iverside in the blinding light and the heat of the sun, and half of Stevanien had heard what he and Rhamanus had just shouted back and forth across the water.
With a small, diffident prayer to his own patron gods of food and forest, and a poignantly clear image of that seaside estate, the Governor chose his fist.
"Let me on board then," he said as briskly as he could manage. "I'm not about to farspeak the King while standing on this dock. I want a chair and some quiet and an extremely strong mug of whatever passes for khav on a galley."
Rhamanus was visibly nonplussed. The Governor was able to derive a certain sour pleasure from that.
They gave him everything he asked for. The woman was taken below deck and he was left alone in the captain's cabin. He took a deep breath and then several more. He drank the khav, scalding his tongue which, as much as anything else, woke him up. Then, for the first time in three years of office, he narrowed his mind down to a pinpoint image as Brandin had taught him, and he framed, questioningly, the name of the King in his thoughts.
With profoundly unsettling speed Brandin's crisp, cool, always slightly mocking voice was in his head. It was dizzying. The Governor fought to keep his composure. As carefully but as quickly as he could, speed mattered, they had all been taught, he outlined the situation they faced. He apologized twice, en route, but dared not risk the time required for a third, however much his lifetime's instincts bade him to. What good were a career diplomat's lifetime instincts when enmeshed in sorcery? He felt sick to his stomach with the strain and the discontinuity of the farspeaking.
Then, with a surging of his spirit, with glory, with paeans of praise to twenty different deities chorusing within him, the Governor of Stevanien was given to understand that his King was not angered. More: that he had been exactly correct in this farspeaking. That the political timing could not be better for such a testing of Alberico's resolve. That, accordingly, Rhamanus should indeed be allowed to take the girl as Tribute but, and the King stressed this, very clearly identified as a Certandan. A Certandan who happened to be in Lower Corte. That fact was to be their claim of authority: no evasions about her being a resident of Stevanien or some such thing. They would see what sort of spirit this minor Barbadian sorcerer had after all.
The Governor had done well, the King said.
The image of the house by the sea grew almost incandescently vivid in the back of the Governor's mind even as he heard himself babbling, silently over the link Brandin made, his most abject protestations of love and obedience. The King cut him short.
"We must end now," he said, "Do go easier on the wine down there." Then he was gone. The Governor sat alone in the captain's cabin for a long time, trying to reassure himself that Brandin's last tone had been amused, not reproving. He was fairly certain it was. He was almost sure.┇┇網┇
A very tense period had ensued. The galley was allowed to leave that same morning. In the fortnight that followed the King had far-spoken him twice. Once to order the border garrison at Forese quietly increased but not by so much as to amount to further provocation in itself. The Governor spent an anguished sleepless night trying to calculate what number of soldiers would suit that command.
Reinforcements from the city of Lower Corte arrived up the river to supplement his own forces in Stevanien. Later he was instructed by the King to watch for a possible Barbadian envoy from Certando, and to greet such a one with utmost cordiality, referring all questions to Chiara for resolution. He was also warned to be on full alert for a retaliatory border raid from Sinave, and to annihilate any and all Barbadian troops that might venture into Lower Corte. The Governor had very little personal experience at annihilation but he swore to obey.
Merchants, he was told, were to be advised to delay their