But Prestimion had spoken just now of sending an army—a great army—to Zimroel to deal with Mandralisca.
There had never been any talk, so far as Dekkeret recalled, of his undertaking the Zimroel journey at the head of any sort of military force. When had Prestimion’s thinking shifted from the use of peaceful means against the rebels to one of all-out war? Dekkeret wondered what had turned the Pontifex so suddenly into such a fire-breather. No one had greater reason to hate war than Prestimion, and yet—yet—that look in his eyes—the angry crackle of his voice—could there be any doubt of his meaning? There must be war, was the essence of what Prestimion was saying. And you are the one who will wage it for us. It sounded very much like an order: a direct command from the senior monarch.
Dekkeret wondered how he was going to cope with that.
Certainly Mandralisca had to be removed: no question of that. But was war really the only way? Suddenly Dekkeret found his mind aswirl with a torrent of roiling conflicts. War was as repugnant a concept to him as it was to any sensible being. It had never occurred to him that his reign might begin, as Prestimion’s had, on the battlefield.
He glanced quickly about for guidance toward Septach Melayn, toward Gialaurys. But Gialaurys’s jowly face was rigidly set, a bleak, stony mask of icy determination, and even the flippant and sportive Septach Melayn had a strange look of seriousness about him just now. They were both of them resolved on war, Dekkeret realized. Perhaps these two, Prestimion’s oldest friends, were the very ones who had turned the Pontifex onto that course.
Cautiously Dekkeret said, hoping Prestimion would not notice the ambiguity of his phrasing, “I give you my pledge, your majesty, that I will do whatever must be done to restore the rule of law in Zimroel.”
Prestimion nodded. He looked calmer now, his face less flushed than it had been a moment before, some of the tension gone from it. “I’m confident that you will, Dekkeret. And so far as a specific plan of action goes—?”
“As soon as possible, majesty.” More ambiguity, but Prestimion did not appear to find that troublesome. “It would be unwise for me to rush toward decisions just now. Your brother’s death deprived me of my High Counsellor, and I’ve had no opportunity to choose another. And therefore, your majesty—”
“You are being very formal with me today, Dekkeret.”
“If I am, it is because we are discussing great matters of war and peace. You have been my friend for many years; but you are also my Pontifex, Prestimion. And”—he gestured toward Septach Melayn—“we are in the presence of your High Spokesman as well.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. This is serious business, and calls for a serious tone.—By all means, Dekkeret, take a few days to think things over.” Prestimion smiled for the first time in the course of the meeting. “Just so long as the path that you choose is one that will rid me of Mandralisca.”
Fulkari must have seen at once, when Dekkeret returned to their rooms on the floor just below Prestimion’s, what an effect his meeting with the Pontifex had had on him. Quickly she drew a bowl of wine for him and waited without speaking while he drank it down.
Then she said, “There’s trouble, isn’t there?”
“Apparently so.”
He could barely bring himself to speak. He felt a little dizzy from weariness, from hunger, from the strain of the strange, tense encounter.
“In Zimroel?”
“In Zimroel, yes.”
Fulkari was staring at him oddly. He had never seen such a look of profound concern in those lovely gray eyes of hers. Dekkeret knew that he must be a terrible sight. His whole body felt clenched. A throbbing had begun behind his eyes. His jaw muscles were aching: too much insincere smiling, he supposed. He accepted a second bowl of wine from her and drank it nearly as swiftly as he had the first.
“Do you want to talk about it at all?” she asked gently, when some time had gone by in silence.
“No. I can’t. I can’t, Fulkari. These are high matters of state.”
Dekkeret had moved to the window now, and stood with his back to her, looking out into the night. All the mysterious beauty of Stoien city lay spread out before him, the slender buildings on their lofty brick pedestals, the variations of high and low, the artificial hills rising in the distance, the dazzling abundance of tropical vegetation. Fulkari, somewhere on the other side of the room, said nothing. He knew that he had wounded her with the sharpness of his words. She was his life’s companion, after all. She was not yet his wife, but she would be, whenever the pressures of this unexpected crisis relented long enough for a royal wedding to take place. And yet he had spoken to her as though she were some casual amusement of the evening, with whom it would be unthinkable to share the slightest detail of what had passed between the Pontifex and the Coronal. He realized that he was asking her to bear all the burdens of being the royal consort without making her privy to any of the daily challenges of his task.
He let a couple of moments go by.
Then he said, “All right. There’s really no sense in hiding it from you. Prestimion is so upset about this Mandralisca affair—this rebellion—that he intends to put it down by force. He’s talking about sending an army into Zimroel to crush it. Not even an ultimatum first, if I understood him correctly: just invade and attack.”
“And you disagree, is that it?”
Dekkeret swung around to face her. “Of course I disagree! Who would lead that army, do you think? Who’d be in charge of putting troops down in Piliplok and heading up the river to Ni-moya? It isn’t Prestimion who’ll be doing that, Fulkari. It isn’t Prestimion who’ll stand in front of the gates of Ni-moya and demand that they be thrown open, and who will have to smash them down if they’re not.”
She was regarding him now in a steady, level way. Her voice was calm as she said, “Of course. Such things would be the Coronal’s responsibility. I understand that.”
“And do you think the people of Zimroel are going to greet an invading army with open arms, and love and kisses?”
“It would be an ugly business, I agree, Dekkeret. But what choice is there? I know a little of what Dinitak’s been telling you—the helmet that this man Mandralisca uses, the things he does with it, the way he’s stirred up those five ghastly brothers to proclaim the independence of Zimroel. What else can the Pontifex do, in the face of open rebellion, but send an army in to straighten things out? And if there are casualties—well, how can that be helped? The commonwealth must be preserved.”
Now it was his turn to stare.
What he saw was a Fulkari that he had never fully seen before, the Lady Fulkari of Sipermit, a woman of high aristocratic pedigree, who traced her ancestry back through the generations to Lord Makhario. Of course she would see nothing wrong with putting down the Sambailid rebellion by the use of armed might. It came to him with the sudden force of revelation that after all these years of life at the Castle, even after having become Coronal himself, he was seeing for the first time, really seeing, the essential difference between the aristocrats of the Mount and a commoner like himself.