The Reformer

awful lot of Confeds are going to die.'

'So? There have been civil wars before-Penburg rose during one of them. The wars end, and then the Confeds stamp on anyone who rebelled like a boot on ants.'

Esmond nodded. 'That might have happened without my brother,' he said easily. 'Why do you think we're helping with this idiot coup?'

'Because your patron told you to,' the steward said.

'Velipad shit. We could have lifted a few thousand arnkets and headed for the Isles-our father traded there, and we have contacts in Chalice. This madness of Redvers would have been over in a few months, and all his properties would have been forfeit to the State.'

He watched them shudder at that. Sale at auction, families split up. . and freedmen were always suspect when a man was put on trial for treason. Their testimony was taken from the rack, or with burning splinters put under their nails.

'With my brother to even things out, the war will go on for a long time,' Esmond continued. 'Many things could happen. For example, one side or the other could get so desperate that they offer concessions to the Emerald cities. . they might even withdraw, leaving at least nominal independence like the Roper League has. Or they might weaken each other so much that the provinces can revolt and win. Or at least if Redvers and Audsley win, we personally stand to be rewarded.'

The steward looked at his subordinates. 'Well, it's worth a hearing, at least. .' he muttered. 'Tell us more. What exactly does your brother need? We've all heard the explosions and heard the rumors.'

* * *

Adrian held the handkerchief to his nose. It was soaked in vinegar, but even so the stink from the bottom of the manure pile was overwhelming; there was a row of piles in back of the barns for the master's racing velipeds. He didn't envy the field slaves who were set to the task, even if they were shambling dull-eyed brutes.

A few years in that underground prison they keep them in would do that to most men, Raj pointed out.

Sorry, Adrian thought.

'Don't you ever put the manure out on the fields?' he asked the chief stockman.

The stockman was from the Isles, a short brown-skinned man, wrinkled but still agile. There was a strong gutteral accent to his Confed. 'Not very much of it,' he said. 'Place is too big to make it worthwhile, too much trouble to haul it out to the distant fields. Sometimes if it gets in the way we dump it in the river.'

'Stop!' Adrian said.

He walked over to the base of the pile. 'Here,' he said, pointing.

Gray crystals like granulated sugar carpeted the ground. 'That's what we want, those crystals-the saltpeter. Scrape it up and put it in the barrels.'

* * *

'Here, now, sir, you're a gentleman-you can't do that!'

The carpenter's voice was shocked and reproving.

Adrian smiled. 'I'm afraid I have to,' he said sympathetically.

The tub was an old wine vat, big enough to hold several hundred gallons. They'd set it up at a shed half a mile from the house, in case of accidents. Slaves were rigging a simple machine over it: a pivot on the beam above, with a hanging pole inside the barrel turning paddles. The power was furnished by ten more slaves, each pushing on a long sweep set into the pole at its top, near where it turned on the iron bolt set into the roof beam.

Adrian pulled his head back and dusted his hands; there were blisters on them, and a few splinters. He was surprised by how little that bothered him, as he pulled one free with his teeth. Not the pain; any Scholar of the Grove was expected to master the body's needs. It was the disgrace, the manual labor.

'My father captained his own ship, when he got started,' he said by way of explanation.

Although he did it so that his sons wouldn't have to do it, he thought. Only leisure could give a man the freedom to cultivate his mind, or shape his body as an athlete. . and there was no slavemaster like an empty belly. That was why all the best philosophers were agreed that manual labor and its necessities were essentially degrading. Bestmun had held that labor should be delegated to those whose natures fitted them for slavery. . of course, in his day Emeralds had rarely been enslaved.

'Now here's how you do it,' he went on. 'You take three of those barrels-' he pointed to the ones that held the saltpeter, boiled and dried and reground '-and two of those-' the finely powdered sulfur; there was a hot spring on this estate '-and one of those with the charcoal dust, and you put them in. Three and two and one, three and two and one, until the big tun is two-thirds full. And all the time you're doing that, the paddles have to be kept going.'

He turned and put his face close to the carpenter's. 'And I'll be coming back now and then to check that you're doing it right, and the master will be very, very angry if I tell him that you're not. Understand?'

The carpenter nodded; he was as jumpy as a cat around a diretooth. Most of the estate slaves were, these days, with all the soldiers on hand. None of the troopers cared much about preserving Wilder Redvers' propery.

'And they still don't do things properly unless you stand over them,' Adrian said in frustration.

Why should they? Raj replied.

A vision flashed into Adrian's head; a steam engine, that's what it's called. . on Raj's native Bellevue. A mass of metal tubes and wheels and parts, wrecked and fused. A man with a whip was beating another man, nearly naked and with an iron collar around his neck.

A slave has a positive incentive to damage things, unless he's a coward or unusually well-managed. And simple carelessness is bad enough.

* * *

The velipad was an estate animal, and knew the laneways better than his rider. Any landholding of this size had its artisans; Redvers had his in a series of workshops not far from the cottages that housed the home-farm segment of the plantation's workforce. Adrian pulled up and tapped his toes on the elbows of his velipad; the animal crouched to the ground, and the young man stepped off. The smell of hot metal came from within the bronzesmith's forge. Experiment had shown that bombs launched from a catapult tended to disintegrate if they were housed in clay pots of practicable thickness. Redvers had grumbled at the expense of sheet bronze, until they showed him a few survivors of the effects of a finely-divided mist of gunpowder meeting open flame.

The problem was, the bronzesmith had trouble grasping the concept of turning out large numbers of uniform containers without ornamentation or excess effort.

Why not? Raj said again. This man turns out fine work because it gives him pleasure. He's not particularly concerned with Redvers' political ambitions, or with anyone else's convenience. Why should he churn out things that don't give him satisfaction? He won't be paid any more if he does.

Adrian sighed again. Raj and Center were putting him through a course of study a good deal less agreeable than the Grove's lectures on the Good and the Beautiful. . but their concept of the Just Order was a good deal more empirically grounded.

He checked half a step. 'I'll give him a bonus!' he said. 'Under the table, of course.' Redvers' funds would stretch to that.

You're learning, son. You're learning.

* * *

'Ufff!'

The other man grunted as his back struck the hard-packed dirt of the corral. Esmond stepped back panting; he had a graze under his right eye that was seeping blood, and his left thumb had been painfully wrenched. The six men who'd offered to take their new employer on were in considerably worse shape, though some of them had shown a thoroughgoing mastery of informal all-in style.

'Any more fools among those looking for a job?' he asked.

There were thirty men grouped around the entrance to the corral. All Emeralds; none too young-most of