Jens shook his head. “No, sir. I think that noise is at the council chambers, people taking things, but no more soldiers.”
“All right then. We need this square cleaned up—” Gird looked around. “Wounded by the well, so the healers don’t have far to go for water. Dead outside the walls—we’ll need men to dig graves. Those whose stalls are broken, you can start repairing them.” He pointed to the woman he remembered throwing the cheeses. “You—what about your stall?”
She pointed at a jumble of broken wood and ripped cloth. “That was it, sir, and how I’m to get another I don’t know—”
Gird pointed to two of his yeomen. “Help her fix what she can. Selamis—” Selamis was at his shoulder, staring bright-eyed around. Gird glared at him. “You can take accounts—who had what space, who needs help to repair stalls or houses. Anything else you find out.” He looked at Kef, one of the marshals he’d brought along. “You take a half-cohort and settle that riot, or whatever it is. Rahi, you take the rest and make sure everything else is quiet.”
Gird stayed in the square with Selamis, trying to get a sense of the town’s organization. It was far more complex than his village, or the army. The artisans were not simply “craftsmen” as he had supposed: each craft had its own standing in the town, and rivalry between crafts became apparent as he listened. Within each, too, were hierarchies and rivalries. So a tanner’s apprentice might jostle a dyer’s apprentice with no more than a curse in response, but a potter’s apprentice ranked a tanner’s. The finesmith had nothing to do with the blacksmith, and Brightwater boasted both a weaponsmith and a toolsmith. In Gird’s village, anyone might peg a bench together or frame a cowbyre; here carpenters and joiners were separated by custom and caste. He wondered what Diamod would say about that, then remembered that Diamod was off scouting. Then there were merchants, some as specialized as the salt seller, and some as general as the importer who handled any and all goods transported across the mountains, from needles to silks to carved buttons in the shape of sea monsters. The houses towered two and three stories tall; those of the wealthiest were clustered in the southwest corner.
An uneasy stillness gripped the town soon after Gird’s yeomen occupied the soldiers’ guardhouse. Gird did his best to keep everyone busy, insisting that streets must be cleaned of dead bodies (“Yes, the rats too!” he had yelled at someone who asked) and debris. When it was possible, he restored goods to the merchants who had owned them—although he could not clean and mend what the fight had soiled and broken.
He settled such minor disputes as were brought to him the first day with what wit he could muster, although some of them seemed frivolous. Why would someone in the aftermath of a battle want a judgment against a neighbor for using the neighbor’s balcony as one end of a laundry line? Why pick this moment to complain that someone’s son was courting a daughter without the father’s permission? He realized that the Brightwater yeoman-marshal, though well-known and considered to be honest, had the low status of a “mere” harness-marker’s assistant; whatever he said on an issue was immediately appealed to Gird. Gird might have found this funny (after all, they were preferring the judgment of a discottaged serf), but he had no leisure to savor the joke.
That night, Gird found himself invited to dine with the principal traders, who had, he was sure, their own ideas about his notions of justice. They offered beef and ale, raising their eyebrows when he refused the ale, and insisted that they each take a bite of the bread he brought before he would eat of their meat.
“We had heard you liked ale,” one of them said, too smoothly. “If you prefer wine—”
“I prefer water,” Gird said, smiling. “In war, I’ve discovered, the drunkard has half the men of a sober man, and less than half the wit.”
They laughed politely, and came to the point rather sooner than he expected. What did he mean by justice, and how would he insure that traders would be respected and treated fairly? Gird answered as the gnomes had taught him: one law, the same for all, of fair weights and measures. A market judicar, backed by a court to which all parties could appoint representatives. He sensed that some of the traders were satisfied by this (he had never believed that all traders were inherently dishonest), but that one or two were appalled. One of these last walked with him back to the guards’ barracks, complimenting him on the discipline of his troops. Gird felt as he had when the steward complimented him on the sleekness of a calf.
“And you yourself,” the man went on, his voice mellow as the ale Gird had not drunk. “So different from what I’d expected—truly a prince of peasants.” Gird controlled his reaction with an effort. Did the fellow think peasants had never heard lying flattery before? The calf the steward had praised so highly had been taken as a “free gift” to his count’s marriage celebration. “I’m sure you will not misunderstand—” The voice had a slight edge in it now; Gird braced himself for the thorn all that rosy sweetness had been intended to conceal. “Some of my colleagues are—alas—less than frank with you. They have their own standards, not perhaps what you would understand, being so honest yourself.”
Gird was tempted to say “Get on with it, man! Is it gold you want, or someone’s life?” He merely grunted, and walked on a little faster. The man’s hand touched his sleeve, slowing him. Gird glanced ahead, to the torchlight where his men were on guard at the corners of the market square.
“There’s fair, and there’s fair,” the man was murmuring, his hand still on Gird’s arm. “A man like you, peasant-born—good solid stock, I always say, Alyanya’s good earth—” That came out of him as harshly as a cough; Gird would have wagered that the man had never given Alyanya a thought in his life. “I just want you to know I’m your friend; you can trust me. And as a token, I have a little gift—” The little gift came heavily into Gird’s hand, round and smooth, with a slightly oily feel. He knew without looking that it was gold, the first gold he had ever touched. With anger and revulsion came curiosity: he wanted to peer at the coins, to see if it was one of the fabled gold seadragons, or the more common (by repute) crowns. He opened his hands and let the coins ring on the cobbles of Brightwater’s main street.
“You dropped something, trader!” he said loudly. Heads had turned at the sound of gold hitting stone; he himself would not forget the almost musical chime, or the edges of the five coins against his fingers.
“You stupid fool!” The trader’s voice was low and venomous. “You might have been rich, powerful—”
“I might have been your tool, or dead,” said Gird softly. Then, louder, “Best pick them up, sir; there’s been enough coin scattered today.”
“If you dare tell anyone—” began the trader, crouching and scrabbling over the cobbles for his coins. “I’ll—”
“You’re threatening me?” Gird’s voice rose, the day’s frustrations and his anger getting the better of him. “You sniveling little liar!” The trader’s hand slid into his gown, and the torchlight glinted on a thin blade; Gird batted it aside, hardly aware of the shallow gash it gave him. He could heard his men coming to see what was going on. His second swing felled the trader as if the man had been a shovel leaning on a wall. Gird stood over him, sucking his knuckles. He wished the man would stand up, so he could knock him down again.
“What happened?” Jens, the Brightwater yeoman-marshal had come with the others. Gird didn’t answer until they had all arrived, perhaps two hands of his own yeomen and those citizens of Brightwater who had been on the street and brave enough to hang around when trouble began. He looked around the circle of faces.