David Weber - The Road to Hell

“Bergahl honors this union.” Lavo read out in a loud carrying voice. “As Bergahl is Just, so is this completion to the Articles of Confederation. Blessings of glory, honor, and wisdom on the Prince of Uromathia chosen this day to wed our own Crown Princess-”

The words continued and Raka stood as frozen as his master. They were exactly the words on the papers, but they’d never been intended for this!

Sparing the Seneschal nothing, Lavo read every word with Nekhaan holding and turning the pages. Then the three Elder Triad gods had their traditional invocations. And all the while Finena turned her feathered head this way and that, studying the Seneschal’s eyes.

All seven of the holy men and women clasped hands together, with the Vothan and Sekharan priests giving the Seneschal no other option, and the priestess of Marnilay pronounced the final words.

“In the names of All Gods, Ternathian and Uromathian, we and Sharona Entire bless our daughter Andrin and our son Howan and join them before all people as one house. And in this holy joining we renew our blessings on the People of Sharona and the united Empire of Sharona. Rise daughter and son, wife and husband, Crown Princess and Prince Consort.”

The Seneschal opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“In the names of All the Gods,” the Double Triad six called out together, “Blessings, blessings, seven times blessings!”

* * *

“That conniving little whore!” Raynarg snarled. “I had to bless them. Bless them! While those six tridiots fawned over the sanctity of marriage and acted oh so delighted to preside over that six times damned farce! She should be whipped in the streets!”

Chava Busar watched the spittle-flecked would-be holy man with partially concealed disdain. “I’d settle for dead. In childbirth would be appropriate, but we probably shouldn’t wait that long.”

Faroayn Raynarg offended Emperor Chava’s sensibilities. But the price of empire demanded using tools like the soft man in front of him. Ternathians dismissed “His Crowned Eminence” as a buffoon, because he was one. But Chava could use buffoons as handily as he could men of capability. In fact, handled properly, buffoons could be far more valuable than more capable-and wary-tools.

“Zindel Calirath, the father, is our true enemy here, remember,” the Uromathian counseled. “The girl is just his blood, and not yet out of her teens, to boot. Trouble enough in time, but for now she’s still untrained.”

“She offends me.” Raynarg ignored this comment, not pausing in his furious pacing to actually acknowledge the wisdom being offered him. “I’ll cut her. Cut her where it hurts.”

Chava sighed inwardly and continued, pointing out more Calirath weaknesses that would never apply to a Uromathian imperial heir.

“Zindel’s children do not compete amongst themselves for heirship, so when he lost the boy he lost his only truly trained heir. Princesses are only good for alliances. Admittedly, our bride chose poorly, but such errors can be…corrected. So, certainly, if your knives get an opportunity, kill her.”

“Yes!” Raynarg clenched a fist in a manner probably meant to be threatening and collapsed into a heavily padded chair exhausted by the few minutes of pacing.

The emperor hid his personal contempt for the qualities which made the Seneschal so attractive as a tool. The man was a fat toad. He was a pure terror to small men, the flies-like those acolytes in the Order of Bergahl who wanted to serve the gods rather than enrich their order’s leader-but he appeared utterly impotent against a force like the Caliraths. Yet that very incompetence was what made him valuable in Chava’s present need. The Seneschal of Othmaliz would never be taken seriously by even the extremely thorough Ternathian Imperial Guard, and so a strike using his Order had a far better chance of succeeding than one might have expected from so feckless a leader. The unholy cleric just needed to be properly led.

“But Zindel is the one who stole your palace and presumes to rule us, not-at least not yet-this girl.” The emperor pointed out. “ He represents the true threat. Still, it would be as well to eliminate this new heir of his before he has a chance to train her as he did his son. If a chance arises, I trust your Daggers have enough sense to make a cut?” He lifted his glass in inquiry.

“Absolutely!” Raynarg slammed his fist on the table, rattling the glasses. It was no way to treat the gently aged vintage in the crystal decanter between them, but Chava had long since determined that the self-absorbed man before him only desired the finer things in life, without the true refinement to actually identify quality in his possessions.

“My informants, trusted loyalists you understand, tell me the new consort’s mother has asked for a visit,” he said now. “The newlyweds will hide with the Caliraths for a time. But eventually, and count on it to be sooner than later, they’ll want some manner of honeymoon. The royal yacht has been sent for an overhaul. The next voyage may have the Crown Princess and her Prince Consort aboard. If they take that honeymoon by sea, they could visit Eniath.”

His spies had had reported nothing of the sort, but if an imperial yacht left the harbor chances were high someone Zindel cared about would be onboard, and he continued the lie fluently with a fine salting of truth.

“They would be at their weakest when out of sight of land, with no reinforcements near to call. But they’ll also be readiest then. I suggest your men examine the palace’s harbor and its approaches. You may find some most unique Talents available to you among your newest supplicants.”

Raynarg’s eyes lit as Emperor Chava had expected they would. Loaning the Seneschal a few exceptionally capable men was, he deemed, absolutely necessary to provide a decent chance of breaking through the Ternathian Imperial Guard. Fortunately, Zindel wasn’t the only emperor capable of searching his lands for useful people and enticing them into his service. Certainly the Ternathians had an unusual number of such capabilities born to families of those already in service, but Chava suspected that came of having started the process centuries earlier and somehow managing to keep whole families in service instead of simply the young men.

Not for the first time Chava longed for a way to make slavery desirable. If he’d just been born a few thousand years earlier, he could have established a stronger Uromathian tradition for the Talented to be wards of the state. Property of the state would have been better, but his otherwise competent ancestors had denied him that possibility. When the Talents which had first arisen in Ternathia finally found their way into Uromathian bloodlines, the rulers of the kingdoms which had predated his own empire adopted many of the Ternathians’ practices in order to encourage their growth. He liked to think they would have showed more wisdom if they’d realized where it would lead, and at least they’d stopped short of the more ridiculous of the Ternathian excesses, but they’d established early on that the Talented were exempt from enslavement except after conviction for certain very specific crimes. By the time of Chava’s birth, those traditions were too ingrained to be overcome in a single generation. He was working on it, of course, and the empire did have the tradition of service, but something stronger than that-something which allowed the assigning of spouses and obligated apprenticeships-would be so much more useful.

Perhaps a breeding program…The idea intrigued him. Not all the Talents would be willing, but surely some could be enticed. And other Talents were valuable enough they didn’t need to be willing.