“Especially the Grand Council,” put in Mara. I could see she had all picked up on the strangeness of the Counsellors’ presence. “I wonder, Imperiality,” she continued, “just why the Council is gathered here, why your guards haven’t arrived yet even after a disruptor blast and several loud screams, and who is responsible for arranging this.”
“And Beramis?” I asked, somehow keeping my voice from breaking.
“His death must be part of the same plot.”
I thought a moment, then spoke to the arched ceiling. “Monitoring crew, relay this to my guards. I want them here, now, without weapons, I repeat, without weapons. Mara, the woman with the disruptor pistol and the blond hair, is temporarily their commander. They are to do as she instructs. Understand?”
A second later, a low-powered laser locked onto my right retina and flashed an acknowledgement: GUARDS ADVISED. It stayed in my line of sight as an after-image for a good minute.
Now, to get to the heart of this plot.
I said, “What were you saying, Jon?”
“I think this goes even deeper than it seems. This ert,” he said, giving the a shake, “was to have been killed by that one.” He bared his teeth in a humorless grin as his captive suddenly paled. “What’s wrong, assassin? Did you just realize you’d been set up? But there’s more than Beramis’s murder… ”
“I didn’t!” the gasped. “His Imperiality told me—”
“I told you to shut up,” I said. I saw, then, why so many High Emperors had gone insane of late. The Grand Council had been responsible. Like any bureaucracy, it had been taking on more and more power at every opportunity… and what better way to keep gaining power than to drive Emperors insane? Their final intention, I thought, would be discrediting so many High Emperors that the very institution was destroyed. Then the Council could easily step in to run things.
I couldn’t be the first to say it, or they’d have reason to throw me out of office: insanity due to paranoia.
From the expression on Jon’s face, I saw he understood, too.
I smiled. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Jon.”
And he did, in short, blunt, angry words. He accused the Grand Council of everything short of murdering me. All the time, I looked on sagely.
“Preposterous!” snorted Grand Counsellor Alderman. He took a stately step forward. “Madness.” Another. “How can you even think such a—”
“Grand Counsellor,” Mara said, “I think that if you get any closer, His Imperiality’s temporary commander of his guard is going to blast you.”
Alderman shut up and took a quick step back.
In a moment, a small squad of uniformed guards pushed their way though the crowd and saluted me. The holsters for their disruptor pistols were empty.
“Search the crowd for weapons,” I said quickly. “I want to know if we have any more assassins hiding among us.”
“Outrageous!” shouted Counsellor Alderman.
“Start with him,” Mara said.
“Get your hands off me!” Alderman said, as several guards began going through his pockets. “It’s unheard of to assault a Grand Counsellor!”
“Sir.” One of the searchers pulled a small weapon from his pocket and held it up for me to see.
“This is pretty unheard of, too,” I said. “Needle-pistol, isn’t it, Counsellor?”
“I can explain—”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “Jon?”
“As for the technique, it appears quite simple: making the High Emperor as word-bound as the Bureaucracy itself, until the Emperor is locked into a fear-pattern regarding his speech. That is, he becomes afraid to speak lest he accidentally get himself or a close friend killed. The pressure simply drives him mad. And, if he does figure out what’s going on—that the plot is turning his every word against him—then the Grand Council can rule him insane due to paranoia.”
“Indeed,” I said.
“Nonsense!” snapped Alderman. “If that gun-waving woman will permit me?” At Mara’s nod, he went on: “His Imperiality incautiously ordered someone to stop that unfortunate young there. So, in his haste to obey, for the High Emperor’s every word is absolute law, this man pulled out his disruptor—”
“Which he just happened to be carrying?” said Jon. “And at the Imperial Coronation Ball? And then another of your assassins just happens to be ready to blast him?”
“Clearly a function such as this, even here, must have some armed men in unobtrusive attendance,” Alderman said.
“These are things which you from the more backward corners of the Imperium cannot be expected to understand, of course. But, needless to say, when the first gunman went so far as to try to blame the Emperor himself for—”
“Shut your lying face,” growled Quent. “You set up this bloody-handed killer to get Beramis, and you set up that one to shut the first murderer up afterwards, and then you had a gun yourself, just in case.”
“Insanity,” hissed Alderman. He raised his voice, shouted, “Madness.” He turned to the rest of the watching Grand Council. “Colleagues of the Council, it is just as I feared; now we must consider the matter of the fitness of His Imperiality. All this talk of wild plots by the bureaucracy—”
“Counsellor!” gasped Mara. “Jad, what shall—”
I moved slowly toward Alderman and the Council, motioning Mara aside. “Now, if a High Emperor from a backward corner of the Imperium may make a small observation?”
Alderman edged back nervously.
“Leaving aside the matter of the killer, who appears extraordinarily and literally obedient one moment and quite unable to take orders the next; leaving aside the matter of the second gunman, who wants to defend My Imperiality even before I’ve been blamed for anything—” I continued to advance, step by step, slowly herding Alderman in a broad loop. We moved through the Grand Counsellors, who scrambled aside to give him room. “—and leaving aside the question of whether you were close enough to hear exactly what I said, the observation I would like to make is that I haven’t said a word about any plots by you, the Bureaucracy, the Grand Council, or anyone else.” I paused a heartbeat, just long enough for Alderman to begin to hope. “Yet.”
I noticed that the guards had finished their search of the immediate crowd: no more weapons. Ahead of me, behind the still-retreating Alderman, I saw Rina mourning over Beramis’s body. Grimly, I maneuvered the Grand Counsellor toward the corpse.
I said, “I think the captain of the guard should be summoned next, if I want more answers. I’m sure he knows what, or who, kept the guards so long.”
“Y-Your Imperiality,” said Counsellor Alderman, face grown quite pale, “we, uh, we meant no harm, but Your Imperiality must be made to, uh, must realize the responsibilities of omnipotence and infallibility and—and—”
“You’d better stop backing up,” I said. “You’re about to step on a dead man.”
Alderman looked back and saw Beramis lying there, all crumpled, on the floor of the great ballroom. Beyond the corpse, Rina rose to her feet.
I turned to Mara. “Have our two assassins brought over here.” Then I turned back to Grand Counsellor Alderman and took a deep breath. “So,” I said, shifting to my lecturing voice, “you would have me infallible and omnipotent? You would have one obey my words rather than my meaning, and a second commit murder to protect my infallibility? You would, then, if you do not drive me mad, make me into the image of the Bureaucracy, bound by words and rules instead of meaning and reality? Well?”