Read Online Madness in Solidar by L. E. Modesitt Jr. - Free Book Online

taxes.”
    â€œThat’s largely correct. But it does one other thing. It limits the powers of all three, the rex, the High Holders, and the factors. Why?”
    Because Bovaria and its domains were largely ungovernable under the old Bovarian system. Alastar waited to see if anyone answered.
    No one did and it took almost a tenth of a glass for Shaelyt to work the answers out of the student imagers.
    â€œWhat did it smell like outside this morning?” asked Shaelyt.
    â€œAwful…”
    Several of the other imagers nodded vigorously.
    â€œWhy doesn’t the Maitre of the Collegium just force the rex to fix the sewers?”
    When no one answered, Shaelyt pointed to a round-faced boy. “Why doesn’t he?”
    â€œI don’t know … ah … because the rex wouldn’t do it?”
    â€œCould the rex do it?”
    â€œNot himself, he wouldn’t.”
    â€œThen how does the rex get anything done?”
    â€œHe has other people do it,” chimed in a younger student, a prime, Alastar thought.
    â€œHow?”
    Alastar eased out of the chamber. Shaelyt was making a good start. Getting any thought so soon was an improvement. As he walked back to the administration building, his nose reinforced the point on which Shaelyt had continued the discussion on governing, and … and, with the continuing impasse between the rex and the factors over the sewers, why he had resolved to look into the source of the odor. If you do take imagers over the east bridge and deal with the worst of the problem, won’t Ryen see that as a matter of his giving in? Or would the factors see it as high-handed? Alastar frowned. Probably both, but you’re the one who keeps talking about the need for the Collegium to be seen as independent of the rex.
    Once back in his study, he drafted a polite note to High Holder Haebyn suggesting that a meeting in the next few days might be mutually beneficial, then handed it to Dareyn for dispatch to the High Holder. He debated about whether to meet with the others on the High Council, then decided that for various reasons, he should meet with each. That required three more letters, and additional instructions to Dareyn.
    Rather than wrestle with the Collegium ledgers, he walked down the corridor to another small study, rapped lightly on the door, and stepped inside. “Good afternoon, Arhgen.”
    â€œGood day, Maitre.” The square-faced and graying tertius behind the wide table desk eased several sheets of paper aside and looked up with his always cheerful smile, waiting.
    Alastar closed the door and settled into the single straight-backed chair in the chamber filled with file chests stacked against almost every wall. “What do we have in reserve … this very moment? In the strong room?”
    â€œSlightly less than a thousand golds. They will barely last past Year-Turn. That is, if the prices of flour, maize, and other foodstuffs do not increase more.”
    â€œWhich they will. What about meat?”
    â€œFor now, that has decreased slightly. The shortage of fodder, you know.”
    â€œThat means next year meat will be more, and until the next harvest, so will everything else.”
    â€œYes, sir. We have ordered slightly more than twenty golds’ worth of supplies, and we will need to pay the stipends to all imagers and to those who work for the Collegium on the eighteenth, and the food costs … all in all, operating just the part of the Collegium here in L’Excelsis takes almost a hundred and fifty golds a week…”
    The costs of running the Collegium continued to stagger Alastar, but then, effectively the Collegium was paying stipends or wages to close to two hundred people, and feeding almost a hundred of them nineteen meals every week. And Ryen is supplying most of those golds.
    Not for the first time, nor would it be the last, he knew, came the realization that the Collegium needed more