“Fools,” she said.
“Who do you mean, mother?”
Aximaan Threysz waved her hand in a wide circle. “All of them. To cry out against the Coronal. To think that this is the vengeance of the Divine. Do you think the Divine wants to punish us that badly? We will all starve, Heynok, because the smut has killed the crop, and it makes no difference who is Coronal. It makes no difference at all. Take me home.”
“Down with the usurper!” came the cry again, and it rang in her ears like the tolling of a funeral bell as she strode from the hall.
5
Elidath said, looking carefully around the council room at the assembled princes and dukes, “The orders are in Valentine’s hand and signed with Valentine’s seal, and they are unmistakably genuine. The boy is to be raised to the principate at the earliest possible appropriate time.”
“And you think that time has come?” asked Divvis coldly.
The High Counsellor met Divvis’s angry gaze evenly. “I do.”
“By what do you judge?”
“His instructors tell me that he has mastered the essence of all the teachings.”
“So then he can name all the Coronals from Stiamot to Malibor in the correct order! What does that prove?”
“The teachings are more than merely lists of kings, Divvis, as I hope you have not forgotten. He has had the full training and he comprehends it. The Synods and Decretals, the Balances, the Code of Provinces, and all the rest: I trust you recall those things? He has been examined, and he is flawless. His understanding is deep and wise. And he has shown courage, too. In the crossing of the ghazan-tree plain he slew the malorn. Did you know that, Divvis? Not merely eluded it, but slew it. He is extraordinary.”
“I think that word is the right one,” said Duke Elzandir of Chorg. “I have ridden with him on the hunt, in the forests above Ghiseldorn. He moves quickly, and with a natural grace. His mind is alert. His wit is agile. He knows what gaps exist in his knowledge, and he takes pains to fill them. He should be elevated at once.”
“This is madness!” cried Divvis, slapping the flat of his hand several times angrily against the council-hall table. “Absolute raving madness!”
“Calmly, calmly,” Mirigant said. “Such shouting as this is unseemly, Divvis.”
“The boy is too young to be a prince!”
“And let us not forget,” the Duke of Halanx added, “that he is of low birth.”
Quietly Stasilaine said, “How old is he, Elidath?”
The High Counsellor shrugged. “Twenty. Twenty-one, perhaps. Young, I agree. But hardly a child.”
“You called him ‘the boy’ yourself a moment ago,” the Duke of Halanx pointed out.
Elidath turned his hands palm upward. “A figure of speech and nothing more. He has a youthful appearance, I grant you. But that’s only because he’s so slight of build, and short of stature. Boyish, perhaps: but not a boy.”
“Not yet a man, either,” observed Prince Manganot of Banglecode.
“By what definition?” Stasilaine asked.
“Look about you in this room,” Prince Manganot said. “Here you see the definition of manhood. You, Stasilaine: anyone can see the strength of you. Walk as a stranger through the streets of any city, Stee, Normork, Bibiroon, simply walk through the streets, and people will automatically defer to you, having no notion of your rank or name. Elidath the same. Divvis. Mirigant. My royal brother of Dundilmir. We are men. He is not.”
“We are princes,” said Stasilaine, “and have been for many years. A certain bearing comes to us in time, from long awareness of our station. But were we like this twenty years ago?”
“I think so,” Manganot said.
Mirigant laughed. “I remember some of you when you were at Hissune’s age. Loud and braggartly, yes, and if that makes one a man, then you surely were men. But otherwise— ah, I think it is all a circular thing, that princely bearing comes of feeling princely, and we put it on ourselves as a cloak. Look at us in our finery, and then cover us in farmer’s clothes and set us down in some seaport of Zimroel, and who will bow to us then? Who will give deference?”
“He is not princely now and never will be,” said Divvis sullenly, “He is a ragged boy out of the Labyrinth, and nothing more than that.”
“I still maintain that we can’t elevate a stripling like that to our rank,” said Prince Manganot of Banglecode.
“They say that Prestimion was short of stature,” the Duke of Chorg remarked. “I think his reign is generally deemed to have been successful, nevertheless.”
The venerable Cantalis, nephew of Tyeveras, looked up suddenly out of an hour’s silence and said in amazement, “You compare him with Prestimion, Elzandir? What precisely is it that we are doing, then? Are we creating a prince or choosing a Coronal?”
“Any prince is a potential Coronal,” Divvis said. “Let us not forget that.”
“And the choosing of the next Coronal must soon occur, no doubt of that,” the Duke of Halanx said. “It’s utterly scandalous that Valentine has kept the old Pontifex alive this long, but sooner or later—”
“This is altogether out of order,” Elidath said sharply.
“I think not,” said Manganot. “If we make him a prince, there’s nothing stopping Valentine from putting him eventually on the Confalume Throne itself.”
“These speculations are absurd,” Mirigant said.
“Are they, Mirigant? What absurdities have we not already seen from Valentine? To take a juggler-girl as his wife, and a Vroon wizard as one of his chief ministers, and the rest of his raggle-taggle band of wanderers surrounding him as a court within the court, while we are pushed to the outer rim—”
“Be cautious, Manganot,” Stasilaine said. “There are those in this room that love Lord Valentine.”
“There is no one here who does not,” Manganot retorted. “You may be aware, and Mirigant can surely confirm it, that upon the death of Voriax I was one of the strongest advocates of letting the crown pass to Valentine. I yield to no one in my love of him. But we need not love him uncritically. He is capable of folly, as are we all. And I say it is folly to take a twenty-year-old boy from the back alleys of the Labyrinth and make him a prince of the realm.”
Stasilaine said, “How old were you, Manganot, when you had your princehood? Sixteen? Eighteen? And you, Divvis? Seventeen, I think? Elidath, you?”
“It is different with us,” said Divvis. “We were born to rank. I am the son of a Coronal. Manganot is of the high family of Banglecode. Elidath—”
“The point remains,” Stasilaine said, “that when we were much younger than Hissune we were already at this rank. As was Valentine himself. It is a question of qualification, not of age. And Elidath assures us that he is qualified.”
“Have we ever had a prince created out of commoner stock?” the Duke of Halanx asked. “Think, I beg you: what is this new prince of Valentine’s? A child of the Labyrinth streets, a beggar-boy, or perhaps a pickpocket—”
“You have no true knowledge of that,” said Stasilaine. “You give us mere slander, I think.”
“Is it not the case that he was a beggar in the Labyrinth when Valentine first found him?”
“He was only a child then,” said Elzandir. “And the story is that he hired himself out as a guide, and gave good value for the money, though he was only ten years old. But all of that is beside the point. We need not care about what he was. It is what he is that concerns us, and what he is to be. The Coronal Lord has asked us to make him a prince when, in Elidath’s judgment, the time is right. Elidath tells us that the time is right. Therefore this debate is pointless.”