Not Quite Scaramouche

by Joel Rosenberg

  But it wasn't up to Walter Slovotsky, and with Thomen eager to return the Holtish baronies, one by one, to the rule of the Holtish barons, Forsteen was likely to stay right where he was, particularly considering that he had married one of Arondael's daughters, a widow half his age.

  Not that I have any business objecting to that sort of thing, Slovotsky thought. Aiea, after all, was just about half his age. He could protest all he wanted that it was different with him and her – and, well, it was – but that sort of protestation would get him laughed at by Aiea.

  And Andrea Cullinane. And Jason Cullinane. And particularly Ahira and Doria.

  And then there was Treseen. Treseen, the governor of Keranahan, was the next to arrive. General Treseen. Treseen the asshole.

  He was ten, fifteen years older than Walter Slovotsky, but he wore his age well, his black hair curled about his scalp in well-oiled scallops, his beard only touched with gray, and his jaw wide and solid.

  Walter Slovotsky was careful not to stare at Treseen, the only governor there not accompanied by a baron – or vice versa, depending on how you looked at it. But Walter Slovotsky could see quite a lot out of the corner of his eye; he pretended to look, once again, at the mural decorating the far wall as he considered the governor.

  Treseen's tunic was of thick linen, edged with silver thread and laced tightly across the chest and belly, probably to hide the sag of one into the other, but the effect worked. Slovotsky didn't know quite what to make of the short, informal cape mostly over his left shoulder, fastened in place with a silver chain. It was an affectation, perhaps.

  And perhaps Treseen was a trifle too richly dressed for a baronial governor. It was probably better and safer for a governor to overdress than underdress – too much of a protestation of poverty would probably draw more attention than a bit of ostentation.

  That was the problem with the Occupation – tax money, by necessity, flowed from the village and district wardens to and through the governor, and it was certain that in some – many? most? all? – cases, some coin would stick to any but the most honest or clever governor's hands, and you probably didn't get to be an imperial governor by an excess of honesty.

  How much coin, of course, was the real issue. A little embezzlement here and there was no problem, as long as it was only a little.

  And if it was too much? A governor could be hanged for embezzlement just as legally as a peasant could be hanged for poaching. The trick was to hang him only if necessary, only if a governor made a pig of himself, to encourage prudence in the others. You didn't want the other governors spending more time fiddling with their books than watching for signs of brewing rebellion.

  Still, since neither Thomen nor Karl had had a governor executed – Karl had relieved a couple; Thomen hadn't – the Crown could probably get away with doing in one, pour encouragez les autres.

  That might not be a bad idea in this case. Slovotsky didn't like Treseen, and he kept coming up with reasons why, although the obvious would serve just fine: Treseen hadn't been able to keep Baroness Elanee from secreting an injured dragon out in the hills of Keranahan, raising it to kill and replace Ellegon, intending not only to put her son on the baronial throne of Keranahan – which had been, in the absence of Forinel, the older son, likely enough, but...

  ... but there was no way of knowing what she had really intended, not now, not with her dead and Miron, who had conspired with her, fled the empire.

  But... Ellegon. Treseen had best not have had anything to do with the assassination attempt on Ellegon.

  It wasn't just that Walter Slovotsky liked the dragon – although he did; the dragon was one of the very few people who knew Walter Slovotsky as he was, with all his flaws and limitations, and loved him just the same – but the dragon helped keep the peace, just by existing, just by being around every now and then.

  The fear of Ellegon dropping out of the night sky, flame roaring from his cavernous mouth or – perhaps better, and certainly safer, what with the proliferation of the cultivation of dragonbane ever since the exodus of magical creatures from Faerie while the rift at Ehevnor had been, temporarily, open – a bag of rocks dropped from a great height, a sort of nonexploding cluster bomb ...

  ... well, just the idea was enough to at least give a possibly rebellious baron pause.

  "So, Walter Slovotsky," Niphael said, as he stalked into the room, and stood in front of his own chair across the room from Walter. He leaned forward, his palms firmly on the table, "How are you this fine, fine morning?"

  Vertum Niphael was a fat man, his cheeks permanently reddened with burst veins near the skin. It was tempting to think of him as a drunk from the way he slurred his words, but bis injuries had come in battle, during the war, in a blow to the head that would have scrambled the brains of a less hard-headed man, and while it had left him with a withered left arm and a way of slurring his speech, it didn't seem to have affected his mind.

  "I am well, Baron," Slovotsky said. "And thank you for asking." Honesty was not a particularly useful tool of statecraft; Niphael would get around to his point sooner or later, and it was simplest to let him.

  "Your new wife treats you well?"

  "Yes, and – "

  "Soldiers and other servants of the empire respond promptly and obediently to your commands?"

  Smirks passed across the faces of several of the barons. What was Niphael up to?

  "So, all is well with you, now, is it?"

  "Yes, but – "

  "Then where," the baron said, all false joviality gone from bis manner, "have you hidden that Jason Cullinane of yours, and why haven't you made sure that he's here with the rest of us?"

  There wasn't an easy answer for that. He could say, of course, that Jason Cullinane didn't answer to him, not anymore – the boy was not a boy, and hadn't been for a while. He could say, truthfully, that he didn't know where the hell Jason and his party were, and that he had dispatched Pirojil and his two companions to that barony in part to make sure that Jason made it in time for Parliament, although mainly it was to get Erenor out of town before Henrad twigged to his identity as a wizard.

  But, as he kept reassuring himself, honesty was not a fundamental tool of statecraft.

  Still... "To be honest, Baron," he said, dialing for an expression of honest concern, "I don't know what's kept Baron Cullinane, and I'm increasingly worried."

  "Hmph." That didn't satisfy Arondael. "It seems to me," he said, his voice low and reedy, "that on an occasion or two when other barons have been tardy in responding to an imperial summons, they've been met at their gateposts with a detachment of the Home Guard, and perhaps the dragon, Ellegon, circling overhead, and on at least one occasion the emperor himself, threatening to pry the baron loose from his castle like a mussel from its shell, if the castle didn't quickly disgorge itself of said baron."

  "Are you suggesting we sit in trial of Baron Cullinane?" Bren Adahan's voice came to Walter Slovotsky's rescue, which both relieved and irritated him. "How ... interesting an idea. Why not bring it up to the emperor himself?"

  Bren Adahan stopped in the doorway, but Ranella didn't break stride. She was another one of the exceptions; as a master engineer, she had been given the military governorship of Barony Adahan, and even after Adahan had been released from direct imperial rule, she had stayed on to manage the development of the mills in New Pittsburgh.

  Short, fortyish, and thick at waist and neck, affecting a mannish tunic and leggings rather than a dress or shift, she didn't look particularly attractive – well, she wasn't particularly attractive – or particularly bright, but looks could be misleading.

  She wore no knife that Slovotsky could see – and he suspected that she probably had none – but there was a brace of pistols on her belt, gold and bone inlays on their curved grips proclaiming that these were to be paid attention to, bragging of her permission to come not only armed, but armed with a gunpowder weapon, into the imperial presence.

  She took her seat quietly, and w
ithout making a fuss of it placed both of her pistols on the table in front of her. "I think," she said, quietly, "that Baron Arondael means nothing of the sort, and that he's just as concerned as the rest of us are at Baron Cullinane's absence." She raised a palm toward where Bren Adahan still stood, framed in the arch of the doorway. "I'm sure, Baron Minister, the proctor has tried to find out what he can – aren't you?"

  From the cynical expressions decorating the faces at the tables, this little charade wasn't fooling anybody. If Bren Adahan and Walter Slovotsky were to have a disagreement – not an unusual event, granted – it would not be in public at all, much less in front of all of the barons.

  Oh, well. Most of what we do is wasted effort, after all, he thought. The only trouble is, you could never tell which part was wasted, so you had to do it all.

  A page – Walter was tempted to claim that he wasn't even a paragraph, but the double meaning wouldn't have worked in Erendra – stepped in through the side door.

  "Barons of the Parliament," he said, the drama of the moment ruined when his voice momentarily cracked into a pubescent screech, "Thomen Furnael, Prince of Bieme and Emperor of Holtun-Bieme."

  Two pikemen marched in cadence through the side door, and took up positions next to it. They wore the black-andsilver imperial livery, from their helms to the enameled armor that covered them down to their toes, and their pikestaffs had been enameled black, the blades silvered, although Walter Slovotsky had no doubt that good steel lay beneath.

  Not that they would have used the pikes indoors. It was a silly weapon here, more ceremonial than threatening, given the difficulty in wielding any sort of polearm indoors. If either had to use a weapon to defend the emperor – and they were ready to do just that – they would use the very businesslike and plain swords at their waists, or the flintlock pistols in holsters that had been welded, two on each side, to the sides of their chest-pieces.

  That was little more than a distraction. Walter Slovotsky had had a word with General Garavar about security for Parliament, and trusted marksmen from the Home Guard, each with a half-dozen flintlock carbines at the full-cock, hid in niches in the tapestries to the right and left of where the emperor would sit, the walls of the niches protecting the emperor from a stray shot more surely than even loyalty could.

  Trust was a nice enough thing, but it was better to make sure.

  Thomen entered, his mother waddling along just a few steps behind him.

  There was a lot wrong with inherited position – not necessarily the worst system in the world, but not the best, either – but one of the good things about it was that the nobles learned young at least part of how to behave.

  The barons and governors were quickly on their feet as Thomen walked in, moving neither quickly nor slowly, a certain dignity to his mien that Walter Slovotsky frankly envied.

  Even after twenty-odd years on This Side, he still had the built-in American disdain for inherited titles. Virtue could, perhaps, be something you were born with, and it could, certainly, be something that you learned, but it was not carried by sperm as it wiggled its way toward a waiting egg.

  Still, whether it was, as Slovotsky believed, training and education, or was something he had been born with, Thomen Furnael carried himself well. The silver crown of Bieme – now of Holtun-Bieme – sat easily atop his head, the bright metal burnished to a high shine, each jewel glistening as though from an inner light.

  He nodded to his right and left, and then took his seat on the throne, to Slovotsky's right, and let the assemblage stand for a few long seconds before folding his hands in his lap.

  "The Parliament is called to sit," he said, formally, his voice low and conversational.

  Walter Slovotsky plopped down in his seat, and looked over at Thomen. He suppressed a frown. If the emperor had a weapon – other than that entirely decorative knife at his belt – it was well-hidden, and while, as a matter of firm policy, Walter Slovotsky always assumed that he had missed a concealed weapon or three, that was purely policy, and he didn't believe for a moment that Thomen had concealed as much as a hunting knife on him.

  Yes, this was Parliament and astronomically unlikely to turn into some sort of fight – physical fight, that is – but stranger things had happened, and rulers who wished to become old rulers were well-advised to take pains with their own safety. Yes, that's what the soldiers in the alcoves were for, but there were damned few people whom you could count on to do their jobs right. Particularly when the shit hit the fan. As it always did, sooner or later, one way or another.

  Chairs squeaked on stone as the assemblage took their seats.

  Nerahan muttered something to Forsteen, his lips close enough to the governor's ear that Walter Slovotsky couldn't see them move enough to guess at what he was saying.

  Is this something you can share with the whole class? he didn't quite ask.

  Arondael leaned forward. "I didn't quite hear that, Baron. Something about special privileges for some?"

  The old man must have had better hearing than Walter Slovotsky would have given him credit for; Nerahan reddened. "It was nothing."

  Thomen Furnael steepled his long fingers in front of his face. "I can't speak for the barons," he said, his voice quiet but penetrating in the still air of the room, "but I'd be interested in hearing what it is that you had to say."

  "I – it was nothing, Emperor," Nerahan said. "Just a quiet comment to Governor Forsteen about how we have two seats empty."

  Actually, there were several unoccupied chairs at the tables; the Biemish barons had elected to come alone. But the chair with the green-and-silver filigree work along the edge of its upholstery, and its black-and-orange mate next to where Treseen sat, showed that there were two barons missing.

  "And you see some equivalence, Baron?" Bren Adahan asked. "There is no baron in Keranahan at the moment – are you suggesting the same thing for Barony Cullinane?"

  Tyrnael grunted. "He doesn't need to suggest anything, Lord Minister." He sat back, and in either deliberate or unconscious imitation, steepled his fingers the way Tho-men had. "What's clear, and what needs no suggestion, but merely simple observation, is that Baron Cullinane is absent, and unless he's not received the same summons that the rest of us have, I don't see how he can – "

  "Be permitted to keep his barony?"

  Bren, shut up.

  Even if that was what Tyrnael was suggesting, it was clumsy for Bren Adahan to bring it out in the open. Bren Adahan was usually too slick for something like that, but something about Tyrnael had him irritated, and while Walter Slovotsky shared the irritation and suspicion, it was one thing to feel it and another entirely to act upon it.

  “– flout the emperor's command." Tyrnael's expression grew grave. "Unless, of course, some tragedy has befallen his party." He shook his head. "It's sad, but it's true: we live in unsettled times."

  Verahan, the youngest of the Holtish barons, leaned forward. "I think we live in very settled times, my Lord Baron Tyrnael," he said. He gestured toward the emperor. "The emperor is on the throne, the Crown is on the emperor, and we are at peace, are we not?" He didn't wait for an answer before continuing. "With the Holtish baronies being returned to the rule of the Holtish barons, we can look forward to even more settled times."

  It hadn't escaped Slovotsky's notice that the governor of Verahan sat at Verahan's right, the position of honor, but also, by local custom, the position of a subordinate when only two men sat together. Claressen was probably the oldest of the governors, although he had never been more than a troop captain – but he had, so Bren Adahan, who knew him better, thought, a better feel for details than for combat.

  "Claressen leaned back in his chair, folded his thick fingers over his massive belly, and laughed. "That's the thing I like about the young," he said, patting the baron on the arm in a way that was clearly affectionate, and not condescending. "Always looking at the bright side of all such matters." His smile dropped away. "As for us older folks – or, at least this ol
der folk – I'm concerned that Governor Treseen has been left to run his barony without a baron to help shoulder the load, as young Arta has been doing for me." His mouth twitched. "I'm an old man, and I'm looking to step down – emperor willing – as soon as my young baron, here, can take over."

  Tyrnael looked over at Niphael, and gave a slight twitch of his fingers. Nothing much; if Walter Slovotsky had blinked, he would have missed it.

  So that's how it is. It was a good thing to know that Niphael would take a hand signal from Tyrnael.

  "Do I take it that you vouch for this ... young baron?" Niphael asked.

  "Yes," Claressen nodded. "I do. I vouch for his intelligence, and his industriousness, and I shall even vouch for his loyalty to the Crown, should anyone be so impolite as to suggest otherwise." His smile had no trace of warmth in it. "But I'm neither so young or so foolish – and aren't those so often the same thing? – that I'd vouch that a boy of twenty, even one like young Arta, with a wife and two sons, would be ready to rule a barony without some help, and even direction." He shrugged. "I'm just not at all sure that direction, that help, needs to come from a military governor." He drummed his fingers on the table in front of him. He turned toward Thomen and addressed him directly. "I had thought there were matters more pressing, but if Baron Tyrnael – I mean Baron Niphael, of course – wishes to discuss whether Verahan should be the second barony to be released from direct imperial rule, I'm not unwilling. But it seems to me that the succession in Keranahan is more pressing."