Excerpt (Chapter 1-3)
There was a beverage native to Ordallia, kafé, which was made from the slow cooking of beans in water. Ehlrig filled a dented kettle from the water-bag he had at his belt, and they added the foreign beans that they’d managed to scrounge; when Wiegraf Folles finally returned to their little temporary hideout, the smell had begun to permeate the half-collapsed wine cellar and his eyes widened.
“My God, I haven’t smelled that in years.” He pulled up a crate to the fire they’d built, and Cerya handed him a stein with which to receive the strange brew. “For this alone, the long journey has been worth it. My thanks to you.”
“It was simple enough; you and I have in common that we’ve sampled the tastes of Ordallia in earlier years.” Cerya wrapped her hands around her own tin cup, which conveyed a warmth that was lacking in the stone bolthole. “The duration and trajectory of your campaign is well-known to many amongst your fellow commoners, who’d hear tales sung in taverns as you cut your way eastward, putting them to the blade. I could only suspect, like myself, it was one of the few things you’d miss.”
“Other things, as well, in truth. The caravans of Ordallia were full of music unlike our own, even after being taken. Even their sad songs were lovely.” He sipped slowly, cherishing the drink, seeming to enjoy the scent even more than the taste. “Before Dhalikar, they were some of the best days, in truth – if only for the comfort of my naivety, for believing in the innate honor of my purpose.”
“You miss also the feel of specie in your hands,” said Ehlrig with a sneer.
Wiegraf laughed. “Well, that’s what it’s all about, is it not? The nobility affect a posture that they are above Capital, but that is because they possess it. To have coin is to have freedom – the freedom to exist beyond one’s base desires.”
Cerya rubbed at her lips, scratched along them with a nail.
“We only wanted what we were owed.” The Shepherd took a long draught. “Even now, I believe they can be made to answer for it, and is that not why we assemble? Revolution, too, is honest work, and we’d be paid for it.”
“Captain Folles...” She placed her cup down on the ground by her feet. “We did call upon you and your band, that you would inspire the people here, as you have in your own movement in the west. And you have succeeded in that, as you could do naught else; you have my thanks for that. But I grow concerned that our movements are not alike in purpose.”
Wiegraf closed his eyes and sighed, as though he’d expected it, which only made Cerya angrier. “What grievance has the Order of the Ebon Eye?”
“Revolution is not a dinner party, nor an artwork; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, respectfully, or modestly. It is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” She tried to rein in the trembling of her hands. “You seek to be the conscience of the king, in truth...”
“Or queen,” mumbled Ehlrig into his cup.
“...But royalty is without conscience, for they rule over the people by very definition.” She glared at Ehlrig. “You tell the Mob that to burn a home to catch a thief is folly, but our home has not a thief, but an assassin. When the sword of rebellion is drawn, the sheath should be thrown away.”
Wiegraf finished his kafé, delicately placed his receptacle upon one of the stone stairs out of the cellar, and smiled sadly. “My sister and I were born of the commons, as you and all well know. We grew up in a small port town in Gallionne... it is here that I should discourse on the trade of our parents, but in truth I can’t remember it, for they died of the plague that Romanda brought to shores, and I scarce remember them at all. We lived in an upturned cask just like one of those,” and here he pointed to one of the giant barrels still remaining the wine cellar, long since cracked and emptied; its long-rotten remains were now home to a rat’s nest. “that existed in an alley behind a pub called ‘The Coeurl’s Whisker,’ at least until we could no longer fit within it. But when I stand before the Mob, many of them doubt – they think me of the nobility.”
“Anyone bathed and lettered can pass for Quality,” said Cerya with a shrug.
“Indeed. And Milleuda made certain I was both, though the latter proved more long-lasting than the former. We would run errands for the local abuna in exchange for my being taught my letters and figures. And later, I was able to teach her. But no, ‘tis something else. For I was born with a defect of sorts, in that I can understand their ways and thoughts. It is a sort of cleverness, or perhaps cunning, put to the work of Lucavi in its idleness. But understanding it became useful after we answered the call to service. To be made useful to officers, and then to their officers, and then to their lords.” He looked at his dirty fingernails in bemusement. “Do you know why we were not paid, when we came home from war?”
Cerya frowned.
Ehlrig looked uneasily from one to the other. “The kingdom is... broke, is it not?”
“Aye, of a sort.” Wiegraf shrugged. “But consider the wealth that the nobility still has. The candlesticks not yet melted down, the bills of exchange yet held in escrow or, even further, wrapped in oiled leathers and buried beneath flower patches. It is true that most of the hard money, the actual coinage, remaining is a pittance being handed back and forth above our heads. But in Lesalia is a great mint which does not make new coins, with either Atkascha on the face.”
“So then...”
Wiegraf nodded to Ehlrig’s beverage. “That there is your answer.”
There was a brief pause, as even now Wiegraf timed his lines for dramatic effect. His sobriquet was well-earned, but Cerya did not enjoy being shepherded. A hound was barking somewhere. “The first time I had that drink,” he finally continued, “it was not so long after crossing the border of Zelmonia, where as you,” to Cerya, “can readily attest, the Ordallian occupation had spread some of the nation’s creature comforts there along with all of the oppression. Reaching that point alone had been an adventure, about which we could discourse for some hours, but when our push reached that point, it was the first of the month, and I, along with the rest of my men, received our stipend. We had bivouacked near a village, and as one might expect, we were quick to spend much of what we’d received. Some fair majority spent it on carnal exchanges readily on offer. I had strolled into a market, where a young woman convinced me this strange brew was worth a gil, though that serving had cut its bitterness with various spices.” He leaned back. “Or rather, it was not a gil-farthing at all that I paid, but Ordallian currency, called ‘goth,’ for Zelmonia had not yet been won back – and then lost again.”
Ehlrig scratched at his beard, not comprehending. Cerya, meanwhile, had begun to do so partway through his tale, and now rubbed at her eyes, trying to slow the spinning sensation that had ensorceled her mind. “An invading army must be paid in the local currency, for otherwise a soldier cannot spend. And so you mean to suggest that Ivalice mints no more coinage...”
“The Skies did not sign a treaty so much as a surrender.” Wiegraf’s fingers were entwined. “The nation’s army is largely discharged. They refuse to pay what they owe because to mint new coin is to introduce currency that, in someone’s mind, could be seized to pay an army that chose instead to invade us.”
“That is insane.” Cerya shook her head. “I’ve no head for markets but...”
Wiegraf stood. “I expect in a year’s time or better, the mint will run again. I’ve sources that suggest Gollund’s mines are pulling up more than coal, of late. But in a year’s time, how many veterans of the Fifty Years War will die hungry? The economy will run along, but on the backs of our brothers. You can believe me naive, Cerya Phoraena. But I serve not my own honor, but those of my men, who marched out of Hell to find no food in Heaven. We must win the hearts of the nobility, and of the Crown, because to do otherwise is to starve.” He placed a hand upon the pommel of his sword as he mounted the stairs, looking again like the statue’s figure he’d cut on the fountainhead. “Consider whose end that would serve. I fought in war, and I’d not lose this one to win a battle.” And then he ascended, and was gone.
