The carpenter nodded; he was as jumpy as a cat around a diretooth. Most of the estate slaves were, these days, with all the soldiers on hand. None of the troopers cared much about preserving Wilder Redvers’ propery.
“And they still don’t do things properly unless you stand over them,” Adrian said in frustration.
Why should they? Raj replied.
A vision flashed into Adrian’s head; a steam engine, that’s what it’s called . . . on Raj’s native Bellevue. A mass of metal tubes and wheels and parts, wrecked and fused. A man with a whip was beating another man, nearly naked and with an iron collar around his neck.
A slave has a positive incentive to damage things, unless he’s a coward or unusually well-managed. And simple carelessness is bad enough.
* * *
The velipad was an estate animal, and knew the laneways better than his rider. Any landholding of this size had its artisans; Redvers had his in a series of workshops not far from the cottages that housed the home-farm segment of the plantation’s workforce. Adrian pulled up and tapped his toes on the elbows of his velipad; the animal crouched to the ground, and the young man stepped off. The smell of hot metal came from within the bronzesmith’s forge. Experiment had shown that bombs launched from a catapult tended to disintegrate if they were housed in clay pots of practicable thickness. Redvers had grumbled at the expense of sheet bronze, until they showed him a few survivors of the effects of a finely-divided mist of gunpowder meeting open flame.
The problem was, the bronzesmith had trouble grasping the concept of turning out large numbers of uniform containers without ornamentation or excess effort.
Why not? Raj said again. This man turns out fine work because it gives him pleasure. He’s not particularly concerned with Redvers’ political ambitions, or with anyone else’s convenience. Why should he churn out things that don’t give him satisfaction? He won’t be paid any more if he does.
Adrian sighed again. Raj and Center were putting him through a course of study a good deal less agreeable than the Grove’s lectures on the Good and the Beautiful . . . but their concept of the Just Order was a good deal more empirically grounded.
He checked half a step. “I’ll give him a bonus!” he said. “Under the table, of course.” Redvers’ funds would stretch to that.
You’re learning, son. You’re learning.
* * *
“Ufff!”
The other man grunted as his back struck the hard-packed dirt of the corral. Esmond stepped back panting; he had a graze under his right eye that was seeping blood, and his left thumb had been painfully wrenched. The six men who’d offered to take their new employer on were in considerably worse shape, though some of them had shown a thoroughgoing mastery of informal all-in style.
“Any more fools among those looking for a job?” he asked.
There were thirty men grouped around the entrance to the corral. All Emeralds; none too young—most of them had a few years on him—and all fairly hard-bitten. Many of them wore sailors’ knitted caps with tassels, and the Goddess only knew how they’d ended up so far from the sea. Sailing on merchantmen going foreign was the main way an Emerald could learn the use of arms these days, that and signing on with one or another of the Lords of the Isles as a mercenary . . . or as a pirate, not that there was much difference in that part of the world. A few did a hitch with the auxiliary light-armed slingers of the Confed forces.
“Good,” he said, when no more volunteers stepped forward. He reached out his right hand, and his servant tossed a spear into it; the old Emerald pattern, six feet long with a narrow sharp-bladed stabbing head. “Now let’s see who can use a sticker. Then we’ll go on to javelin, sling, sword and knife.”
The testing process lasted all afternoon, while the hot summer sun baked strong-smelling sap out of the eucalyptus trees that shaded the pasture beyond the corral. When he was finished Esmond’s eyes looked twice as brilliant, staring blue out of the mask of reddish dust streaked with runnels of sweat. He gasped as he shoved his head into the bucket of water resting on the coping of the well, then poured the rest down his neck and tossed the bucket in for another load.