The five clerks departed, scattering like quail before the hunter. He didn't need to give them any further orders about how to get access to those papers; one of the reason that these men were no longer in the civil service was that they had initiative. Neither initiative nor creativity were rewarded in the Imperial Civil Service, and those with both often grew frustrated and looked for employment elsewhere.
Melles next called in his private treasurer.
"You get down to the Imperial Exchequer. I want to know how much out of the military budget can be spared in hard coin and how much in goods. Tell the Exchequer that I suspect the Army's pay has been bollixed up, and we may have to make good in a hurry if we don't want trouble on our hands." He thought for a moment, and dredged up the relevant fact from his memory. "If he balks at telling you, just say something about the road budget; it doesn't matter what, just work it quickly into the conversation."
The man nodded, grinning; every Imperial Exchequer skimmed a certain amount off the top, it was expected, so long as they were clever enough not to get caught at it. But if they were caught, the penalties were severe. Melles knew precisely where the current Exchequer was skimming and even had a rough idea of how much; he had made it his business to know, planning to use the information at the right moment. There could be no better moment than now. A good card was no better than a bad one if you never played it.
The treasurer left, and Melles called in his final choice in this campaign of seduction, one of his odder employees. This rather elegant specimen was ostensibly Melles' personal poet and playwright, but although the man was mediocre creatively, he was an absolute genius at propaganda. Melles didn't use him often, but he was, like the valet, the appropriate scalpel for certain types of surgery. Melles was doubly fortunate in that the man enjoyed the writing of manipulative propaganda almost as much as poetry. He had told his patron once that when he wrote the former, he considered that he was writing a different kind of drama, one in which the words manipulated the actors, instead of the other way around. He enjoyed seeing how his works played out on the larger stage of the real world.
And as a peculiar kind of reward, Melles regularly financed the production of poetry readings in opulent surroundings, seeing to it that the right critics were flattered, fed, and given enough strong and exotic drink to make even the worst drivel seem inspired.
"I hope you aren't in the throes of creation," Melles said cautiously, for this was one individual who could not be coerced, only persuaded. But his loyalty to Melles was based on firm self-interest and was utterly trustworthy. When bought, he stayed bought—and no one aside from Melles himself knew that he was anything other than a peculiar affectation. It was expected that someone of Melles' status patronize the arts in some way, and a poet was the cheapest and least intrusive sort of artist to have on one's staff. "I have a rather extensive job for you," he continued. "I hope you aren't preoccupied."
The man smiled urbanely and crossed his legs with conscious elegance. He was something of a dandy and rather fancied himself as a popular man with the ladies. His salary from Melles enabled him to cut quite a figure of sartorial splendor among not only his peers but also his superiors. "What do you need my skills for? As a repairer of reputation? I've been planning what to do for you since the moment the rumors began to fly." He shook his head, and then waggled his finger in mock-admonition. "My dear patron, you have been very injudicious. This could ruin you yet, if it isn't carefully handled."
Melles did not make the retort he felt hovering on his tongue. The man was worth his weight in gold, and was arrogant enough to be quite aware of it. Instead, he got right to the point. "It isn't the Court I'm worried about; they're ineffectual enough, and like sheep, they'll follow anyone with the right bell around his neck. No, it's the Army that's giving me trouble." He leaned forward over his desk, to emphasize how serious he felt the situation was. "They've decided they don't care for the idea of someone with my ethics on the Iron Throne."
The poet pursed his lips. "That could be troublesome. I don't know quite how to handle the Army—unless you already know what you want to say?"
"I do. Believe it or not, I want you to report the exact truth." Melles smiled thinly at the poet's surprise. "We're going to concentrate on the plight of my old rival, Tremane," he continued lightly. "I want you to spread the story of how he and his command were abandoned out beyond the farthest reach of the Empire. Be creative; go on about the horror of being sent off to die in utterly unknown lands. Find the right words to convince people that I had nothing to do with the abandonment of Tremane and his men in Hardorn. Then convince them that I had no idea that I would be Charliss' next choice for his successor. Say that I feel that the times are so radically changed that I have changed with them. Say I personally am so busy trying to keep the Empire together that I have no interest in pursuing my old vendetta against Tremane himself."
That last could get him in a certain amount of difficulty with the Emperor if Charliss got wind of it, but he was willing to take that particular chance.
The poet pursed his lips in thought. "It's a novel approach," he admitted. "And it just might distract soldiers from the stories of dead bodies in baby cribs. After all, you didn't actually kill the baby, you only dumped the body of an assassin there. Whereas Tremane and his men were abandoned in Hardorn; that's without a doubt and with no particular reason to leave them out there."
"That's exactly what I'm looking for," Melles encouraged. "And soldiers have more in common with other soldiers than with brats in cribs. They will have empathy for Tremane's forces. Why weren't they called back while it was still possible to construct Portals that worked between the Storms? Don't place any blame yet, but raise as many questions in peoples' minds as you can, particularly in the Army."
"I can do that," the poet said decisively, losing a great deal of his languid pose as his own imagination set to work. "I'm very good at questions. What about answers?"
"I'll give you more to work on when I have facts," Melles promised. "For right now, this will be enough. Get people talking, get their minds on something else besides my little jokes." He signaled that the man could go.
"Gossip and rumor, opiates of the dull, can for the clever be the stuff that dream are made of," the poet said sardonically, as he smiled, standing up as gracefully as he had sat down.
"My dreams, at any rate," Melles chuckled, watching the man's elegant way of walking—elegant, but not at all effeminate. It was rather like a wolf at the stalk, and he made up his mind to copy it.
The first of his seekers came back within hours with an accurate account of the Army pay records. As he had suspected, since every district governor was individually responsible for seeing to it that the units within his jurisdiction actually were paid (even though the pay actually came out of the military budget), there were several instances where pay was in arrears, sometimes significantly. As he went over the figures with his own accountant, the secretary he had sent to interview the Imperial Exchequer also returned.