Space Viking H. Beam Piper (life books to read .TXT) 📖

half later, he was speaking from his throne, wearing his crown and employing the first person plural for himself and finally the third person singular for Trask. By the end of the fourth year, there was no audiovisual message from him in person, and a stiff complaint from Rovard Grauffis to the effect that His Majesty felt it unseemly for a subject to address his sovereign while seated, even by audiovisual. This was accompanied by a rather apologetic personal message from Grauffis⁠—now Prime Minister⁠—to the effect that His Majesty felt compelled to stand on his royal dignity at all times, and that, after all, there was a difference between the position and dignity of the Duke of Wardshaven and that of the Planetary King of Gram.

Prince Trask of Tanith couldn’t quite see it. The King was simply the first nobleman of the planet. Even kings like Rodolf of Excalibur or Napolyon of Flamberge didn’t try to be anything more. Thereafter, he addressed his greetings and reports to the Prime Minister, always with a personal message, to which Grauffis replied in kind.

Not only the form but also the content of the messages from Gram underwent change. His Majesty was most dissatisfied. His Majesty was deeply disappointed. His Majesty felt that His Majesty’s colonial realm of Tanith was not contributing sufficiently to the Royal Exchequer. And his Majesty felt that Prince Trask was placing entirely too much emphasis upon trade and not enough upon raiding; after all, why barter with barbarians when it was possible to take what you wanted from them by force?

And there was the matter of the Blue Comet, Count Lionel of Newhaven’s ship. His Majesty was most displeased that the Count of Newhaven was trading with Tanith from his own spaceport. All goods from Tanith should pass through the Wardshaven spaceport.

“Look, Rovard,” he told the audiovisual camera which was recording his reply to Grauffis. “You saw the Space Scourge when she came in, didn’t you? That’s what happens to a ship that raids a planet where there’s anything worth taking. Beowulf is lousy with fissionables; they’ll give us all the plutonium we can load, in exchange for gadolinium, which we sell them at about twice Sword-World prices. We trade plutonium on Amaterasu for gadolinium, and get it for about half Sword-World prices.” He pressed the stop-button, until he could remember the ancient formula. “You may quote me as saying that whoever has advised His Majesty that that isn’t good business is no friend to His Majesty or to the Realm.

“As for the complaint about the Blue Comet; as long as she is owned and operated by the Count of Newhaven, who is a stockholder in the Tanith Adventure, she has every right to trade here.”

He wondered why His Majesty didn’t stop Lionel of Newhaven from sending the Blue Comet out from Gram. He found out from her skipper, the next time she came in.

“He doesn’t dare, that’s why. He’s King as long as the great lords like Count Lionel and Joris of Bigglersport and Alan of Northport want him to be. Count Lionel has more men and more guns and contragravity than he has, now, and that’s without the help he’d get from everybody else. Everything’s quiet on Gram now, even the war on Southmain Continent’s stopped. Everybody wants to keep it that way. Even King Angus isn’t crazy enough to do anything to start a war. Not yet, anyhow.”

“Not yet?”

The captain of the Blue Comet, who was one of Count Lionel’s vassal barons, was silent for a moment.

“You ought to know, Prince Trask,” he said. “Andray Dunnan’s grandmother was the King’s mother. Her father was old Baron Zarvas of Blackcliffe. He was what was called an invalid, the last twenty years of his life. He was always attended by two male nurses about the size of Otto Harkaman. He was also said to be slightly eccentric.”

The unfortunate grandfather of Duke Angus had always been a subject nice people avoided. The unfortunate grandfather of King Angus was probably a subject everybody who valued their necks avoided.

Lothar Ffayle had also come out on the Blue Comet. He was just as outspoken.

“I’m not going back. I’m transferring most of the funds of the Bank of Wardshaven out here; from now on, it’ll be a branch of the Bank of Tanith. This is where the business is being done. It’s getting impossible to do business at all in Wardshaven. What little business there is to do.”

“Just what’s been happening?”

“Well, taxation, first. It seems the more money came in from here, the higher taxes got on Gram. Discriminatory taxes, too; pinched the small landholding and industrial barons and favored a few big ones. Baron Spasso and his crowd.”

“Baron Spasso, now?”

Ffayle nodded. “Of about half of Glaspyth. A lot of the Glaspyth barons lost their baronies⁠—some of them their heads⁠—after Duke Omfray was run out. It seems there was a plot against the life of His Majesty. It was exposed by the zeal and vigilance of Sir Garvan Spasso, who was elevated to the peerage and rewarded with the lands of the conspirators.”

“You said business was bad, as business?”

Ffayle nodded again. “The big Tanith boom has busted. It got oversold; everybody wanted in on it. And they should never have built those two last ships, the Speedwell and the Goodhope; the return on them didn’t justify it. Then, you’re creating your own industries and building your own equipment and armament here; that’s caused a slump in industry on Gram. I’m glad Lavina Karvall has enough money invested to live on. And finally, the consumers’ goods market is getting flooded with stuff that’s coming in from here and competing with Gram industry.”

Well, that was understandable. One of the ships that made the shuttle-trip to Gram would carry enough in her strong rooms, in gold and jewels and the like, to pay a handsome profit on the voyage. The bulk-goods that went into the cargo holds was