A Plague of Giants (Seven Kennings #1) - Kevin Hearne Page 0,59

our walls.

I also do not understand this extreme discomfort whenever I urinate.

But who am I kidding? The entire city envies my position because they are surrounded by shit of a slightly different stench from mine and think the viceroy never has to smell any of his own. They think I live a privileged life—and they are right. I certainly do. My boot closet is probably second only to the king’s. But that does not mean I am free of worries.

I have material comforts and no security. People see the material comforts and believe I must have security, too, but no, that is not the case. I only have a finer bed, a chef to cook my food, a man to taste it for poison (after which it is cold), and a safe place to dump it all when my body is through with it.

These privileges, no doubt, are very fine indeed: a safe dump should never be scorned.

And yet I think the stress of my existence will end me. If the king doesn’t send an assassin to kill me first. I’m on his list now, I can feel it, because he knows I covet that cushy chair of his. But he needs a good reason to replace me. He would find it very convenient if I died, but if I do something he can label as a failure of leadership, that will serve as well. If I don’t get the city expanded on time, that might be all the excuse he needs. Even a dip in revenue could spell my doom if it’s big enough, and now it might be here.

That simpering wine-soaked liaison to the merchant clave, Badavaghar, claims that we have lost our trading partner in Harthrad in a single night and this will create a costly deficit in the treasury; they imported a lot of our goods. New trading partners will have to be secured in other Hathrim cities if we want their glass and steel and terms might not be as favorable as before, and so on. I banish him to the cellar where he can marinate in his favorite cask, leaving me to think. I climb the dank stone steps of the tower, spiraling ever up and misted with sea spray under the open windows, until I can look out at the entirety of the city without obstruction or interruption. The cry of seabirds and the bustle of industry reach my ears, and underneath it the dull whoosh and hiss of the ocean, but that is all.

Strange, looking out at Hashan Khek from the Tower of Kalaad, to think that the city might be in any kind of danger, economic or otherwise. It is a vista of prosperity viewed from on high, the beasts of the plains all safely deterred by our walls, and it is easy to imagine that everyone below is happy and fulfilled. Rooftops shield the people from rain and their rulers from the reality of the streets.

I know that they suffer. I know that they need more room and that the farmers and herders outside the walls need more protection. That’s why I approved the expansion of the city at great expense. And if we don’t make up this sudden trade deficit, we won’t be solvent and the king will shove a hot poker up my anus before he kicks me outside the walls for the animals to eat. He won’t care that a volcano melted and buried our revenue stream.

Dhingra bursts into my tower study while I’m meditating on what to do next. “Viceroy, the Raelech stonecutters are gone. They’ve been hired away.”

That means the city expansion is on hold indefinitely—another reason for the king to serve me whole to a family of harkha weasels. “Who hired them?”

“Hathrim—I mean the ones from Harthrad. The Raelechs left a note. Said they’d return in a month to finish with no further payment required.”

“The ones from Harthrad? But Badavaghar just told me that Mount Thayil killed them all.”

“Yes, but Badavaghar needs help to find his boots in the morning.”

That was certainly true. The drunken sponge needed help to take them off at night, too. “Wait a moment, Dhingra. We may have a problem here that could solve all my other problems.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’ve been given two steaming piles of shit news mere minutes apart: Harthrad was destroyed, but the survivors just hired my Raelech stonecutters out from under me. What does that tell you about the direction the survivors sailed?”

My chamberlain’s eyes widen.