Drubeka in her SUNN personality began a very creditable obeisance for a woman who’d spent the last several years interviewing small town fishermen and plebeian business magnates. She got no further than the initial bow, because the emperor stepped in close and clasped both her arms in the warm greeting of colleagues. That caused the robe to slide, and Drubeka caught it.
Emperor Chava laughed out loud, the handful of courtiers attending to business around the room chuckled in pure delight…and a chill ran down Trebar’s spine.
Chava’s eyes twinkled inviting all of Sharona to share in the joke. The Uromathian-based Voice Broadcast Service had accused SUNN of carrying the robe for Emperor Zindel. The phrase implied an ugly willingness to do distasteful things to further the desires of the robe’s owner-an insinuation SUNN Voicecasters had simply ignored. Now VBS would play the nasty comment to the hilt with their audience if SUNN used the interview.
“Mistress Drubeka.” The emperor chuckled. “You SUNN correspondents simply cannot help yourselves. I shall have to ask the VBS to take your natural inclinations into account when they make their news bulletins.” He tipped his head at a courtier standing a half dozen paces back up the entry wearing, Trebar noticed belatedly, the sash of office adopted by Voices in the employ of VBS.
So they could be sure this interlude would run tonight whether SUNN showed it or not, he thought. SUNN in the person of Noriellena Drubeka would be accused of being Emperor Zindel’s robeholder, and the VBS report would surely expand that to imply Drubeka was so used to being Zindel’s servant that she’d reached out and grabbed Emperor Chava’s robe too out of helpless habit. Regrettably the other man had had a better view of the whole exchange, and Trebar moved quickly around to position himself for the rest of the interview.
Drubeka rallied by offering the robe to the VBS Voice…who avoided ruining his version of events by making a leave-taking bow to Emperor Chava and exiting the chamber. At a crook of the emperor’s finger, a servant relieved Drubeka of the heavy garment.
“Please, please.” Chava motioned to an alcove, clearly set up specifically for this meeting. “Let us sit. My page, he tells me he is a big fan of your work, but you have questions about the new Parliament, of course. And you would like to ask me about the war caucus. Is that not so?”
Trebar was already very still taking the record. Drubeka only froze for a fraction of a second. Then she smiled right back at the Emperor.
Chava Busar was good. He’d had to be to build and hold the political position Uromathia had maintained for the last decade, but in Ternathian-influenced areas of Sharona it was too easy to discount the man as a power-mad aristocrat more likely to be killed by his own kin than to survive to old age.
The emperor sat and the interview began.
Drubeka skipped the formal, flowery intro she’d practiced. This had become Chava’s Voicecast, not hers. He was setting the tone and she’d have to scramble to slip in her best questions wherever she could make them fit. The plan had been to distract him with a few cetacean rights questions, the topic she was known for pursuing in many of her interviews, and then shock him into an unplanned response with questions about the MPs who might emerge as parliamentary leaders.
Clearly surprise was now out of the question. She could ask about the cetaceans after all, but that was old news, with well-worn talking points he’d already spoken to with a dozen VBS reporters. Drubeka had pursued this audience to get something fresh, and the war caucus was the topic of the day.
The group supported Emperor Zindel, celebrated the unification of the Sharonan universes, and sought to transfer as much power as possible to the Winged Crown. One MP had even suggested folding existing national police agencies into a single imperial police force-far beyond anything Emperor Zindel had requested. The obvious question was what the Uromathian Emperor would have to say about this support for his rival’s objectives.
Drubeka didn’t do obvious, but she didn’t normally interview emperors, either.
“Mistress Drubeka.” She’d waited too long and Chava was taking the interview’s reins again, and the correspondent clenched her teeth at the thought. “Why is it, exactly, that your news organization, this SUNN, is so negative towards all things Uromathian?”
“Your Excellency, I’m no emperor to speak for all of SUNN.” Trebar breathed relief as Drubeka rallied enough to speak calmly. “Personally, I find Uromathia a lovely place and, as you yourself mentioned, we have many fans here, including Master Rihva your Excellency’s Court Page.”
She didn’t take the bait and attempt to defend the reporting, for a lot of reasons. One was that it was true reporting, highly critical not of Uromathia itself but of Uromathia’s current emperor, as she and her Voice was in a far better position than most non-Uromathians to know. Kylmos Trebar and Noriellena Drubeka were among the many who’d been greatly relieved when Zindel had emerged as Emperor of Sharona instead of Chava. Another reason, of course, was that attempting to defend it would give Chava exactly what he wanted: legitimization for the VSB’s claims of bias. The SUNN correspondent had obviously been scrambling for an explanation of Chava’s legitimate question, their mouthpieces would opine. It wouldn’t matter what she’d actually said, either; they were past masters at twisting clear, simple declarative sentences into pretzels to make those sentences say exactly what they wanted them to say.
“Your Excellency,” Drubeka said instead, “while I have this wonderful chance to ask, and I must say it’s beyond gracious of you to have allowed this interview, I must ask some questions myself. So I suppose I should start with a question your page told me he hoped I would ask: Who’s your favorite MP?”
It was a simple question, she’d never thought to ask, but after the page had mentioned it, Drubeka hadn’t been able to let it go. If Chava answered, he’d probably name the man he’d chosen as leader of the opposition and she’d be able to stop leaning on the SUNN analysts’ guesses about which Uromathian MPs had influence and which didn’t.
Emperor Chava smiled indulgently, as Drubeka held her breath waiting to see what he’d say.
“Here in Uromathia,” he said. “All our MPs are the exquisite flowers of their districts, as difficult to chose between as an orchid over a rose. So I would not normally answer this question.” Emperor Chava leaned in with a knowing look directly at Trebar. “But for my friend Mistress Drubeka who sees the loveliness of Uromathia, I tell this secret. My favorite is the fine Mister Darcel Kinlafia.”
Trebar blinked quickly. He needed to focus and catch all this.
Kinlafia had no connection to Uromathia. The MP’s district was in New Farnal, which had been populated by settlers from Ternathia not Uromathia, and the MP’s wife was even Emperor Zindel’s former Privy Voice.
Someone was being played right now. Quite possibly it was all of Sharona, but it might be just SUNN and Drubeka. Trebar couldn’t tell where this was going and he needed to see and hear what Chava decided to announce next.
Drubeka glanced downward with an eyelash flutter that was something of a signature expression for her. It gave the viewers a distraction while she thought.
And she might not realize it, but Trebar knew she used it far more often when she thought the interviews were going exceptionally well than when she thought they were out of control. Not for the first time he wished she’d been at least a trace Mind Speaker so he could whisper a warning as she played with a black tendril of hair by her ear.
“Oh my, that is a secret.” Drubeka tilted her head with another eyelash flutter at Trebar inviting all of Sharona to join her and the emperor in this interview-turned-intimate-conversation. “I know all the women out there agree Darcel has that wild universe-explorer handsomeness, but tell me really, what attracted Your Excellency?”