Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [58]
“Stop that,” Arcolin said. “I didn’t order you back here to scrub pots. We need you, your expertise. You’re the senior sergeant, just as if you’d broken a leg and were riding in a wagon. From what Marshal Harak told me, you were already starting to train his yeomen.”
Stammel’s face relaxed. “Just wanted to give you a chance—”
“What, to waste the best sergeant I ever had? I may not be Kieri’s equal, but I’m not stupid. Let’s start this over. Welcome back, Sergeant Stammel.”
“Glad to be back, Captain,” Stammel said.
“Devlin already has some ideas for you,” Arcolin said. “But I wanted to brief you on the situation. It’s gotten complicated.”
“Complicated?”
“It’s not just brigands we’re fighting. I don’t know if someone—Alured, for instance—is trying to infiltrate a whole army into southern Vonja or something else …”
“That money the merchant we captured had. I heard in the city it was counterfeit.” That sounded like the old Stammel.
“You heard?”
“People see a man being led around by a young woman, they think neither of them can hear. Or think. Suli’s my eyes now, sir, but I’m the ears. I don’t think I hear better, but not seeing … I pay more attention. Anyway, she’d take me out on walks in the city. We stopped in a tavern … and I heard men talking. Merchants, I think, because one was talking wool prices, and then their voices got lower and it was about coins. That some of the Guild League cities are minting false coinage, cheating their own people.”
“I wish I’d thought to look at those money bags,” Arcolin said. “All I saw was silver and copper coins; when he said it was his own, I thought I’d let the Council figure it out.”
“Well, they have. ’Course, what I heard could be just rumor, but I heard other things that fit in. Those coins were supposed to have been minted here, in Vonja—had the Vonja die marks. But the Vonja Council swore they weren’t, by some secret mark no one’s supposed to know. The odd thing is, most of ’em were the right weight and passed the float test, whatever that is. Only some of the silvers were too heavy. Why would anyone make counterfeits with too much silver?”
“I’m not sure,” Arcolin said. “Burek told that last season, most of Golden Company contracted there and the bankers turned back a lot of their contract payment as counterfeit. Those were Sorellin natas … or they bore Sorellin’s mint marks. Burek said it almost caused riots.”
“Did M’dierra tell you about it, sir?”
“No. She did mention some counterfeiting—so did the banker—but she didn’t tell me specifically about her experience.”
“Burek still doing well?”
“Very well. And I found out what Andressat has against him. He may be a bastard grandson of the old man, and he chose not to take the job the count offered him. That would be enough with Andressat; he’d think it ingratitude. His foster father is a horse master at the count’s stud.”
Talking to Stammel the way he always had eased the strangeness; Stammel sat the same way, held his hands the same way, had the same expressions on his face. Arcolin tried not to look at his eyes.
“The thing is,” Arcolin went on, “there are more brigands—or whatever they are—in the woods around here than can possibly be supported without regular resupply. You know that village we camped near at first?” Stammel nodded. “They came down on that village, destroyed a couple of the cottages, killed some of the villagers and took the rest—left a trail a blind—sorry—anyone could follow across the grain. We stayed there the night after I left Cortes Vonja. No attack. We went as far as the deserted village beyond the one where we found the merchant.”
Stammel scowled. “Is that the one just south of a stretch of woods?”
“Yes. I remembered it when I rode out into what had been fields; we passed that way coming up from Sibili, last year of Siniava’s War. The cottages are all collapsed now, but someone’s tending the well. Flowers, and that.”
“And the merchant came that