Honorable?
That word was not, thought Thastain, the first one that would come to mind in describing Mandralisca. Cold-hearted, yes. Cruel, maybe. Frightening. Fierce. Determined. Ruthless. But honorable? Honorable? Thastain had known a few unquestionably honorable men in his Sennec days, good, strong, uncomplicated men, whose word was their bond. Liaprand Strume, for one, the storekeeper, who would always allow more credit to someone in trouble. Safiar Syamilak, his father’s bailiff, the devoted guardian of their lands. And the big red-bearded man with the farm just upriver from theirs, the one who had cracked his back lifting the wagon that had fallen on that little boy—Gheivir Maglisk, that was his name. Three honorable men, no doubt of that. It was hard to see what Count Mandralisca had in common with those three.
On the other hand it was not his business to be speaking harshly of Count Mandralisca to this Metamorph, or to anyone else. It was Mandralisca whom he served, not the Metamorphs. If this creature wanted to find out how trustworthy Mandralisca might or might not be, he would have to do it on his own.
“The Count is an extraordinary man,” Thastain replied finally. No lie, that. “When this land of ours is freed at last from the oppression of the Pontifexes, you’ll see how well Count Mandralisca keeps his promises.” Which was also the truth, for what it was worth.—“Look there, sir,” Thastain said, desperately searching for some distraction. “How the early-afternoon light strikes the Crystal Boulevard.”
“Is so very beautiful, yes,” said Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp thickly, shading his strange eyes against the brilliant stream of radiance that batteries of revolving reflectors summoned from the Crystal Boulevard’s shining paving-stones. “Is the greatest of cities, your Ni-moya. I am thankful to your Count for permitting me to come here. Is my hope someday to bring my clansfolk here to see it as well, when your Count has won his war against the Pontifex and the Coronal. For such his promise is, that we will be allowed to come.”
“Such his promise is, yes,” Thastain agreed.
Jacomin Halefice was in the Movement headquarters building when Thastain returned to it after delivering the Shapeshifter to his hostelry. Thastain was glad to see him. Lately a friendship of sorts had come into being between Thastain and the aide-de-camp, based, apparently, on Halefice’s fears that Khaymak Barjazid was supplanting him in Mandralisca’s affections. Halefice, Thastain knew, went a long way back with Mandralisca—back to the days when the two of them had been in the service of Dantirya Sambail. They had fought together against the army of Prestimion in the Procurator’s rebellion.
But it was Barjazid, whom Mandralisca had known only a short while, who controlled the all-important helmets. Often, nowadays, the Count seemed to favor the little man from Suvrael over Halefice; and so, evidently, Halefice had decided to cultivate the friendship of the young and swiftly rising Thastain, forming an unstated alliance against a further increase in Khaymak Barjazid’s influence with Mandralisca.
Thastain, young as he was, was clever enough to know that Halefice was being foolish. There was no need for anyone to worry about the place he held in Mandralisca’s “affections.” Mandralisca had no affections, only schemes, desires, goals; he kept people about him who would help him in the fulfillment of those things, saw them entirely as instruments toward his intended purposes, discarded them if they were no longer useful. You were deluding yourself if you imagined that you were any kind of friend to Mandralisca, or he to you.
Even so, Thastain welcomed Halefice’s overtures. It was a nerve-wracking business, working for Count Mandralisca. You never knew when you would make some critical mistake, or even a minor one, and he would turn on you with all his terrible ferocity. Thastain had not really anticipated being thrust into such proximity with the terrifying Count when he had chosen to enter the service of the Five Lords. Jacomin Halefice softened that proximity for him. The aide-de-camp was a genial, easy-natured man, whose company was a pleasant relief after an hour or two with the Count. And perhaps Jacomin Halefice might even be able to protect him against Mandralisca’s wrath should he someday become its target. Sooner or later, after all, everyone did.
“Took the Shapeshifter home, did you?” Halefice asked. “That was a surprise, eh, seeing the Count invite one of those in for a conference! But he’ll ally himself with anyone and anything, will our Count, if he thinks it’ll serve his needs.”
“And will it serve his needs, do you think, to bring in the Shapeshifters in the struggle against Alhanroel? How can you trust such creatures?”
“They are a bunch of slippery serpents, yes,” Halefice said, with a grin and a nod. “I love them no more than you do, boy. But I see why Mandralisca would attempt to make common cause with them, just the same. They have much more reason to hate the Pontificate than he does, you know. And the enemy of your enemy, remember, is your friend. Mandralisca believes that when the time comes, the Piurifayne folk will do everything they can to make life difficult for Prestimion and Dekkeret.”
“So we have Metamorphs as our friends, now!” Thastain shuddered. “Stranger and stranger every day.—The Metamorph doesn’t trust the Count very much, by the way. Doesn’t entirely think he’s going to keep his promises about granting them equality once the war is won.”
“He told you that, did he? Very confiding of him. I wouldn’t pass that word along to Mandralisca, though, if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“What good will it do? If Mandralisca’s planning to doublecross the Shapeshifters when he no longer has any use for them, he’ll do it regardless of what they might suspect. He doesn’t expect anyone to trust him anyway, does Mandralisca. And if you tell him that the Shapeshifter’s been pouring things such as you’ve just told me into your ears, the Count’ll start worrying about how chummy you’re getting with his new Metamorph friends. Keep it to yourself, is what I say. Don’t even tell me. You haven’t told me. Understood?”
“Understood,” Thastain said.
“What about going out on the Promenade for some sausages and beer, now?” Halefice suggested.
Thastain welcomed the return to the bright warm sunlight. His head was spinning. He had not been expecting any sort of conversational intimacy with that Shapeshifter, and the fact that Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had appeared to want to use him as a confidant was disturbing and unsettling. If the Metamorphs mistrusted Mandralisca’s promises, let them take that up with Mandralisca himself, he thought, not whisper it in the ear of his youngest and least surefooted aide.
And, though he had not found his brief moments of contact with the Shapeshifter as horrifying and repugnant as he had expected—had, indeed, begun in that brief conversation to look upon the Shapeshifters as actual people with actual grievances, rather than dread monsters—he still resented the fact that Mandralisca had thrust him so blithely into that contact. It had not been right to ask that of him. His old conditioning was still powerful. He did not crave the companionship of Metamorphs. He was not at all sure that he cared to be in the service of a man who thought it would be desirable to form an alliance with them.
Thastain was, in fact, getting weary of Mandralisca and his icy-souled ways. Mandralisca treated him reasonably well, even seemed to find his company somewhat amusing, but he knew how little that really meant. Even the Metamorph had been able to see the contempt behind the Count’s use of the mock title of “duke” for him.
“Do you notice,” Jacomin Halefice said, as they stood by the riverfront walk eating their sausages, “how tense the Count has become these days? Not that he was ever a man of easy spirit. But the slightest provocation now is enough to set him twanging like a tightly strung harp-string.”
“Indeed,” said Thastain noncommittally. He had learned long ago the great value of listening and nodding and saying very little of his own when Count Mandralisca was the subject of the discussion.
“Khaymak thinks he is overusing the helmet,” Halefice went on. “Night after night he roves the world with it, ent
ering people’s minds and doing what he does to them. Barjazid says that the helmet is a wearying thing to use, when one uses it as much as that. And who would know better?”
“Who, indeed,” said Thastain.
“But I think more than the helmet is involved. This is no trifling thing, proposing to make war against the Coronal. I think the Count sometimes fears he may have overreached himself. He must do all the planning himself, you know. The Five Lords are worthless creatures. And now, this business of enlisting the Metamorphs in our cause—it is always dangerous, dealing with them, of course. You must watch your back at every moment. The Count knows that. And, I think, the Danipiur’s ambassador knows he must look to the Count in the same fashion. A wondrous pair, they are!—Another round of sausages, eh, Thastain?”
“What a good idea,” Thastain said.
“Of course,” said Halefice, “the important question is not whether the Count intends to doublecross the Shapeshifters, but whether they will doublecross us. If the Count has not convinced the Shapeshifter that his promises are sincere, how likely are they to help our cause, when the day of action comes? Suppose they decide that his talk of civil equality is no more to be believed than anything else the Unchanging Ones have said over the years, and abandon us to fight our own battles among ourselves.”
“Unchanging Ones?”
“Their term for us. The Count may be making a grievous error if he places overmuch reliance on the goodwill of his new Metamorph friends.—But of course we are not having this discussion, Thastain. We are simply standing here enjoying our sausages.”
“Indeed,” said Thastain.
And thought: So Halefice also thinks they mistrust each other, do Mandralisca and Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp? Surely he is right about that. They are of the same kind, in a sense: slippery treacherous serpents, just as Halefice says. Well, they deserve each other.
But do I really deserve either one of them?
14
“A breakfast meeting is what he wants,” Prestimion said. “A discussion of the highest priority, he says, just the two of us, Pontifex and Coronal together. Not Septach Melayn, not Gialaurys, not even you, Varaile. And only last evening he was asking for more time to prepare his invasion plan, because he’s operating without a High Counsellor. What could have come over him in the night, do you think?”
Varaile smiled. “He knows you very well, Prestimion. How little you enjoy any sort of delay.”
“I don’t think that’s it. I may be an impatient, impulsive man, but Dekkeret certainly isn’t. And this time I wasn’t rushing him, for once. I agreed yesterday that it would be all right for him to take three or four days to think things over. Instead he’s coming back at me the very next morning. There has to be a reason for that. And I’m not sure I’m going to like it when I discover what it is.”
The meeting took place in a private dining room adjacent to the Pontifex’s quarters, on the eastern side of the building facing into glorious golden-green morning sunlight. At Prestimion’s orders the meal was served all at once, plates of fruit, steamed fish, a stack of sweet brown stajja-cakes, some light breakfast wine. Neither of them touched much of it. Dekkeret seemed to be in a very strange mood, tense, wound up very tight, and yet with a glowing, oddly exalted look in his eyes, as though he had had some rapturous vision in the night.
“Let me tell you my plan,” he said, when the brief social pleasantries were done with. “With the alterations that I’ve made in it as a result of a night’s thinking.”
There was something almost theatrical about the way Dekkeret had said that. Prestimion was mystified by it.
“Go on,” he said.
“What I intend,” Dekkeret said, “is at once to undertake the first grand processional of my reign. That will give me a convenient and uncontroversial pretext for visiting Zimroel. Since I’m already here on the west coast, I’ll announce that that will be my first stop. I’ll set out as soon as possible. Sail right across to Piliplok, journey up the Zimr to Ni-moya, continue on into the far western lands, stopping at Dulorn, Pidruid, Narabal, Til-omon, all those cities of the west where ‘Lord Dekkeret’ is nothing more than a name.”
He paused then, as though to give Prestimion a chance to express his approval.
Prestimion, growing more and more bewildered by his Coronal’s words and manner, said, “I remind you, Dekkeret, there’s an insurrection going on over there. What we spoke of yesterday was your invading Zimroel with a major army, in order that the uprising can be put down. A campaign of war against the rebels who defy our authority. War. That’s something quite different from a grand processional.”
Serenely Dekkeret said, “Prestimion, you were the one who spoke of an invasion. I never did. Invading Zimroel, raising my hand in war against its people, who are my own people: these are not policies with which I can agree.”
“So you oppose the idea of dealing with the rebellion by force?”
“Most emphatically, majesty.”
Prestimion felt the blood beginning to leap in his veins. He was astounded as much by Dekkeret’s air of bland calm assurance as by the outright insubordination embodied in his words.
He controlled himself with some effort. “I think you have no choice in this, my lord. How can you even think of a grand processional of the usual sort at a time like this? For all you know, you’ll arrive in Piliplok and find that they’ve sworn allegiance to one of these Sambailid brothers, hailing him as their Procurator or even, maybe, as their Pontifex, and won’t even let you land. Imagine that: the Coronal of Majipoor turned away at the harbor! What will you do then, Dekkeret? Or you’ll get to Ni-moya and the river will be blockaded by a hostile fleet, and you’ll be told that this is Sambailid territory and you’re not welcome in it. What then? Won’t you regard that as a cause of war?”
“Not necessarily. I’ll remind them of the covenant that binds them in loyalty.”
Prestimion stared. “And if they laugh at you, what course of action will you take?”
“I promised you, Prestimion, that I would do whatever needs to be done to restore the rule of law in Zimroel. I intend to keep that promise.”
“By measures that nevertheless fall short of outright war.”
“I’ve never said that. I’ll have troops with me. I’d use them if I had to. But I don’t think a war will be necessary.”
“If I tell you that I see it as the only solution, that will put us in direct conflict, you and me, won’t it?” Prestimion still spoke in a measured tone, but his anger was rising from moment to moment. This was a development he had never envisioned. In all the years since Dekkeret had first emerged as the obvious choice to become the next Coronal, Prestimion not once had imagined that he and Dekkeret would ever find themselves differing on any great matter of state. This seemed the final betrayal, to have his own protégé rise up against him in a time of such crisis. “I urge you, Dekkeret, rethink what you’ve just said.”
“You are Pontifex, majesty. I obey you in all things and always will. But I tell you, Prestimion, I oppose this war of yours with all my soul.”
“Ah,” said Prestimion. “With all your soul.”
Prestimion had not felt so baffled since the moment long ago when he had watched Confalume’s son Korsibar placing the starburst crown on his own head with his own hands and proclaiming himself king. What is the Pontifex to do, he asked himself, when his Coronal throws his orders back in his face? Confalume had never prepared him for something like this. Prestimion saw the relationship between himself as Pontifex and Dekkeret as Coronal, suddenly, much as the aging and increasingly ineffectual Confalume, grudgingly yielding power to the young firebrand Coronal Lord Prestimion, must once have seen it in his own day.
He fought to contain his surging temper. In another moment he would be shouting and snarling. That must not be allowed to happen. To win time for himself he broke a stajja-cake in half, nibbled at it without interest, washed it down with cool golden wine.
“Ve
ry well,” Prestimion said at last. “You think you can avoid war. No doubt you can, if you’re resolved not to start one. But that still leaves the problem of Mandralisca and his uprising. You’ve pledged to bring both of them under control. Just how do you plan to do that if not by military force?”
“The same way we did in the campaign against the Procurator. Mandralisca has a helmet. We have helmets also. He has a Barjazid: I have a Barjazid. My Barjazid will outmaneuver his Barjazid and take him out of the picture; and that will leave Mandralisca at my mercy.”
“I think this is naive of you, Dekkeret.”
Now anger flared for an instant in the younger man’s eyes. “And I think your thirst for war against your own citizens is an unbecoming thing for one who fancies himself a great monarch, Prestimion. Especially when it’s a war you’ll be waging by proxy, many thousands of miles from the battlefield.”
It was difficult for Prestimion to believe that Dekkeret had actually said such a thing. “No!” he roared, slamming his open hand against the table so that the cutlery jumped high and the wine-flask went flying over the edge. “Unfair! Unfair! Wrongheaded and unfair!”
“Prestimion—”
“Let me speak, Dekkeret. This must be answered.” Prestimion realized that his hands were clenched into fists. He put them out of sight. “I have no thirst for war,” he said, as calmly as he could manage it. “You know that. But in this case I think war is unavoidable. And I will wage it myself, Dekkeret, if you have no stomach for it. Do you think I’ve forgotten how to fight? Oh, no, no: you get yourself back to the Castle, my lord, and I will take the troops to Zimroel, and I’ll take my place proudly in the front lines with Gialaurys and Septach Melayn, as we did in the old days.” His voice was rising again. “Who was it who broke Korsibar’s armies that day at Thegomar Edge, when you were not much more than a boy? Who was it who put the thought-helmet on his own head in this very building and reached out to smash Venghenar Barjazid with it in the Stoienzar jungles? Who was it who—”