"Dinner time, dinner time!"
The loudspeaker mounted on a pole across the fields crackled to life, and the prisoners toiling in the dirt straightened up one by one, making their way toward the meal area.
James rose slowly, moving along with the crowd. He cast a glance toward the far end of the fields, where wolf-soldiers on horseback occasionally cantered past — a reminder that escape was not worth attempting.
In truth, not many of the prisoners wanted to escape. Very few, in fact.
A full day's work here — ten-odd hours — and they actually paid you one yuan.
It wasn't even backbreaking labor. That came out to three and a half taels of silver a year.
Had they known prison life was this comfortable, why bother soldiering at all, chasing after military rations?
They could have just come here and eaten at the state's expense from the start!
Probably only a nobleman like James would fail to see it that way — someone who spent every day feeling thoroughly miserable.
All eight thousand of them had been dispersed into different prisons, different cells, upon arrival.
A handful of his former soldiers were still nearby, but most of his neighbors were former black slaves, red-haired Russian devils, and local prisoners of war.
After dinner, everyone returned to the prison.
The evening lessons began.
Though he had been here more than ten days now, James remained fascinated by the glowing objects mounted overhead.
"If I could bring one of these back to France, and present it to His Majesty..."
Well — even here, the merchant in him never slept. He was already scheming about trade and profit.
In a classroom of several dozen men, a teacher who had come from Longcheng Elementary to moonlight for a double salary began the pinyin lesson. After pinyin came arithmetic, and after arithmetic, Chinese language study.
Once these men learned Chinese, they would make excellent interpreters someday.
They say potential must be cultivated. Take James as an example — barely a fortnight here, and he was already recognizing Chinese characters.
He had his reasons. He needed to master the written language as quickly as possible so he could communicate with the administrators, and more importantly, write home.
Write to his elderly father and have the old man pay his ransom.
He had, admittedly, lost half the family fortune...
But he was confident his father loved him. Old James had only one son, and as yet, no grandchildren.
Oh God — he had to write quickly. He couldn't let his father find out about the illegitimate child. Once that came to light, he'd become expendable.
In just a single month, James had somehow managed to hold a halting, stumbling conversation in Chinese.
Wealth truly is a remarkable motivator.
He sought out Liu Dadao, the administrator of his section. "Mr. Liu, I would like to write a letter home. When I arrived, the warden told me this was my right."
"Correct. It is your right."
"Then please help me send this letter to my homeland."
"Your homeland? I'm sorry, Mr. Foreign Devil, your homeland is far too distant. We have no postal service there yet."
"Then please, find a way."
"I'm afraid that's above my authority. Well — give me the letter. I'll pass it up the chain and see what they say."
The letter was submitted, reviewed, and cleared without issue. The reply came back: they could forward it to Guangzhou. If any Westerners happened to be sailing from Guangzhou to France, they could pass the letter along.
Longcheng had a way of being humane with its own people.
And this foreign devil, in another year, would count as one of their own — bound to serve the master for life, contributing ten yuan a day to the cause.
"Mr. Foreign Devil, I can see you're an ambitious one," Liu Dadao said cheerfully. "Tell you what — I'll put in a request to make you a supervisor. Work hard and you'll go places! Strive to be like me — reach Level Four prisoner wages, one yuan ninety a day. Eat well, live well!"
Are you sure that's enough for you to eat well on?
Your wife brings you a hundred yuan every month, and you've been saving every last coin of it, haven't you?
"Mikovsky! You're both prisoners of war, both foreign devils — look at old James here, then look at yourself! I don't know what to do with you!"
A red-faced man with an enormous beard went on shoveling down his food, stone-faced, utterly indifferent to Liu Dadao's scolding.
James turned, curious. "Mr. Liu, is he also a prisoner of war? What did he do?"
"Nothing much. He just led twenty thousand red-haired devils in an attack on the capital up north. Our brilliantly capable Second Young Master defeated them and sent the lot of them here for reform through labor."
"Twenty thousand... Russian soldiers? All defeated by you people?"
James found it hard to believe. The Russian Empire was a power on par with Great Britain and the rigid, stubborn Germans — a hegemon in every sense of the word. A man who commanded twenty thousand soldiers had to be a general, at the very least. If anything, that made him outrank James himself.
"I never imagined you'd have generals sitting in this prison."
"What of it? What's so special about a general? I'm a prisoner too, you know. Do you have any idea what I used to be?"
"I'm sorry — you were...?"
"I used to be an emperor!"
James stared blankly. He thought Liu Dadao must be pulling his leg, yet the man's expression was perfectly serious.
"And over there — see him? The one with the big head? He used to be an emperor too."
No harm in a little boasting when you've got nothing better to do — and besides, it wasn't a lie. He had been an emperor, after all.
What he wouldn't mention was that he'd never set foot outside the county seat, nor that his imperial domain had never commanded more than a few thousand men.