Teri McLaren
Everything she owned-and most of what I owned- had been packed and moved."
"So that's how Riolla got to be Schreefa!" Claria said, daggers in her words. "I knew she had to have had some kind of magic behind her. Maceo wouldn't fall in love with her otherwise."
"Oh, Maceo, yes. Well, she did use the magic, at first. She could spark a bit of a spell off the ring, but she never had the perfect pitch it required to really control the power in the four stones. Burned her house down once, changed some poor steward into a big white cockroach for bringing her the wrong drink. But in the end, she split up the ring-stones and scattered them. The first I heard about it on the street was that she had bought her freedom with one of the stones, then stole the gem back not three hours later. She gave the others out for political favor and privilege. Paid off the controllers of the caravan route."
Cheyne interrupted him. "This caravan route? Why would she need to do that?"
"Oh, well, the situation with the route is that the heads of the smaller factions of Almaaz let only Riolla's caravans go through unharmed for the price of the gems-otherwise, they would raid the caravans, and Riolla would end up with nothing soon-like the many other caravan owners she has driven out of business.
"See, this is, was, I mean, the shortest route to bring ch'mina into Sumifa. You can't grow it there, it's a mountain crop, and the main ingredient of bap-pir. Since the river dries up for six months every year, Sumifa lives off of it, actually. The longer route takes so much more time that the stuff spoils before it gets to the city. Riolla had cornered the market on it. She brought in tons and tons, converted it to a sort of meal that keeps indefinitely, and stockpiled it in those big round buildings between the Mercanto and the Citadel. Only her caravans were getting through, and so, Claria, that's how she got so rich.
"So now she doesn't actually direct all of the stones'