CHAPTER THIRTY

He had been in Sulos a little over a month, now, and Adred was beginning to feel restless. Mantho recognized his symptoms. “You want to return to the capital, don’t you?”

But Adred wasn’t certain he wished to do that. He knew Orain now seemed content to remain in Sulos and leave Athad where it was, as the capital, with everything that had happened there. As for himself, “I feel I must do something,” Adred told his friend. “But I don’t want to go back, not yet. I need to travel.”

“Go hike in the uplands,” Mantho recommended. “They’re at their most pleasant this time of year. It gets chilly up there—but the pretty girls will help keep you warm. And you’ll be listening to people complain all day about the crops and the weather. Not a peep about Elad.”

This sounded splendid to Adred. He was becoming preoccupied with news that came from the capital, news that deeply disturbed him. He and Orain had been receiving letters twice a week from Abgarthis, detailing how the traitors who had been involved with Cyrodian in the attempted coup had been beheaded, from Umothet on down to a single rider in Captain Uvars’s squadron of escort. The fate of Prince Cyrodian himself, however, remained unknown. Units dispatched immediately upon the discovery of the plot had met Uvars’s men on their return from the Bithiran border, but a thorough search of the hills and villages in the wide vicinity of those borderlands had yielded not one clue of the renegade. If any of the farmers or shepherds in the region had heard or seen aught of him, they refused to admit it. Uvars and his men, with the units sent by King Elad, returned to the capital with no one in manacles.

This failure had incensed Elad, but wisely, he had made a political move in reaction to it rather than one of brute force. To a gathering of army leaders invited to the palace, Elad had made an address and had discussed openly (or as openly as he dared) the situation with Cyrodian. It was never my intention, he told the imperial army, to make enemies of you; I believe that that condition was artificially created by my brother. Now that the matter is clarified, I would like to acknowledge my feelings toward the army by making a gesture of good faith: a bonus for every commander, every officer, and every sword in the imperial service who has remained loyal to this throne through a difficult time. You will find these bonuses in your pay allotments at the end of the month.

As Cyrodian himself had said, Elad was beginning to learn.

Abgarthis made it clear in his letters to Adred and Orain that this spontaneous intention to buy the loyalty of the army would dangerously deplete the royal treasury. Advised of this, Elad had ordered additional coin minted. This meant the buying of surplus gold held in reserve in the mines of allied provinces and cheapening it with copper and silver into an alloy. The expenditure could prove to be disastrous. To make certain that the treasury would not be wholly emptied by this bonus pay to the army, Elad had ordered a policy of limited withdrawals from the banks throughout the empire. At the same time, the government was borrowing funds from several agencies and businesses friendly to the throne—at a very high rate of interest, of course. This pleased the bankers who were on friendly terms with Elad but, as Abgarthis reported, the plan had caused an uproar with others in the High Council. How could the king dare to limit available funds, simply to buy the affection of an army that mistrusted him in the first place, and to do it by improving the fortunes of bankers, whose only loyalty was to their record books?

But Elad had held firm. New coin was hurriedly minted from surplus stock even as additional shipments of bullion were ordered from the gold mines of northeast Galsia and southern Herulia. And the extra bonuses had indeed appeared in the pay allotments given to the army at the end of Hutt, the Month of the Horse—just in time for the soldiers to spend in celebration of the Feast of the Ascension, Athadia’s most religious holiday.

* * * *

On the day before the Feast of the Ascension (held to observe the rising of the Prophet Bithitu into the Hall of the Gods, following his death), Adred went to a banking house in Sulos where he kept an account. The bank was crowded, which was typical for a day before a national holiday, with merchants making large deposits and the wealthy withdrawing funds for private festivities. But today, the crowd in the bank was restive because of King Elad’s order to limit the amount that could be withdrawn. Adred had intended to take out ten in long gold, not an exorbitant sum, but it came to more than four percent of what the bank held for him—the limit now permitted by the crown.

“We can give you nine in long and three in short, Count Adred. You can withdraw more after the holiday, but for now—”

“This is ridiculous! It’s my money!”

“Sir, we’ve heard this complaint all day, and we’re sorry. It’s the crown. Complain to the king. We’re waiting for further word from the treasury—”

Adred angrily swore, as did everyone else, but no one could do more, particularly because the number of city guards at all money houses had been increased to prevent outbursts of violence. Jakovas, the military governor in Kendia, had been ordered to do so by Elad himself—at the throne’s expense, of course.

Adred withdrew what he could and walked all the way back to Mantho’s apartment, mentally drawing up a letter of complaint against Elad. But he was confronted by a further surprise when he returned.

That same morning, Orain and Galvus had gone out to shop. Adred now found the princess and her son being tended to by Mantho’s servants, and Mantho, at his most bellicose, cursing the king in three languages.

“What happened?” Adred asked in alarm.

Orain had been cut on the head and her skirt torn—a whole side ripped away from ankle to hip. Galvus’s shirt was in tatters, and he had a number of bad bruises and cuts on his arms.

“A riot!” Mantho told him tempestuously.

“Where?”

Orain winced as a servant woman applied some kind of oil to her cut forehead, but she told Adred, “In the Shemtu Square. Galvus and I—ouch!—we were in a little glass shop when a whole squad of soldiers rode down the street. We ran out to see what was happening. There was a large crowd—very large crowd of— All right, it’s stopped bleeding now. Please! Thank you, thank you.”

“A large crowd.” Galvus faced Adred. “Governor Jakovas’s headquarters are at the end of the square; his mansion is there. The people lined up—”

“A mob!” Mantho interjected furiously. “A mob of Osonites!”

Osonite was a common term to describe them; Oson had been an anarchist of the previous generation, a hot-tempered rebel whose arguments made on behalf of the deprived within the empire had led to his assassination and death.

“The people,” Galvus insisted, “lined up in front of the governor’s mansion. Some of them started throwing bricks and rocks. That’s what we were told. Jakovas called in the swords, and they drew their weapons on them.”

“Do them good!” Mantho growled. “Damned sewer rats!”

Galvus turned to him, reddening. “Can’t you understand why they did it?” he asked hotly. “We have everything! They don’t have a—”

“They might have killed you, boy!” Mantho retorted, leaning forward. “Don’t you understand that you might have been killed? Your mother might have been killed?”

“All right, enough, please!” Orain said strongly, reaching for Galvus’s arm. “We are guests here! Galvus! We are Count Mantho’s guests!”

Wounded, he shot a look at her, stood, crossed the room, and approached Mantho. “Will you excuse me?” he asked quietly.

Mantho looked at him for a long moment, then slowly nodded, and Galvus left the room.

He then told Orain, “Have a glass of wine. Adred—you, too. I understand the boy’s confusion.”

Orain helped herself, but Adred sat back in a chair and let out a low curse.

“What’s wrong?” Mantho inquired. “It’s over—at least for now. Blood in the streets. We’re almost getting used to it. I’m only sorry that—”

“Elad mustn’t know,” Adred told him. “Orain and Galvus are royal blood. He’ll have this city smashed down to its stones if he finds out they were almost killed!” Then he grinned and let out a derisive laugh. “No, he won’t. That would take money. And Elad doesn’t have any money right now.”

Mantho and Orain stared at him.

“I went to the bank,” Adred informed them. “Elad’s limited the withdrawal of funds, remember?”

Orain couldn’t believe it. “But Abgarthis said—”

“It wasn’t supposed to be for personal accounts, only business and government. I know. But they’re limiting everybody.”

“This is outrageous!” Mantho exclaimed. “He can’t do it. He’ll make more enemies than he has already!”

“It’s only temporary,” Adred told him. “Besides, what can council do? Anyone there powerful enough to profit by this is already on Elad’s side. He’s giving all of this money to the army. You see, Mantho? We don’t have the good sense to organize ourselves into a cavalry regiment. Then we’d get our money. It’s the army he needs most of all, not people like you and me.”

“It’s an outrage.”

“It’s a business. The crown’s business. Good Feast to you,” Adred said sarcastically. “We’ll praise the prophet in the hall and the king on the earth and kill anyone who doesn’t like it when we do. That’s why we hire an army. The prophet had it backward. Ruling a country is easy. You feed the people excuses and lies, and you feed your rich friends more money. That’s paradise. That’s how the gods want it. It must be, because they sure don’t seem to be stopping it.”