By Heresies Distressed (60 page)

The two of them were ensconced in a waiting room off Tellesberg Palace's grand ballroom. They'd chosen this particular waiting room because the artfully arranged and wrought ornamental grillwork in the wall between it and the far larger ballroom allowed someone inside the waiting room to watch the ballroom without being seen in return. And they'd chosen the grand ballroom for today's assembly because there wasn't another room in the palace large enough for their requirements.

“I don't understand why you should take that position, My Lord,” Sharleyan said with a slightly lopsided smile. “Surely all these loyal servants of the Charisian and Chisholmian crowns couldn't possibly have assembled in anything less than the wholehearted spirit of cooperation!
I
certainly don't expect anything less out of them!”

She elevated her nose with a slight but clearly audible sniff, and Earl Gray Harbor turned to smile up at her.

“Your Majesty,” he said, “I trust you won't take this in the wrong spirit, but I don't think you should consider changing vocations. You'd make a very poor salesman if you can't learn to lie better than that.”

“For shame, My Lord!” she scolded.

“Oh, trust me, Your Majesty,” he assured her with a gracious bow, “no one will ever be able to discern the way I really think about these . . . people. Unlike you, I'd make an
excellent
salesman.”

Sharleyan chuckled and shook her head at him, but when she turned back to the grill covering their peephole, she had to admit Gray Harbor had a point.

And the reason he does is mainly thanks to Chisholm
, she acknowledged sourly.

She had no fears where the Charisian delegates to the new Imperial Parliament were concerned. Well, very few fears, at any rate. There were a handful of them she could have done without, but all of them had been selected by a joint committee of the Lords and Commons. In Charis, those two bodies had a tradition of actually working together cooperatively, and their members, by and large, considered themselves accountable to their colleagues, so it was unlikely any of them would ignore their official instructions. There'd been some tiffs, and one or two knock-down, drag-out fights, especially over which of the Kingdom's nobles should be seated in the new Imperial House of Lords. And there'd been a few disagreements (and quite a bit of political dragon-trading) over who would replace the representatives named to the new Imperial House of Commons in the Charisian House of Commons. For the most part, however, all of those disputes had been settled relatively amicably. No one was completely happy with the final list of selections, but no one was completely unhappy with it, either, and that was almost certainly the best anyone could reasonably have expected.

Chisholm, however, hadn't done things quite the same way.

The letter from Green Mountain and Sharleyan's mother had apologized profusely for that, but she knew she couldn't really blame them. For that matter, she couldn't blame Cayleb, either, though a part of her was just a bit frustrated because she couldn't. His decision to stay out of the selection process had undoubtedly been the correct one, even if it had left her with a sticky, potentially nasty mess.

The Chisholmian Commons had been quite willing to cooperate with their own Chamber of Lords, but the Lords had flatly refused to cooperate with the Commons. They, and they alone, would decide which of their members would be sent to Tellesberg to represent them in the new Parliament.

And that's exactly why they're going to be such a pain in my posterior
, Sharleyan thought grimly.
They aren't here to represent Chisholm; they're here to represent
themselves.

Well, it wouldn't be the first time she'd crossed swords with the Chisholmian nobility, and this time she had some truly formidable allies.

“—and so, My Lord Speaker, I most urgently request that this body give its immediate attention to this matter.”

Sharleyan grimaced as she leaned back in the comfortable chair in the same waiting room she and Gray Harbor had occupied that morning. There were a great many other urgent tasks upon which she could have been spending her limited time, but she badly wanted to hear at least the first day's deliberations with her own ears. She trusted Gray Harbor and Archbishop Maikel—both of whom were formal members of the Imperial Parliament the delegates were attempting to organize—and for the most part, she would be completely satisfied with their reports as the organizational meetings proceeded. For now, though, she wanted to get a feel for the delegates' mood and where those deliberations of theirs were likely to go.

What I
really
want
, she admitted to herself grumpily,
is to be in there, kicking their posteriors—or possibly shooting one or two of them out of hand—to get this job done right!

In the end, she and Cayleb would almost certainly get pretty much what they wanted. She knew that, and if anyone in that ballroom-turned-meeting-chamber thought otherwise, they would soon discover differently. Unfortunately, she couldn't just dictate her own terms and decisions—not if she wanted this new Parliament's legitimacy to be fully accepted by its own members, much less the rest of the Empire. These people, however irritating some of them might be, were the representatives of the Empire's subjects. If they were truly going to represent Lords and Commoners, then they must be allowed to voice their own opinions, organize their own affairs, and reach their own decisions. If the Crown disagreed with those decisions, then it was clearly the Crown's job to do something about that, but not by brazenly setting aside or openly trampling upon them. And not without listening to them and attempting to work
with
them first, since it was highly likely that they had something worth saying, even if it
wasn't
what the Crown wanted to hear.

No matter how exhausting, frustrating, and just plain irritating it could be.

For that matter
, Sharleyan reflected with a lopsided smile,
sitting out here instead of in there may actually be doing me some good. I can work off—or at least work
through—
the worst of my temper tantrums before
I
have to start dealing with them
.

That wasn't a minor consideration, and the man who had just finished speaking and resumed his seat was an excellent example of why it wasn't. Pait Stywryt, the Duke of Black Horse, had ambitions (which were less well concealed than he apparently thought) to succeed where the previous Duke of Three Hills had failed. Nor was he alone in that. He and the man seated next to him—Zhasyn Seafarer, the Duke of Rock Coast—were close allies in the Chisholmian House of Lords. Not too surprisingly, Sharleyan supposed, given the fact that their dukedoms neighbored one another in southwestern Chisholm and their families had been intermarrying for generations. Or that both of them were about as stubborn, pigheaded, and shortsighted as it was possible for a breathing human being to be. For that matter, she suspected most
corpses
were less pigheaded than they were! And yet, by the oddest turn of fate, both of them, and the almost equally revolting (from Sharleyan's perspective) Earl of Dragon Hill, had been chosen by their fellow peers to represent them in Tellesberg. Fortunately, Sir Ahdem Zhefry, the Earl of Cross Creek, had also slipped through the selection process somehow. Cross Creek was the Earl of White Crag's brother-in-law, and one of the senior members of the Chamber of Lords who was actually a stalwart ally of the Crown.

At the moment, Duke Black Horse was staking out the grounds for what Sharleyan had anticipated from the beginning would be one of the Chamber of Lords' tactics. There were far fewer dukes and earls and far more barons in Charis than in Chisholm, and the marriage contracts which had created the Empire had specified that all preexisting patents of nobility would remain unchanged and, upon the formal merger of the two crowns, would become
imperial
titles. Now the Chisholmian peers were taking the position that seats in the new Imperial Parliament's House of Lords should be assigned strictly on the basis of precedence of title, without regard as to the kingdom from which the holders of those titles might come.

It was a brazen attempt to ensure that the Chisholmian aristocracy would dominate the new Parliament's upper house, and while Sharleyan had anticipated a move in this direction, she hadn't expected them to try pushing it this quickly. Admittedly, Black Horse had much in common with a dragon in a glassworks, but he'd learned at least a modicum of tactical timing in Chisholm. Surely he should have had the wit to realize it would only be prudent to at least test the waters here in Tellesberg before he plunged in headlong. And to remember that the heraldic symbol of Charis was a kraken.

Apparently not
, she thought tartly.
Which doesn't exactly break my heart. If there are any Charisian nobles with delusions of power-grabbing, this should at least ensure that they don't think they can cut some sort of deal with
my
idiot aristocracy!

In fact, she could already see quite a few fulminating Charisian peers. Obviously, the Chamber of Lords' tactic hadn't come as a complete surprise to them, either. Not that having anticipated it made the Charisians any less . . . irked when their anticipation was confirmed. And not that realizing Black Horse had jumped too quickly made what he was saying one bit less irritating to Sharleyan.

He and his allies had wrapped their proposal up in the camouflage of her own and Cayleb's insistence that there was no “senior” or “junior” partner in the merger of their two kingdoms. If Chisholm and Charis were truly going to merge into a single entity, Black Horse was arguing, then the national boundaries which had once separated them would no longer exist. All of their peers should be considered members of a single unified peerage, just as all of the commoners from both of the now legally deceased realms should be eligible for election to the new House of Commons. And if that was the case, then, obviously, the seats in the new House of Lords ought to be assigned strictly on the basis of precedence of title without regard to whether it was a Chisholmian or Charisian title. After all, were they not all to become the loyal servants of a single, united Crown?

Just like that lying cretin
, she thought waspishly.
But does he actually think this noble patriot act is going to fool anyone? I'd like to “loyal”
his
“servant”! And I've got a dungeon cell somewhere which would fit him just fine. I'm
sure
I do, even if Cayleb did forget to tell me where it was. Maybe if I ask Rayjhis he can
—

“My Lord Speaker,” another voice said, and Sharleyan's grimace eased just a bit as Samyl Zhaksyn, the Duke of Halleck, asked for recognition.

Halleck of was one of the relatively small handful of Charisians whose titles would take precedence over virtually any Chisholmian. Indeed, he, the Duke of Korinth, and the youthful Duke of Tirian were three of the four most senior noblemen of the entire Old Kingdom of Charis, and all three of them had been chosen as delegates, despite the fact that young Rayjhis Ahrmahk, the Duke of Tirian, was barely twelve years old. Obviously, the choices had been made expressly because the Charisians had expected something like this. Although, Sharleyan smiled rather nastily, the fact that young Rayjhis' regent was his grandfather, the Earl of Gray Harbor, had probably had a little something to do with it, as well.

“His Grace, the Duke of Halleck, is recognized,” the Speaker announced, and Halleck nodded gravely in thanks.

“While I feel confident that I speak for most of my fellow Charisians—I beg pardon, for my fellow
Old
Charisians, for as His Grace of Black Horse has just pointed out, we are all Charisians today—when I say that I wholeheartedly approve of our Chisholmian fellow subjects' willingness to accept that we are all now a single Empire, and no longer separate kingdoms, I fear Duke Black Horse may be getting just a bit ahead of himself. With all due respect, and while fully agreeing that the Empire has already come into existence, I invite His Grace's attention to the marriage agreement between His Majesty and Her Majesty. In particular, I note in section four that it is specifically stated that the crowns of Chisholm and Charis will not be formally united until both of them are inherited by Their Majesties' heir. As every patent of nobility in Old Charis is currently held in fealty to the King of Charis, and every patent of nobility in Chisholm is currently held in fealty to the Queen of Chisholm, we cannot, however much we might wish to, consider them to be part of a seamless whole at this time.”

Black Horse scowled. Rock Coast didn't seem much happier, although Edwyrd Ahlbair, the Earl of Dragon Hill, was actually nodding gravely, his lips pursed in obvious thought. Then again, Dragon Hill had always been a smoother operator than either of the two dukes.