He cleared his throat. “You sent your aide out before the council opened?”
Lord Attaper looked from Carus to Waldron sharply, then made his face blank. Placed where he was by the door, he’d missed the interaction between Waldron and the youth.
“I alerted the army for deployment in twenty-four hours,” Waldron said, beaming with satisfaction that had nothing soft about it. “If you’d called this council to announce a Founder’s Day parade, then the exercise would still have kept my men on their toes.”
Attaper grinned at his rival in grudging admiration.
Aides were hunching beside their principals’ chairs, whispering numbers and exchanging notebooks or whole files. Everyone at the table save for Liane and Sharina was waiting for the king’s hard gaze to spear them; waiting, and dreading the questions that would follow.
“Royhas, how many merchant ships are there in the harbor of, say, fifty tons’ burden or better?” Carus demanded.
Instead of looking up from the documents now spread before him on the table, Royhas stabbed a vellum notebook with his index finger and slid it through the litter in front of him. “Forty-seven in Valles, twelve more between Valles and the mouth of the River fields,” he said. “Some of them are outbound, but we can catch them with a mounted courier.”
He flipped back two pages in the notebook, then raised his eyes to meet the king’s. “We can expect seven to ten more vessels to arrive in the next three days,” Royhas added, smiling with his own tight satisfaction. “Based on normal traffic for this time of year.”
“Your highness!” Master Koprathu cried. “Your highness! I’ve blocks and cordage for forty-seven triremes and oar-sets for thirty-nine—but masts for only twenty-two. I’ve been trying to get an appropriation for more masts from the treasury, but—”
“Quit while you’re ahead, Koprathu!” Carus said before Lord Pterlion, the treasurer, could weigh in with an angry response. The clerk’s head jolted up with a look of horror.
Sharina laid her fingertips on Carus’ arm; not at all her brother’s arm, not at this moment. Carus jerked his head around to meet her eyes. His expression dissolved into a smile.
“Which you are, Master Koprathu, very much ahead,” Carus boomed over a bubble of incipient laughter. “If we strip the masts out of the merchantmen we’re not using for stores and cavalry mounts, can you get more triremes outfitted? Needs must, we’ll row the whole way, but if we can I’d like to save the phalanx for their other work when we land.”
“I—” said Koprathu. He was bug-eyed with amazement. “Well, well yes, of course, but I’ll need men—”
“Lord Zettin?” the king said with an eyebrow raised in interrogation.
“He can have two thousand men in an hour if he needs them,” the admiral said. “We’ll have every ship you point out down to a bare hull if that’s what you want.”
Zettin blinked, suddenly aware that he was posturing again. In a rush of decision he blurted, “No, by the Lady! We really can! I mean it!”
Carus nodded dismissal. “Is the City Prefect here?” he demanded. “Lord Putran, isn’t it? Where’s he?”
A middle-aged, balding, terrified man in a gray robe stood against the wall in a corner; he had a large document case at his feet. He raised his hand, and squeaked, “Milord?” before slapping a hand over his mouth in horror.
“Don’t worry about the bloody form of address!” Carus roared. “What have you got to say? Where’s Putran?”
Sharina reached for his arm again, but there was no need. The king’s sinewy left hand closed over hers affectionately, gave her a pat, and released her while his attention remained centered on the man in gray. Several of the aides along the wall goggled at the way Prince Garric showed his affection for his sister.
“I’m Lord Putran’s chief clerk, your highness,” the fellow said. “The lord is, well, we’re not sure where his lordship is. He, ah, doesn’t come to the office very frequently. But I usually handle…”
Carus turned his head to glare past Sharina toward the chancellor. Royhas gestured curtly. “I’ll take it in hand, your highness,” he said. “There’ll be three possible candidates for the post before you tomorrow morning.”
“Not before me,” Carus snapped. “Give them to Liane. But that isn’t the business for now anyway.”
He crooked a finger toward the clerk. “All right, how much grain is there in the city now? Enough to feed fifteen thousand men for ten days?”
“Not in government warehouses, your highness,” the clerk said. His eyes bobbed up and down toward the document case. He wanted to open it, but if he squatted to do so he’d drop out of the king’s sight over the table.
He paused, then went on, “Even if we add rye and barley to the stores of wheat, there’d only be full rations for four days.”
Carus smiled grimly. “I didn’t say ‘government warehouses,’” he said, but he didn’t snarl. Competence counted with this king, and the clerk’s answer had put him on a plane with Lord Waldron. “I said the city. For this emergency, I’ll let the residents of Valles eat rats for a week if that’s what it takes to supply my troops.”
“Oh!” the clerk said. “Well, in that case…Yes, that easily, even by the tax declarations. And I know for a fact that those are low, disgracefully low!”
His face grew worried. “But milor…ah, but your highness,” he said, “these are private property and—”
“Royhas, draft an emergency decree,” Carus interrupted. “We’ll promulgate it when we leave here.”
“Done, your highness,” the chancellor said. The aide who’d been kneeling at his side as Royhas whispered hopped back to the wall, scribbling with a blunt stylus on a waxed board.
“Pterlion, they’ll be issuing chits on the treasury,” Carus continued, turning his attention to the treasurer. “These will be honored. Do you understand?”
Lord Pterlion, a diminutive man with the manner not of a mouse but a shrew, glared across the table. His lips were pursed into a beak. He dipped his head twice, nodding agreement, but he obviously didn’t trust what would come out if he opened his mouth.
“But if there’s undeclared goods in the warehouses,” Carus added, no longer eyeing his treasurer as a possible next meal, “then the chits come due in a quarter, not at the month. All right?”
Pterlion smiled, an expression his face hadn’t practiced often. “Much better, your highness,” he said. “If I can’t find the money in ninety days, then you need another man in this ministry.”
“Waldron, they’ll need escorts,” Carus said. The way his head turned disconcerted Sharina; it was like watching a weathercock in a gusty storm. “Provide—”
He looked at the clerk again. “What is your name, anyway?” he snapped. “You from the prefect’s office?”
“Hauk, your highness!”
“Right, provide Hauk with however many men he thinks he’ll need.”
“I am going to use the four regiments of heavy infantry to carry the grain,” Waldron said, meeting the king’s eyes. Liane, seated between them, leaned back in her chair with the look of someone who’d found herself between duelists. “It’ll give them exercise, and it’ll show me how they’ll react to an order they don’t like. Especially their officers.”
For a moment Carus was bowstring taut, reacting to the “I am,” rather than “May I?” in Waldron’s statement. Sharina and Liane reached out simultaneously, their mouths open in fear of the king’s reaction.
Carus shrugged them aside, almost angrily, but he said in a growl, “Aye, a good plan, milord. A fine plan.”
“Your highness?” chirped Hauk. “I wonder—will you be wanting dried vegetables, wine, and cheese as well? Because we could get those supplies at the same time.”