Of Limited Loyalty

1768
Chapter Forty-three

17 March 1768 Government House, Temperance Temperance Bay, Mystria

The day Prince Vlad had been dreading had arrived. The courier, wearing the uniform of the Fifth Northland Cavalry, had brought him the pouch of dispatches from Launston, then retired to report to Colonel Rathfield. Vlad had taken his time working the worn leather strap free from the brass buckle. At another time he would have found the heavy pouch laying on his office desk pregnant with possibility, but instead he imagined it infested with disaster.

Few had been the ships coming into Temperance from Norisle in the latter half of 1767. Unusually stormy weather off the Norillian coast had been credited with delaying the shipping schedule, but that should have meant the Crown had more time to get messages aboard ships. Even correspondence from his father had slowed to a trickle, and most of it cautioned him against heresy and exhorted him to find “the heretic” as soon as possible. Vlad could not help to wonder if the slowing of communication was meant to send him a message in and of itself, or if governmental uncertainty had caused his father’s keepers to withhold all but the most innocuous missives.

Even information from informal channels had been scarce. Prince Vlad felt less that friends were distancing themselves from him than there was just no news to relay. This was remarkable in that it meant the Crown was being exceedingly tight-lipped regarding him and Mystria. That did not bode well.

He poured the correspondence in a pile onto his desk and pulled his glasses on. Each letter had been folded within a sheet of blue paper, bound with twine and sealed with red wax. Vlad sorted them by thickness, being used to guessing at what they contained based on their size. He selected one of the most slender, cut the twine with a knife, then broke the seal. He unfolded the letter and pressed it flat to his desk, relishing the crispness of the paper.

As the courier’s uniform had suggested, the packet contained orders for Colonel Rathfield to take command of the Fifth Northland Cavalry Regiment, which was being stationed in Temperance Bay. This doubled the size of the military in Temperance Bay-albeit temporarily. Rathfield would be promoted to Brigadier General and the Prince’s Life Guards would be sent south to take up their new duties in Kingstown, Richlan. The notice of change of command included a request for the Prince to requisition enough horses to equip the cavalry, confirming the fact that they’d been sent over without mounts.

And there was no indication of where the Prince was to find the money to pay for the horses.

He set that message aside and picked one of the thicker ones. He selected it because, in addition to the red wax seal, purple twine had been used to bind it. That meant it was from the Crown. By rights he should have opened it first, but he was certain he knew what it contained.

Over his aunt’s signature came the response to his request for troops to fight the Norghaest. Embedded within whereases and wherefores he found a simple message: the Crown does not have money to spend on fighting faery tales. The Crown concluded that the slaughters at Piety and Happy Valley were the result of Shedashee raids, possibly encouraged by the Tharyngians. The deaths should serve to show all Mystrians why they should not stray beyond the Queen’s protective reach.

The packet included a proclamation which he was required to publish and have read in town squares and from pulpits throughout the Colonies. In it the Queen came across as a patronizing parent scolding imbecile children for wasting her time crying wolf. She threatened stern punishments were such nonsense to continue. In four paragraphs she managed to call all Mystrians stupid, cowardly, conniving, and dishonest. That single document would not only cause citizens to rally to the banner of anti-government groups like the Sons of Liberty, but would spawn many more, and create impetus for Colonies to break away from Norillian rule.

Vlad shook his head. That single sheet would do more damage than a Norghaest invasion. He also recognized that it was a test. If he chose not to publish it, he would be revealing himself as a rebel. If he did, he would be charged with incompetence when protests began. Her response to my petition casts me as a liar. The groundwork is being laid to remove me.

His fingers trembling, he picked up the next largest packet, one from the Home Secretary. It contained a proclamation of the “Shipping and Commerce Act.” It laid the foundation for the Control Acts. It required everyone engaged in the import and export of goods to obtain a license and to register with Her Majesty’s government. The legislation had been written as an anti-smuggling law but would require everyone whose products could end up on a ship to register. Nathaniel Woods, and all of the Shedashee for that matter, would have to abide by the law or their trade goods could be confiscated. Furthermore, while registration did not cost money, language was in place for the Home Secretary to impose fees and tariffs as necessary to maintain the integrity of the Norillian economy.

Vlad removed his spectacles, tossed them atop the messages, and rubbed his eyes. “Have you any idea what you’re doing?” The Shipping and Commerce Act would be more than enough to incite protests. Hunters and trappers would simply ignore the laws, which put pressure on those who bought their furs, subjecting them to possible fines for smuggling. Because the act applied to any product that could end up on a ship, the scope of its application knew no limits. The act was designed to remind everyone to whom they were subject.

Adding on top of that, the Crown’s reply concerning the request for troops and the Queen was guaranteeing rebellion. It would simmer at a low level, but as taxes and fees got imposed, the heat would rise. And if the Norghaest do attack… even if they threaten, there is no way the Queen will not be made to look the fool.

A gentle rapping on his office door caused him to glance at the clock on his sideboard. He got up and answered the door.

“Quite punctual, Miss Frost, thank you.”

“My pleasure, Highness.” Bethany entered and set the sheaf of papers she was carrying on the side table. She flipped the folio open and handed him a set of sheets which appeared to be ledger pages. He scanned the account names atop each sheet, then smiled. “You had no difficulty with the sendings?”

“Storms did scramble some things, but redundancy allowed me to correct them.”

“Any more ghost messages?” The thaumagraphs occasionally produced messages that had a rhythm and cadence all their own, but resulted in nonsense messages. The Prince feared his thaumagraphs were picking up on Church communications through similar devices-which meant his messages might trigger their devices.

“Both your wife and I have heard more of them, but they remain short and appear to be nonsense.” The woman smiled. “She can tell you more, but she thinks they might be the result of magick storms.”

“Interesting theory. I can’t wait to hear more about it.” The Prince brought the papers to his desk and then handed Bethany the Queen’s proclamation about how her colonial subjects should behave. “Take your time. I’d like your opinion.”

“Yes, Highness.” She sat at the small desk the Prince had installed for her and began reading.

From the start of the thaumagraph project the Prince needed reliable and intelligent people. He’d brought Caleb Frost into his cabal, and Caleb had suggested employing Bethany. Because she was known to have edited Owen’s book, and to edit the Gazette, it was easy to make people believe that she was working with the Prince on an immense, multi-volume work on the flora and fauna of Mystria. That fit with what most people knew the Prince for, and quite common was the sight of Bethany hauling papers to and fro.

Where Bethany had proved an incredible boon was not only her facility for working ciphers, but her ability to use the thaumagraph. She’d grasped its potential immediately, and in conjunction with Gisella had suggested refinements to the design. Bethany had become far more adept at employing the device than any other operator. The Prince installed a thaumagraph in the attic of the Gazette building and from there Bethany and Caleb were able to gather and send messages from and to the other units.

She looked up at him, her brow creased. “Can the Queen’s advisors not see what reading this will do here? Who could have suggested she take a step like this? Bishop Bumble?”

“I have no doubt that bits and pieces of messages he’s sent have been communicated to the Queen, and may have influenced her.” Vlad shook his head. “Bumble is a grasping man. He’ll be more than happy to read that aloud and preach long and hard about it. Still, even he would see that the emotions stirred up by it would not be easily controlled.”

“So when rebellion happens, the Church offers to exert control where there is insufficient military to secure it?”

Prince Vlad shivered. “That is far more likely than I would prefer to imagine, though if that were the plan, would the message not be more laudatory of the Church?”

Bethany bit her lower lip. “That is an excellent point. Will you have it read aloud?”

He shook his head. “No. I immediately reply with a need for clarification and another copy. I held the original too close to a candle, can’t get the exact wording. It would be June before the duplicate arrived.”

“Unless you’re anticipated and a second copy has been sent to you or someone else.”

“If the seal has been broken on the message, I cannot be certain it is genuine. I would be a fool to publish in that case.” Vlad slid his spectacles on again and sat to study the ledger pages. “I know it’s a dangerous game, but I have no choice. By June we’ll know the nature of the threat from the west.”

“Would you like me to draft a response for you?”

He laughed. “Please. Stuffy, stupid, and craven would be the right notes. Fear of the Queen makes me incompetent. It will please her and annoy whoever wanted action to cause trouble.”

“My pleasure, Highness.”

Prince Vlad glanced at the first ledger page. As with all book code, words had been reduced to digits, with the page number acting as thousands, paragraph number as hundreds and the word being behind the decimal point. Every sixth entry was a number which, when totaled with the five previous, would produce the number ten million. Not only did that provide a way for both the encoder and decoder to make sure they had the right numbers from a transmission, but it provided nonsense-data to confuse anyone attempting to decode the message. Moreover, numbers alternated being recorded in the credit and debit ledger columns, with the totals making running sense, but signifying nothing. Credits formed the first half of the message, debits the second.

The longest message came from Fairlee and Bethany’s uncle, Major Forest. He reported no incidences of anything unusual to the south. Moreover, he’d managed to pull the Southern Rangers together and had trained them in the way of “green” powder. He’d had great success and would continue training men, anticipating a call to head west by mid-May.

A second message had come from a training camp Count von Metternin had set up. He reported continued success educating men with the new brimstone spell. He’d also been training more thaumagraph operators drawn from Caleb’s Bookworm squad in the Northern Rangers. Once they became proficient in sending and receiving messages, he was going to move to the second phase of their training.

The Prince looked up. “Anything from Plentiful?”

Bethany shook her head. “Double-nought sent from them two days ago, right on schedule. All is well.”

The thaumagraph in Plentiful was the unit they’d placed furthest afield. The Prince had set it up such that the Plentiful station would send something at noon and sundown, just to make certain they were still there. When the messages came in, the Temperance operator would note the time, which was always later than noon or sundown. Through this method, and allowing for storms and other delays, Prince Vlad had been able to roughly calculate Plentiful’s longitude.

This calculation placed the village just over a hundred miles as the crow flies. Getting there with troops in sufficient quantity and supply to deal with the Norghaest would be the work of weeks. The twice-daily messaging was less to let Plentiful feel it could send for help, than to let the Prince know, by its silence, that the Norghaest had overrun the settlement and were on their way east.

Despite that reality, he did expect some useful information to come from Plentiful. “Please let me know when you hear anything.”

“Of course, Highness.” Bethany set down her quill, rose, and handed him a sheet with clear writing along even lines. “Make notes and I shall copy it over.”

He shook his head. “I’ll copy it out myself. It will please my aunt that I wrote her directly. This is very good. You have a flair for writing.”

Color flushed her cheeks. “I merely edit, Highness.”

“You edit Samuel Haste, I believe.”

Her eyes tightened. “When he makes things available. Why do you ask?”

Vlad handed her the Shipping and Commerce Act. “What would you gauge his reaction to this to be?”

She scanned it quickly, her bright blue eyes flicking back and forth. She chewed her lower lip, then frowned, running a finger under certain sentences. She reread passages, then shook her head. “I don’t know how Mr. Haste will react, Highness. I can tell you that my brother and his friends will be very upset. The document tax is nothing compared to this. This is… this is…”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Yes, Miss Frost?”

She handed him back the act, then retreated to her desk. She made some quick notes. “Forgive me, Highness. If you do not put this act in place, you invite intervention. This is far more than our having to pay customs. This requires everyone to keep track of everything they produce, such that Her Majesty’s government could figure out who to tax and when, correct?”

“Precisely.”

“What if you choose to apply the act universally, and not selectively?”

The Prince removed his spectacles and cleaned them with a handkerchief. “This would invite an immediate revolt.”

“Not if you were to focus it.” Bethany smiled. “Who are the most educated and literate people in each community?”

“The ministers and priests.”

“Exactly. If you ask Bishop Bumble and his peers to not only announce this program, but administer it, anger will focus on them. But, there’s something which is even more important. This act, and compliance with it, will force people to create a lot of paper. If Makepeace Bone, for example, was to sell a skin at a trading post, he would need a receipt, the trader would have to keep one, and one would have to cover the sale and be sent to be recorded. And then if that trader sells the skin to a broker in Temperance, more receipts are created and must be recorded. If everyone is doing this, and if farmers would be required to track grain by the bushel, and distillers rum by the gallon…”

Vlad chuckled. “My aunt’s surrogates would drown in paper, and that would keep them too busy to pay to much attention to what we are doing.”

“And if men like my brother and Samuel Haste urge compliance with the law, pointing out that burying the Queen in paper is better than burning her in effigy, the people will do it for the amusement. When you have countless receipts all signed with a man’s mark to sort through, the system will collapse.”

“True.” Vlad tossed his glasses on his desk. “However, it will still increase resistance to the Crown in the future albeit more slowly than otherwise.”

“Highness, do you think you can insulate the Crown from its own stupidity?”

“No.” Vlad slowly shook his head. “I just hope I am able to insulate the people from the Crown’s ire.”