“The estate to its left is owned by a respected physician. The estate to the right belongs to a minor noble family. They think their neighbor is a trader who has done well for himself. A good businessman, a bit reclusive, but pleasant. Nobody knows.”
He drank his tea. I sipped my brew. The black tea was aromatic and slightly floral, vanilla, lavender, and a hint of citrus. Any other time, I would have savored it.
He was giving no indication whether any of my words were landing.
“A thriving kingdom must always be at war,” I said. “That’s how it justifies and trains a professional army. These wars don’t have to be large. In fact, it’s better if they are not, and it’s best if they’re fought on foreign soil or at the frontier. The kind of conflict that doesn’t affect most of the kingdom and allows the citizens to ignore the fact that every day someone is dying on their behalf, for reasons most of the people involved do not understand or care about.”
No reaction.
“Of course, a professional army creates the problem of veterans. Highly skilled at warfare, great at surviving, and not always fit to reenter civilian life after all the blood and horrors they witness. A professional soldier with twenty years of experience is a living weapon that can be used against the state when hired by a rogue noble as a mercenary or incited to violence. The state must then find a way to anchor these veterans. They need an incentive to not become a destructive force.”
I poured another cup of tea. He hadn’t stabbed me yet. I took it as an encouraging sign.
“When a veteran reaches the eighteenth year of their twenty-year service, they are offered the Last Tour. It is a terrible tour of duty, in a place where the risks are high. If the veteran survives it, they are awarded a parcel of fertile land no less than one gere.”
About eight acres. Typically, near a forest with monsters or a border with a hostile nation, where the veterans could act as a buffer.Praemia militia, invented by Ancient Rome of our world for its legionnaires, never bested, often imitated, and eventually transformed by our modern government into the GI Bill. Instead of rewarding our veterans with a parcel of land, we sent them to college and hoped they would learn to cope.
“In addition to one gere of land, these veteran soldiers are also given the Green Purse, enough money to hire farmhands, obtain seed, purchase two oxen or a single horse, and work the farm for one year. They can become farmers, or sublet the land, or they can cash out. It’s a tempting proposition for a soldier with a family. The promise of a peaceful life.”
He refilled his cup. His face looked like it was carved from stone.
“So, a soldier takes that Last Tour. He survives against all odds and receives all that was promised. He returns to the city with his limbs and mind intact and discovers that the wife he left behind was murdered and his son has gone missing.”
Nothing. Not a hint of emotion. I was on very thin ice, and I could hear it cracking.
“He searches for his son and finds out that he was taken and sold by a slave-monger who lives in an impenetrable fortress. He keeps looking for a way in but can’t find any, so every day he comes to the rooftop terrace of the local teahouse. He drinks the same tea he learned to enjoy during his first campaign, he watches, and he waits for fate to knock on his door.”
“And you would be fate?” he asked.
His voice matched him, confident, powerful, controlled. His eyes turned cold. Yep, he would kill me. I wasn’t getting off this terrace.
“No. I’m just a woman who made a deal with dangerous people. I get my payment in one week, and I need a bodyguard.”
If I got him on my side, no fighter in the kingdom, aside from the members of the Great Families, could touch me.
Don’t babble. Babbling makes you appear nervous. Stay calm. Like an icicle. Think icy thoughts.
“Normally I would offer money.”
I couldn’t afford him. Even if I threw all the money I had at him, it wouldn’t be enough.
“But you don’t want money. You want Derog Olgren.”
He stared at me. “What kind of deal did you make? What is your profession?”
Lying of any sort would get me murdered. I could feel it emanating from him.
“I sell information. I know things. Surprising things, secret things, things I shouldn’t be aware of. Things people think are private and hidden.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Impress me.”
“You were in Gassargand, trying to take the city. You and three others scaled the First Wall and were running across an old aqueduct when the ground gave way. You fell into an underground chamber. It was old, older than the city. The only light came from the hole your bodies made as you tumbled down. There were tunnels leading from the chamber into the darkness.”
I was all out of tea, and my mouth was as dry as the Gassargand desert.
“A creature came out of the tunnels. It walked upright like a man, and it wore armor and carried a battle hammer, but it was covered with gray fur, eight feet tall, and its head was the head of a monster. It smashed Mertio’s skull with a single blow, and you saw his head crack like a broken egg. The three of you fought it until the mortar bombardment resumed, and the sounds of explosions drove it back into the darkness.”
“We used to tell that story at every campfire for years afterward,” he said.
