by David Weber
"Was there anything else, Fifty Sarma?"
"No, Sir," Jaralt Sarma said. "Nothing else, Sir."
'Chapter Ten
"Voice Kinlafia?"
Darcel Kinlafia's head snapped up, like a startled rabbit exploding out of cover, as he turned to face the assistant chamberlain. His movement wasn't quite sudden enough to count as "whipping around," he realized an instant later, but it was too sudden for any other description.
"Yes?" His response came out half-strangled, and he cleared his throat, blushing furiously.
"If you'll come this way, please," the assistant chamberlain said with a small smile. Kinlafia didn't have to touch the man to feel the sympathy—and understanding—behind that smile, and a trickle of comfort flowed through him. Obviously, he was far from the first visitor to the Great Palace to wonder if his blood pressure was going to survive the visit. He supposed that the fact that most of them appeared to have made it through the ordeal intact should have been comforting, but somehow it didn't actually make him feel all that much better as the chamberlain led the way down the broad, marble-floored passageways with the walls adorned with paintings and tapestries, any one of which was probably worth a prince's ransom.
Don't be silly! Kinlafia scolded himself. Most of them are only worth a duke's ransom, you twit, whatever the cliche says! And it isn't "the Great Palace," any more, either.
He'd been more than a little surprised by the name change. For the better part of three centuries, this enormous, glittering fairyland had been known as the Great Palace, or the Grand Palace, depending upon how one chose to translate the Shurkhali. Now, though, it had reverted to the name it had borne for over two thousand years: Calirath Palace, the ancient and future home of the Calirath Dynasty.
The change in names had not met with universal approval. The palace had been renamed by one of the early seneschals who had been restored to rule after the Ternathian withdrawal from Othmaliz. It had been widely proclaimed as a gesture of Othmalizi pride in its restored independence, and Kinlafia had no doubt that at least some Othmalizis had seen it as a poke in the eye for the dynasty which had ruled over them for so long.
Of course, what none of them realized at the time was that the seneschal in question only got away with it because the Caliraths themselves agreed to it. It's amazing how few people knew the family never actually surrendered ownership. I suppose that's because it's been imperial policy for almost three hundred years to allow the Othmalizi government to use it as if it owned it. But given the most recent seneschal's track record, it's probably also the only reason it didn't get sold—or turned into a resort hotel!
None of the seneschals had gone out of their way to make known the minor fact of who actually owned the place (or the fact that it sat on what was technically still Ternathian territory, under the terms of the Empire's withdrawal from the rest of Othmaliz and Tajvana), and Kinlafia suspected that had the Great Palace belonged to anyone else, some seneschal would have seized title by force long ago. No one was quite stupid enough to do that to the Caliraths, however, and Kinlafia wondered how badly it must have irked generations of Othmalizi rulers to realize that they were living in someone else's house on sufferance . . . and that they couldn't even collect property taxes on it.
Judging from the current Seneschal's reaction to "his" parliament's decision to revert to the ancient and original name for the most historic single edifice in Tajvana, it must have irked them badly, indeed. The Seneschal had put the best face he could on the decision, but his mouthpieces had inveighed furiously against the entire notion in his usually tame parliament. Their failure to vote down the proposal had constituted a major political defeat for the Seneschal, and his irritation had been obvious despite his flowery speech of approval when the change became official.
Now Kinlafia remembered some of Shaylar's pithy comments about the Seneschal and surprised himself with a quiet chuckle of genuine amusement as he reflected upon how inordinately pleased she would have been by his current discomfiture.
The chamberlain glanced back at him, and this time Kinlafia's smile felt far more natural and unforced. The chamberlain gave him a slight nod, as if approving the change. Then they reached a huge, ornately carved door with the ancient motto of the Caliraths—I Stand Between—etched into the stone lintel above it. An armed guard in the green-and-gold of the Calirath Dynasty's personal retainers stood outside it, and the Voice felt something as the guard looked him up and down.
Kinlafia wasn't certain what he'd felt—or, rather, Felt. He'd never experienced anything quite like it before, and he found himself abruptly wondering if the occasional whispered rumors about the Ternathian imperial family's bodyguards and their Talents might not hold at least a kernel of truth, after all. Certainly there was something going on as the guard's eyes swept over him. Kinlafia could Feel a peculiar sort of . . . probing. Or testing, perhaps. Whatever it was, he couldn't put his mental hands on exactly the right label, but he knew it was there . . . whatever it was.
It lasted for no more than one or two heartbeats. Then the guard came to attention and nodded respectfully.
"Voice Kinlafia," he said quietly. "You're expected."
Kinlafia wondered if he was supposed to say anything in response, but before he could, the guard reached back—with his offhand, not his gun hand, Kinlafia noticed—and opened the door behind him. The Voice hesitated. He knew who was waiting for him on the other side of that threshold, and he abruptly discovered that even "call-me-Janaki's" letter of introduction wasn't nearly enough to prevent the butterflies in his midsection from launching into a complicated Arpathian drum dance.
In that moment, Darcel Kinlafia, who had accompanied Company-Captain chan Tesh's troopers through the swamp portal with rifle in hand, who had faced down brigands and outlaws, fought off claim jumpers and raiders, and stood his ground against charging bison, Ricathian cape buffalo, and even an infuriated grizzly bear, decided that the only thing to do was run. He was a fleet-footed man. If he started now, he could be all the way back to the train station in no more than twenty or thirty minutes. And from there—
The chamberlain's cleared throat interrupted the Voice's brief fantasy of escape. Kinlafia looked at him, and the chamberlain twitched his head at the open doorway. For an instant, Kinlafia actually considered backing away, but he discovered that he lacked sufficient nerve to chicken out at the last minute. And so he nodded back to the chamberlain and followed the palace staffer through the doorway with a surprisingly steady tread.
The room on the other side was on the small side—indeed it was positively tiny—by the scale of Calirath Palace, which meant it was no more than twenty-five or thirty feet on a side. It was furnished with surprisingly worn, overstuffed armchairs and a long, comfortable looking couch. A coffee table which appeared to have been made from driftwood stood in front of the couch, and an old leather-topped desk sat before the wide bay window which looked out over the sun-soaked palace gardens. Bookshelves lined the wall opposite the window, and the priceless artwork so much in evidence elsewhere in the palace had been replaced by what were very good but obviously amateur watercolors and oils of a land whose soft, misty greenery was far removed from the sunbaked heat of Tajvana.
All of that registered instantly, but almost peripherally. It couldn't have been any other way, when the man who'd been seated behind that desk stood and held out his right hand.
Kinlafia froze. No one had ever instructed him in formal court protocol and etiquette, but he had a shrewd notion that one didn't simply walk up to the Emperor of Ternathia, say "How the hell are you?" and shake hands with him. On the other hand, he had an equally shrewd notion that one didn't refuse to shake hands with him, either.
"Voice Kinlafia."
Zindel chan Calirath's voice was a shade deeper than his son's, but it sounded remarkably similar, and the physical resemblance between him and Janaki was positively uncanny. The crown prince stood eight inches over six feet, and he and his father were ve
ry much of a size. If anything, Zindel might have been a fraction of an inch the taller, and his shoulders were definitely broader. Aside from that and the strands of gray beginning to thread themselves through the dark, gold-shot hair of the Caliraths, the Emperor looked far more like Janaki's older brother than his father, the Voice thought. Then he gave himself a mental shake as he realized he was keeping the Emperor of Ternathia—no, the designated Emperor of Sharona—standing there with his hand held out.
"Your Majesty," Kinlafia got out. It sounded a little strangled to his own ears, and he drew a deep breath, then reached out and gripped the hand of the most powerful man in Sharonian history.
Darcel Kinlafia had come into this room determined not to intrude upon the Emperor's privacy in any way, only to discover that the stress of the moment was too great for him to shut down his Talent completely. He was far too well trained, and too experienced, to let things get fully out of hand, of course. He didn't even come close to tapping into Zindel's thoughts, but the Emperor's emotions were something else, entirely. Kinlafia couldn't help sensing those, and he felt a moment of something very like panic as he realized that was the case.
Yet that flare of almost-panic was brief. It vanished in a moment, blown away on the genuine welcome flowing out of Zindel like some warm, comforting tide, and something else swept over him in its wake. He remembered how Janaki's sheer presence had radiated that mysterious magnetism, that awareness that he was in the presence of the direct descendent of Erthain the Great. Yet whatever it was that Janaki had, it was far stronger, almost physically overpowering, as Kinlafia gripped Zindel's hand. It was like an electric charge, flowing through him, and he wondered if the Emperor was aware of it.
"My son has written me quite an epistle about you, Voice Kinlafia," Zindel said. "He appears to have been impressed by you."
"Ah, Prince Janaki is too kind, Your Majesty," Kinlafia got out.
"His mother will be glad to hear that." The Emperor released the Voice's hand with a smile. "I, on the other hand, know Janaki a bit better than that. He wouldn't have written me a letter like this one—" the Emperor gestured at the creased sheets of paper lying on his desk "—unless he truly felt it was justified. And I suppose I should add, Voice Kinlafia, that I have a very lively respect for his judgment."
"Your Majesty, I don't—"
Kinlafia broke off. The truth was, that he didn't have a clue what to say, and Zindel chuckled.
"I apologize, Voice Kinlafia. I'm sure this is all rather overwhelming after months out on the frontier. Tajvana traffic all by itself is probably enough to leave you longing to run for cover. And as if that weren't enough, here you are, dragged into the Palace for a face-to-face interview with that bogeyman, the Emperor."
There was so much genuine warmth and amusement in Zindel's expression that Kinlafia found himself chuckling as he nodded.
"I would never call you a bogeyman, Your Majesty," he said ruefully. "A little scary, now . . . that I might go for."
"I don't suppose I can blame you for that. On the other hand, at the moment what I most am is a father who hasn't seen his son in months. And you, Voice Kinlafia, are the man he picked to send his letters home with. That would be enough to make you welcome without any other recommendation from him. But you're also the Voice who relayed Voice Nargra-Kolmayr's last message to us, and from what Janaki's had to say in his letter about you, you're the sort of representative we're going to need in our new parliament, too. That's quite a combination of recommendations."
"Your Majesty, that was Prince Janaki's idea. Running for Parliament, I mean. It hadn't even crossed my mind until he raised the possibility."
"Which isn't a bad recommendation for office all by itself." Zindel's smile turned far less humorous. "Most people who start out wanting power for its own sake shouldn't be trusted with it in the first place. Which, I suppose, must sound a bit strange—if not hypocritical—coming from someone in my position."
Kinlafia made no response to that last statement, and the amusement returned to the Emperor's smile.
"I see Janaki was correct about your natural . . . diplomacy, Voice Kinlafia," he observed. "Don't worry. I won't put your native tact to any more tests. For now, at least."
* * *
Zindel chan Calirath watched the tanned, brown-haired Voice with careful attentiveness . . . and with more than just his eyes. He knew the fanciful rumors—legends, really—about the mysterious Talents which were somehow reserved as the exclusive property of the House of Calirath. Of course he did; everyone knew about those ridiculous tall tales. But what Zindel knew that most people didn't was that there was a solid core of truth behind them.
The Calirath bloodline extended far beyond the immediate imperial family. It could be no other way, after so many millennia, and the longstanding policy of the emperors of Ternathia to not simply permit but actively encourage periodic marriage outside the ranks of the aristocracy had only pushed that extension harder and farther. And yet there were the Talents which had been persistently associated with the imperial house for literally thousands of years but which scarcely ever manifested outside the immediate imperial family. And in addition to the Talents which everyone knew about, there were others, most of which were spoken of only in whispers, about which very few, indeed, knew a thing.
Zindel chan Calirath had always cherished his own doubts about the mythic, almost demigod stature of Erthain the Great as the sun source of all Talents. Yet he knew of no other explanation for the knowledge conserved within the Calirath archives. Ternathia had given the Talents to the entire human race . . . but the imperial dynasty had not shared all it knew. Only the Caliraths, their most trusted Healers, and the high priests of the Triad knew how to activate the potential to Glimpse the future, for example. And only the Caliraths and those same trusted Healers and priests knew how to awaken the other Talents bound up with the Winged Crown.
There'd been times Zindel felt more than a little uncomfortable with the notion that such knowledge had been kept secret for so long. The fact that no one was ever informed of it without first voluntarily agreeing to have that information placed forever under seal by a Mind Healer had also bothered him upon occasion. Yet, in the end, he'd always come back to the inescapable fact that the knowledge which reserved those Talents as the Crown's monoploy constituted one of the Empire's most important state secrets—one which had literally saved the Empire on at least two occasions. That was the sort of advantage no ruler could justify casting away.
The imperial family and its spokesmen had always been careful to smile at the "absurd notion" that such "secret Talents" existed. But they'd always been careful never to expressly deny their existence, either, which meant most people had come to the conclusion that there was some substance to the rumors, but not a lot. Still, the ability of the Ternathian Emperor to judge the fidelity of ambassadors and councilors, to recognize those driven by personal ambition, to pick out those who might betray his trust, was legendary, and as Zindel gazed at Darcel Kinlafia, he knew Janaki's judgment had not been in error.
Of course, Janaki didn't tell him everything, the Emperor thought. And I'm not going to tell him, either. Not yet, at least. I don't have any clearer Glimpse of why it's so important to Andrin to have this man in Tajvana than Janaki does. But Janaki's right about that, too.
"I'm afraid my schedule for the day is on the full side, Voice Kinlafia. It always is, actually. However, I've read Janaki's letter, and my initial impression of you strongly suggests that he's right about both your character and your electability. And the importance of the service you could render not simply to this new world government we're seeking to establish but to Sharona as a whole. I also realize that having the Crown Prince of Ternathia—and the Emperor, as well—suggest that to you has to be overwhelming."
" 'Overwhelming' is a grossly inadequate choice of words, Your Majesty," Kinlafia said with a grimace, and Zindel chuckled appreciatively. The fact that Kinlafia was able to make even that mi
ld a joke in his very first private audience said truly amazing things about the Voice's resilience. Things, Zindel suspected, which Kinlafia himself had never even suspected.
"I hope we can get past that," the Emperor said now. "I'll be honest with you. For all of the power and indisputable prestige which clings to the Winged Crown and the Calirath Dynasty, we can never have too many allies in the political process. I hope you'll become one of those allies. Not out of any sort of blind loyalty to my House—the fact that you aren't Ternathian yourself will probably help there—but because we both have the best interests of Sharona at heart and recognize the need for those who share that commitment to work together."
"Your Majesty," Kinlafia said slowly, "I appreciate what you've just said. And I appreciate everything the Prince said when he urged me to seek office. More than that, I hope we will find ourselves in agreement if I should manage to win election to Parliament. But if I do win election, my decisions as a member of Parliament will have to be my decisions. I hope you realize I mean absolutely no disrespect when I say this, but if I should find myself in disagreement with you, I would have no choice but to say so openly."
"An ally who isn't willing to tell you when he thinks you're wrong isn't an ally worth having, Voice Kinlafia," Zindel said, and it was hard to conceal his satisfaction. It took a huge amount of intestinal fortitude—not to mention a spring-steel spine—to stand up to the Emperor of Ternathia in a face-to-face audience. People who could do that were far too valuable to let slip away.
"I'm glad you think so, Your Majesty." Kinlafia's tone and expression were still somewhat guarded, and Zindel shrugged.
"I'm sure if you do disagree with me, and if I think you're wrong to disagree, we'll have the occasional . . . energetic debate, let's say. I've been told by my physicians and Healers that occasional bouts of elevated pulse rate and respiration are good for my circulatory system, though, so I don't think it will be a problem. Not," Zindel smiled charmingly, "from my perspective, at any rate."
