Or as directly as discussions ever got with that... Or as directly as discussions ever got with that man
Sipping at her khav she moved onPeople came up to her wherever she wentIt was bad politics in Brandin's court not to be on good terms with Dianora di CertandoConversing absently and inconsequentially she kept an ear pitched for the discreet raps of the Herald's staff that would be Brandin's sole announcementRhun, she noted, was making faces at himself in one of the mirrors and laughing at the effectHe was in high humor, which was a good signTurning the other way she suddenly noticed a face she likedOne that was undeniably central to her own history
In could be said, in many ways, to have been the Governor's own faultSo anxious was he to assuage the evident frustration of Rhamanus, captain of that year's Tribute Ship, that he ordered the Certandan serving-girl, who had apologized so very charmingly after the spilled-wine incident some time ago, to bring rather more of The Queen's best vintages than were entirely good for any of them at the table
Rhamanus, young enough to still be ambitious, old enough to feel his chances slipping away, had made some pointedly acid remarks earlier in the day on board the river galley about the state of affairs in Stevanien and its environsSo much of a backwater, so desultory in its collection of duties and taxes, he murmured a little
montre cartier tank too casually, that he wasn't even sure if the galley run upriver in spring was worthwhile under the present administrative circumstances
The Governor, long past the point of ambition but needing a few more years here skimming his share of border tariffs and internal levies, along with the criminal justice fines and confiscations, had winced inwardly and cursed the conjunctions of his planetsWhy, when he strove so hard to be decent and uncontentious in everything he did, to leave any waters he entered as unruffled as possible, did he have so little luck?
Short of a massive midsummer military assertion there was no way to force more money or goods out of this impoverished regionIf Brandin had seriously wanted to extract real wealth out of Stevanien he would have been better advised not to have so successfully smashed the city and its distrada to its knees
Not that the Governor would have even dreamt of letting such a furtive thought come anywhere near his lipsBut the reality was that he was doing the best he couldIf he squeezed the leather or the wool guilds any harder than he was they would simply start to foldStevanien, already thinly inhabited, and particularly bereft of men in their prime years, would become a town of ghosts and empty squaresAnd he had explicit instructions from the King to prevent that
If the King's
vintage hermes various orders and demands rammed so violently up against each other, in such patent contradiction, what, in all fairness, was a middle-echelon administrator to do?
Not that such a plaint could be used with this bristly, unhappy RhamanusWhat care would the captain have for the Governor's dilemmas? The Tribute Ship captains were judged by what came home to Chiara in their holdsTheir job was to put as much pressure on the local administrators as they could, even to the point, sometimes, of forcing them to surrender a portion of their own levies to bring the contents of the ship nearer to the markThe Governor had already resigned himself, dismally, to doing just that by the end of the week if the last hurried sweep of the distrada that he'd ordered didn't produce enough to satisfy RhamanusIt wouldn't, he knewThis was an ambitious captain he was dealing with, and there had been a tenuous harvest in Corte last fall, Rhamanus's next stop
His retirement estate in eastern Ygrath, on the promontory he'd already chosen in his mind, seemed farther away this evening than ever beforeHe signaled for another round of wine for all of them, inwardly grieving for the blue-green sea and the splendid hunting woods by the home he'd probably never be able to build
On the other hand (as they liked to say here), it appeared that his attempt
rolex watches ladies to soothe the ire of this Rhamanus had been unexpectedly successfulThe Governor had asked his wonderful Arduini, the true and only joy there was for him in this benighted place, to prepare an evening meal for them of an unforgettable order
"All of my meals are unforgettable," Arduini had bridled predictably, but had been mollified by a judicious mixture of flattery, gold ygras, and a quiet reminder (almost certainly not the truth, the Governor reflected unrepentantly) that their guest that evening had ready access to the ear of the King on Chiara
The meal had been an ascending series of revelations, the service prompt, soothing, and unobtrusive, the wines a sequence of complementary grace notes to Arduini's undeniable artistryRhamanus, a man who appeared to keep his trim physique with some difficulty, had progressed from edginess through guarded appreciation, to increasing pleasure, ending up in a volubly expansive good humor
Somewhere in the next-to-last bottle of dessert wine imported from back home in Ygrath he had also become quite drunk
Which was the only explanation, the only possible explanation, for the fact that, after the dinner was over and The Queen closed for the night, he'd had their evening's dark-haired waitress formally seized as Tribute for Brandin in Chiara and bundled directly onto the galley in the
sac kelly hermes riverThe serving-girl from Certando
Certando, on the other side of the border, where Alberico of Barbadior held sway, not, alas, Brandin of Ygrath
The Governor of Stevanien had been awakened at dawn from a fitful, wine-fogged slumber by a terrified, apologetic Clerk of the CouncilUnclothed and without so much as a whiff of his morning khav he had heard, through the ominous pounding of a colossal headache, the nature of the news
"Stop that galley!" he roared, as the horrifying implications fought their way through to register upon his slowly emerging consciousnessHe had tried to roar, anywayWhat came forth was a pitiful squeal that had been, nonetheless, sufficiently explicit to send the clerk flying, his gown flapping in his haste to obey
They blocked the River Sperion, stopping Rhamanus just as he was raising anchor
Unfortunately the Tribute captain then proceeded to reveal a stubbornness that ran stupefyingly counter to the most rudimentary political good senseHe refused to surrender the girlFor one wild, hallucinatory moment of insanity the Governor actually contemplated storming the galley
The river galley of Brandin, King of Ygrath, Lord of Burrakh in Khardhun, Tyrant of the western provinces of the Peninsula of the PalmSaid galley then flying, rather pointedly, Brandin's own device as well as the royal banner of
coco chanel jewelry Ygr