As he had predicted, the price of staple food supplies had increased as the availability had decreased, to the point where the average person either could not find or could not afford two out of three meals. That was enough to trigger food riots, his first shoot-to-kill order, and his second tier of plans. Jacona was already divided into precincts, with an elected official, the precinct captain, responsible for arranging local matters such as street repair with the city. That made organization much easier. The citizens of Jacona were now under strict rationing, with so many ration chits per commodity per week each, as arranged and administered by their precinct captains. Price controls went into effect with the rationing. No one was starving, and prices, while high, were no longer as extortionate as they were. Food supplies from the surrounding countryside had been assured, and those ration chits guaranteed that everyone would have access to a minimum diet. The chits did not cover luxury items, only staples, permitting those with higher incomes the ability to buy what they chose.
Naturally, there would be some citizens who would choose barter away their own chits and even those of members of their families for cash or other commodities, such as alcohol. And naturally, the Empire officially took no stand on this, so long as those who were involved were adults.
A child was different, and precinct captains were on orders to watch for children begging for food. If they found a child starving, and if its parent could not produce its ration chits or enough food to cover the household, the child (and its ration allocation) would be taken away and put in an Imperial orphanage.
That would be the end of that; once taken away, a parent could not retrieve a child, and it became the ward of the State. Once it turned fourteen, if male it would go into the Army; if female, underdeveloped, or sickly, an Army auxiliary corps or a workhouse—unless it showed extraordinary ability and qualified for higher training. But that was child welfare, and had nothing to do with rationing.
Naturally, there were luxuries and larger rations available for cash, and the Empire took no stand on this, either, so long as the commodities for sale on the gray market were not purloined from Imperial stores. Meals and services continued normally in the homes of the wealthy, although household expenses had doubled in the past few weeks. From what Melles had learned from his agents, prices on the gray market had stabilized, which meant that the wealthy would simply have to work a little harder to maintain their wealth. Many of them had already begun investment in coal, wood, and other fuels, or speculation in food items. There were a few with new-built fortunes in the city, because they had seen the trend of things and had moved accordingly. There were a few who were ruined, because their stock-in-trade consisted of small items that depended on magic, or because they were dealers in items like Festival costumes that no one wanted to buy under the current conditions. But so far as Melles could see, aside from these few unlucky or clever individuals, nothing much else had changed.
There were no more riots after the first serious one that gave Melles the excuse to issue his shoot-to-kill order, and which had resulted in the death of a dozen fools who happened to be leading it. There were occasional demonstrations, and a great many speeches on street corners, which were officially ignored. There were also no more collapsing buildings, or loss of service because magic had failed. This was because there were no more services left—or buildings still standing—that depended on magic.
There was plenty of work, though, and the one large change was that unemployment simply did not exist anymore. Those who demonstrated or made speeches did so when their working hours were over—unless. of course, they happened to be one of the few wealthy eccentrics who did not need to work to have an income. Where magical aqueducts no longer supplied water, and there were no communal wells, brigades of otherwise unemployed citizens with buckets brought fresh water from reliable sources to fill newly-constructed below- or above-ground cisterns. An entire newly-formed corps of citizens with handcarts now collected garbage, cinders, and ashes from fires, and animal waste from the streets and yards. Fortunately, the sewers were nonmagical in nature, and still functioned reliably.
Life in the city was not back to the way it had been, and never would be again until these mage-storms were over, but the ordinary citizen went to work, received his pay, ate regular meals, and slept securely at night. If he was colder this winter than last, or a little hungrier, well, that was the case for all of his neighbors, too. But not only were his streets kept clear of dangerous riots, they were also kept clear of vagrants and beggars—for vagrants and beggars swiftly found themselves in Imperial workhouses or work gangs, cleaning the streets and carrying water for the good of the ordinary citizen. This made the ordinary citizen happy. What made him even happier was the fact that Imperial workers were toiling day and night to find ways to restore more of the things that he had come to take for granted in the days of reliable magic. Already some things had been replaced—safe stoves that could burn a variety of fuels, from dried dung to coal, were now being made available at a moderate price from Imperial workhouses. Imperial bathhouses and laundries had been established, so that if a man could not afford to heat water for regular baths and laundry, he could still have those baths and get his clothing clean for a few copper bits. The average citizen could look forward to eventually regaining the kind of comfortable life he had lost.
And if he had to give up some of his freedom to get that life back, well, all but a few malcontents thought that was an acceptable loss. Some folk even welcomed these new workhouses and work gangs, and were happy to see soldiers patrolling the streets and sweeping up those with nothing better to do than to make trouble. It was true that crimes like assault, robbery, rape, and burglary had dropped to almost nothing after the deadly-force patrols had been deployed on the street level.
Well, assault, robbery, rape, and burglary by citizens against citizens have dropped to almost nothing. No one in his right mind is going to report a soldier or constable for such a crime. And if there is no report, there is no crime, and hence officially no problem.
So far, everything that he had set in motion in Jacona was working well or would be with a few slight adjustments. Now was the moment to plan the next steps. He put both elbows on the desk, tented his fingers together and rested them lightly over his lips, thinking.
He stared at the flame in the oil lamp on his desk that replaced the mage-light that had once burned there. The desk itself had been placed near to the antiquated fireplace, which held a better, more improved version of the official stove, a contrivance of ceramic and steel that burned coal rather than wood. More Imperial cleverness, that; coal fires burned hotter and longer than wood, and although the smoke coming from them was dirtier and might cause a problem one day, this new "furnace" invention would get them through the winter. All the fires in the Palace and in most of the homes of the noble and wealthy had these furnaces, and the coal mines, which once produced only fuel for the smelting furnaces for the metal trade, now sent huge wagonloads into the city on daily deliveries. A variation on this furnace heated the boilers that once again delivered hot water into the bathing rooms of Crag Castle and other edifices—and also supplied the hot water for the Imperial bathhouses and laundries. Interestingly enough, this entire situation was proving to be surprisingly profitable for the Imperial coffers, for not only was the Empire collecting more tax money, since taxes were based on profits, but the Empire was also something of a merchant, selling heating- and cook-stoves and the services of the bathhouses.