Scion of Cyador Read Online Free Page A

of this before. Neither can afford to trust the other allied to Bluoyal. Yet they know that both Magi'i and Mirror Lancers are few indeed outside of the three cities. They cooperate like a pair of giant cats against a pack of night leopards. Most carefully."
    "And when the towers do fail?"
    "We will need far more lancers against the barbarians. Bluoyol's successors will find they still need lancers, but not until many perish, and more than a few vessels are lost."
    "Thus, all will continue as today," she replies.
    "It will not seem so, not to most. The emperors to come will either be powerful Magi'i or inspire loyalty within the Mirror Lancers, because it appears that either lancers or Magi'i can destroy an Emperor."
    "Bluoyal believes that the merchanters will purchase the Palace of Light in years to come, perhaps sooner. We need to watch him, more closely, far more closely, for a merchanter rising would bring down Cyador more swiftly than the Accursed Forest or the barbarians."
    "So has said the Hand, but he has also advised that we have time, and that Bluoyal will overreach himself before such can occur."
    "Would that I could take comfort in that," says the Empress, leaning her head against his shoulder.
    "Seldom is he wrong... most seldom."
    "If he is...?"
    "If he is, if we fail, then blood will stain the sunstone of the Palace so deeply it cannot ever be lifted." He looks down and studies her drawn face. "I tell you this often, but... You give too much to me."
    "What else would I do, dearest? We know there is no one else."
    "Not yet."
    As he speaks, her fingers lift to rest lightly on his cheek.
    The orange glow of twilight floods from the hillside to the west, and the white stone piers of the harbor shimmer gold.
    The Emperor and Empress stand on the balcony and watch the gold fade.
     
     
    IV
     
    Sitting at one end of a long table in the corner of Ryalor House, in gray light of a stormy spring morning, Lorn reads through the stack of papers that Eileyt has set before him. The senior enumerator has assured Lorn that the papers have several examples of shady trading practices.
    Outside of several clear errors in addition, Lorn has found nothing. He finally beckons to Eileyt, and when the gray-eyed man nears, says, "I don't think I'm seeing what I should be seeing."
    Eileyt turns over the first three bills of lading, then points to an entry halfway down the fourth one. "Look at that closely."
    Lorn looks at the entry: Cotton, 20 bales, dun, Hamor. "Hamor grows dun cotton, but all they usually export is the good white. Look at the parchment-and it is parchment, which is another clue."
    "It looks like it's smoother there, but just around the word dun."
    "There's more space around the word dun, too." Eileyt nods. "With parchment, you can use it like a palimpsest, take a sharp knife and scrape off the letters, then write in dun instead of white."
    "But why? Why don't they just rewrite the bill of lading?"
    "It's sealed below. A trader gets caught counterfeiting a seal, and he loses a hand. An 'error' in a bill of lading merely costs some golds in fines, but most of such 'errors' are never found. The tariff on white cotton is a gold a bale. It's a silver on dun cotton, and you can get that from Kyphros or Valmurl or even out of Worrak in Hydlen."
    "But they all come from beyond Cyador," Lorn says. "That is right," Eileyt says patiently. "But... if the Imperial tariff were a gold on Kyphran dun cotton, then people would use carts and smuggle it along the beaches below the lower Westhorns, and some dishonest merchanter in Fyrad would mix it with his real Kyphran stock and it would be hard to tell without counting every bale, and the Imperial Enumerators don't have the bodies or the days to do that. At a silver a bale, and the tariff is the same for a bolt of the finished cloth, it's cheaper and faster to ship the dun cotton, or any cotton from Kyphros, than smuggle it. Hamorian white cotton goes for five golds a bale these