Gird thought of the other Rules, so painfully learned when he was a recruit. If indeed the first meant that, then how could the second, the third, be interpreted? “One, for me, and one, for you” had looked, to a peasant boy, like a clear description of the present situation: one rule for the masters, and one for the serfs.
“No,” said the priest, with a sigh. “It’s easily read that way, and that is in fact the way they read it now, paying tribute to Simyits the Two-faced, the Trickster, the lightfingered lord of luck and gambling. But it reminds us to share, as children do, as we did tonight—one spoonful for you, and one for me. Your people do the same.”
“But the others?”
“Define the vigilance necessary to protect the code: touch not, nor ask, nor interfere, where it is not necessary, where it is not your business; but if it is, then go far, swift, silently—never let justice lack because of distance or time or idle chatter. Face the door, yes: evil overwhelms the careless. Learn all the arts, to judge fairly, but staying alive is imperative, or the good judge cannot exist to judge.”
“It’s—it’s like a grape-leaf,” said Gird, his mind awhirl. “On one side dark green, shiny, and on the other silvery fuzz—can it be the same Rules? And even if it is, what matter to us? We were never of them.”
“Gird, if a man use a stick to beat a cow, instead of guide it, does that make the stick evil? Would you burn the stick, for being a bad stick, or clout the man?”
“The man, of course, but—”
“The Rules of Aare were a tool of law, a stick, if you will—once men used them well, to guide themselves to better actions, and now they use them badly, to beat other men. You’re going to need a stick like that; before you throw this one on the fire, take another look at it.”
“It still sounds like trickery,” said Gird. He looked closely at the priest, watching for anything he could interpret. Nothing but interest. “If the Rules can be read both ways, then there’s something wrong with them. Why not write laws that can’t be read wrong?”
“Try it,” said the priest. A smile twitched his lips. Gird felt the back of his neck getting hot. Somehow the man had made a trap, and he’d walked in. Even though he didn’t feel the teeth yet, it was still a trap.
“I could,” he muttered sourly, thinking hard. What was the trap? “It’s not that hard to say a man shouldn’t steal his neighbor’s sheep, or put offal down his neighbor’s well.”
“And if the sheep got into his garden, or the neighbor had stolen something from him?”
“If we had fair courts, to settle the first problem—”
“Very good. And how will you make fair courts?”
The priest was taking him seriously. The trap must have very fine teeth, because he couldn’t feel them yet, and the man was asking what he’d thought about before.
“Fair courts should have someone who knows something about the argument—the kind of argument—”
“Another serf?” asked the priest. This was extraordinary, and Gird paused to look again for any signs of ridicule. None.
“I’ve wondered about that,” he said cautiously. “A farmer to judge disputes between farmers, a tanner to judge between tanners. But then if a farmer and a tanner have an argument, who? If it’s someone who started as a peasant, say, then he’d need some training, same as if he wanted to be a soldier.”
“Let’s suppose you have your judge,” said the priest. “A fair man, who knows enough of both sides to understand it, then what?”
“Plain laws that anyone can understand,” said Gird. “Fair dealing between master and man, between crafter and crofter. If the law says ‘no stealing’ that’s plain enough—”
“And what is stealing?” asked the priest.
“Taking what’s not yours,” said Gird. “That’s obvious.”
“But think, Gird. We all take some things that aren’t ours: air, water, sunlight and starlight—”
“The water in my well was mine.” Gird clung to that. Air? Sunlight? He’d never thought of himself as “taking” them. There was plenty left for everyone else.
“The water in your well came from somewhere else, and someone else put it there. Have you done one thing to make it grow, as you work to make your cabbages grow?”
“No.” He’d never thought of it that way. It was his well, as it had been his father’s well, and he had felt lucky to have a well of his own. His well, his water. But he had worked, himself, to get each year’s crop of barley and oats and cabbages and onions, to take the cows to be bred, to birth the calves. He himself had fed and brushed his animals, pruned and manured his trees, plowed and harrowed and planted and harvested his fields. The water was just there, more in a wet year and less in a dry year, but always there, without his thought. Given, like the air and the light. And he had taken.
“Would you call that stealing from the gods?” asked Gird. Or, he wondered to himself, were the gifts of flowers and herbs to the merin spirits really a form of payment, and not praise?
“No, I think not. They gave us to this world, and gave to it also those things we need and cannot make for ourselves, by any labor. To take a gift is not stealing. But I wanted you to think about your law. If you want more than riots, if you want more than killing the magelords and then each other, you must have law.”
Before he could stop himself, Gird blurted “But I don’t know anything about it.”
Arranha smiled. “You were just saying you knew what kind of laws you wanted. And once you knew nothing about fighting, but you learned. You can learn this, if you care enough about it.”
“From you?”
“From me you can learn some, but not all. You don’t trust me, even now—” He looked closely at Gird, as if to see into his mind. Gird hoped the uneasy feeling inside wasn’t the priest’s inner sight. “So we must find you teachers better suited to your nature and experience. What do you know of the kapristi, the gnomes?”
“The gray rockfolk? Dire fighters, fair dealers, is what I’ve heard. Not much friends with humans—”
“Not with our folk,” the priest agreed. “Before we came your people had no problem with them. Some of ours . . . well, you’ve heard me admit that our folk have gone widely astray from Esea’s path, and not alone in their treatment of you. Some of the wildest thought the kapristi were easy prey, being small and seeming meek. Tried to hunt them, ahorse and afoot. Ignored their boundary markers, tried to move you peasants onto their land to farm or mine.”
“And?”
“And were deservedly killed by the kapristi. That’s not what my former colleagues would say, of course, but it’s true. They never tried to invade human lands, or attacked humans where they had not been attacked. But once roused, those small gray folk are as dangerous fighters as any you could hope to train. As well, they live by a code of law that they boast is the fairest and most settled in all the worlds and peoples.”
Gird could not keep back a grin. “There is such a law?”
“They claim so. I have met them myself, Gird, as a student of law. They like my people little, but they were fair and just with me. But it is a strict law, so strict that I doubt you’ll find humans agree to follow it. They take no excuses, the kapristi, as they make none; they value fair exchange so highly that they believe free gifts are dangerous, fostering slackness. Would you go so far?”
“No, among our people, gifts are a sacred duty. Alyanya’s blessings are gifts—”