Selenay followed his gaze and smiled. “I don’t know who that is, but I know what he is, and why he’s there,” she said. “These statues began going up in Elspeth the Peacemaker’s time. Valdemar had been pretty much at peace for more than a generation, and a lot of people were getting very prosperous. So they started putting up statues of themselves, which rather annoyed my ancestor, who thought it was a silly waste of money. She made a law forbidding people to put up privately owned statues on public streets, so they’d have the statues put up, then give them to the city. So she had another law made that forbade the putting up of anything on public streets unless it served a practical use and was for the public good, and being able to tie a horse to it didn’t count. Oh, and you had to leave money in your will to see anything you put up was kept clean and in working order.”

Alberich smiled at that. “Clever, that was,” he responded. “And good for the city folk.”

Selenay grinned. “Especially since the corners in the best part of the city went early, so people who wanted to do things had to take what they could get. Most people went for fountains and water pumps; the Queen said it was a pity that we were stuck with all those statues of a lot of vain old men, but at least now every street had a public water supply without taxes going to pay for it.”

Mirilin overheard them, and unbent enough to smile slightly. “A wise woman, your ancestor,” he said mildly. “If she had taxed them to pay for such things, they would have been calling for her head. But when they were able to make them into self-aggrandizing statuary, they were climbing all over themselves to oblige.”