Page 25 of Elvenbred

“Yes,” he replied. He definitely disliked how Nora had phrased that. “I have engaged the services of a professional to ascertain potential ethical breaches by … unknown parties, which the good doctor can pursue to her heart’s desire, or at least until Triana is of no further value, and then it won’t matter.”

“I see,” replied Nora, her voice noncommittal. “Of course.”

He watched her working her thumbnail along the seam on the bottom of the trousers until she found something that interested her. Taking a small stylus, she worked it into the seam

“Hmmm. Our girl lives in a dangerous neighborhood.”

“How do you know?” he answered.

“By the very small gemstones she has sewn into her trouser hem. A routine pair of outdoor trousers, and she’s prepared to be ransomed, or to bribe her way out of captivity. No wonder she wanted these back.”

Far too late, he made a connection. This felt pretty far afield for a tutor. “How do you know to look for all this?”

Nora shrugged, dismissing the importance of the question. “I pay attention to details. Little things like … this. But I didn’t realize she was throwing up.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Every night. Well, the last two nights.”

She gave him a grin, with a hint of malice mixed in. “Are you sure she’s not pregnant?”

He let out a long stream of profanity, as she wrapped up the clothing box. “I’m for the laundry.”

It wasn’t until much later that he realized she had changed the subject, and hadn’t answered the question.

Haldeen reviewed Nora’s transcripts while awaiting the king’s pleasure. He blinked through his headache and tried to focus. Nora wrote using a dry, droning style that he found hard to follow, headache or no. She seemed to be going on at some length about time passage and linguistic drift, and philological studies … whatever those were … in obscure places he had no interest in.

He looked at the small water clock that kept time in his inner office. The sovereign now accounted others’ time as valuable, and rarely kept his lords waiting, even by Farspeaker. The king expected efficiency, and made it a point to give it. Alliard hadn’t been the birth lords’ first, second, or even fifth-choice, but had been a compromise between entrenched factions. Fortunately for all, he had proven good at the job … just in time for the bottom to fall out. I shudder to think what life would have been like if Santosveria had been in charge. We’d probably all be squeezed into a single city by now, while the king dithered and changed his robes hourly.

Haldeen took a sip of the concoction, hopefully just enough to ease the throbbing in his temples, and not enough to leave his head stuffed with wool. He closed his eyes for a moment, to rest them before continuing, when he heard a dry “Ahem.”

His eyes snapped open and he stood. Of course, the king would chime in, during the few seconds he’d taken to rest. He started to stammer out an apology.

The king, ghostly in the Farspeaker’s globe, put his hand up. “Don’t worry about it, Haldeen. I don’t begrudge a few moments of rest, especially when I’m running late.” The king sounded tired.

Haldeen nodded. The king’s face appeared drawn and weary, and he had evidently not slept for some time. “Majesty?”

The king glanced to one side of the Farspeaker, and nodded to someone that Haldeen couldn’t see.

“Haldeen, do you know that the difference is between order and disorder, civilization and chaos?”

Held held his silence. The king had lectured on this point nearly every day … but it was also the king’s privilege to educate. He waited.

“Three missed meals, Haldeen. That’s it. The Monsters outside will be nothing to the monsters in here once hunger spreads, and we start killing each other over who gets to have supper.” Haldeen kept his face carefully neutral, while the king continued. “The new Lord High Provisioner has completed a very quiet survey, done on his own initiative, and the ration counts in the warehouses appear … optimistic.” The king made a wry face at the euphemism.

“How ‘optimistic,’ Majesty?” Haldeen replied. He really should not have been surprised that the warehouse counts had been inflated, and he doubted that anyone had done a brick by brick ration inventory in half a lifetime. The daily ration store hadn’t really hadn’t mattered all that much … right up to the point where it mattered a whole lot.

“Theft?” he asked, once it became apparent the king waited for a response.

King Alliard shrugged. “Possible. Likely. Not required. What gets checked gets done, and this post went unfilled for too long. But, that’s all irrelevant at this point. What we have is a third less food than we thought … so you have a third less time than you thought you did.”

Haldeen pressed his finger to the bridge of his nose. The throbbing has spread. “Anything we can do to raise food production?”

The king gave a humorless laugh. “That shoe will drop tonight. Proclamation that assigns all magic sensitives in all the mid-birth ranges to food production, unless they are required for defensive tasks. Adolescents included. Officially, it’s to build up our already ample stores, and bring the cities together in common … you know the rest. Nobles assessment will go up by a fifth starting the next eight-day.”

Haldeen choked. “A fifth? We’re struggling now, Majesty.”

The king raised his eyebrows. “Three meals, Haldeen. If you—and by that, I mean all of you—don’t make them, and we don’t keep everyone fed, this all comes down.”

Haldeen made no effort to alter his glum expression. “Well, I can economize at my own table …” he offered.