Saraband of Lost Time by Richard Grant

Author:Richard Grant [Grant, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 1985-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

On the town’s opposite flank, her chair situated in such a way that she faced away from the garrison and all it represented, Lady Illandra sat alone in the herb garden of Cheeve Arbor, trying to concentrate on the sunlight and the cardomom-scented breeze, but brooding in fact over the ominous circumstances into which her demesne had fallen.

Her eyes lay sadly on the half-mile row of oaks, spaced at intervals of thirty paces, which ten years after their planting still gave barely a hint of the mighty wall of limb and leaf Emo had seen when he laid earth to their young roots. He had wanted to plant them sooner, early enough that he might live to see them twine their branches, but he had waited.

“One always consults one’s heirs,” he told her, “before making permanent alterations to the grounds.”

Falspur had been a toddler then; Emo waited thirteen years.

She clung to the memory: Emo’s unshakeable confidence in the future. His stony indifference to passing years. And now she, his widow, might preside in a matter of weeks over the death of his dynasty.

Her thoughts railed. She would not. It would not happen. She would find some way to prevent it.

“Thraus!” she called on a sudden resolution. Her younger son stepped lightly from the breakfast room, still carrying his bowl of frumenty. His freckles had grown more pronounced with the advance of summer, his hair lighter, his eyes clear and pale. He was more Illandra’s child than Emo’s—a thought which now unsettled her.

“Hi, mother,” said Thraus.

How old was he now? She remembered: fifteen. Too young for any of this.

“I want you to talk to the reeve,” she said.

“Rugo?” He put down his bowl.

“Tell him to cease immediately all sales of food to the army. Tell him that, and nothing more. Then come home and stay indoors.”

Thraus gave these matters some thought. “If you’re going to engineer a food shortage,” he said, “you might as well work it so that the price of grain goes up. You can put it around that the guerrillas have stolen all our produce—that way, see, you aren’t inviting retaliation. Then Rugo goes to the Warmaster and confides that the guerrillas have quoted him a price to get the stuff back. Meanwhile, you tell our agent in the Capital that the guerrillas are going to sell everything to the army at such-and-such a price unless he makes a better offer. We go back and forth a few times until the price has doubled. Then we sell everything to the highest bidder and split the profits with Cundiff.”

Illandra shook her head. “It does sound like something your father would have done. One hears, though, that our agent in the Capital is in jail being tortured.”

She paused to watch a bee sucking nectar from a camelia.

“It will be nice to talk to Cundiff again; he was so sad at your father’s funeral. I wonder if he writes to Alisha?” Her smile was not, she hoped, visibly nervous. “Tell the bailiff-at-arms I am awaiting him in the study.

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