The king's Royal Procession...
Free City had clearly put the Royal Palace under so much pressure that the king had to resort to this to raise morale.
Could they take advantage of it? An assassination, perhaps...
Annan shook his head. Not only could they not do that, but the Blade of Freedom also needed to lie low for a while.
Whether the Blade of Freedom was capable of it was beside the point. An assassination might push those on the fence toward the Kingdom and alienate those who supported Annan.
Annan had yet to receive the procession route, but it would probably pass through the Outer City. The City Guard had been ordered to clean the streets before the Royal Procession.
A hundred City Guards could spend forever cleaning three filthy streets. Annan hired locals to scrub the streets and walls. Most other districts did the same, except they offered neither wages nor food.
The three streets grew visibly busy. Filthy ice, frozen rock-hard in the alleys and along the gutters, was chipped away, loaded onto carts, and hauled off.
Annan did not overlook what the king would never see, either—like the public restrooms.
What else besides the Rikaner Kingdom disgusted you but left you no choice except to hold your nose and endure it?
The answer was a toilet in winter.
The "Montreal Mountain Excrement Flood Incident" had been an extreme case, but it also showed just how awful toilets could get during a Northern Frontier winter.
In the bitter cold, waste froze in no time, leaving the night-soil collectors helpless. It rose from the pits like pillars until it protruded above them.
On streets where people were a little more diligent, they knocked the frozen columns over with pickaxes. But the waste had merely fallen, not vanished. As