“This morning,” she said. “It was quite unexpected, indeed. And Lord Merrin went with him.”
“Did he, now. Hmm. Have you eaten? Shall I have some luncheon brought? Tea?”
She was about to decline when she realized that accepting something from his hand would allow her to pass her note without a watcher being aware of the fact.
“Yes, please,” she said. “Tea would be lovely.”
“If you care for lenanberry, that’s what I’m having,” he said, and she thought he looked at her very keenly.
“One of my favorites,” she lied, and waited as he rang for another thick pottery mug to be brought. He poured a mug-full for her and handed it to her across the desk. When she accepted it, the note was in her hand and she slipped it into his.
He made it vanish as if he was a conjurer.
Then he pressed her for details of the morning’s departure—how had Kordas gotten the news? How many people did Merrin have with him? All the while, sipping his own tea, and finishing his luncheon.
“Well,” he said, when the food was gone. “I’m glad you came to tell me. I’ll just skip making my reports to that worthless steward of Merrin’s and send them directly to Lady Isla. Care to come see the Empress?”
For a moment she couldn’t imagine what on earth he was talking about. The Empress? What was the Emperor’s wife doing here? And why? And then she remembered that the Empress was Squire Lesley’s Duchy-wide famous pig.
She still couldn’t imagine why he’d take her to see a pig, but then she remembered what Isla had said, that if they had anything important to tell her, Lesley and Count Endicrag would take her somewhere it was safe to talk.
“I’d be honored,” she said, and put down the mug of untasted tea as she stood up.
He stood too. “Come along, then. She’s got piglets. Do you like piglets?”
Properly roasted . . . she thought, and stifled a slightly hysterical laugh. “I would love to see her piglets,” she said instead, and he came around to her side of the desk and offered her his arm, as if he was escorting her to a ball.
They strolled through the manor, out the back into the kitchen garden, and from there down a path that ended at a small stone building about the size of a room, surrounded by a stone wall. After a moment, she realized this was a pigsty. A truly palatial pigsty. And although she could not see the pigs in it, she soon was able to read the name carved above the door.
The Empress.
Sure enough, when Lesley led her to the wall, which was at exactly a comfortable height to rest her arms on and lean against, there was the sow in all her immaculate glory, large and pink and very, very clean. The sty smelled of nothing worse than clean straw. And the piglets were surprisingly cute, nosing around in the straw in imitation of their mother, although they surely weren’t old enough to want anything other than milk.
“Handy thing, this,” said the Squire. “You’ll find a couple of places in Valdemar like this. Lovely little circles of stone, absolutely dead to scrying. Anyone who tries can see what’s here, but won’t be able to hear a bloody damned thing. Now, young lady, what in the seven Hells is going on? Are we putting off the Plan?”
“Nothing of the sort,” she assured him. “If anything, it might be going faster than we thought. Ivar Endicrag has been to the site, and found a lake perfect for our purposes in every possible way and more.”
“Wait a moment, let me read the note,” he said, pulling it out of his waistband and unfolding it. He perused it for a very long time, and smiled slightly.
Then instead of talking to her, he pulled something else out of a pocket, and wrapped the note tightly around it. She got a glimpse of cheese before he leaned over the wall, held it out, and made a “pshpshpshing” sound at the sow.
The Empress ambled over, sniffed his offering, and daintily accepted it, devouring paper, cheese, and all.
“I don’t suppose you’ve been told the Plan?” he said.
She shook her head. “Not in full, but I’m told none of us have. All that I know is that Kordas wants to get as many people as he can as far away from the Empire as possible. And that this is something that goes all the way back, perhaps to his grandfather’s time, and certainly to his father’s.”
Lesley nodded. “It does, and my folk have been in on it from the beginning. We’re evacuating by barge, because barges can carry more than wagons and make better shelters. That is why we needed a place where we could put a water-Gate down. First we needed to find a good spot. Then we needed to get someone across to explore and find us a body of water. After that comes the Foothold Gate, and then it’s up to the mages to do whatever it is they do to establish a proper water-Gate on the shore, and maybe another for foot traffic. Once they do that, Valdemar Manor will start transporting barges full of supplies and people to establish a camp across. This will take a tremendous amount of supplies, far more than people can bring for themselves. Depending on how many people we can evacuate, they’ll have to spread themselves out so we don’t overwhelm the area with people and animals and all the shit they produce.” He raised an eyebrow. “I mean that literally. Kordas’s father was the first one to see the sanitation problem and allow for it. ‘If you’re to manage a civilized people, start with the sewage,’ he told us all early on. As a pig farmer, I’m acutely aware of such a problem. Fortunately, shit itself is a valuable resource when it comes to crops, so the challenge isn’t just getting rid of it, but managing it. We’ll need to establish a territory at least as big as this Duchy if we are going to prosper.”
“As big as this Duchy?” she said, shocked. “But—that looked like it was all wilderness! And—how?”
“It might look that way, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people there already. We’ll have to deal with that as we go along. It might be easier if there are people and we can negotiate with them to mutual satisfaction. After all, we do have plenty of people who are from all manner of crafts and so on.” He shrugged. “If not, there are two big things. We’ll need to get as far as we can from the Gate we put up, simply because whatever we did, the Emperor’s mages might be able to follow. And because our—call ’em sanitary facilities—are going to be crude at best, we’ll need to spread ourselves out. If we poison our water, we might as well slit our own throats and get it over with, otherwise it’ll be a miserable lingering death for about half of us, if not more. As to how, Kordas, and I suppose Isla, have that all mapped out. All I know is my part: my people, my kin, and my pigs.”
“It seems impossible,” she faltered.
He shrugged again. “The Emperor’s Army can do it. He can put three legions in the same place without wrecking it. We reckon to have about five thousand less than that, if we can get everyone out. We just have to allow for animals as well as people, but again, the Emperor’s Army has horses, mules, and a fair number of food animals with it, otherwise the supply problems would be endless.”