That, Sastro thought, is power also. The ability to withhold life.
He stepped in off the balcony and shut the intricately carved screen behind him. He found himself in a tall stone room, the walls hung with tapestries depicting scenes from the lives of various saints. Braziers burned everywhere, generating a warm fug, a charcoal smell. Only above the long table where the others sat did oil lamps burn, hanging from the ceiling on silver chains. The day outside, with the screen closed, was dark enough to make it seem nocturnal in here. The three men seated around the table, elbow-deep in papers and decanters, did not seem to notice, however. Sastro took his seat among them again. The headache which had occasioned his stepping out on to the balcony was still with him and he rubbed his throbbing temples as he regarded the others in silence.
The rulers of the kingdom, no less. The dispatch-runner had put in only that afternoon, a sleek galleass which had almost foundered in its haste to reach Abrusio. It had set out from Touron a scant nineteen days ago, spent a fortnight pulling against the wind to get clear of the Tulmian Gulf, and then had spread its wings before the wind all the way south along the Hebrian coast, running off eighty leagues a day at times. It bore a messenger from Vol Ephrir who was now a month on the road, who had hurtled north through Perigraine killing a dozen horses on the way, who had stopped at Charibon a night and then had hurtled on again until he had taken ship with the galleass in Touron. The messenger bore news of the excommunication of the Hebrian monarch.
Quirion of Fulk, Presbyter of the Knights Militant, an Inceptine cleric who bore a sword, leaned back from the table with a sigh. The chair cracked under his weight. He was a corpulent man, the muscle of youth melting into fat, but still formidable. His head was shaved in the fashion of the Knights, and his fingernails were broken by years of donning mail gauntlets. His eyes were like two gimlets set deep within a furrowed pink crag, and his cheekbones thrust out farther than his oft-broken nose. Sastro had seen prize-fighters with less brutal countenances.
The Presbyter gestured with one large hand towards the document they had been perusing.
“There you have it. Abeleyn is finished. The letter is signed by the High Pontiff himself.”
“It is hastily written, and the seal is blurred,” one of the other men said, the same one who had complained of the cold. Astolvo di Sequero was perhaps the most nobly born man in the kingdom after King Abeleyn himself. The Sequeros had once been candidates for the throne, way back in the murky past which followed the fall of the Fimbrian Hegemony some four centuries ago, but the Hibrusids had won that particular battle. Astolvo was an old man with lungs that wheezed like a punctured wineskin. His ambitions had been extinguished by age and infirmity. He did not want to be a player in the game, not at this stage of his life; all he wanted of the world now were a few tranquil years and a good death.
Which suited Sastro perfectly.
The third man at the table was hewn out of the same rock as Presbyter Quirion, though younger and with violence written less obviously across his face. Colonel Jochen Freiss was adjutant of the City Tercios of Abrusio. He was a Finnmarkan, a native of that far northern country whose ruler, Skarpathin, called himself a king though he was not counted among the Five Monarchs of the West. Freiss had lived thirty years in Hebrion and his accent was no different from Sastro’s own, but the shock of straw-coloured hair which topped his burly frame would always mark him out as a foreigner.
“His Holiness the High Pontiff was obviously pressed for time,” Presbyter Quirion said. He had a voice like a saw. “What is important is that the seal and signature are genuine. What say you, Sastro?”
“Undoubtedly,” Sastro agreed, playing with the hooked end of his beard. His temples throbbed damnably, but his face was impassive. “Abeleyn is king no more; every law of Church and State militates against him. Gentlemen, we have just been recognized by the holy Church as the legitimate rulers of Hebrion, and a heavy burden it is—but we must endeavour to bear it as best we may.”
“Indeed,” Quirion said approvingly. “This changes matters entirely. We must get this document to General Mercado and Admiral Rovero at once; they will see the legitimacy of our position and the untenable nature of their own. The army and the fleet will finally repent of this foolish stubbornness, this misplaced loyalty to a king who is no more. Do you agree, Freiss?”
Colonel Freiss grimaced. “In principle, yes. But these two men, Mercado and Rovero, are of the old school. They are pious, no doubt of that, but they have a soldier’s loyalty towards their sovereign, as have the common troops. I think it will be no easy task to overturn that attachment, Pontifical bull or no.”
“And what happened to your soldier’s loyalty, Freiss?” Sastro asked, smiling unpleasantly.
The Finnmarkan flushed. “My faith and my eternal soul are more important. I swore an oath to the King of Hebrion, but that king is no more my sovereign now than a Merduk shahr. My conscience is clear, my lord.”
Sastro bowed slightly in his chair, still smiling. Quirion flapped one blunt hand impatiently.
“We are not here to spar with one another. Colonel Freiss, your convictions do you credit. Lord Carrera, I suggest you could exercise your wit more profitably in consideration of our changed circumstances.”
Sastro raised an eyebrow. “Our circumstances have changed? I thought the bull merely confirmed what was already reality. This council rules Hebrion.”
“For the moment, yes, but the legal position is unclear.”
“What do you mean?” Astolvo asked, wheezing. He seemed faintly alarmed.
“What I mean,” Quirion said carefully, “is that the situation is without precedent. We rule here, in the name of the Blessed Saint and the High Pontiff, but is that a permanent state of affairs? Now that Abeleyn is finished, and is without issue, who wears the Hebrian crown? Do we continue to rule as we have done these past weeks, or are we to cast about for a legitimate claimant to the throne, one nearest the Royal line?”
The man has a conscience, Sastro marvelled to himself. He had never heard an Inceptine cleric talk about legality before when it might undermine his own authority. It was a revelation which did away with his headache and set the wheels turning furiously in his skull.
“Is it one of our tasks, then, to hunt out a successor to our heretical monarch?” he asked incredulously.
“Perhaps,” Quirion grunted. “It depends on what my superiors in the order have to say. No doubt the High Pontiff will have a more detailed set of commands on its way to us already.”
“If we put it that way, it may make clerical rule easier to swallow for the soldiery,” Freiss said. “The men are not happy at the thought of being ruled by priests.”
Quirion’s gimlet eyes flashed deep in their sockets. “The soldiery will do as they are told, or they will find pyres awaiting them on Abrusio Hill along with the Dweomer-folk.”
“Of course,” Freiss went on hastily. “I only point out that fighting men prefer to see a king at their head. It is what they are used to, after all, and soldiers are nothing if not conservative.”
Quirion rapped the table, setting the decanters dancing. “Very well then,” he barked. “Two things. First, we present this Pontifical bull to the admiral and the general. If they choose to ignore it, then they are guilty of heresy themselves. As Presbyter I am endowed with prelatial authority here, since the office is vacant; I can thus excommunicate these men if I have to. Charibon will support me.