“You’ll get used to it.” Darcel patted Istin on the shoulder.
The young man smiled gamely but didn’t exactly agree as he used his gangly height to clear a path towards the rented auditorium. A few interns joined his efforts including one of the newest volunteers, Kelahm something. Darcel couldn’t quite remember his name.
Kelahm was brown-haired and brown-eyed just like Darcel himself, and rather below average height for a Ternathian. A late addition to the campaign, he always seemed to be exactly where he needed to be at any given moment, and he was always ready to help with any task, yet somehow he always faded into the background. It wasn’t that his personality was colorless, exactly. He was simply one of those people who seemed…muted, somehow. Darcel worked hard to avoid the trap of taking volunteers for granted, which seemed to afflict many politicians, and he felt obscurely guilty about the way Kelahm disappeared into the backdrop, even for him. It didn’t seem to offend Kelahm, but Darcel made a mental memo-again-to get to know the other man better.
A warm, much more memorable presence brushed his mind and Darcel felt his fiance before he saw her. Alazon Yanamar, former Privy Voice to Emperor Zindel and the exquisite slender, dark-haired woman of his dreams, hopped out of the train car and stepped to his side. He didn’t know how she’d justified spending this week on the campaign trail with him. Precious few Voices in Sharona had her Talent; fewer still had developed the political sense she’d earned in her years working at the emperor’s side; and none of them had been Emperor Zindel’s Privy Voice.
Darcel’s heart thumped again in astonishment that this amazing woman was here with him. They were soul mates in the magical way two Talents could sometimes find themselves perfectly matched with one another, yet that was only part of what made her so amazing to him. He still found the notion of himself as a politician profoundly absurd in many ways, but that choice wasn’t up to him any longer. One way or the other, however preposterous it seemed, he had a political career to launch. Alazon had decided to help him do it, and to his amazement, Emperor Zindel had agreed to let her. As a Voice himself, Darcel knew how incredibly valuable someone with her strength of Talent-and the brainpower to go with it-was to any leader, far less the man who was about to become Emperor of Sharona, yet Zindel hadn’t even blinked when she informed him she intended to resign to help Darcel’s campaign. Of course, there was the little question of whether or not he intended to allow her to remain resigned after the elections, and Darcel strongly suspected that both Alazon and Ulantha Jastyr-her protegee and long-term assistant who’d “replaced” her as Privy Voice-knew her resignation was actually only a leave of absence. In fact, what he truly suspected was that Zindel himself had engineered the entire thing, although he knew, as only a Voice bonded to another Voice could know-that Alazon hadn’t realized it when she initially offered her resignation. She’d expected the emperor to fight her decision, not support it, and she still seemed a bit bemused that he hadn’t.
Darcel hadn’t asked the emperor about any ulterior motives which might explain his willingness to deprive himself of the best Privy Voice in the multiverse, but it would have been entirely in keeping with things Zindel had already said to him. There were more reasons for his entry into politics than an old survey crew Voice’s needing a job when a lot of the resources formerly used on exploration were redirected towards war. Prince Janaki had told him he had important work to do for Sharona, but Darcel had found that difficult to believe. He still did, in many ways, but he’d been shaken to his marrow when he’d accidentally shared bits of one of Emperor Zindel’s Glimpses and seen himself at the side of a future Empress Andrin. He supposed he’d started down that road when he and Alazon pointed Andrin at the blessed ambiguity of the Unification Treaty’s stipulations, but the emperor’s Glimpse went far beyond that.
Alazon didn’t know everything about that, because he couldn’t share the details of that Glimpse with her-much as he loved her, they were both Voices, bound by the confidentiality oaths which went with their Talents-but she clearly understood that the threads of his and Andrin’s lives were somehow interwoven, and she was both immensely pragmatic and someone who’d seen imperial politics from their very heart for years. If he was to play a part on that sort of stage, he needed the stature and position from which to play it, which was why she’d insisted Darcel follow through and seek election. At the same time, she’d also insisted he couldn’t be directly tied to Emperor Zindel during the campaign, which was the real reason she’d resigned her position at the emperor’s right hand. Had she stayed Privy Voice, no one reporting on his candidacy would have let a mention of the campaign be complete without a reference to how close to the Winged Crown’s influence he would have to be, and that could definitely have been a two-edged sword in New Farnal.
New Farnal might have been populated and governed initially with significant assistance from the Ternathian Empire, but the public didn’t necessarily warm to monarchies now. Even a monarch as generally approved of as Emperor Zindel was still in the words of Darcel’s own mother, “An unelected genetic lottery winner. He could easily have been a despot, and Ternathia wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it without one hell of a war, and we’ve already got enough warfare going on as it is, don’t you agree?”
It was in the light of that sort of attitude that Alazon had decided to leave her position as Privy Voice to spend her days and nights with him on the campaign trail. The fact that Zindel undoubtedly expected her back didn’t change the fact that she hadn’t known that when she handed in her resignation, and Darcel was amazed still she’d been willing to risk her entire career for him.
‹I love you,› he Sent.
The laugh lines around Alazon’s clear gray eyes crinkled in greeting and, possibly in response to his thought, she darted a gentle look towards the waiting voters. Darcel turned back towards the crowd with her hand in his.
The next constituent wore a pin supporting one of the other Voices running for the same seat as Darcel.
She offered her hand anyway, and he took it. He would have done that under any circumstances, but her grip was firm and her gaze met his forthrightly, and he found himself smiling at her. She clearly wasn’t going to be supporting him, but Voices were better than most at sizing up others’ motives, and whatever her motives for choosing a different candidate, she was open about it. And she was also refreshingly free of the sort of demonization of political opponents he’d already encountered entirely too often.
At least she wasn’t one of the conspiracy nut “Truthers” who were trying to deny anything had really happened out there on the frontier. Or who believed, if something had happened, that the Portal Authority-including one Darcel Kinlafia-had somehow provoked it. For that matter, she wasn’t even one of the depressingly large number of people who figured he was only one more political hack who’d vote for anything if given a large enough private campaign donation.
Darcel smiled at the open adversary, waved her in the direction of the complimentary buffet, and turned to the next member of this town’s League of Women Talents. ‹Whitterhoo› Alazon supplied with a light mental laugh. ‹‘This town’ is Whitterhoo.›
Darcel sent a mental grin back. Alazon’s mind fitted his own so comfortably he had to keep a tight focus to avoid acting a like a love struck puppy in front of the crowd of would be voters. There was no hiding that he adored her and that the feeling was mutual, but they were both expert Talents, well able to keep their mental communication private even from the other Voices in the crowd if they stayed focused. And there were always other Voices in the crowd.