On the third day Able was in Adeptsby, he decided to pay a visit to the financial analyst. Hardy Northrise's office was sequestered on the upper floor in the shadow of the tower. He recognized the scent of hashish before he knocked on the door, so he gamely knocked a second time when there was no response and mused at what he might find within.
"Yeah, come in," came the distracted response, and Able opened the door. The smoke took him straight back to the evenings in the University residence halls. He had never partaken himself as he could neither afford to be as unproductive as the hashish enthusiasts were nor had he trusted his fellow students in the event he had a bad reaction to it. The source of the smoke was a simple rolled cigarette forgotten at the elbow of the man Able assumed was Hardy Northrise. All his attention was currently on the admittedly impressive four-level house of cards on the end table before him. This was situated before the narrow solitary window, and he had pulled up a bench to sit with his knees against it. His desk was in the center of the room and nearly bare.
Able took all this in and considered giving this cause up for lost.
"Did you want something?" the man had carefully withdrawn his hands from his precarious creation.
"I did. I was wondering at your thinking over the state of the county's financial affairs."
"I am thinking I should fake my death and change my name," he said this with such lucidity that Able couldn't help but chuckle at which point the man actually looked at him. "Shit. Oh...sh—landing ships, yes. Who are you?"
"Able Houser. Independent chronicler affiliated with Fourwind Heights."
Northrise hastily stood and stubbed out his smoke, and the hapless cards tumbled all around. He straightened and strode to his side table, "were you looking for any particular reports or sheets?" He poured himself a cup from the coffee pot.
"I've looked through quite enough down in records and wanted to discuss my findings with you."
Northrise gulped down his coffee and made a face, "I'd offer you some, but it is cold and vile. Please have a seat."
Able looked at the empty space in front of the desk, then went to fetch the bench.
"Oh—let, uhm..." Northrise awkwardly smoothed down his jacket front as Able pulled the bench to the desk and sat on it. While he was smoothing, he became entranced by an loose button.
"I can come back at a more opportune time," Able offered.
"Nope—er, no," Northrise sat. "My schedule is clear right now, so. Now is a very opportune time."
"Really? Because you don't appear to have all your faculties right now."
"Of course I do," Northrise sat bolt upright. "It's just that the job is very stressful, and I really need a little help dealing with it. It's a health thing. All it does is help me relax and keep my blood pressure down."
"Oh, is that all it does?"
"Have you never tried it?" Northrise apparently missed Able's sarcasm and fished the roll out from his pocket.
"No, I haven't," Able replied then after a pause took the offered cigarette. "You just inhale through here?"
"Yeah, exactly, that easy. Take it slow, though." While Northrise lit his lamp, it occurred to Able that he would have hesitated to do this before he had come to Borealund, and how silly that seemed now. This might be the easiest time he'd have winning over a source yet. Then again, he had gamely inhaled quite a bit before it occurred to him that he had just intentionally filled his lungs with smoke, and they were responding accordingly. He started coughing so hard that he felt as if he would never breath again. His throat burned more with every desperate wheeze.
"First-timer, that was an amazing first toke," Northrise laughed and got up to go to the sideboard. "I salute you, sir." He returned with coffee, which Able gulped down. It was, as promised, vile, but more importantly, it was wet.
"People do this for fun?" Able was finally coughing infrequently enough to speak. He wiped the tears from his eyes, but they kept coming.
"Sorry my waterpipe is broken," Northrise settled back in his chair. "That'd be a lot easier."
"What makes the job this stressful?"
"The territory is completely broke, and every time I think it can't get worse, it does?"
"That's what I was wanting to ask you about, when I was reading your reports."
"Thank you for that. It's nice to know that someone read them."
"The count doesn't even read them?" Able cleared his throat to hold off more coughing.
"I don't know," Northrise sighed. "Maybe he does and just doesn't listen. When I was selected for this office, I thought it was on merit of the proposal I had submitted on generating capital in this region, but then Adeptson wasn't interested in following my advice at all. He has it in his head and will not budge on the idea that we should be selling the properties to Larbant citizens, and that's where our revenue should come from. I get wanting to his territory to be developed enough to get to province status, but talk about putting the wagon in front of the oxen, yeah? Nearly half the settled land has to be sitting idle at this point, and the Larbants won't buy it—why would they buy? There's nothing for them here."
"I hear there are trees," Able chuckled. "And that trees are worth a lot of money."
"It doesn't grow on the trees," Northrise leaned forward and his tone intensified. "The trees are a fucking nightmare. People look at trees and think, 'oh how lovely to have building material that just sprouts out of the ground for you.' They have no idea—no idea—that it takes just as much work to get anything usable out of these pompous overgrown plants as it does to dig rocks out of the ground. And you know what stone doesn't do? Split, warp, or mold while it's in transit from the mill to the shipyard. Every day I got another report crossing my desk about a ruined load of lumber. And then the Crown's demanding we make good on the loads or refund the coin, and guess which we have neither of, now?"
"Stone doesn't float though," Able mused as he re-lit the cigarette. "Why am I doing this again?" he asked before he tried toking a second time.
"See? You get it."
Able did not get it, as his coughing reaction was just as bad as the first time, and he had presumed it would be easier on the second try.
"Take it slower and smaller," Northrise advised. "Let yourself get used to it."
"Sure," Able hacked. "Don't the Bors know how to harvest trees, though? Instead of having our own workers getting hung-up on reinventing the wheel, sounds like we should be enticing some experts into the fold."
"Sure, but they're too busy cursing our efforts. I'm dead serious; they got witches out there or something doing stuff only the Prophets know about and would condemn if they'd could be found in this godforsaken place. When the chief architect and his team did their surveys, of this area, this hill was considered ideal for the keep. Defensible high ground, plenty of building materials nearby, and so on.
"So we started clearing the hill, you know, after we establish a base of operations on this flat section down here, and I swear—I told you we're losing loads? These ones were to mold. Little bubbly, slimy caps that almost looked like they were dipped in honey. You could scrape them off but they'd be back the next day, and more of them at that, until the timber's just crumbling in your hands. Next thing we know? We're finding them on the still-living trees! They're cutting trees down and they already got the rot on them. I'm telling you, the Bors have cursed these trees to try to get rid of us!
"And that's not even the last of it! Two years ago, the hill came down on our heads!"
"I saw the reports," Able offered. He'd seen the site too, the gaping yawn in the hill's side, and, though the storage sheds that had been clobbered by the debris were dug out and repaired, the ground around remained a raw clay red at odds with the black soil and yellow dust of the rest of the grounds.
"I'm telling you, they called on their foul demons to punish us. We're too far from the holy land here, with no priests to protect us."
Able had been trying smaller puffs, as Northrise had suggested, but now that he was finding himself taken in and considering Northrise's rant, he thought he should probably just stop. He offered the hashish back to Northrise, who gladly took another hit.
"Couldn't any of this be explained to the crown? Aid be sent, or at least extensions be granted?"
"Absolutely. I offered to file to have our quota waived for hardship and submit prospective analysis to have it lowered entirely, but the count refused. I explained to him that it's perfectly normal, even for established territories that have had bad weather, but someone must have told him otherwise, and he's listening to them, not me."
"How many years do you have left in your contract?"
"Two," Northrise slowly exhaled and watched the smoke dance around.
"Are you going to make it?" Able chuckled. No, not chuckled: laughed. Louder than he meant to, and was having a hard time stopping.
"Ask the prophets," Northrise did not seem offended. "Best I can hope for is the indentureds don't revolt this winter. Or if they do, they don't care about me and my tiny office. We got more of them than ever, did you see? They outnumber our garrison ten to one, and the count wants to bring in even more to ramp up construction."
"If he had them constructing a shelter for themselves, they might be motivated. Hey, how did they survive so far without it? The horses too."
"Not happily, I'll tell you that. Wait, not the horses. Their fur grows in thick, and they don't seem to mind the cold at all, so long as the hay keeps coming. But the tents don't keep the Bors very warm, and while they're tough, the winter can be tougher. I swear, I don't leave this miserable building for months once the snow starts falling. It gets up to the window sills and they have to dig the doorways out and everything. What am I doing here?"
"What is anybody doing here?" Able tried to imagine frozen water sitting as high as a windowsill and shuddered.
"What is anybody doing here?" mused Northrise. "I wonder that all the time. What are we doing here?"
"Me too," Able laughed, really laughed and couldn't seem to stop. "Does this life mean anything? Is there a purpose to all this misery? What is the point?"
"See? You get it."