Part 14 (2/2)

Furio was completely still apart from his hands, which were squeezed tightly together. ”Once he's set up and making things, you'll have all the stock you can sell. That's the whole point.”

”Sure,” Marzo growled. ”And when's that going to be? He hasn't given me a date.”

”Ask him,” Furio said, ”not me. I'm going to bed.”

Furio stood up, but made no move towards the door. ”Keeping him in food and tools is one thing,” Marzo said. ”Financing his hobbies is another matter.”

”What's that supposed to mean?”

Marzo reached for a cup, standing next to a half-empty bottle of cider brandy. ”He used my bacon and my flour,” he said, ”not to mention a harrow worth six thalers to buy something off Calo Brotti.”

”What?”

”Calo wouldn't say,” Marzo replied. ”But what the h.e.l.l would he have that your pal would possibly want? Couldn't be anything for the grand adventure. My guess is it was a falcon or a hunting dog, some sort of aristocratic c.r.a.p like that.”

”Where would Calo get-”

”I don't know, do I?” Marzo shouted. ”That's not the point. The point is, the supplies are supposed to be for the factory.”

”The supplies,” Furio said quietly, ”are part payment on the sword, which is worth more than this whole colony put together. You might care to bear that in mind. And Gig can't be doing with hunting and falconry, he told me so. That's Luso's stuff and he doesn't want anything to do with it.”

Marzo looked blankly at him for a moment, then grinned. ”You know,” he said, ”your pal may say he can't stand his brother, but I reckon those two've got more in common than you think.”

”You don't know anything about him,” Furio said, and left the room.

Uncle Marzo was right, of course. It had always been there, but ever since Gig had left the Tabletop it had been growing stronger. He couldn't call it a resemblance, because he knew nothing about the rest of the met'Ocs apart from what Gig had told him, and in the circ.u.mstances his evidence was unreliable. A tendency? Playing with words.

He sat on the porch and looked out into the dark street. Fifty yards away, there was a light in the upper window of the livery; he couldn't be bothered to speculate about what it signified. He considered the resemblance or the tendency. He'd always been aware of it, of course, but he hadn't really thought much about it until they met the crazy old man at the savages' camp. The old fool didn't once look at me, Furio told himself, only at Gig. I might as well not have been there. No, amend that. Maybe that's how the aristocracy treat their servants. They're aware of their presence but they don't talk to them or look at them unless they want something, and if a man shows up with his valet or his groom, you wouldn't talk to the servant in the master's presence, it'd probably be appalling bad manners or something. The old lunatic treated me like I was Gig's servant. Quite likely a.s.sumed I must be. Like talking to like. Of course, the old man was off his head-hardly surprising, given his life story-but Gig... Gig accepted it. He wasn't offended, he didn't think it was funny, a.s.sumed I'd accept it too. The tendency. The met'Oc running all the way through him, like the core in an apple. Running away from home didn't mean he'd changed. Basic fact of life: no matter how far you run, you always take yourself with you.

Not that it mattered. Did it? No, because it had always been there, the tendency, and Furio had always been aware of it, and it hadn't mattered before. It only registered with him now because...

Why was was Gig doing all this? Furio had a.s.sumed it was because he was bored. He'd been planning to leave the colony, go back Home under a false name, but there wouldn't be a s.h.i.+p till spring, so he'd found something to do. Maybe-it was plausible. The scale of the thing didn't signify. A met'Oc wouldn't concern himself with the fact that he was turning the world upside down for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, and anything small and trivial wouldn't be sufficiently entertaining. But there were problems with that hypothesis. The factory was a long-term project. If Gig still intended to get on the spring s.h.i.+p, he'd leave before the factory was in full swing and having its dramatic effect on the colony; he'd miss all the fun. Besides, he'd have wasted at least part of his share of the sword money (though there'd be so much money he'd hardly notice). But what other reason could there possibly be? All that stuff about revolution, independence, freedom without bloodshed. Well, big concepts and big dreams and changing the world for ever were all very met'Oc. In fact, he could just imagine them taking enormous delight in Home losing a profitable colony. Serve the government right for banis.h.i.+ng a n.o.ble house to a distant, barbarous land. Not a primary motivation, perhaps, but distinctly plausible as a secondary one. Gig doing all this? Furio had a.s.sumed it was because he was bored. He'd been planning to leave the colony, go back Home under a false name, but there wouldn't be a s.h.i.+p till spring, so he'd found something to do. Maybe-it was plausible. The scale of the thing didn't signify. A met'Oc wouldn't concern himself with the fact that he was turning the world upside down for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, and anything small and trivial wouldn't be sufficiently entertaining. But there were problems with that hypothesis. The factory was a long-term project. If Gig still intended to get on the spring s.h.i.+p, he'd leave before the factory was in full swing and having its dramatic effect on the colony; he'd miss all the fun. Besides, he'd have wasted at least part of his share of the sword money (though there'd be so much money he'd hardly notice). But what other reason could there possibly be? All that stuff about revolution, independence, freedom without bloodshed. Well, big concepts and big dreams and changing the world for ever were all very met'Oc. In fact, he could just imagine them taking enormous delight in Home losing a profitable colony. Serve the government right for banis.h.i.+ng a n.o.ble house to a distant, barbarous land. Not a primary motivation, perhaps, but distinctly plausible as a secondary one.

The light in the livery window went out, and Furio treated it as his own curfew. He went upstairs to bed and found he was too tired to sleep.

When he arrived at the factory site next morning, he was stunned to find that the road was finished. It had only been light for an hour or so.

”We started early,” Gignomai said cheerfully, leaning on his axe. Furio saw that both his hands were bound with cloth-blisters. ”And we finally figured out how to drop a tree against the lean, so it doesn't get hung up in the branches. All you do is...”

Furio didn't pay attention to the explanation, which was complex and involved technical terms he didn't recognise. When it was over, he said, ”You seem pretty cheerful. All of you,” he added, looking round. ”Yesterday I was convinced they'd all leg it during the night.”

”Ah.” Gignomai beamed at him. ”I had an idea. Your fault, actually.”

”My-”

Gignomai nodded. ”You scuttled away back to your nice clean sheets and left me with them,” he said. ”No option under the circ.u.mstances but to make conversation. I ended up making them all partners.”

Furio tried to repeat the word, but it came out as a splutter.

”Junior partners, of course,” Gignomai rea.s.sured him. ”Very junior. Each of them gets one per cent of the net profit. It's all right,” he added, ”it's no big deal.”

”Really.”

”Really. If we do well, they get rich; if we don't, they're no worse off. They love the idea, naturally. They reckon that come Independence, they're going to be the new merchant aristocracy. Well, you can see for yourself,” he added. Furio had to admit the point-a dozen big trees felled and cleared in a couple of hours suggested a degree of enthusiasm that hadn't been evident the previous day. ”And what's eight per cent to you and me? Fleabites.”

Furio was counting in his head: eight per cent. But aloud he said, ”Did they ask, or did you offer?”

”I offered,” Gignomai replied. ”If they'd asked for it, I'd have told them to go to h.e.l.l.”

”I see. And this was all my fault.”

As a road, it had its drawbacks. Quite soon, when the rain started to fall, it'd be too soft for carts; they'd get down the hill easily enough, but not back up again. (”But that's fine,” Gignomai said. ”Once we've got the lumber and the provisions down here we won't need anything else before we've built a raft, and then we can fetch stuff in by river.”) Even so, it was something they'd set out to do and achieved, ahead of time and without quarrels or bloodshed. They spent the rest of the day levelling the ground for the main shed-hard, miserable work, but Gignomai personally set a ferocious pace, and the men felt obliged to keep up.

”It's what Stheno does,” Gignomai explained. ”Half the time you want to cut his throat just to make him slow down, but come the finish, when you realise how much you've got done in a day, you feel so good about it you don't mind. And it's how you feel at the end that matters.”

Furio wasn't quite sure what to make of that, so he made an excuse and found something to do on the far side of the site. As he worked (thumping stones into the ground with a heavy wooden post; nature hadn't equipped him for arduous manual labour) he ransacked his mind for the thing that was bothering him, something Gig had said earlier that hadn't quite made sense.

Eight. Eight per cent.

Well, Lario, Senza and Turzo formerly employed at the sawmill; Ranio and the fat man whose name he hadn't managed to learn yet, from Derio's forge; Pollo and the boy (Areno or Arano) from the wheelwright's shop. Seven. But Gignomai had distinctly said eight per cent.

He rested the log against his shoulder and looked at his hands. There were soft white bubbles, like the ghastly pale mushrooms that grow in marshy ground, at the base of three of his fingers. n.o.body ever got blisters working at the store. He felt in his pocket for a handkerchief to wrap round them, but couldn't find it. A few yards away, Pollo the wheelwright and the useless boy were on their knees in the deep wet leaf mould, carefully positioning a flat stone they'd fished out of the riverbed. I should feel guilty, he thought, I'm not pulling my weight, I can't keep up, I shouldn't be here. That made him think about the savages-dead, or not born yet, shouldn't be there, either way, and therefore, by the exercise of logic, weren't there. A reasonable explanation that made sense of the world, which just happened to be wrong.

That made him think about the met'Oc, who had no place here, and Gig, who had no place with them any more, no place anywhere else, so-eminently practical, supremely met'Oc confident-he was building a brand new place just for himself, in the gap between the colony and the savages. And why not?

He tried clenching his hands like claws as he gripped the post. It didn't help.

When it was too dark to see what they were doing, Gignomai called a halt for the day. Someone got a fire going. Someone else drifted down to the river to fill a pot with water. Furio waited until Gignomai had finished talking to, encouraging, cracking a joke with each of the partners in turn (the junior partners, but the term had stuck in his mind now). Then he sat down beside him next to the fire and asked, ”Gig, where's Aurelio?”

Gignomai was trying to ease the boot off his left foot, but it was too sodden with sweat and damp to move. ”What?”

”Aurelio. That's his name, isn't it? The blacksmith from your place. Didn't I hear he'd run away and joined you?”

Gignomai was giving his boot his full attention. ”You wouldn't catch Aurelio running anywhere,” he said, ”not with his trick knee.”

”Gig?”

”Joining us later,” Gignomai said. He made a last, desperate, heroic effort and the boot came free. ”Wouldn't be much use to us at this stage of the operation,” he went on. ”And if he did his back in lugging tree trunks about, he wouldn't be fit for the work only he can do.”

But there were two other smiths: Ranio and the fat man. ”Right,” Furio said. ”I just wondered.”

”You were doing the maths,” Gig said, with a grin.

”Yes.”

”He'll earn his share,” Gig said. ”You know, I think I'll leave the other boot where it is, rather than kill myself trying to s.h.i.+ft it. After all, I'll only have to put it back on again in the morning.”

<script>