27.

"I need a tour of Synfal." That was what she'd said, and now Anna was descending worn yellow-brick steps, lit only by intermittent candles, into the depths of the oldest section of the hold. The scooped-out edges of the steps indicated that the hold's age was considerable.

Anna found herself using her left hand to steady herself from the disruptive impact of the double vision, while still trying to ignore the disability she hoped was temporary.

At the base of the stairs, Alvar stopped and gestured to a stooped and gray-haired man with a wispy goatee, dressed in a clean but faded gay tunic and trousers. "This is Vierk, Lady Anna. He does the accounts for the liedburg."

"Were you with Lord Arkad long?" Anna asked.

"We were boys together, lady. I did what I could, but ...in the recent years, he listened but to Fauren."

Vierk's eyes dropped to the brick floor. Was everything in Synfal brick?

Anna glanced down, realizing that she still had blood across the cuff of her shirt. In the press to take charge of Synfal, she'd forgotten that. You're worried about that, now? "Did he talk with you?"

"Not often, lady. And he talked about the past, and how Fauren and he would make Synfal great again, as in the days of Suhlmorra. Then he laughed." Vierk shivered.

"What about Halde? What did he do?"

"He did the ledgers in the strongbox room, and he checked my accounts. Fauren was most firm that two must check all accounts."

"Let's see the strongbox room." Did everyone every where romanticize the past? She hoped she didn't...

but would she ever know?

The strongbox room met the conditions of its name. Two iron gates, one on the outside of the archway that pierced the three-foot-thick wall, and one on the inside, stood open, guarded by four Defalkan lancers, besides Fhurgen and the other lancer who followed her.

Five small chests and ten large ones stood on four st.u.r.dy and ancient oak tables. All were iron-bound.

Before each of the laige chests was a leatherbound book.

Anna glanced at Alvar, then Vierk. "How much is there?"

'The first nine large chests contain a thousand golds each. I would have to check the book for the last. The small chests, those are for trade. Each has fifty golds, but they can hold three hundred."

Anna figured-nearly ten thousand golds stashed away, with the winter already gone, and the rents for the next harvest yet to come. And Arkad, or Fauren, hadn't paid liedgeld-a mere nine hundred golds.

Anna stepped forward toward the table and the nearest large chest. She opened the cover of the well- thumbed book, turning the pages until she reached the last one with entries on it.

"... ten silvers... rents from Gerhing, farmer in the north quarter of Ashfaal, for ten morgens of good land."

Anna frowned. Morgen meant morning in German, but the farmer wasn't renting mornings. Another term she didn't understand. "Lord Jecks, how much land is a morgen?"

Jecks frowned momentarily. "It is the amount of land a farmer could plow in a morning. I would say a square sixty yards on a side."

That didn't seem all that much for a morning's work, until she thought about Papaw and how long it had taken him in the holler with old Barney. Anna nodded. "Are these rents high?"

Jecks glanced over her shoulder at the entries. "A silver a morgen? That is a gold a year for this peasant.

My farmers could not raise that. This land must be rich indeed." He began to look through the ledger before the adjoining chest.

Anna frowned. Doing math, even approximations, in her head required concentration. Defalk was roughly seventy leagues from east border to west, and eighty leagues from north to south-say four hundred miles by five hundred-twenty thousand square miles. A morgen was smaller than an acre, something around two-thirds, she'd guess, and a square mile had six hundred forty acres- she remembered that from somewhere. So. . . nine hundred morgens to a square mile. . . something like eighteen million morgens in the country. . . and if only ten percent were farmed by tenants, that still totaled close to two million silvers in rents at the rate charged by Arkad or Fanren. And she had trouble collecting eight thousand golds- equivalent to eighty thousand silvers.

"You look displeased, Lady Anna."

Anna glanced at Alvar. "If you would escort Vierk up the stairs, Alvar?"

"Yes, Lady Anna"

Anna waited until she heard boots and sandals on the bricks. "If only ten percent of Defalk brings in rents, and every lord charged like Arkad, each of the lords of Defalk would each get something like. . . five or six thousand golds a year."

Jecks nodded. 'But that is not the case. I would say that more like two-thirds of Lord Arkad's lands are rented, from what these books show." He coughed almost apologetically. "Elhi ... I am fortunate, and Herstat says that one in five morgens brings in rent, but only five coppers a morgen."

"So your rents are around ten thousand golds a year," she said quietly.

"Lady Anna. . . you are dangerous."

"Dangerous? It's only taken me a year to understand what a good accountant would have figured out in a week."

Jecks offered a puzzled look at the word "accountant," but answered, "I doubt Barjim ever understood,"

"I'd bet your daughter did." Better than I do. Anna wanted to shake her head. She'd paid close to thirty percent in taxes, between social security and income taxes, and these high-living lords were complaining about a tax of what, less than ten percent?

"You look angry."

"I am. I'm beginning to understand, and I'm going to get very upset if I get any more excuses from people like Arkad. Or his seneschal." She also felt a lot less unhappy about claiming a thousand golds for her own efforts.

Jecks glanced back to the iron gates where Fhurgen and the two lancers stood, almost as if he wished he had gone with Alvar.

Unhappy? Anna had to wonder. Jecks had told her the strongbox room held six thousand golds, and Vierk had pretty clearly indicated the total was closer to ten. Had Jecks been mistaken, or had Vierk underestimated originally, or was something else going on?

She took a long slow breath. What was it that Herod Agrippa had said in I, Claudius? "Tnist no one."

Does it come to that? She hoped not, but she'd hoped for a lot of things that hadn't turned out as she hoped.

She closed the ledger or whatever the book was called.

"I'd like to see the stables and the kitchens next." Anna glanced to Jecks and turned. "Fhurgen? Can you make sure this is well-guarded, and that it all remains here? I'd hate to have to use sorcery." She kept her voice sweet, but the last phrase was for the guards, and she hoped both Jecks and Fhurgen understood.

"Yes, Lady Anna." Fhurgen suppressed a smile.

Anna began the climb up the three long flights of brick steps, Jecks and Fhurgen and two guards behind her.

The stables were to the left of the main building, left as one entered the hold, built as in Faicor against the outer wall.

Anna sniffed as she neared the brick arches where two more armsmen stood with a thin young man in brown trousers and a sleeveless leather vest. The area smelled clean, and that was a good sign.

"This is the ostler, Lady Anna."

"You're young for the head ostler," Anna observed, noting that the man didn't seem as old as Mario, and she wouldn't have trusted her son with the horses of an entire liedburg. Then, people grew up faster in Liedwahr.

"My da was stablemaster till the fever took him last year.

"Lady," suggested Fhurgen.

"Lady," the man added with a glare.

"What's your name?" Anna asked.

"Bielttro.. . lady."

"Will you show me your stables, Bielttro? I've only seen where Farinelli's stalled, and I wasn't really paying attention. I need to groom him"

"The big gelding-he's yours, lady? You groom him?" The surliness vanished from Bieltiro's voice.

"He makes sure I do. He doesn't let many others near him," Anna said dryly, reflecting that Farinelli was a better diplomat than she was these days. "He deserves it. He's saved my life a few times. If he wants me to do the grooming, that's a fair trade. More than fair," she added.

"You are the lady Anna?"

"She is," Alvar said.

Bielttro shook his head as Anna eased into the stall beside Farinelli. She loosened the girths and slipped off the saddle, awkwardly because her hand hurt, but managed to get it over the rack on the stall wall, sloppily because the double vision didn't do much for depth perception.

Bielttro glanced from the saddle to the dressing on her hand.

"Lord Arkad tried to slice me up. I wasn't expecting it. It makes lifting heavy things awkward."

"You always saddle and unsaddle... him?"

"Sometimes, others have unsaddled hint" Anna admitted.

"When?" asked Alvar from beside the ostler. "The last time I recall was after you destroyed the dark army. I got his saddle off, and he almost killed me. He'd eat and drink, but that was about all."

"I wasn't in the best of shape," Anna grunted. "Easy, there." She slipped off the bridle and scratched Farinelli's forehead.

Whuuuff.

"I know, fellow. You're hungry." She looked oyer the shoulder-high wall, brick, of course. "Do you have any grain, oats, that sort of thing?"

"I will get some."

Alvar shook his head after the stablemaster left. "Horses-stablemasters judge people by their mounts."

"It's not a bad way," reflected Anna, struggling slightly with the curry brush in her left hand.

Whufff!

"Sorry. I'm not as good with this hand." The gelding turned his head slightly as if to offer a.s.sent.

"Thank you," Anna said. "I'm so happy you agree."

"This should help." Bielttro reappeared with a wooden bucket, which he poured into the manger while leaning over the stall wall. Farinelli just watched.

"He likes you," Anna observed.

"He doesn't dislike me," the stablemaster corrected. "You really are the sorceress?" He studied Anna frankly.

Anna sighed. "Bielttro, it's hard explaining, but please believe me when I tell you I have a son your age.

He's the youngest of my children."

The dark-haired man glanced at Alvar and Jecks. Both nodded.

"I saw her soon after she came to Liedwahr," Jecks said. "She was beautiful then, but one could see that she had experienced much."

"All say you never lie, Lord Jecks." Bielttro met the older man's eyes for a moment. "Still... it is hard to believe."

"Watch and listen for a time. Then you will believe," suggested Alvar.

Fhurgen. standing farther back, nodded, and Anna felt like a third party being discussed. She set aside the brush and stepped out of the stall. "If you would show me the rest of the stables?"

"I would indeed." Bielttro smiled and started down the line of stalls. "The big mounts, they go in the front stalls, and the workhorses. The roof is higher." He pointed to a s.h.a.ggy beast that was a good four hands taller than Farinelli. "That is Hoofa. That is what I call him. He is the lead for the big wagon team."

Hoofa lifted his head and regarded the stablemaster placidly.

"And there is Olaaf,... he is younger and works best beside Hoofa."

Olaaf's coat was lighter than the deep reddish brown of Hoofa's, and his big head turned toward Anna and Bielttro more quickly.

"...next are the stalls for the favorites of Lord Arkad...he rode until the year before the last..."

Anna just nodded as the young stablemaster walked her through the entire complex, nearly twice the size of those at Falcor, but every hit as well-organized and clean if clearly older. All the straw seemed fresh, and both stable boys she saw smiled, rather than cringed.

''Thank you. Bielttro," she said as they neared the front archways to the stables. "It's very impressive.''

She smiled.

Bielttro glanced at the bricks.

Anna understood, and wanted to kick herself He was young, and he was afraid he'd be replaced.

"Bielttro...," she said softly. "I am not the one who will hold Synfal, but I will put in a good word for you."

That got a shy smile. "Thank you, lady."