This is the twenty-eighth chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
Andrei stood as the master of the house entered, served coffee. This was served in the Turkish style, in a steaming cezve of beaten copper.
"My Master, My Mistress, good morning." The rope merchant cleared his throat. "Should you be talking like that?"
Andrei recognized the tones of a man more used to giving orders than asking polite questions. He appreciated the effort.
"I was just telling him," said Kori. "No. Sit, Chichko Arsene."
She called the most prominent Good in Tatar Pazardjik 'Little uncle Arsen.' Kori must have spent most of every summer here with this man. It was kind of her to remind Andrei of his name.
"Arsen," he repeated to himself as the old man fetched a low table and two little stools from a corner. Andrei joined him on a stool, while Kori lounged on the wall-bench behind them. The people here weren't going to throw out all of their Turkish customs just because they weren't Turkish anymore. Still, they could have found a chair somewhere.
"What is it the Good say?" he asked. "We do not embed our words in the tongues of Fools?"
Kori grimaced. "That's not exactly what we say."
"Why not?" Andrei passed her one of three tiny, heavily decorated cups to Kori.
She passed it back. "Sweeten it, husband."
Arsen bowed his head. "My Master, we are not a bold people. Ours is the dagger in the darkness, not the saber glittering at the head of an army."
So, this man was not of the Hadean camp of Nikolai and the giggling leather merchant of Peshtera. Arsen was of the old school. A hider-in-darkness.
"I am here to change you." Andrei spooned a dollop of the milk-colored, honey-textured nougat that the Bulgarians called white jam into Kori's cup. "The Good can no longer stay pure, separate, and secret. You can't hide in your caves and rituals." He straightened his spine. "I was pulled into your shadows so I could pull you out of them."
Kori shot him a surprised look, her cheeks flushing. Andrei smiled and gave her her coffee with a small flourish. Yes, I was listening that night in Peshtera.
He turned back to Uncle Arsen. "Our first question is this: why should anyone else want to join the Bessian army?"
Arsen glared at him. "I cannot stop you from blaspheming, My Master, but it demeans you."
Andrei met the old man's eyes. "Is that what you'll tell the recruits? Die for us, kill for us, but don't say our name?"
Arsen looked to Kori for help. "I thought we had agreed to call ourselves Hadeans in the tongues of Fools."
"And will you call our recruits and fellow subjects 'fools'?" asked Andrei. "That will only make them nostalgic if they served in the Russian army."
"Setting aside the question of what we call outsiders," said Kori, "I agree that Hades is not the best face for our new nation to wear. I suggest the Rhodopian Federation. In every language, it would be easy to understand."
"Won't that look like we're laying claim to this entire mountain range?" asked Andrei.
"Well," said Kori. "We can invade the eastern Rhodopes later."
"It would be uncomfortably similar to the Good name for our Holy Mountain."
Andrei decided some arrogance was called for. "I am less concerned, sir, with your comfort than I am with winning this war." He allowed them to stare angrily at him while he picked up his own cup. "Last night I went down into the basement of this house and I received a prophesy."
"The darkness knows," said Arsen.
In other words, we were eavesdropping, My Master, while you talked to yourself.
Andrei tapped the rim of his coffee cup. "The Unseen spoke to me, not in some ancient language but in my mother tongue of Russian, and he said, 'Bessia and Death.' If you have a problem with embedding, take it up with him."
"That isn't how prophesy works," said Kori. "We have traditions. We have sacred rules."
"The world has rules, too. Can you imagine a battlefield with officers shouting orders and stumbling over which language to use? Or before the battle when the soldiers get drunk together and swear they'll die for each other and one of them says the wrong word and the others slap him in the face?"
Arsen made a dismissive gesture. "We can all speak Bulgarian and Turkish, and the Turks and the Bulgarians can speak each other's languages as well."
"But eventually, some outsider will have to hear the Bessian language!"
Kori flinched. "Stop doing that!"
"And outsiders will have to speak it, too. You can't deny your language to…how many? Two thirds of your fellow citizens?"
He peered, not into Arsen's face, but Kori's. The old man had spent thirty years running the city under the light of day, but Kori lived half her life in caves. She wasn't as bad at schooling her expression as Nikolai, but her guilty, hopeless expression was clear.
Andrei nodded and turned back to Arsen. "How many Bulgarians are there in Tatar Pazardzjik?"
"One thousand four hundred households, My Master." His eyes crinkled. "The number we gave the census-takers is slightly higher, of course."
"Of course. And Turks?"
"About a third of that, My Master."
That would make things harder. Andrei made circular motions with his coffee cup, as if it was the reel of a fishing rod. "Anybody else?"
"Three hundred seventy Gypsy households and a handful of Jews. Fewer than forty households. A few Armenians."
Andrei looked up, calculating. "Which means at very most three thousand fighting men, but given the war, likely far fewer."
Arsen wagged his head slowly in assent.
"And how many Good?" asked Andrei.
"Three hundred forty-two households, My Master," Arsen admitted, "but most of our men are still with us."
Andrei grimaced and took a sip of his coffee. He crunched the grounds between his molars and grimaced harder.
"You have to wait for the grounds to settle," said Kori.
"I thought I had."
"You were gesturing quite a lot with the cup."
"We might be able to procure black tea, My Master," said Arsen.
"Never mind about that," said Andrei. "The numbers you've given me don't add up. You, I mean, we, the Good, are not one third of the population. You're saying we're less than half of that."
"Peshtera has more of us," said Kori, "and there are other villages."
"But this is the largest town in the region and it won't furnish us with a single brigade." Andrei forced himself to crunch on another bitter sip. "All infantry, I'm assuming. And that's only if we're lucky and all the fighting men haven't already been killed, and if we're very clever in convincing them to fight with us and each other. Because, why should they?"
"The other options are worse," said Kori. "What protection would Armenians or Gypsies get under the Sultan or the Tsar?"
Andrei swallowed another mouthful. "What about the Bulgarians under the Tsar and the Turks under the Sultan? That's why we fought this whole damned war."
Arsen gave him a sly smile. "Did it work, My Master? Are the Bulgarians free now?"
Andrei looked from one sullen face to the other, and composed his expression and voice to maximum pressure. This was when the patient refused to believe in the gangrene. And when the patient was a whole nation.
"Don't depend on the Tsar and the Sultan to make mistakes for you. Us. We have to do active good. We have to give a country to everyone: Good, Bulgarian, Turkish, it can't matter. Either we find common cause with our neighbors or we die."
"My Master, we all become servants in the House of the Dead, given time."
Andrei drew in his breath to argue. How, he didn't know. Probably just repeat his thesis again, more loudly. But Kori put a finger to the back of his hand.
"What is a Fool?" Her voice was calm, clear, and didactic. "A Fool is someone who does not take what the Wealthy One gives. And who would refuse gold? Who would turn away from the green sprouts when they are pushed from the ground, or ignore the sweet water of the mountain spring? Who would refuse death, when it comes?"
Andrei wasn't sure if those rhetorical questions were with or against his argument. Neither, apparently, did Arsen.
"You command us to kill the Fools, My Mistress?" he glanced at Andrei. "It won't be easy."
Kori clicked her tongue in negation. "I mean that our people are already," she cleared her throat but continued in French. "Already Bessian, whether they know it or not."
Arsen closed his eyes and slumped as if a great weight had been put on his shoulders. But his head rocked from side to side. "My Mistress," he said in agreement and defeat. "My Master, how can we give them Bessia?"
Andrei put his hand over his heart. He could feel the coffee working in him. Dark and deep, perhaps, but not slow.
"This is what we are," he said. "Pumping hearts, twitching brains, sacks of organs that spill out at the slightest provocation. Even in the very best of circumstances, it only takes us a hundred years to fall to pieces."
"He used to be an army doctor," explained Kori.
Andrei went on. "We're thrown into this world without any idea what to do with it. All we know is that we love everything the world lacks, and hate everything the world gives freely. The Sun is harsh. The Wine births madness. The Earth waits to swallow us all.
"I asked you why should an army join us, but first you have to ask of yourselves. Why should you join them? Why should the Good be strong, and not weak? Why not hide in the shadows and close our eyes? Because the sickle will fall. On you, on the ones you love. At some point, inevitably, they will cry out to you. Will you be able to save them?"
He met Arsen's eyes.
"Will our ears be sharp enough to hear the call? Will our minds be clear and our hearts generous enough to give it? Will our hands be strong and skillful enough to do anything good at all in this harsh, mad, grim world?"
The old man smiled slightly and sat back. "When I asked 'how,'" he said, "I was thinking of tax systems and army levies."
No, he hadn't been. He'd been asking for a reason to bother with taxes and armies. But Andrei matched the smile of the leader of the Good in Pazardjik. "I'm open to suggestions."
***
"He's offering them subscriptions?"
Nikolai's voice painted the walls of the cavern with echoes. The bare patches on the walls where he'd scraped away a larger dose than usual of the pale moss. The pool, ripples not yet calmed from his most recent mediation. The two trembling priests.
"Yes, Elder Brother," said Murad. "Like to an insurance company."
"Or a newspaper," flailed Bogdan.
None of these words existed in the Good Language, and had to be awkwardly calqued. Selling 'under-writings' like to a 'with-ownership' of 'in-sure-ness.' Or a 'day-of-thing.'
Nikolai had to pull apart the Good neologisms, figure out the Latin or French roots they corresponded to, then put them back together. But this was well. Important issues required deep thought.
"The Mistress and Master will go before the people of Tatar Pazardjik, Good and Fool alike, and they say, 'let us protect each other.'"
"It's an exchange," said Murad, now on firmer linguistic ground. "In return for fees, they promise to give access to common goods such as our communication network, contract enforcement, and disaster relief."
Nikolai snorted. "With a pension system to come, I suppose, like the Prussians?"
The priests hummed, trying to work out 'system of with-touch.'
"Think about the Greek," snapped Nikolai. "Like a high-interest, long-term investment account."
"Aha," said Murad. "Pensions, yes, guaranteed by a central, um, bank."
That came out as "public treasure-horde," which was almost a contradiction in terms.
"Or, uh, a public money-bench?" tried Bogdan, who spoke German.
"I know what you mean." Nikolai reached out to drum the nearest wall with his nails. "Let me think."
He closed his eyes, not that that made a difference, and listened to the mountain breathing around him. Windmills creaked, driving fans. Melt-water rushed through pipes. Priests ate, slept, worked, prepared for war.
How hard it was to prepare an avalanche. Nikolai had spent his life piling people in just the right stacks, binding them together with retaining walls of pride, obedience, anger, and greed, building the potential energy of his people until the mountain crackled with potential energy. And not only Nikolai, of course. He would set into motion plans which had been laid by every high priest of the Sacred Depths, back to the time when a mountain shepherdess had stumbled out of a cave, crying her prophesy.
Now, the Maiden no longer spoke through her vessel. Alone in her head and drunk with vernal sunlight, of Kori had cooked up some ridiculous, romantic plan with her paramour. Nikolai had expected them to simply flee, and arranged assassins to kill him and bring her back. Simple.
But the woman still called "Mistress" and her pet Fool weren't begging for asylum in Vienna, they were in Tatar Pazardjik, selling subscriptions to a central insurer. They were building a nation.
Bessia. Nikolai knew the Fool, the cad, the drunken reprobate had made it his official policy to blaspheme. It was the very least of his vile sins, and Andrei would pay for it. Pay for it with all the rest.
"The Fool himself is a sign from the Wealth Giver," he told them. "A symbol. Don't you see? He is the soldier. The Great Power. The conqueror. He would trample our ancient ways. Split our lands apart! He would take," choking, "he takes!"
Brother Bogdan turned. "Brother Murad, would you—"
"Listen to me! The Fool takes what he wants for himself and tells us it was our idea. Brothers, he is only the first!"
What was that whisper in his ear?
Nikolai Igorevich, you is the second.
Nikolai clawed a hand through his hair.
"Elder Brother," said Murad. "Please slow your breathing."
Nikolai rubbed his tingling fingers to his nose. Water. A spring of pure water. It would come up, yes, up from the depths below his heart, rising, rushing, dissolving the filth from inside and turning his skull to rock crystal.
"Andrei remains a problem." When at last he spoke, Nikolai's voice was as cool and smooth as always. Not a quiver of emotion. No sign on the surface of what thrashed underneath. Drinker of passions, the Maiden had called him. Or whatever had spoken through her.
"We brought a Christian into our depths and he brought with him the stench of the Wine God." said Nikolai. "The Fool will attempt to give us orders through the M—through the Mistress of the Mountain. Let him do so. But we know her last true prophesy."
How hard to build an avalanche, but how easy to begin one. To unleash the Good upon the world, Nikolai needed but a single stone. He closed his fingers over his empty palm. "Rivers ruddy stream around / The armies tugging at her gown. Do you remember?"
"The Andr—" Bogdan stopped himself. "The Hadean Prophesy?"
Nikolai stretched his lips tight, so that the brothers could hear his smile. "Let us make it come true."
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