“Ratonkin informs me that is not the case, that one may dress in any costume one desires, and that the English queen and her consort intend to dress as an ancient king and queen, which I thought was highly ironic, given that they are a king and queen. Not terribly original, is it, would you not agree?”
He looked at Marek, as if expecting an answer. Marek responded with one half of a wry smile.
“Precisely my point,” Dromio blithely continued. “You’ve some sort of costume, haven’t you? Perhaps a military uniform? You’ve served in the military, haven’t you, Mr. Brendan?”
“Je.Two years in the navy, my lord.” Like all Weslorian men, he’d completed the compulsory requirement for every able-bodied man to serve in the military. He’d chosen the navy, of course—he’d been raised on the sea by his uncle, a captain.
“Wear that, then,” Dromio said with a flick of his wrist.
Marek hadn’t been a member of the navy for fifteen years and certainly hadn’t thought to bring his old uniform to England. He’d come as the minister’s assistant, not a naval officer. Sometimes he wondered if Dromio understood his role in the ministry.
“It’s a costume ball, you see,” Dromio said again, as if Marek couldn’t grasp the idea. He took the trousers that the valet had been desperate to hand him and stuck one leg into them while his bits bounced around. Then he shoved in the other leg, and thereby proved once and for all that his lordship did indeed put his trousers on one leg at a time as did everyone else.
“I beg your pardon, my lord, but I had not anticipated—”
“Well, who had, Mr. Brendan? Who had?” the minister said gruffly. “Now, I need you to stay close by this evening. I’ve had a bit of a row with Montcrief from the Privy Council. He’s a vile little prick.”
Marek didn’t know any Montcrief. He hadn’t been to any of the peace talks—thus far, his assistance to the minister of trade had meant waiting in an adjoining room on the slim chance the minister or the king or some other Weslorian grandee needed information.
“I won’t be caught wrong-footed again if he brings up the...” The minister turned away to stuff his shirttail into his trousers, and when he did, Marek couldn’t hear what else he said.
“Pardon, my lord?”
The minister turned back and held out his arms so his valet could put a waistcoat on him. “Theengines, Mr. Brendan. Our commission of four steam engines for the textile factories in Cormanda, for which we paid handsomely. They were routed to Helenamar.”
Marek blinked. Engines for Weslorian textiles had been routed to the Alucian port city of Helenamar? Why?
“It wasn’tmydoing,” Dromio said defensively, as if Marek had accused him. “It is the king’s doing. He’s convinced that the Aphidina is a bed of corruption and thinks it is better that the engines are transported by train from Helenamar.”
Dromio was speaking of the Weslorian port town Aphidina, one of the major inroads into Wesloria. To reroute the shipment to Helenamar added so much uncertainty. There were border raiders, gangs of thugs who looked for transports between the two nations to rob. And since when did anyone believe that Aphidina was a den of thieves? Goods arrived through there every day.
He was suddenly reminded of another puzzling event. Wesloria was known for its superior grain. The climate in the north and vast amounts of arable land had produced the finest wheat and barley for centuries. Alucia was more mountainous and produced more coal than Wesloria, but had tried to produce grain at levels enough to trade.
Last autumn, a shipment of Weslorian grain, bound for Finland, had been held up at port. Marek couldn’t find anyone who knew why, and while he tried to sort it out, the grain sat in storage and eventually began to rot. In the meantime, Finland took a shipment of grain from Alucia. How had Weslorian officials managed to make a hash of the one commodity they were adept at producing and selling?
Dromio said it had all been a misunderstanding. “A bad deal, I suspect.”
Marek had frowned. “But...we have a solid agreement with the suppliers, my lord. We gave Finland a very good price.”
“Je,it was a misunderstanding about the price,” Dromio had added, as if that was an afterthought.
“Who’s mis—”
“How should I know, Brendan? I can only report what has been said to me. I have much to do,” he’d said, waving a hand at Marek and dismissing him.
It was one shipment, and sometimes these things happened. But it had bothered Marek nonetheless. It made no sense that the grain had not shipped as planned. It made even less sense that Finland had gone to Alucia for grain instead. Would they not have inquired after their expected trade? Asked for a remedy? Someone had intervened and sold Alucian grain to them.
It was much later that Marek had read a report from a neighboring state that Weslorian trade officials had set an export tariff on the grain. “Impossible,” he’d muttered. There hadn’tbeena tariff. There had never been a tariff—who had introduced a tariff? Who would handcuff the landowners who produced the most reliable staple of Wesloria? Who would flood the Weslorian markets with grain they didn’t need?
Once again, Dromio had no answer for Marek. “The king and his prime minister must have done it. You know that Lord Rubane tells him whatever he wants to hear.”
But Marek knew the king hadn’t done it—everything he’d said indicated he was desperate to expand trade deeper into Scandinavia.
Moreover, the economy of Wesloria was teetering on the brink of collapse. There wasn’t enough work and people were struggling to make ends meet. Many laid responsibility for the poor state of the Weslorian economy at the king’s feet. It didn’t matter that his parliament had a hand in it—the king was an easier target, a lone man on top of a hill. They said that his plans to industrialize ignored the industries and occupations that had sustained Wesloria for centuries in favor of occupations that were foreign to them. They were not, the critics said, a textile nation, or a country of ironworks. They were shepherds and farmers and fishermen and glassmakers. They argued that the king was trying to turn them into Alucia, and powerful men were losing money on the delays of steam engines and the loss of grain shipments.
It was no help to the king to have a dullard as the minister of trade.
The tutor of Marek’s youth, Mr. Ropas, was a wise man. He’d taught Marek that man didn’t easily accept change, and like a new plant must push the mud and detritus aside to show its head, so, too, must change. Wesloria was the plant needing to grow, but there was so much old mud to push through.
