Sethra Lavode (Viscount of Adrilankha) Read Free

used. Moreover, it gave the impression of a return to a normally functioning Empire.
    The slaughterhouses in South Adrilankha began to work once more, mostly using the labor of the Easterners who had settled there during the Interregnum, as kethna and cattle were driven in from the north. This was good news to everyone except those toward whom the winds blew from these slaughterhouses. Another effect this had was that more Easterners, who had been living to the north and east of the city and barely surviving as free farmers, gave up their nearly worthless plots and moved into South Adrilankha to work in these slaughterhouses. Although this concentration of Easterners (and, indeed, many human Teckla) would eventually lead to social unrest, this would not occur for hundreds of years, and so is beyond the scope of our history.
    As a sort of footnote, we should add that certain aristocrats, including the Dzurlord Shant, whose holdings were north of the city, lost some number of Teckla to the employment available in South Adrilankha, which proves that, contrary to claims of those who operated the slaughterhouses, some Teckla did leave the land to which they were legally bound. This was followed up in a few cases, but the infant Dragaeran police force was mostly unable to cope with anything in South Adrilankha.
    This, then, is the general state of the Empire. As we open this chapter of our history, our friends are not yet aware of Kâna’s continuing machinations against the Orb.

 
     
Sethra
Lavode
    BOOK FIVE
    In Which Matters of Great Historical Moment
Such as the Role of the Orb in Determining the Emperor
Are Brought to a Head

Chapter the Sixty-Ninth
    How the Empress, Attempting to
Work on the Design of the Imperial Palace,
Manages Those Who Interrupt Her
    O n the ground floor of Whitecrest Manor was a wide enclosed terrace, the twin to the open terrace on the other side where the Count and Countess of Whitecrest were accustomed to take their morning klava and watch the ocean. The enclosed terrace, of course, was used during inclement weather and had been the place where the Countess was accustomed to carry on her work—except that now it was the room where the Empress was carrying on her official business. The room was reached by a hallway with two entrances, one leading down to the parlor, and the other to a flight of steps that went up to the second story of the Manor. This second entrance had been sealed off, and a guard was posted at the first, with instructions to admit no one without permission of either Her Majesty or the officer on duty.
    The officer on duty, of course, was generally Khaavren, and it happened to be Khaavren on this day who entered the room, bowed to Zerika, and said, “A gentleman to see Your Majesty. It is Prince Tiwall, of the House of the Hawk.”
    “Ah!” said Zerika, looking up from the papers she had been studying, which papers were, in turn, a single entry in a seemingly endless list of details to be decided upon with regard to the design of the Imperial Palace. Before her were not only lists and diagrams, but several different models of the future structures, or portions there-of, one of which was a full five feet high and more than fifteen feet in length, and occupied most of the room.
    This activity had taken up so much of Her Majesty’s time and effort that she was often impatient with any interruptions. On hearing who was there, the Orb, which had been circling her head with a beige color of distraction, first turned to a faint red of irritation, then, aftershe had reflected, to a warm orange of pleasurable excitement. “Send him in at once,” she said.
    Khaavren bowed and, as he had been trained to do for so long, did as he was told.
    “I greet Your Majesty,” said Tiwall, a stern, forbidding gentleman of well over two thousand years, whose white hair, worn long and brushed back from his noble’s point, made a stark contrast to his dark complexion.
    “Come, Your Highness,”