seeing plots hatching in every barnyard and using them as an excuse to seize fowls and vegetable gardens all over the Eastern Palm. There were also a few, not very subtle sexual innuendos thrown in for good measure.
The poems, posted on walls all over the city, and then in Tregea and Certando and Ferraut, were torn down by the Barbadians almost as fast as they went up. Unfortunately they were memorable rhymes, and people didn't need to read or hear them more than once . . .
Alberico would later acknowledge to himself that he'd lost control a little. He would also admit inwardly that a great deal of his rage stemmed from a fierce indignation and the aftermath of fear.
There had been a conspiracy led by that mincing Sandreni. They had very nearly killed him in that cursed cabin in the woods.
This once, he was telling the absolute truth. There was no pretense or deception. He had every claim of justice on his side. What he didn't have was a confession, or a witness, or any evidence at all. He'd needed his informer alive. Or Tomasso. He'd wanted Tomasso alive. His dreams that first night had been shot through with vivid images of Sandre's son, bound and stripped and curved invitingly backwards on one of the machines.
In the aftermath of the pervert's inexplicable death, and the unanimous word from all four provinces that no one believed a word of what had happened, Alberico had abandoned his original, carefully measured response to the plot.
The lands were seized of course, but in addition all the living members of all three families were searched out and death-wheeled in Astibar. He hadn't expected there to be quite so many, actually, when he gave that order. The stench had been deplorable and some of the children lived an unconscionably long time on the wheels. It made it difficult to concentrate on business in the state offices above the Grand Square.
He raised taxes in Astibar and introduced, for the first time, transit duties for merchants crossing from one of his provinces to another, along the lines of the existing tariff levied for crossing from the Eastern to the Western Palm. Let them pay, literally, if they chose not to believe what had happened to him in that cabin.
He did more. Half the massive Nievolene grain harvest was promptly shipped home to Barbadior. For an action conceived in anger he considered that one to be inspired. It had pushed the price of grain down back home in the Empire, which hurt his family's two most ancient rivals while making him exceptionally popular with the people. In so far as the people mattered in Barbadior.
At the same time, here in the Palm, Astibar was forced to bring in more grain than ever from Certando and Ferraut, and with the new duties Alberico was going to rake a healthy cut of that inflated price as well.△△網△文△檔△下△載△與△在△線△閱△讀△
He could almost have slaked his anger, almost have made himself happy, watching the effects of all this ripple through, if it wasn't that small things kept happening.
For one, his soldiers began to grow restless. With an increase in hardship came an increase in tension; more incidents of confrontation occurred. Especially in Tregea where there were always more incidents of confrontation. Under greater stress the mercenaries demanded, predictably, higher pay. Which, if he gave it to them, was going to soak up virtually everything he might gain from the confiscations and the new duties.
He sent a letter home to the Emperor. His first request in over two years. Along with a case of Astibar blue wine, from what were now his own estates in the north, he conveyed an urgent reiteration of his plea to be brought under the Imperial aegis. Which would have meant a subsidy for his mercenaries from the Treasury in Barbadior, or even Imperial troops under his command. As always, he stressed the role he alone played in blocking Ygrathen expansion in this dangerous halfway peninsula. He might have begun his career here as an independent adventurer, he conceded, with what he saw