Death-wheels, the Governor reflected, were... Death-wheels, the Governor reflected, were lovingly made for minor functionaries who essayed such maneuvers
Desperately, his brain curdling in the unfair brightness of the morning sunlight by the river, the Governor tried to find a way of communicating reason to a Tribute captain seized by the manifest throes of a midsummer madness
"Do you want to start a war?" he shouted from the dockHe had to shout from the dock; they wouldn't let him on the galleyThe wretched girl was nowhere to be seen; stowed, doubtless in the captain's cabinThe Governor wished she were deadHe wished that he himself was deadHe wished, in the most grievous inner sacrilege of all, that Arduini the master chef had never set foot in Stevanien
"And why," Captain Rhamanus called blandly from the middle of the river, "should my doing my precise duty by my King cause any such a thing?"
"Has the sea salt rotted your miserable excuse for a brain?" the Governor screamed, ill-advisedlyThe captain's brow darkenedThe Governor pushed on, dripping with sweat in the sun
"She's a Certandan, in the name of the seven holy sisters of the god! Do you have any idea how
chanel pearl necklace easy it will be to goad Alberico into starting a border war over this?" He mopped at his brow with the square of red cloth a servant belatedly produced
Rhamanus, cursedly composed despite having drunk at least as much as the Governor the night before, seemed unimpressed
"As far as I'm concerned," he pronounced airily, the words drifting over the water, "she's living in Stevanien, she's working in Stevanien, and she was taken in StevanienBy my reckoning that makes her perfectly suitable for the saishan, or whatever our King, in his wisdom, decides to do with her He leveled a finger suddenly at the Governor"Now clear the river of these boats or I will ram and sink them in the name of each of the seven sisters and the King of YgrathUnless," he added, leaning forward, lowering his hand to the railing, "you would care to farspeak Chiara and have the King settle this himself?"
They had a saying here in the colony: naked between a fist and a fistIt was an exact phrase for the place where that insidious, cleverly calculated, viciously unfair proposition put the man to whom it was addressedA phrase that described in precise and
vintage hermes graphic terms where the Governor of Stevanien abruptly felt himself to beThe red cloth swabbed repeatedly, and ineffectually, at his forehead and neck
One did not farspeak the King without, it had been painstakingly impressed upon all the regional administrators in the Western Palm, very compelling reasonThe power demanded of Brandin to sustain such a link with his non-sorcerous underlings was considerable
One most particularly did not willingly undertake such a course of action in the very early morning hours when the King might be asleepMost relevant of all, perhaps, one did not hasten to bespeak the mental presence of one's monarch with a mind clogged and befuddled with the miasmic aftermath of wine, and over an issue that, in essence, might be seen to involve no more than the Tribute seizure of a common farm girl
That was one of the fists
The other was war on the borderWith the brain-battering possibility of more than thatFor who, in the name of the sisters and the god, knew how the devious pagan mind of Alberico of Barbadior worked? How he might regard, or decide to regard, an incident such as this? Despite
cheap tiffany's jewelry Rhamanus's glib analysis, the fact that the girl worked in The Queen made it obvious that she wasn't really a Lower CorteanIn the name of the sisters, they couldn't even seize a Lower Cortean for tribute! They weren't allowed to, by order of the KingTo take the woman, she had to be CertandanIf Rhamanus wanted to argue she was a resident of Stevanien, well that made her a Lower Cortean which meant that they couldn't take her! Which meant that he didn't know what that meantThe Governor held out his sopping kerchief and it was exchanged for a fresh oneHis brain felt as if it was frying in the sun
All he had wanted out of his declining years in service was the quiet, mildly lucrative postings his family's long, if fairly minor, support of Brandin's original claim to succession in Ygrath had earned themWith a decent house on that eastern promontory one day where he could watch the sun come up out of the sea and go hunting in the woods with his dogsSo very much to ask?
Instead, a fist and a fist
He briefly considered washing his hands of the whole affair, and let the cursed inhabitants of this peninsula chew on that for a phrase! ,
chanel white purse letting the imbecilic Tribute captain row his galley down the river just as he pleasedIn fact, he realized, lamentably too late, if he had stayed in bed and pretended he'd not received the message in time he would have been entirely blameless in this affair of a drunken captain's blunderHe closed his eyes, tasting the exquisite, vanished sweetness of such a possibilityHe was standing by the riverside in the blinding light and the heat of the sun, and half of Stevanien had heard what he and Rhamanus had just shouted back and forth across the water
With a small, diffident prayer to his own patron gods of food and forest, and a poignantly clear image of that seaside estate, the Governor chose his fist
"Let me on board then," he said as briskly as he could manage"I'm not about to farspeak the King while standing on this dockI want a chair and some quiet and an extremely strong mug of whatever passes for khav on a galley
Rhamanus was visibly nonplussedThe Governor was able to derive a certain sour pleasure from that
They gave him everything he asked forThe woman was taken below deck and he was left alone in the captain's
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