The village women were lined up to go to the fields now that the gate was open, but today Slats and his guards were ahead of them. The administrator chirped an order through his lavaliere. His four bearers left the group of girls at the fort and lifted him in his palanquin. Slats sat bolt upright with both sets of arms crossed behind his back, wearing what Froggie was coming to recognize as a sour expression on his pointed face.
Froggie nodded. He didn’t especially want to talk to Slats, but he wasn’t surprised when the palanquin came to a stop beside him.
“No more warehouse inventory to take, Slats?” Froggie asked. “Can we head home now?”
“Of course not, Centurion Froggie,” Slats said severely. “I am to remain here in charge of the district even after the planet is classed as pacified and you warriors are dispatched to another location.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Froggie said. He’d miss the bug now that he’d gotten to know him on this detached duty; but what Froggie really regretted was that he and the boys wouldn’t be leaving here until the place was officially pacified.
Froggie suspected pacification was a long way off. He just hoped the Third of the Fourth wouldn’t be massacred to prove he was right.
“I am going into the fields to watch the work,” Slats said. “The crops being harvested are less by one half than they should be.”
The palanquin lurched as the bearers set it down without orders. They’d apparently decided that if their cargo was going to stay in one place and talk, they didn’t need to hold his weight on their shoulders. Froggie braced Slats with a hand to keep him from tumbling out on his face.
“They’re eating meat, remember?” Froggie said. “It makes them perkier.”
The women from the town were trudging out to the fields, moving in pairs and small groups the way it always happens, even in a flock of sheep. Queenie, striding with the assured direction of a thrown javelin, entered a clot of a dozen local girls and brought them to a halt. She didn’t look around as she talked, but her listeners turned and stared straight at Froggie. It was like walking by a fishmonger’s stall, all eyes and gaping mouths. He hoped the barb axemen weren’t watching.
“Anyway,” he continued to Slats, “two days isn’t much time to decide what’s a normal amount of work.”
“Do I tell you how to use your sword, warrior?” Slats said, his tone the first hint Froggie’d gotten that the bug was capable of an emotion other than fear. “Do not tell me how to assess labor against output; this is what I do. I tell you the crops entering Kascanschi these past two days are only half what they should be, based on the surplus earmarked for transport to the royal capital immediately before the battle.”
“That’s ’cause half the women have been put to slicing the tops of kiro trees out in the forest, buddy,” Laena said. Slats chirped and jumped against the back of his palanquin in surprise at being addressed by a man he’d thought of as furniture.
Froggie was surprised too. Laena was part of the administrator’s guard section today, but while Slats talked he’d been taking it easy with “Glycera” same as the other troopers and girls were. The last thing you’d expect from Laena was for him to volunteer a comment about farm output.
“Yeah,” Laena continued. He didn’t notice or didn’t care that he’d scared Slats into an early molt. “My girl Glycera says that since this new lot come in, they’ve put half the workers to cutting the tops, that’s where they fruit, of the kiro trees. The sap bleeds out and hardens, and the seeds don’t ripen the way they ought to.”
“Dis!” Froggie said. “What’s good does that do?”
“Not a bit, the girls say,” said Laena. “The guys with axes tell them they’ll carry the heads away in a couple weeks, but none of the girls can see why. It just makes a black gunk.”
Slats patted his middle arms together. “I will examine the kiro trees,” he said, his eyes focused on a point in space. “Perhaps they provide a valuable product which the survey informing my briefing cube failed to note. But if they do not—”