“That’s cruel, El,” Elissia heard, which made her look up to see Gardal shaking his head at her. “Treating your loving brother like a stranger and not even offering him a hug. How could you?”

  “Today’s the day I chose to be cruel to everyone,” Elissia answered, knowing well enough that Gardal was teasing. “Aren’t you glad you weren’t left out?”

  “There are some things I don’t mind being left out of,” Gardal countered with a grin. “So how come you’re over here all alone with Mother and Father over there? They should still be bothering you about everything from how you look to what you’re wearing.”

  “Speaking my mind for once seems to have stopped the usual flow,” Elissia said, making no effort to look over at their parents. “Don’t you ever get tired of the way she acts, Gardal, or of the way Father always lets her get away with it? Or are you just too chivalrous and noble to say anything?”

  “It’s not for me to criticize my parents,” Gardal answered, now looking extremely uncomfortable. “My life has been more than pleasant because of them, and eventually I’ll even be given a throne. Can’t you just concentrate on the good things when you get an urge to ? speak your mind?”

  “What good things?” Elissia countered, making no effort to avoid Gardal’s gaze. “Are you talking about all the time I wasted being taught to be a ‘woman of station’ no matter how stupid I said the lessons were? All the times Mother just couldn’t quite find something nice to say about whatever I was doing because she wouldn’t have done the same? Maybe you mean the times Father felt he had to apologize for me because I wasn’t a sweet, mindless, bit of fluff. And then there’s the way Father married me off as a child, just because he wanted the marriage. You’re right, Gardal. I have an enormous amount of good things to remember.”

  “El, you sound even more unhappy now than when we were in Ramsond,” Gardal protested with pain in his voice as Elissia remembered to sip her tea. “Tell me what I can do to make things better for you, please, tell me something!”

  “Everything possible is already being done,” Elissia said, too depressed even to reassure the brother she loved. “As soon as we find out who’s sending assassins, I’ll be free to go where I please. I don’t yet know where that will be, but it certainly won’t be back with Mother and Father. Being buried alive would be kinder than that.”

  “All right, I know that this ‘time of celebration’ is part of the plan to catch Derand’s enemy,” Gardal said in a soft voice after running a hand through his hair. “Mother and Father weren’t told, but I was, and I see something that could ruin the plan. Your not getting along with your parents doesn’t fit with how blissfully happy you’re supposed to be.”

  “Sure it does,” Elissia said, privately shaking her head over Gardal’s lack of imagination. “Part of the bliss I supposedly feel will be for the fact that I don’t have to go back to live with my parents again. Any number of people will understand that motive even if you don’t.”

  “El, if you do leave Derand the way you claim you mean to, I can’t see Father letting you do anything but come home,” Gardal said after something of a hesitation. “You’re still his daughter, after all, so no matter what you say to him you won’t - Or is that what you had in mind when you suddenly decided to get all those complaints off your chest? Are you making sure that he’ll simply close his eyes and pretend he doesn’t know what’s going on?”

  “Am I supposed to have forgotten how quick Father is to forgive and forget?” Elissia asked with a sound of ridicule that ought to throw Gardal off completely. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to be considered a better tactician than that.”

  “Then what are you trying to do?” Gardal demanded, a touch of short-tempered annoyance behind the words. “When you do something you usually have some kind of plan in mind, and I’d like to know what it is this time.”

  “You mean I’m not allowed to just lose my temper like any other human being?” Elissia countered at once, her tone sharp. “You can but I can’t, is that it, brother? Well, excuse me all to pieces for overstepping myself, and let me assure you that it won’t happen again - very often.”

  And with that Elissia walked away from him, almost as outraged as she’d pretended to be. To think that a full grown woman would be expected to obey her father’s wishes about her life rather than her own? !

  That nonsense had always had the ability to set her off, which made it very useful right now. It gave her an excuse to be less than blissfully happy, a break she really needed at the moment?

  Elissia was able to take one more swallow of tea before a servant announced that lunch was ready to be served. The table that could hold fourteen people easily had been set for the seven who were present, which happily put Elissia at one end with Derand at the other and their guests in the middle. Elissia let herself be served only a moderate amount of food, but it was still too much for her feeble appetite to handle. So she ate what she could, then sat back with fresh tea to wait for everyone else to be finished.

  Oddly enough, it seemed that no one had the kind of appetite they were supposed to have. When the meal was through, Elissia sent a servant to get the notes she’d made from the scribes’ reports, then handed the pages to Derand when they were brought.

  “I’ve already heard about the kidnapping, but the rest of this looks almost as ugly,” Derand said after glancing over what she’d written. “Two men who constantly get drunk and beat their wives and children.

  A new ‘guild’ of fishermen formed that’s trying to keep everyone else from fishing in the river. People robbed of everything they have and no one even looking into the thefts? We’ve got a long afternoon ahead of us.”

  “I think you’re also going to have to do something about the current group of city guardsmen,” Elissia said with a mirthless smile. “From what people have said, they’re collecting pay for sitting around and drinking all day when they’re not chasing women who want nothing to do with them.”

  “I’ve already sent some of my men to watch them for a while,” Derand said with a wry nod. “That should let us know if any of them are worth keeping - and if any of them ought to be charged with some sort of crime? Are you feeling all right? You look ? tired.”

  “I don’t feel tired, I feel impatient,” Elissia said as she glanced around the room. Their guests were talking as they moved toward the door, apparently on their way back to their apartments. “I want the waiting to be over with and the main part of the plan to start, but you can’t expect people to get here by magic. You have to wait for them to arrive by normal means, and who knows what will happen until they do arrive.”

  “Meaning you expect the attacks against me to stop once our guests are here,” Derand said, and Elissia could feel him studying her. “Yes, now that I think about it I have to agree. The enemy won’t want it to look like I’m a victim instead of a villain, so I won’t be a target any longer. We have no choice but to wait for the attacks to stop while hoping nothing effective will be done until then, so let’s fill some of the time in the most constructive way we can.”

  He offered her his arm, so Elissia took the arm and let herself be escorted to the audience chamber.

  Everyone stood and bowed or curtsied when she and Derand entered, but not everyone sat down again afterward. The sight of the same scribe entering and setting up sent a number of people out of the room in disgust, causing Derand to make a sound of amusement.

  “It looks like some of the ‘petitioners’ thought that yesterday would be considered a mistake,” he murmured to Elissia as they got more comfortable on the thrones. “They seemed to expect that the man they paid would set me straight on who was supposed to be granted an audience and who should be ignored. I wonder how they made such a mistake.”

  “Most likely they spoke to that fool Railsley before he was arrested,” Elissia murmured back. “If they’d had any brains they would have demanded their money back instead of letting him talk them into being patient. Now they’re out of luck.”

  “I’m probably going to charge Railsley with being an accessory to every crime we should have known about but didn’t,” Derand added just as softly. “So let’s get started with seeing what he’s guilty of.”

  He turned his head then to nod at the fighters who had a stout, greasy man in shackles to one side of the room. The man was dressed in very expensive but rumpled clothing and wore rings on almost all of his fingers, and he looked completely outraged. Elissia knew that this had to be the moneylender, and she watched carefully as he was manhandled forward and forced to bow.

  “This man is Oldio Fazon, a fool who considers himself a law unto himself,” Elissia said fairly loudly into the buzz of comments from the other people in the room. “He pretends to lend money to help people out, but in reality he’s only helping himself. He kidnaps children and sells them into slavery.”

  “I most certainly do not!” Fazon flared out at once, his indignation clearly growing stronger. “My clients are lucky that I have a friend who’s willing to repay their loans for them if he’s sent children to work out their parents’ debt as servants to him. That isn’t slavery or even kidnapping, so I respectfully demand an apology!”

  “‘Respectfully demand,’” Derand echoed with an odd kind of amusement as he stared at the man. “You have your ridiculous story all ready, so the idiots on the thrones of your kingdom should simply nod with understanding and let you go back to doing as you always have. And since you have been doing this for quite some time, that brings up a question: if the children are only supposed to be working off a debt, how many of them can you produce to show that they were returned home once the debt was repaid?”

  “Why - why - there aren’t any because the debts haven’t yet been paid off,” Fazon said, obviously thinking fast. “And I haven’t been doing this for years, only for a short time, so it’s perfectly understandable that none of the children are back yet.”

  The man began to preen where he stood, clearly proud of the way he’d found out of the trap, but before Elissia could call him a complete liar someone else did it for her.

  “You lie like the disgusting slime you are!” a woman called from the back of the chamber before stepping out where she could be seen. “Seven years ago you took my oldest son to repay the loan my husband was already paying back, just not fast enough to suit you. Losing our son killed my husband, and our son hasn’t been seen since!”

  “She’s the liar! Fazon snapped, the look in his dull little eyes showing how furious he was. “For some reason she hates me, so she’s taking this opportunity to lie about me! She - “

  “That’s enough!” Derand ordered in a voice so loud that Fazon was left with his mouth hanging open and no words coming out. “That woman isn’t the only one to accuse you, and how long you’ve been taking people’s children isn’t an issue. Doing something that vile even once would condemn you, and you’ve already admitted to committing the crime more than once.”

  “But it isn’t a crime!” Fazon screamed, suddenly losing all control of himself. “I paid good gold to make sure it wasn’t considered a crime, so you can’t change things now! Who do you think you are to barge in here and tell honest merchants what they can and can’t - “

  “Honest merchants?” Derand interrupted in a roar, again drowning the stupid man out. “You’re as honest as I’m a delicate poetry lover, but the main point is that I’m your king! That’s who I think I am, and I believe I can prove the contention. Guards! Take this man and make him tell you the names of everyone involved in his disgusting crime, including his bullies, whoever he paid off here in Holdisond, and the man he sent the children to. Once you have him wrung out, arrange for him to be sold into slavery. But not through his own contact, because that man will be too busy answering questions for my fighters to have the time to sell him properly.”

  Fazon began to scream as he was dragged out, but his screams weren’t easily heard over the cheering of most of the people in the chamber. There was also a smattering of applause, but when Derand held up one hand the cheering and applause changed to respectful silence.

  “I’m told that that man was just about the only moneylender in the city,” Derand said as he looked at the people who had shown him how pleased they were. “Since people do need to borrow money in times of difficulty, I’ve decided to take Oldio Fazon’s wealth and put it to good use. Until some honest moneylenders can establish themselves, anyone who needs to borrow money can apply to the chamberlain I’ll appoint to oversee the matter. If you get a loan you will pay interest, but not in an unbearable amount and no children will be part of the matter. Please tell all your friends that their families are no longer at risk.”

  The cheering and applause was louder now, and Elissia enjoyed it at least as much as Derand obviously did. He’d clearly used lunch to do some thinking, and the results of that thinking would be to the benefit of a lot of people in his city.

  Elissia had arranged for the head of the new “guild” to be brought to the audience, and that was who Derand called for next. The man had looked smug and complaisant to begin with, but after seeing what had been done with Fazon his expression had changed to one of worry. When Derand told him that he couldn’t keep people from fishing in the river themselves rather than being forced to buy from the members of his “guild,” the man didn’t even argue. Elissia saw that the man was smarter than Fazon in that he knew when to give up his attempted thievery. If he tried to keep on with the nonsense, the next time there would be more than a warning given to him.

  When Derand called for the abusive drunks to be brought in, instead of two there were seven men pushed and shoved forward. Elissia had told the fighters to bring in any other nasty drunks they might come across, and they’d obviously taken her at her word. The seven men were dirty and disheveled and unsteady on their feet, but it seemed that an effort had been made to sober them up. They weren’t completely sober, but they seemed able to follow most of what was going on.

  “You men are a disgrace to yourselves and to this city,” Derand stated in a growl that made most of the fools flinch. “If you have a problem you try to solve it, you don’t get blind, stinking drunk in order to forget about the problem instead. You men will be kept under arrest until you’re completely sober, and then you’ll be told again what I’m telling you now: you’re forbidden to take even a single drink for a full month.

  “If you drink anyway you’ll certainly end up drunk again, but the next time you won’t simply be sobered up. You’ll be taken to a work gang and worked until you drop for six full months, and only at the end of the six months will you be given one last chance. If you stay sober you’ll stay free. If you don’t, you’ll go back to the work gang for good.”

  Derand let the mutters and moaning run through the group for a minute, then he held up a hand again.

  “Before I forget, let me add something to what I’ve already said. Any of you who manage to stay sober for a month are not being told that they can then get drunk again any time they please. If you can’t handle drinking only in moderate amounts, you won’t be drinking at all. And if you do go back to drinking anyway, you’d better pray that no one in your family has an ‘accident’ during the time. If they do, you won’t be free of the work gang in a mere six months. Get them out of here now.”

  The guards forced the stunned men out of the room while Elissia listened to the murmurs of the people attending the audience. Some of the private conversations sounded worried, but most of them sounded delightedly relieved.

  Other people with problems were called forward then, and one of them was a woman who wanted her marriage ended. Elissia hadn’t made a point of mentioning the matter to Derand because she’d wanted to know what he would do without having been given time to think of something beforehand. If Derand felt cornered he certainly didn’t show it. He simply asked the woman if she was sure she wanted the marriage to be set aside, and when she answered firmly and calmly that she did he allowed it.

  Another two hours went by while fairly serious matters were taken care of, and then Derand called a halt for the day. There were only a few people heading for the scribe as Elissia joined Derand in leaving the room, which was a relief. Tomorrow morning would hopefully be more pleasant than this morning had been?

  Derand went off about his own business, so Elissia returned to their apartment and read until it was time to get dressed for dinner. Her aim was to avoid their “guests” as long as possible, and the effort proved to be a success. She was left alone until she had no choice but to join everyone in the dining room, and then she was actually left to drink tea in peace until Derand himself appeared. A moment later dinner was announced, so she took her place at the table and did her best to eat enough to keep herself alive.

  Everyone else did better than that with the excellent meal, so their mood had apparently lightened.

  The after-dinner conversation was friendly and touched on nothing serious but Derand’s handling of the moneylender cum slaver, something his parents had managed to see for themselves. No one seemed to notice that Elissia didn’t join in any of the talk, at least until she and Derand went to their apartment to get ready for bed. When Elissia walked into the bedchamber after her maids had left, Derand looked up from where he sat.

  “You were very quiet during dinner and afterward,” he said as he put aside the glass of wine he’d been holding. “Is that because of the words you had with your parents earlier today?”

  “I also had words with Gardal,” Elissia said, stopping half way across the room. “Didn’t he mention that as well?”

  “Instant counterattack is sometimes a good strategy, but not always,” he commented, looking at her very directly. “In this case, for instance, I haven’t been distracted from the knowledge that you behaved very badly. The way you spoke to your mother was inexcusable. If you had a complaint, you should have made it in private.”