CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

They smelt the city a long time before they drew near to it.

Elyria took a breath, silently grateful for the enhancements in her sense of smell. Most primitive societies lived in filth, literally, unaware that it was dangerously unhealthy. Only a handful of human colony worlds that had lost technology had remembered germs and how diseases spread from person to person. Darius didn’t seem to be any different. The unholy combination of smells reached out towards them as they finally headed down towards the city.

Warlock’s Bane was laughably small by the standards of the Confederation, or even by the standards of a Second Age society. The snoops had revealed no more than a few thousand people living in the city, mainly workers, merchants and a handful of governors and City Guardsmen. That too wasn’t untypical; the majority of Darius’s population would still live on the land, producing food for their masters. They’d seen enough farms from orbit to conclude that the yields were very low, barely average for a First Age society. The locals had no way of countering crop pests, diseases and other problems that plagued comparable societies.

The city was surrounded by a high stone wall, topped with battlements that suggested the main threat to the city was an invading army trying to climb over the defences and into the city. Elyria knew that such walls would become obsolete very quickly once the locals developed gunpowder; indeed, given the power of some of their magicians, the walls might be already useless. Maybe they just marked the limits of the city, although they’d seen several cities where the walls were surrounded by shacks on both sides. An enemy with nothing more than swords and spears could use the ramshackle hovels for cover and advance against the city. It wasn’t very secure.

Warlock’s Bane seemed to avoid having any habitations on the wrong side of the wall. Someone had cleared away everything that could provide cover to an invading army, leaving them exposed to arrows fired from the walls – assuming that the City Guards had enough manpower to hold back an army. Their snoops couldn’t go everywhere, so it was impossible to be sure, but it looked very much as if they didn’t have enough trained men to hold the walls. The real protection of the city rested in the power and reputation of Master Faye. That was strange, almost an inverse of every other First Age society Elyria had studied; there was no way to know what it meant for the development of society at large.

Unless it’s another Kahn, she told herself, silently. Some animals are just more equal than others.

The road, never very good outside the borderlines, grew better as they headed down towards the main gates. Elyria felt the carriage rocking as the horses started to slow down, waiting for the gates to open and allow them to enter. A heavy portcullis barred their way until it rattled upwards, powered by a pair of slaves who were chained to the pulley. It was a killing ground for unwary invaders, she’d been told; inside the gatehouse, they’d be bottled up and very vulnerable to anything from swordsmen to boiling oil. Dropping hot oil on enemy heads was a standard tactic in medieval societies, even though it inflicted injuries that were very much beyond their ability to mend. That might have been the point.

“Here we go,” Adana said, as they rattled into the gatehouse. There was a long, almost pregnant pause, and then the inner portcullis slowly rose up into the air, allowing the horses to pull the carriages forward, into the courtyard. It was a barren space, smelling of the wastes of countless horses, with a handful of low gates that barred access into the city beyond. “Just keep our mouths shut.”

Elyria nodded. Thankfully, the locals didn’t seem to be particularly corrupt, at least from what they’d picked up with the snoops. There might be a demand that some city taxes were paid, but they weren’t going to try to steal everything in the carriages. And yet they would just have to wait and see what happened. As far as they could tell, cities that had poor government, the type that would make it hard for merchants to operate, were simply excluded from the trading networks. It wasn’t an uncommon pattern when a world was developing the rudiments of a capitalist economy.

The carriages came to a halt and the guardsmen bellowed orders for the occupants to climb out. Elyria pasted a vaguely worried expression on her face and opened the door before the bodyguards could reach them, jumping down to the muddy – and smelly – ground and lifting up her skirt to ensure it didn’t get dirty. Adana followed her down; Elyria smiled inwardly as she saw the guards trying not to stare. They’d marred their skin slightly to match the local women – most people, it seemed, caught some kind of pox when they were growing up – but they were still cleaner than most. That, at least, wasn’t uncommon among local travelling merchants, for obvious reasons. They spent most of their time on the road rather than in disease-ridden cities.

“Over here,” Adam barked, playing the proud and dominant father. The guards had offered them a small hut in which to rest and wait, while the guards searched the carriages for smuggled goods. “And stop acting like children!”

Elyria concealed a smile and took a seat, waiting patiently for the guards to finish their search. It had been difficult to tell what was actually forbidden in Warlock’s Bane, but they’d been careful to only bring along duplications of items they’d seen other merchants taking into the city. The real secret was the concealed technology, items beyond local imagination. Even if they found them worked into the wood and iron that made up the carriages, they wouldn’t recognise them for what they were. Or so they hoped.

The chief guardsman entered the hut a moment later, checking the bodyguard papers with surprising attention to detail. Elyria scowled, inwardly, wondering if they’d made a mistake when forging them. They had such complete coverage of most primitive worlds that it was easy to forget that they might have missed something – and they didn’t have complete coverage of Darius. The papers should have been indistinguishable from other, perfectly valid papers, but the guard was hesitating. A moment later, he grunted his approval, stamped a note on each sheet of paper and handed them back to the owners. Elyria allowed herself a moment of relief before the interrogation began.

Being women, Gigot, Adana and herself were largely ignored, apart from glances the guardsman tossed in their direction when he thought their ‘father’ wasn’t paying attention. Adam took the brunt of the questioning, which he skilfully deflected after endless simulations on Hamilton based on what they’d overheard through the snoops. Yes, they were traders of no fixed abode; yes, they had links to the sea-folk; it was where they’d purchased their goods. And they’d come so far inland because they were looking for higher profits. A handful of questions made little sense. The guardsman wanted to know if they’d seen anything unusual on their trip. Lacking an idea of what was unusual on Darius, Adam could only say that they’d seen nothing and pray that was enough. It seemed to be, thankfully.

Another guardsman returned with a sheet of paper, which he’d used to list their trade goods. The guardsman read it quickly and then nodded, passing it to Adam for him to read and sign. Adam held it so the others could see it too, pretending to have difficulty reading it. The guards had done a thorough job of searching the carriages, to the point where they’d included a number of items as trade goods that were nothing of the sort. They’d certainly never intended to offer sleeping blankets for sale. That would definitely raise eyebrows.

“You will be expected to present them when you leave the city,” the guardsmen said, when Adam raised the issue. He made a mark on the paper before handing it back to Adam. “If they happen to be missing, you will be expected to pay import duty on them. For the moment, you will pay twenty gold; if you fail to sell all of your goods, you may claim a refund.”

And should we earn more than you expect, Elyria thought wryly, we will be expected to pay additional taxes.

It didn’t matter to the Confederation if they were taxed or not, naturally. Producing enough gold to utterly shatter the local economy would be a comparatively simple matter. But it did matter to the locals, a sign of future trouble between merchants and their rulers. Tax farming was always complicated. If the taxes were too high, local business would be strangled; if the taxes were too low, the state might not have the funds it needed to safeguard itself. And if it couldn’t protect itself, another state was likely to invade.

She glanced at the sheet of paper in Adam’s hand and smiled to herself. There was another trap there, a subtle one that might not be noticed by the locals. Everything that was brought into the city would be registered and logged, allowing the rulers to know who bought what and why. Maybe it wouldn’t be treated as anything more than a record, but anyone who wanted to hold absolute control over a human society knew the value of keeping good records. At the very least, they’d know who should be paying more taxes next year.

Adam signed with a flourish – learning the written language had been easy – and reached into his pouch for the gold coins. The locals had managed to achieve a remarkable unity in their coinage that wasn’t often a hallmark of First Age societies, they’d discovered. Each of the coins was precisely the same weight, stamped with the logo of one of the mints scattered across the planet. The cities might be rivals, but they maintained the same standard of weights and measures, right down to the tiniest detail. It suggested that there had been more organised settlement of Darius than was immediately apparent, which was interesting. Colony worlds that fell so far, normally, tended to fragment in all kinds of ways. They had to reinvent weights and measures from scratch and they were never identical.

“Thank you,” the guard said. “You may move your carriages into the courtyard of the Golden Arch, where rooms have been set aside for you. And then you may start selling to the merchant factors.”

Elyria nodded as she stood up, careful to walk behind Adam. The locals might have sounded generous when they’d organised rooms for weary travellers, but they knew that it included a sting in the tail. A set of snoops that had peered through the Golden Arch Inn had confirmed that the building had been designed to make spying on guests easy, even without modern technology. The locals clearly had no intention of allowing them to operate unobserved.

And without constant footage from the snoops, we will have to watch our backs more carefully, she told herself. Normally, they could monitor the watchers – if there were watchers – from a distance. On Darius, that wasn’t going to be so easy. The QCC links just kept breaking down.

They walked back to the carriages and allowed the bodyguards to mount up and drive the horses forward. Elyria chose to walk rather than climb back into the carriage, which should pass unnoticed. The locals knew that merchant women tended to have different standards of behaviour than those of city women, although they were also being escorted by their parents and Dacron, whom the locals would probably assume was pledged to one of Adam’s ‘daughters’. It would be maddening to be a local woman; indeed, she’d seen societies where women, treated as nothing more than property, developed all kinds of mental illnesses from banging their heads against a glass ceiling. The populations of those societies, given the ability to change sex, had promptly become almost all male.

The interior of the city, once they’d moved out of the first courtyard, was familiar because they’d seen it through the snoops, but Elyria found it easy to pretend interest anyway. There was a long line of shops, including some that were owned by wealthy businessmen who would probably be among their first customers, and a handful of inns for travellers. The population looked reasonably happy and content, for their civilisation, including a small group of young girls who were being escorted from shop to shop by an elderly man. Most of the population seemed to be fairly industrious, wearing drab clothes that stood in stark contrast to Adam’s brightly-coloured outfit. A handful, clearly wealthy, wore clothes that were almost as colourful as the visitors.

Elyria nodded to herself as they reached the inn and drove around to the back, so the carriages could be placed in the courtyard. The horses would have to be moved to the stable and fed; their trade goods could be left in the carriages until they were ready to start selling them to the merchant factors. Judging from what the snoops had picked up, the City Guard would already have passed the list on to the merchants – or at least to the ones who had paid bribes – and they’d be on their way to make offers. The spices, in particular, could be sold at quite high prices.

The interior of the inn was lightly furnished, illuminated by blazing torches and a roaring fire that warmed the entire building. Adam talked briefly to the innkeeper, a man who was quite disturbingly fat, and secured the keys to three rooms. He would be sharing a room with his wife, his daughters would get a second room and the third would be Dacron’s. The bodyguards were apparently expected to sleep in the carriages, guarding them overnight. Elyria schooled herself to show no reaction as the innkeeper offered Adam an extra lock for the second room, allowing them to lock his daughters inside, something that hadn’t been picked up by the earlier snoops. Maybe there was a local custom they’d missed, or maybe the innkeeper was just making a joke. It was difficult to be sure.

“No, thank you,” Adam said, finally. It was a shame that standard communications implants were almost useless on Darius. They could have pulled the live feed from the snoops, rather than relying on the AIs to collect it and then summarise the information to them. The innkeeper’s reaction to Adam’s refusal might have been quite informative. Still, the AIs would pick it up later. “Please have us called if anyone arrives to discuss our trade goods.”

They were led through a stone passageway and up to a set of wooden doors, which the innkeeper opened before passing the keys to Adam. Inside, there were large – if uncomfortable – beds, a single wash basin and a large jug of water. Darius had yet to reinvent the concept of indoor plumbing, Elyria knew, but it was always a shock when she came face to face with what that meant. The less said about the chamber pot under the bed, the better. No wonder the locals had so many problems with disease.

She and Adana were expected to share a bed, she noted; after all, they were sisters. The locals didn’t seem sophisticated enough to consider incest as a possible perversion, something that struck her as odd. Primitive societies often knew the dangers of incest even if they didn’t understand why it was dangerous. Even the Confederation, which could have avoided the dangers altogether, frowned on incest. She shook her head a moment later, convinced that she was reading too much into the bedding. A society without any real means of heating rooms, outside fires, would probably see some advantages in siblings sharing beds. There was nothing sexual about it at all.

There was a faint ding in her head, followed by the AI voice. “There are four people watching your rooms,” they said. The snoops would have spread out as soon as they realised which rooms would be occupied by the Confederation’s party. “The system is really very neat. They can see almost all of the room.”

Elyria resisted the temptation to glance over at the wall that held the peepholes. They’d be almost invisible to everyone, just high enough to be out of sight. A woman from Darius would have been horrified at having a man peeking on her; Elyria knew that she couldn’t show any sign of being aware of their existence, or the spies would start wondering how they knew. At least it didn’t seem to be sexual; the locals wanted a better bargaining position and if that meant spying on their guests, that was what they would do.

“Understood,” she subvocalised, as she lay down on the bed. They shouldn’t be able to see her lips move in this position. “And the traders?”

“The guards sold four exclusive copies of the list of trade goods,” the AIs said, with a hint of amusement. Each of the merchants would believe that they were the only one to be given an advantage, at least until they arrived at the inn. “We believe that they are preparing to send envoys now. They may compete, or they may try to act as a united front.”

“Probably the former,” Elyria said. If the merchants united, they could force the traders to accept a lower price for their goods than they would have otherwise received. But there were too many merchants in the city for that to work very well. There was no reason why Adam had to accept the first offer for his goods. “Monitor them; see if you can tell what they’re offering.”

She smiled as she rolled over on the uncomfortable bed. “Tomorrow we can explore the city,” she said, out loud. Let the observers think that the girls were nothing more than unimportant women. They’d keep their eyes on Adam, allowing Elyria and Adana to research the city in peace. “That should be fun.”