Soon Inga led in a parade of damsels with jars on their heads, and in no time Frena was floating dreamily in her porphyry bathtub. Plumna sponged away her coat of road dust while Lilin busily laid out clothes, scents, and other necessities. Inga frowned at the cut on her shoulder and suggested summoning a Sinurist.
'It's nothing. A rock flew up and hit me. Now tell me all the news.'
Good ladies' maids never gossiped, of course, so they had to make a mild pretense of resistance before serving up all the meaty dishes they had been saving. They began by repeating what Verk had already told her—Horth had been abducted before dawn the previous day by the satrap's Werists, and returned later in an unusually agitated condition. He had even called for wine, although he normally drank only ibex milk, and had gulped it while dictating the summons to his daughter. Verk and Uls had left before noon.
'There's talk of a big party, mistress!' Ni confided. 'Stuff being brought in from the country.'
Since her mother died, Frena had been Horth's hostess. She had organized some of the biggest parties Skjar had ever seen. She could not imagine
Later Lilin, who was married to one of the tallymen, let slip that Horth had been closing negotiations and calling in loans, as he did when he needed large amounts of bullion on hand. No feast could require gold on that scale.
By the time Frena swept down the stairs, past the ebony sculptures, she had learned everything the household staff knew, which was normally fifty-nine-sixtieths of what mattered. Ominously, she had only just missed meeting High Priestess Bjaria, who had come calling on her father with a sneer of lower priestesses in train. They had all been treated like royalty and laden with gifts when they left. What the two principals had discussed had not been audible to anyone else, but the servants clearly thought they could hear wedding trumpets in the near future. So could Frena. She was girded for war.
¦
Horth's normal workplace was opulent and designed to impress. His gilded chair was inset with ivory, jade, and mother-of-pearl, and also raised so he could look down on visitors and petitioners—servants, scribes, guild masters, ship captains, rival traders. In the hall's vastness he could negotiate without being overheard, yet a gesture would bring scribes and tallymen running from the far end. For more honored guests he descended from his glory and sat with them at equal level, on stools near the windows. The truly revered—the satrap or his wife, consular agents of other cities, the four or five heads of mercantile houses he chose to regard as his equals—were usually received outdoors, in the greater privacy of the water garden.
It was to this shaded glade that Frena was directed, being given the customary warning not to brush against foliage on the way in. A narrow curving path brought her to the little pentagonal court concealed within the fleshy jungle. Trilling fountains muffled whatever was said there, and any spy approaching to eavesdrop would learn nothing except the deadly properties of Navarian choke cherries.
Horth was slumped despondently on a chair, gazing at the paving, half turned from her. She wondered if she had been taking her summons too personally. His troubles might have nothing to do with her at all, other than a need for support. They had no family except each other.
'Father?'
He looked up sharply. 'Frena, my love!' He rose to embrace her. She knew by his awkwardness that his back was hurting him again, and responded carefully. He was wearing thick-soled shoes, which normally meant company was coming, but there were only two chairs present.
Horth Wigson was singularly unimpressive at first glance and on closer inspection even more so—short of stature, spare and narrow, hollow-chested. His head was hairless, too large, and egglike, with prominent ears and a face tapering downward to a wispy beard. He lived on barley cakes and ibex milk, so the only excessive flesh on him anywhere was under his eyes, two crescents like pale segments of grapefruit. Those wan eyes blinked a lot, peering at the world in a permanent state of sad incomprehension. He was hard to overestimate. Yet even Frena, who must know him better than anyone, rarely knew what he was really thinking.
'Did you have a good journey? Please, please be seated. Have you eaten? We can go indoors if you wish... hoped it might be cooler out here. So hot... It will be better when the rains come.' He was massively overdressed as usual, enveloped in brocade robes of gold and peacock blue.
The best method of defense, in Frena's experience, was not attack—for that could lead to pitched battle against overwhelming odds—but a vigorous flanking movement with enough implied threat to disturb established positions. As she sat down, she sent her skirmishers onto the field.
'Father, I heard a horrible story recently. I was told that rich people steal farmers' lands away from them by foreclosing on loans the poor men had to take out when their crops failed. Is that really true?'
The pale eyes blinked. 'You mean is that really stealing? Or do you mean do starving peasants borrow from rich people? Or do rich people foreclose their loans? Or do you mean do I do such things?' He had a soft, disarming voice.
'Do you?'
He spread jeweled hands. 'My agents are authorized to make loans to hungry peasants, yes. Usually sacks of grain, repayable when the harvest is in. They do require security, of course. If they didn't, do you think the debts would ever be repaid? Should my servants just give my grain away? Is that what you mean?'
'Well, no... But—'
Horth rarely came nearer a smile than a look of tolerant amusement, which is what he displayed now. Frena remembered that he must know her a lot better than she knew him.
'Let me ask you this, my dear. A peasant dies and his six sons divide the land between them. Each of them raises six sons and so on. Eventually the plots must become too small to support their owners, do you see? A young peasant may get by at first, but he will want a wife, and year by year his brood will grow in size and number. Drought, blight, and flood are the peasant's lot, and children his curse. Sooner or later he will fail and need help. Once he falls into debt, the chances that he will ever climb out again are very, very slim. Should he borrow from me at all? Should I help him when he asks?'
'Er... I don't know.'
'I'm not sure I do either, my dear,' he said sadly. 'But were I in that peasant's fix, I would exchange my scrap of land for something more rewarding—a mill, say. Or a kiln, or a fishing boat.' He sighed. 'But then, I am not a
