“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 Danip-iur’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 un-controversial 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.