As dawn broke over Heliqar's walls, I was walking from the Royal Residence to the lower parts of the city. I needed a fresh perspective, and somehow the chill still in the outside air combined with a brisk walk had always had a way of clearing my mind.
Before I had made it four blocks from the Royal Residence, the way was blocked by a long line of people. In some places it was four abreast and in other places wider. Rather than pushing through, I took a detour, block after block after block, until the line reached the tanneries. The stench of curing hides usually kept this area empty; today, people stood in it for hours just to hold their place.
It wasn't just the tannery smell that forced an acid bite from my stomach into my throat. I saw a face of someone I recognized. "Olen?" I said.
Behind him were masons, smiths, laborers of all sorts, each holding their bags. "The breadline?" The palace was far from here. Normally the breadline served a dozen or two of those for whom it was intended: widows, orphans, and a handful of others who were down on their luck. Now these crowds of people whose work fueled their identity were forced into a fragile dependency.
Olen nodded. "The retainer the city pays for my services is generous. But word that the Empire refused to defend the caravans has spread through the whole city. I saw the notice myself in the marketplace. The cairn project is on hold. The retainer isn't enough to feed my family on its own, not with the blockade prices we have now. Our savings are spent, so we'll need bread from the palace like everyone else."
"Your father is a good man." Olen continued. "His goodness alone won't be able to fill the granaries. Rumor has it that the Council intends to turn to Carth for help. But Carth is a dangerous friend, like the shade of a rock that hides a serpent. I don't know whether to root for the viper or starvation."
"Neither do I, Olen," I said. "But there has to be another way, and I'm going to find it." I walked on before he had a chance to ask for more detail.
My mind went from the breadline to Spartova. We had idle hands; did they need labor? Elias had written a treatise on negotiation, so, of course, I had read it. The first key was figuring out what the other side really wanted, their root need. From everything I knew about them, Spartova was brutally self-sufficient, with the exception, apparently, of wanting more helot slaves. They didn't need our trade, our goods, or even our coin.
A thought crossed my mind. Could we trade expertise? Could we help them map their frontiers or find hidden aquifers in exchange for a treaty of non-aggression?
I dismissed it as harebrained almost as quickly as it formed. Ridiculous. For the Hegemony of Spartova, expertise wasn't something to be traded for; it was a commodity to be harvested. The more valuable the services you could render, the more likely you were to receive a collar, chain, and brand.
Elias always favored an approach of mutual benefit where both parties end up better off. He said that negotiation should always be approached as a test of creativity. Every negotiation should leave the pie larger than before, not just shift slices around. Look deep down, figure out how to satisfy the root need in a new way.
How could I do that? What they wanted wasn't slaves per se, but tightly controlled labor. The thought of labor without freedom stirred an old memory. My mother's voice, telling the story of the Spindle-Servant, a machine that did labor. A story about bargains made in fear. It rose unbidden:
In a small village lived a miller and his pregnant wife. Their debts were heavy, for the local ruler demanded three wagons of spun flax in three days. Without it, the mill would be seized, and they would be cast out.
That evening, as the miller despaired, a stranger arrived. The stranger promised that he would save the household, but it would come at the loss of something precious, but not anyone's life. The miller reluctantly agreed.
The stranger asked to see the cellar. There, beneath sacks and broken tools, lay a metal figure bearing a resemblance to a spider. A relic from a former age. The villagers had never dared touch it. The stranger opened a panel in its side that contained a socket. "It needs its heart," he said.
From his own pouch, the stranger pulled out a cylinder that glowed with a blue pulse. "The heart is filled with sunlight," he said. "You have no way to fill it."
He slid it into the socket. With that, the Spindle-Servant hummed and rose to its spiderlike feet, silent and obedient.
"Bring the flax," the stranger said. All night the machine worked, spinning thread finer than any human hand could manage. By dawn, one wagon was full. The next night, another. And the next, a third.
The miller wept. "The work is done," the stranger said. "Now my price."
"Name it," said the miller.
"I will return in one year. You will give your child to me."
"You promised you wouldn't take a life!" The miller objected.
"No," said the stranger. "I said I wouldn't take your life or your wife's. Nonetheless, I have plans for the child. What I will do with it is not death."
The wife cried and rent her clothing, but the miller kept his promise when the stranger returned next year.
The lesson was too apropos. Desperation narrows vision until ruin looks like rescue. Turning to Carth would make us the miller and Carth the stranger offering salvation. I pushed the story out of my mind.
Were there other ways? Did we have leverage over Spartova? Could we offer them land rights to a chunk of the Red Sand Sea? Worthless. No resources, and they clearly already had the freedom to take what they wanted. Could we control their access to anything? Spartova was landlocked, but we didn't control their access to salt. Their own caravans could reach the sea through the southern wastes without crossing any other major nation.
Did they have fears we could exploit? No. They didn't fear hunger or thirst. They valued labor, expansion, and ideological purity.
Was ideological purity a weak point? Could a war of propaganda work? Anyone who cared already knew what was going on, and they didn't care enough to intervene. I didn't have any way to reach their people and no way to be heard by them. Certainly no way to get Sparovan citizens or slaves to revolt.
My mind circled back to Elias. He always said that if inspiration doesn't strike, acquire more information. I had a map with holes I couldn't see, like inselbergs submerged beneath the sand. I needed sounding rods; I needed data. We had all read everything there was about Spartova, but we had never visited. There might be gaps in our knowledge that need to be filled or leverage to exploit. Weak points to find if that failed. There had to be a way; we just needed more data.
My father's virtue had effectively allowed him to wash his hands of the hard choice that would frighten the Council into selling the city to Carth. Carth was the Stranger, offering salvation at the cost of our future. But the story had a third character: the debt itself. If the miller hadn't owed the flax, he never would have let the stranger in. I couldn't stop the Council from being afraid. But maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to handle the debt. I pushed the story away and looked back at the map. The only way out was to give them another option. I needed to go with a solid plan.
I turned the corner back to the Royal Residence as the horizon began shimmering with morning heat and thought of the stones back in my quarters under my old laundry.