He shrugged. “It’s hard to explain. Let’s just say that Emeralds appreciate a good maneuver for its own sake.” He inclined his head toward Demansk. “Most of them understand well enough what the Triumvir’s doing. Giving the Vanbert upper crust a hole in the corner, if you will. You’ve got five years to find yourselves a partner who needs your blessing to get rich. After that, you’ll have to face the grasping, greedy—and very capable—bastards on your own. Because, five years from now, their citizenship will be as good as yours.”
“Crude, crude,” chided Oppricht. “Almost as bad as ‘businessman.’ But—accurate.”
* * *
Accurate, it was. Every move Demansk made leading up to the emergency Council meeting was designed for the same purpose: turn the world upside down, mix it up, break all the old crusted and rancid layers—while still leaving everyone a hole in the corner.
For the slaves, immediate emancipation for those under Albrecht’s rule and at least the hope of eventual emancipation for all others. So much for theory. In practice, Demansk was also creating the economic conditions which would dissolve slavery like so much acid.
For the slaveowners, enough of an illusion that—if loyal to the “legitimate Council”—they could retain their slaves; combined with enough uncertainty to start them thinking about alternatives. So much for theory. In practice, Demansk was also providing them with the alternatives. Sharecropping for some; investments in new enterprises, for others; and—though he hadn’t really unveiled this yet, and wouldn’t for some time—the prospect for the rising generations of gentrymen to become well-salaried public servants doing useful work instead of a class of drones and tax-farmers, good for nothing except fighting wars.
For the people of the subject nations, he was offering full citizenship. Delayed for five years, true enough—only those who could demonstrate a citizen “sponsor” could skip the waiting period. Still, it was a clear and definite end to what had seemed the endless prospect of Vanbert’s iron heel. So much for theory. In practice, most of those folk would not find their lives changing much—and, when it did, often for the worse. For all the aristocratic sneer behind it, the dictum of the old Emerald political philosopher Llawat had more than a grain of truth in it: “Freedom is simply the freedom to starve.”
In the name of “justice,” Demansk was unleashing much injustice into the world, and knew it perfectly well. But he was not trying to create “justice,” in the end. That task was quite beyond his power, great as it was. Justice would have to take care of itself, in the years to come. What Demansk could do was shatter a world which made justice impossible.
Finally, there was his masterstroke. The same “silly” Emancipation Proclamation which Arsule derided because it freed those Demansk could not free and kept enslaved those he could, was the thing—so he thought, at least—which would win him a civil war.
Arsule was a brilliant woman, in many ways. She was certainly capable of grasping things which were normally beyond the imagination of her class. But, ultimately, she was a noblewoman from the top of her glossy black-and-white hair to the soles of her well-manicured and lotioned feet. Hers was a world of bright conversations, and art, and philosophy. She simply didn’t understand—couldn’t understand—the way the world looked to the men who, when all was said and done, would thrust Demansk to power and keep him there.
Jessep Yunkers; Forent Nappur—and all the men of that hardscrabble, bitter commonality, especially that of the eastern provinces. Men who, generation after generation, had spent the prime of their lives wearing a helmet and hefting a spear in the service of the nobility—the same nobility which, generation after generation, had driven them off their land and replaced them with slave labor on their great plantations.
What Arsule did not understand was that freedom of the slaves also meant freedom from the slaves. And so, what would the soldiers who filled the ranks of Albrecht’s army gathering in Vanbert do? When they discovered, by means of Sharbonow’s endless supply of leaflets—the papermakers of Solinga were, not accidentally, one of the most prized catches for “sponsors”—that if their enemy triumphed, they could seize back their land now. Whereas if their commander triumphed, they . . . could look forward to serving out their term, in the hope that the gracious lord might deign to give them a good retirement bonus.