“The answer seems simple enough, my lords,” Grieg said. “The king is incapacitated, and the princess has taken to her rooms. The Cabinet must propose a regent for the duration of the emergency. I nominate His Grace the duke.”
Torahn shot Grieg a sharp look, then turned slowly to Orlanko. “A regency?”
“It honestly had not occurred to me,” Orlanko drawled. “But if the Cabinet requires it, I shall of course be pleased to serve in that capacity, until the king recovers from his illness, or-”
“The king is dead,” came a voice from the back of the room, among the crowd of courtiers.
Amid the sudden explosion of whispering, a wedge of green uniforms became visible, pushing their way through the crowd. Orlanko got to his feet, though with his small stature this did not assist him much.
“What’s going on?” he said, loud enough to be heard over the growing babble. “Who’s that?”
“Make way,” bawled an Armsmen sergeant. “Make way for the Minister of Justice!”
Vhalnich. Orlanko forced a smile onto his face and sat back down. Damn him. I should have been warned. Concordat spies were in place all over Ohnlei, with instructions to report his movements, but apparently the man had evaded them somehow. His own Mierantai guard had established a cordon around his residence, and the backcountry soldiers had proven to be both competent and irritatingly unbribable.
Inside the flying wedge of Armsmen, Vhalnich walked beside another man, stoop-shouldered and fragile-looking. Orlanko’s breath caught as he recognized Doctor-Professor Indergast. How the hell did he get out of the king’s bedchamber?
“My lord Mieran,” Orlanko said aloud. “I’m glad you could join us.”
“I’m sorry to be late,” Vhalnich said. “As you can imagine, the Ministry is in a bit of an uproar.”
“And you have brought us the good doctor-professor,” Orlanko said. “Who, I’m sure-”
“What you said about the king,” Torahn snapped, interrupting. “Is it true?”
Indergast bowed his head, and the room went quiet as he spoke, everyone straining to hear the quavering words.
“It is. My lords, Your Grace, I regret to say that my skills have failed His Majesty in his last trial. I was able to remove the diseased mass, but the loss of blood and other strains overcame him. He is with the Savior now, until the end of time.”
“I see,” Orlanko said. He matched gazes with Vhalnich, whose wide gray eyes reflected the duke’s spectacle-obscured stare. “The nation will mourn.”
“It does not change the point at hand,” said Torahn.
“Which is?” Vhalnich said, settling into his chair after helping the doctor-professor to a stool.
“We must have troops to put down the riots,” the Minister of War said. “For that, we require a regent. The Minister of Finance has proposed His Grace the duke. Do you have any objection?”
“I am confused,” Vhalnich said. “The king is dead, but we now have a queen, who is of age to rule in her own right. What need for a regent?”
“The princess,” Orlanko said, “that is, the princess who was, and the queen who is, is clearly overcome by grief and the terrors of the moment. She has confined herself to her room these past three days. In time, perhaps, she will grow into her responsibilities, but for the moment-”
Vhalnich cut him off with a wave. The queue of courtiers was parting, of their own accord this time, like the bow wave preceding a ship. Leather creaked and silk rustled as they bowed.
Damn, damn, damn Vhalnich! He planned this from the start. Orlanko, no stranger to political theater, recognized the hand of an expert. None of it should have been possible, of course. If the princess left her rooms, I should have been alerted immediately. But he’d clearly underestimated Vhalnich’s influence.
The duke forced a grave expression onto his face and sat calmly as a quartet of Noreldrai Grays trooped into the room and took up stations beside the door. For now, he had to ride out this farce.
Raesinia seemed even smaller and frailer than usual, swaddled in a tissue of gray silk and black lace, with fringes of pearls that clacked rhythmically as she walked. She was doing her best to look the queen, but her young appearance betrayed her.
He suppressed a smile. Go ahead and put on your play. Let’s not forget who has the upper hand here. The people of Vordan would not long tolerate a queen who had made congress with a demon, and it would not be hard to arrange a public demonstration, should it become necessary.
“Orlanko,” she said, with a nod. “Ministers. Honored guests. It is painful that we must interrupt this time of mourning with affairs of state, but the crisis will brook no delay.”
“Indeed, Your Majesty.” Orlanko inclined his head. “We were just discussing what measures to take. Count Torahn had offered the army’s assistance in suppressing the rebellion.”
“No.” The single word rang out clearly, and a silence fell across the whispering courtiers.
Count Torahn cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Your Majesty, I believe there is no other way to restore order.”
“Vordan City has gone four generations without feeling the tread of a soldier’s boot,” Raesinia said curtly. “I would not have the first act of my reign be to break that honored compact.”
“Besides which,” Vhalnich murmured, “the Royal Army is, by and large, recruited from the same unfortunates who have taken to the streets. Who’s to say they would not simply join the mob?”
Torahn shot to his feet. “The loyalty of my soldiers is not in question! And as an officer yourself, you should be ashamed to make such an assertion-”
“Please.” Raesinia raised a hand. “What Count Mieran meant was only this. These are not foreigners in the streets, or heretics, or even rebels. They are good citizens of Vordan, with legitimate grievances. Any man might hesitate to stand against them, without any implications to his loyalty to the Crown.”
“They are a weak-willed mob,” Grieg said, “in the sway of a demagogue.”
“And what are their demands?” Raesinia said.
Vhalnich made a show of consulting a paper he took from his pocket. “To convene the Deputies-General to discuss the problems afflicting the nation.”
“A call for the august body that conferred the crown on my respected ancestor in the first place can hardly be treason,” Raesinia said. “I am inclined to grant their request. That will resolve the problem without the need for troops.”
“Apologies, Your Majesty, but it will not,” Torahn said. He was sweating. “The deputies of Farus the Great’s time were the nobles and lords of the land, men who understood the order of things. Any body convened from this rabble will only impose impossible demands on the Crown, demands that will be all the harder to refuse once given royal sanction-”
Orlanko got to his feet. “Your Majesty. If you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the latest reports from the Ministry.”
“Of course,” Raesinia said. She didn’t take her eyes from Torahn, but Vhalnich met Orlanko’s gaze. A smile flickered across the Minister of Justice’s face, just for an instant.
It wasn’t until he was back in the safe, well-ordered domain of the Cobweb that the duke once again began to feel secure.
Torahn might bluster and argue, but he would ultimately do nothing. And the princess-the queen-had obviously planned the whole affair with Vhalnich from the beginning. Orlanko had no illusions about what the “demands” of the Deputies-General would be. The mob was already tearing down Sworn Churches and hanging Borelgai from the lampposts, and who was more closely associated with the Borels and the Sworn Church than the despised Last Duke and his vicious Concordat?