David Weber: Hell's Gate

"Do you think Ronnel is really on our side?" Ekthar Shilvass murmured quietly in Shamir Taje's ear.

Andrin knew she hadn't been supposed to overhear the Internal Affairs Councilor's question, but she'd always had remarkably acute hearing. And, she had to admit, she found Shilvass' inquiry well taken. The Emperor of Farnalia was on his feet once more, his eyes crackling with fury, as he rebutted the comments of yet another of Chava Busar's allies.

He'd been doing a lot of that over the past several hours, as early morning turned into late afternoon, she reflected.

Taje's lips twitched in what could have been amusement or irritated agreement?or both, Andrin supposed?but the First Councilor didn't respond. Perhaps he was too well aware of all of the attention focused on the Ternathian delegation as the debate raged onward. Andrin wished he'd responded anyway, and, after a moment, she decided to take advantage of her own youthfulness. She didn't do it very often, but she was barely seventeen years old. There were times when being a teenager allowed her a degree of latitude the official adults around her were denied.

"Papa," she said quietly, looking up at her father in the chair beside hers, "why is Emperor Ronnel kicking up such a fuss?"

Zindel chan Calirath found himself restraining an abrupt temptation to burst into deep, rolling laughter. "Such a fuss" was precisely the right word for what his old friend was doing at the moment, although he rather doubted that anyone except his Andrin would have described it with such succinct accuracy. It took him a few seconds to be sure he had his voice under control, then he looked down at her and shook his head slightly.

"Ronnel is just a bit … stubborn," he said, with massive understatement. "To put it bluntly, he doesn't like Chava, he doesn't trust Chava, and he doesn't want Chava anywhere near the imperial succession. Not in any empire that he belongs to, at any rate."

"But if you don't object to it, then how can he?" she asked. "I mean, it doesn't seem very logical."

"Politics often aren't logical, 'Drin," he replied. "People think with their emotions at least as much as they do with their brains?probably more, I often think. Part of the art of ruling is to recognize that. To allow for it when it's likely to work against you, and to figure out how to use that same tendency when it can help to accomplish the things you have to accomplish.

"At the moment, though, Ronnel is convinced?in some cases for some pretty emotional reasons?that he has a lot of perfectly rational reasons to hate and distrust Chava. And he does, actually. To be honest, most people who know Chava have reasons to hate and distrust him."

He considered telling her about his intelligence reports on Chava's use of terror tactics against suspected opponents among his own people … and against his neighbors, as well. The "brigandage" which no one could ever quite stamp out in the mountains and valleys along his borders had been inexplicably on the upsurge over the last couple of decades?a period which just happened to coincide with his accession to the throne. And for some peculiar reason, it appeared to be directed primarily against people the Uromathian Emperor didn't like very much. That was bad enough, but there were other, still darker reports which even Ternathian Imperial Intelligence hadn't been able to definitely confirm or rebut.

He thought about those reports as he looked down into his daughter's clear, sea-gray eyes, and decided not to share them. Someday he might have to, but that day had not arrived yet, and for all of her strength, she was still only a girl. His girl, and the father in him decided that just this once he would shelter her a little longer.

"No one is ever likely to confuse Chava with one of the paladins out of the old tales," he said instead. "Ronnel?and some of the other delegates?aren't about to forget that. And, to be perfectly honest, I suspect that the fact that Ronnel is one of my closer friends has something to do with his present attitude."

Andrin looked puzzled, and he squeezed her shoulder gently.

"I've told Ronnel this is how it has to be," he told her. "But he's not at all convinced that it's how I want it to be. Which is fair enough," he conceded, "since if I had any choice at all, I certainly wouldn't do something like this to Janaki! But the point is that Ronnel is convinced I made my decision for reasons of state, and he's furious at the thought of seeing me backed into this sort of corner by someone like Chava. And don't forget, he's Janaki's godfather, as well. Do think he really wants to see Janaki with Chava Busar as a father-in-law?"

Andrin shook her head with a grimace, and Zindel shrugged.

"To be perfectly honest, neither do I. But we don't seem to have a great deal of choice, and I know your brother, 'Drin. Once everything was explained to him, he'd make exactly the same decision I've made. Getting back to your question, though, it's the combination of Ronnel's own reasons to despise Chava, coupled with the fact that he's trying to 'defend' me from a decision he feels has been forced upon me, which accounts for his decision to oppose me on this particular issue. I did say," he reminded her, "that politics often aren't logical."

"But if this is necessary??" she said, and he shrugged once again.

"Ronnel and I differ on just how necessary it is," he said. "I think we need Uromathia included from the outset. And I think we need to do it in a way which makes it perfectly clear to everyone that we've made an extra effort to accommodate Chava's reasonable demands. I think we can't afford to leave an excluded Uromathia sitting out there like some sort of canker, distracting us while we're trying to gear up for a major war against the Arcanans. And if we're going to include Uromathia, I want to do it in a way which cuts the legs out from under any future attempt on Chava's part to argue that we didn't meet him at least halfway.

"Ronnel's view is that the Conclave's already approved Unification and already approved my election as Emperor. As far as he's concerned, the rest of Sharona can get along quite handily without Uromathia. In fact, I think he'd just as soon see Uromathia excluded in order to keep Chava as far away as possible from the levers of power. And the news that the Arcanans have initiated negotiations leaves Ronnel feeling less of a sense of urgency than he felt when unification was originally proposed. So where I'm willing?even determined, however little I like it?to include Uromathia, he's perfectly prepared to exclude it. And all he has to do to accomplish that is to prevent me from assembling a big enough supermajority to amend the original Act."

He smiled down at his daughter, but his eyes were dark.

"So you see, 'Drin, it's the very fact that he's my friend which is driving him to do everything in his power to defeat what I'm trying so hard to accomplish."

Andrin nodded slowly, but the youthful eyes looking up into his were just as dark, just as shadowed, and he knew. She'd Glimpsed what he had. Neither of them had Glimpsed it clearly?not yet?and, in many ways, that was even more terrifying than it would have been if they had. Over the millennia the Calirath Dynasty had discovered that the more deeply involved someone with the Calirath Talent was in the events he Glimpsed, and the more harshly those events impinged directly upon him, the harder it was to See that Glimpse's details sharply. That was what frightened Zindel chan Calirath now, because there was too much darkness, too much loss and pain, woven through the chaotic scenes he and Andrin had managed to Glimpse for him to force clarity upon them.

But because his daughter shared his Talent, she understood what Ronnel Karone?who did not?never could.

"I do see, Papa," she said quietly, laying her slender hand atop one of his. "Thank you for explaining to me."