Chapter Two — Schedule IV
1490 Words
They were serving sliced pears in the palace's small reception room.
The sight reminded Lysandra that she had eaten no breakfast. Her stomach was empty. Her father had spent the journey discussing seating arrangements for the wedding, and she had inclined her head whenever a response seemed necessary.
Now Oren Vale stood beside the fireplace with Chancellor Rhen, glancing occasionally at the gloves she had yet to remove. Silver had begun to replace the chestnut at her father's temples; there was more gray in his neatly trimmed beard. She recognized her own long face in his, and the same hazel eyes, though his had narrowed at something the chancellor said.
Rhen bent his thinning reddish-gray head to listen. He was all narrow shoulders and long bones, his immaculate robes worn smooth at the cuffs. Small round spectacles rested low on his freckled nose.
Adrian turned from the window.
For a moment, he was not the man she remembered.
He was younger. His blond hair lay neatly above his collar, his fair face unmarked by the permanent fatigue she had come to associate with it. He had always been handsome. It had been easy to trust that open blue gaze, especially when his smile softened the precise lines of his face and seemed to belong to her alone.
He smiled that way now.
“Did you sleep?” he asked.
“Not much.”
“Neither did I.”
He approached, his posture still carrying the effortless balance of a man who rode every morning. When he reached for her hand, she drew back.
The movement was small. Large enough for both of them to notice.
His hand remained between them for a moment, then settled on the white leather folder.
“There is nothing to be afraid of,” he said more quietly. “Only signatures today.”
Lysandra lowered her head. Took a breath, then another.
“Then let us read.”
The chancellor called them to the table. He moved through the marriage provisions with brief explanations. Separate household funds. Ceremonial expenses. The succession rights of any children.
Lysandra turned the pages.
Stopped at Schedule IV.
“This provision will need to change.”
The chancellor fell silent.
“Lysandra,” her father said. The warning was still gentle.
Adrian sat down.
“Which provision?”
“The administration and revenue of my granaries. I will not assign them to the Crown Provisioning Office for nine years.”
Rhen adjusted his spectacles.
“Ownership remains with you, my lady.”
“If I cannot choose whom to employ, where to move the grain, or what price to sell it for, that distinction is of limited use to me.”
Rhen laid a finger beside the clause.
“Central administration prevents competing orders. Three granaries cannot answer to two authorities during a military shipment.”
That was a reasonable objection. She disliked him a little more for making it.
“Then the purchase agreement should specify which stock belongs to the army. Your officers may direct that stock. They need not direct everything I own.”
“Separate inventories,” he said. “Additional inspections.”
“My steward already maintains separate inventories for every buyer.”
Her father shifted beside the fireplace. The small scrape of his heel told her more than another warning would have. She had brought the language of warehouses into the room where he expected to secure his family's future.
She understood his embarrassment. Until that morning, she might even have shared it.
“The revenue will support the border army,” Adrian said. “We discussed this.”
Yes. They had. He had told her about the debts his father left behind. She had offered a solution. He had held her hand and told her that, for the first time, someone understood him.
She had been too happy to sleep that night.
“I can sell grain to the army,” she said. “Under a contract specifying delivery dates and payment.”
Her father left the fireplace.
“You intend to bargain with your sovereign like a merchant?”
She turned to him.
“The document already gives the grain a value, Father. It simply does not say what I will be paid.”
Adrian raised a hand. Oren fell silent.
The king drew the document closer and read. Lysandra waited. She knew which words he would begin with. Her shoulders tightened when she heard them all the same.
“You understand,” Adrian said. “The council will not approve another tax. Nor can I send the soldiers home.”
Beneath the table, she pressed her hand against her knee.
He had said it the night before her execution.
You understand. For the people's confidence, the proceedings must be concluded.
The man sitting before her had not yet spoken those words. Answering an Adrian who was not in this room would be an excellent way to waste the only chance she had.
“I propose a three-month purchase agreement,” she said. “Thirty days to pay for the first delivery. Regular payment thereafter.”
Rhen answered at once.
“The treasury cannot, within thirty days—”
“Then the arrangement depends on my being the one who goes unpaid.”
Some of the warmth left Adrian's face. There was no visible anger yet. He had the attentive look of someone hearing an unexpected sound.
“Leave us for a few minutes.”
Oren began to object. Rhen opened the door, and he thought better of it.
After they had gone, Adrian remained seated, looking at the document between them.
“Have I offended you?”
She had not prepared for that question.
“No.”
The lie felt dry in her mouth.
“Then why are you behaving as though you've never heard these terms before?”
“Having agreed to them before does not oblige me to sign them today.”
“Have you spoken to someone?”
There it was. For her to have changed her mind, an invisible third person had to enter the room.
“My accountant.”
He glanced toward the door, as though Mara might be standing behind it.
“Does she understand what this marriage offers your house?”
“She understands what the granaries earn.”
“Those are not equal considerations.”
“They are both considerations.”
His fingers moved along the edge of the folder. She remembered those hands undoing a necklace whose clasp she could not reach. The recollection arrived with such ordinary tenderness that she almost looked away.
She had loved him in rooms like this. Quiet rooms, after the ministers left, when his exhaustion seemed a confidence entrusted to her. Remembering that did not make the document any less dangerous. It made refusing it harder than she wanted him to know.
“You would have your own household here,” he said. “You would want for nothing.”
“I would still like to know which expenses I could authorize without asking.”
His hand stopped on the folder.
Adrian leaned back.
“I had not expected to debate a state budget this morning.”
“Neither had I.”
He was silent for a while. Rhen coughed in the adjoining room.
“If you need time to think, you may have it,” Adrian said at last. “But without your signature, I cannot issue a royal transport permit for your granaries. Civilian applications must wait until the army's shipments are complete.”
Her attention sharpened.
“I need to move existing stock between my own stores.”
“Everyone has urgent business this week.”
The weariness in his voice might be real. So was the closed permit register on the table.
In her first life, she had signed away her authority. Refusing to sign did not mean she would be allowed to exercise it.
Adrian pushed the pen toward her.
“We can resolve this together.”
She looked at the ink gathering on its tip. Did not reach for it.
“Have the Derenk sluices inspected today,” she said. “Particularly the northern wall. And send a warning to the lower quarter.”
Adrian frowned.
“The sluices?”
“It is still raining in the upper basin. That is why I need to move the grain.”
“I'll speak to Rhen.”
“Today.”
His gaze settled on her face.
“I heard you, Lysandra.”
Once, that tone would have been enough to end the conversation.
She stood.
“I will need a copy of the settlement. You will have my counterproposal for Schedule IV in writing.”
She was at the door when he spoke again.
“You're different this morning.”
Her hand stopped on the latch. She gave him as much of the truth as she could.
“I slept badly.”
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