Storm Breaking

while still retaining a fair number of illusions about honor and fidelity was quite beyond Melles, but he had, and he was already causing some trouble. He didn't care for the idea of a former chief assassin as an Emperor—although Melles was following in a long and distinguished, if not openly acknowledged, tradition. He had preferred Tremane, who at least pretended to honesty, and had a fine career in both the civil service and the military behind him.

More important than Peleun, however, was Councillor Baron Dirak, who was in charge of the Imperial Civil Servants. He had been one of Tremane's staunchest allies, still defended him openly at Court, and was not at all pleased with Melles' rise to power. He'd had some hope of wedding a sister to Tremane, and was very bitter about losing that chance for power.

Either of these men alone could have caused him some small difficulty, but with both of them allied, things could become serious. And if his sources were correct, they were maneuvering to get Councillor Serais, head of the tax collectors, into their corner.

He had to consolidate his power in the Court. There were other candidates for the Iron Throne, many of them just as qualified as Melles. It was entirely possible that someone could send an assassin out after Melles. Peleun probably would be horrified at the thought, but Dirak would consider it, and there were others who knew how to contact the same list of 'special agents' that Melles used. Melles hadn't been able to contact them all, and that meant there were at least a few top-level assassins unaccounted for. Peleun could use his power as the head of the Imperial Guard to allow anyone he wished in to see the Emperor at any time, and given the right set of circumstances, the end result of such an interview could be a brace of guards arriving to put Melles under arrest. With the Emperor's mind so unbalanced, it wouldn't be too difficult to persuade him that Melles was not enthusiastic enough in his pursuit of Tremane. That alone would be enough to get him arrested and replaced.

If he was arrested, his enemies would have the leisure to concoct as much evidence as they pleased to prove whatever they wished, and he would not be able to interfere. It was possible, of course, that Porthas would take up the reins and act in his absence, but Melles preferred not to count on such enlightened self-interest. It was far more likely that Porthas and all of his special employees would offer their services to what they perceived to be the winning side.

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