Harry Turtledove - Opening Atlantis

Guards stood in front of the house Neville had appropriated: the biggest one in town. They carried spears taller than they were. The sharp edges of the spearpoints glittered blood-red in the fading light. "So he came, did he?" one of the guards said. "How about that?"

"He came, all right," the crossbowman answered. "See? He's not so dumb as he looks."

"Couldn't prove it by me," the guard said. "Take him on in, then. His Lordship'll let him know what's what."

"Right." The crossbowman gave Edward a little shove. "You heard Peter. Go on in."

"Thank you so much," Edward said. The fellow with the crossbow smirked. Plainly, he didn't recognize irony when he heard it. Too late, Edward realized that might be good luck; had the archer recognized it, he might have made him sorry.

Inside, the Earl of Warwick sat in a chair with a back. That emphasized his noble blood; like most people, Radcliffe had only stools in his house. "Lucy!" Warwick called. "Fetch my guest something to drink!"

"Yes, your Lordship." Lucy Fenner hurried in from the kitchen. The silk gown she wore must have come from England with the exiled earl. It bared too much of her, and clung too tightly to what it didn't display. She lowered her eyes to the ground, and scurried away as soon as she'd set a mug in Edward's hand.

He raised an eyebrow even before he tasted it. The rich bouquet told him what it was. "Did the wine come from England, Lord?" he asked.

Warwick shook his head. "I took it in trade from the Bretons," he replied. "It's horsepiss alongside what a proper vintner could do, mind, but any wine is better than none."

Edward hadn't known the settlers Francois Kersauzon had brought to Atlantis were finally turning out enough wine to turn some loose. "I thank you for your kindness," he said, and surprised himself by more or less meaning it. "Been a good many years since I've drunk anything but beer and ale and barrel-tree sap."

"I deserve better," Warwick said simply. "The one trouble is, getting what I want isn't always cheap."

"Sorry to hear that, your Lordship." As long as the earl was giving him wine, Edward would sound sympathetic.

He thought so, anyhow, till Warwick continued, "Since it isn't, I am going to have to take…certain measures, I suppose you would say."

Maybe the exiled noble hoped the wine would fuzz Edward's wits so he'd blithely accept anything he heard. If that was what Warwick had in mind, he was doomed to disappointment. "What kind of measures, sir?" Radcliffe asked. He still sounded polite, but he was sure he also sounded wary. And with reason, for he was.

Warwick sent him a sour stare. Yes, the noble had wanted him fuddled, all right. Well, no matter what Warwick wanted, he had what he had. He needed only a handful of heartbeats to see as much. "I shall have to start levying a tax on the settlers here," he said regretfully, as if it were Edward's fault that he'd been reduced to such measures.

"A tax?" Edward blurted. He could have sounded no more appalled if Richard Neville had denied that the Son and Holy Ghost were proper Persons of the Trinity. "You can't do that!"

One of the bully boys who'd fetched him hither growled like a dog on a chain. The Earl of Warwick raised a languid-seeming hand, and the soldier fell silent. He still glared in Edward's direction, though, and his knuckles whitened as his hand clutched the hilt of his sword.

"You are a bold man, Radcliffe-a bold man or a fool," Warwick said. "How dare you tell me what I may and may not do? I suggest you think carefully before you answer. Think very carefully, in fact."

"Lord, I could think from now till doomsday and not think you had the right to tax me," Edward said. "I am sorry if my being so plain offends you, but that's the truth. Why, in England the king himself has to ask leave of Parliament before he taxes his people."

Richard Neville's mouth tightened. "I will thank you not to speak of the king in my presence. If you value your neck, Radcliffe, you will honor my-request."

"I don't know if I can, sir, not while we're talking about taxes," Edward said. "How do you claim a power here that he doesn't claim in England?"

"How? Simple." The Earl of Warwick drew from his belt a dagger whose hilt was ornamented with gold wire and began cleaning his nails with the point. "This miserable, godforsaken place isn't England. It's bloody Atlantis, and you people here never tire of telling me so."

"But we are Englishmen, Lord. We have the rights of Englishmen." Till that moment, Edward's main concern had been making sure that England paid no attention to Atlantis. Parliament might have decided to levy taxes here, too, and to whom could he have appealed if it did? To no one at all, as he knew too well.

Warwick eyed him like a cat watching a mouse it was playing with but hadn't yet decided to kill. "You claim those rights when you feel like it. Otherwise, you're glad England lies across the sundering sea."

That arrow quivered in the center of the target. Edward couldn't, and wouldn't, admit as much. He took a deep breath. "You are not our king, Lord. You have not got the right to do this."

Warwick went on cleaning his fingernails. The dagger was slim, pointed, and sharp-quite a bit like him. "I have the might to do it, sirrah, as you will learn to your sorrow if you prove lunatic enough to challenge me."

"We are Englishmen, Lord," Edward Radcliffe repeated stubbornly. "You have no right to steal from us this way-and that is what it is, stealing. If you try to take what is ours, we will appeal to his Majesty."

Even as he said the words, he wondered whether that was a good idea. The Earl of Warwick, with a small force of soldiers behind him, was an annoyance, and no small one. But the King of England could call on the whole strength of the island if he chose-and if he wasn't caught up in the coils of civil war. He might prove a more dangerous master than any local lord.

Or he might not, if the local lord made as much trouble as this one was doing.

The threat didn't seem to worry Warwick. He neither flinched nor paled. Nor did he raise his voice as he said, "I will kill every one of you if you try." He was just stating a fact; he might as well have said, Red-crested eagles will kill honkers if they can.

If I am a honker, by God, I can honk all the way across the ocean, Edward thought. "Meaning no disrespect, Lord, but that is a silly thing to say," he replied.

"Silly, is it?" That roused the noble's ire. "Explain yourself, and quickly-you are talking for your life."

"We're fishermen, for heaven's sake," Edward answered. "Cod are what brought us to Atlantis in the first place. We have lots of boats, and they can sail across the Atlantic. How do you propose to stop them all?"

Richard Neville's jaw dropped. Edward almost laughed in his face. The only thing that stopped him was the fear that he would never leave this room alive if he did. The Earl of Warwick plainly was a calculating man; you didn't get the name Kingmaker if you couldn't see past the end of your nose. But Warwick hadn't seen something here-his astonishment and dismay showed as much.

"You!" he said thickly. "I'll hold you to blame if boats go out and don't come back."

"Then bring Bishop John here now so he can shrive me," Edward said. "Boats go out all the damned time. They stay away a long time, too. They have to-otherwise, we'd go hungry. How will you know if one's gone to England and not just to the fishing banks? You won't, not till it's too late for you."

By the way Warwick's jaw worked, he might have been gnawing on a piece of meat that proved tougher than he'd expected. "Get out," he told Edward. "Just-get out. But if you think you can stop me from levying taxes when I have a mind to, you'd best think again."

"You will do what you think best, your Lordship," Radcliffe said. And so will we. He didn't say that out loud. Maybe Warwick would figure it out for himself. Or maybe it too would come as a surprise to him. If it did-too bad.