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Chapter Fifteen
"Good evening, Your Majesty," His Crowned Eminence, the Seneschal of Othmaliz said as his visitor was shown into his private apartment in what had, until a very few weeks before, been known as the Great Palace.
"Good evening, Your Eminence," Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia, replied.
The two men were a study in contrasts in many ways.
The Seneschal was a short, round man, addicted to decorating his already colorful religious robes with additional jewels, bullion embroidery, lace, and pearls, while rings dripped from his fingers. He literally glittered when he walked, and the beautiful little silver bells which adorned his unique, stovepipeshaped, gold-encrusted religious headgear jingled musically with every movement.
Chava Busar was also short. That, however, was the only real similarity between them. Where the Seneschal was so obese that he seemed to roll along, rather than walk, Chava was lean and athletic, especially for a man in his late fifties. Unlike the clean-shaven, moon-faced Seneschal, the Emperor favored a neatly trimmed, dramatically shaped dagger beard, and his eyebrows—bushy for a Uromathia
—floated above almond-shaped eyes dark as still water on a moonless night. There was a hardness in those eyes, as well, like a shelf of obsidian just under the water's surface. For his height, he was broad shouldered and powerfully built, and where the Seneschal seemed to roll into a room, Chava strode purposely forward into a universe which belonged—or ought to have belonged, at any rate—exclusively to him.
Yet for all the physical contrasts between them, there were similarities under the skin, as well, and it was those similarities which had brought the Emperor to this very private meeting. Indeed, a meeting so private that not a single advisor—or bodyguard—was in sight. In fact, none of the servants with whom the Seneschal routinely surrounded himself was present, either.
"Please, Your Majesty," the Seneschal invited, gesturing to the two comfortable chairs placed to face one another in front of the enormous portrait of Bergahl in glory which dominated the main room of the Seneschal's suite. "Be seated."
"Thank you."
Chava accepted the invitation, sitting regally in the indicated chair. Both chairs were more than a little throne-like, he noted, although the Seneschal's was fractionally larger and ever so slightly more richly carved, and his lips twitched ever so minutely at the observation. How very like the Seneschal, the Emperor thought.
The Seneschal waited until his guest had settled into place, then took the facing chair. A small table, with a bottle of wine, pastry cakes decorated with sesame seed, and a platter of delicate sandwiches sat conveniently placed for both of them, and he smiled at the Emperor as he personally poured wine into the waiting crystal glasses.
"I think you'll find this palatable, Your Majesty." He smiled. "It comes from one of my own vineyards.
I'm quite proud of it, actually."
"Thank you," Chava repeated as he accepted the glass and sipped delicately. His bushy eyebrows rose, and he nodded in approval. "You're quite right, Your Eminence. It's very good."
"I'm glad you approve." The Seneschal smiled again, and this time his smile was as tart as alum. "It's always a pleasure to entertain a guest who appreciates what small comforts one can offer him."
"Oh, I most definitely agree, Your Eminence." Chava's smile just showed the tips of his teeth. "Indeed, to be totally frank, I find myself amazed at your tolerance and forbearance in the face of having your entire city turned topsy-turvy by this Conclave." He shook his head. "To find oneself suddenly and unexpectedly playing host to the rulers of every land of Sharona must pose extraordinary hardships.
Particularly upon such short notice."
"One ca
It will take quite some time for the proper administrative agencies to reassert an orderly control over many aspects of it."
"Not to mention the ... disruptions here in your own home," Chava observed, and watched with amused satisfaction as the Seneschal's fat face darkened.
"I am only the Seneschal of the Order of Bergahl," he said after a moment. "The Great Palace is not my home, but the home of the Order itself, as symbolized by the man chosen by the Order as its head.
Nonetheless," he inhaled deeply, "I must confess that arranging to house so many prominent and powerful political figures has, indeed, led to significant disruptions here in the Palace."
Chava nodded sympathetically. Both of them knew the true nature of the "disruptions" to which the Seneschal took such exception. Prior to Zindel chan Calirath's arrival with his daughter, the Seneschal had been housed in the Emperor's Wing of the palace. The decision by the Emperor to return to his ancestral home—and to the building which, however little public recognition the fact had received, still belonged to him—had placed the Seneschal in a most difficult position. In the end, he'd decided he dared not refuse to move out of what had been the House of Calirath's family living space by a tradition literally mille
"I was particularly impressed, Your Eminence, by how gracefully you and the Order have dealt with this situation," Chava said after a moment. "It must have been particularly difficult, after more than two centuries of independence, to find oneself face-to-face with the Emperor of Ternathia. I've often thought that the Caliraths simply don't realize how ... instinctively patronizing they are." He smiled again, briefly. "It's hard to blame them, I suppose. They are, after all, the oldest dynasty in the history of Sharona. It would probably be unfair to expect them to realize how hard—and often—they step on so many people's toes because they simply assume the precedence so many other people automatically grant them."
"Indeed," the Seneschal agreed. He sipped his own wine, then lowered the glass and regarded the Emperor levelly.
"One is, of course, always gratified by the sympathetic understanding of a ruler as powerful as the Emperor of Uromathia. Still, it occurs to me that this meeting wasn't arranged solely so that you might commiserate with me on the dislocation of my capital, Your Majesty."
"No, of course it wasn't," Chava acknowledged, and reminded himself that however fat and ridiculous the Seneschal might appear—might actually be, for that matter—he, unlike Chava, had not inherited his power. The man who had been born Faroayn Raynarg, the next-to-youngest son of a dune-treader merchant who had spent much of young Faroayn's boyhood jailed for dealing in stolen dune-treaders, had made his way to the top of a religious order in which it was not unheard of for fatal accidents to overtake one's rivals. That might have been many years ago, and it was entirely probable that the years the lean and hungry "Father Faroayn" had spent as His Crowned Eminence had softened his steel even as they had expanded his waistline. But it would be best to remember that he was not truly—or, at any rate, had not always been—the petty little buffoon who'd humiliated himself so on the day of Zindel chan Calirath's arrival in Tajvana.
"Actually, Your Eminence," the Uromathian continued after a moment, "I requested this meeting because it occurred to me that it's been many fine centuries since an Emperor of Uromathia last spoke to a Seneschal of Bergahl as one ruler to another."
The Seneschal stiffened in his chair, and his round face hardened at the words "many fine centuries."
Anger flickered in the backs of the small eyes, half-hidden in pouches of fat, and Chava recognized it with quiet satisfaction. At the moment, it was quite probable that at least some of that anger was directed at him, for reminding the Seneschal of his self-inflicted humiliation. But that was all right with Chava, because there was so very much of it ... and most of it was certainly directed where he wanted it.
I wonder if the fat fool truly thought only he and the Ternathians would understand that particular challenge? the Emperor thought sardonically. What? He thinks I have no historians—no spies? That Uromathia forgets its tools simply because we haven't used them in two or three centuries?
Still, he reminded himself, in fairness to the Seneschal, the episode really wasn't well known, and the pretense of friendship between the Order of Bergahl and the departed Calirath Dynasty had helped bury it deep. But Chava knew about the confrontation between the last Ternathian Emperor to rule from Tajvana and the then-current Seneschal of Bergahl.
Emperor Gariyan VII hadn't much cared for the Order of Bergahl. Indeed, he'd distrusted it deeply after watching it cater to the more restive elements of his imperial capital's population for decades. The Empire had been in a state of ferment. Not disruption, really, and not rebelliousness, but of ... uncertainty. No one really knew exactly what had inspired Gariyan's father to begin the phased reduction of the Empire. The argument that the imperial infrastructure had become too expensive to maintain made a certain degree of sense on the surface, yet it had never withstood serious scrutiny very well. Imperial taxes had been ludicrously low; it wouldn't have been impossible, or even significantly difficult, for that tax structure to be adjusted to provide the necessary funding.
Yet no one had a better reason for Gariyan VI's decision to abandon—or emancipate, depending upon one's viewpoint—the eastern portions of his sprawling empire. Certainly there'd been no organized resistance to "tyra