And, Sterren promised himself, he would deliver that warning.
The only catch was to figure out how to convince Vond that he, Sterren, had only recognized the danger now. If Vond knew that Sterren had withheld his certainty for so long he was likely to be very annoyed indeed.
Sterren did not care to have Vond annoyed with him. He was puzzling out an approach when someone behind him cleared a throat.
He turned and found a palace servant, a man named Ildirin who had once been a butcher’s assistant in Ksinallion, standing in the balcony door.
“Your pardon, my Lord Chancellor,” he said apologetically, “but the Emperor is meeting with the Council and desires your presence.”
“Now?”
“Yes, my lord,” Ildirin replied.
Sterren knew better than to argue or hesitate; Vond hated to be kept waiting. “Where?” he asked.
“In the council chamber.”
Sterren nodded, stepped past Ildirin into the palace, and headed towards the marble stairs.
Ildirin followed at a respectful distance. The council chamber had not been designed as such; after all, when Vond built his palace he had no idea that an Imperial Council would ever exist. He had intended the room to be an informal audience chamber, where he could meet with his cronies without the full pomp of the main audience hall, but still on a business basis rather than in his personal apartments.
Save for Sterren, however, who was usually welcome even in Vond’s private quarters, the warlock had no cronies. He had a council, instead, and so the informal audience chamber had become the council chamber.
The councillors could hardly he considered cronies; none of the seven liked Vond or particularly wanted to see him remain in power. All seven, however, were willing to recognize that the Empire of Vond was a reality and that it needed governing; and all seven were very good at governing.
Ordinarily, the Council went about its business, and Vond went about his business, and the two had as little to do with each other as possible, communicating with each other only through Sterren. For Vond to meet with the entire Council was unheard of.
Sterren hurried down the stairs, the wide sleeves of his velvet tunic flapping at his sides, and marched across the broad hallway at the bottom. The great red doors at the inner end of the hallway led into the audience chamber; the black doors at the outer end led out to the plaza. He ignored them both and headed directly for the small rosewood door that nestled unobtrusively in one corner.
His hand on the latch, he hesitated. He rapped lightly, then opened the door and walked in.
The seven councillors were seated at the table where they carried out most of their deliberations, three to a side. Their chairwoman, Lady Kalira, usually sat at the head of the table; today she was at the foot, and the Great Vond floated cross-legged at the head. He was only slightly higher than if he had been using a chair; his knees were below the polished wood of the table top.
“Ah, there you are!” Vond said when he saw Sterren step into the room.
“Here I am,” Sterren agreed. “What’s happening?” He looked about for somewhere to sit, or even somewhere better to stand, and spotted an unused chair. He turned it to face the warlock emperor, and asked, “May I sit?”
Vond waved permission. As he did, he caught sight of Ildirin peering in the doorway.
“I see you found him,” the warlock said. “Now go see if you can find us something appropriate to drink; I expect we’ll be doing a lot of talking, and talking is thirsty work.”
Ildirin bowed and vanished, closing the door behind him.
“Now,” Vond said, “I suppose you all want to know why we’re here, so I’ll get right to the point, which is that am I not at all sure I like this ’Imperial Council’ of yours.”
Sterren did not like the sound of that and decided that perhaps Vond was not in a mood to hear bad news today. He wondered whether he could somehow convey an anonymous message to the warlock.
The councillors glanced at one another, and some at Sterren, but after a second or two all eyes came to rest on Lady Kalira. She accepted her silent appointment as spokeswoman and rose. “Your Imperial Majesty,” she said in her accented Ethsharitic, “we serve at your pleasure. If you wish us to stop, we will stop, we will be glad to stop.”
Two or three heads bobbed in agreement; nobody indicated by even the slightest gesture or sound that he might think otherwise.
“Don’t be so quick to resign, either,” Vond snapped. “I know I need somebody to run things; I’m just not sure I want you. I’m not sure you’ve been running things the way I want them run.”
“We serve at your Imperial Majesty’s pleasure,” Lady Kalira repeated, bowing her head.
Her Ethsharitic had improved greatly over the past several months, Sterren noticed. Recognizing that it was the new language of government had driven her to study it far more seriously than mere curiosity had before. “That’s what you say here,” Vond said, “but I hear otherwise elsewhere. I hear whispers that you’re plotting to overthrow me, to restore the old monarchies. After all, you’re all aristocrats yourselves; why should you accept a commoner like me as your emperor?”
Lady Kalira started to say something, but Vond held up his hand to stop her.
Sterren wondered suddenly just what sort of whispers Vond had actually been hearing. Was it whispered rumors that had upset him, or was there another sort of whisper entirely that was getting on his nerves?
Then he forgot about that, as Vond turned and addressed him directly. “So, my lord chancellor, why is it you chose only the old nobility for your council?”
The question itself was easy to answer, so easy that Sterren wondered what Vond was really after.
“Because, Your Majesty,” Sterren said, “no one else in your empire has had any training or experience in governing.”
“And you did not see fit to train them?”
“No, Your Majesty, I didn’t; I was trying to set up something to handle governing now, not at some indefinite future time. Besides, I don’t know any more about governing or training peasants to govern than you do.”
“It wouldn’t have to be peasants; couldn’t you find merchants or tradesmen? Running a country can’t be that different from running a business.”
Sterren had some serious doubts about Vond’s statement, but he ignored it and answered the question. “I didn’t try to find tradesmen, because I didn’t see anything wrong with using nobles who already know the job. Besides, there aren’t that many tradesmen around here; it’s not exactly Ethshar. I mean, in Semma, they had a Lord Trader, how much of a merchant class could there be, in a case like that?”
“You didn’t see anything wrong with using the nobles I threw out of power?”
“No, I didn’t!” Sterren answered. “What are they going to do? You’d kill anyone who got out of line, and they know it.” He gestured at the councillors, reminding Vond that they were listening.
“They could stir up discontent,” the warlock suggested.
“Why should they? Listen, Vond, I don’t think you appreciate what these people have done here. I picked the most competent people I could, without worrying about where they came from. Each of them agreed to help run the empire because they could see that it was here to stay; and each one of them was labeled a traitor by his friends and family because of that! They put up with that because they want to see their people, nobles, peasants, merchants, everybody, ruled fairly and well. If your empire ever did fall, and the old kingdoms were restored, they’d probably all be hanged for treason for having helped you!”