stone's cost. As for d'Eymon, she would probably end up talking directly to him later in the week. Or as directly as discussions ever got with that man.
Sipping at her khav she moved on. People came up to her wherever she went. It was bad politics in Brandin's court not to be on good terms with Dianora di Certando. Conversing absently and inconsequentially she kept an ear pitched for the discreet raps of the Herald's staff that would be Brandin's sole announcement. Rhun, she noted, was making faces at himself in one of the mirrors and laughing at the effect. He was in high humor, which was a good sign. Turning the other way she suddenly noticed a face she liked. One that was undeniably central to her own history.
In could be said, in many ways, to have been the Governor's own fault. So anxious was he to assuage the evident frustration of Rhamanus, captain of that year's Tribute Ship, that he ordered the Certandan serving-girl, who had apologized so very charmingly after the spilled-wine incident some time ago, to bring rather more of The Queen's best vintages than were entirely good for any of them at the table.
Rhamanus, young enough to still be ambitious, old enough to feel his chances slipping away, had made some pointedly acid remarks earlier in the day on board the river galley about the state of affairs in Stevanien and its environs. So much of a backwater, so desultory in its collection of duties and taxes, he murmured a little too casually, that he wasn't even sure if the galley run upriver in spring was worthwhile . . . under the present administrative circumstances.
The Governor, long past the point of ambition but needing a few more years here skimming his share of border tariffs and internal levies, along with the criminal justice fines and confiscations, had winced inwardly and cursed the conjunctions of his planets. Why, when he strove so hard to be decent and uncontentious in everything he did, to leave any waters he entered as unruffled as possible, did he have so little luck?
Short of a massive midsummer military assertion there was no way to force more money or goods out of this impoverished region. If Brandin had seriously wanted to extract real wealth out of Stevanien he would have been better advised not to have so successfully smashed the city and its distrada to its knees.
Not that the Governor would have even dreamt of letting such a furtive thought come anywhere near his lips. But the reality was that he was doing the best he could. If he squeezed the leather or the wool guilds any harder than he was they would simply start to fold. Stevanien, already thinly inhabited, and particularly bereft of men in their prime years, would become a town of ghosts and empty squares. And he had explicit instructions from the King to prevent that.
If the King's various orders and demands rammed so violently up against each other, in such patent contradiction, what, in all fairness, was a middle-echelon administrator to do?▃▃文▃檔▃共▃享▃與▃在▃線▃閱▃讀▃
Not that such a plaint could be used with this bristly, unhappy Rhamanus. What care would the captain have for the Governor's dilemmas? The Tribute Ship captains were judged by what came home to Chiara in their holds. Their job was to put as much pressure on the local administrators as they could, even to the point, sometimes, of forcing them to surrender a portion of their own levies to bring the contents of the ship nearer to the mark. The Governor had already resigned himself, dismally, to doing just that by the end of the week if the last hurried sweep of the distrada that he'd ordered didn't produce enough to satisfy Rhamanus. It wouldn't, he knew. This was an ambitious captain he was dealing with, and there had been a tenuous harvest in Corte last fall, Rhamanus's next stop.
His retirement estate in eastern Ygrath, on the promontory he'd already chosen in his mind, seemed farther away this evening than ever before. He signaled for another round of wine for all of them, inwardly grievi