by David Drake
The truth was that after three hours with these people, Sharina wouldn't have been able to manage much sympathy for them if they were being boiled in oil. Sharina's maid had dressed her as a private citizen of high rank. Chancellor Royhas had picked the outfit to emphasize that Sharina wasn't a court official and therefore couldn't bind the government by anything she chanced to say.
Sharina understood the purpose. She even managed not to feel too insulted that Royhas was treating her like a silly girl who might want to remit a district's taxes or promise a governorship to some charlatan who claimed to be a royal bastard. Royhas was simply being careful, and it was to the benefit of the kingdom that the Isles have a careful chancellor.
The problem was that the garments worn by a private Ornifal citizen of high rank were even heavier and more confining than court dress of beige silk robes with a stripe on the side to indicate the wearer's rank and position. Sharina's blond hair was teased up in a vast pile supported by ribbons and gold combs. Her tight-laced bodice was cloth-of-gold over a robe of heavy green silk, with applique panels showing the birth and exploits of the mythical hero Val.
For comfort, Sharina had decided to hold the meeting in a water garden of the palace. Cypresses shaded the slate-roofed gazebo; streams played from the mouths of stone dolphins to plash into the encircling lotus pond, cooling the air.
Nothing could make this clothing acceptably cool! Sharina had been more comfortable--less uncomfortable--tending the bread oven in the middle of the summer. The garb was as stiff as armor and as stifling as the steam baths that were a Cordin specialty which the elite of Valles had begun to take up.
"While I promise you consideration...," Sharina continued. Royhas would be pleased at my diplomacy. "I can't tell you that there'll be an immediate change in the principle that the government has instituted. You see--"
The one female delegate--Mistress Alatcha--said, "Princess, the king's your brother! Can't you tell him we deserve to be ruled by our own folk?"
Physically there wasn't much to distinguish Alatcha from her colleagues. When standing--she was seated now--her tunic fell to her ankles instead of being knee-height, and there was a narrow band of lace dangling from her hat brim to do duty for the veil of respectable widow. Her sex had emboldened her to interrupt with the protest that the male delegates were swallowing, however.
Sharina smiled to show that she'd accepted the interruption in good part. She nodded--very carefully, because the mass of combs and hair was heavy enough that she worried what would happen if she leaned too far--and said, "I'll certainly discuss the matter with my brother Prince Garric, Lady Alatcha--" thank goodness she'd at least remembered that one name out of the twelve "--though I hasten to remind you that Valence III is King of the Isles. Like yourselves, my brother and I are the king's loyal subjects."
Mild as Sharina's statement was, the male delegates edged away from Alatcha as though she'd suddenly begun frothing at the mouth. Garric and the advisors who'd helped make him the real power in the Kingdom of the Isles were extremely careful to maintain the fiction that Valence was still king. To do otherwise would stir up trouble on Ornifal as well as probably pushing the rulers of other islands to declare their independence.
Alatcha looked frozen with fear. To take the unmeant threat out of her correction, Sharina stepped forward and offered the woman her hand. Alatcha gripped it as though she'd been drowning.
"But since you've raised the point, I'll address it directly," Sharina said. She patted Alatcha with her free hand, then disengaged and stepped back to survey the entire delegation. "Your taxes are being levied by people you don't know, and perhaps you've heard--I'll tell you now if you haven't--that within the year circuit courts under royal judges will begin hearing all cases of manslaughter and civil matters where more than twenty silver eagles are in dispute."
"Oh!" said one of the standing delegates. His colleagues, nodding grim-faced, had obviously heard the rumor already. In embarrassment the fellow sat down. The two others who'd been standing to speak sat also. For the first time this afternoon, the delegates were listening to something other than their own voices.
"The men who are coming to your districts were clerks in the households of northern landholders," Sharina said. "They're being paid by the treasury, though. Their loyalties, like their responsibilities, are to the whole kingdom rather than to one nobleman or another."
She paused, wishing she had a mug of the sharp, dark germander ale that her father had brewed in his inn. A swallow of that would cool her throat and clear the phlegm from it.
"But they don't know us," one of the delegates said, giving frustrated urgency to the point the speakers had been repeating with embellishment all afternoon.
"They'll get to know you," Sharina said forcefully. "But they'll serve the king. And if you think you're unhappy at having to deal with folk from the North, you can imagine how those northern nobles feel about assessors who come from the commercial houses here in Valles. Can you imagine how many times I've heard, 'But you can't propose that Lord So and Which pay taxes like some plowman in West Bay!'"
The delegation broke up in guffaws of delight. "Is that so?" a delegate cried in wonder.
"Well, Prince Garric does expect all the fine lords to pay their taxes," Sharina said. "And he expects the Valles shippers to pay theirs as well, which they will since they're being watched over by some of your own sons and daughters. Isn't that true?"
Over the general murmur of agreement, a man whose moustaches divided his face into two florid parts said, "Aye, my nephew Esmoun's one of them, he is. The king pays him seventeen eagles a month, a month that is, and in cold, hard cash!"
During the crisis just past, when the queen strove through wizardry to gain the kingdom, taxes due from the outlying regions had generally gone unpaid. There were two reasons why the new government had money to pay its employees. First, the conspirators who'd opposed the queen--when King Valence was too weak to do so himself--were wealthy men in their own right. They'd backed the new government with their purses as well as their lives.
The second reason was that the queen had amassed enormous wealth before her defeat. Some had been looted, more was destroyed in the riot that made Garric the heir to the kingdom; but a great deal of the queen's treasure remained, and Lord Tadai had been quick and efficient in bringing that wealth into the royal treasury.
It was an open question whether Tadai would have been quite so scrupulous to avoid further enriching himself in the process had he not known that Chancellor Royhas was keeping very close track of matters. In the event, Tadai knew that he was being watched, so Tadai's worst enemy couldn't complain about the way he carried out his duties as treasurer.
"And Rohan, he's the second son of Robas, the miller in Helvadale, he went off to the king in Valles too," another delegate agreed. "Sharp as a bodkin, that boy, but what was there for him if he'd stayed in the parish? You can't split a grist mill, can you? Nor can you keep two families on what a mill brings in, not in Helvadale, you can't."
There was a pause for general consideration. Mistress Alatcha rose carefully to her feet. "Lady Sharina, you'll tell your brother that the Western Region is loyal, won't you?" she said. "I mean, we're used to the folk here in Valles treating us like we were scrapers to clean the muck from their boots--and we won't have that!"
Several representatives cried, "No sir!" or something similarly agreeable. One launched into a story about an absentee landowner who didn't keep up his fences, but a pair of his fellows hushed him immediately.
"But we'll stand for the kingdom if the kingdom stands for us!" Alatcha concluded. The men around her bellowed, "Aye!" and "Hear hear!" in voices that threatened to rattle the roof slates. Servants and minor officials passing nearby craned their necks to see what was going on. Here in Valles, that many people shouting at the same time probably meant a riot rather than cheerful enthusiasm.
Sharina sighed internally with relief. She'd gotten through to this group, at leas
t. She felt a rush of kinship for the delegates, peasants like herself, who were satisfied to be treated fairly.
Most of the people who came to Lady Sharina--because Royhas and Tadai made sure they couldn't get to Prince Garric--didn't care about what was fair or even what was necessary for the Kingdom of the Isles to survive the crisis it was facing. They wanted more for themselves, and their concept of justice balanced on the belief that the world (and certainly the kingdom) should operate to give them everything they wanted.
"Mistress Alatcha," Sharina said. "Masters--I'll be glad to assure my brother that the Western Region is loyal. For your own part, feel free to communicate with your government either in person as today or by written petition. But I ask for your patience as well, and your awareness that the burdens you and your neighbors carry are there for the kingdom's sake."
Sharina thought about the way the royal income was spent. She suspected there might be a way to run the palace that didn't require quite so many servants standing around with self-important expressions... but maybe not. Her father had made a success of a rural inn where there was no margin for waste. Now he was running the palace, and she didn't imagine he'd changed his principles with his new position.
The palace had requirements that went beyond simple efficiency. It had to cater to the expectations of the people who came here, folk like this delegation and embassies from other islands as well. Maybe you needed a network of servants calling the time for the same reason that Sharina was wearing expensive garments when bare feet and a simple woolen tunic would have answered the demands of decency. How would Mistress Alatcha have reacted to Sharina looking like a peasant?
She grinned. The delegates thought she was smiling at them as they mouthed their goodbyes. Actually, she was thinking about how good it would feel to change into a tunic and take off the high buskins which encased her feet.
Ushers, summoned in some fashion Sharina didn't understand, stood ready to guide the delegates back to the palace entrance. She ought to ask her father how servants, discretely out of sight, suddenly appeared when they were needed.
The delegates moved off slowly, murmuring among themselves. Mistress Alatcha turned and waved where the walkway swept around a bed of osiers in a flooded planter; all of her fellows had to stop and do the same. Sharina held a frozen smile and waved back until the last of the twelve had disappeared.
Sharina's maid Diora came up to her quietly. Sharina lowered her hand and said quietly, "I've never been so glad in all my life to see a stand of osiers."
"Milady?" said the maid, frightened because she didn't understand what Sharina meant. Servants could never be sure how their employer would react to ignorance. Even in Barca's Hamlet, an occasional merchant or drover would aim a blow at a servant who hadn't performed as the guest thought was proper.
That didn't happen twice. Not when the broad-shouldered Garric or-Reise was the innkeeper's son, and every man in the borough would back Garric if the guest's guards took exception to the way their master was being rammed face-first into the inn's manure pile.
"That's all right, Diora," Sharina said. "I was just talking to myself. Can you help me let down my hair right now? I suppose I'll have to wear the rest of this ridiculous outfit until I get back to my suite."
She'd see Cashel as soon as she'd changed. She wished he were here already, not that there was anything he could really do for her. Sharina giggled, imagining Cashel carrying her to her suite like a woolsack. He was strong enough to lift two of her, even in the heavy garments she was wearing, but it would cause as much scandal as if Lady Sharina decided to strip down to her linen undertunic here in the gazebo. People--here and everywhere--worried more about the way things looked than the real decency or indecency of what was going on.
Diora plucked out combs with quick fingers. Sharina hadn't liked the thought of having servants, but there wasn't any choice. She could no more have dressed herself in this garb than she alone could have rowed all hundred and seventy oars of a trireme.
Diora was quietly cheerful, good at her job, and--perhaps the most important thing from Sharina's standpoint--completely a child of Valles, so that she could pilot her mistress through the shoals of palace culture. There were many times that without Diora, Sharina would have been as lost as, well, as the maid would be if dropped into the middle of the common woodland adjoining Barca's Hamlet.
"Ah, milady?" Diora said hesitantly as she removed the last few combs, twisting them slightly so that Sharina's massed hair fell loose instead of following the teeth. Bits gold rang softly and sweetly against other bits. "I wonder if you might have a moment to talk to some... other people?"
Sharina felt her stomach knot. She couldn't take more of this....
But she could. So long as she stayed in Valles, she had to. It was her duty.
"What other people would those be, Diora?" Sharina said in what she hoped was a tone of friendly curiosity. She started down the path toward her suite; the maid quickly stepped ahead of her and took Sharina's hand in the one that didn't carry the bag of combs. Sharina couldn't see her own feet while wearing this stiff, puffed outfit, so she needed a guide to keep from falling on her face.
Newly-hired gardeners were repairing the ravages of years of neglect, but there was a lot of work yet to do. The roots of a stately elm had grown across the walk. Workmen had stacked the flagstones on one side and dumped a load of gravel ballast to the other, but they hadn't gotten around to sloping the ballast over the humped roots and relaying the flagstones.
"Up here, milady," Diora said. "Higher--there, now your left, and high again.... There! You have it, milady."
Once they were past the awkward stretch, Diora released Sharina's hand. The maid continued to walk ahead as they passed between beds of zinnias flaring in vivid pastels, so that her mistress couldn't see her face. She said, "You see, milady, these are people from my old neighborhood. In the Bridge District, where I lived before I got my place here in the palace."
"Ah," said Sharina noncommittally. She didn't know where the Bridge District was--well south on the River Beltis, she supposed, because that was where the only bridge was. Valles had three districts on the west side of the river, she knew, but Sharina understood that only ferries and small boats connected them to the municipality's other fifteen districts.
"You see, milady, they can't get anybody to listen to them!" Diora said. "My mam's near out of her mind with it! I said that you were a real lady, not just a painted statue, and that I thought you'd maybe, you know, if you had a moment free...?"
The girl was speaking faster than she normally did and clipping her syllables. That was the way people talked in the streets of Valles, not here in the cultured sanctity of the palace.
Sharina smiled faintly. She was trying to avoid the Haft lilt that came into her voice when she spoke without thinking. The lilt made her sound different from everyone around her, though of course nobody would mention it to her face.
She'd noticed her brother didn't seem to care if courtiers thought he sounded like a Haft countryman. Well, maybe it was easier to be yourself if you were strong as well as smart, and a better swordsman than any of the Blood Eagles you sparred with using wooden swords....
Sharina had been smiling; her face sobered. She didn't underestimate her brother's duties. She knew the sheer volume of Garric's work was crushing and the responsibility must be even worse. The decisions Prince Garric made would decide whether the Kingdom of the Isles returned to peaceful unity for the first time in a thousand years. Otherwise the terrors following the collapse of the Old Kingdom would be repeated--only worse this time, and forever.
But Garric's duties were real. Sharina's job was to figuratively hold the hands of all the thousands of people who wanted something from the government that they weren't going to get.
The staff of people around Garric decided who might be permitted to petition the prince directly. There was only so much time in a day. Garric set the priorities for the government as no king
since his ancestor Carus had done, but he couldn't spend an afternoon explaining those priorities to a delegation from the Western Region.
Still, somebody had to listen to the various groups and interests who wanted to put their points to Prince Garric. They were citizens, and they were important: all government depends on the consent of the governed, and Garric had neither the stomach nor the strength to compel that consent with the edge of a sword.
Petitioners had to be sent away believing that Garric cared about them, even if he wasn't able to grant their immediate desire. Parish leaders like the delegation just dismissed--or guild presidents, rich landowners, priests, or a hundred other sorts of important citizens--would be insulted if only some minor official, some hireling, bothered to listen to them.
Lady Sharina, Prince Garric's sister, was tall, blond and the image of an Ornifal aristocrat to look at. She was a perfect choice for someone to soothe with words that were completely empty despite being true.
The delegates would have gone away happy if Sharina had claimed that tomorrow the rivers would run with wine and pies would grow on trees. The important thing was that Lady Sharina had listened to them, had talked to them, and they could carry that memory back to their parishes with as much joy as if it had been a casket of golden crowns fresh from the royal mint.
Sharina knew that was she was doing was important, but it felt as empty as trying to sweep back the tide with a broom. There were other people who could have taken her place--King Valence himself might have done so--but so long as Garric's sister remained in Valles, the job would be hers.
And now her maid was bringing a deputation to her. Well, Reise hadn't raised his children to shirk their duties.
Diora risked a glance over her shoulder; Sharina's silence had worried her. They'd almost reached the building that was Sharina's own, a suite of neat little rooms about a central atrium with a skylight over a little pool. The janitor had removed the glazed cover for this hot weather; rain sent the pool's lacy-finned carp scurrying about the lily pads.