Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

Better-Weather's fortress, built of granite blocks four years before, squatted gray in dawn's cloudy light amid the town's scattered wood and adobe houses, liveries, small manufactories, and inns. Three-storied, deep-moated by Liana Creek, and shaped a square, it enclosed a large, grassed siege-yard for sheep, a roofed swinery for boar, and runs for chicken-birds.

Charles Ketch's office was off the courtyard, at the northwest corner of the third floor. Its four tall windows were barred with thick, greased steel, and armored men and women of Butler's Heavy Infantry mounted hall guard in six-hour shifts. These sentries, recruited deaf and dumb, had calmed their watch-mastiffs – and grinning, apparently pleased with news of Boca Chica, saluted Sam past.

"… Sam, Sonora doesn't pay. Tax payments denied by three separate pigeon-notes. Two, day before yesterday. One, yesterday afternoon."

"Late, you mean, Charles." Sitting on a three-legged stool with his scabbarded bastard-sword across his lap, Sam straightened to ease his back, and wished he'd had a hot bath in the laundry before coming upstairs and down the hall to duty. Wished he'd had a second cup of chocolate at breakfast.

"No, sir. Withheld. Stewart claims they need their money for their roads, this year – says an elected governer should have that decision." Charles – looking, it seemed to Sam, older each time he saw him – sat with his desktop and the floor around him piled with papers, paper scraps, twine-knotted bundles of papers, and wooden boxes of the tiny rolled notes of pigeon-carries. His copy of The Book of jew Jesus – a very old and precious copy concerning the first Jesus known – rested like a thick battlement of sewn binding and time-browned paper in front of him.

Eric Lauder had once said to Sam, "Charles thinks the truth hides in that Warm-time Bible like a bird in a bush. He puts his ear to it for little chirps and twitters of sweetness… kindness."

"Charles, you're sure he's serious about withholding the province's taxes? He's picked a very bad time for it."

"Yes, I know."

Ketch's office, gloomy in a cold and clouding morning, was packed to its rafters with narrow crates of bound volumes containing the records of what each year had brought to the provinces of North Map-Mexico. Reports of gold or silver earned or spent, of diseases – animal and human – of good crops or bad, of crimes and hangings. Bitter complaints and boasts of success. Everything carefully entered on paper from Crucero Mill.

All news came to Better-Weather, and came fairly swiftly – by messenger, by pigeon – or several were made sorry for slowness. Rumors came as well, and were always stacked in seven boxes at the end of the highest shelf – hard to get to, and so the more carefully considered before setting in place.

"Our memories are all in my paper-work," Charles Ketch had once said to Sam. And each short summer, when Lady Weather's daughter had wed the sun, he cleaned out his office, transferred all the crates to storage down the hall, and ordered new boxes built for the memories of the new year.

"Oh," Sam had said to him, "I still keep a few memories in my head."

Charles had smiled and reached out, as he often did, to grip Sam's arm, as if to be certain he was still present, young, and strong.

"Very worst time for refusal." Sam leaned forward to pour a clay cup of water from the fat little pitcher on Ketch's desk. "What makes Stewart think he can get away with it?"

"A habit of making important decisions. It's the risk with governers: the tendency to independence. They are elected."

"Elected with my permission, Charles."

"Easy for them to forget that, after two or three years in office." Charles took a pinch of snuff, but didn't sneeze.

No one smoked the Empire's tobacco in Ketch's office – there were never flames there that might cause fire, not even lamps at dark, so all reading and copy-work was done by daylight.

No flame, so no heat through the nine months of hard winter. There were leaded panes of clear glass in the windows, so the wind, at least, could not come in.

"And this is your worst news for me, Charles?"

"Yes – except for the Kipchaks coming down, of course."

"You're mistaken." Sam stretched his legs out. His right spur scraped the stone flooring. "This tax thing is much more serious than two thousand horse archers."

Charles smiled. Approval… fondness. "Yes. That's right, of course. Stewart's is just the first of an endless succession of conflicts between Better-Weather and the governers elected locally. Each province will challenge you, sooner or later. Roads, mutton prices, wool prices, cabbage prices. You'll need certain taxes, and they'll wish to make them uncertain, to use the money locally, if only to insure their reelections. Stewart, and Sonora, are only the beginning."

"And you've done… what?"

"Nothing, Sam. It's too important for a decision of mine."

"Then you advise… what?"

Charles sighed, seemed embattled behind his stacks of paper, his massive copy of The Book. "Sam, you can have any recalcitrant governer removed from office, or killed. But that would mean always having them removed or killed at any serious disagreement. Taxes being the most serious – "

"Aside from recruitment."

"All right, aside from recruitment."

"Which would be the next refusal, Charles."

"Yes, which might very well be the next refusal."

"And your advice?"

"What I think we need to do, is limit their time in office. Make it law that a person can be elected only once as governer in each province. Then there'd be no building of little lordships to break us apart – or at least it would become less likely." Charles's voice from gathering shade, as rain came down outside.

"Yes. My fault for not thinking of this before."

"Our fault."

Sam considered Patricio Stewart. Big, bulky man with direct blue eyes and a bad temper. Broken nose, possibly because of his bad temper. For some reason, wore his long black hair in pigtails, held with silver clips.

"Alright." The stool had been doing Sam's back no good. He stood up, leaned on his scabbarded sword. An aching back at twenty-seven; he'd be a bent old man, no doubt about it. "Alright. We'll issue that order of a single term only, for governer of any province."

"Still five years?"

"Yes. Still a five-year term, once elected against all comers. But one term only."

"And if the other governers object? Follow Stewart?"

"Charles, I won't kill them; they were elected by their people. And I won't kill Stewart, for the same reason." The rain swept like a slow broom down the windows, dimming the daylight so Ketch, behind his desk, seemed to fade with it. "Instead, when this happens, I'll kill the person most important in supporting their independence."

"… I see."

"Might be Eric talking?"

Charles shrugged. "Eric has his uses."

"Who is Stewart's most important friend in this tax thing? Who stands behind him in Sonora?"

"… His wife's father, I believe. A formidable man, Johnson Neal. I know him, raises spotted cattle."

"Have Neal arrested, Charles. See that he's tried for treason in the tax matter. For plotting to destroy our unity… possibly in the Khan's pay, or the Emperor's. Then hang him."

In deepening shadows, Charles had become a ghost. "And if the magistrate makes some difficulty, Sam?"

"Choose a magistrate who won't. This is to be done at once. And the same magistrate is to issue a judgment referring to payment of provincial taxes as duty inescapable."

"That's… that should be effective."

"Also, find a discontented priest of Mountain Jesus, a man who may have had problems with Stewart's people over shares of altar gifts, distributions… whatever. Bound to be one. Advise the man to preach, publicly and often, proper obedience to Better-Weather. Three gold spikes will be sent, later, to be driven into any temple tree he wishes."