“Yeah.”
“Fixed security,” Tom said as the door opened up. “Ah, thank you, Miss Vega.”
“You’re welcome, sir,” Stephanie replied, laying a thick file on his desk and walking out without a backwards glance.
“Put your eyes back in your head, Herzer,” Tom chuckled.
“Actually, I got a pretty good look last night in the baths,” Herzer admitted.
“I’ve been keeping up with your accounts,” Tom said, ignoring the comment. “But they’re managed by Posteal, Ohashi and Deshort…”
“Deshort?” Herzer asked. “Isn’t he the economy guy that Edmund was, is for that matter, always muttering about?”
“I don’t know,” Tom said, frowning. “His background is in preindustrial economic modeling. He’s on the board. But I didn’t know that he and the duke had problems.”
“Not problems, really,” Herzer said with a grin. “More like a mutual disadmiration society.”
“He’s on the board of the bank, as well…”
“In that case, I think I need another bank.” Herzer chuckled. “If Brad Deshort is involved in managing my money, I’d rather play the ponies.”
“Are you seriously disturbed about this?” Tom asked.
“I don’t know; how much have I lost?” Herzer said, still chuckling.
“You haven’t lost anything, Herzer,” Tom replied, seriously. “I’ve been very careful about your investments and so has PO and D.”
“I’m joking, Tom,” the lieutenant said, shaking his head. “Never joke with a banker about money.”
“If it really bothers you…”
“It doesn’t,” Herzer said, definitely. “Let’s look at the books, okay?”
It took nearly an hour to go over all the investments that Herzer had accumulated. He was surprised at that; he had no idea he’d gotten his finger in so many pies. But the eventual total was pleasant.
“Anyway, it’s a well distributed portfolio,” Tom finished. “There have been some losses; the sand-gravel business folded completely in fact. You came out of that with only a few pence on the credit, but everything else is going well. Fortunately most of your investments still fall into tax credited areas. We’ll see what the idiots in the legislature come up with next year.”
“And then there’s Mike Boehlke’s farm,” Herzer added.
“Yes, we don’t manage that, but Mr. Boehlke has made it into quite a business. A solid, if long-term, investment.”
“And another subtle joke,” Herzer pointed out.
“Excuse me?”
“One of the expressions we use in the military for getting killed is ‘buying the farm,’ ” Herzer said, his face distant. “Soldiers talk about finally getting out and buying a farm to settle down on. So when one gets killed, we say he ‘bought the farm.’ ” His face suddenly cleared and he grinned. “Either I’m already dead or I’m never going to get kilt.”
“I see,” Tom said, shaking his head. “So are you ever going to settle down on the farm you already have ‘bought’?”
“I dunno, Tom,” Herzer replied with a shrug. “I guess we’ll both have to live long enough to see.”
The worst problem for Joel about the dragon ride had been landing at the base at Washan. It was one of the growing army bases along the coast, though, and he quickly faded into the background. He’d ridden wyvern a few times before the Fall and the only new iteration was the length of the trip. Since wyvern could only make a couple of hundred klicks per day it had been a multiday trip across the country. But wyverns were still faster, and marginally more comfortable, than coaches.
When he landed at the base he made himself scarce, then started looking for transportation. The base was not actually at Washan but across the Poma River and there was a small town that had grown up outside the base, mostly to support the needs of the sailors and soldiers that roamed the area.
He walked down a street lined with pawnshops, bars and barbershops, watching the small groups that moved on it. There were a remarkable number of barbershops and they seemed to do a brisk business. As he passed one he noticed that the “barber” was a scantily clad young woman and had to make a rapid reassessment of the situation.
It was the middle of the day, though, and there weren’t many crowds. He considered stopping in one of the bars, or one of the barbershops for that matter, and seeing what he could pick up. But that wasn’t part of his mission so he continued down the road to where a small complex of buildings was set off to the side of the town. There was a corral with about a dozen horses, most of them in decent condition, a small barn and an even smaller building with a porch out front. He walked to the latter and slipped inside.
The interior was dim; there were only two unglazed windows in the front area and the afternoon was overcast. So he was startled to hear a female voice from the rear of the room.
“Help you?” she said.
The woman wasn’t young, wasn’t old, probably somewhere in her first century. She was seated behind a counter looking at him over the top of a piece of paper.
“I need to catch the stage down towards Newfell,” he said, stepping up to the counter.
“Next stage isn’t for three hours,” the woman replied, setting down the paper. “Stage goes all the way to Newfell Base.”
Reaching the base on the stagecoach was not part of his plans. He glanced at the wall, where a map was mounted, and then down. “Well, I’m only going to Tenerie, not Newfell. I’m actually headed for the coast; I just found out I’ve got friends over there who made it through the Fall.”
“Tenerie’s thirty credits,” the woman said, pulling out a ledger book. “Can you afford it?”
“I think so,” Joel said, pulling out the silver he had gotten in Chian and one of the bronze coins. “I’ve got a twenty piece and some silver.”
The woman sighed at the latter but pulled out a scale and measured out the silver to make thirty credits. “You need to get this changed, you know. Hardly anybody out here uses chunk metal anymore and I can’t give you what you’d get at an assayer’s office for it.”
“Okay,” Joel said. “I’m from up the road towards Raven’s Mill. Plenty of people still use it up there.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to the big city,” the woman grinned. “Nobody around Washan, or Newfell for that matter, uses that stuff anymore. You might over on the coast, I don’t know about those hicks.”
She wrote him out a chit for the stage and picked up the paper in apparent dismissal.
“Thanks so much for your help,” Joel said, turning and going back out into the street.
Three hours. Assuming it was on time. That might mean two hours. Or four. Or nine for that matter.
Beyond the corral was an inn, clearly for the use of overnight customers from the stage. Across the street from it was a bar with two barbershops closely adjacent. But on the other side of the barbershops was a building with a large, freshly painted, sign that said “Sundries.”
Joel wasn’t sure what “Sundries” meant in this case; it might be a larger and more complicated version of one of the “barbershops.” But he suspected it might mean such lost luxuries as, oh, a razor, soap, maybe even new clothes.
He walked over to the shop and was pleasantly surprised. It was well stocked with shelves of clothing, toiletry items and even premade shoes.
“Can I help you?” the clerk said, coming from around the counter at the rear.
“I need a new set of clothes,” Joel said, fingering a folded pair of pants made of some heavy material. “And some toiletry items. And a bag to carry it in.”
“Of course,” the clerk replied. “We sell a lot of such things to soldiers and sailors who are being moved other places. That’s a material called ‘denim.’ It’s just starting to come off the lines, quite the new fad. Heavy, double-woven cosilk with double stitching. A pair of those will last you for years and years, just getting more comfortable with each wearing.”