Authors: David Weber,Linda Evans
"Court-martial?" Jathmar repeated sharply.
"Do you really think the politicians and the most senior officers of the Union's military aren't going to be looking for a scapegoat if all of this goes as badly as it well might?" Gadrial asked bitterly. "Jasak hasn't discussed it with me-not in so many words-but he doesn't really have to. Someone's going to be blamed for what happened to your people, Jathmar. And if there is a war, someone's going to be blamed for starting it. And who's going to be an easier-or, for that matter, more reasonable-scapegoat than the man who was in command of the troops who wiped out the rest of your survey crew?"
"But-" Jathmar began, then chopped himself off, wrestling with his own complex feelings.
A part of him still couldn't forgive Jasak for what had happened to his friends. He suspected that whatever else might happen in his life, however his feelings might change in other respects, there would still be that small, bitter core where all the pain, fear, and loss was distilled down into a cold, dark canker. And that part was perfectly prepared to see Sir Jasak Olderhan pay the price for what had happened to his crewmates, to himself, to his wife.
Yet the rest of him knew Jasak was a decent, caring, honorable man who'd done everything he could to prevent that massacre. True, he'd made the mistake of doing what his own military's regulations required of him instead of relieving Shevan Garlath of command of his platoon, and he would never forgive himself for that. But after that mistake, he'd done everything humanly possible to stop the killing, and Jathmar and Shaylar were alive and as close to free as they were solely because of Jasak Olderhan. If there was a single human being on the Arcanan side who had consistently acted honorably and honestly throughout this entire debacle, it was Jasak.
"But that's wrong," Jathmar heard himself saying quietly, almost plaintively.
"Of course it is. I see that, you see that, Shaylar sees that. Everyone sees that … except for Jasak."
Gadrial threw up her hands in frustration. "He certainly knows I don't agree with him-that's why he won't talk to me about it. He only shrugs when I try to get him to. I've even accused him of masochism, of wanting to be punished for what happened to you and the rest of your people. But that's not it either, and he knows I know that as well as he does. He doesn't want to be court-martialed, doesn't want to be saddled with responsibility for the first inter-universal war in history. He just refuses to even try to run away from it, just as his father is going to refuse to use his political power and prestige to save him from facing it. The Duke will do everything in his power to help defend Jasak if a court-martial's impaneled, but he won't step a single inch over the line to stop one, even to save his own son."
"Gadrial, I-"
"No, Shaylar." Gadrial shook her head. "Don't say it. Jasak doesn't blame you or Jathmar at all. Neither do I, and neither will any member of his family. It's just the way Andarans-some Andarans, at least-
are." Her expression was an odd mixture of sorrow, exasperation, and a curious, almost forlorn sort of pride. "You can't change them. And if you could, they-he-wouldn't be the people they are, now would they?"
"I suppose not."
"But what I meant before, about Jasak and the Duke being throwbacks," Gadrial said, "is that it's exactly that same stubborn, bullheaded, obsolete, hopelessly romantic sense of honor which absolutely guarantees that the Duke of Garth Showma will protect his son's shardonai with his very life, no matter what else may happen."
Chapter Fifteen
"Good evening, Your Majesty," His Crowned Eminence, the Seneschal of Othmaliz said as his visitor was shown into his private apartment in what had, until a very few weeks before, been known as the Great Palace.
"Good evening, Your Eminence," Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia, replied.
The two men were a study in contrasts in many ways.
The Seneschal was a short, round man, addicted to decorating his already colorful religious robes with additional jewels, bullion embroidery, lace, and pearls, while rings dripped from his fingers. He literally glittered when he walked, and the beautiful little silver bells which adorned his unique, stovepipeshaped, gold-encrusted religious headgear jingled musically with every movement.
Chava Busar was also short. That, however, was the only real similarity between them. Where the Seneschal was so obese that he seemed to roll along, rather than walk, Chava was lean and athletic, especially for a man in his late fifties. Unlike the clean-shaven, moon-faced Seneschal, the Emperor favored a neatly trimmed, dramatically shaped dagger beard, and his eyebrows-bushy for a Uromathia
– floated above almond-shaped eyes dark as still water on a moonless night. There was a hardness in those eyes, as well, like a shelf of obsidian just under the water's surface. For his height, he was broad shouldered and powerfully built, and where the Seneschal seemed to roll into a room, Chava strode purposely forward into a universe which belonged-or ought to have belonged, at any rate-exclusively to him.
Yet for all the physical contrasts between them, there were similarities under the skin, as well, and it was those similarities which had brought the Emperor to this very private meeting. Indeed, a meeting so private that not a single advisor-or bodyguard-was in sight. In fact, none of the servants with whom the Seneschal routinely surrounded himself was present, either.
"Please, Your Majesty," the Seneschal invited, gesturing to the two comfortable chairs placed to face one another in front of the enormous portrait of Bergahl in glory which dominated the main room of the Seneschal's suite. "Be seated."
"Thank you."
Chava accepted the invitation, sitting regally in the indicated chair. Both chairs were more than a little throne-like, he noted, although the Seneschal's was fractionally larger and ever so slightly more richly carved, and his lips twitched ever so minutely at the observation. How very like the Seneschal, the Emperor thought.
The Seneschal waited until his guest had settled into place, then took the facing chair. A small table, with a bottle of wine, pastry cakes decorated with sesame seed, and a platter of delicate sandwiches sat conveniently placed for both of them, and he smiled at the Emperor as he personally poured wine into the waiting crystal glasses.
"I think you'll find this palatable, Your Majesty." He smiled. "It comes from one of my own vineyards.
I'm quite proud of it, actually."
"Thank you," Chava repeated as he accepted the glass and sipped delicately. His bushy eyebrows rose, and he nodded in approval. "You're quite right, Your Eminence. It's very good."
"I'm glad you approve." The Seneschal smiled again, and this time his smile was as tart as alum. "It's always a pleasure to entertain a guest who appreciates what small comforts one can offer him."
"Oh, I most definitely agree, Your Eminence." Chava's smile just showed the tips of his teeth. "Indeed, to be totally frank, I find myself amazed at your tolerance and forbearance in the face of having your entire city turned topsy-turvy by this Conclave." He shook his head. "To find oneself suddenly and unexpectedly playing host to the rulers of every land of Sharona must pose extraordinary hardships.
Particularly upon such short notice."
"One cannot pretend that the entire affair has not created great difficulties-great difficulties," the Seneschal agreed gravely. "The dislocation of the capital's normal business has, of course, been extreme.
It will take quite some time for the proper administrative agencies to reassert an orderly control over many aspects of it."
"Not to mention the … disruptions here in your own home," Chava observed, and watched with amused satisfaction as the Seneschal's fat face darkened.
"I am only the Seneschal of the Order of Bergahl," he said after a moment. "The Great Palace is not my home, but the home of the Order itself, as symbolized by the man chosen by the Order as its head.
Nonetheless," he inhaled deeply, "I must confess that arranging to house so many prominent and powerful political figures has, indeed, led to significant disruptions here in the Palace."
Chava nodded sympathetically. Both of them knew the true nature of the "disruptions" to which the Seneschal took such exception. Prior to Zindel chan Calirath's arrival with his daughter, the Seneschal had been housed in the Emperor's Wing of the palace. The decision by the Emperor to return to his ancestral home-and to the building which, however little public recognition the fact had received, still belonged to him-had placed the Seneschal in a most difficult position. In the end, he'd decided he dared not refuse to move out of what had been the House of Calirath's family living space by a tradition literally millennia long. His present suite of rooms were luxurious to the point of opulence, and decorated with priceless artworks, but they were no longer in the Emperor's Wing, and his resentment was only too apparent.
"I was particularly impressed, Your Eminence, by how gracefully you and the Order have dealt with this situation," Chava said after a moment. "It must have been particularly difficult, after more than two centuries of independence, to find oneself face-to-face with the Emperor of Ternathia. I've often thought that the Caliraths simply don't realize how … instinctively patronizing they are." He smiled again, briefly. "It's hard to blame them, I suppose. They are, after all, the oldest dynasty in the history of Sharona. It would probably be unfair to expect them to realize how hard-and often-they step on so many people's toes because they simply assume the precedence so many other people automatically grant them."
"Indeed," the Seneschal agreed. He sipped his own wine, then lowered the glass and regarded the Emperor levelly.
"One is, of course, always gratified by the sympathetic understanding of a ruler as powerful as the Emperor of Uromathia. Still, it occurs to me that this meeting wasn't arranged solely so that you might commiserate with me on the dislocation of my capital, Your Majesty."
"No, of course it wasn't," Chava acknowledged, and reminded himself that however fat and ridiculous the Seneschal might appear-might actually be, for that matter-he, unlike Chava, had not inherited his power. The man who had been born Faroayn Raynarg, the next-to-youngest son of a dune-treader merchant who had spent much of young Faroayn's boyhood jailed for dealing in stolen dune-treaders, had made his way to the top of a religious order in which it was not unheard of for fatal accidents to overtake one's rivals. That might have been many years ago, and it was entirely probable that the years the lean and hungry "Father Faroayn" had spent as His Crowned Eminence had softened his steel even as they had expanded his waistline. But it would be best to remember that he was not truly-or, at any rate, had not always been-the petty little buffoon who'd humiliated himself so on the day of Zindel chan Calirath's arrival in Tajvana.
"Actually, Your Eminence," the Uromathian continued after a moment, "I requested this meeting because it occurred to me that it's been many fine centuries since an Emperor of Uromathia last spoke to a Seneschal of Bergahl as one ruler to another."
The Seneschal stiffened in his chair, and his round face hardened at the words "many fine centuries."
Anger flickered in the backs of the small eyes, half-hidden in pouches of fat, and Chava recognized it with quiet satisfaction. At the moment, it was quite probable that at least some of that anger was directed at him, for reminding the Seneschal of his self-inflicted humiliation. But that was all right with Chava, because there was so very much of it … and most of it was certainly directed where he wanted it.
I wonder if the fat fool truly thought only he and the Ternathians would understand that particular challenge? the Emperor thought sardonically. What? He thinks I have no historians-no spies? That Uromathia forgets its tools simply because we haven't used them in two or three centuries?
Still, he reminded himself, in fairness to the Seneschal, the episode really wasn't well known, and the pretense of friendship between the Order of Bergahl and the departed Calirath Dynasty had helped bury it deep. But Chava knew about the confrontation between the last Ternathian Emperor to rule from Tajvana and the then-current Seneschal of Bergahl.
Emperor Gariyan VII hadn't much cared for the Order of Bergahl. Indeed, he'd distrusted it deeply after watching it cater to the more restive elements of his imperial capital's population for decades. The Empire had been in a state of ferment. Not disruption, really, and not rebelliousness, but of … uncertainty. No one really knew exactly what had inspired Gariyan's father to begin the phased reduction of the Empire. The argument that the imperial infrastructure had become too expensive to maintain made a certain degree of sense on the surface, yet it had never withstood serious scrutiny very well. Imperial taxes had been ludicrously low; it wouldn't have been impossible, or even significantly difficult, for that tax structure to be adjusted to provide the necessary funding.
Yet no one had a better reason for Gariyan VI's decision to abandon-or emancipate, depending upon one's viewpoint-the eastern portions of his sprawling empire. Certainly there'd been no organized resistance to "tyrannical" Ternathian rule, despite the isolated cases of nationalistic resentment Chava had managed to dredge up during the debate on the Act of Unification. Indeed, there had been significant elements in almost all of the pre-withdrawal provinces which had spoken out strongly in favor of remaining under the Winged Crown. In the end, however, those arguing in favor of continuing as Ternathian subjects had found themselves outnumbered by a combination of their fellow citizens who preferred freedom to increased tax burdens, and those who had truly found themselves unhappy under
"foreign domination" for so many centuries.
And so, over a period of two generations, Ternathia's frontiers had withdrawn over three thousand miles to the west, and a sizable percentage of the world's population had spent the last two or three centuries as independent states.
Yet Gariyan VII clearly had entertained few illusions about who was likely to emerge as the dominant political faction in Othmaliz. Indeed, he'd almost certainly known that Uromathian money had been subsidizing the Order of Bergahl's ambitions for power in Othmaliz, and he had summoned the thencurrent Seneschal to Calirath Palace before his family departed-for all time, most had expected-to Estafel and Hawkwing Palace.
There were disputes, even between the reports Chava had access to, of exactly what had passed between the departing Emperor and the politically powerful priest already maneuvering to assert his Order's control of Othmaliz. Most of them agreed, however, that Gariyan had pulled no punches in its course, and all of them agreed that it was at that point that the Seneschal had first discovered that the Caliraths had no intention of passing ownership of Calirath Palace to the newly created Kingdom of Othmaliz.
He had not, apparently, reacted well to that information. After all, like the current Seneschal, he'd undoubtedly been looking forward to easing his own posterior onto a throne in the Grand Throne Chamber from which so much of the world had been ruled for so long. When Gariyan informed him that the Caliraths intended to remain the Palace's landlords, the Seneschal had threatened to nationalize it, even against their wishes. Not even Chava knew precisely what … argument Gariyan had presented to discourage such precipitous action, but it had obviously worked for the better part of three centuries.
Yet if the Order of Bergahl had never quite found the nerve to test the temper of the Calirath determination to retain ownership of the Palace, that long ago Seneschal had still found himself in a white-hot rage. The conversation had been one of ice from Gariyan's side and blast furnace-fury from the Seneschal's. And it was in the course of that … discussion, just before he stormed out of the audience chamber, that the Seneschal had uttered what any reasonable sort might have construed as a threat.
"It will be many fine centuries before a Calirath returns to this city to enjoy this Palace," he had said,
"for the Daggers of Bergahl are sharp, and the memories of his priests are long!"
It had not, perhaps, been excessively politic of the current Seneschal to remind Zindel chan Calirath of that long ago predecessor's comment, Chava Busar reflected. Of course, the weeks of semi-hysterical pro-Calirath rallies which had preceded Zindel's arrival would have been enough to flick any ruler on the raw, especially here, in this particular city. And the possible consequences of a third-party investigation of a regime as corrupt as that of the current Seneschal's might very well prove dire, which couldn't have improved the Seneschal's reaction to all those frothing rallies and Ternathian flag-bestrewn demonstrations. Desperation could make even a normally prudent man do foolish things, Chava conceded charitably. Of course few people would have called the Seneschal of Othmaliz particularly prudent these days, but perhaps the Seneschal had actually believed Zindel would recognize the implied threat and be cowed by it. Or, at least, sufficiently … chastened to at least declare a quiet moratorium on any potentially embarrassing audits.
If so, however, he'd been either an idiot or incredibly ill-served by the spies who should have given him an accurate appreciation of Zindel chan Calirath's character. Chava hated the Ternathian Emperor with a passion so pure it was almost sublime, yet he'd never made the mistake of underestimating his opponent.
"Yes," the Seneschal said finally, "it has been too long since a Seneschal discussed the burdens and difficulties of rulership with an Emperor of Uromathia."