The Road to Hell - eARC (60 page)

“Oh my, that is a secret.” Drubeka tilted her head with another eyelash flutter at Trebar inviting all of Sharona to join her and the emperor in this interview-turned-intimate-conversation. “I know all the women out there agree Darcel has that wild universe-explorer handsomeness, but tell me really, what attracted Your Excellency?”

Kinlafia was on the wrong side of average in Trebar’s opinion, but the right angles and lighting could make anyone look good, as every SUNN correspondent certainly knew.

“My girl Krethva,” the emperor named a Uromathian society journalist for VBS who certainly wouldn’t disagree with any words he put in her mouth, “tells me the strong shoulders are more than sufficient reason to favor a man.

“But,” he continued with a side look at Trebar, proving himself an adept at Voicecast interviews, “We all know the famous Mistress Drubeka does not fall for just a pretty face.”

He made a mournful expression inviting the audience to sympathize with him for not personally attracting the correspondent in that way. Then he winked as if to tell the viewer he knew full well that he, one of the most powerful men in all of Sharona, had not a chance with their darling beautiful newsgirl.

It wasn’t the truth, but perception, even on live Voicecasts, showed only the surface. No emotions were permitted in commercial Voicecasts without the express permission of the interviewee. And without that, no amount of additional commentary would convince the audience which Saw this that Emperor Chava was really a dangerous man who’d have a pretty reporter slaughtered like a farm animal if he found her responses disrespectful.

Drubeka blushed, and Trebar thanked the Double Triad that she was a capable actress.

“Many of my viewers have quite the crush on you, Your Excellency.” She covered the Emperor’s implied self-disparagement, carefully.

Chava shrugged off the flattery, this time not quite managing to appear unconceited. He acknowledged the comment with a shade too much arrogance.

“Darcel Kinlafia and I have much in common in this way. I do for Uromathia what I can to protect the people from those who would wish us ill. And sometimes, regrettably, always regrettably, there is a conflict of understanding in the need for these protective acts. And,” Chava’s accent was thinning as the interview went on, but Trebar suspected few viewers would notice, “Mister Darcel with his Voice report of the Arcanan brutality brings us warning of the danger. We must have this man in the Parliament. His warning must be repeated again and again until all of Sharona demands a leader who will defend our universes properly.”

Trebar held back a blink and shifted focus to Drubeka who took the volley.

“Your Excellency, we all saw you agree to the Unification Treaty establishing the Empire of Sharona for the fight against Arcana. Are you saying Emperor Zindel
can’t
defend our universes?”

“He tries.” Chava shook his head as if in concern for a small child. “But we can see what it costs the Caliraths. His own firstborn dead already? And this after losing how many universes to the Arcanan horde? I say only that Sharona may not be able to afford the Calirath style of protection. Must we lose that many more universes for every one of the Grand Princesses? I would not see Sharona so splintered or let my friend and fellow emperor, Zindel, suffer so much.”

Chava stood and perforce, Drubeka came to her feet as well even though this was far from the note on which she would have chosen to end the interview.

“My friends at the SUNN,” his accent returned, “I must say goodbye and return to my work.” He gestured at the audience chamber where the court page had brought in a young woman with three sobbing children. Trebar turned his head back to the Emperor and correspondent quickly, not wanting to linger on the staged setup.

Drubeka made her bow, and the very smug court page saw them out.

* * *

An old friend at SUNN contacted a politician’s wife with news of the Uromathian Emperor’s words, and Alazon Yanamar’s eyes widened in shock, and then closed in disgust.

“A problem?” Crown Princess Andrin whispered in her ear. “We could cut back on the wedding flowers a bit, if you really hate them.”

“Just a negative Voicecast piece, Your Highness” Alazon explained and tried to narrow her focus back to just this room of the Grand Palace. Ulantha Jastyr would be more than able to relay the newest set of aspersions being cast by Emperor Chava. Today Alazon was supposed to pretend to like wedding planning.

Lilies—enormous lilies, and piles of other flowers she couldn’t begin to identify—bedecked a massive display the very proud florist had rolled into the center of the Tajvana main ballroom.

“Pretty! So pretty!” Nine-year-old Grand Princess Anbessa squealed in delight. The girl danced a circle around the thing pointing out this and that flower from places Darcel Kinlafia had worked survey missions.

Crown Princess Andrin patted Alazon on the shoulder. “They aren’t actually from the border universes.” She whispered. “Don’t tell Anbessa.”

“But we got all the right ones, yes? Picked from the geo-match locations here in Sharona.” A young florist’s assistant hovered, clearly concerned about a possible failure of diligence in meeting the latest elaborate wedding request.

Andrin reassured the young man, and he calmed immediately. The Crown Princess’s falcon Finena nuzzled her beak into her feathers for a nap, expressing about the same level of interest as Alazon herself felt.

Still, there were roses in the mix, and Darcel had given her a massed bouquet of them the day after the election results came in. He didn’t have to do that. They were psionicly-paired lifemates. She knew exactly what he felt and how much he cared for her…but he still sent flowers out of the blue, just to see if they might make her happy.

Anbessa completed another turn around the flowers and twirled around Alazon.

“Mistress Yanamar, you do like them right? Can we keep them in the wedding?” She looked uncertainly back and forth between Alazon and the florist. Empress Varena, Marithe Kinlafia, and Anbessa’s other sister Razial stood a little way off, surrounded by a pile of silks, making some kind of plan for table linens—too preoccupied to make another wedding decision on Alazon’s behalf this time.

Alazon laughed and pulled Anbessa in for a hug.

“I’m going to let your mom plan my wedding however she wants it,” she whispered to the youngest grand princess, letting her in on the secret.

“Oh.” Anbessa whispered back. “It is going to be really big. Lots and lots of flowers,” the girl cautioned, wide-eyed.

Alazon nodded. The grand princess was more right than she knew. Empress Verona had been robbed of the opportunity to make a grand spectacle of Andrin and Howan Fai’s wedding, so she’d redirected all that energy towards this one, throwing all the wedding planning zeal she hadn’t been able to spend on her daughter’s state wedding into the reception she and Zindel were throwing for Alazon Yanamar and Darcel Kinlafia.

She and Darcel got to keep the service itself simple and traditional, with full respect for the ceremony before the Holy Double Triad. And in exchange for this one hard line, the grand princesses and the empress (especially the empress) had an entirely free hand in the reception festivities.

Thank the Triad they were also
paying
for the reception, or Alazon imagined she’d be indenturing her great-grandchildren to cover the price of the meticulously planned party. The newlywed Crown Princess Andrin gamely stayed at Alazon’s side during these wedding planning sessions, offering few suggestions of her own. But, Alazon noted with some suspicion, the crown princess delighted in encouraging her younger sisters in their greater flights of fancy. She was beginning to suspect that Crown Princess Andrin had received exactly the kind of simple wedding she’d always wanted, and that she was delighting in redirecting all the hoopla onto another couple.

If Darcel’s mother, Marithe, hadn’t turned out to have a surprising appreciation for over-the-top festivities, Alazon would have put her foot down on a lot more than the ceremony. But since her future mother-in-law was also enjoying participating in the spectacle, Alazon left them to it.

Andrin winked and covered her exit, and at least being a Voice made it easy to arrange to sneak off with Darcel. She’d have to stop in again before dinner to agree with everything the four women had decided on, but in the meantime she got to spend a lovely afternoon walking with her fiancé: the Honorable Mister Kinlafia, Member of Parliament in the House of Talents.

She rather liked the ring of that. Perhaps she could attempt to introduce herself as MP Kinlafia’s wife later and see if any of the other newly elected delegates were politically naive enough to accept that summation of her identity at face value.

She suggested as much to Darcel. He first laughed and then actually thought it through and agreed. Some politicians were elected because politics was simply what their families did and the voters were used to choosing that name, and most members of the new House of Talents were from long established political families. This test might be a way of finding out which of them had taken their seats with intent to actually
do
something. Anyone who intended to show up for debates and make their own choices about votes would know Alazon Yanamar had been the Emperor’s Privy Voice.

And she would be again, very soon. She’d actually tried to convince Emperor Zindel to retain Ulantha in the position, and he’d admitted she was doing very well. Unfortunately, she lacked both Alazon’s experience and the strength of her Talent. Ulantha was a very good, very strong Voice, but she wasn’t a
Projective
Voice. Alazon was, and there were times when that could be a critically important ability for Privy Council meetings. On the other hand, Alazon had been thinking about her protégé’s future, and it seemed more and more likely to her that Ulantha would make the perfect Personal Voice for Andrin, which would also guarantee the younger Voice’s career.

In the meantime, it amused Alazon immensely that some people thought she’d become a quiet politician’s wife.

The security concerns for the wedding nagged her a bit. Crown Princess Andrin and Prince Consort Howan Fai had discussed sitting in the balcony with most of the Calirath family to watch the ceremony, and she felt almost physically queasy at the thought of putting so many eggs into one basket. On the other hand, Telfor chan Garatz, the Chief of Imperial Security, had everything in his capable hands. Alazon had to trust him to outwit any threats.

Empress Varena was hosting the after party back at the palace. Surely the house guards would be in attendance in some form, but that particular chapel had been expressly nixed in favor of the Conclave floor for the Andrin-Howan Fai wedding because it lacked sufficient defenses. Alazon didn’t think it had been reinforced in the meantime, and while Howan Fai’s marriage to Andrin might have sealed the unification of Sharona, it hadn’t brought peace to the tempestuous Ternathian relationship with the Uromathian Empire.

She hoped the Imperial Guard had a plan to see to the Imperial Family’s safety.

* * *

The interview ran as the lead story in every SUNN market that evening with bits and pieces shared out for further discussion in the talk shows the next morning. And Privy Voice Ulantha Jastyr did indeed discuss it with the emperor. Meanwhile the SUNN correspondent team took the first train back to Tajvana.

Noriellena Drubeka’s promotion had come through, but not for Features Correspondent. Instead she was offered Lead Uromathian Political Correspondent…along with a warning from corporate that an appearance of favoritism towards the emperor could result in firing.

Trebar sometimes wondered if corporate paid any attention to the news the company collected. If SUNN wanted a permanent political correspondent in Uromathia, they’d have to accept the appearance of bias in Chava’s favor.

He also checked SUNN’s staff directory. SUNN had no other permanent Uromathian political correspondents, but “lead” came with a significant pay bump, and as her assigned Voice, he’d get a raise too.

Drubeka suggested they think of it as a hazardous duty bonus and work as many features as possible from the seat of Parliament in Tajvana.

Trebar heartily agreed.

Now Drubeka grabbed her diner-train glass and toasted her reporting teammate.

“To surviving the election season!” She lifted the glass and gulped down half of it.

Trebar tilted his own and sipped while his partner gasped at the kick.

The harsh Uromathian liquor from the bartender hadn’t been miraculously improved by the dining car’s price markup. After a few gasping coughs, Drubeka tossed back the rest of the glass with a grimace.

“I don’t understand how you can sip this stuff,” she said.

Trebar chuckled and added his own toast. “And here’s to getting out alive.”

“Hey now, all that insinuation made for good copy, but—” She waved it away.

Miles away from Uromathia’s capital city and on a fast train to their new office in Tajvana, she indicated with a wiggle of her fingers why SUNN supervisors always paired her with paranoid, or at least highly cautious, Voices. Noriellena Drubeka would never quite be brave—not with the cold blooded courage which truly recognized danger and accepted it. Hers was the sort of personality which protected itself by
denying
threats, not grappling with them. In the moment, she’d know there was danger and do the work anyway, but in the in between times, she never really acknowledged that that danger had existed. Trebar knew that perfectly well, and now he waited for the inevitable justification.

“You know what I think,” she said. “This battle of the two emperors is all showmanship. Uromathia clearly accepted the Treaty of Unification, and the drama with the Crown Princess’s wedding has all blown over. Yes, I agree with the VBS commentators that the wedding clothes left something to be desired. But really? Complaints about clothing hardly amount to a true attack on the Winged Crown, and we do have this multiversal war with Arcana going on.”

She caught an attendant’s eye and signaled for another round before continuing.