A pity, she thought absently, tapping her lips with the tip of the pen before dipping the nib in the inkwell again. A very pleasant young man.
And easy to manipulate. Which had been crucial; like his uncle, he'd been mad with suspicion against Raj. With envy, too, in young Cabot's case: of Raj's reputation, his victories, his hold over his soldiers, and his wife.
A pity she'd had to kill him. Particularly just then. Shooting people was a crude emergency measure. .
Which reminded her. She crossed to her jewel table and reached beneath for a small rosewood box. A tiny combination lock closed it, and she probed at that with a pin from a brooch.
Yes, the crystal vials of various liquids and powders within were all full and fresh-there was a slip of paper with a recent date inside to remind her, one of Abdullah's many talents.
You never knew what sort of help Raj would need. . whether he knew it or not.
"You will triumph, my knight," she whispered to herself, closing the box with a click. "If I have anything to do with the matter."
CHAPTER THREE
Governor Barholm stood while the servants stripped off the heavy robes; apart from Raj, they were the only people in the chamber who didn't look terrified. . and they didn't have to watch the Governor's face. A sicklefoot had that sort of expression, just before it pivoted and slashed open its prey's belly with the four-inch dewclaw on one hind foot.
The Negrin Room was three centuries old. Walls were pale stone, traced over with delicate murals of reeds and flying dactosauroids and waterfowl; there was only one small Star, a token obeisance to religion as had been common in that impious age. The heads of the Ministries were there: Chancellor Tzetzas, of course; General Fiydel Klostermann, Master of Soldiers; Bernardinho Rivadavia, the Minister of Barbarians; Mihwel Berg of the Administrative Service; Gharzia, Commander of Eastern Forces. The courier from the east as well.
It was strange not to see Lady Anne Clerett, the Governor's wife. Barholm didn't have anyone he really trusted now that she was dead, and it was affecting his judgment.
"Heldeyz," Barholm snapped. "Give us the report, man."
Ministerial couriers were men of some rank themselves, but it was still strange how unintimidated Heldeyz looked, even facing the stark fury in Barholm Clerett's eyes. His own were fixed and distant, in a face still seamed by trail dust.
Barholm went on fretfully: "I don't know why Ali has done this. The treaty after the last war was generous to a fault-particularly since we won the war. The gifts of friendship. ."
observe:
* * *
Sweating slaves heaved at bundles of iron bars, heaping them on the flatbed rail-cars and lashing them down. One slipped and fell to the paving stones of East Residence's main station. A bar snapped across; as a clerk bustled over a guard rolled the broken end beneath his boot.
"Spirit," he said in a tone of mild curiosity. The interior of the fracture showed a gray texture. "That's not wrought iron, it's cast."
Cast iron came straight from the smelting furnace; it was hard, brittle and full of impurities. Only after treatment in a puddling mill did it become the ductile, easily worked material so valuable for machinery and tools.
The clerk cleared his throat. "I think you'll find," he said significantly, "that the Chancellor has inspected the manifests quite carefully."
The guard grinned; he was a thin man with a long nose and a pockmarked face, an East Residencer by birth with all the ingrained respect for a good swindle that marked that breed. He brushed his thumb over the first three fingers of his right hand. The clerk smiled back.
* * *
"Sovereign Mighty Lord," Raj said. "I think you'll find that quality, quantity, and delivery dates on our tribute-pardon, our gifts of friendship-to the Colony have been below the Treaty terms."
Figures scrolled before his eyes, and he read them in an emotionless monotone worthy of Center.
Barholm blinked. He turned his eyes on Tzetzas, and a fine beading of sweat broke out on the Chancellor's olive face. "Sole Autocrat," the minister said, spreading his hands. "When contracts are handed out, something always sticks-so many layers of oversight, so many hands-you know-"
The Governor's fist struck the table. Gold-rimmed kave cups bounced and clattered in their saucers.
"I know who's responsible for seeing that the payments were met!" he roared; suddenly there was the slightest trace of Descott County rasp in his Sponglish. "You fool, I don't expect you to work for your salary alone, but I did expect you to know enough not to piss in our own well! D'you have any idea what this war is going to cost in lost taxes and off-budget funding?"
He paused, and when he continued his voice was calm. "You'd better have some idea, because you're going to pay the overage-personally."
"Sovereign Mighty Lord," Raj said. "Right now, I think we'd better concern ourselves with the state of the garrisons on the Drangosh frontier."
Barholm snapped his fingers. "Gurnyca had a garrison of-"
"Ten thousand men, Sole Autocrat," Mihwel Berg said helpfully. "At least, ten thousand on the paybooks."
Chancellor Tzetzas busied himself with his papers. When Barholm spoke, it was to General Gharzia.
"General," he said, his voice soft and even, "tell me-and if you lie, it would be better for you if you had never been born-how many troops were actually on the strength of the Gurnyca garrison? In what condition?"
Gharzia licked his lips, going gray under the tanned olive of his skin. "Two thousand, Sovereign Mighty Lord. In. . ah, poor condition."
Somebody had been collecting the pay of the missing eight thousand. All eyes turned to the Chancellor.
The ruler turned back to the courier from the east. "Now, Messer Heldeyz," he said evenly. "Your report, please."
"Yes, Sole Autocrat."
Heldeyz stared at his hands. "I met the Colonials fifty klicks south of Gurnyca," he began. "They-"
observe, Center said:
* * *
Terrible as an army with banners. Bartin Foley had quoted that to Raj, once; it was a fragment of Old Namerique, from the codices that survived the Fall.
There were plenty of banners in the forefront of the Colonial host that crossed the Drangosh. The green flag of Islam, marked with the crescent, or with the house blazons of regiments and noble amirs. The peacock-tail of the Settlers; that meant Ali was present in person. And a black pennant marked with the Seal of Solomon in red. Tewfik. Ali's brother, disqualified from the Settler's throne because of the eye he'd lost in the Zanj Wars, but the Colony's right arm nonetheless.
Raj recognized the terrain instantly; he'd campaigned out east himself, five years ago. Generations of the Civil Government's soldiers had taken their blooding in that ghastly lunar landscape of eroded silt, and all too many left their bones there. Just north of the border and the river forts, by the look of it, in one of the locations where the right-the western-bank was too high for irrigation. In consequence nothing grew there, except for a few bluish-green native shrubs.
The oily-looking greenish-gray waters of the Drangosh were a kilometer and a half across. A bridge of boats had been built across it, big river-barges of the type used for trade up and down the river from Sandoral to Al Kebir and the far-off Colonial Gulf. Good engineering, Raj thought; as good as the Civil Government's army, or a little better. The barges were lashed together with huge sisal cables as thick as a man's waist; then timbers and planks were laid across to make a deck, and pounded clay half a meter thick on top of that to give the men and animals a firm surface. There were even straw balustrades on either side, chest high, to keep the beasts from spooking at the water curling up around the blunt prows of the barges.