December 29
The Seneschal of Othmaliz stood breathing in the incense, listening to the majestic music of organ and woodwinds, and the bathed in the glorious polychromatic chiaroscuro light pouring in through the Temple of Taiyr’s stained glass dome and managed-somehow-not to curse.
It wasn’t easy.
He held the golden staff of his high office in his right hand, but he would vastly have preferred a dagger. The memory of the previous day’s insult burned deep within him, like poison, and there was only one way that poison might be purged. Yet today he had no choice but to absorb yet another insult, yet another affront to the dignity of his office, and yet another nail in the coffin of the Order of Bergahl authority here in its own city.
He’d considered-considered long and hard-pleading illness and remaining closeted in his apartments with his personal healer. No one would have believed it for a moment, and that would have been fine with him. It would have been one way to repay at least a little of the calculated insult he’d been offered in the Emperor Garim Chancellery during that travesty of a wedding. Unfortunately, he’d discovered-or perhaps rediscovered-just how much he truly feared those Ternathian barbarians. The unspeakable Zindel had the bit well and truly between his teeth at the moment. The Seneschal wouldn’t put it past the Emperor to send his personal armsmen to drag a recalcitrant cleric to the temple. After all, he’d stood there and smiled while his bitch of a daughter used her godsdamned bird to terrify and humiliate him in front of the entire Conclave!
Still, he would probably have dared Zindel’s wrath-no, he told himself, he would certainly have shown his steel by defying the Calirath tyrant-if not for the message from Chava Busar.
The Seneschal knew that at least half of Tajvana was waiting, agog to see how Chava would react to the Coronation now that he’d had thirty-six hours to recover from the shock of that oversized cutcha’s scandalous, bizarre betrothal and wedding. However pleasant he might have forced himself to appear in the Chancellery, no one could doubt the bitter bile he’d swallowed as Zindel and his daughter brazenly circumvented the clear intent of the Articles of Unification. He was a proud man, Chava Busar, and one who had agreed to subordinate his own empire to this worlds-wide monstrosity the Conclave had forged only after the interests of his own dynasty had been safeguarded. Whatever he might have chosen to show on the surface, the abrupt destruction of those safeguards in a flagrant reading of the treaty’s literal language rather than its obvious intent, must have struck him like the cut of a whip.
The Order’s ears were everywhere, and the Seneschal knew the betting was over three-to-one that Chava would change his tune here at the Coronation. That he would denounce the entire proceedings, denounce the treaty itself, and storm back to Uromathia. After all, he had scores-hundreds-of Uromathian jurists who could provide him with any number of precedents to base that defiance upon. And if they couldn’t find the precedents they needed, they could certainly have manufactured them in the ensuing day and a half.
But the betting was wrong. The Seneschal’s new friend hadn’t shared all of his reasoning with him, but the Uromathian Emperor had suggested-rather more forcefully than the Seneschal was accustomed to-that it was essential the Coronation proceed. Personally, Faroayn Raynarg considered it anything but essential, and he’d been very strongly tempted to tell Chava that. But only tempted. Given the last day or so’s events, the necessity of an alliance with someone like Chava, someone with the wherewithal and…intestinal fortitude to defy even the fabled Calirath Dynasty, had reasserted itself in the clearest possible way.
And it was obvious from Chava’s message that whatever position he might adopt for public consumption this day he had no intention of acquiescing in the Calirath tyranny. In the fullness of time, he would take back what was rightfully his, and in the process the Seneschal and Order of Bergahl would take back what was rightfully theirs, as well. But for now, for today, they must bend their necks and bear the unbearable-with a smile, gods damn it! — if they would preserve the freedom of maneuver to strike back when the time was ripe.
At least his part in the proceedings would be relatively brief. Of course, he’d have to stand here, lending his official countenance and blessing to the travesty, for hours before he would be able to escape. But despite his prestige as the senior prelate of Bergahl, and despite the fact that Tajvana was Bergahl’s own city, he would have no active part in the coronation itself. He would simply join all of the other senior priests and priestesses in bestowing a final, parting blessing upon the newly crowned and consecrated Emperor of Sharona.
He was grateful for that, and yet the reason for it was simply one more insult delivered to both himself and Chava, for the Articles of Unification specified that the ancient Ternathian coronation rites would be extended to the Empire of Sharona. It was preposterous! Outrageous! Yet Zindel had been inflexible upon that point. He’d flatly refused to accept the planetary crown the fawning fools of the Conclave were so eager to place upon his head unless everyone else on the entire planet accepted the Ternathian ceremony. And under the terms of that ceremony, only the clergy of the Double Triad would be permitted to officiate in the coronation itself.
Ecumenicalism stretched only so far as suited the Caliraths, it would seem.
He felt his teeth grinding together and made himself stop, then stiffened as the temple’s massive, magnificently sculpted portals swung open at last to admit His Imperial Majesty Zindel XXIV, Duke of Ternathia, Grand Duke of Farnalia, Warlord of the West, Protector of the Peace, Wing-Crowned, and by the gods’ grace, Emperor of Ternathia.
Zindel chan Calirath was a tall, powerfully built man, with the sheer force of Calirath personality even the Seneschal had to admit was formidable. Yet in that moment, as he walked slowly down the temple’s long nave, between the packed pews, his appearance was shockingly at odds with the magnificently garbed onlookers crowded shoulder to shoulder to witness this pivotal moment in history.
He wore a plain shirt of white linen, its full sleeves gathered at the wrists by cuff bands of Calirath green. His breeches were of the same green, yet they were also starkly, almost brutally plain, and instead of the elegant court shoes every other occupant of that temple wore, his feet were encased not in shoes, not even in boots, but in plain, calf-high rawhide sandals, and more rawhide served as a belt. He was bareheaded, with no attendants, no servants. The golden-stranded black hair of his dynasty gleamed in the sunlight pouring through the temple dome, his only diadem, and he carried no dress sword, no dagger, no jewelry beyond the golden marriage bracelet around his left wrist and the emerald signet of the House of Calirath on the second finger of his right hand.
The music had stilled as the temple doors opened. There was no magnificent fanfare to play Zindel down the nave. There was only silence, and the quiet, clear slap of the soles of his sandals on the polished marble floor of the temple.
The Seneschal curled a mental lip of scorn. Why, Zindel might have been any menial, a mere servant. For that matter, the staff of Tajvana Palace was better garbed than he! But did he show any awareness of that? Of course not! And yet, Raynarg reflected, was that not the ultimate statement of arrogance? It said, as clearly as if he had shouted it into the witnesses’ faces, that he-a Calirath! — had no need for mere finery, no need for the trappings of power. He could come before them dressed like this, and still they would bow their heads before him and submit to his mastery.