K Parker - Devices and Desires

'That sounds more like my job,' Miel said; and he realised that he wasn't being nearly as polite as he'd intended. 'But I'm supposed to be telling you things, not the other way round. What would you like to know?'

'Well.' Vaatzes paused. 'We could start with geography and put in the history where it's relevant, or the other way round. Whatever suits you.'

'Geography. All right, here goes.' Miel cast his mind back a long way, to vague recollections of maps he'd paid too little attention to when he was a boy. 'Your city stands at the mouth of a gulf, on the east coast of the continent. On the other three sides you've got plains and marshes, where the rivers drain down from these mountains we're walking up. You'll have observed that the eastern plain-where the battle was-separates two distinct mountain ranges, the north and the south. Eremia Montis is a plateau and a bunch of valleys in the heart of the northern mountains; in the southern range live our closest neighbours and traditional enemies, the Vadani. There's not a lot of difference between us, except for one thing; they're lucky enough to have a massive vein of silver running through the middle of their territory. All we've got is some rather thin grass, sheep and the best horses in the world. With me so far?'

'I think so,' Vaatzes said. 'Go on.'

Miel paused for breath; the climb wasn't getting any easier. 'South of the Vadani,' he said, 'is the desert; and it's a wonderful thing and a blessing, because it forms a natural barrier between us and the people who live in the south. If it wasn't for the desert we'd have to build a wall, and it'd have to be a very high one, with big spikes on top. The southerners aren't nice people.'

'I see,' Vaatzes said. 'In what way?'

'Any way you care to name,' Miel replied. 'They're nomadic, basically they live by stealing each other's sheep; they're barbaric and cruel and there's entirely too many of them. If I tell you we prefer your lot to the southerners, you may get some idea.'

'Right,' Vaatzes said. 'That bad.'

'Absolutely. But, like I said, there's a hundred miles of desert between them and us, so that's all right. Now then; above us, that's to the north of Eremia Montis, you've got the Cure Doce. They're no bother to anybody.'

'I know about them,' Vaatzes interrupted. 'That's where most of our food comes from.'

'That's right. They trade wheat and beans and wine and God knows what else for your trinkets and stuff. We sell them wool and horses, and buy their barley-and their disgusting beer. To the best of my knowledge, they just sort of go on and on into the distance and fade out; the far north of their territory is all snow and ice and what's the word for it, tundra, until you reach the ocean. I have an idea the better quality of falcons come from up there somewhere, but you'd have to ask my cousin Jarnac about that sort of thing. Anyway, that's geography for you.'

'Thank you,' Vaatzes said. 'Can we stop and rest for a minute? We don't have mountains where I come from, just stairs.'

'Of course,' Miel said; he'd been walking a little bit faster than he'd have liked, so as to wear out the effete City type, and his knees were starting to ache. 'We can't stay too long or we'll get left behind, but a minute or two won't hurt. History?'

'Please.'

'History,' Miel said, 'is pretty straightforward. A thousand years ago, or something like that, the mountains were more or less empty, and the ancestors of the Eremians and the Vadani were all one people, living right down south, other side of the desert. When the nomads arrived, they drove us out. It's one of the reasons why we don't like them very much. We crossed the desert-there's lots of good legends about that-and settled in the mountains. Nothing much happened for a while; then there was the most terrific falling-out between us, meaning the Eremians, and the Vadani. Don't ask me what it was all about, but pretty soon it turned into a civil war. We moved into the north mountains and started calling ourselves Eremians, and the civil war stopped being civil and became just plain war. This was long before the silver was discovered, so both sides were pretty evenly matched, and we carried on fighting in a force-of-habit sort of way for generations.'

Vaatzes nodded. 'Like you do,' he said.

'Quite. Then, about three hundred years ago, your lot turned up out of the blue; came over the sea in big ships, as you presumably know better than I do. To begin with, our lot and the Vadani were far too busy beating each other up to notice you were there. It was only when your traders started coming up the mountain and selling us things that we realised you were here to stay. No skin off our noses; we were happy to buy all the things you made, and there was always a chance we could drag you in on our side of the war, if the Vadani didn't beat us to it. Really, it was only-no offence-only when you people started throwing your weight about, trying to push us around and generally acting like you owned the place, that we noticed how big and strong you'd grown. Too late to do anything about it by then, needless to say.'

'When you say throwing our weight about…'

Miel stood up. 'We'd better be getting along, or they'll be wondering where we've got to. Throwing your weight about; well, it started with little things, the way it always does. For instance: when your traders arrived-they came to us back then, we didn't have to go traipsing down the mountain to get ripped off by middlemen-the first thing they had a big success with was cloth. Beautiful stuff you people make, got to hand it to you; anyhow, we'd say, That's nice, I'll take twelve yards, and the bloke would measure it off with his stick, and we'd go home and find we hadn't got twelve yards, only eleven and a bit. Really screws it up when you're making clothes and there's not quite enough fabric. So we'd go storming back next day in a fine old temper, and the trader would explain that the Mezentine yard is in fact two and a smidge inches shorter than the Eremian yard, on account of a yard being a man's stride, and the Eremians have got longer legs. Put like that, you can't object, it's entirely reasonable. Then the trader says, Tell you what, to avoid misunderstandings in the future, how'd it be if you people started using our measurements? We'd say we weren't sure about that, and the trader would explain that he buys and sells all over the place, and it'd make life really tiresome if he had to keep adapting each time he came to a place that had its own weights and measures; so, being completely practical, it'd be far easier for us to change than it'd be for him; also, if he's got to spend time consulting conversion charts or cutting a special stick for Eremian yards, that time'd have to be paid for, meaning a five or ten per cent rise in prices to cover additional costs and overheads. Naturally we said, Fine, we'll use your yard instead of ours; and next it was weights, because there's eighteen ounces in the Eremian pound, and then it was the gallon. Next it was the calendar, because a couple of our months are a few days shorter, so we'd arrange to meet your people on such-and-such a day, and you wouldn't show up. You get the idea, I'm sure.

'Didn't take long before everything was being weighed and measured in Mezentine units, which meant a whole lot of us didn't have a clue how much of anything we were buying, or how much it was really costing us, or even what day of the week it was. Sure, all just little things, one step at a time, like a man walking to the gallows. But the time came when we stopped making our own cloth because yours was cheaper and better; same for all the things we got from you. Then out of the blue the price has shot right up; we complain, and then it's take it or leave it, we've got plenty of customers but you've only got one supplier. So we gave in, started paying the new prices; but when we tried to even things up by asking more for what we had to sell, butter and wool and so forth, it's a whole different story. Next step, your people are interfering in every damn thing. The Duke appoints someone to do a job; your traders turn round and say, We can't work with him, he doesn't like us, choose someone else; and by the way, here's a list of other things you do which we don't approve of, if you want to carry on doing business with us, you'd better change your ways. We're about to tell you where you can stick your manufactured goods when suddenly we realise that your people have been quietly buying up chunks of our country; land, live and dead stock, water rights, you name it. Investment, I believe it's called, and by a bizarre coincidence you use the same word for besieging a castle. So there we were, invested on all sides; we can't tell you to go and screw yourselves without getting your permission first. Throwing your weight around.'