“And think of the loot stacked up there,” the mercenary shouted.
This time the cheers split the night.
* * *
“Where the hell were you?” Esmond asked.
“I had an errand to run,” Adrian said, walking down the gangway.
Esmond peered behind him. “Where’s Helga?”
“As I said, I had an errand,” Adrian said, and forced a smile. “Look, let’s forget about it, okay? Business.”
“Certainly, brother,” Esmond said. “This is Enry Sharbonow, Suttete of Preble, Chief Minister to the sovereign, Prince Tenny of Preble.”
Adrian bowed, returning the Preblean magnate’s more elaborate salute. “Everything went well? Where’s the Prince?”
The northern dock of Preble was busy enough, although most of it seemed to be ships loading for departure—Adrian could see an entire household, from a portly robed merchant to veiled wives and a dozen children to skinny porters under huge bundles wrapped in rugs. They were scuttling up the gangplank of a freighter, and they were far from the only ones he could see. There was a smell of smoke in the air, as well.
“Things got a little out of hand,” Esmond said. “There aren’t many Confed civilians left in town, either. We’re letting some of the non-Prebleans leave.”
Enry spread his hands. “The Confeds are not—were not—popular here,” he said.
Adrian nodded. They never were; the first thing that happened in a country taken under Confed “protection” was a tribute levy, and then officials to collect it. The Confed Council didn’t like hiring bureaucrats much: too many opportunities for political patronage with implications at home. They put tribute and tax collection up for competitive bidding; that might not have been so bad, if it weren’t for the fact that the successful bidders had no fixed fee. The winning syndicate made its profit by collecting whatever it could above the amount it had paid for the contract, with the Confed army to see that nobody objected. Then Confed merchants swarmed in, to buy up goods and property at knock-down prices as the locals frantically tried to raise cash, and Confed bankers to loan at fifty percent interest, compounded, to those who couldn’t raise the cash. If anyone defaulted on the loan, they’d sell every stick and rag he had, and march him off to the auction block, and he’d find himself hoeing beans on some Confed Councillor’s estate outside Vanbert.
The nod was general; everyone knew how the system worked. “Funny,” Adrian said. “The Confed peasants go into the army, because they can’t compete with the big slave-worked estates . . . then they go out and get the Councillors the money and slaves they need to set up the estates in the first palace.”
“Nice work if you can get it,” Donnuld Grayn said. “Meantime the civvies ran down and killed maybe a thousand of ’em last night, once word got around we’d taken out the garrison.” He smiled, a nasty expression. “Sort of commits ’em, don’t it? What’s that Confed saying?”
” ‘I am a Confed citizen; let kings tremble,’ ” Adrian said. “They’re not going to be happy at a massacre.”
Enry Sharbonow shrugged. “I put my arse above the stake when I enlisted in Prince Tenny’s cause,” he said. “Now everyone else in town is in the same boat.”
“Where’s Prince Tenny?” Adrian asked.
Enry coughed discreetly; it seemed to be his favorite expression. “He is occupied with setting up the Royal household,” he said. “In his mercy, he has decided to take into his hareem the now-protectorless females of the Confed commandant and his officers, or some of them.”
Adrian winced slightly. One of the drawbacks of this business, Raj said at the back of his mind, is that you usually end up working for some son of a bitch. Politics attracts them.
“Well, we’ve got business to attend to,” Adrian said. “I suppose I should start setting up the artillery?”
“Too right,” Esmond said. “I don’t think the Confeds are going to wait long to try a counterattack—some refugees will have made it out, over the wall and swimming if no other way.”
“Sir!” One of the Strikers came up, panting. “Lord Esmond, Confed troops are putting out in small craft from the shore—barges, some ladders.”