documents to Killane for safekeeping and then I was caught up in the
giddy whirl of celebration of the founding of the fourth Arendish
duchy.
It was fairly late that evening when I returned to my own pavilion
to find Killane sitting at a small table illuminated by a pair of candles.
He had a map of Sendaria and the scroll defining my boundaries
in front of him, and his eyes were a little wild. ‘Have y’ looked at
this, yer Grace?’ he asked me.
‘They didn’t really give me much time, Killane,’ I replied.
‘I wouldn’t be after tryin’ t’ ride around yer entire duchy in a
single day, if I was you,’ he said, ‘nor in a week, fer that matter. Y’
go on firever up there!’ He laid his hand on the map. ‘I bin tryin’ t’
mark yer boundaries out on this map, an’ as close as I kin tell, either
th’ dukes took leave o’ their senses, or some drunken scribe garbled
some descriptions on this scroll. Look fer yerself, me Lady. I’ve
inked in yer borders in red.’ He handed me the map.
I stared at it. ‘This is ridiculous!’ I exclaimed. ‘Let’s go see Alleran.
I want some clarification of this.’
Alleran was very calm about it. He looked at Killane’s map with
no apparent surprise. ‘This looks about right to me, Aunt Pol,’ he
said. ‘Is there some problem? You can have more land, if you’d
like.’
‘Alleran,’ I said pointedly, trying to hold down my exasperation,
‘this is well over half of central Sendaria.’
‘So?’
‘What do you mean, “so?” You’ve got me stretched from Seline
to Lake Camaar!’
‘Yes, I know. I notice that we didn’t give you an outlet to the sea,
though. Would you like to have that coast between Sendar and
Camaar? It’s awfully marshy there, but your serfs could probably
drain those marshes for you. Did you want that island off the west
coast?’
‘Serfs?’ I cut in.
,’Of course. They’re part of the land, Aunt Pol. When we get back
to Wacune, I’ll send word to your vassals up there and have them
all come on down and swear fealty to you.’
‘ Vassals?’
‘Naturally. You didn’t think we were saddling you with open
wilderness, did you?’ He coughed a slightly embarrassed little
cough. ‘Actually, Aunt Pol, I provided the land for your duchy. I’m
not sure which of my ancestors annexed all that ground up there,
but it’s more than I can handle, to be honest about it. It’s not much
of a present, is it? I gave you something I wanted to get rid of
anyway.’
‘That does take some of the shine off my new title,’ I agreed.
‘I know, and I’m sorry. The people up there are strange. Sendaria’s
been sort of ill-defined for so long that all kinds of people have
migrated there. The races are all mixed together, and the
population’s definitely not pure Arendish. I don’t know how to deal with
them, but you’re far wiser than I am, so I’m sure you’ll manage
better than I have. Your vassals – who used to be mine – are all
pure Wacite Arends, however, so they’re more or less manageable.’
His expression grew slightly guilty then. ‘You’ll notice that I kept
Darine, Muros and Camaar. I hate to appear parsimonious, but I
really need the revenues from those three towns. My budget’s been
very tight lately.’ Then he smiled slyly. ‘I’ll bet you thought that we
were just handing you an empty title, didn’t you, Aunt Pol? You’d
probably better get rid of that notion right away. You’ve got a real
duchy up north of the River Camaar, and you can do anything with
it you wish.’ Then his smile became a smirk. ‘Now you’re going to
find out what the rest of us have to go through every day, so I
wouldn’t be too quick with any thanks, if I were you. Wait a little
while first. Land and everything that goes with it is a responsibility,
Aunt Pol, and sometimes it grows very heavy.’
I noticed that he glossed over the strategic location of the Duchy
of Erat. Asturia had been the source of much of the trouble in
Arendia for the past few centuries, and now Alleran, Corrolin, and
I had that troublesome duchy hemmed in on the north, east, and
south to pose a perpetual threat to Nerasin or anybody who might
succeed him.
After we returned to Vo Wacune, Killane and I went on north to
have a look at my new domain. I firmly declined Alleran’s offer of
an armed escort. I wanted to see what was really going on up there,
and I didn’t want knights, pikemen, and fanfares to announce my
coming. We rode on up through Muros, took the road leading to
Sulturn, and once we forded the north fork of the River Camaar,
we were in ‘Erat’.
‘Tis fertile ground y’ve got here, me Lady,’ Killane observed on
the second day after we’d crossed the river, ‘an’ ample water. With
a bit o’ careful management, y’ could git ridiculously wealthy, don’t
Y, know.’
I was looking at a shabby collection of mud and wattle huts
huddled a couple of hundred paces back from the road, however,
so I wasn’t really paying attention to my friend’s predictions. ‘Serfs?’
I asked, pointing at the miserable hovels.
‘It has th’ look of a serfs’ village,’ he agreed.
‘Let’s ride into that clump of trees just ahead,’ I said. ‘I want to
go have a closer look.’
‘After Y’ve seen one serfs’ village, y’ve seen ’em all, me Lady,’ he
said with a shrug.
‘That’s the whole point, Killane. I’ve never seen one up close.’
We rode back in among the trees, I dismounted, and then I ‘went
sparrow’. I flew on back to the huts to look around. There was no
furniture inside those hovels, nor anything even remotely
resembling a fireplace. Each of them had a pit filled with ashes and charred
sticks instead, and each also had a heap of rags in one corner that
evidently served as a communal bed. There were a few scrawny
dogs wandering about and some equally scrawny children. I flew
on out to the nearby fields and saw wretched, dirty people hacking
at the earth with the crudest possible tools under the watchful eye
of a hard-faced man on horseback.
The mounted man had a whip in his hand.
I flew on back to where Killane waited and resumed my own
form. ‘That has to go,’ I told him very firmly.
‘Th’ village? Tis unsightly t’ be sure, me Lady, but th’ serfs’ve got
t’ live someplace.’
‘I’m not talking about the village, Killane. I’m talking about
serfdom itself.’
He blinked. ‘But th’ whole o’ society’s based on it, me Lady.’
‘Then I’ll just have to rebuild the society, won’t I? We’ll get to
that in a little while, but keep it in mind. I will not live my life on
the backs of slaves.’
‘A serf ain’t no slave, me Lady,’ he objected.
‘Oh, really? Maybe someday you can explain the difference to
me. Let’s move along, Killane. There’s a lot more to see here than
I’d imagined.’
We stopped in secluded places rather frequently, and I spent a
great deal of time wearing feathers as I snooped out the reality that
lay just under the surface of my seemingly placid realm. The lives
of the serfs were miserable beyond imagining, and the nobility lived
in idle luxury, spending – wasting actually – money that grew out
of the sweat and misery of their serfs. I found my nobles to be
stupid, cruel, lazy, and arrogant. I didn’t like them very much. That
was also going to change.
We reached Sulturn and then turned north and rode on to
Medalia, stopping frequently so that I could look into things. The
land was fair, I found, but the society definitely wasn’t.
After we passed Medalia, we rode on up to Seline, then turned
east toward Erat. I tried as best I could to keep my equanimity. This
wasn’t Killane’s fault, but he was the only person handy, so I don’t
imagine that he enjoyed the trip very much.
‘If Y’ don’t mind me sayin’ it, yer Grace,’ he said one afternoon
when we were about half-way between Seline and Erat, ‘y’ seem to
be a bit waspish. Is it somethin’ I’ve done?’
‘It’s not you, Killane,’ I said. ‘There are a lot of things wrong here
terribly wrong.’
‘Well, fix em, Lady-O.’
‘That’s sort of what I had in mind, me boy-o.’
‘If I kin be persuadin’ y’ t’ set aside yer peevishness, y’ might
want t’ give some thought t’ where y’ want t’ build yer capital, yer
grace. Yer title suggests Erat, but I’ve been there a time or two, and
it ain’t th’ prettiest town in all th’ world, don’t y’ know, an’ th’