David Weber - The Road to Hell

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.

His life as a political candidate now included a steady stream of professional news Voicecasters, sometimes following him individually and sometimes simply appearing among the prospective voters. The best of them had a Talent control that exceeded his own and kept complete mental silence until they pounced. The small town reporters like the two from rival news organizations covering this particular stop, on the other hand, leaked like toddlers trying to keep a secret.

Slight shifts in the nearest Voicecaster’s level of excitement warned Darcel he expected something interesting to happen.

The next woman in the newly formed line was a grey-haired lady with a self-important if not exactly regal bearing. She held his hand and professed her eagerness to see him take a seat in the new Imperial House of Talents.

“Lady Durthia,” Darcel repeated the woman’s name back to her and thanked her for the support using one of the standard polite phrases he could now murmur in his sleep. People seemed to appreciate him cycling through six or seven different ways of saying the same thing rather than repeating the same precise lines again and again. Politics. He kept his sigh strictly internal.

The woman leaked irritation at him. In his surprise at having an emotion projected at him, he didn’t catch what she actually said.

“I appreciate your support, Lady Durthia.” Darcel answered a beat too late, echoing a suggested response from Alazon.

Only the Talented were eligible to vote for members of the new empire’s House of Talents, since-like its equivalent in the Ternathian Parliament-it was to be the only part of government authorized to introduce legislation binding exclusively on the Talented population. Since that was the case, Darcel fully expected most of the crowd to be Talented. What he hadn’t expected was an untrained if very weak projective. She squeezed his hand once, and immediately Darcel had no doubt that, for all her smiles and gentle words, she quite viscerally despised him. And that she also hadn’t realized she’d just pushed that angry mental outburst at him.

Not everyone with a Talent trained and used it. This woman should have at least applied a basic effort to learn control but clearly hadn’t.

He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her. Politeness for the grey in the woman’s hair was all that stopped Darcel, a child of New Farnalian university professors, from chastising her on the spot for wasting that shriveled remnant of a very rare Talent.

‹Be nice to the donors, Love.› Alazon chided him silently. ‹Even the idiotic ones.› She’d felt the projection also, but only because she and Darcel shared the lifemate bond unique to Voices.

“Lady Durthia.” Alazon leaned across and said out loud, “Thank you for the kind words. Darcel appreciates your support.”