“Good. Good.” Prestimion seized Dekkeret’s hand and wrung it with startling force.
Then, at last, his icy self-control broke. He turned quickly away and went striding briskly around the room in quick furious steps, fists clenched, shoulders rigid. Dekkeret suddenly understood the aura of tension that had surrounded Prestimion this day: the man had been overflowing all this while with barely contained rage. That was only too plain now. That his own family should be under attack—his wife and his daughter, and of course Teotas—that was something he could not and would not abide. The Pontifex’s face looked gray with fatigue, but there was a bright spark of anger in his eyes.
A hot stream of words that had been withheld too long came boiling out of him now.
“By the Divine, Dekkeret, can you imagine anything more intolerable! Yet another rebellion? Are we never to be spared such things? But this time we’ll put a finish to the rebels and their rebellion both. We’ll hunt down this Mandralisca and make an end to him once and for all, and these five brothers as well, and all who swear allegiance to them.”
Prestimion was moving agitatedly about the room all the while, barely pausing to look in Dekkeret’s direction. “I tell you, Dekkeret, whatever was left of my patience is worn away. I’ve spent the twenty years of my reign, Coronal and Pontifex both, struggling with enemies such as no ruler of Majipoor since Stiamot’s time has had to cope with. Drive my brother to madness, will they? Enter the dreams of my little girl, even? No. No! I’ve had enough and more than enough. We’ll cut them down. We’ll abolish them root and branch. Root and branch, Dekkeret!”
Dekkeret had never seen Prestimion in such rage. But then the Pontifex seemed to regain some measure of poise. He halted his frenzied pacing and took up a stance in the middle of the room, letting his arms dangle, breathing slowly in and out. Then he waved Dekkeret and Dinitak unceremoniously to the door. His voice was calmer, now, but it was chilly, even harsh. “Go, now, the two of you. Go! I need to speak with Varaile, to let her know what’s ahead for us.”
Dekkeret was more than happy to be excused from the Pontifex’s presence. This was a new Prestimion, and a frightening one. He was aware that Prestimion had ever been an impulsive and passionate man, his intrinsic shrewdness and caution constantly at war with surging temper and impatience. But there had always been a leavening quality of good humor and playful wit about him that gave him the ability to find sources of fresh strength even in times of the most arduous crisis.
Moderation in the face of adversity had been Prestimion’s defining characteristic throughout his long and challenging reign. Dekkeret had already noticed that in his middle years he seemed to have grown crusty and conservative, as men will often do, and had lost a good deal of that resilience. Prestimion appeared to be taking this Mandralisca business as a personal affront, rather than as the attack on the sanctity of the commonwealth that it actually was.
Perhaps it is for this reason, Dekkeret thought, that we have a system of double monarchy here. As the Coronal grows older and more rigid, he moves on to the higher throne and is replaced at the Castle by a younger man, and thereby the wisdom and experience of age is yoked to the flexibility and vigor of buoyant youth.
Fulkari greeted Dekkeret with a warm embrace when he returned to their quarters after parting from Dinitak. She had just been bathing, it seemed, and wore only a thick furry robe and a bright golden strand at her throat. A sweet aroma of bathing-spices rose from her breasts and shoulders. He felt some of the stress of his meeting with Prestimion beginning to ebb from him.
But clearly she was able to tell, just at a single glance, that things were not right. “You look very strange,” she said. “Did things go badly between you and Prestimion?”
“Our meeting covered a lot of difficult ground.” Dekkeret flung himself down carelessly on a velvet-covered divan. It creaked in protest as his big form landed on it. “Prestimion himself is becoming rather difficult.”
“In what way?” said Fulkari, seating herself at the divan’s foot.
“In a dozen ways. The long weariness of holding high office has had its effect on him. He laughs much less than he did when he was younger. Things that once might have seemed funny to him no longer amuse him. He gets angry very easily. He and Abrigant had a peculiar little argument that never should have taken place in front of me. Or at all, for that matter.” Dekkeret shook his head. “I don’t mean to speak harshly of him. He’s still an extraordinary man. And we mustn’t forget that his youngest brother has just met a horrifying death.”
“Small wonder that he’s behaving like this, then.”
“But it’s painful to see. I feel for him, Fulkari.”
She grinned mischievously. Taking one of his feet in her hands, she began to knead and massage it. “And will you also grow cranky and ill-tempered when you’re Pontifex, Dekkeret?”
He winked at her. “Of course. I’d think something was wrong with me if I didn’t.”
For an instant she appeared, despite the wink, to have taken him seriously. But then she laughed and said, “Good. I find cranky, ill-tempered men very attractive. Almost irresistible, as a matter of fact. Just the thought of it excites me.”
She slithered up the divan toward him until she was nestling in the crook of his arm. Dekkeret pressed his face against her copper-bright hair, inhaled its fragrance, kissed her lightly on the nape of her neck. Slipping his one hand into the front of her robe, he lightly traced the line of her collarbone with his fingers, then let the hand slide lower to cup one of her breasts. They remained like that for a time, neither of them in a hurry to move onward to the next stage.
He said, after a while, “We’ll be returning tomorrow to the Castle.”
“Will we, now?” said Fulkari dreamily. “That’s nice. Although it’s very nice here too. I wouldn’t mind staying another week or two.” She wriggled against him, fitting her body more snugly into place against his.
“There’s plenty of work waiting for me at home,” Dekkeret persisted, wondering why he was so perversely bound on shattering the developing mood. “And once I’ve caught up with that there’ll be a little traveling for us to do.”
“A trip? Ooh, that’s nice too.” She sounded almost on the edge of sleep. She was coiled against him in a state of utter relaxation, warm and soft, like a drowsy kitten. “Where will we be going, Dekkeret? Stee? High Morpin.”
“Farther. Much farther.—Alaisor, in fact.”
That woke her up quickly. She drew back her head and stared at him in amazement. “Alaisor?” she said, blinking at him. “But that’s thousands of miles away! I’ve never been that far from the Mount in my life! Why Alaisor, Dekkeret?”
“Because,” he said, wishing most profoundly that he had saved all this for later.
“Just because? Clear to the other side of Alhanroel, just because?”
“It’s at the Pontifex’s request, actually. Official business.”
“The matter that you and he were just discussing, you mean?”
“More or less.”
“And what matter exactly was that?” Fulkari had extricated herself from his embrace, now, and had swung around to face him, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the divan.
Dekkeret realized that caution was in order here. He was hardly in a position to share much of the real story with her—the rebellion that was supposedly starting up in Zimroel, the reappearance of Mandralisca, the possibility that the Barjazid helmet had been used to drive Teotas to his death. Those were not affairs that he was able to speak of with her. Fulkari was still a private citizen. A Coronal might share such things with his wife, but Fulkari was not his wife.