“Why, where is he?”
“In the Throne Room with Sam Godwin. They’ve been shouting at each other for most of an hour, ferociously. You might need to interfere, if it comes to blows—if you can walk straight.”
“I’m completely sober.”
“That makes one of you, then.”
“Do you find this shocking, Lymon?”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen drunker parties. Though where I come from they usually end in a murder or a mass arrest.”
I followed him to the Executive Office, which Lymon and other members of the Republican Guard called the Throne Room. Perhaps they can be pardoned for the exaggeration. The Executive Office was a vast square tiled room at the very heart of the Palace, windowless but forever ablaze with electric lamps. Its high ceiling was painted with a panoramic picture of Otis [The former President, not the Giraffe which was named after him.]on his gunboat fighting the Battle of the Potomac long ago. This was the room in which Presidents signed their Proclamations, or met with foreign consuls or Senatorial delegations on formal occasions. As such, it was set up to emphasize the dignity and power of the Presidency. The Presidential Chair wasn’t quite a “throne,” but approached that description as closely (or more closely) than any respectable republican chair really ought to have: it was carved from the heart of some noble oak, upholstered in purple cloth and plastered with gold leaf, and raised on a marble dais. Just now Julian sat sidelong on it, while Sam paced before him in short angry strides.
“All yours,” Lymon Pugh whispered, ducking out of the room before I could announce myself. Neither Sam nor Julian took any notice of my presence, for they were too busy arguing. Their voices echoed from the ornamental tile floor and bounced back from the high ceiling.
I didn’t like to see the unhappiness so obviously written on Julian’s face, nor was it pleasant to hear Sam berating him. The argument concerned some decision Julian had given out without Sam’s knowledge or approval.
“Do you have any conception,” Sam was asking, “of what you’ve done—of what the consequences of this will be?”
“The consequence I’m hoping for,” said Julian, “is the extinction of an old and ugly tyranny.”
“What you’ll get is a civil war!”
“The Dominion is a noose around the neck of the nation, and I mean to cut the rope.”
“A noose is what you’re staring at, if you don’t desist! You act as if you can proclaim any doctrine you like, and enforce it with soldiers—”
“Can’t I? Isn’t that exactly what my uncle did?”
“And where is your uncle now?”
Julian looked away.
“The enemies of a President hold daggers in their hands,” Sam went on. “The more enemies, the more daggers. You offended the Dominion—well, that can’t be undone. You’ve defied the Senate, which doubles your danger. And if these orders reach the Army of the Californias—”
“The orders have been dispatched. They can’t be withdrawn.”
“You mean you won’t withdraw them!”
“No,” Julian said, in a softer but no less hostile tone. “No, I won’t.”
There were smaller chairs arrayed before the Throne, presumably for lesser dignitaries to sit in. Sam kicked one of these chairs with his foot and sent it screeching across the tiled floor.
“ I will not let you commit suicide!”
“You’ll do as you’re told, and be quiet about it! The fact that you married my mother doesn’t make you my master! I had but one father, and he was killed by Deklan Conqueror.”
“If I protected you all these years, Julian, it was out of my loyalty to your father, and my affection for you, and for no other reason! I don’t have any ambition to sit on a throne, or meddle with the man who does so!”
“But you didn’t protect me, Sam, and you do meddle! By all rights I should have died in the Goose Bay Campaign! Everything that’s happened since then is just a ridiculously prolonged last gasp —can’t you see that?”
“That’s not the sort of thing your father would ever have said, or allowed you to say.”
“Your debt to my father is your own business. Mine was paid in full, with Deklan’s head.”
“You can’t salve your conscience with an execution! Bryce Comstock would tell you the same thing, if he was here.”
Julian had ceased shouting, but his anger had not abated. It had run underground, instead, and glittered in his eyes like a rushing torrent glimpsed through the crevice of a glacier. “Thank you for your advice. But there’s nothing more to discuss. You’re dismissed.”
Sam looked as if he might kick over another chair. But he didn’t. His shoulders slumped, and he turned to the door, defeated.
“Talk to him if you can,” he whispered to me on his way out. “I can’t.”
“I’m sorry you had to hear that,” Julian said as Sam’s footsteps faded down the corridor.
I advanced to the foot of the Throne. “Lymon Pugh tipped me off. He was afraid it might come to blows.”
“Not quite.”
“What did you do, Julian, that offended Sam so much?”
“Declared a sort of war, in his view.”
“Haven’t you had enough of war yet?”
“It’s nothing to do with the Dutch. There’s been a rebellion in Colorado Springs. Yesterday the Council of the Dominion told their parish Deacons to disobey any Presidential mandate that conflicts with ecclesiastical regulations.”
“Is that what you call a rebellion? It sounds more like a lawyer’s brief.”
“It amounts to an expressed wish to overthrow me!”
“And I suppose you can’t tolerate that.”
“Tonight I declared the City of Colorado Springs a treasonous territory, and I ordered the Army of the Californias to capture it and establish military law.”
“A whole Army to occupy one city?”
“An Army and more, if that’s what it takes to overthrow the Council and burn the Dominion Academy to the ground. Traitorous Deacons, should any survive, can be tried in court for their crimes.”
“Colorado Springs is an American city, Julian. The Army might not like to raze it.”
“The Army has many opinions, but only one Commander in Chief.”
“Won’t innocent civilians get killed in the fighting, though?”
“What fight ever spared the innocent?” Julian scowled and glared. “Do you think I can sit in this chair and not imagine blood, Adam Hazzard? Blood, yes; blood, granted! Blood on all sides! Blood past, present, and future! I didn’t ask for this job, but I don’t deceive myself about the nature of it.”
“Well,” I said, not wanting to provoke him into another outburst, “I expect it’ll work out all right in the end, if you say so.”
He stared at me as if I had contradicted him. “There are rules about entering this room—do you know that, Adam? I don’t suppose you do. Visitors customarily bow when they cross the threshold. Senators bow, ambassadors from distant nations bow, even the clergy is obliged to bow. The rule doesn’t exempt Athabaska lease-boys, to my knowledge.”
“No? Well, it’s a fine room, but I’m not sure it requires any genuflection on my part. I didn’t bow down to you when we were shooting squirrels by the River Pine, and I don’t think I could get in the habit of doing it now. I’ll leave, if you like.”