Seventeen: Dell's Bargain

Looking back over what I wrote last night, I realized that I’ve gone and talked about all kinds of things that people won’t know about unless they grew up in Meriga or spent a good long time there. Jennels, for instance. They don’t have those in Nuwinga or Genda, and Mam Gaia only knows whether they’ve got anything of the kind over in the Neeonjin country way off past the mountains and the dead lands of the west. In Meyco they’ve got dons, who are like jennels with attitude, but then Meyco’s an empire. a big one, and I think that comes with extra bragging rights.

Anyway, Meriga has jennels. We’ve got a couple of hundred of them, maybe, and a couple of thousand cunnels, who would have been jennels if somebody back along the line of their grandfathers had been firstborn sons and not second or third or whatever. Most of the jennels are heads of families that have been famous names in Meriga since the old world ended and ours was born; they own a lot of land and a lot of other things, they have soldiers and servants, and when the presden names somebody to take one of her armies off to the borders to fight, it pretty much has to be one of the jennels.

One of the archivists at Sisnaddi told me that that’s all the jennels used to be, commanders of the Merigan armies back before the old world ended, and all the rest of it came later. That would explain why they don’t have them in Genda or Nuwinga, since I don’t think either of those countries had a big army back then. Meriga did, which is why most of the ruinmen I’ve ever met know the look of the stiff heavy clothing soldiers wore in Meriga before the old world ended; you find a lot of bones in what’s left of that clothing, tucked away here and there in the old ruins.

The man looking over my shoulder as I examined the letter I’d found down deep in the ruins at Shanuga wasn’t wearing that kind of clothing, of course, but some of his grandfathers back four hundred years and more had worn it. The plain black stuff he was wearing might as well have been the same thing; you only see that on jennels, and then only on jennels who have enough clout at the presden’s court that they don’t need to announce who they are to all and sundry, just as the really big names in Circle aren’t the women in the fancy stuff and pearls but the ones in the plain green dresses and the plain long hair, who don’t talk much and don’t have to.

Jennel Cobey didn’t have to talk much, either. He stood there while I examined the letter I’d found down inside the Shanuga ruins, watching me as though he had all the time in the world.

“I’m curious how you came by this, Sir and Jennel,” I said finally.

He had a short sharp laugh like a dog’s bark. “I imagine so. Still, no mystery there; one of my people in Noksul heard about the letter as soon as word got out and contacted me by radio, and so I was able to get someone to Shanuga in time for the auction. Which was quite the lively event; your Mister Garman did very well out of it.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“The man I sent to Shanuga mentioned that you had the finder’s rights for it.”

“That’s right.”

He was still watching me, of course. “I hope you won’t feel insulted, Sir and Mister, if I say that you’ve taken on quite a task there.”

He meant, of course, that I was a brand new mister who probably didn’t even look my twenty years just at that moment. “If you’d had a chance at something like that, Sir and Jennel,” I said, “would you have turned it down?”

A moment later I knew I might just have said the worst possible thing, since of course he did have a chance at something like that, and could take it by nothing more difficult than having one of his people cut my throat. He paused, still watching me, and then broke into a slow smile. “Of course not,” he said. “Good. I think we have the basis for an understanding, then.”

He reached for the letter, and I handed it to him. “You want to find Star’s Reach,” he went on then. “So do I, badly. Still, finding it and digging down to it are your line of business, not mine. If I recall correctly, your guild sometimes does contract digs.”

“Sometimes,” I said.

“And in this case?”

I considered that long and hard. A contract dig is one where the ruinmen are paid out of somebody else’s pocket, instead of getting by each season on whatever they made on finds from the season before. That’s not something most ruinmen will do unless the dig’s really worth it, because whoever pays the costs gets their money back before anyone else gets paid, and after that a share of the profits goes to the contract holder as well. On the other hand, a dig at Star’s Reach would cover almost any contract I could imagine with plenty to spare, and having someone else foot the bill for the digging would make it one mother of a lot easier for a brand new mister and his prentice to get a good crew together and do the thing the way it ought to be done.

“In this case, Sir and Jennel,” I said, “it’s a possibility.”

He nodded, then: “If you’re worried about your profits, don’t be. I’m perfectly willing to see the salvage go to the ruinmen and whatever records are there go to Melumi. That’s your business and theirs.” Seeing my expression: “You’re wondering why. I don’t need the money. Partly I want to find Star’s Reach for the same reason everyone else in Meriga dreams of finding it; partly –” He leaned a senamee or so toward me. “Partly, whoever finds Star’s Reach is going to become the most famous person in Meriga as fast as word can spread. That could be a real advantage to me in Sisnaddi.”

“Fair enough,” I said, though I didn’t have the least idea just then why it would be an advantage to him, or to anyone else.

“Then would it be fair to say that we have a bargain?”

I agreed, and we shook hands. “By the way,” he said then, “do you have any idea where it is?”

“Not yet, Sir and Jennel. That’s why I’m headed to Melumi.”

“Sensible. It was my destination as well. Would you be willing to ride with my party? I think I can promise you a faster trip and better accommodation than you’d have on your own.”

I agreed to that gratefully enough, and he said, “Good. We were planning on leaving tomorrow, if that’s suitable. I’ll have a horse sent – do you have prentices?”

“Just one.”

“Two horses, then, to the guild hall tomorrow morning.” He said a few more pleasantries, which I don’t remember just now, and then without ever having to say a word about it he dismissed me and I turned to find his servant waiting for me just inside the door.

All the way back to the ruinmen’s guild hall, I thought about what had just happened. Just about every ruinman I’d ever met would have called that the best bit of luck I could have had, and more than half of me thought the same thing, but the rest of me wasn’t so sure, because the bargain I’d made with Jennel Cobey felt a little too much like a Dell’s bargain.

That’s something else I ought to explain, because I know for a fact that people from outside of Meriga don’t say that or know what it means; I used the phrase once in front of Tashel Ban, and he gave me the owl-look he always gives when whatever somebody says doesn’t make the least bit of sense to him. Dell—well, you don’t mention him around the priestesses, because they don’t believe in him and don’t like it when other people do, either.

Dell’s not a human being, though he looks like one. He looks like a tall man with white skin, like people from Genda have, and he wears fancy clothing from the old world, with one of those strips of bright cloth tied around his neck that men used to wear back then to tell other people they were rich or something. Nobody knows where he lives, but if you want to find him, they say, all you have to do is go to a place where two roads cross right at midnight when the moon’s down, going with one eye closed and one hand tucked inside your clothes and hopping on one foot, and call him. Sometimes, they say, he shows up even if you don’t call him, if you want something badly enough, but if you go to the crossroads that way and call him three times, before you finish calling him the third time, he’s there waiting for you.

I never knew anyone who called him, but the story goes that you call him if you want something so bad that you think nothing else matters. If you do that, and tell him what you want, he’ll get it for you, but you have to promise to give him something else in trade for it. You don’t get to pick the something else, he does, and he doesn’t have to tell you what it will be when you make the bargain; sometime later, maybe years later, he just shows up and takes it, and you know as well as I do that it’s going to be the one thing in the world you care about more than the thing you got from him.

That’s a Dell’s bargain, and that’s what it felt like I had just made with Jennel Cobey. Now of course I hadn’t promised to give him anything but whatever fame he got from being the one who paid for the contract dig at Star’s Reach, but since he was a jennel he could pretty much show up and take anything he fancied whenever he wanted, the way Dell does. Still, I couldn’t think of any way I could have said no to him and been sure of leaving with an uncut throat, and there were plenty of good practical reasons to have said yes. That’s what I told myself, at least, as I balanced unsteadily on the horse and Jennel Cobey’s servants took me back through Luwul’s streets to the ruinmen’s guild hall.

Back at the hall, Mister Bron was glad to see me still breathing, and said so. Berry acted as calm and cool as though nobody’d ever said a word about heads on spikes, but once Bron and his prentices headed back to work at the ruins and Berry and I went to the room they’d given me up in the guild hall to get some rest and wait for the next meal, he threw his arms around me and clung there, shaking like a leaf in a good strong wind. I got him calmed down after a bit, and we sat and talked, or rather I talked about what had happened at the jennel’s house and he took it in with one hand curled around his chin and an expression on his face I couldn’t read at all.

When I mentioned what Jennel Cobey had said about the advantages of being the most famous person in Meriga, though, Berry nodded. “He’s right, you know. They say that the presden’s sick again, and if – well, when – she dies, it’s anyone’s guess who becomes presden.”

“Since there’s no heir.”

He nodded. “The jennels could have a lot to say about who gets chosen, and I’m sure they’ve all got their favorite choice in mind. If everybody thinks of Cobey Taggert as the jennel who found Star’s Reach, his choice would be hard to ignore.”

That made sense to me. “You know a fair amount about politics.”

Berry looked away. “A bit. My teacher in the Warrens used to talk about it all the time. Her mother was some kind of big name in Circle, though she never had children, and so she used to follow the news whenever we’d hear anything.” He didn’t seem comfortable talking about it, though, so I let it drop and we talked about something else until the dinner bell.