"What was that?"
"Nothing, dear."
"I'm not going to let you forget this, Actas, let me tell you."
"Life does have its little ups and downs, doesn't it?" Sadi murmured as they rode on out of earshot.
"I don't think it's anything to laugh about," Ce'Nedra said with surprising heat. "They're being thrown out of their home over a moment's foolishness. Can't someone do something?"
Zakath gave her an appraising look, then beckoned to one of the red‑cloaked officers riding respectfully along behind them. "Find out which unit that man's in," he instructed. "Then go to his captain and tell him that I'd take it as a personal favor if Actas were reinstated in his former rank ‑on the condition that he stays sober."
"At once, your Majesty." The officer saluted and rode off.
"Why, thank you, Zakath," Ce'Nedra said, sounding a little startled.
"My pleasure, Ce'Nedra." He bowed to her from his saddle. Then he laughed shortly. "I suspect that Actas' wife will see to it that he suffers sufficiently for his misdeeds anyway."
"Aren't you afraid that such acts of compassion might damage your reputation, your Majesty?" Sadi asked him.
"No," Zakath replied. "A ruler must always strive to be unpredictable, Sadi. It keeps the underlings off balance. Besides, an occasional act of charity toward the lower ranks helps to strengthen their loyalty "
"Don't you ever do anything that isn't motivated by politics?" Garion asked him. For some reason, Zakath's flippant explanation of his act irritated him.
"Not that I can think of," Zakath said. "Politics is the greatest game in the world, Garion, but you have to play it all the time to keep your edge."
Silk laughed. "I've said the exact same thing about commerce," he said. "About the only difference I can see is that in commerce you have money as a way of keeping score. How do you keep score in politics?"
Zakath's expression was peculiarly mixed ‑half amused and half deadly serious. "It's very simple, Kheldar," he said. "If you're still on the throne at the end of the day, you've won. If you're dead, you've lost ‑and each day is a complete new game."
Silk gave him a long, speculative look, then looked over at Garion, his fingers moving slightly. ‑I need to talk to you ‑at once-
Garion nodded briefly, then leaned over in his saddle, He wined in.
"Something wrong?" Zakath asked him.
"I think my cinch is loose," Garion replied, dismounting. "Go on ahead. I'll catch up."
"Here, ‑I'll help you, Garion," Silk offered, also swinging down from his saddle.
"What's this all about?" Garion asked when the Emperor, chatting with Ce'Nedra and Velvet, had ridden out of earshot.
"Be very careful with him, Garion," the little man replied quietly, pretending to check the straps on Garion's saddle. "He let something slip there. He's all smiles and courtesy on the surface, but underneath it all he hasn't really changed all that much."
"Wasn't he just joking?"
"Not even a little. He was deadly serious. He's brought us all to Mal Zeth for reasons that have nothing to do with Mengha or our search for Zandramas. Be on your guard with him. That friendly smile of his can fall off his face without any warning at all." He spoke a little more loudly then. "There," he said, tugging at a strap, "that ought to hold it. Let's catch up with the others."
They rode into a broad square surrounded on all sides by canvas booths dyed in various hues of red, green, blue, and yellow. The square teemed with merchants and citizens, all dressed in varicolored, loose‑fitting robes that hung to their heels.
"Where do the common citizens live if the whole city's divided up into sections based on military rank?" Durnik asked.
Brador, the bald, chubby Chief of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, who happened to be riding beside the smith, looked around with a smile. "They all have their ranks, Goodman," he replied, "each according to his individual accomplishments. It's all very rigidly controlled by the Bureau of Promotions. Housing, places of business, suitable marriages ‑they're all determined by rank."
"Isn't that sort of over-regimented?" Durnik asked pointedly.
"Malloreans love to be regimented, Goodman Durnik. " Brador laughed. "Angaraks bow automatically to authority; Melcenes have a deep inner need to compartmentalize things; Karands are too stupid to take control of their own destinies; and the Dals ‑well, nobody knows what the Dals want."
"We aren't really all that different from the people in the West, Durnik," Zakath said back over his shoulder. "In Tolnedra and Sendaria, such matters are determined by economics. People gravitate to the houses and shops and marriages they can afford. We've just formalized it, that's all."
"Tell me, your Majesty." Sadi said, "how is it that your people are so undemonstrative?"
"I don't quite follow you."
"Shouldn't they at least salute as you ride by? You are the Emperor, after all."
"They don't recognize me." Zakath shrugged. "The Emperor is a man in crimson robes who rides in a golden carriage, wears a terribly heavy jeweled crown, and is accompanied by at least a regiment of imperial guards all blowing trumpets. I'm just a man in white linen riding through town with a few friends."
Garion thought about that, still mindful of Silk's half-whispered warning. The almost total lack of any kind of self‑aggrandizement implicit in Zakath's statement revealed yet another facet of the man's complex personality. He was quite sure that not even King Fulrach of Sendaria, the most modest of all the monarchs of the West, could be quite so self‑effacing.
The streets beyond the square were lined with somewhat larger houses than those they had passed near the city gates, and there had been some attempt at ornamentation here. It appeared, however, that Mallorean sculptors had limited talent, and the mortar‑cast filigree surmounting the front of each house was heavy and graceless.
"The sergeant's district," Zakath said laconically.
The city seemed to go on forever. At regular intervals
there were squares and marketplaces and bazaars, all filled with people wearing the bright, loose‑fitting robes that appeared to be the standard Mallorean garb. When they passed the last of the rigidly similar houses of the sergeants and of those civilians of equal rank, they entered a broad belt of trees and lawns where fountains splashed and sparkled in the sunlight and where broad promenades were lined with carefully sculptured green hedges interspersed with cherry trees laden with pink blossoms shimmering in the light breeze.
"How lovely," Ce'Nedra exclaimed.
"We do have some beauty here in Mal Zeth," Zakath told her. "No one ‑not even an army architect‑ could make a city this big uniformly ugly."
"The officers' districts aren't quite so severe," Silk told the little Queen.
"You're familiar with Mal Zeth, then, your Highness?" Brador asked.
Silk nodded. "My partner and I have a facility here," he replied. "It's more in the nature of a centralized collection point than an actual business. It's cumbersome doing business in Mal Zeth ‑too many regulations."
"Might one inquire as to the rank you were assigned?" the moon‑faced bureaucrat asked delicately.
"We're generals," Silk said in a rather grandly off-hand manner. "Yarblek wanted to be a field marshal, but I didn't think the expense of buying that much rank was really justified."
"Is rank for sale?" Sadi asked.
"In Mal Zeth, everything's for sale," Silk replied. "In most respects it's almost exactly like Tol Honeth."
"Not entirely, Silk," Ce'Nedra said primly.
"Only in the broadest terms, your Imperial Highness," he agreed quickly. "Mal Zeth has never been graced by the presence of a divinely beautiful Imperial Princess, glowing like a precious jewel and shooting beams of her fire back at the sun."
She gave him a hard look, then turned her back on him.
"What did I say?" the little man asked Garion in an injured tone.
"People always suspect you, Silk," Garion told him. "They can n
ever quite be sure that you're not making fun of them. I thought you knew that."
Silk sighed tragically. "Nobody understands me," he complained.
"Oh, I think they do."
The plazas and boulevards beyond the belt of parks and gardens were more grand, and the houses larger and set apart from each other. There was still, however, a stiff similarity about them, a kind of stern sameness that insured that men of equal rank would be assigned to rigidly equal quarters.
Another broad strip of lawns and trees lay beyond the mansions of the generals and their mercantile equivalents, and within that encircling green there arose a fair-sized marble city with its own walls and burnished gates.
"The imperial palace," Zakath said indifferently. He frowned. "What have you done over there?" he asked Brador, pointing at a long row of tall buildings rising near the south wall of the enclosed compound.
Brador coughed delicately. "Those are the bureaucratic offices, your Majesty," he replied in a neutral tone. "You'll recall that you authorized their construction just before the battle of Thull Mardu."
Zakath pursed his lips. "I hadn't expected something on quite such a grand scale," he said.
"There are quite a lot of us, your Majesty," Brador explained, "and we felt that things might be more harmonious if each bureau had its own building." He looked a bit apologetic. "We really did need the space," he explained defensively to Sadi. "We were all jumbled together with the military, and very often men from different bureaus had to share the same office. It's really much more efficient this way, wouldn't you say?"
"I think I'd prefer it if you didn't involve me in this discussion, your Excellency," Sadi answered.
"I was merely attempting to draw upon your Excellency's expertise in managing affairs of state."
"Salmissra's palace is somewhat unique," Sadi told him. "We like being jumbled together. It gives us greater opportunities for spying and murder and intrigue and the other normal functions of government."
As they approached the gates to the imperial complex, Garion noticed with some surprise that the thick bronze gates had been overlaid with beaten gold, and his thrifty Sendarian heritage recoiled from the thought of such wanton lavishness. Ce'Nedra, however, looked at the priceless gates with undisguised acquisitiveness.
"You wouldn't be able to move them," Silk advised her.
"What?" she said inattentively.
"The gates. They're much too heavy to steal."
"Shut up, Silk," she said absently, her eyes still appraising the gates.
He began to laugh uproariously, and she looked at him, her green eyes narrowing dangerously.
"I think I'll ride back to see what's keeping Belgarath," the little man said.
"Do," she said. Then she looked at Garion, who was trying to conceal a broad grin. "Something funny?" she asked him.
"No, dear," he replied quickly. "Just enjoying the scenery is all."
The detachment of guards at the gates was neither as burnished nor plumed as the ceremonial guards at the gates of Tol Honeth. They wore polished shirts of chain mail over the customary red tunic, baggy breeches tucked into the tops of knee‑high boots, red cloaks, and pointed conical helmets. They nonetheless looked very much like soldiers. They greeted Kal Zakath with crisp military salutes, and, as the Emperor passed through the gilded gates, trumpeteers announced his entrance into the imperial compound with a brazen fanfare.
"I've always hated that," the Mallorean ruler said confidentially to Garion. "The sound grates on my ears."
"What irritated me were the people who used to follow me around hoping that I might need something," Garion told him.
"That's convenient sometimes."
Garion nodded. "Sometimes," he agreed, "but it stopped being convenient when one of them threw a knife at my back."
"Really? I thought your people universally adored you."
"It was a misunderstanding. The young man and I had a talk about it, and he promised not to do it any more."
"That's all?" Zakath exclaimed in astonishment. "You didn't have him executed?"
"Of course not. Once he and I understood each other, he turned out to be extraordinarily loyal." Garion sighed sadly. "He was killed at Thull Mardu."
"I'm sorry, Garion," Zakath said. "We all lost friends at Thull Mardu."
The marble‑clad buildings inside the imperial complex were a jumble of conflicting architectural styles, ranging from the severely utilitarian to the elaborately ornate. For some reason Garion was reminded of the vast rabbit warren of King Anheg's palace at Val Alorn. Although Zakath's palace did not consist of one single building, the structures were all linked to each other by column‑lined promenades and galleries which passed through park-like grounds studded with statues and marble pavilions.
Zakath led them through the confusing maze toward the middle of the complex, where a single palace stood in splendid isolation, announcing by its expanse and height that it was the center of all power in boundless Mallorea. "The residence of Kallath the Unifier," the Emperor announced with grand irony, "my revered ancestor."
"Isn't it just a bit overdone?" Ce'Nedra asked tartly, still obviously unwilling to concede the fact that Mal Zeth far outstripped her girlhood home.
"Of course it is," the Mallorean replied, "but the ostentation was necessary. Kallath had to demonstrate to the other generals that he outranked them, and in Mal Zeth one's rank is reflected by the size of one's residence. Kallath was an undisguised knave, a usurper and a man of little personal charm, so he had to assert himself in other ways."
"Don't you just love politics?" Velvet said to Ce'Nedra. "It's the only field where the ego is allowed unrestricted play ‑as long as the treasury holds out."
Zakath laughed. "I should offer you a position in the government, Margravine Liselle," he said. "I think we need an imperial deflator ‑someone to puncture all our puffed‑up self‑importance."
"Why, thank you, your Majesty," she said with a dimpled smile. " If it weren't for my commitments to the family business, I might even consider accepting such a post. It sounds like so much fun."
He sighed with mock regret. "Where were you when I needed a wife?"
"Probably in my cradle, your Majesty," she replied innocently.
He winced. "That was unkind," he accused.
"Yes," she agreed. "True, though," she added clinically.
He laughed again and looked at Polgara. "I'm going to steal her from you, my lady," he declared.
"To be your court jester, Kal Zakath?" Liselle asked, her face no longer lightly amused. "To entertain you with clever insults and banter? Ah, no. I don't think so. There's another side to me that I don't think you'd like very much. They call me 'Velvet' and think of me as a soft‑winged butterfly, but this particular butterfly has a poisoned sting ‑as several people have discovered after it was too late."
"Behave, dear," Polgara murmured to her. "And don't give away trade secrets in a moment of pique." Velvet lowered her eyes. "Yes, Lady Polgara," she replied meekly.
Zakath looked at her, but did not say anything. He swung down from his saddle, and three grooms dashed to his side to take the reins from his hand. "Come along, then," he said to Garion and the others. "I'd like to show you around." He threw a sly glance at Velvet. "I hope that the Margravine will forgive me if I share every home owner's simple pride in his domicile ‑no matter how modest."
She laughed a golden little laugh.
Garion dismounted and laid an affectionate hand on Chretienne's proud neck. It was with a pang of almost tangible regret that he handed the reins to a waiting groom.
They entered the palace through broad, gilded doors and found themselves in a vaulted rotunda, quite similar in design to the one in the Emperor's palace in Tol Honeth, though this one lacked the marble busts that made Varana's entryway appear vaguely like a mausoleum. A crowd of officials, military and civilian, awaited their Emperor, each with a sheaf of important‑looking documents in his hand.
Zaka
th sighed as he looked at them. "I'm afraid we'll have to postpone the grand tour," he said. "I'm certain that you'll all want to bathe and change anyway ‑and perhaps rest a bit before we start the customary formalities. Brador, would you be good enough to show our guests to their rooms and arrange to have a light lunch prepared for them?"
"Of course, your Majesty."
"I think the east wing might be pleasant. It's away from all the scurrying through the halls in this part of the palace."
"My very thought, your Majesty."
Zakath smiled at them all. "We'll dine together this evening," he promised. Then he smiled ironically. "An intimate little supper with no more than two or three hundred guests." He looked at the nervous officials clustered nearby and made a wry face. "Until this evening, then."
Brador led them through the echoing marble corridors teeming with servants and minor functionaries.
"Big place," Belgarath observed after they had been walking for perhaps ten minutes. The old man had said very little since they had entered the city, but had ridden in his customary half doze, although Garion was quite sure that very little escaped his grandfather's half‑closed eyes.
"Yes," Brador agreed with him. "The first Emperor, Kallath, had grandiose notions at times."
Belgarath grunted. "It's a common affliction among rulers. I think it has something to do with insecurity."
"Tell me, Brador," Silk said, "didn't I hear somewhere that the state secret police are under the jurisdiction of your bureau?"
Brador nodded with a deprecating little smile. "It's one of my many responsibilities, Prince Kheldar," he replied. "I need to know what's going on in the empire in order to stay on top of things, so I had to organize a modest little intelligence service ‑nothing on nearly the scale of Queen Porenn's, however."
"It will grow with time," Velvet assured him. "Those things always do, for some reason."
The east wing of the palace was set somewhat apart from the rest of the buildings in the complex and it embraced a kind of enclosed courtyard or atrium that was green with exotic flowering plants growing about a mirror-like pool at its center. Jewel-like hummingbirds darted from blossom to blossom, adding splashes of vibrant, moving color.
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