“Let’s fetch coats, then,” he said. “The thickest you have. Kregiaw is the closest I can get us without going there directly, and that shithole might as well have been hewn from ice.”
37
ERRIS
Grand Foyer
Outside the Assembly Hall
Only the barest moment, if you please, High Commander,” the orderly said. “They are preparing the chamber for you now.”
She gave a nod that sufficed for acknowledgment and dismissal together, then glanced toward Marquand, standing in a relaxed pose to her right, after the attendant had given them the chamber.
“Fifteen minutes by my count,” she said, and Marquand nodded his agreement. “Past the bounds of propriety, wouldn’t you say?”
“Far be it for these assholes to make you wait at all,” Marquand said. “If it were up to me.”
Aide-Captain Essily coughed. “Sir, the attendant said it would be only another moment.”
The three of them stood alone in the hall, with all the power of the Assembly of New Sarresant buzzing on the opposite side of the doors. Marquand was right. It was past time for waiting.
“Marquand, if you please,” she said, squaring herself in front of the door. He obliged, pushing through ahead of her, holding it open long enough for her to follow.
The roar of the chamber greeted them at once, a swelling tide of shouts and bedlam that should have threatened to burst the heavy oak inward. Good. Let them see military discipline in a moment of disarray. Voren had promised her a favorable outcome in these proceedings, but she’d come to understand the importance of appearances in Voren’s world.
Essily formed up on her left, and Marquand fell in on her right as they marched toward the rostrum at the center. A tide of shouting surrounded them, a dozen clusters of ten or twenty men and women each, standing among the chairs and desks that ringed the room in concentric half circles. She led the way toward the empty dais at the heart of the chamber, welcomed by stares and the silence that followed. First one group’s conversation died, then another, but she was already at the base of the steps before the bulk of the room noticed the three uniformed soldiers among them.
The Assembly stared, but it was the same silk-and-lace-covered orderly who came scurrying toward where she stood, his head tucked low as though his presence were an apology.
“It isn’t time yet, High Commander,” the attendant whispered, still loud enough to carry through the last sputtering remnants of debate. “The hall hasn’t yet issued its summons.”
She ignored him.
For a moment, the spreading quiet prevailed. Like the last moment before a charge, when what would become a battlefield was still given to calm.
“High Commander,” a voice called from the crowd. A man, one she recognized from her farce of a hearing some weeks before. Assemblyman Lerand, dressed in an imitation of factory workers’ clothes, but cut too finely and kept too clean for her to have confused them for the real thing. “The chamber isn’t yet prepared to receive you. I move the Commander be escorted from the hall while we conclude debate.”
“Second,” came a cry from circles nearby the speaker, carried by multiple voices at once.
“She’s here, we knew she was coming”—another voice interrupted, and then another—“let her speak. We intend to settle—” And then cacophony as a dozen more sentences began and ended midway through.
She stayed in place, briefly scanning the room for faces she knew. She saw a handful she’d met in Voren’s chambers, scattered among the various circles, and a small knot of familiar faces seated around High Admiral Tuyard, who seemed to be grinning at her with a knowing smile from one of the rearward benches.
Voren himself was nowhere in sight.
The realization hit her hard. He’d been the one to urge her to make this appearance, the one who swore he could deliver a majority of support for the Thellan invasion on the floor.
Nothing for it now. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and began.
“Assemblymen and women of New Sarresant,” she said. “I’ve come before you to make plain my intent to make war on the Thellan colonies, and by extension, on Thellan itself. I stand before you as High Commander of our military, land and sea. My aim here today is to secure your support for the invasion, on grounds of the essential need to defend our nation through preemptive action against an enemy bent on our destruction. I invite you to join me on the right side of our nation’s history. Without this action, our country will have no history at all.”
Voren had composed the speech for her; it sounded foreign to her ears, for all she was the one giving it. At first the chamber had continued its cacophonous debate, but quickly fell silent as she spoke. When she said the last words of the short speech, the silence lingered for another beat, as though she might continue, before Assemblyman Lerand stepped into the aisle.
“Is that a threat, High Commander d’Arrent?” Assemblyman Lerand asked. “Do you mean to tell this Assembly you mean to snuff us out should we fail to accede to your warmongering?”
“She means there are military matters that should be beyond the purview of nattering fools who aren’t fit to command a textile loom.” High Admiral Tuyard rose to his feet on the opposite side of the chamber. “This is the danger of democracy, my friends. This council holds its positions by way of cajoling citizens with false promises, if not outright bribery. Not a one of you is suited to tell High Commander d’Arrent how to dispose her army.”
“Forgive me, Admiral, but this is an outrage, against our very principles.” This came from Assemblywoman Caille, the pruned elder who had chaired her hearing. She rose from a cluster of chairs between the factory worker and Tuyard, speaking softly but somehow managing to project it through Tuyard’s tirade and echo through every corner of the hall.
“Assemblyman Lerand is quite correct,” Caille continued. “This council cannot exist as a governing body with the threat of military force hanging over our heads. Without question there are matters over which we do not presume to vote, but expertise cannot be confused for sovereignty. And so the question is: Can we allow a military officer to draw us into war? Are there not factors we must consider that run well beyond the needs of soldiering, and, if so, do we not rightly claim purview over them?”
Lerand was nodding in time with her words, with the rest of his coterie of supporters following along.
“Assemblywoman Caille has seen to the heart of it,” Lerand said. “I, and my supporters, embrace her vision of the matter at hand, and propose the submission by High Commander Erris d’Arrent to this Assembly a detailed accounting of the military concerns of her invasion, to be considered in due course alongside the trade and taxation concerns, as this chamber deems appropriate.”
Tuyard’s laugh filled the room, like a stage actor cutting above the audience. “You would have our brigade-colonels give you a detailed accounting of the ground before they dispose their troops. Were you fools not listening? D’Arrent claims an imminent and certain threat from Thellan. This is a simple question of existence: Do we fight the inevitable war, or do we wait to vote on what to call it when we surrender?”
Caille and Lerand both spoke at once, but Erris stopped listening before they resolved the issue of who would command the floor. It was clear the three of them represented factions with broad support clustered among the seats in the chamber: Tuyard with his group on the left, Caille in the center, and Lerand on the right. The center group seemed the largest by a fair margin, and Assemblywoman Caille, inasmuch as she spoke for them, seemed to balance the viewpoints of the two more extreme men on either side. She couldn’t have said where Voren would have stood; a second scan of the chamber confirmed he was nowhere in sight. Whatever subtle politics were at work here, she didn’t trust any of them. Voren had been her guide through hostile ground, as valuable as a turncoat scout native to her enemies’ lands. Without him, this trip was like to be wasted, with consequences she couldn’t foresee, except that they were li
kely to be dire.
“I am prepared to concede the need for swift action under threat,” Assemblywoman Caille was saying. “And I accept it may illumine the need for an executive within our government. But the point must stand that no such executive exists today, and therefore whatever action is proposed by High Commander d’Arrent must be considered in due course by this Assembly before it can be considered legitimate.”
“You use my own words against me,” Tuyard replied. “But I argue we must have a leader, empowered to act without deliberation. Without such a figure, we will be paralyzed while our enemies move against us. This is a time for bold leadership, not dithering and debate.”
Caille affected a look of consideration, as though she hadn’t before considered the idea. She had the look of an elderly grandmother, the sort depicted in village folktales as a stern voice of reason when the local magistrates pushed the bounds of common sense. Yet for all that, the woman had iron in her voice, a sound Erris recognized from her own commands, and the circle of Assemblymen and women at the center looked to her with nodding heads, as though her contemplation counted for theirs.
“A King,” Lerand said, sneering as though he’d been the first to see it. “You mean to give us a King, before our hands are dry from de l’Arraignon blood.”
Erris stepped forward, drawing eyes from across the room. “We must make war,” she said. Voren hadn’t prepared this part of the speech, but she sensed weakness, as sure as if her lines had been stretched too thin at the critical juncture of a battle. “I led our army against the Crown-Prince because he meant to order us to abandon our homeland. He put our people in jeopardy. I tell you now, the enemy mustering in the south represents a threat no less dire. My soldiers do not fight for freedom, égalité, or the glory of your revolution. They fight for their homes and families. If it takes a King to allow them to do it, they will put this council down for cowards who lack the nerve to act, and swear allegiance to whatever crown will let them fight.”
Silence returned to the chamber.
“There it is,” Tuyard said, at the same moment Lerand took a step away from his supporters, toward the dais.
“I will never swear to another King,” Lerand said, “who makes liberty his enemy, nor a Queen, who would commit us to foreign entanglements anathema to the ideal of égalité. I name any man or woman who tries to take us down that path a traitor, owed the lawful punishment for treason, the same we gave Louis-Sallet de l’Arraignon.”
Murmurs sounded through the chamber, from the balcony above through the rows of benches situated below. It appeared she’d said precisely the wrong thing, and Assemblyman Lerand the right one. Hot eyes fixed on her, and Marquand pressed closer than he had before. Easy to find comfort in his presence, as she’d done on battle lines in her younger days. The main halls connected the Assembly Hall to the army high command, but this chamber had started to feel like hostile ground. No chance of making a retreat without displacing some among the crowd. Gods send they could do it without resorting to Entropy.
“Time to go,” she said under her breath, low enough for only Essily and Marquand to hear. Both men adjusted to cover her flanks, watching her for the cue to move. It had been a mistake to come here. Voren had promised a resolution supporting the invasion, and the tax money to fund her quartermasters. Instead she stared down vipers in thrall to ideas wholly distinct from the realities of war. Fools, but powerful fools, and Voren had abandoned her to—
“High Commander d’Arrent is right.”
Once again Assemblywoman Caille’s voice cut through the chamber, though somehow the woman seemed to be speaking in measured, even tones.
“Our people must be kept safe,” Caille continued. “The sanctity of the state begins there. It is not treason to suggest our soldiers—our people—would follow any government that could provide safety, and reject any that failed to do so.”
“Well enough, and so do we propose,” Lerand cut in. “This Assembly will serve to—”
“No.” This time Caille’s voice was sharp. “We need the counsel of experts empowered to govern their respective areas. And we need a leader to preside over them. Not a King. A First Minister, accountable and beholden to this Assembly for their authority, but placed at the head of an empowered executive arm of our government. And given the nature and imminence of the threat presented by High Commander d’Arrent, we must settle the matter swiftly.”
“A First Minister?” Tuyard said, and laced the title with cynicism, as though the words themselves were meant to be amusing. “I suppose you’d nominate yourself for this post, Assemblywoman?”
If Tuyard had meant the charge to resonate, it seemed to have the opposite effect, with voices raised in agreement from among the chairs at the center of the room.
Lerand seemed confused for the moment, conferring with councillors among his supporters on the far side of the chamber while still more voices stirred at the center. Erris raised a hand to stay Marquand and Essily. Where before the chamber had seemed volatile, on the edge of erupting into shouting if not outright violence, now it simmered with a different sort of heat. She could see Voren’s hand in it, an echo of a battlefield strategy played out in front of her, though she couldn’t guess the precise nature of the moves it had taken to set it in motion.
“We could accept Assemblywoman Caille in such a role,” Lerand said at last. “But only so long as there were strict limits established. A matter for extended debate, past the point of settling the question the High Commander brings before us.”
“I am flattered, of course,” Assemblywoman Caille said. “But if a leader is selected from among our number, their constituents would be necessarily raised above all others. First among equals is no égalité at all. No—I move our First Minister be chosen from outside our halls. Empowered to act in matters of state, but ultimately beholden to a majority among this Assembly.”
Tuyard leaned forward, looking like the lead wolf from among his coterie of similarly wolfish compatriots. Voren had planned this. She was sure of it now.
“There is wisdom here,” Tuyard said. “But I ask again, do you have a name in mind, Assemblywoman?”
“I do,” she replied. “A man who has been instrumental in the formation and constitution of our republic. He has made his share of enemies—and I might have counted myself among them, once. But for the good of our country, I urge all inclined to trust my judgment to join me in putting our support behind Anselm Voren for First Minister, with a term to be deliberated by this Assembly.”
Voren’s name percolated through the chamber, repeated in whispers by those who needed to be certain they’d heard aright. Erris stood at its heart, watching as those seated in the center—the largest group, and from the look of things a group disposed to trust neither Voren or Tuyard—whispered his name, and looked to Caille for confirmation. It was a rout, as certain as if Voren had broken an enemy’s best-reinforced flank and now swept around to take their center from behind. The Assemblywoman stood tall, confident, and proud without an overbearing air. Erris had seen entire companies rally to a lone soldier holding a flag, firm and steady when it seemed all hope around them was lost. She’d held such a flag herself. Caille did it now.
“A former lord,” Lerand said, echoing a sentiment stirring among his fellows on the right-hand side of the chamber. “This alone should disqualify him.”
His complaints drowned beneath a hum of activity. Voren’s name continued to be repeated, and smaller bouts of conversation sprang up between seats and benches with varying degrees of fervor. Tuyard reclined in his seat, wearing a knowing smile as his fellows exchanged excited looks.
Caille raised a hand, gesturing to calm the chamber. For a moment, the seats nearest the dais seemed to obey, while those in the rear of the room still buzzed with a thrum of energy. Men and women rose to their feet near the exits, and the wave of excitement seemed to pass through the room, replaced by quiet, and anger.
It took a moment to realize why.
“What is the meaning of this?” Assemblywoman Caille said, then paled as the crowd rose to its feet, craning to see Omera reach the center, only a few paces from Erris’s entourage, before he turned to address the room.
She recognized the woman Omera held the moment the rest of the chamber seemed to do the same: an elderly matron with iron-gray hair. A perfect copy of Assemblywoman Caille, for all the woman herself stood twenty paces away, as though she’d used a Mind binding to make a copy and place a perfect replica in Omera’s keeping.
“The man called Voren is not the man you believe,” Omera said to the hall, then turned to Caille as though addressing her directly. “He has done evil, and he must meet justice for his crime.”
By now the front ranks could see there were two Cailles—one standing, ashen-faced and full of panic, and one seemingly dead, lying in Omera’s arms.
Erris’s mind reeled; the chamber seemed to do the same, meeting Omera’s words with open mouths and expressions caught between shock and fury. Assemblywoman Caille darted frantic looks around the chamber, but managed no more than a stuttering step into the aisle before her eyes rolled upward and she collapsed.
Marquand caught the assemblywoman—or, the copy of her—before she fell to hit the floor. He made as though to lay her down, and recoiled with a burst of profanity over top of the growing roar among the Assembly.
Where Assemblywoman Caille had been, a man lay instead: young, olive-skinned, with a neat-kept beard and high-set, narrow eyes.
“That is him,” Omera said. “That is Voren, as he is when he thinks none are watching.”
ELSEWHERE
Blood of the Gods Page 33
