She thought about her older brother, wondering—not for the first time—how much of his petulance and spoiled refusal to understand the responsibilities which came with the privileges of birth had been the work of people just like that. She’d never know about that, for no one had ever attempted to mold her to their purposes. She liked to think that was because they’d known they’d fail, but deep inside she had to admit what she’d always known. There’d been little point in any court faction’s attempting to bend her to its purposes, for she’d been only a daughter. Why waste effort on her when the future prince himself had been so accessible and ready to hand? And if Daivyn had been too young to be included in their plans before their father sent them to Delferahk, that was no longer the case, was it? What would happen when—?
She shook herself and inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring as the salt air filled her lungs, and told herself sternly to let tomorrow take care of itself. The Writ told God’s children to do the best they could each day and trust Him and the Archangels to look after them when tomorrow came. Princes and princesses and emperors and empresses were less free to do that than most of His children, for the weight of a crown was heavy, but there were times when even they simply had to stand back and trust Him to get it right.
* * *
“Well, they’ve kept their word,” Sir Rysel Gahrvai, the Earl of Anvil Rock, said, looking down at the dispatch. The semaphore stations had flashed word of the Charisians’ arrival ahead as soon as the first picket boat reached the shore.
“It looks like they’ve kept their word,” Sir Taryl Lektor, the Earl of Tartarian, corrected in a finicky sort of tone, and Anvil Rock gave him a glare.
“I don’t really think they’re very likely to go back on it after this.” He waved the dispatch at his friend. “That would be just a teeny bit stupid of them, don’t you think?”
“Of course it would. And of course I don’t think they’re going to. I’m simply saying that until we have Irys and Daivyn back on Corisandian soil in one piece, I’m keeping my guard up.” Tartarian grimaced. “For that matter, you know damned well—as well as I do—that there are people right here in Manchyr who’d prefer to see Daivyn dead at wharf-side rather than seated on a throne as a ‘Charisian puppet.’ And not all of them would be acting without the Church’s blessings. Or instructions, for that matter.”
“You’re right.”
Anvil Rock dropped the dispatch on the table and strode to the window. The chamber in which they stood was in one of the palace’s taller towers, looking out over the harbor and Manchyr Bay beyond. It was a spectacular view in the midmorning sunlight, despite—or perhaps because of—the scores of windmills which crowned so many of Manchyr’s buildings, spinning briskly or slowly, depending upon their size and power, and gilding the city with their own liveliness and flickering motion. Yet the harbor itself looked strangely empty at the moment, despite the miles of orange and white bunting and banners hoisted to dance with the wind from every spire, rooftop, and waterfront crane, because every small vessel which would normally have dotted its waters was absent. The earl knew where they were, and he took the time for a brief, heartfelt prayer that none of them belonged to another of Zhaspahr Clyntahn’s “Rakurai” who’d managed to smuggle a few tons of gunpowder aboard.
“You’re right,” he sighed again. “But the Charisians’ve made it abundantly clear that they’re transporting and treating Daivyn and Irys with all of the respect they deserve. And if that dispatch is right, if they are flying the heir’s banner, then they’re officially underscoring their recognition of him as the rightful Prince of Corisande. That’s pretty conclusive evidence that they have no intention of backing off from the terms Phylyp’s reported he and Irys accepted.”
“And you think members of the Royal Council aren’t going to argue that a nineteen-year-old girl had no business ‘accepting’ any sort of terms in her brother’s name?” Tartarian’s tone was skeptical, almost scornful. “Shan-wei, Rysel! There’re members of the Regency Council, far less the entire Royal Council, who feel that way! And that doesn’t even get us to Parliament or the Temple Loyalists! For someone as smart as we both know Sharleyan Ahrmahk is, she’s hanging an awful lot of faith on our ability to convince the entire damned Princedom to ratify a teenager’s ‘decisions of state.’ Especially one like this one!”
“If you think they were bad terms, you should’ve said so at the time,” Anvil Rock pointed out, turning his head to glare over his shoulder once more.
“If I’d thought they were bad terms, I would’ve said so at the time. I happen to think they’re the best terms we could possibly’ve hoped for! I’m just pointing out that whether or not the Charisians have any intention of ‘backing off,’ we’re going to find Corisandians who think we ought to. And some of them—I might mention the late, unlamented Earl of Craggy Hill as an example—may not be shy about trying to do something about that.”
“Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?” Anvil Rock’s expression was grim, his eyes hard as Barcor Mountain granite. “But I’ve got quite a bit of faith in Koryn and Charlz—and even young Windshare. For that matter, people like Craggy Hill are why we have executioners, and, personally, Taryl, I think we’ve had just about enough of that kind of crap over the last two or three years. Don’t you?”
* * *
The cheers rolled up from the waterfront as the oared tugs eased Destiny against the wharf’s thick fenders. They crested and swelled in waves, washing over the galleon and the crowd of dignitaries waiting to greet her like a tempest. Guns rumbled like that tempest’s smoky thunder as the fortresses and every warship in the harbor sent up the rolling eighteen-gun salutes due the long-absent heir to Corisande’s throne, and her topmen manned her yards while her Marines snapped to attention and presented arms to her royal passengers.
The cheers redoubled as the gangplank ran up to the galleon’s side, and the crowd pressing against the cordon of Corisandian troops (there wasn’t a single Charisian soldier or Marine in all that raucous shoreside tumult) waved hands, flags, and scarves while others threw clouds of flower petals into the air. The petals swirled like particolored snow in a city which had never seen snow in its life, and Hektor Aplyn-Ahrmahk knew the trumpeters behind the dignitaries were blowing a fanfare only because he could see the raised instruments. No one more than a few feet from the musicians could have hoped to actually hear them in all that wild, unbridled bedlam.
He stood on Destiny’s quarterdeck, hands clenched behind him, and watched that crowded wharf through narrow eyes. He was very young for his rank and duties—indeed, he’d celebrated his seventeenth birthday on the same day Prince Daivyn had celebrated his eleventh, since there were only six days between their actual birthdates and Daivyn had insisted that they share. But he’d seen and done a great deal in those seventeen years and been tutored in the duty expected of a naval officer by the finest captain he’d ever known. More, he’d become a son of the House of Ahrmahk. He’d seen the working of politics and policy at the highest level from inside the imperial family, and so he knew why the foreign, common-born duke who’d been betrothed to their princess couldn’t possibly be by her side when she and her brother, the rightful Prince of Corisande, returned to their homeland at last. He’d understood how it would be—how it had to be—but he hadn’t had a clue how hard it would be, and his hands gripped even tighter as he thought about how easily a Temple Loyalist fanatic could use that mad confusion to get a pistol close enough to kill the young woman he’d come against all odds to love. It had happened to his stepmother, after all, right here in this same princedom, despite the presence of Seijin Merlin and under far less chaotic conditions, and—
Yet there was nothing he could do about it except to trust Koryn Gahrvai to get it right. He was Irys and Daivyn’s cousin, and everything Cayleb or Sharleyan—or Merlin Athrawes—had ever said indicated that he and his father were both men of honor … and that Koryn was very, very good at his job. If anyone c
ould keep Irys safe, Gahrvai was that anyone, but it was hard—hard—to trust a man he’d never met with the most vital task in his universe.
Irys and Daivyn walked between the lines of Destiny’s Marines and started down the gangplank, Earl Coris at their backs, and his heart swelled with pride as he watched them. Daivyn was obviously nervous, but he held his head high, and if he simultaneously clutched his sister’s hand, who should blame him? Certainly his subjects didn’t, for the impossible volume roared still higher as they saw the royal brother and sister. As for Irys, if there was an anxious bone in her body, no one could have guessed it from her graceful, regal carriage. They gained the wharf and the men gathered to greet them stepped forward, and Hektor’s proud eyes narrowed as he saw the orange-trimmed white cassock and priest’s cap.
The crowd roar diminished suddenly, magically, as the man in that cassock raised one hand. It didn’t die away completely, but it faded until a single voice could be heard, and Klairmant Gairlyng, Archbishop of Corisande, spoke.
“Let us pray, my children!”
The crowd noise faded still further, dropping away into a quiet in which the snapping of flags and bunting and the cries of seabirds and sea wyverns disturbed by all the uproar could be heard echoing down from above.
“O most mighty and magnificent God,” Gairlyng prayed into that stillness, his voice carrying firm and strong, “we thank You from the bottoms of our hearts for the grace which You have vouchsafed us this day in the return of these our beloved Prince Daivyn and his sister Princess Irys. We thank and praise You for the way in which You have spread Your protecting arm about them, keeping them safe during their long absence, warding them from harm, preserving them from danger. We glorify You for moving so powerfully and mysteriously in the hearts of men and women of goodwill as to bring this moment to pass. We beseech You to remain with them, to guard and guide them, to give them wisdom that they may know and do Your will. We beseech You also to so guide and move the Regency Council, and our Prince’s Council Royal, and his Parliament assembled, that we may find that peaceful resolution to the remaining points of contention between Corisande and the Empire of Charis which we know is near and dear to Your heart, as it must also be to the hearts and minds of all good and godly men and women. Be with us in the days to come, strengthen us when we falter, bear us up when we stumble, and bring us in the fullness of time to that place in which You would have us be as Your beloved sons and daughters. We ask this in the name of the love You proclaimed to all men and women in the words and mighty deeds of Your Archangels so many years ago. Amen.”
Absolute silence hovered for a long, aching moment, enhanced and not broken by the wash of water around wharf pilings, the sigh of wind in Destiny’s rigging, and the crackling pop of that blue flag flying from her masthead, and then the stillness vanished into cheers even louder than before.
* * *
The last time Irys Daykyn had been in the Grand Council Chamber, her father had occupied the throne behind that long, massive table of gleaming, intricately carved wood. Now that throne sat empty, its cushioned seat occupied only by a simple presence crown, and the dozens of men who’d been seated around the table rose, bowing profoundly, as she and Daivyn stepped through the door, followed by Archbishop Klairmant and Sir Phylyp Ahzgood, Earl of Coris.
“His Highness Prince Daivyn,” the door warden announced loudly and unnecessarily. “His Eminence Archbishop Klairmant. Her Highness Princess Irys. The Earl of Coris.”
The sound of Irys’ heels on the brilliantly polished marble floor was crisp and clear in the silence that followed. She walked beside Daivyn, her hand laid upon his left arm, and her brother’s eyes were very bright. Despite his youth, his head was high, his deportment was that of a gentleman escorting a highborn lady with the poise and assurance of someone twice his age, and she saw one or two eyebrows rising among the noblemen waiting for them.
You show them, Daivyn, she thought proudly from behind the calm composure of her own expression. You remember everything we talked about, and you show them.
They advanced to exactly the proper spot on the chamber floor, and the Earl of Anvil Rock stepped around the council table. He crossed the black and white squares of marble that glistened in the sunlight pouring down from the high windows set into the chamber’s roof and once again went to one knee before them, bending his head.
“Your Highness,” he told Daivyn, “in the name of your Regency Council, of the Council Royal, of your Parliament, and all of the subjects of your realm, I welcome you home. Each and all of us have prayed long and hard that we might see this day, and I know I speak for your entire Council when I tell you how deeply my heart rejoices that God and the Archangels have permitted you to return to us safely at last.”
“I thank you, My Lord Earl.” Daivyn’s young voice was clear and admirably grave as he repeated the formal response in which Irys and Coris had drilled him. “The reports of the manner in which you have governed and protected my people and my princedom in my stead and as my regent during my absence have gladdened my heart. And”—he looked directly into Anvil Rock’s eyes as the earl raised his head—“I’m very happy to see you again, cousin.”
His voice changed subtly with the last sentence, becoming both younger and far less rehearsed, and Anvil Rock had to swallow hard as he looked into those brown young eyes and saw the truth behind them.
“Thank you, Your Highness,” he said, and turned his attention to Irys. “We are all equally gladdened and grateful to see you returned safely to us, as well, Your Highness.”
“Thank you, My Lord.” Irys heard the tiniest waver in her own voice. It surprised her, and she blinked hard, then reached out to Anvil Rock. He took her hand and kissed it, then rose without releasing it and extended his other hand to Daivyn.
“Your places await you,” he said.
* * *
Irys was a little surprised.
Daivyn had been escorted to that empty throne and seated in the smaller, comfortably upholstered chair on the uppermost step of the dais on which it sat (they’d had to put two more cushions in it to make him tall enough, then place a stool so his feet didn’t dangle), but she’d expected that. Until he was crowned as Prince of Corisande, he could not be seated in the throne itself, although the position of his chair underscored his right to claim that throne. What surprised her was that she was seated beside him, at his right hand, in the position which would have been granted to Daivyn’s consort, had he been old enough to wed. And the reason that surprised her was that she was merely their rightful prince’s sister, and one who hadn’t yet quite attained her own age of majority, to boot. By law, she had no more standing in the Royal Council than she did in the succession. Seating her at Daivyn’s right granted her that standing at least temporarily, and she wondered whether it had been Anvil Rock’s idea or Tartarian’s. Before her exile to Delferahk, she would have wagered that it was Tartarian’s. Now, having read the correspondence between Coris and Anvil Rock—and between Anvil Rock and Cayleb and Sharleyan—she was less certain of that. Her cousin had neither sought nor wanted the responsibility which had fallen upon him, and he would have been the first to argue that he was thoroughly unqualified for it, yet he’d discharged his duties well. And along the way, he’d become far more adroit at treading the mazes of power—and shaping those mazes, when necessary—than either of them had ever expected he might.
“Would you honor us by opening our deliberations in prayer, Your Eminence?” Anvil Rock requested, and Klairmant Gairlyng rose from his place at the table, directly to Daivyn and Irys’ right as befitted God’s direct representative.
“Of course, My Lord,” the dark-haired, dark-eyed archbishop replied. He stood, raising his hands in benediction, and bowed his head.
“O God, we pray You to look down upon this Council as it meets to grapple with the many and weighty decisions which await it and all the people of this Realm. We ask You to grant it the wisdom to make those decisions aright, to walk
in Your light and to do those things which You would have us do. And we ask You especially to bless Prince Daivyn and his sister and guardian, Princess Irys, that they may shoulder the responsibilities You have placed upon them and lead the people of their Realm in justice, safety, and well-being to bear Your sword under the banner of Your champions against those enemies of Your word and will who have turned even Your Church into a house of corruption, Your Temple into a den of thieves, and Your Inquisition into a pestilence loosed upon the world. Amen.”
He never raised his voice. The sonorous words came calm and measured—without any fiery, denunciatory passion but firmly and unhesitatingly and all the weightier for it. They were the words of a priest who knew his own mind … and God’s, and Irys’ eyes went wide in astonishment. The sound of a falling pin would have been deafening as the archbishop calmly seated himself once more. The rustle of his cassock, the whisper of his slippers on the marble floor, were clearly audible in the Grand Council Chamber’s petrified stillness, and she managed—somehow—not to look over her shoulder to see Phylyp Ahzgood’s expression.