“So, I kill people and break things,” he said, looking for any subject that wouldn’t get another rise out of her. “What do you do?”
“I work at the bank,” she said, flatly, frowning. “Let’s not talk about work.”
“Bank?” Herzer said. “What bank?”
“Raven Federal,” Stephanie replied.
“Used to be Tom Sloan’s Loan Shark and Credit Destroyer,” Shilan said with a grin. “They’ve come up in the world.”
“Huh,” Herzer said. “Tom handles all my accounts. I’ve got to see him tomorrow.”
“Accounts?” Stephanie said, raising an eyebrow. “Plural.”
“Plural,” Herzer said flatly. “What are you doing Shilan?”
“I’m still a textile designer,” Shilan said. “That’s where I met David. He’s in sales at the plant.”
“Which is a losing cause,” David said unhappily. “We used to be the only mill in the area. But these days Hotrum’s Ferry has three, and transportation costs are making us unprofitable out of the immediate region.”
“Well, this is just fascinating but I’ve got a date with a bottle of wine,” Stephanie said, standing up. “Herzer, pleasure to meet you,” she added, holding out her hand.
“Same here,” he replied, shaking it. She turned immediately and climbed out of the pool.
“Okay, what just happened?” he asked.
“Social butterfly,” the instructor said, sliding into the pool. “She got exactly what she wanted out of the conversation, then went off to find one where she could get more.”
“Whatever,” Herzer replied. “I’m sorry, I cannot for the life of me recall your name.”
“Mike Fraser,” the instructor replied, holding out his hand. “I’m in second phase at the Academy.”
“I was supposed to be coming back for an instructor’s gig at the O course,” Herzer said, shrugging.
“What are you doing instead?” Shilan asked.
“I just got told,” Herzer admitted. “But I’m not sure I should talk about it.”
“Open secret,” Fraser said. “You’re going to the Southern Isles with Duke Edmund.”
“So much for military security,” Herzer grumbled.
“Like I said, open secret,” Fraser shrugged. “You can’t organize something like that without it getting out. And there are no secrets in the baths.”
“None at all,” Shilan said. “Worst gossip spot in the town. Even including the ‘ladies get-togethers’ that resulted from counseling classes. Although those are more catty. I knew that Edmund was going to the Isles, but not that you were going.”
“Daneh and Rachel took it as a surprise,” Herzer said.
“They don’t come in here much,” Shilan shrugged. “Rachel rarely and I’ve never seen Daneh in here.”
“I can imagine why,” Herzer said.
“It’s not that,” Shilan replied. “I think she’s about as over her rape as it’s possible to be. If not she certainly controls it well. I think she’s just very body-modest. Rachel, too, to a lesser extent. And, of course, they have their own baths at the house. Daneh probably would have picked it up at one of the meetings but she’s been missing those the last couple of weeks. I only heard about it… two nights ago.”
“I don’t care how hard it is to keep a secret in the baths,” Herzer said. “This is still a problem.”
“Yup, sure is,” Fraser nodded. “I’m not sure what can be done about it, though.”
“Education comes to mind,” Herzer replied. “I don’t know what the security classification is on this mission, but I don’t really care. It shouldn’t be talked about in public, period. That’s basic OPSEC, sir.”
“No rank in the baths, either,” Fraser noted. “But I get your meaning. You’re probably right about the education aspect, but we’re all still feeling our way. A couple of years ago, none of us were soldiers.”
“Not my problem,” Herzer shrugged. “It just bugs me.”
“Speaking of feeling our way…” Shilan said, then blushed. “That didn’t come out right.”
“It’s okay,” Herzer chuckled. “It would take a very dirty mind to find anything wrong with that comment. Admittedly, I have a dirty mind…”
“Speaking of trying to figure out stuff about this life,” Shilan said, clearing her throat. “Why is he a captain and you’re a lieutenant?”
“A very good question.” Fraser nodded. “The answer is that I came to the Academy as a lieutenant and have gotten promoted since. I think you were enlisted, Herzer?”
“Yeah,” Herzer said. “I just got my commission before going to Harzburg. That was another one of their gripes. I basically got the commission for the mission and that was pretty obvious.”
“But you got them to see the error of their ways?” Fraser asked.
“It took a while,” Herzer admitted. “The town is run by guilds and they took to their prerogatives, post-Fall, really damned quick. It was more feudal than it sounds. They didn’t want some no-class low-life newly promoted lieutenant telling them how they were supposed to run their militia. For one thing, the militia was only open to those they thought ‘acceptable.’ Which meant those they could trust with a weapon at their back.”
“Under the constitution all voters are supposed to be armed,” David interjected. “I mean required.”
“Yeah, and that has holes you can run an elephant through,” Herzer said. “They were using the ‘bondage labor’ provisions to exclude most of the people in the town, not just the refugees but others they didn’t like and had squeezed out of power. You had to be a full guild member to be a member of the militia.”
“About a fifth their available bodies at a guess,” Fraser mused.
“About that,” Herzer said. “And all too busy to bother actually training. I mean, most of them were honestly busy, you know how it is. They had real jobs, hard ones. And the labor pool guys, who were mostly sitting around hoping for work, were restricted from training. I’d been railing about it, quietly, for quite a while. There was also a real split between the farms, who were the ones getting hit, and the town, where they thought nobody would attack. Well, shortly after my little encounter at the farm Tarson did hit the town. Things were pretty screwed up but we managed to stop them after they’d burned the tanneries.”
“We?” Fraser interjected.
“I’d… been training some of the bond labor on the side,” Herzer admitted. “And that was item one in the meeting after the attack. But it was me and a few of them that drove the attackers off.”
“Blood Lord tactics?” Fraser asked.
“Modified,” Herzer admitted. “More of a phalanx approach. Really, I just had them make long spears and learn to march in formation with them. And, yeah, that was tough to arrange. But we got our tools together and drove the Tarsons off. Then the shit hit the fan. There was a pretty… intense meeting. But they had a few unpalatable choices. They could throw me out and try to get something else from the Federals. Pretty damned unlikely. Or they could actually train their ‘organized’ militia. Equally unlikely. Or they could trust the scum with weapons.”
“The scum?” Shilan said, angrily.
“That’s how they felt about the labor pool guys,” Herzer said. “And some of them were scum; Harzburg had a hell of a crime problem for that matter. They started off the meeting wanting to kill me. ‘Violation of local ordinances’ was the crime I was accused of. I more or less told them ‘You and what army?’ By the end of the meeting they’d given me approval to recruit among the laborers. And I made a tiddly little company out of them if I do say so myself.” He looked up at the rafters again and shrugged. “Maybe I’ll have a command again, someday.”