CHAPTER 16
Euclind § 2
“What next?” mumbled Euclind as he stared out the window. Absent mindedly, his hands shuffled through the pile of letters, scrolls, and carrier-bird messages on the table in front of him.
“What would you like next, sir?” Radbert replied.
“Hmm? Did you say something, Radbert?” Euclind asked.
“I was just asking if you wished for me to do anything else.”
“What? Oh. No, I can’t think of anything else I need right now. Wait, has any other mail arrived?”
“You have everything that we’ve received, sir.”
“If I get any more correspondence, bring it to me immediately.”
“I always do, sir,” Radbert assured him. As he turned to leave the room, he added, “Don’t forget to eat your lunch. It’s on the table beside your papers.”
The Wise One of Lucidus corresponded regularly with many long distance friends and his influence spread far beyond the boundaries of his own city. He had traveled widely during his life and he was generous with his advice and knowledge, a fact which was appreciated by many people and not just scholars. As a result he had many friends, including numerous important people, who sent information to Euclind just because they liked him. He also had a network of paid informants all over the Eastern Side – including, some people believed, spies among the enslaved people of Hibbria – and he could rely on being kept up to date on activities in other cities and towns. He knew, for example, that the leading Madrére in the Sistéria had been in Matik until a few days earlier. Then she and the mysterious young Sistére with her had disappeared from sight. Euclind also heard that Sarkonian mercenaries were watching the Eastway Road between Matik and Torae, and he had no difficulty deducing what those two facts meant.
Euclind further realized that his efforts to aid Hadwin and the people of Anglio had been of limited success so far. His warnings had stirred some activity but not enough. If Anglio was attacked openly by the forces which were gathering around it, help would be slow in coming. Torae would send some of its warriors but would keep the best of its forces home to guard their own city, and Aidano, the Mayórę of Iteneris, was already vacillating. He expressed concern and made vague promises of support but kept talking about the need to protect his own people. Even the news from Hinterland was distressing. A small but vocal group of hotheads was urging residents to ‘fight back against the hu-men intrusions,’ ‘protect our heritage,’ and ‘take back our land.’
“Take back?” Euclind mumbled to himself, but there was no point in trying to correct the historical inaccuracies being spread by persons who would not listen to him even if they could hear his voice.
Patron Edric of Matik had not yet responded to the message delivered by his nephew, meaning his wife had not yet reacted to it, so Euclind took a further step. He sent a blunt message directly to Patroness Gildea urging her to act.
“Will you wait until the minions of the Zafiri are trampling through Outer Matik to take action, or is it better to stop them while they are still distant from your city?” he had written her. “My fervent hope is that a quick show of support will deter an attack on Anglio, but if it does not then even stronger steps must be taken. I abhor violence and it pains me to recommend even a display of force, but other members of the Concordia besides Anglio will fall if the Great Cities do not move quickly. If the situation deteriorates much further, all of Matik’s Civil Guard along with those of Riviarre, Niazport, and elsewhere else will be needed in the east.”
Every leader East of the Sea knew Euclind’s reputation and understood he was no alarmist. His intelligence-gathering network was well known and if anyone had both the information and ability to analyze the current situation, it was him. Whether they liked it or not, reluctant people everywhere knew they should pay attention to him.
“Watch the Eastway Road and don’t let Anglio become isolated,” he told them all.
Fortunately, not every bit of news that Euclind received was as worrisome as the situation in Anglio. Among other things he received was a report from one of his correspondents who lived far away across the Sea. When the first Žhìnian diplomatic ships from the distant West had arrived some years earlier, Euclind had made the long trek to Niazport to meet the new ambassadors. He knew something about the contacts between East and West during bygone times from his study of history, and during his earlier years he had once obtained an extraordinary document written in the Žhìnian language. That text still remained in his personal archives, and his years-long effort to decipher it had given him some familiarity with Žhìnian, at least in its written form.
This knowledge had proved invaluable. Only one Žhìnian diplomat, a scholar named Yanshuo Jia, had any comprehension of Eastern common speech. Together he and Euclind were able to translate enough words to make communication between sides possible, and while doing so they became close friends who exchanged a great deal of information during the following years. Yanshuo even used Žhìnian diplomatic ships to forward letters from Euclind to other scholars back in the West, and although it took months for replies to return, the leader of Lucidus regularly received correspondence from a score of his Western peers.
The lengthy letter he had just received, in fact, was from the Master Scholar of a prestigious dàxue, the equivalent of an Eastern universitas, and it answered some of his questions about the young protégé of an old friend of his. Euclind had good relations with members of the Sistéria, and his reputation for keeping secrets was impeccable; as a result, he heard things which were known to very few others. Stories about an amazing young girl found on a lovely but destitute island on the fringe of the Eastern Side caught his attention, and he put a lot of effort into learning more – including asking questions about her possible lineage back in Žhìn.
No Žhìnians knew the name Graice, of course (the word was Kêltikæn after all), but now Euclind finally learned something about a ship named the Nínjìng, a Žhìnian word meaning peace. The vessel had sailed secretly a quarter-century earlier on some undisclosed mission and had never returned. The loss of two very important people aboard, a husband and wife, was so stunning that the fact was kept secret from the Žhìnian people.
Even now, no one in Žhìn could say where the Nínjìng had been lost or whether a baby had been born onboard during the fateful voyage, but Euclind now knew enough pieces to put the puzzle together. It was a very intriguing puzzle indeed.