LITMIR.BIZ

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the Great Ones with whom she arrived, and the Warlord.’ He paused for a moment, then ended the assembly with the formal dismissal, ‘Honours to your houses, my lords.’

      He stepped down from dais and everyone in the room bowed, the common servants going to their knees. As the Emperor swept past, he glanced in Miranda’s direction, and indicated that she should follow.

      As the newly-appointed Warlord fell into step behind the Emperor, Alenca held Miranda back for a moment. Without preamble, he said, ‘By breaking the seal on the temple of the War God, the Light of Heaven ensures all other matters become moot. No faction struggle, clan feud, or debt of blood may be undertaken until the temple door is again resealed, and that will not happen until final victory is achieved.’ He glanced around as if worried about being overheard. ‘You must understand the gravity of this. He has told them that not only are we preparing for the possibility of war, but that we are going to war.’

      Miranda was confused. ‘Isn’t that what we wanted?’

      Alenca said, ‘It is not what I expected. Moreover, I never believed any emperor would again revive the office of Warlord. To promote a Minwanabi to that position …’

      ‘What does it mean?’ asked Miranda, wishing not for the first time but with more fervour than ever before that her husband were here. Pug would understand all of this.

      ‘There is an old saying, one that I am certain you have among your people as well: keep your friends close and your enemies closer. The Minwanabi were defeated by the Acoma, the Emperor’s ancestors, and rather than the usual obliteration, with every living member of that family put to the sword or sold into slavery, the great Lady of the Acoma, the Mistress of the Empire, in a gesture of mercy unimaginable to any Tsurani ruling noble, allowed the Minwanabi to survive. That made one of the original five great houses a vassal to a lesser house, an insult to our ancestors despite the generosity of the gesture.’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ said Miranda.

      ‘You would have to be Tsurani to understand fully, I fear,’ said Alenca, motioning for Miranda to follow. ‘A minor cousin, one of the last surviving members of the last true Minwanabi lord was made ruling lord and he later married an Acoma cousin, further binding the two houses together, but the insult to the Minwanabi by the Acoma was never forgotten. I suspect that breaking the seal on the temple and putting the most dangerous man in the Empire in charge of the war is our Light of Heaven’s tactic to ensure that his most bitter enemy within the High Council is otherwise occupied for the foreseeable future and not exploring the possibility of regicide.’

      Miranda took a deep breath to calm herself and wondered, not for the first time, if the Tsurani were truly mad.

      Miranda continued to observe the young Emperor as he oversaw the conference in his private chambers. They had met only briefly on two previous occasions, the first when he was a boy in his father’s court, and the second time when he assumed the throne. The later event was so dominated by Tsurani tradition that she had been in his presence for less than five minutes, and the entire conversation had been between the young Emperor and her husband. Miranda had found it annoyingly ironic that she was soundly ignored by a tradition-bound young man who owed his position entirely to a tradition-breaking woman, his great-grandmother.

      And again she was being left on the edge of the conversation while the newly-appointed Warlord and the Emperor directed the bulk of the questions to Alenca and the two other senior magicians from the Assembly. At one point in the hour-long interrogation she had verged on volunteering an observation, but Alenca had shot her a warning glance and a slight shake of the head and she had remained silent. Because of her husband’s affections for the old man and her previous dealings with him, she followed his lead, but wondered at what he was playing.

      Despite the injury done to her pride and independent nature, Miranda was impressed by how deftly the Emperor manoeuvred the discussion in the direction in which he wished it to go, deftly controlling the flow of debate and manipulating opinion. After another hour of discussion, she was now certain that despite his youth, this Sezu of the Acoma, First of that Name, Emperor of all Tsuranuanni and Light of Heaven, was nobody’s fool. When the meeting came to a close, he had fashioned a consensus without once having to appeal to his own authority.

      As she rose, the Emperor said, ‘Lady Miranda, a moment please.’

      Alenca hesitated, then bowed slightly again to the Emperor and with an expression of curiosity indicated to Miranda that he’d wait outside for her. Once the Tsurani nobles and magicians had departed, the Emperor said, ‘May I offer you something? Wine? I have several very good reds from your Kingdom of the Isles, as well as some of those that have been cultivated here, though I fear our hot climate makes for difficult vintages.’

      Almost charmed, Miranda realized he was attempting to get her to drop her guard. She said, ‘Water would be fine, Majesty.’

      He signalled and almost before the gesture was finished a large ceramic goblet of fresh water was presented on a tray by a servant. While she drank, the Emperor waved away the servants and pointed to two chairs placed before a massive window looking out over the central courtyard of the palace. ‘Please, no formality,’ he said in the King’s Tongue, almost without accent.

      She looked surprised.

      ‘My guards are sworn to protect me and my life with their own,’ he said, indicating the four remaining figures in the room, men clad in the traditional white-gold armour of the Emperor’s personal guard. ‘But they are men, and as such, likely to suffer the flaws of men. A word here, a chance remark there, and we are undone. So, while many here in Kelewan speak one or another of your homeworld’s tongues, I ensured that none of these do.’ He said this with humour, but his eyes were fixed upon Miranda and showed no mirth. ‘So, what do you really think?’

      ‘About what, Majesty?’ replied Miranda as she sat in the proffered chair, a well-cushioned divan that faced the Emperor’s. She studied his face. Like the Kingdom of the Isles and the Empire of Great Kesh on Midkemia, the Tsurani Empire was made up of diverse people, so there was no true Tsurani ‘look’, save that they were a short people compared to those from Midkemia. Sezu was a bit taller than average, perhaps matching Miranda’s five foot nine – most Tsurani men were an inch or two shorter; some were barely taller than dwarves.

      Other than that, the young man appeared the icon of Tsurani nobility, poised, calm, and almost impossible to read. If there was one thing about the Tsurani in general that annoyed Miranda it was their seemingly implacable composure. One rarely heard a raised voice or heated exchanges in public.

      The Emperor sat down. ‘You did well.’

      ‘Thank you,’ said Miranda, ‘I think.’

      The young man smiled and years fell away from him. ‘I sometimes struggle to remember you’re quite old, for you appear not that much more older than me, say an older sister or very young aunt.’

      Miranda said, ‘Very young.’

      The Emperor chuckled. ‘I have been told certain things regarding your husband’s whereabouts. Are those reports accurate?’

      ‘As accurate as can be, given that he’s unreachable by any means, magic or mundane,’ she replied.

      The Emperor leaned back, thoughtful. ‘He undertakes a journey of unimaginable risk.’

      Miranda’s expression revealed her concern, despite her attempt to appear calm. ‘As I know all too well, Majesty.’

      ‘Then there are things I must know.’

      ‘What would you know, Majesty?’

      ‘The truth,’ said the young monarch. ‘Alenca and the others often think me still a boy – and I suspect from their vantage point of advancing age. I must be – but from your point of view they must seem as children.’

      ‘I learned a long time ago, Majesty, age has little to do with wisdom. One can endure a lifetime’s experiences in a few years or go through life blissfully unaware of the world’s troubles around you.

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