David Weber - How firm a foundation

Shouts and screams had still filled the huge chamber, and no one else had been close enough to hear what the seijin might have said, anyway, but Gahrvai had no doubt at all what Merlin had advised. Unfortunately, even seijins had their limits, and one of those limits, clearly, was Sharleyan Tayt Ahrmahk.

“Be seated!” she’d shouted, and somehow she’d managed to pitch her voice so that it could be heard. Not by very many people at first, but those closest to her first stared at her in disbelief and then started repeating her command at the top of their lungs. In less than two minutes, by some sorcery Gahrvai didn’t come close to understanding, she’d actually managed to restore something like order as she stood almost straight, one hand still pressed to her side.

Merlin Athrawes had stood beside her, his pistol still in his right hand, merciless sapphire eyes scanning the witness-filled benches, and Sergeant Seahamper had stood on her other side with an expression which could only be described as murderous. Gahrvai hadn’t blamed either of them at all. God only knew if there was another assassin out there. It didn’t seem possible, but then Gahrvai wouldn’t have believed the first one could have gotten in unchallenged. And if there was another assassin, the slender white-and-blue-clad figure who’d lost her crown and whose long hair had come tumbling down about her shoulders would be a perfect target.

She’d seemed unaware of that, however, just as she’d seemed unaware of the bruise already darkening her left cheek. She’d simply stood there, exposed to any follow-up shot, willing the Corisandians back onto their benches. Only after the last of them sat had she seated herself once more, sitting very erect, her left elbow beside her and her upper arm still pressed against those ribs.

“Thank you,” she’d said in a calm voice whose normality seemed utterly bizarre under the circumstances. Then she’d actually managed a smile, and if it was a bit shaky and passed quickly, who should blame her? She’d reached up with her right hand, tucking a strand of that fallen, glorious sable hair behind her ear and shaken her head.

“I deeply regret that this should have happened,” she’d said, looking down at the body in the pool of blood as four of Gahrvai’s guardsmen prepared to remove it. Her eloquent brown eyes had been shadowed, and she’d shaken her head sadly. “Surely God weeps to see such violence loosed among His children.”

Stillness had seemed to flow outward from her. The scraping sound of the corpse’s heels as the guardsmen picked up the body had seemed shockingly loud in the silence, and the empress had turned her head, watching as the man who’d tried to kill her was carried from her presence. A trail of blood droplets had followed him, dark in the lamplight as the guardsmen and their burden vanished through the double doors, and she’d gazed at those doors for a handful of heartbeats before she’d turned once more to look out at the assembled witnesses.

“There are times,” she’d told them quietly, almost softly, “when all the killing and all the hatred strike me to the heart. When I wonder what sort of world my daughter will inherit? What kind of men and women will decide how the people of that world live? What they’re allowed to believe?”

Gahrvai’s eyes had widened as he realized she’d abandoned the royal “we.” And they’d gone even wider as he saw those benches filled with Corisandians leaning towards a Chisholmian queen who was also a Charisian empress and listening intently. She’d no longer been a conquering monarch dispensing justice and retribution; she’d been something else. A young mother worried about her own child. A young woman who’d just survived a murder attempt. And a voice of calm when she should have been demanding vengeance upon those who had allowed such a thing to happen.

“Is this what we truly wish?” she’d asked in that same quiet voice. “To settle our differences with murder? For those of us on one side to leave those on the other no option but to kill or to be killed? It grieves my soul to know how many people-some of them known personally to me, some of them beloved friends and kinsmen, and far more who I never met but who were someone’s kinsmen or kinswomen or beloved-have already died, yet the death toll is only starting. Yesterday I sat here in front of you and sent thirty-nine people to the headsman. Tomorrow and the next day I’ll send still more, because I have no choice, and those decisions, those confirmations of the sentences of those brought before me, will live with me for the rest of my own life. Do you think any sane woman wants to order the deaths of others? Do you truly believe I wouldn’t rather- far rather-pardon, as I’ve just pardoned Master Ibbet, Master Pahlmahn, Master Lahmbair, and young Dobyns? Despite anything the Group of Four may say, God does not call us to exult in the blood and agony of our enemies!”

She’d paused, her expression sad, her eyes dark in the shadows yet lit by the lamplight while the stink of blood and voided bowels and the brimstone reek of gunsmoke drifted like Shan-wei’s perfume, and then she’d shaken her head.

“I wish I had some magic wand that could make all this go away, but I don’t, and I can’t. The only ‘peace’ someone like Zhaspahr Clyntahn will ever accept is the destruction of everything I know and love and hold dear. The only ‘agreement’ he will ever tolerate is one in which his own twisted, vicious perversion of God’s will rules each and every one of God’s children. Charis didn’t start this war, my friends; Charis simply survived the war someone else launched at her like a slash lizard crazed by blood. And Charis will continue to do what she must to go on surviving, because that’s what she owes to her own people, to her own children, and to God Himself.

“Which is what brings me to this throne in this room, delivering and confirming sentences of death. Many of these people amply deserve those sentences. For others the case is less clear-cut, however clear the law itself may be. And in still other cases, what the law decrees is neither true justice nor what compassion and mercy require. I must err on the side of caution in the cause of protecting that which I’m charged to protect, but where I can, where the chance exists, I’ll grant that mercy whenever and however I may. I won’t be able to do that as often as I wish, or as often as you could wish, but I’ll do it as often as I can, and I’ll ask God’s help to live with the many times when I cannot.”

A ripping sound had been loud in the stillness as Edwyrd Seahamper tore open Spynsair Ahrnahld’s sleeve and applied a dressing of fleming moss from the emergency case each of her Imperial Guardsmen carried at his belt. She’d looked down, watching her secretary’s pale face as the bandage was adjusted, then cocked her head at him.

“Can you continue, Spynsair?” she’d asked him, and Ahrnahld’s hadn’t been the only eyebrows which rose in astonishment at her question.

“Yes-I mean, of course, Your Majesty. If that’s your wish,” he’d said after a moment.

“Of course it’s my wish,” she’d replied with a crooked smile, that elbow and upper arm still pressed against her ribs. She’d sat very erect, but she’d also sat very still, and Gahrvai suspected it had hurt her to breathe. Yet if that was so, she’d allowed no sign of it to cross her expression or shadow her voice.

“We have much still to do today,” she’d told her secretary, her eyes rising across the puddle of her assailant’s blood to include the gathered witnesses in the same statement. “If we refuse to let Clyntahn and the Group of Four stop us, then we won’t allow this to, either. Let us proceed.”

And proceed she had, Koryn Gahrvai thought now. For another four hours, until lunch. She’d seemed unaware her hair was steadily tumbling into looser and looser falls about her shoulders, just as she’d seemed unaware when Merlin Athrawes picked up the crown which had fallen from her head and stood holding it in the crook of his left arm like a paladin’s helmet. There’d been the slightest, barely perceptible breathlessness in her voice, like a catch of pain, yet it was so faint Gahrvai suspected most of those watching her never heard it at all.