Irona 700 (40 page)

Irona so ruled, but with a heavy heart. Podakan had just been given a free hand to exterminate the hill folk of Muhavura. The rest of the Chosen had no idea how far he was likely to go.

As usual, her son astonished her. First, Podakan asked for Borawli as his deputy, which surprised everyone, especially Borawli. Next, having gathered a force of twenty thousand and marched them into the territory of the tribe closest to Severny, he shed no blood at all. At a parley, he demanded only release of all captives, return of all stolen goods, and a penalty of one hundred juvenile slaves. Hardly able to believe their good fortune, the tribal leaders complied, turning over some of their loot, many of their prisoners, and one hundred superfluous children seized from their poorest families. They also delivered their previous chief in chains, claiming that he had incited their recent, regrettable, homicidal frenzy.

Podakan released the chief, confident that he was now disgraced and harmless, but took his two sons hostage, just in case. He then spent the summer exploring Muhavura in force, collecting adolescent hostages from all the prominent chiefs. He returned to Benign with forty-nine of them.

Now his choice of deputy made some sense. In a speech to the Seventy, Borawli drew on his experience with the Education Board to explain how these children could be educated in imperial ways at almost no expense to the state. When they were eventually sent home in exchange for others, as had been agreed, they would leaven their people's barbarism with some Benesh civilization.

Any new idea met with opposition among the Chosen. Where were they to be boarded and who would pay for their food? Had he any idea how much fifty adolescents would eat? Podakan replied that there was plenty of unused space in his consort's palace, and he hoped the boys could be put out to work part-time as soon as they understood some simple Benesh. Grumbling on principle, the honorable Seventy gave their approval. Irona suppressed her doubts and voted with the majority.

The Year 737

I
n early fall, the Seven were informed that First Mallahle had taken to his bed. Ledacos came calling on Irona next morning as she was eating breakfast. She poured him a beaker of wine and Source Water while Veer tactfully withdrew, closing the door.

For a moment 692 sat and smiled conspiratorially. Irona waited, knowing why he had come and content to let him roll the first die.

“He's been a good First, 700.”

“Yes, he has.” She smiled back. They were the two main power brokers. The last time they had disagreed on something, the Seventy had split narrowly in her favor, but sometimes Ledacos won the majority. Election of a First had uncertainties all its own.

“Just supposing we went head-to-head,” he said. “I'd win. You're a woman and too young.”

“We're both too young.” She was well aware that a stranger judging by looks alone would assume she was older than Ledacos. “Goddess knows who might get picked as a tiebreaker.”

He knew that too. “Yes, let's settle it now.”

She knew that he was in the stronger position. Not in this election but in the one after this, they would butt heads. If whoever was chosen this time reigned for ten years, as Mallahle had, then Irona would be sixty-three, still too young, and Ledacos seventy-one, about right. The time after that she might be too old to be elected, or even too old to care.

“Can we agree on a candidate?” Ledacos said. “How about Suretamatai 683?”

“Your distinguished client and lapdog.”

He conceded the point with a shrug. “Makian 682, then?”

“I will fight to the death.”

Irona 700 was determined that the first female First must be Irona 700. Even if Makian could be elected, which was doubtful because she had no following of her own, the Seventy would never elect another woman to succeed her.

“Who's your choice, then?” Ledacos said.

Irona had spent half the night thinking about that. The younger the better, from her point of view, to put off the next election as long as possible and give her time to age. Ledacos would prefer someone older for the opposite reason. If they disagreed, his elderly candidate was more likely to carry the day than her younger one, whoever they were.

She said, “Ranau 674.”

Understandably, Ledacos was taken aback. “He's only five years younger than Mallahle.”

“He's popular and competent. Who says a First must reign for ten years?”

“The goddess, I suppose.” Ledacos offered a hand to shake. “Ranau it is, then. You want to tell him, or shall I?”

Later that year, Irona was chatting in the Scandal Market with Haruna 710. The air was cool and the grass wet, but a week ago there had been snow there. Spring was on the way, and that meant sailing weather could not be far behind. The evening's agenda included several seasonal items. Suddenly Podakan 725 was there also, so intent on business that he barely nodded a greeting.

“Item Four,” he said. “Election of a governor for Vult. Who gets your vote, Dam?”

“Isn't it Lascar 730's turn?” Irona was not then a Seven, but she still had her clients, and Vult had not come up at their strategy meeting for this agenda because it was routine now. Ever since the governor's term had been reduced from two years to one—on her recommendation—a stint on the edge of the Dread Lands had become a rite of passage for Chosen in their midtwenties.

There had been exceptions, of course. No one had suggested trusting Puchuldiza alone for a year with a hundred men. And Podakan had always escaped, because he had been holding more important offices. Umboi 729 was the present governor, no doubt counting the days until he would be relieved.

“I think it's mine, Dam,” he said. “No reason why I should be excluded.”

Great Goddess!
Needing time to think, Irona looked to Haruna, who had served her term years ago. “He never ceases to amaze me. Have you ever heard of anyone volunteering for Vult?”

What in the world was he was up to this time?

“I expect all those young barbarians boarding in his house have driven him insane.” Haruna's humor often exceeded her tact.

“Quite right,” Podakan said. “They were a very bad idea and this is probably another, but Lascar is five years my junior, and every Chosen for twenty-five years has taken a turn at Vult latrine duty. Besides, Koriana has just whelped and I can't breed her again for months.”

Haruna flushed scarlet. “Then I will certainly vote for you. I just wish it were a five-year term.”

“That's the spirit! You should bark more often. Dam, will you nominate me, please?”

“If you wish. Koriana certainly deserves a rest.” She had produced three girls and three boys in ten years.

Podakan glanced around the garden. “Good. I'll go and butter up some of the other old relics.” He strode away.

Looking quite comically shocked, Haruna said, “There are times, my dear …”

“He's always like that with me when we're alone. You got caught in the splash, that's all.” But what was he up to?

Irona had still not made up her mind about that when Item Four was called. She raised her hand—she did not stand in the Assembly these days—and nominated Podakan 725. As usual, there was no other nomination.

Within a week he was gone, sailing off to visit his birthplace.

The Year 738

W
ith Podakan away, Irona made more of an effort to befriend Koriana, but with little success. The former princess declined all social invitations and refused to let her children out of the house. Admittedly it was a huge house, whose grounds were spacious by city standards, and she had dozens of servants. She allowed Irona to visit, but made her disapproval obvious. Irona was surprised to learn from a chance remark that the young hostages from Muhavura were no longer billeted in the attic. She had almost forgotten those hostages.

Next day, she requested—which meant commanded—Borawli 727 to drop by her office in the palace, “at his convenience.” She might be only a Six at present, but she was still Irona 700, so he came at once. She bade him be seated, offered wine, tried to put him at ease. He didn't look at ease, which was a bad sign when she hadn't yet said why she wanted to see him.

“Hostages?” she said. “I remember the Seventy approving the idea back in 734, but I cannot recall any further discussion. No reports, even.”

Borawli squirmed. “That might be because the program was not funded by the Treasury. I left it up to your noble son and … he … probably … forgot?”

In other words, the overpowering Podakan had bullied the low-key scholar into keeping his mouth shut about something. The lowness of his key might explain why the scholar had been chosen as deputy leader for the Muhavura mission in the first place. Irona mentally drew her sword.

“Tell me how it went, then. In your own words.”

“Um … Quite well to start with. We found some freedmen to teach the kids the language, and … various things. Took them to see a public flogging so they would behave themselves.” He brightened. “Which they did! You realize that they committed no crimes at all? Not one! Fifty adolescent barbarians loose in Benign and there was not a single complaint about them the whole time they were here.”

“I hadn't noticed that. I'm surprised you didn't brag about it to the Seventy.”

He hesitated. “Well … when we sent them home, we couldn't be sure we had really done any good.”

“Just when did you send them home?”

“In 736, as we had promised. And we got another fifty or so in exchange, but they weren't the same.”

“Not the same in what way?” She wondered if the sight of a public flogging might loosen his tongue, but of course no Chosen ever got flogged.

His forehead glistened. “They weren't sons or grandsons of elders, like the first lot had been. The chiefs fobbed us off with commoners' spawn. The tribes are very hierarchal in their—”

“Quite. So they were sent back?”

“No. We treated them the same way. But when your honorable son left for Vult, he sent them home and told them not to send any replacements. He didn't want to leave his wife and children at the mercy of young savages.”

How thoughtful of him.

“Why were the Seventy told nothing of this?”

Tendons in Borawli's neck were taut as ship's rigging, and his eyes looked anywhere except at Irona's.

“If I may say so, ma'am … Your noble son was rather disappointed with the, um, lack of … He did promise … He told me he was writing … It was up to him.”

Irona had to be content with that. Certainly Podakan had never been willing to admit mistakes, so he would have kept quiet if his hostage idea had been a failure. And possibly if it had been a success, depending on what it had really been meant to accomplish.

The trouble began as winter was setting in, when the garrison troops who had sailed with Podakan in the spring were relieved and returned to their home bases. One galley had been contributed by Purace and the other by Nedokon Kun, so there was a further delay before mail reached Benign.

Irona received only a very brief note saying that Podakan was well but much too busy to write more. Busy? In Vult? Whatever had he found to do in the rock? Koriana claimed that his letter to her had said no more than that, but she blushed furiously when asked to produce it. It had been destroyed, she said.

The governor's “routine” midterm report was delivered to the Seven. It was anything but routine. The Seven had it read aloud to the Seventy, and it caused a near riot.

There was too little to do at Vult to keep the troops on their toes, Podakan had written. Trogs had been seen again, after an absence of years. He had therefore assembled a flotilla of fishing boats from Fueguino and some of the tiny villages along the coast—small craft that could be manhandled over the weir. He was about to launch an attack on Eldritch. He hoped he could return it to imperial control, but even if he couldn't achieve that much, he could root out some maleficence.

His commission expressly forbade any action more than one bow shot inland from the Eboga Weir, but by this time, it was far too late to send a message north. Even if it arrived, it would almost certainly fail to reach Podakan, unless he had been mad enough to plan his campaign for a Vultian winter. There was nothing to do except wait for the spring sailing season. When the Seventy stopped screaming, they had mostly decided that it must be all Irona's fault. After all, she had nominated him.

Podakan had maneuvered her into that.

Caprice rarely sent troubles alone. On days when the Seventy were due to meet, Irona's major clients would call upon her after breakfast to discuss issues and strategy. That was how the Empire was run. It was a mutual help arrangement, support here traded for opposition there, but the most important votes were always the elections, and one election would be critical. A vacancy had opened among the Seven, the first since Irona had become eligible for another term. If she failed to win, the wind would spread whispers that she was past it, losing her grip, on the way down. Normally she would have been quite confident, but Podakan's insubordination at Vult had thrown the issue into doubt. For the Chosen to vote against her just to spite him would be a meaningless gesture—he could not even hear about it for another half year—but the Seventy's decisions were never based only on logic.

Her clients understood the danger, for if her power waned, their own prospects would dim. They agreed that the day must be spent in campaigning. They were halfway through a triage of the Chosen—the good, the bad, and the buyable—when there came a tap on the door.

Lascar 730, the most junior, rose to answer it, but it could only be Edziza out there, and he would not interrupt lightly. Muttering apologies, Irona reached for her staff. Two men jumped to help her rise. She hated that highlighting of her disability, but lately she had begun to accept it as necessary. Lascar returned to his seat; Edziza waited in the doorway until Irona arrived.

Then he spoke softly. “Princess Koriana here to see you, ma'am. And the boy Avazan.”

In almost eleven years, Koriana had never come calling without being invited, rarely even then. Why come on such a vile winter day, with lamps swinging and rain beating against the shutters? Why bring a ten-year-old with her? Irona turned to tell her cohort that she would need a few minutes and would they please carry on with that they were doing. Then she followed Edziza along to the dining hall, where the visitors were waiting.

“Koriana. … And wonderful to see you, Avazan. Do please sit, both of you. …” Words came automatically as she tried to guess what could have provoked the visit. It was hard to do that when she couldn't see the woman's eyes. The boy was gazing around with a contempt that he must have learned or inherited from his father. His presence was still a mystery to Irona, but a woman of the Three Kingdoms might well believe she must not go out without a male escort.

“I can't spare long just now, dear. In an hour or so …”

“It will only take a moment,” Koriana told the floor tiles. “I am returning to the Three Kingdoms. And taking my children, of course.”

Oh, she was, was she? Irona drew a deep breath and kept her voice soft.

“This is bad news. What provokes this decision?”

“Your son has passed out of my world. He will not be coming back to Benign.”

For a moment the words felt like a dagger stab: Maleficence, trogs, Eldritch. … Then common sense reared its homely head. The woman was insane. Even if her information were based on reality, why discuss it in front of the boy?

“You believe he is … his tide has ebbed?”

“He is gone,” Koriana said firmly. “There is nothing more for me to do here.”

“You can't sail yet, dear. Not in this season.”

“I arrived in such season, I can leave in such season.”

Unaccustomed to backtalk, Irona found herself very close to losing her temper. “Until Podakan returns or we are certain that he will never return, I will not let you remove his children from the city. And probably not then. You understand?”

Koriana looked up, eyes flashing fury. “They are my children.”

“And my grandchildren.”

“No.”

Oh, Goddess!
“What are you saying, woman?”

“I am saying that your son cannot make children. His seed will not flourish. Oh, he plowed me often, but he had other men sow me so that people would not know his state.”

“You are joking.” Irona glanced at Avazan, who had blanched, as if his world had just fallen to pieces. It was a small comfort to know that this nonsense was news to him and not something he had been fed for a long while.

“No joke.” Koriana was still staring, her face white with rage. “Always I obeyed my lord and submitted. He watched to make sure I did. Men from the docks. Men from visiting ships. Boys from Muhavura.”

Irona fought for calm. “You are overwrought. You are alone too much.”

“Just look at them!” The princess was close to screaming. “None looks like your son. Or you. Or one another. You've seen Alayta's hair, Chiracha's eyes!”

Yes, but … No. This was madness.

Edziza would have stayed close in case he was needed.

“Avazan,” Irona said quietly. “Your mother is having a bad dream. Please open the door and ask the man outside to come in again.”

Even the election seemed unimportant after that interview. Irona sent an urgent summons to the Palace office for Daun Bukit. She arranged for Koriana to be put under house arrest and doctors to declare her insane. She hired guards and nurses. She pulled more strings than a fishing boat hauling in its nets, but only when both the children and their mother were being supervised day and night was Irona able to relax again. It was going to cost a fortune, but she could afford it.

She did win reelection to the Seven, but she had an opponent for the first time in twenty years, and the vote was too close for comfort.

Koriana refused further discussion of her visions, and Irona would not have believed anything she said anyway. It should have seemed like a long winter, waiting to hear what had happened in Vult, but between the workload of a Seven and getting to know her grandchildren better, she found that the months flashed by. Without Podakan's forbidding presence, she did get to know them at last: Avazan, Adwa, Hanish, Alayta, Chiracha, and baby Olkaria. She and Veer took them on trips around the city and entertained them at Sebrat House. She brought in playmates and tutors, which their father had never done, and she spoiled them with treats of toys and sweetmeats as a grandmother should.

Suddenly it was again time to elect a governor for Vult.

Normally the Seven just put the appointment on the agenda for the next meeting of the Seventy, more or less leaving it to the younger Chosen to decide among themselves whose turn it was in the pillory. But this time the Seven debated it at length, sitting around their octagonal table with First Ranau, seven purple and one red.

They agreed their nominee would have to be Lascar 730. There was some talk of sending Kieyo 731, who made too many speeches for a junior and had a monotonous voice—one honorable Seven suggested extending his term there to five or ten years. But nobody quite knew what the next governor might have to deal with when he arrived, and they trusted Lascar more than Kieyo. Then they discussed sending a senior Chosen along as admiral, to see the junior governor safely installed, but that break with routine might seem like panic. In the end, the Seven agreed to recommend Lascar for the post.

Even that was not the end of it this year. Old Dallol 672, who wasn't frightened of Irona or anyone else, moved that the new governor be provided with a warrant for Podakan 725's arrest on charges of mutiny. All eyes turned to Irona.

This was her moment of truth. He was certainly guilty if he had done what he said he was going to do, and he had lied in his report if he hadn't. Headstrong he had always been, but to attack Eldritch with a mere four hundred men was more like insanity than mutiny. Or it might be treachery, although no one had spoken that word yet. She was not allowed to abstain from a vote. Did she put loyalty to her son ahead of loyalty to the goddess? In truth, that was no choice, because what was going to happen would have already happened despite anything she did or said.

“I agree,” she said. “But no summary justice. He is to be brought back here for trial.”

They all agreed that this was what they wanted.

“Furthermore,” she said, “we tell Navy to send its best two imperial galleys with first-rate captains. No allied trash this time.”

That also was agreed, yet that evening the Seventy, in their wisdom, added a third galley. No one quite came out and explained why that might be a good idea, but it was agreed unanimously.

A week before Midsummer Day, when Sevens Irona and Komev were sitting in judgment in Adult Court, they were summoned to attend the First. They had to suspend the sitting, a breach of normal procedure that would set the whole Palace abuzz. As they followed the herald along the corridor, they debated what emergency might have provoked it. The most obvious possibility was news from Vult, but that seemed impossible: bad weather had delayed Lascar 730's departure, and there had simply not been time for him to arrive and send word back.