by David Weber
She wanted to shout her irritation to the sky, or else—preferably—hit him over the head with something large and heavy. Instead, she favored him with a frosty gaze.
"My schoolroom is hardly noted for its incompetent schoolmasters," she observed, and Ilforth reddened.
"No, of course not. I hardly meant to imply—"
"Then perhaps you will be so good as to consider my argument's merit, regardless of the chronological age of its source."
She left him standing, hat in hand, gaping after her as she stalked clear across the broad, windswept deck to the opposite rail. She paused fractionally there, not sure she knew where she meant to go. But a moment later, she knew exactly what to do as the first Lord of the Privy Council appeared on deck, sensibly attired in a practical morning suit with nary a feather nor a geegaw in sight.
"My Lord! How delightful to see you! Would you join me for a stroll?"
Shamir Taje stared at her for a moment. Then he caught sight of Ilforth, still standing frozen on the far side of the deck, and a sudden, impish grin burst forth like sunlight.
"Your Grand Highness, I would be delighted to accompany you."
He held out one arm gallantly, and she laid her hand on his dark, sober sleeve and gave him a brilliant smile.
"I can honestly say I've never been so relieved to see you in my life," she said earnestly, and he chuckled.
"His Lordship has been his usual ingratiating self, I see. What diplomatic crisis has he engendered now?"
Finena, perched on Andrin's other forearm, let out an improbable squawk that lifted Taje's eyebrows and left Andrin laughing.
"I think she wants to eat his tongue for lunch," the princess said. "And, I must say, she'd make better use of it than he does if she did!"
"Marnilay preserve us, how badly did he offend you?" Taje asked, only half-humorously, and her eyes flashed.
"Have you a brace of pistols about you, My Lord?" she asked in reply, and he winced.
"That bad?"
"How in heaven's name did he ever get to be Speaker of the House of Lords?"
To her surprise, Taje met her gaze squarely, and his voice was completely serious.
"He's the Speaker because he's the most senior earl in the House of Lords, and because he has sufficient money, and therefore political influence, to sway an unfortunate—one might almost say unholy—alliance of extreme conservatives, status-conscious popinjays, and ambitious men who know better but find his money exceedingly useful. Never, ever underestimate the damage Ilforth can do in—or from—the House of Lords. Thank Marnilay Herself that the power of the imperial purse rests in the Commons, Your Highness, or that blue-blooded, damnfool-tongued disaster would be able to sit back on his undeserved laurels and dictate to the Throne whenever he felt like it. Which would be every minute of the day."
Andrin stared at the man who held, on a daily basis, more power than anyone in the Empire except her father. She'd never heard such venom from the eternally unflappable First Councilor in her life. Nor, she realized a moment later, had anyone—including her father—ever given her such a crystal-clear glimpse into the machinations of governance.
"My father has tremendous faith in your judgment, First Councilor," she said quietly after a moment. "I would be honored if you would teach me what you can in the limited time you have available."
The glow in his eyes warmed her to the soles of her feet.
"Young lady, I do believe that may be one of the highest compliments I've ever been paid." He cleared his throat, then continued gruffly. "I should be honored to act as your tutor. And I pray to all the gods who watch over our Empire that my tutelage will never be needed."
She slid her hand down his forearm to cover his.
"Amen, My Lord," she said softly, squeezing his fingers briefly. "No one could hope that more than I do. But," she continued with a grim fatalism new to her own experience, "I would far rather be prepared for something I never face than to be caught wanting when it comes, no matter how unpleasant the preparations may prove. Should Janaki die and anything happened to my father—"
She couldn't even finish. The vision was too unrelentingly horrifying for that. She'd never forgotten the earthquake which had rocked her family when her grandfather had been killed in a completely avoidable accident in the middle of an utterly ordinary afternoon in the center of his own capital city. She'd been just five years old, but that memory would be with her until the day she died.
Shamir Taje, First Lord of the Privy Council, didn't move at all for several long moments. He just stared into her eyes. Then he made a tiny move with his free hand, hesitated, and finally finished the motion anyway. He brushed a wild strand of raven-black hair from her brow and tucked it behind her ear.
"You are your father's daughter in so many ways it takes the breath away," he said quietly. Then he drew a deep breath. "Very well, Your Grand Highness. Shall we begin with an analysis of the political situation in the House of Lords?"
"I would be most grateful for anything you could say to clarify that for me."
"In that case," he said, his voice dry as desert sand, "perhaps it's fortunate I hadn't made any specific plans for the balance of the morning."
She gulped, then gave him a brave smile. He nodded almost absently, tucked her hand back into his elbow, and began strolling aft in the shadow of Windtreader's funnels as he started to the morning's lesson.
Chapter Thirty-One
It was almost sunset of the third day of their voyage when Andrin spotted the sight she'd been waiting for all day and discovered that her breathless anticipation had been more than worth the wait. With Finena on her arm, her father beside her on the left, and Shamir Taje standing on her right, Andrin stared out at her first sight of the massive rock that guarded the narrow Bolakini Strait.
The Fist of Bolakin was the largest natural fortress on Sharona. It was also the longest continuously occupied fortress, and under the provisions of an ancient treaty, it was garrisoned jointly by Ternathia and Bolakin. That treaty, and the others between Ternathia and Bolakin which had been signed at the same time, were the second oldest in the Empire's history. Only its treaties with Farnalia predated them, and those were five thousand years old, cemented by intermarriage and the continued mutual interest of close neighbors.
The Bolakini treaties were the result of the shrewdest political move any of Ternathia's more distant ancient neighbors had ever made. The Queens of Bolakin, watching the Empire's expansion across the continent north of the Fist had accurately predicted Ternathia's intention—its need—to expand its naval presence into the Mbisi Sea to secure the southern shores of its new acquisitions. Aware that Ternathia would want control of the Fist, and that the Empire would tolerate no piracy, the Queens of Bolakin had approached the Emperor of Ternathia with a proposition: a joint garrison and shared sovereignty for the Fist, duty-free passage for both Ternathian and Bolakini vessels past the Fist, and the equal division of all duties collected on non-allied shipping through the Straits and bound for Ternathian or Farnalian ports of call, coupled with an ironclad guarantee that no Bolakini shore-runner would harass Ternathian shipping. In exchange, Bolakin offered to open her ports to Ternathian ships, giving Ternathia access to the vast wealth being carried north from the Ricathian interior, both by overland caravan across the vast Sarthan Desert and by Bolakini merchant ships plying the long western shore of Ricathia.
The Emperor had been impressed. Certainly, the proposal had represented an excellent deal for Bolakin, but it was also pragmatic and eminently fair to Ternathia, as well. Not only that, but his own naval commanders and merchants had been suggesting for some time that the Fist had to be either neutralized or taken under imperial control. He'd vastly preferred the treaty approach, which had the enormous advantage of avoiding the need to maintain armed garrisons to defend against Bolakini efforts to retake conquered territory . . . or rebel against an imperial oppressor.
So the treaties had been signed, the marriages of
alliance had been arranged, and four and a half prosperous millennia later, Andrin carried a trickle of Bolakini blood and both sides were well content with a long-standing pact.
The Fist was an immense, crouching lion of stone, a sharply sloped mountain planted solidly to protect the sheltered waters of Bolakin Bay, carved out of the southeastern edge of the Narhathan Peninsula. The Fist was three miles long and three quarters of a mile wide, connected to Narhath by a low, sandy isthmus which had been steadily expanded over the years behind its advancing seawalls as land was reclaimed from the sea and used for wharves, warehouses, taverns, and—in recent years—luxury hotels. The ancient passage duties on shipping through the Strait were long gone these days, but Bolakin Bay remained a vitally important service port for the traffic sweeping in and out of the Mbisi every day, and it had also been one of the Empire's most critical naval bases for thousands of years. The original bronze-age forts had long since disappeared, although archaeologists had recently exhumed one of them, and the curtain walls and catapults and ballistae of a later age, and the muzzle-loading smoothbore cannon which had followed them, had disappeared in turn. Now armored gun turrets, their barbettes and magazines blasted deep into the Fist's stony heart, boasted rifled artillery capable of reaching entirely across the Straits to the shore of Ricathia.
Beside that huge, ancient crag, Windtreader was a child's toy tossed into the sea. The immovable mass of stone caught the westering sunlight with a deep golden glow. Stark black shadows marked the locations of the powerful batteries, their turrets protected by tons of armor plate and reinforced concrete, capable of sending any battleship ever built to the bottom at a distance of over twelve miles.
Two flags snapped and cracked in the wind above that mighty fortress, representing the two nations who shared sovereignty over it to this day. One was the black field and golden lion of Bolakin, rippling and wavering as it streamed out from its staff. The other was the eight-rayed golden sunburst of Ternathia on its deep green field, and as Andrin watched, both of them started down their staffs in perfect unison.
She couldn't have explained to anyone why sudden tears filled her eyes. It wasn't just pride in her people, wasn't just the honor that salute accorded to her father, her family, and all they represented to their people. There was something else. Through some strange alchemy, born of the eerie light of the dying sun and the black shadows that marked those immense guns, of the threat which pulled this ship and its passengers towards a fateful meeting in Tajvana, that simple salute—the dipping of two flags as the Emperor passed by—became something more. Became a reminder of all the ancient Empire had endured . . . and an ominous portent of what was yet to come.
Men in Ternathian uniform were already on their way to fight. To rescue any survivors, and to prevent the deaths of more innocents. But Sharonians had already died, and that simple salute brought home with painful clarity the fact that still more would die tomorrow—for an unknown stretch of tomorrows. She felt the weight of those deaths pressing down on her soul, crushing her until it was a struggle simply to breathe. The enemy had no face, beyond the indistinct images transmitted by a woman unable to clearly see the men killing her, yet Andrin was suffocating under the weight of the more and more deaths to come. Her throat was locked. She wanted to promise the memory of Shaylar Nargra Kolmayr that she would be avenged. She wanted so badly to make that promise, to give in to the need to strike back in an outraged demand for justice, but the terrible weight on her chest wouldn't let her.
She could see the men on the fortress walls, waving and cheering, and however hard she tried, she couldn't lift her arm to respond. They would literally go to their deaths, if ordered to do so by her father . . . or by Andrin, if she ever came to the throne. The terrible prescience, if that was what gripped her, left her chilled and frightened, alone despite her father at her side, despite Lazima chan Zindico at her back. She had never felt smaller, less heroic or less capable, in her life than she did as she contemplated the kinds of decisions an empress would have to make in time of war.
She swallowed once. Twice. And then she made a silent vow—not to Shaylar's shadow, but to the men in that fortress, and to all the other men in uniform scattered across the known universes.
She would do her best—the very utmost best she could—to prepare herself to lead them. And if the time ever came that she must, she would not risk them lightly. She was the daughter and granddaughter and great-great-granddaughter of emperors and empresses. Throughout the millennia of the Empire, its rulers had sent Ternathian fighting men out to die again and again, sometimes for good reasons, and sometimes for bad. She knew that, just as she knew emperors and empresses would send them out to die in the future, as well. She knew that, too. But if those men in that fortress must die under her orders, she would spend them well. Not on a whim, not capriciously, not to satisfy her own anger or out of her own fear. She would spend them as if their blood were more precious than gold, more precious than her own . . . because it was.
The thought burned through her, and then, without warning, Finena launched unexpectedly from her wrist. The silver falcon arrowed skyward, drawing the eye as white wings flashed red in the glowing sunset. She wheeled once, high above the fortress flags, then folded her wings and dove, streaking earthward like a meteor plunging down the sky.
She snapped her wings wide again, fanned her tail, and whipped across the deck at more than a hundred miles an hour. Sailors ducked out of sheer instinct, and Andrin lifted her wrist as Finena's piercing call shrilled against the wind. The falcon banked into a wide, sweeping turn, then floated back down the crystal depths of air like a dream of beauty until her talons slapped against Andrin's gauntleted wrist.
The magnificent bird perched there for an endless, breathless moment—a living sculpture, carved from silver and ash-pale ivory, wings spread wide, ready to fly again and strike at a moment's notice. Fierce, proud, defiant, protective . . . The adjectives and emotions tumbled through Andrin, too many and too rapidly to name them all.
Then the wings folded, the head tilted inquiringly up to meet Andrin's shaken gaze, and Finena was just a bird again. Only a falcon, sitting peaceably on Andrin's arm, and no longer an avatar of fate itself.
Andrin drew a single, shallow breath and turned her gaze from her falcon to her father. Her eyes met his, and she recognized the look in them. It was the same look she'd just given the soldiers in the fortress—the look of a man who knew his word would send other men to their deaths on a world so far away the message would travel for days, even at the speed of thought, just to reach it. Men who would go willingly, trusting him to send them for good reason, for a cause that was worthy of their sacrifice. The look of the man who knew the terrible weight of that responsibility . . . and feared that one day it would be transferred from his shoulders to hers.
Andrin wanted to weep. Then her father looked into her eyes . . . and did.
"I'm tired, Papa," Andrin murmured, trying to hide how desperately shaken she was. "I'll say goodnight now."
"Of course, 'Drin," he replied.
He kissed her brow, squeezed her hand for a moment, then let her go, and she fled to her cabin, where Lady Merissa was lying in her bunk, pale and asleep, thank all the gods. Andrin settled Finena on her perch, pulled off her own heavy coat and embroidered gown, and wrapped herself in the comforting softness of a silk night dress and a thick robe woven from Ternathian wool and exotic cashmere.
Her head ached fiercely, and she curled up in her own bed. She started to light the lamp as the sun sank toward the sea, but then she changed her mind. Instead, she simply gazed out the scuttle for a long, long time while the sea turned golden and the sun balanced on the rim of the world.
She couldn't actually see the sun slip beneath the waves. The sunset lay astern as Windtreader forged steadily onward, deeper and deeper into the Mbisi. But she watched the light on the water, watched the clouds overhead turn orange and crimson and deep wine-red, then fade into soft shades of purp
le. The cabin was chilly as the light finally disappeared and the heavens came to life, glittering with thousands upon thousands of autumn stars beyond the drifting banners of cloud. She pulled the thick woolen blankets up around her shoulders and leaned her aching brow against the cool glass. She didn't want to think about what would happen in Tajvana. She didn't want to think at all.
It was comforting to simply sit in the darkness, watching the stars and thinking of nothing while the ship moved beneath her and the throb of the powerful engines enveloped her. It was past time for supper, she realized distantly, but her stomach rebelled at the mere thought of food, and she swallowed queasily. Her head ached, and she closed her eyes, thinking longingly about an icepack, not food.
A quiet tap sounded at the door.
"Go away," she called, softly enough to avoid disturbing Lady Merissa.
Silence fell once more, but then, five minutes later, the tap sounded again. And again, five minutes after that.