David Drake - Tyrant

Demansk sighed. He'd never seen Gellert before, but he'd had him described. He almost winced, waiting for Sharbonow's — inevitable — next words.

"Let me see if I understand the story right. Best I do, since I'm the one who's been spreading it. He is supposed to have rescued her?"

"He's said to be quite an accomplished slinger," grumbled Demansk. "Just lie, dammit."

"Oh, certainly, certainly. No problem, Triumvir. But. ." Even Enry seemed at a loss, for a moment. "Emeralds don't get smitten by women to begin with, much less. ."

Demansk ignored the rest. Helga had spotted him and was racing up. In bounding leaps, like an athlete of the Five Year Games, each great stride bringing yet another mutter of despair from Sharbonow.

When she seized her father in a hug and began jiggling him up and down in glee and pleasure — his feet were off the ground, most of the time — Sharbonow's muttering became nonstop.

But Demansk ignored it all. Sharbonow would figure out a way to tell the lies. And, in the meantime, it was one of the great moments of his life.

* * *

"You're getting married a few days from now. In a great ceremony at the shrine of the Gray-Eyed Lady of the Stars." Demansk drained his cup. "Remarried, I should say. The priests have agreed that your, ah, secret wedding in the cellar on Vase doesn't preclude a more formal ceremony." He blithely ignored the blank looks on the faces of his daughter and soon-to-be-even-if-he-already-was son-in-law. "Do be sure to get the details from Enry regarding the, ah, earlier wedding. No reason to confuse the priests at this point, seeing as how they're being so cooperative."

He set the cup down on the side table next to him and glanced around the salon. Eyeing, in turn, the other men in the room — Trae, Forent, Prit Sallivar and Enry Sharbonow.

Not a chance. The sole surviving Triumvir could not get one of his cohorts — not even his own son — to meet his gaze.

No help for it. Got to do it myself.

"I'd have preferred to have the wedding tomorrow. But. ."

He cleared his throat. "But it'll be a double wedding, as it happens, and the lady who will figure in the second wedding hasn't arrived yet. She's on her way here, from her estate in Hagga where she took refuge after Albrecht's massacres in the capital. I'm not quite sure when she'll get here. I received a letter yesterday from the commander of her escort saying that the journey would take a bit longer than expected. It seems the noble lady, ah, insisted on bringing along several wagonloads of art treasures. Twenty wagonloads, to be precise. Marble sculptures, mostly. And, ah — unusual, this — apparently quite a few wooden ones. Reedbottom carvings, as it happens. Seems that new cult of theirs — what's it called? the 'Young Word'?—is given to religious icons."

"Sculptures?" choked Helga. "Icons?" Her eyes widened. "We're in the middle of the worst civil war in history and some noblewoman is hauling useless crap through the countryside? To a wedding ? What kind of lunatic—"

She broke off and rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Oh, the gods. Don't tell me. Twenty wagonloads? There's only one woman in the Confederacy rich enough for that. Not to mention crazy enough!"

Demansk thought it was time to pour himself another cup of wine. A full one.

"Well. Yes." He attempted a look of stern fatherly reproof. "Though I believe the proper term for a lady of her station is 'eccentric.' Not, ah, 'crazy.' " The patriarchal cluck of the tongue which followed sounded hollow, even to Demansk. "She's hardly a peasant crone, Daughter. About as respectable and wealthy a widowed matron as exists, anywhere in the land."

Helga chuckled. "To say the least. Wealthy, that is. I'm not sure how many of the Councillors — not to mention their wives — would call Arsule Knecht 'respectable.' "

To Demansk's relief, Prit Sallivar came to the rescue. "None at all, these days. Not in the capital, at any rate. The morning after Ion Jeschonyk and the others were massacred, Lady Knecht mounted a speakers' platform in the Forum of the Virtuous Matrons and denounced Albrecht for a murderer and a traitor. She barely escaped from the city with her life. Wouldn't have, if she hadn't taken the precaution to bring her household troops — and if her husband hadn't been one of the few to maintain his troops up to the legal limit."

And now Enry Sharbonow sallied forth. "And if the lady herself hadn't had the foresight to keep those forces up to strength, in the years since her husband died." He straightened up in his chair. Unlike most of Demansk's close counselors, though not Demansk himself, the Islander preferred chairs to couches. "I've met the lady, as it happens. Several times, the last of them quite recently. She's really not the, ah—" He groped for words.

"Try 'lunatic,' " suggested Helga. "As I recall, that's usually the term I heard people use."

Sharbonow's frown was quite fierce. "A slander! Slander, I say. I admit the woman has her, ah, eccentricities, but—"

Helga waved her hand. "Never mind, never mind. It's not as if I care. I'm just curious. Who here in Solinga is crazy enough to marry her?"

Dead silence fell upon the room. All of Demansk's counselors were studying the tapestries on the walls. Except Trae, who seemed utterly engrossed in the ceiling. Which, as it happened, had not so much as a single fresco painted upon it.

Treacherous bastards. Demansk sighed, drained half his goblet in one long swallow, and set it firmly down upon the table. Most powerful man since Marcomann. Courage!

"I am," he announced.

* * *

He was prepared for a ferocious brawl. After Helga stopped laughing, at least. But, to his surprise, his past-and-future son-in-law intervened.

Until that moment, Adrian Gellert had said nothing since he arrived, beyond a few murmured words of polite greeting. So far, at least, Demansk was rather mystified by the man. For someone who'd had such an incredible impact on the world, his daughter's lover seemed more like a distracted Emerald scholar than anything else. The kind of man you wouldn't trust to walk across a small town without getting lost on the way.

"It's a good move," he said firmly. "Might even prove to be a brilliant one."

Helga choked off her laughter and goggled at him. "You have got to be kidding! You've never met her, Adrian. You have no idea—" Another choked-off laugh. "For as long as I can remember, every nobleman in Vanbert has made fun of her. You don't want to know what the matrons say! Especially the time—"

"Who cares what they think?" demanded Adrian. "Helga, don't you understand yet ?" He pointed a finger out the window of the airy salon. The southern window, that was. A thousand miles beyond it lay the great capital of the world's greatest empire. "You're talking about the aristocracy, which is finished. "

His eyes swiveled toward Demansk. Incredibly blue, those eyes were. But what struck Demansk far more was the weird sense that something lurked within them. Something wise as well as pitiless. As if a scholar was inhabited by. .

Helga's "spirits." The gods save us, she was right. And maybe that's what will do it, since the gods have gone away.

"Not, at least, in their present form," Gellert continued. "We haven't spoken yet, sir, but I imagine you've already given some thought— Well, that's for later. I think of it as the nobility of the pen, rather than the spear."

He turned back to Helga. "What matters — this is what your father understands and you don't — is what the gentry thinks. Because you can destroy — cripple, anyway — a small elite. You can't destroy a numerous class of gentrymen. Not, at least, without destroying most of your educated populace. And try building an efficient and civilized realm without them. It could be done, but not without paying a bitter price."