Storm Breaking

'That won't be necessary' he said hastily.

'As you wish,' she murmured, with an amused glance at Darkwind.

:Well, talk about fire to the left and torrent to the right—not only does he have Solaris' curse of truthfulness on him, but the Hardornen earth-binding.: Gwena sounded unbelievably smug, but for once, Elspeth was in full agreement with her. :I do believe that Grand Duke Tremane is going to be very cooperative with the Alliance from now on—because if he isn't, he hasn't got the option to escape and he knows it.:

:And I just thought of another good reason for putting the earth-binding on your King,: Darkwind Sent silently, as Tremane turned back to the window. :If you bind him to a place so that he can't escape from it, he has to rule well, because he certainly can't ignore what he is immersed in.:

:Let's hope that's one of the things he's thinking about right now,: Elspeth replied. :He is a skilled leader and an intelligent man, and he is certainly a pragmatic one. It should dawn on him soon just how deep in he is right now, and then he will have to accept it and deal with the tasks at hand. For the sake of the Alliance as well as of Hardorn, I want him to know he has no other option but to rule wisely and honestly. We can't afford anything less.:

Six

Paper rustled quietly, the only sound in the cold, cavernous room. Baron Melles read the last page of Commander Sterm's report with a smile of satisfaction on his lips. Jacona, the throne city, was now effectively secured. Although the capital of the Empire was not precisely under martial law, his soldiers shared the streets and the patrols with the city constables, and both were happy to have the situation that way. He had tried his plan out here, where everything was directly under his careful supervision, and his ideas had all worked. They had not worked perfectly, but he had never expected perfection; they had worked well enough that he and Thayer were both pleased.

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