“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?”