“You think so?” Vond said, his expression unreadable.
“Yes, I think so!” Sterren snapped.
At that point Ildirin entered quietly, bearing a tray that held a full decanter and a dozen wineglasses. He proceeded around the edge of the room to the emperor, who court etiquette required be served first.
“And I don’t suppose,” Vond said, “that you might be trying to put the nobility back in power, leaving me just a figurehead!”
“Why would I want to do that?” Sterren asked, genuinely puzzled.
Vond accepted a glass of wine. “Because you’re a noble yourself, of course, Sterren, Ninth Warlord!” He drank.
Sterren’s mouth fell open in astonishment. One of the councillors giggled, then quickly suppressed it. Ildirin silently poured wine.
“Me?” Sterren said at last. “I’m an Ethsharitic merchant’s brat! I’m no noble; my grandmother ran away from home, and I don’t give a damn who her father and brother were. I’m no more a part of the old nobility here than you are!”
Vond’s expression stopped him, and he corrected himself, “Well, not much more. I didn’t know I had any noble blood.” He glanced at the councillors and said, “Besides if I were trying to restore the old nobility, wouldn’t I have put kings and princes on the council, instead of these people?”
“Kings would be a little obvious,” Vond pointed out, “and you did put a few princes in here, didn’t you?”
“I did?” Sterren looked at the councillors again and recognized Prince Ferral of Enmurinon.
“Oh,” he said. Defensively, he added, “Only one. Out of seven.”
“So far,” Vond said.
Ildirin had served all the councillors, now, and approached Sterren with a filled glass. He waved it away; it appeared he needed his head clear if he was going to keep it.
“So far,” Sterren said, “and forever, I don’t choose new councillors; I don’t know who can handle the job and who can’t. I let each councillor choose his own successor.”
Ildirin, still holding the glass he had intended for Sterren, looked around the room and noticed that the emperor’s glass was empty. He stepped back and started gliding silently along the wall, back toward Vond’s place at the head of the table.
“Oh, I see!” the warlock said, sneering, “You won’t put any kings on the council, but if these seven name kings as their heirs, then retire, there’s nothing you can do to stop it!”
“Don’t be silly,” Sterren said, and he heard someone gasp quietly at his audacity in addressing the warlock emperor thus. “The Imperial Council serves at my pleasure, as well as yours, your Majesty. I can dismiss any councillor any time I please. So can you, just as you can dismiss me as your chancellor. And I assure you, I’d dismiss any king or queen, and probably whatever fool named him as heir.”
“Ah, you would? Why?”
“Because we don’t want the old royalty back in power. We don’t want one councillor, by virtue of his former station, to perhaps sway the rest of the council unduly. We don’t want to confuse the peasants by restoring a king to any semblance of authority.”
“That’s right,” Vond said, accepting the full wineglass from Ildirin. “We don’t want any of that. I’m sure the peasants resent me, consider me a usurper...”
Algarven, once royal steward of Semma, coughed suddenly, choking on a sip of wine. Vond turned to glare at him between sips from his own fresh glass.
“Excuse me, your Majesty,” Algarven said, as soon as he could breathe and talk again, “but the peasants... why would you think the peasants resent you?”
A flicker of uncertainty crossed Vond’s face.
“I’ve overthrown their kings,” he said.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” said Berakon Gerath’s son, once royal treasurer of Akalla of the Diamond, “but so what? What did the old kings ever do for the peasantry? You’ve built roads and houses, put an end to wars, and even done what seemed impossible and regulated the weather. With all this, your taxes are no higher than the old. Believe me, your Majesty, the peasants don’t mind at all that you’ve replaced the old kings, though they do worry a bit about the inevitable price for this bounty.”
Vond handed his empty glass to Ildirin, who struggled a moment to balance everything on the tray before he could accept it. Vond threw him an annoyed glance.
“All right,” Vond said. “Forget the peasants. You say nobody here wants the old kings restored, but you have a prince on the council; what happens when his father dies?”
“Your Majesty,” Prince Ferral said quietly, “my father has been dead for five years now. You deposed my elder brother, not my father.”
“All right, then,” Vond said, as Ildirin fumbled with the decanter, “what happens when your brother dies?”
“Nothing much, your Majesty. He has children and other brothers older than myself. I am eighth in the line of succession.”
Vond glared and reached for a glass of wine just as Ildirin started to hand him one. Their arms collided, and the wine spilled down the emperor’s chest, staining the golden embroidery on his black robe an ugly shade of red.
The warlock stared down at the spill for an instant, then shrieked, “You idiot!” He waved an arm, and Ildirin was flung hard against the marble wall. The crack as his spine broke was clearly audible to everyone in the room. Vond waved again, and the servant’s head was crushed, the bones shattered, leaving the skin a limp sack. Blood gushed from his nose and mouth as he died. The corpse fell heavily to the floor and lay in a pool of gore.
Sterren and the councillors stared in shocked silence.
The tray that held the decanter still stood on the table. Vond smoothed his robe, but did not seem overly disturbed.
Sterren knew, as he stared at the corpse, that he would not be warning Vond of anything.
CHAPTER 36
Little was accomplished in the remainder of the meeting. The presence of Ildirin’s body cast a pall over the conversation, and Vond seemed to have spent his anger. In the end, he agreed to let the Imperial Council continue as it had been, with the understanding that it existed entirely by his sufferance, and that he had the right to dismiss any member at any time and to overrule any decision.
None of this had ever been in any question, as far as Sterren and the councillors were concerned, but nobody was foolish enough to point this out.
Afterward, Sterren took a long walk.
It was obvious that Vond was losing control. The magnificent buildings, the prosperous empire, the thriving crops had all served to hide this; Ildirin’s gruesome death had dragged it out into plain sight. Not only was any thought of a warning gone, Sterren was now convinced that he had to do all he could to destroy Vond quickly.
That night Vond ate dinner in the Great Hall, with Sterren at his right hand. As often as not he ate in his private apartments, if he bothered to eat meals at all, but on this particular occasion he held a formal dinner, with himself, Sterren, and the Imperial Council at the high table and the rest of the imperial household arrayed along three lower tables.
“You know, your Majesty,” Sterren remarked as he chewed a bite of apple, “you haven’t done any real spectacular magic lately.”
Vond looked at him. “Oh?”
“I mean, early on, you conjured up that storm to rout the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion, and you quarried and assembled the stone for this palace in a few days, and so forth; but lately you haven’t done anything much more impressive than laying pavement stones. Oh, that’s certainly useful, and so is regulating the weather, and all the rest, but you haven’t done anything really showy in months.”