Free The Trials of Hercules by Tammie Painter

Gods, what a beautiful morning.
    A fit of laughter hits me again. The carriage dips into a rut in the road, jolting me up out of my seat and knocking my head into the ceiling. I slam my fist against the offending surface which only makes my hand throb as vigorously as my head. Slumping back in the seat, I peek out the curtain. Outside, the grumpy faces of people trudging to their morning duties fire harsh glances at me. I flick the curtain shut again.
    Why do the Portaceans throw such an ungrateful attitude toward me? They act as if they expected my grandfather to reappear when I took power. A ridiculous notion if there ever was one. I’ve been groomed for my position since a child. I’ve cultured fine tastes. I refuse to live as he did, so ordinarily. He had actually chosen to live in the heart of the city rather than with Portaceae’s upper crust on the Solonian Hill that perches above the mess of Portaceae City. My mother scoffed every Godsday when we had to descend from our own home on the hill into the heart of the city to pay him a visit. It was from her I learned a leader should show he was better, that he was above his people. As Solon, I have to be an example of what they should strive for.
    And truly, what do they have to complain about? I don't tax them heavily. I don't rule with an iron hand. And yet they gripe. What difference does it make if roads are in poor condition when all the commoners either walk or ride horses as they go about their business? I’m the one who suffers on Portaceae’s rutted and damaged roads. The very thought makes my head throb anew.
    From the basket the kitchen servants have placed in the carriage, I grab an orange that has been imported at great cost from the Califf Lands because Adneta once declared them her favorite fruit in all the world. I dig my nails into the skin sending up a puff of citrus oil and filling the interior with the luxurious scent.
    Do the people think the public buildings, the houses Portaceae provides for them, or the running water system can be repaired without raising taxes? It's not as if I’m the one causing the earthquakes. It’s not as if I’m the one who let the farmlands go fallow. It’s not I who tell tenants to abandon their farms and the wealthy to abandon Portaceae. With only a trickle of tax money coming in from rents, crops, or estates, the budget is stretched thinner than a whore’s nightshirt.
    Don’t they see Hera is to blame for most of this? It’s her neglect, her obsession with her own hatred toward Herc that has left the land barren. I can’t make soil fertile; I can’t force tenants to farm when robbing travelers along the Osterian Road is far more profitable; and I can’t make the buildings in the city stand stable when all of Osteria seems plagued with earthquakes.
    There is simply no way I can be expected to find money for what they think needs to be done when at the mere mention of increasing the tax, I face weeks of criticism. If repairs are such a concern, why don’t they just rebuild these things on their own rather than wait for someone else to do it?
    Unfortunately, they do have someone else in mind. They always have. In my frustration at the thought, I grip the naked orange too tightly. The juice soaks my fingers. I wipe my hands down the front of my silk robes to dry them and the beak of the Solonian chain’s peacock emblem pierces a finger. The acidic juice sears into the wound and I chuck the offending fruit out the window.
    Even within the first year of my Solonship, undercurrents of whispers said that Herc should rule. After all, he saved that family, why wouldn’t he save the entire polis? Although the decline in Portaceae’s glory had started at Herc’s birth and continued for the final thirteen years of my grandfather’s rule, the people had managed to find a way to maintain the polis. Once my mother took the regency, her iron rule, her insistence on keeping us in high standards brought the wrath of the