David Drake - Tyrant

But Demansk paid the statues little attention. He strode across the antechamber to the wide doorway leading into the chamber. The bronze doors had been flung open, as always when the Council was in official session. The two Council members who held the office of Watchmen stood on either side of the doorway, full-sized battle-axes held in their hands.

Demansk suppressed a smile. The post of "Watchman" was a matter of ritual honor. By a tradition now at least two centuries old, it was given to the most elderly of the Councillors. Neither of these men, nor both put together — potbellied little Kirn and cadaverous Undreth — could have prevented a determined and energetic ten-year-old boy from entering the hall.

The two Watchmen shuffled aside as he came to the doorway. Undreth wheezed a welcome; Kirn, a longtime partisan of Albrecht, satisfied himself with a moue of distaste. To the first, Demansk responded with a polite nod; to the other, not so much as a glance of appraisal. Kirn was a meaningless enemy. His vote was a given, and, for the rest—

Once he was past, where Kirn could not see his face, Demansk's lip curled. There was an old saying, very popular among Vanbert's lower classes: a nobleman's trough is his grave. Kirn, in particular, was notorious for his gluttony. He would be dead anyway, soon enough, from natural causes.

The floor of the chamber was marble, inlaid with large copper and silver medallions. Each of the medallions recorded the name of a victorious battle or siege. A good two thirds of the floor was spackled with the things. Pausing for a moment to scan the Councillors assembling on the tiered stone benches which encircled the floor everywhere except the entrance, Demansk reminded himself of those medallions. Whatever else could be said of today's Vanbert, there was nothing false or illusory about those victories.

Workmen had already prepared a spot for the next. Quite some time ago, now. Demansk's lip curled further, into a gesture of open derision rather than simple humor. Preble, that medallion would read — whenever Albrecht finally managed to reduce it.

His open sneer, and the source of it, had already been noticed by at least a dozen other Councillors. However dull-witted they might be in many respects, Councillors were hypersensitive to political nuances. A number of them grinned; several scowled; several more looked away, feigning indifference.

Albrecht, as the old saying went, had truly hoisted himself on his own assegai. The year before, he had taken advantage of the stunning defeats which Adrian Gellert had inflicted on the Vanbert besiegers of the rebel island to have Jeschonyk and Demansk removed from command — heaping a mass of contumely on the first and a fair portion on the other. And he had also taken the occasion to get himself appointed the new commander of the besieging forces.

A necessity, that, if Albrecht's ambitions were to go any further. The Confederacy might be corrupt, but the rot still only went so far. No Councillor, even in modern times, could hope to attain the Speakership without a modicum of martial glory to his name. Albrecht had been famous for his political maneuvering, not his skills on the field of war. He'd seized the opportunity to have himself elected the commander of the siege precisely in order to remedy that flaw.

Demansk's sneer was now a thing of pure histrionics. He allowed the assembling Councillors to get a full taste of it, while he himself kept his eyes visibly on the spot long-since prepared for the missing medallion of triumph.

Albrecht had discovered, the hard way, that it was much easier to deride besiegers than to surpass them. A year had gone by, and Preble was still in rebel hands. Even after Adrian Gellert and his brother Esmond left the service of the King of the Isles to go to the southern half of the continent, the islanders had been able to keep fending off the Confederate forces.

Albrecht had been handicapped, of course. Needless to say, both Jeschonyk and Demansk himself had used their influence to keep Albrecht from getting the massive resources he needed to end the siege quickly. Jeschonyk simply out of political revenge, Demansk because — even then — he had begun seeing that he might someday need to overthrow the existing order.

The chamber was almost full, now. Only a handful of Councillors were scurrying to take their seats. Demansk left off his sneer and strode to his own accustomed place, on the lowest tier of benches reserved for the Confederacy's ten Justiciars.

When he sat down, he made the ninth present. The tenth was not there, and would not be. Justiciar Albrecht was far away, staring at the island of Preble from a Confederate rampart. And, Demansk had no doubt at all, gnashing his teeth in fury and frustration.

Albrecht's many supporters, of course, would do what they could to advance their patron's interests at this emergency meeting of the Council. But without Albrecht himself there, to guide them with his political cunning and his seemingly bottomless coffers, they would have a much more difficult time of it.

* * *

Their difficulty began almost immediately. Speaker Chollat rose and made the ritual speech which opened a session of the Council. Fortunately, old custom held here still — the speech was mercifully brief. As brief as possible, in fact, which was Chollat's subtle way of indicating his continued neutrality. Chollat was, essentially, a prestigious non-entity. He had been elected Speaker of the Council the year before simply as a compromise between the factions — a position he apparently intended to retain.

No sooner had Chollat finished than one of Albrecht's principal supporters was on his feet. "I urge the Council to declare this session invalid!" he boomed. Quaryn was a big man, tall as well as fat. His voice was positively stentorian.

Speaker Chollat, still standing on the floor of the chamber, opened his mouth to protest at such an abrupt — almost rude — demand for a ruling. But Quaryn overrode whatever he was going to say.

"No debate! An urge for invalidation takes precedence!"

True enough. Demansk glanced toward Jeschonyk. He and Tomsien had agreed to allow the old Speaker Emeritus to be the "gray eminence" of their projected Triumvirate. The purely political maneuvering in the Confederacy's capital was Jeschonyk's domain — and specialty.

Judging from the cheerful smile on the Speaker Emeritus' face as he rose — almost a predatory grin — Demansk relaxed. Whatever his personal vices and limits as a field commander, no one had ever accused Jeschonyk of lacking skills in the endless maneuvers of Vanbert politics.

"Agreed!" shouted Jeschonyk. "No debate! I call for an immediate vote!"

Demansk could see Quaryn's heavy jaws tighten. Clearly enough, Albrecht's man had wanted some squabbling over procedure in the hopes that confusion might fray the ranks of his enemies. The quick and ready willingness of Jeschonyk to move straight to a procedural vote was the old man's own way of clashing assegai against assegai. He was signaling his confidence in victory to the triumvirate's supporters.

Sure enough. The vote rolled in quickly, even following Quaryn's insistence on an individual count of the voices.

For continuing the session: eighty-seven.

For declaring it invalid: fifty-eight.

It was as clear a procedural victory as any in recent Council history. And Jeschonyk used the boost of confidence to keep the tide surging.

* * *

It was late in the afternoon before Demansk rose to speak. By then, it was clear, a majority of the Councillors leaned in favor of establishing a new Triumvirate to supercede — temporarily — the authority of the Speakership. Their motives varied, from personal greed and ambition to simply wanting to be on what they perceived as the winning side.