This had also enabled Merrin to flatter himself that he had infinitely better taste than “that bumpkin” Duke Kordas, and that was that. One look had been all that it took to seal the deal. And within days, Kordas knew every letter of every word that Merrin sent to the Emperor.

I do regret losing that desk, a little.

“I can just see the dispatch,” Isla said, breaking the silence. “After all the bowing and scraping and sucking up, the next words will be that bumpkin Kordas spent all night in his stable personally attending to the birth of a horse.”

“If ‘that bumpkin’ is what they both think of me, we can all live with that,” Kordas replied. “Better to be inconsequential in the Emperor’s eyes. I am grateful to be small and poor.”

That was not quite true, although it was true that Valdemar was by far the smallest Duchy in all of the vast Empire. In fact, truth to tell, Valdemar was smaller than many Baronies. And Valdemar was not precisely poor; it just was not rich. They produced enough from the farms to feed the Duchy and store back a bit against bad years, but not more than that. The real wealth of Valdemar was in its horses, all the more especially because the Ducal lands were more suited to grazing and mowing than tilling and farming. Money from the sale of those horses was what had gone into filling all those storage rooms here at the manor.

And it was going to be a good year in the Valdemar meadows, as long as there were no problem births. Every mare above the age of four and below the age of sixteen was in foal. There were five different lines that Kordas sold outside of the Duchy—the Valdemar Golds (rarely), the Charger line (which were heavy horses favored by knights for tourneys), the Tow-Beasts that pulled the barges along the vast Imperial network of canals that handled almost all of the cargo of the Empire, the Sweetfoot palfreys, and the Fleetfoot racehorses. Valdemar paid its tribute to the Emperor in horses, all of them as four-year-old, tamed and trained beasts. And until now, none of those had ever been Valdemar Golds. The Golds were the rarest, in part because of the color, but mostly because he was so careful about his breeding and bloodlines.

“Are the Emperor’s fake Golds ready?” Isla asked. “Because if he actually reads the dispatch, being told about a Gold foaling is going to make him want the ones you promised him.”