Last Life

Book 8: Chapter 13

MY MEETING WITH THE ELDERS took place the following morning. The guests looked well-rested and refreshed. Many of them had smiles on their faces. The lunari had done her work well. She had helped ensure that the old men got some good sleep. Plus, every one of them had a nice, pleasant dream about what the future would hold for them under their new ruler. All things considered, it wasn’t surprising to see that the elders seemed a lot more comfortable as they looked at me that morning.

Our discussion dragged on until lunch. At first, they were answering my questions about their villages, their land, their people, and the harvest. Basically, the standard questions a new ruler is practically obligated to ask in such situations. The old men were seasoned complainers, too, and their answers were pretty similar to the ones Chevalier Duval had fed me the first time we met.

In a word, things in the villages were bad. And of course, the Atalians were to blame for all of it. The Scarlets were accused of all the most heinous sins imaginable.

It was pretty convenient, actually... Hail cut down the young wheat, and the Scarlets were to blame. Drought? The Scarlets were at it again. Half the village had stomach complaints? The Red Cloaks were somehow responsible for that, too. If Jacob the Gray hadn’t intervened to keep his compatriots on track, there’s no telling how long they might have gone on for.

After their litany of complaints, the old men fell silent and turned to stare at me expectantly. I turned to look at my seneschal and nodded as if to say “go ahead and tell them.” At that, Hans unrolled a fat scroll and, with a soft smile on his face, he began to read out the main points of our plan, which he and I had spent more than one sleepless night working out.

When Hans finally finished, a ringing silence fell over the tent in which we were meeting. A moment later, a seemingly-endless torrent of questions erupted from the crowd, to which Hans (and sometimes me) had detailed answers at the ready.

Basically, when all was said and done, the old men were left satisfied. They were especially happy about the prospect of three years without taxes. What’s more, when I told them that I was planning to move a large number of settlers in from outside the valley and distribute some of the peasants’ lands to them, the elders actually reacted favorably. In fact, I’d say they seemed positively happy about the news. Some of them, apparently, were already completely comfortable in my presence, because they started talking and arguing about how many peasant families each village would get.

In this time of demographic crisis, the village communities stood in serious need of fresh blood. So the elders weren’t scared by the prospect of having to redistribute some of their lands. There was nobody to work most of them anyway.

In the end, the meeting turned out quite productive. We followed it up with lunch, which I made sure the entire delegation was invited to attend. Sure, they weren’t sitting at the same table I was — they had a separate table, set especially for them. All the same, though, it was a big honor. For most of them, having lunch with the Margrave himself (even inside a big campaign tent, rather than a castle) would be one of the most notable events of their lives.

It wasn’t long before most of our guests were blind drunk, so eventually my people loaded the old men onto their carts and brought them back down to their camp. Jacob the Gray was the only one left sitting at the table. At the beginning of the banquet, Gunnar — who was in charge of the whole affair — leaned in undetected as he was handing out plates and whispered to the old man that the Margrave hoped to speak with him privately later on. Jacob understood everything else without having to be told. He was sober, and he kept looking over at me expectantly.

When it came time for our conversation, we moved into my tent. Gunnar had repeated his trick with the sword rack, so the first thing that met the old man’s eyes as he walked into my tent were the Gray Reaper’s swords. Judging by the way Jacob’s face darkened, the curved blades were already familiar to him.

“Have a seat,” I said as I nodded toward an armchair next to my campaign stove. I took a seat opposite him, in an identical armchair. “This is going to be a long conversation.”

Jacob was about to bow yet again before sitting down, but this time I stopped him.

“Enough of that,” I said, before nodding at the chair again and repeating: “Have a seat.”

The headman did as I asked without any further delay. His eyes were attentive and guarded as he looked around. His bushy eyebrows were already angling down toward the bridge of his nose. He had deep wrinkles all across his forehead and cheeks — so deep you might have thought they had been carved with a knife. Once seated, his broad hands quickly squeezed themselves around the armrests of his chair.

“Now — let’s hear it,” I said.

“Hear what, Your Lordship?” The old man inquired.

“First, I’d like you to tell me about yourself,” I suggested, before adding with a wry smile: “But you can skip the fairy tale about coming to this strange land as a little boy. You were already a grown man by the time you came here. Otherwise there’s no way you’d have such a heavy accent. You know it yourself: children get acclimated extremely quickly. You can’t tell them apart from the locals after a year or two. See?! I can tell you understand that word — “acclimated.” Most peasants don’t throw words like that around. I had a good chance to sample their lexicon during lunch. There’s another example — “lexicon” — and I can tell by the look on your face that you know what it means. You obviously learned your Vestonian from books, but you were already an adult by that time. Judging by your hands and the way you move, though, you’re not the kind of man who spent his whole life with his nose in a book either. I can see a soldier in you as well... Who are you, Jacob the Gray?”

The headman’s face grew gloomier and gloomier as I went on. But he didn’t turn his eyes away once. He straightened his spine. He pulled his shoulders back. Despite his advanced age, the man was prepared for a fight. The peasant headman faded from his countenance. In an instant, my guest had turned back into the person he really was.

“Why do you care about my old name, Your Lordship?” He asked drily. “It’s long forgotten, and the person who it belonged to is long gone too. He died... Just like everybody who knew him. Believe me, that person won’t be a problem for us... I’m Jacob. Jacob the Gray. The gods turned my hair silver before my time. That’s how I got the nickname...”

Fine, I thought. He doesn’t want to talk about it right now. He’ll tell me later. I’ll let it slide for the time being. There’s no point trying to pressure a man like that. The lunari already told me as much. And I trust her senses without question. He’ll either open up to me on his own, once he truly trusts me, or he’ll take the secret to the grave with him. I mean, if worst came to worst, people like him could be tortured for the information. To do so, however, would mean sacrificing any hope of living together in peace and harmony ever again. Making an enemy of Jacob the Gray, or whoever he actually was, certainly didn’t factor into my plans. Quite the opposite, in fact: I would need to establish a healthy working relationship with him.

“So you’re not actually from Skaligrad, then?”

“I wasn’t lying about that, Your Lordship,” he replied, before hurriedly continuing. “And you’re right about the soldiering.”

I smiled. There would have been no point in him lying about that anyway. Any experienced swordsman could recognize a colleague immediately — even if that colleague had spent many years pretending to be a simple peasant.

“It wasn’t just me who noticed that. My companions also marked you for a soldier almost immediately. And not one of the grunts, either. It’s hard to hide that kind of thing. Did you hire people for service yourself, or were you enrolled under someone’s banner?”

“No,” he shook his head. “I’m no nobleman...”

“Why did you leave your master?”

“Alas, he’s no longer with us,” the old man replied with a dejected shrug and a heavy sigh. “And neither are his wife and child...”

“Hm...” I ran my fingers across my chin. “And you refused to serve the new master who took his place, so you left to find a better life in a foreign land.”

“Exactly so, Your Lordship,” he nodded.

“Long ago?”

“Long ago...”

“Why didn’t you join the Baron’s retinue?” I asked. “He would’ve taken you on in a second, with your skills.”

“He would have,” the old man replied, his tone suddenly icy. “But I swore an oath that my sword would only ever serve the house of my former master...”

“And so the soldier turned into one of Baron di Festa’s peasants...”

The old man just shrugged in reply. He was obviously pretty philosophical about the whole issue. Apparently, having many years to think it all over had helped him come to peace with his past.

“Although on the other hand...” I mused aloud. “Why NOT start a brand-new life? No swordplay involved. No risking your life. I mean, marrying some young peasant girl certainly sounds a lot nicer. Having some kids. Getting a farm set up. Especially since, with your credentials, it wouldn’t have been hard to become a pretty influential figure in the village. First an elder, then headman. Status and prestige...”

“Well, this kind of status brings a lot more pain than profit,” Jacob frowned as he waved his big hand dismissively through the air. “Say something goes wrong, even just a little bit — who has to answer to the Baron? The headman, that’s who. And that Baron of ours was no pushover, either. He was always trying to fleece us like sheep, day in, day out. Let your guard down for a single second, and you’d find yourself slapped with a new tax or a new duty on the harvest.”

“You’re right about that,” I chuckled. “You need both eyes open all the time with a Baron like that. Especially one who trades in contraband. Who moves Shadow resources under the Amber Guild’s nose...”

Jacob obviously wasn’t easily ruffled. His expression didn’t change a jot as I said that last sentence. He had already spotted Chevalier Duval in my camp. So he knew where I was getting my information from. Or at least he thought he did...

“Sure, the local nobles take their units out to the Frontier and cross the Barrier — every stray dog in the land knows that,” Jacob shrugged. “But the nobility’s business doesn’t really affect the simple peasants. They have their places, we have ours...”

“Right again,” I nodded. “But the peasants certainly get their hands on some of the spoils too. Isn’t that right?”

“What do you mean, Your Lordship?” The headman’s surprise didn’t sound especially convincing.

I smiled.

“Well, let’s just take those mills that stand at every river crossing, for example. Little things, usually kind of an eyesore. I saw a couple of them on my march here. I’m sure there are plenty of them around your village too. Admittedly, the ones near the border are in pretty bad shape. One of them was covered in moss and grass, but it caught my eye nonetheless. I especially admired the little compartment right below the grindstone itself. Nobody would ever have known it was there if the wall around it hadn’t collapsed. A clever design... You could tell immediately that whoever built it knew his craft pretty well.”

Jacob tried to look indifferent, but again, it wasn’t very convincing. Actually, I had never discovered any collapsed wall at all. I had discovered the compartment thanks to my Seer’s gift.

While I was checking out the old mill using true vision, I noticed a dim, familiar glow coming from beneath the foundation. Design-wise, there should have been nothing but stone. But when I looked closer, I saw that someone had carved out a small, round compartment in the big stone, and that there was a small hunk of Shadow ore lying buried in the pool of silt at its bottom.

From there, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together and figure out where it had come from. All the rivers in the Margraviate had their sources in the mountains. More specifically, in Shadow Pass. The source could have been one of the glaciers, mountain lakes, or springs that periodically fell under the effect of the flows.

Basically, the water was always bringing little surprises down from the Shadow. And the locals (or more likely, a small group of locals working together) would catch them with a variety of clever traps that were designed into their watermills.

Naturally, this little cottage industry was illegal. Acquiring Shadow “surprises” from the rivers without permission from the landowner was forbidden. And punishments for violators were harsh.

Jacob said nothing; he just kept his eyes riveted on my every movement, so I continued.

“To be fair, not every mill has compartments like that underneath it. I only found two of them on the way here. But these mills were all sited at exactly the right locations. Places where the random catch is most likely to be biggest. Apparently, whoever built all these traps knew quite a bit about what the water could do for them. And I’m guessing that secret is still probably limited to a close circle of people.”

I leaned back on my armchair and stretched my legs out toward the stove.

“Yesterday, by the way, my people had a little chat with some of your companions,” I said as I stared into the fire. “It turns out you’re the miller around here. They say you have no less than five mills. And I’d bet they’re all sited in some very nice spots. I’d just have to check to see whether they’ve got compartments in them... What do you say, Jacob the Gray? Would I find anything under your mills, or not?”

“You would, Your Lordship,” the old man replied after a short pause.

To my surprise, his voice wasn’t shaking when he spoke. He didn’t look scared in the least. The expression on his face suggested that he felt totally confident in the rightness of his actions.

“All of them?” I asked.

“Just two,” the old man admitted with surprising nonchalance.

“And are there a lot of these cleverly-built mills scattered throughout my Margraviate?” I asked, although I wasn’t really expecting an honest answer.

“I’m not sure about that,” the headman confirmed my assumption without a moment’s delay. “I can only speak for my own mills.”

“Was it your idea to install these traps? If not, whose was it?” I asked, without paying much attention to his answer.

“It was mine,” Jacob replied quickly, before leaning in a little bit and asking: “It was all me... The people who built the mill don’t even know about the understone.”

“Understone...” I repeated aloud. “So that’s what you folks call them...”

“Not “us.”“ The old man obviously never let his guard down for a second. “Me...”

“Okay,” I nodded. My eyes narrowed a little bit. “It turns out you’ve got quite a multifaceted personality, Jacob the Gray. Were you a miller back in Skaligrad too?”

“I’m just the guy who owns the mills,” he answered. “The people who actually run them are experienced millers.”

Then, hurriedly, he added:

“They’re just millers, though. They don’t know any of my secrets.”

“I see,” I nodded. “You want to take all the blame yourself.”

“Exactly, Your Lordship,” he replied glumly. “Because there’s nobody else to blame.”

“How long ago did you install these understones?” I asked. “The recess in that old mill — the one I discovered myself — was clearly a new creation.”

“I don’t know, how long has it been...” He paused as he tried to recall how much time had passed. “Mine are more than two years old by now...”

“And how’s the catch?” I asked. “Pretty rich?”

The old man frowned and let out a heavy sigh. Apparently, this was the question he had been waiting for the whole time. He had almost certainly already bid a mental farewell to his mills. He could probably sense hard times ahead.

“It varies,” came his evasive reply. “It all depends on the ebbs and flows...”

“Well, sure,” I nodded. “And what sort of stuff do you get?”

“Well...” He gestured dismissively with one of his big, broad hands. “Nothing much. Pieces of Shadow ore. Shells and snails. Silt and sand. Basically, the normal junk that flows down a river, altered by the Shadow...”

“I see,” I shook my head. “And who’s been buying this junk from you? I assume your Baron didn’t know anything about this little side job of yours?”

The old man replied with another heavy sigh.

“No, he didn’t... Before the Red Cloaks came, there was a trader who used to stop in to visit the village. I used to sell to him... He was a scoundrel, though. He would always screw me into selling for rock-bottom prices. I only put up with him because he knew how to keep his mouth shut.”

After a moment’s silence, Jacob continued in a resigned tone of voice.

“I would always leave a portion of the money with that merchant afterward. I would buy up any supplies I thought might be useful to the collective. A Baron like ours wouldn’t give you snow in the wintertime. And his collectors were even worse, as soon as tax season came around. Bad harvest, livestock plague — they didn’t care... We had to wring blood from a stone every time...”

“And how did you live under the Scarlets?” I asked.

The old man’s face immediately darkened. His hands clenched into fists. The wrinkles on his forehead deepened.

“Bad... You could hardly call it living...”

“And the Scarlets never discovered these understones either?” I asked.

“They never looked,” the old man shrugged. “They had enough on their plate without my little mills.”

“You mean Bone Grotto?” I asked.

“Exactly,” the old man nodded.

“And what did your Baron find there to make the Gray Reaper himself come galloping?”

“I don’t have an answer to either question,” the old man shrugged yet again.

“Not even a guess?” I narrowed my eyes as I asked this question. “I mean, even I’ve been hearing all sorts of wild speculation over the last few weeks. You must have some sort of guess about what he found...”

“Not at all,” he shook his head. “And I’m not one to talk for the sake of filling the air. The Scarlets didn’t let any of our people anywhere near the fort that stands at the approach to Bone Grotto. All we saw were the caravans that they sent to Atalia every month. Six or seven big covered wagons, every time. As for what was inside... Well, it could have been anything.”

“Not bad,” I said with a whistle of admiration.

Silence settled over the tent for a moment. I was mulling over everything I had just learned. Although to be honest, I didn’t really need to think very hard. I would obviously have to visit the place and investigate for myself.

“This has turned into quite an interesting conversation,” I finally said.

The old man flinched slightly as I broke the silence. Apparently, he had gotten lost in his own anxious thoughts.

“I’d like to talk to this partner of yours — the one who helped you set up your scheme for collecting Shadow resources,” I announced with a sigh.

Noting that the old man was trying anxiously to say something, I raised a hand to stop him.

“After all, there’s one other detail I forgot to mention. I found something else when I was examining that mill. A hidden rune. And it wasn’t a witching rune... The Scarlets would have detected that immediately. The rune that was keeping your understone hidden was carved by one of the first-born. Someone with water magic at their disposal. Runes like that are extremely hard to spot. I think you’re in cahoots with a waterman. And judging by the runes I saw, it’s one of the elders...”

Jacob’s eyes were bulging as he stared back at me.

“Your Lordship...” He replied with a nervous croak.

“Once our second caravan arrives,” I said as I stood up from my chair. “I’m setting off to claim your former master’s lands. When I do, I want you to introduce me to this waterman of yours...”