rking back to the violence of the first year after he'd landed here. Things had been quiet for so long, and this level of intensity, of very public intensity, never boded well. Briefly he even considered rolling back the new taxes, but that would look too much like a giving in rather than a gesture of benevolence. Besides, he still needed the money for the army. Back home the word was that the Emperor was sinking more rapidly now, that he was seen in public less and less often. Alberico knew he had to keep his mercenaries happy.
In the dead of winter he made the decision to reward Karalius with fully half of the former Nievolene lands.
The night after the announcement was made public, among the troops first, then cried in the Grand Square of Astibar, the horse barn and several of the outbuildings of the Nievolene family estate were burned to the ground.
He ordered an immediate investigation by Karalius, then wished, a day later, that he hadn't. It seemed that they had found two bodies in the smoldering ruins, trapped by a fallen beam that had barred a door. One was that of an informer linked to Grancial and the Second Company. The other was a Barbadian soldier: from the Second Company.
Karalius promptly challenged Grancial to a duel at any time and place of the latter's choosing. Grancial immediately named a date and place. Alberico quickly made it clear that the survivor of any such combat would be death-wheeled. He succeeded in halting the fight, but the two commanders stopped speaking to each other from that point on. There were a number of small skirmishes among men of the two companies, and one, in Tregea, that was not so small, leaving fifteen soldiers slain and twice as many wounded.
Three local informers were found dead in Ferraut's distrada, stretched on farmer's wagon-wheels in a savage parody of the Tyrant's justice. They couldn't even retaliate, that would involve an admission that the men had been informers.
In Certando, two of Siferva's Third Company went absent from duty, disappearing into the snow-white countryside, the first time that had ever happened. Siferval reported that local women did not appear to be involved. The men had been extremely close friends. The Third Company commander offered the obvious, disagreeable hypothesis.
Late in the winter Brandin of Ygrath sent another suave envoy with another letter. In it he profusely thanked Alberico for his offer of verses, and said he'd be delighted to read them. He also formally requested six Certandan women, as young and comely as the one Alberico had so kindly allowed him to take from the Eastern Palm some years ago, to be added to his saishan. Unforgivably the letter somehow became public information.
Laughter was deadly.
To quell it, Alberico had six old women seized by Siferval in southwestern Certando. He ordered them blinded and hamstrung and set down under a courier's flag on the snow-clad border of Lower Corte between the forts at Sinave and Forese. He had Siferval attach a letter to one of them asking Brandin to acknowledge receipt of his new mistresses.
Let them hate him. So long as they feared.－本－作－品－由－－網－提－供－下－載－與－在－線－閱－讀－
On the way back east from the border, Siferval said in his report, he had followed an informer's tip and found the two runaway soldiers living together at an abandoned farm. They had been executed on the site, with one of them, the appropriate one, Siferval had reported, castrated first, so that he could die as he'd lived. Alberico sent his commendations.
It was an unsettling winter though. Things seemed to be happening to him instead of moving to a measure he dictated. Late at night, and then at other times as well, more and more as the Palm gradually turned towards a distant rumor of spring, Alberico found himself thinking about the ninth province that no one yet controlled, the one just across the bay. Senzio.
The grey-eyed merchant was making a great deal of sense. Even as he found himself reluctantly agreeing with the man, Ettocio wished t