He was secure in the city; Jacona was quiet, and entirely his. He had issued his orders and sent out his assassins and negotiators along with Thayer's troops; within a few weeks he would know how successful he had been at taking the rest of the Empire under his rule. Now, while he was waiting for word from the countryside, would be a good time to consolidate the Court. That was one thing that his enemies never counted on; that he would continue to work on another aspect of his projects while waiting for results from the previous phase. They always started on a phase and waited to see what would happen before going on to the next, but that was a costly way to operate.
As for the Court—he would order no assassinations, at least not yet, and only use it as a last resort. If anyone died in the next few weeks, even if it was completely an accident, he would be the first to be suspected of initiating foul play. But he had always used the knife as a tool, not an end, and the skills that had made him the Emperor's most successful agent included blackmail, information brokering, and—of course—rumor creation. He didn't need to kill anyone to be effective. It was more effective to keep a small but omnipresent fear of death in peoples' minds than to actually deliver the blow itself.
Peleun, Dirak, and Serais; he would concentrate on those three, who were outwardly his enemies. The little fish were probably waiting to see who came out the victor, and the bigger fish, the equals of those three, had not yet openly taken sides.
Peleun's weakness was his fortune, or rather, his lack of one; he didn't have a solid financial situation and he had been speculating lately in commodities. He had been doing very well, in no small part because he knew just what commodities were going to be in short supply, thanks to his contacts with the Army. The Army, of course, had taken over the Cartage Guild, and although the Army did not own or profit directly from the cargoes carried, there were Army records of what had just come in that Peleun could easily get access to before the goods ever came on the market. Everything had to go through inspection, weighing, and taxation before so much as a grain of wheat could be sold, and that took several days, enough time for Peleun to purchase goods that were going to be scarce before anyone else knew that supplies were going to temporarily dry up until the next cargoes came in. That was a great weakness in the current market situation, for there was no telling what might come in besides staples. There was no way to effectively communicate back to the farms and estates, so at some point, it might be impossible to find an apple, and at another, there was nothing in the way of fruit in the market but apples. All Melles had to do would be to see that Peleun saw the wrong records, or completely falsified records, and within a few weeks he would be a ruined man.
Dirak was a very nervous gentleman, timid and altogether afraid of his shadow; perhaps that was why he had gone into civil service in the first place. The current situation had him gulping handfuls of calmatives on a daily basis; surely there was something that Melles could do to further destroy his nerves.
And as for Serais—did he but know it, he was the most vulnerable of all. Some quick work among the Imperial tax records, and hundreds of thousands of gold pieces that had never existed in the first place would "vanish" from the treasury. Of course, the errors would eventually be uncovered, but it would take a great deal of work and require referring to all the original tax receipts, and Serais' reputation would be completely ruined by the time it was over. With any luck, he was probably skimming a little off the top anyway, and when Melles was through, that would have been uncovered as well.
That wouldn't be enough to keep the Court completely under his thumb, though. He had to give the malcontents within the Court another target than himself, just as he had done for the malcontents in the city. It could not be a target for blame, however, but a target of profit and reward. It would be very dangerous to blame the Emperor for anything, and there was no point in spreading rumors accusing anyone else of wrongdoing, when those rumors might well be turned on him. No, with all the uneasiness in the Court, offering people hope and profit would be far more effective.
What would happen when the mage-storms were over? What, exactly, would the Empire need? How could those courtiers who remained here profit from the end of the Storms? If he could give them a direction—even an entirely specious direction—that would get them too busy to concern themselves with him.
Last of all, he and Thayer should work together to at least make his position look unassailable. Perhaps by tempting one of his three targets to attempt to persuade the Emperor to do something—something that Melles could come out against—something that Melles would know the Emperor would never even consider. Reliable rumors that the Emperor was actually in favor of the given action would spur the target onward. By urging something the Emperor was against, the target would label himself as a troublemaker and potential traitor in the Emperor's eyes.
He smiled to himself. And what better action could there be than urging clemency for Tremane?
He felt his eyes growing heavier, and his body relaxing. He had a plan. In the mornings he would implement it.
Now he could sleep.
Melles smiled and nodded graciously as one of Viscount Aderin's six unmarried daughters blushed and dedicated her performance on the great-harp to him. He watched her attentively—which had the effect of making her fumble her fingerings—as she labored through a rendition of an old chestnut entitled "My Lady's Eyes."
Musical evenings were the best cure for insomnia that he knew, but attendance at this one was important. If one was going to plant information, this sort of gathering was the place to do so—a room full of very minor nobility, all of them hungry for advancement, all of them so eager for a crumb from the tables of the great that they would listen to and believe practically anything. They would never divulge where their information originated, in the hope that those they imparted their choice bits to would think that it originated with them and give them credit for enormous cleverness.
And none of them could be directly linked to him. He did not mix with them socially, except at extremely large gatherings like this one, which he had been urged to attend by the Emperor's Minister of Protocol. He was not related to any of them. No one had any reason to assume that he had any reason to give them information. For all intents and purposes, he was here to survey Aderin's daughters as possible marriage fodder, not to chat with Aderin's friends.
In fact, the girls weren't that bad. Three of the six were discreet and submissive, able to entertain without embarrassing him, unlikely to try to put themselves forward, attractive enough to satisfy him, and tractable enough to smile and ignore any little excess of his own. He could do worse, and very well knew it. This was probably why the Minister of Protocol had suggested the gathering, at least in part. There was some nervousness among the Ministers about the fact that he was not yet married and showed no signs of wanting that particular state. There had been a single Emperor in the past who had been uninterested in the opposite sex, and there had been trouble during his reign that he could have resolved with a marriage of state but had not done so. This had eventually led to a costly minor war, and at the moment, the Empire could not afford a cheap minor war.
Of course, he could always make the ministers happy by doing what the Sixth Emperor had done. With his reign starting on a shaky note, and unwilling to offend anyone by picking one girl over another, he had handpicked the daughter of a mere Squire, a very plain, very quiet child, and had educated her to be the perfect Empress. She had offended no one in his Court, because she had deferred to everyone; she had every skill needed in an Empress. Even the fact that she was plain had been valuable, because it was quite clear to everyone that she was the Emperor's place-holder and hostess, and nothing more. The Emperor had been able then to appoint dozens of royal mistresses over the course of his reign, all of them enjoying the same status, and he had threaded his way through many intrigues on the basis of which mistress he chose to favor at any one time.
That might be the best solution of all. And
if he had to make a state marriage eventually, well, the Emperor could divorce his wife and remarry within a day and a night, and an insignificant place-holder would have no family to make trouble later. In fact, such a girl would probably be very happy to retire from Court with a generous settlement.
As he caught himself playing with the various possibilities of such an arrangement, he sternly brought his attention back to the real reason why he was here. He was going to plant rumors, and he had better get about it before people began indulging themselves a little too heavily in the mulled punch to properly remember what they heard.
Before the evening was over, he had started a whisper-campaign about Serais and the "missing" tax money, had suggested several lines of profit to be pursued when the Storms were over, and had hinted that when he was Emperor, those who confined their attention to conservative ideas and relied on "what always worked before" would take second place to those with innovation and creativity. Since these folk were among the lesser nobility, they had less access to rejuvenative magics, and hence the average age here was much lower than for the Court as a whole. Melles knew that the one thing he could do to attract the support of little fish like these was to suggest that he would be more receptive to fresh, new ideas than his predecessor. This indicated that there was room at the top—and that some old, tired titles might find their Council seats and Ministerial offices taken by those who had been languishing in their shadow.
It had been a profitable evening. And in addition, he had managed to deflect any accusation that he was actually pleased at Tremane's downfall by pretending to a low level of disappointment in "his old childhood friend," thus lending another layer of obscurity to his motives. Now there would be a substantial number of people with the impression that he and Tremane had been friends for most of their lives rather than rivals. So when he laid the trail to suggest that the Emperor might be willing to consider clemency for the Grand Duke, there would be people ready to believe the suggestion since it came from him.
This very evening, a bright young fellow who'd brought himself to Porthas' attention by his brilliance with both forgery and "fixing" account books had been smuggled into the tax office and was ensuring Serais' downfall. Peleun had invested everything he had to spare, and some that he did not have, in smoked ham, bacon, and fancy sausage, certain that the cargo that had just arrived from Tival was frozen fish, not meat. Tomorrow the double caravan of smoked ham, bacon, and fancy sausage that had arrived from Tival would go on the market, and Peleun would be very lucky if he could hold onto his house in the city.
And as for Dirak, well, Melles had something very special in mind for him. Besides being nervous, Dirak was devout—or perhaps it was better to say that he was superstitious. He was about to be the recipient of a great many omens of bad fortune, together with many minor mishaps that might lend further credence to those omens. If Dirak did not collapse with nervous exhaustion before the end of a fortnight, Melles would be very much surprised.
Melles was feeling pleased enough with the way that things were going that he dismissed Porthas early when he returned to his rooms. Porthas had been responsible for setting up most of what Melles had planned for his three enemies, and he was looking a bit worn, at least to Melles' critical eye. "I can take care of myself for once," he told the man. "I'm going to work for a few more hours, then go straight to bed."
"I would argue with you," Bors Porthas replied, rubbing his hand across his eyes, "but I'm too tired. I know my limits, and I've just reached them."
Melles uttered a short bark of laughter. "Good! I was beginning to think you had no limits, and I was wondering when you were going to set yourself up as my rival." He was only half joking about that; it was something anyone in his position had to consider.
Porthas snorted. "No fear of that, my lord. You are a target. I am not. To my mind, my position is the better one. Please sleep lightly and put an extra guard on your door, my lord. And don't try to dress yourself until I arrive to select your robes for the day. I do not want a repetition of the day you wore the sapphire tunic with the emerald trews. I would not be able to live down the shame."
Melles acknowledged the advice with a wave of his hand, and Porthas bowed himself out.
Since he would be doing without his valet's silent attendance, Melles set his desk up with everything he might need to work before he ever sat down. A servant would come in to mend the fire, but otherwise he would be left alone at his own orders until he chose to go to bed.
He had been working steadily on follow-up orders for his agents in Jacona involved with the freedom movement, and similar, but more general orders for similar agents in other cities of the Empire. He had noticed that the room seemed to be getting colder, and had been about to ring for the servant, when the servant finally came in, bearing a metal hod of coal.
He started to turn his attention back to his work, when something about the young man's posture sounded a mental alarm in his instincts.
He was already out of his chair and had slipped free of the cumbersome outer robe as he dove toward the floor, when the first knife hit the back of the chair and stuck there, quivering.
He rolled to his feet beside the fireplace and snatched up a fireplace poker as the youngster threw a second knife that he dropped down from a hidden sheath in his sleeve. Melles easily dodged that strike, too, and his lip curled with contempt. Arm sheaths—that was a trick for sophomores and sharpsters! And against him! What kind of fools were they sending after him anyway?
"'You might as well hold still, old man," the young one whispered, pulling another knife from somewhere behind the back of his neck as he went into a lithe crouch. "You're going to die anyway, so you might as well make it easier on both of us."
Old man! Who did this young idiot think he was? But the stupid speech—so melodramatic and such a waste of breath—told him the kind of assassin he faced. He had to deal with nuisances like this one at least once a year; youngsters who thought they were better and faster than the old masters, and would use any excuse to take them on. He would have to kill this cretin; he had no choice in the matter. If he didn't make an example of the fool, others like him would think he'd gone soft and keep coming at him. Killing the boy would mean that the others would leave him alone for about another year.
But anger boiled up deep in his gut, and not just because some young freelancer, ill-trained and without even a nodding acquaintance with discipline, had decided to show that the master had lost his touch. No, this boy would never have come here if he had not been brought into the palace by someone who belonged here. That meant he'd been hired.
And that was an insult that was hardly to be borne. How dared someone send a rank amateur against him? Did they think his reputation, was inflated? Did they think he could no longer hold his own against even a boy like this one?
Were they that contemptuous of him?
They were about to discover that it was not wise to tease the old basilisk; they would learn that it was only pretending to sleep.
He rushed the boy, startling him into skipping backward; he was used to the flickering shadows cast by flames instead of mage-lights, but the boy obviously was not. As he passed his desk, he feinted with the poker and picked up the tray of sand he used to dry the ink on his documents. The boy's attention was on the poker, not on Melles' other hand. Before he could get out of reach, Melles flung the contents of the tray into his eyes, then threw the tray itself at him. The boy deflected the tray clumsily with one arm; it hit him and clattered to the floor. He could not deflect the sand.
So far neither of them had made enough noise to attract the attention of the guards at the door, and Melles had no intention of calling for help. If the guards came, they'd kill the fool before Melles had a chance to find out who had sent him.
Blinded and in pain, the boy still had a few tricks left; with his eyes watering, he threw the dagger he held at the last place Melles had been standing, and rubbed at his face with one hand while groping b
ehind his neck for another blade. Of course, Melles wasn't where the boy thought, but had dropped down below the level of a thrown blade. He lunged forward before the boy could register where he was, and swept the poker out in a savage backhanded blow at knee-height.
He shattered the boy's left kneecap, and the boy went down with a strangled cry.
"Who sent you?" he hissed angrily, as he stood up slowly, absently pleased that he was not at all winded. The daily workouts with Porthas had been more than worth the effort.
The boy responded with a curse about Melles's sexual preferences, rolled out of the way of another blow, and got his fourth knife into his hands at the same time.
"No matter what you've heard, I don't take any pleasure in that particular pastime," Melles said coldly. By now, his eyes had watered so much that the boy could see again, although his eyes were bloodshot and swollen. Melles was in no mood to take chances, even though he was facing a partially disabled foe, so he watched the young fool warily. The boy did not writhe or take his eyes off Melles, though the pain from his shattered knee must have been excruciating. "I suggest you tell me who hired you, and save yourself a great deal of pain."
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