She looked up at him, her brow creased. “Can the Queen’s advisors not see what reading this will do here? Who could have suggested she take a step like this? Bishop Bumble?”
“I have no doubt that bits and pieces of messages he’s sent have been communicated to the Queen, and may have influenced her.” Vlad shook his head. “Bumble is a grasping man. He’ll be more than happy to read that aloud and preach long and hard about it. Still, even he would see that the emotions stirred up by it would not be easily controlled.”
“So when rebellion happens, the Church offers to exert control where there is insufficient military to secure it?”
Prince Vlad shivered. “That is far more likely than I would prefer to imagine, though if that were the plan, would the message not be more laudatory of the Church?”
Bethany bit her lower lip. “That is an excellent point. Will you have it read aloud?”
He shook his head. “No. I immediately reply with a need for clarification and another copy. I held the original too close to a candle, can’t get the exact wording. It would be June before the duplicate arrived.”
“Unless you’re anticipated and a second copy has been sent to you or someone else.”
“If the seal has been broken on the message, I cannot be certain it is genuine. I would be a fool to publish in that case.” Vlad slid his spectacles on again and sat to study the ledger pages. “I know it’s a dangerous game, but I have no choice. By June we’ll know the nature of the threat from the west.”
“Would you like me to draft a response for you?”
He laughed. “Please. Stuffy, stupid, and craven would be the right notes. Fear of the Queen makes me incompetent. It will please her and annoy whoever wanted action to cause trouble.”
“My pleasure, Highness.”
Prince Vlad glanced at the first ledger page. As with all book code, words had been reduced to digits, with the page number acting as thousands, paragraph number as hundreds and the word being behind the decimal point. Every sixth entry was a number which, when totaled with the five previous, would produce the number ten million. Not only did that provide a way for both the encoder and decoder to make sure they had the right numbers from a transmission, but it provided nonsense-data to confuse anyone attempting to decode the message. Moreover, numbers alternated being recorded in the credit and debit ledger columns, with the totals making running sense, but signifying nothing. Credits formed the first half of the message, debits the second.
The longest message came from Fairlee and Bethany’s uncle, Major Forest. He reported no incidences of anything unusual to the south. Moreover, he’d managed to pull the Southern Rangers together and had trained them in the way of “green” powder. He’d had great success and would continue training men, anticipating a call to head west by mid-May.
A second message had come from a training camp Count von Metternin had set up. He reported continued success educating men with the new brimstone spell. He’d also been training more thaumagraph operators drawn from Caleb’s Bookworm squad in the Northern Rangers. Once they became proficient in sending and receiving messages, he was going to move to the second phase of their training.
The Prince looked up. “Anything from Plentiful?”
Bethany shook her head. “Double-nought sent from them two days ago, right on schedule. All is well.”
The thaumagraph in Plentiful was the unit they’d placed furthest afield. The Prince had set it up such that the Plentiful station would send something at noon and sundown, just to make certain they were still there. When the messages came in, the Temperance operator would note the time, which was always later than noon or sundown. Through this method, and allowing for storms and other delays, Prince Vlad had been able to roughly calculate Plentiful’s longitude.
This calculation placed the village just over a hundred miles as the crow flies. Getting there with troops in sufficient quantity and supply to deal with the Norghaest would be the work of weeks. The twice-daily messaging was less to let Plentiful feel it could send for help, than to let the Prince know, by its silence, that the Norghaest had overrun the settlement and were on their way east.
Despite that reality, he did expect some useful information to come from Plentiful. “Please let me know when you hear anything.”
“Of course, Highness.” Bethany set down her quill, rose, and handed him a sheet with clear writing along even lines. “Make notes and I shall copy it over.”
He shook his head. “I’ll copy it out myself. It will please my aunt that I wrote her directly. This is very good. You have a flair for writing.”
Color flushed her cheeks. “I merely edit, Highness.”
“You edit Samuel Haste, I believe.”
Her eyes tightened. “When he makes things available. Why do you ask?”
Vlad handed her the Shipping and Commerce Act. “What would you gauge his reaction to this to be?”
She scanned it quickly, her bright blue eyes flicking back and forth. She chewed her lower lip, then frowned, running a finger under certain sentences. She reread passages, then shook her head. “I don’t know how Mr. Haste will react, Highness. I can tell you that my brother and his friends will be very upset. The document tax is nothing compared to this. This is… this is…”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Yes, Miss Frost?”
She handed him back the act, then retreated to her desk. She made some quick notes. “Forgive me, Highness. If you do not put this act in place, you invite intervention. This is far more than our having to pay customs. This requires everyone to keep track of everything they produce, such that Her Majesty’s government could figure out who to tax and when, correct?”
“Precisely.”
“What if you choose to apply the act universally, and not selectively?”
The Prince removed his spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “This would invite an immediate revolt.”
“Not if you were to focus it.” Bethany smiled. “Who are the most educated and literate people in each community?”
“The ministers and priests.”
“Exactly. If you ask Bishop Bumble and his peers to not only announce this program, but administer it, anger will focus on them. But, there’s something which is even more important. This act, and compliance with it, will force people to create a lot of paper. If Makepeace Bone, for example, was to sell a skin at a trading post, he would need a receipt, the trader would have to keep one, and one would have to cover the sale and be sent to be recorded. And then if that trader sells the skin to a broker in Temperance, more receipts are created and must be recorded. If everyone is doing this, and if farmers would be required to track grain by the bushel, and distillers rum by the gallon…”
Vlad chuckled. “My aunt’s surrogates would drown in paper, and that would keep them too busy to pay to much attention to what we are doing.”
“And if men like my brother and Samuel Haste urge compliance with the law, pointing out that burying the Queen in paper is better than burning her in effigy, the people will do it for the amusement. When you have countless receipts all signed with a man’s mark to sort through, the system will collapse.”
“True.” Vlad tossed his glasses on his desk. “However, it will still increase resistance to the Crown in the future albeit more slowly than otherwise.”
“Highness, do you think you can insulate the Crown from its own stupidity?”
“No.” Vlad slowly shook his head. “I just hope I am able to insulate the people from the Crown’s ire.”
Chapter Forty-four
17 March 1768
Slow Creek
Richlan, Mystria
Nathaniel crouched with Makepeace and Kamiskwa on the crest of a wooded hill. A light breeze carried down from the north across the snow-choked valley to where they waited, blowing their scent far to the south. The light snow clung to their buffalo robes and fur hats, helping to further conceal them. Each man wore double-layered mittens with white rabbit fur on th
e outside, and a slit thumb that gave them access to their rifles’ firestones.
Nathaniel nodded to Makepeace, who smiled happily. Makepeace had seen odd tracks on a patrol to the southwest of Plentiful. He’d described what he thought had made them, but neither Nathaniel nor Kamiskwa believed him. They’d all bundled up and headed out, hoping to backtrack the trail before the snow obliterated it. None of them had expected to see what lay in the little valley below.
Makepeace had been right in that the tracks had been made by a wooly rhinoceros. It was fully grown, making it about half-again as large as Peregrine. Its horn had to be three and a half feet long if an inch, and its thick brown fur was more than enough to insulate it from a March storm. What they’d not expected, however, was a harness holding a copper plate tight to its head. The harness fitted blinders over its eyes, and held a fist-sized stone set in the middle, which looked for all the world like a firestone.
More impressive than that was the creature riding the rhino.
Nathaniel had seen one of them before, in a quick glimpse, in the Antediluvian Temple. Ten feet tall as measured against the rhino’s horn, it had ram’s horns of its own and a shaggy white coat. Its thick build matched it to Makepeace, if he’d been stretched up, out, and back. Fur shaded its eyes the way it would on a sheepdog, but the black claws on its hands reminded him more of jeopards than dogs. It wore a brown leather girdle and strap that ran from hip to shoulder and back behind, with shiny copper fittings. A flattened warclub with obsidian blades jutting from each edge dangled at its right hip, and it bore a stone-tipped spear in its left hand. Another leather strap bound a copper plate to the creature’s forehead, set with a stone that matched the one on the rhino.
Kamiskwa tapped Nathaniel on the shoulder, pointed to the rifle, and raised an eyebrow.
Nathaniel frowned. He figured the target was about a hundred twenty yards out, which would have been beyond the rifle’s range save for all the green powder training he’d done over the winter. Prince Vlad had told him what was really going on, and he’d helped train members of the Northern Rangers. The new magick pushed his rifle’s range out far enough, and made a killing shot possible at nearly a hundred yards. Ain’t a single bullet going to kill that beast.
He shook his head.
Kamiskwa shucked his buffalo robe and warclub, then pulled off his tunic. He touched a new tattoo on his left breast, right next to where his medicine bag dangled from a cord around his throat. The tattoo was of a bear paw, yet the large pad had only been done in outline. In the middle of it had been drawn an open eye design. Kamiskwa covered the image with his hand, and when he pulled it away seconds later, the paw remained, but the eye had closed. He picked up his warclub, and worked his way to the right, moving from tree to tree, and down the hillside toward the valley.
Makepeace moved out the other way. Nathaniel waited until Makepeace had paused behind the bole of a tree and brought his rifle to bear before he moved forward. He advanced ten yards and took up a similar firing position. Makepeace then advanced, ranging a bit further out. Nathaniel continued his descent until he reached a fallen log approximately eighty yards from his target. The wind was blowing across his line of fire, but came light enough that he wouldn’t have to compensate too much.
Kamiskwa broke from cover, screeching at the top of his lungs. Snow sprayed up with each step—steps which slowed as the Shedashee waded into a deep drift. He held the warclub aloft in one hand, and paddled at the snow with the other.
The troll looked in his direction, then the rhino began to gallop. The rider couched the spear as a lance. Snow flew up and back. The stones in the harnesses blazed with green intensity as the rhino charged. The creature plowed through the drifts as if they were no more substantial than fog.
Nathaniel measured the range with a practiced eye, then invoked the spell to ignite brimstone. Prince Vlad had directed him to think of something hot and burning. Most men thought of embers or the dull, red glow of iron fresh from the forge. Nathaniel allowed as how those things were hot, but he went for something else, something suitable to the winter. He recalled the burning pain of frostbitten fingers slowly warming up, and pumped that through the firestone, adding in, for good measure, the murderous rage he’d been experiencing at the time of that particular recollection.
Makepeace fired a half-second before he did. The man’s bullet flew true, hitting the troll high in the chest. It struck with enough force to rock the creature back and tip the spearpoint up.
Nathaniel’s rifle bucked against his shoulder. The bullet sped out, but the troll’s reaction to Makepeace’s shot had shifted Nathaniel’s target. He’d been aiming for the throat, hoping to hit higher or lower than that. The troll’s being knocked back lowered its head just enough that Nathaniel’s shot slammed into its forehead, directly over the left eye. It snapped the leather strap, but the bullet ricocheted to the side, chipping off half of the troll’s horn.
With the rhino thirty yards away and in mid-charge, Kamiskwa dove to the left. Nathaniel and Makepeace each levered their rifles open and reloaded, forcing themselves to calmly complete a ritual they’d done hundreds of times before. Nathaniel refused to look at the rhino and trusted to his brother’s ability to get clear. If he let worry interfere, he’d never get his rifle loaded for the shot that could save Kamiskwa’s life.
He levered his rifle’s breech closed, then sighted on the rhino.
Just in time to see the beast rear up and hurl the troll from its back. Churning up a cloud of snow, the rhino turned quickly and ducked its head. The horn came up, and the troll flew again, all limp-limbed, the forehead plate clattering against the whole horn. The rhino attacked the troll again and again, ripping great holes in its torso, then finally trotted off to the side, snorting out great jets of steam. Its course took it upwind of the troll’s corpse, which stank of musk and bile, then the rhino shook its head and cleaned its horn in the snow. It pawed at the ground and began to graze peacefully a minute later.
Nathaniel worked his way back up the hill to recover Kamiskwa’s gear and met him halfway to the valley floor. Makepeace joined them. The Shedashee pulled his clothes on, but refused to indicate that he’d felt the cold at all.
Nathaniel looked at his companions. “Now I reckon the Prince, he’d like that troll out there.”
Makepeace nodded. “I do believe that rhino might dispute our taking it. I ain’t of a mind to shoot a beast just to drive it off.”
“I agree, Makepeace, but I surely do want to see how much damage our shots did. Don’t mind knowing I can crack a horn, but I want to see how much of the skull went with it.”
“And knowing how its guts is plumbed would be good.” Makepeace smiled. “Though I ain’t sure there’s much knowing of that to be done from what the rhino left behind.”
Kamiskwa pointed. “More valuable will be the plates and stones.”
“Cain’t get but one of them.”
“I think we can.” Kamiskwa pulled his medicine bag from within his tunic. “I have just the plan.”
Nathaniel, helping Makepeace load pieces of the troll onto a travois, shook his head. “I never would have reckoned that would work.”
Thirty yards away, Kamiskwa was unbuckling the rhinoceros’ headplate. To accomplish that, he’d taken a small pellet of dragon dung from his medicine pouch, crushed it with a handful of snow to make a muddy paste, which he spread over his hands and face. He circled around wide and approached the rhino from upwind, letting the breeze carry Mugwump’s scent to it.
The beast, which had been snorting and digging through the snow for meager mouthfuls of golden grass, had brought its head up. It sniffed the air, then trotted toward Kamiskwa, its shaggy stub of a tail wagging. It stopped when it caught sight of him, but started grazing again and didn’t seem fazed by his getting closer.
“It does beat all sense.” Makepeace shrugged and tossed a piece of what appeared to be liver onto the travois. “I do believe we have it all.”
&n
bsp; Nathaniel gave a low whistle. Kamiskwa backed downwind of the rhino and rejoined them. Nathaniel half-expected the beast to follow him. They took to the woods, working their way along a path the rhino likely wouldn’t follow, and just after dark reached Plentiful.
Under Makepeace’s direction, and with the help of Hodge Dunsby and the men he brought with him, Plentiful had been rebuilt. They’d leveled off a hilltop and constructed a palisaded fort which commanded the entire valley. They’d also expanded the settlement’s graveyard and placed it toward the northeast end, well above the floodline. New homes sprang up between the two points, and had been built as small blockhouses that allowed for overlapping fire and mutual support.
What had once been a peaceful, religiously based town, had become a military encampment. Nathaniel wasn’t too certain how Arise Faith would have taken to that idea. Out of respect for him and Plentiful’s origins, the fort did include a chapel and services were held twice weekly. Yet the chapel’s steeple was manned around the clock, and watchmen kept their eyes peeled southwest for anything coming from the Westridge Mountains.
The three of them dragged the travois into the fort and to the structure where Makepeace made his home. They left the troll under the roofed-over sideyard, warmed and fed themselves, then returned to taking stock of the monster. Nathaniel and Makepeace put the bits back together as best they could. Kamiskwa came in behind them, measuring things and jotting them down in a notebook, just as Owen would usually do.
Once he’d collected some basic information, Kamiskwa retreated to the cabin and prepared to send a sundown message to the Prince. He drew the thaumagraph from a locked cabinet and set it up on Makepeace’s table. To Nathaniel’s eye, the device looked to be a boxy guitar, complete with hole, and fitted with ten strings, but absent a neck.
From a small drawer built into the side opposite the tuning pegs Kamiskwa pulled a flat, wooden tile. On it had been burned the image of a crown and below it a clock face. Kamiskwa slid that into a slot on the base where it became part of the device’s sounding board. That particular tile linked the device to the thaumagraph in Temperance, whereas others would link it to the one at Prince Haven, or at Count von Metternin’s home.