Chapter 141 Words Across the Wall

The gold in the Navel Hollow was all treasury reserve from King Edmond II's reign — a fortune to rival a kingdom's, and not a coin of it could be put to open use. What Leon had had brought back was a hundred gold ingots. One face of each carried a stamped dedication: "Submitted for the crown by the servant Godfrey Ypres, Right Chancellor and Secretary of Works, Commissioner for the Market Silver." The other face read: "Yornton gold, one ingot, twenty marks." In King Edmond II's day the treasury had taken in thirty-four million florins a year; the take now was not half of that. A flood of gold and silver so sudden could neither be spent smoothly nor easily hidden — one wrong move and it would all come to light. The Cliff Sanctuary was not far from Lohenheim. There had been no time to spare that year — the gold was meant for the Riverlands — and only desperation had dug it this hiding place. In the days of his grandsire the old King, the curbs on silver-mining in the southern provinces had already come off; the gold pits of Yornton, Andalusia, and Goldhaven had been opened one after another, and that gold and silver had gone to feed the overseas trade. Lora had said as much to him once: one answer to the Empire's copper-coin famine was to do as his grandsire had done in opening the south — let gold and silver move as money in their own right, and only then would the market breathe again. The Navel Hollow, then, was his finest prop for the day he held power: the lever that would make gold and silver real, spending money. Lora had only just said there was gold in the Yarrow — and there, downstream on the Yarrow, he had come by the treasure cave the Frost Ravens guarded... He was still deep in these thoughts when the carriage drew up, and Armand leaned his head in at the window, voice kept low: "My lord — the man who was just now with Cedric Salt was Windsor Yves, the ninth of the Windsor sons. The deed to the Odenheims' East Manor is in his hands. The other day, when you set me to go with the Odenheim family's people and look into those houses that had put out the money, I marked him from afar." "Those men all run in one circle to begin with. That every one of them knows Cedric Salt proves nothing — that Salt himself has a hand in it. Still — the fox breaks cover sooner or later." Leon did not stir. Armand dropped from the carriage, went in through the side gate to the back court, and came down again after a while: the young lady had come over, tasted the dishes, and gone — only the Horn siblings and a few Black Eagle men were still upstairs. With Lora not there, going up would be a dull business. Leon waved a hand, and the carriage turned round and rolled back to the Grand Princess's mansion. On the morning of St. Agnes' Eve, the Royal Avenue of Lohenheim woke first. Young ladies out early to Flora's Chapel to bow to the flower goddess, in their bright jackets and skirts, their high coifs studded with blossoms, came laughing and chattering down the great streets and the small lanes. Lora had no share of that good humor. The mutiny among the household troops had been stamped flat the very day it rose, but the days of dealing that came after — one guard after another who had joined it — had left Father and her brothers sick at heart. Grandmother was still down on her medicine besides. Her own plan was to set up a little altar in her own courtyard and say her prayers before it, and let that count as her "St. Agnes' Eve." The Count had sent Alvin off to Augustburg that very day, to take counsel with their grandsire on the mother's side, the Duke of Charwick. Lora saw her eldest brother off outside the front gate, then turned back into the house. "Won't you go out and stroll the streets today, my lady? St. Agnes' Eve isn't one of the great festivals, but the streets are all full of the things young ladies love, and the young lords come out to stroll this day as well — it's as lively as can be." Lilac, seeing her so moped, made the suggestion with a smile. Lucy chimed in: "Manager Keane opens his doors today too — he means to have you over to sit a while." "Didn't we taste everything yesterday? In a few days I'll add him a few more dishes. I'd asked Cousin Hugo a while back to go to the East Manor's lender for a stretch of days on the pledge — and to this day he's brought me no answer. I was counting on the restaurant's opening, and the face that would be done him there, to fetch me a good piece of news at last." No trade in this world ever comes together at one bound; the only quick money is the cheat's kind. Lora fretted over it, truly. Gareth was already drafting men from the guards, inner and outer, to hunt Webb down — and that was a business with no floor under it either. The household registry was nothing now like what it had been in the Empire's golden age; folk adrift were a common sight; hunting a murderer came down to going about with a portrait that hardly looked like the man, asking at every door — which was little better than dice-throwing. "Two manors — thirty, fifty thousand florins. Even the General could only send the young lord to Augustburg to find some way. You're only a young lady — what way could you have? When we've money of our own later, we'll simply buy them back." "Buying them back later isn't impossible — it will only cost who knows how many times more. And besides, a manor isn't just a stretch of ground; there are all those tenant households bound up in it... Ah! If only a lump of gold would fall out of the sky." The words were hardly out of her mouth when she caught sight of something hanging on the old apple tree — glinting, giving off the very sheen of gold. "Eh? What's that?" Lilac saw it too. She went up quick, reached out and untied the thing from its fine cord, and handed it into Lora's palm with a smile — one look and anyone would know: the young lord next door had hung it there to tease his young lady into spirits. "What a darling little camel — eyes closed, mouth open... why, that's a nursing pose! Quick, look about — is its mother up in the tree as well?" On the far side of the wall, Leon wore a face of wry suffering: He'd come upon this little gold camel yesterday — tiny, so dear it vanished whole inside his palm. He had thought to give it to Lora; she was certain to love it. And behold — the lady wanted not only the little camel, but its mother into the bargain. "Nothing here, only the little one... My lady, this looks to be gold. This one small camel must already weigh a good eight marks — its mother would run to fifty?" Lora studied it carefully. The color was surely right for gold; solid gold or gilded she could not have told. She had wished for gold from the sky, and down had dropped a piece — a pity this crumb of it would go nowhere near far enough. She pressed her lips together, smiling: "The little camel is adorable — I'll keep him. I'll take him home and feed him up, see whether he can't put on a little weight. Who knows — when he's grown, his droppings may come out gold, and buy my mother's manors back." "He'll never redeem your manors. But raise him well, and on this very tree his father and mother, his uncles and his cousins, may yet grow. Raise him badly, and even that one will run off." Leon answered from beyond the wall. "He dares run? My camel! If he runs to the far edge of the sky and the last corner of the sea I'll still drag him back — and if he so much as cozies up to some other she-camel, I'll break both his legs so they never knit right again!" The far side of the wall went silent. Lora curled her lip: "There, you see — a gold camel can't manage it after all. Fine, then. I'll trade him for a silver camel. A copper one. A wooden one..." "No trading. I'm thinking... that perhaps I could be the first." "The first what?" She waited a while. Not only did no answer come — there was no sound of anyone left on the other side of the wall. In all recorded history, only one king ever kept a single queen — old King Alberic of the Northmark. In the Empire's own line, from the old King's day on, king after king had declined to name a queen, under the fine-sounding plea that a king wished to favor his whole ladies' court: with a queen seated above them, she would be wounded — better there should be none at all. If Leon one day took the throne and kept one woman and one only in his palaces, he would truly be a "first" without forerunner in all the ages. Lora never did get an exact answer. But that Leon could say even this much — his meaning stood out plain as daylight. She sighed softly and closed the little camel inside her palm. Just then came the sound of running feet behind her. She turned to look — Channing: "My lady, trouble at East Manor!" "Trouble? What trouble? It's the tenant families—" That was exactly what Lora had been dreading. "No — the Windsor people wanted into the manor to look it over, and Steward Coltrain's men beat them off." And Mother's manors were quartering a good many of those retired guards!

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