Harmonia checked her reflection again and pursed her lips. "Are you sure that will hold?" she asked her servant irritably. She knew that Tiy's skill with hair was perfectly reliable; but she was in a mood.

  Her father had something afoot, and Harmonia never liked having to drop whatever she was doing and attend to his business. And, having done that, how dare he keep her waiting for three whole days? He was clever, of course, and she did have to follow his lead in the family, but she wasn't some servant to be ordered around as he saw fit. She could have spent days more sans responsibility in the Castle if he hadn't gotten antsy about something.

  "I can try a braid, ma'am," Tiy volunteered. Harmonia waved them off with a nonverbal grumble.

  Sometimes she thought she should stay in that Castle. It knew how to treat her, even if it spoiled her servants. It wouldn't argue with her, not if she was polite. It gave freely of its treasures. Pity she couldn't make Mellon pay her for her permits. Maybe if she didn't come back to Tyrene next time... but no; he'd divest her of her position in publishing, and she'd be stuck out of country with no income. Nobody, least of all her, wanted to be stuck working for a living.

  Her hair was, unfortunately, beyond reproach. Her robes were new and fresh from the Castle, and Harmonia's only opportunity to place fault after that was with her own demeanor. She schooled her expression and examined herself again.

  "Very well," she admitted. She didn't want Mellon to find any fault in her. This would have to do.

  The trip across the villa to her father's section was as short as ever. Her father received her visit in his office. Mellon was greying; he looked stately with the silver in his hair, so he let it remain. Would she come into that look as she aged? Harmonia wondered. She wasn't yet forty; she only had a few gray hairs. Her father was wearing a sheer dark silk over his wine-red House colors, pinned with his badge of office and Assembly cords. Great things must be afoot, she thought, if he'd gotten all formal for her.

  "Welcome to Dryas, my daughter," he began.

  "Thank you for your hospitality, and your invitation," Harmonia responded with a hint of asperity. What had he gotten up to?

  "I called you back suddenly," Mellon began. The directness took Harmonia off her guard. "My apologies. You had Eryx with you; I need her where I can keep an eye on her."

  Harmonia cocked her head. "Might I ask why?"

  "Thee days ago, there were riots along the docks in Bryos," Mellon said. "Psamat marched his troops in. The city's still occupied. I'm not sure if his evidence is meaningful or not, but I've heard a thing or two. He's going before the Assembly in a matter of days. His accusation is that the Servant's Guild plotted treason."

  He handed a sheet of paper to Harmonia. "Here's a draft. I don't know if it will pass, but I can't take any chances."

  Harmonia took it and started reading. As she scanned down the document, she understood.

  For years, the balance of power in the Assembly had been between the landowning business families, the military generals, and the few temple lands that followed the oldest traditions. They were all landowners in their own right, but the balance was leaning towards business. The military estates, however, were starting to catch up. Their land was nominally agrarian, a reward for the generals' services, but they had begun to develop their own industry and weapons manufacture. The temples were dying away; land was more profitable than philosophy. The people who stuck with the temples themselves were often by nature unprofitable, and only a few temples had managed to turn themselves into licensed business families. They were the poorest houses in the Assembly, left there only by tradition.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  But the servant's guilds weren't any of those groups. The guilds were self-organized workers, people who didn't make real money and didn't own land. Even the offices they had in the cities were usually grants from the temples. They had nothing; their growing popularity was counterintuitive. Harmonia didn't mind conceding some of their demands when it kept her House's workers happy, but she couldn't call them anything but presumptuous.

  It was also hard to believe that they could present a real obstacle to the Assembly's authority. Oh, it was true they were a threat, to a point. Harmonia thought of Eryx's almost instant diversion into economic texts and political reading. She'd hoped to see better out of her father's new pet scholar. It seemed like some people couldn't resist the lure of thinking they were good enough to be more than they were.

  But a rude servant wasn't necessarily a revolutionary. A crowd of angry workers could destroy a lot of merchandise, but one needn't occupy a city, houses and all, to put that down. Well. Psamat was going to run with it, and Harmonia understood.

  The occupation wasn't just about putting down violent servants. Psamat wanted the Assembly to give him free rein, not just to put down the workers, but to confiscate from those houses who had supported them. Harmonia wondered how many houses Psamat would label as complicit; she supposed it would depend on what he wanted to take from them.

  "How wide a net do you think he'll cast?" she asked her father. "Will he take just guild lands? The temples? Houses whose industries he's got an eye on?" She frowned at the paper. "You don't think he'll try to hold the cities in their entirety, and cow the Assembly as a whole?"

  "I don't know," Mellon said. "I'm hoping that enough of the other Prytanes would oppose him. I don't think he's mad enough to take Tyrene by force. A lot of houses are keeping their guards close at hand. I've had Tarn split our guard between here and our villages for now, just in case. It's hard to say."

  Maybe Psamat was smart enough only to take what he could keep, Harmonia thought. He might pick off the weak, or the easily accused houses. The ones that supported servant's policies openly. In that event, her House just had to keep out of those categories.

  "That takes us back to Eryx," she said. "You're right. we can't look like guild sympathizers. What shall I do?"

  "Keep her inside." Mellon said. "My policy now is that she informs no policy. As far as we're concerned, she never did. We can't afford to be seen taking the guild lightly, much less allowing people like her to communicate with them or recommend the sorts of things she has. I expect some harassment if Psamat comes here, but if we allow ourselves to be seen in the right light, I think we can keep the damage minimal."

  Harmonia nodded, thoughtfully.

  "That's all?" her father said. "I thought you'd argue with me."

  "Isn't it all, though?" Harmonia asked. Her earlier sour mood was dissolved; she was thinking of the upcoming situation.

  "You took Eryx out to that library; I'm surprised you'd let her go so easily now," her father said. "I thought you'd liked taking her under your wing."

  "Before this, I'd have been angry, yes," Harmonia said. If Eryx got anywhere, she had fully intended to present herself as the mentoring party; being her father's blood daughter didn't exempt Harmonia from the need to prove useful. "She helped keep our people happy and away from the guild. But profit is profit. You don't run a household on tokens."

  Mellon smirked, cocking his head. "Well spoken. I'll keep it in mind. I'll be in touch; it's going to get busy soon."

  Harmonia nodded. With the news she'd just been given, Dryas was going to get busy indeed.

  She couldn't say she wasn't a little bit excited.