Money was fortunately no problem; but time, all the things that could go wrong, were riding on Molin’s mind. The vision of what it would be if all went well security against enemies, against the Empire, power for himself and those he chose to share it-that vision was barely enough to counter the murderous work of it all. He took any help he could find, and didn’t scruple to use it to the utmost thereafter.
He hadn’t scrupled on the morning several months or so back when the first courses of stone were being laid on the southern perimeter, and there was trouble with the foundations, dug too deep and uneven to boot. The plans were spread out on a block on undressed northern granite, and he was speaking to his engineers in that soft voice that made it plain to them that if they didn’t set things to rights shortly, they would be very dead. And in the middle of the quiet tirade, he had become aware of someone looking over his shoulder. He didn’t move. The someone snorted. Then a slender arm poked down between his shoulder and the chief architect’s and said, “Here’s where you went wrong. The ground’s prone to settling all along this rise; using that for your level strings threw all your other measurements off. You can still save it, with cement enough. But you won’t have time if you stand here gaping. That ground dries out, a whole city’s worth of cement on top of it won’t hold firm. And mind you put enough sand in it.”
He had turned around to see the ridiculous, the laughable. It was a tall young woman, surely no more than twenty-five, with cool clean features and long black hair, and a most peculiarly draped white linen robe with a goatskin slung over it. He looked at her with annoyance and amazement, but she was ignoring him which was also ridiculous; no one ignored him. She was looking at the plans as if they had been drawn in the mud with a stick. “Who designed this silly heap of blocks?” she said. “It’ll fall down the first time an army hits it.”