Alpheo couldn't help but snicker at the thought. The irony of it all: the one clause Sorza had been least bothered by at the peace conference , the banner exemption, would be the very thing to bleed him of the most silverii.
Well, the second, Alpheo corrected himself with private amusement, since the mine was already gone.
It had been, he thought with no small measure of satisfaction, a very bad couple of years for Sorza.
The tolls had always been one of the most lucrative incomes for a lord, aside from the annual harvest. Five to ten percent of a caravan's cargo, sometimes more, depending on how greedy the gate-guards were. Or, in some cases, a simple bribe of coin slipped into a mailed fist. Either way, merchants paid dearly to cross walls and into safety. And because of that, most of them tried their damnedest never to stop at towns unless forced.
