arne greeted them with grave courtesy, and Ravla, the elderly woman who acted as housekeeper for both him and the schooler, brought chairs for them.
Nonen, the miller, acted as spokesman. He was a sturdy, blunt individual who had never been known to waste a word. “The peer must be informed as soon as possible,” he blurted. “I intend to petition for a hearing. Every adult in the village is willing to sign a formal accusation against the prince’s guard. We will insist upon severe punishment.”
“The guard certainly merits punishment,” Arne agreed. “Much property was damaged, things were stolen, several people were injured—one of them seriously—and two women were raped. But the guard was only carrying out the orders of the prince. Will you also demand that the prince be punished?”
Nonen sputtered into his beard. “Surely those who commit outrages must be held accountable for them!”
“Nevertheless, the prince was responsible. Her guard wouldn’t dare to enter a one-name village unless she ordered it. Are you certain you want to do this? The prince has a long memory, and she will be peer herself sooner than any of us would like to believe. If she retaliates then, there will be no one to appeal to.”
Toboz, the portly old sawyer, tugged at his own beard. One-name males did not wear their beards long— that was for lashers and no-namers—but Toboz’s beard was exceptionally thick, and he took inordinate pride in it. He growled, “Do we have to bow down and accept this outrage? Our persons and homes will never be safe again if the guard goes unpunished.”
“The prince expects us to file some kind of complaint—with the wardens if not with the peer—and she is doing everything in her power to prevent it. This morning, not long after she and her guard left, I sent two carpenter prentices to replace a plank on the bridge below the sheepfold. Lashers from the prince’s guard had already set up a watchpost on the road. They stopped the prentices and demanded to know their errand. Then one of the lashers went with them, watched them work, and escorted them back to the village when they had finished. The prince has every route between Midd Village and Midlow Court posted. She is determined that no word of the raid shall reach the court until she has given the peer own version of what happened.”
There was a stunned silence. Then Toboz said indignantly, “Are you saying we can’t even tell the peer about it? That the prince won’t let us? Surely she can’t isolate Midd Village for long without questions being asked. The court couldn’t exist for a tenite without us. It would run out of everything, starting with food. We have cloth, shoes, harnesses, crocks, lace, flour, and I don’t know what all in our warehouse right now waiting for the next scheduled delivery. Repairs and building will stop if one-namers can’t get to the court. The prince’s watchposts won’t be there long. Anyway, we don’t need roads to send a messenge to the peer.”
“Of course we don’t,” Arne agreed. “We can petition the peer any time we choose. The question is whether we should. She is so desperately ill that her servers may refuse to bother her with such a difficult problem. She may be helpless to deal with it in any case.”
“What do you suggest?” asked Margaya, an elderly master weaver.
“I already have sent Marof to tell the land warden what happened. I did it while the raid was still in progress. He was to make a wide detour and approach the court this evening from the south. The prince probably won’t think to block that route. Even if she does, her guard won’t dare stop a messenger who has official business with one of the wardens. The land warden understands our problem, and the peer has given him authority to act for her during her illness. He will investigate the raid himself and make sure the prince doesn’t know how he found out about it. She will be less inclined to retaliate if she thinks the information came from another peerager.”
“And the land warden will tell the peer?”
“When her health permits.”
Margaya said bluntly, “
“In that case, a formal petition would accomplish nothing except to antagonize the prince. Let’s let the land warden handle this for us and hope the peer won’t be too sick to act when she is finally told. Only the peer has authority over the prince. Only she can decide what should be done. We one-namers have a problem of our own to deal with.”
All three of them regarded him uneasily. Nonen asked, “What problem do you refer to?”
“The prince ordered the raid because she thought the peer’s first server was harboring strangers.”
Their uneasiness changed to alarm. This touched on matters they preferred not to know about. Like all one-namers, they had learned from childhood to look the other way and say nothing if they chanced to see strangers in their midst.
“She wouldn’t have thought that if someone hadn’t told her,” Arne went on. “It means she has a spy in the village.”
Now they were incredulous. Margaya exclaimed, “Surely none of our people would actually tell the prince —”
Arne said earnestly, “As all of you know, no peerager, not even the wisest and kindest—which our peer is —can be trusted with information that concerns only one-namers. Those of us with responsibilities never speak openly of these things, not even in a private meeting such as this one. The only secrets that can remain secret are those that are unspoken. Any one-namer—in Midd Village or elsewhere in the peerdom—may glimpse something from time to time that he has no need to know. We live close together, and our lives are linked in so many ways it
