By Heresies Distressed (12 page)

I suppose it's hard to blame them for that
, Cayleb thought as the Speaker came towards him to offer formal greeting.
They must have been unhappy enough with only Sharleyan to worry about. Now there's
me,
as well . . . and any of them who have been awake enough to smell the chocolate have to be aware of how Charis' Parliament operates. Whatever else they may be expecting out of me, it's not going to be anything that will
improve
their position here in Chisholm
.

“Somehow,” he heard Merlin murmur very, very softly into his ear, “I don't feel all warm and loved.”

“
You
don't?” Cayleb snorted back, then adjusted his face into an expression of proper formality as the Speaker bowed to him in greeting.

“Welcome! Welcome, Your Majesty!”

“Thank you, My Lord Speaker,” Cayleb replied graciously.

“Both Houses await your pleasure with eagerness,” the Speaker continued more diplomatically, Cayleb was certain, than accurately, at least where the Lords were concerned.

“Then let us not keep them waiting,” Cayleb said.

He
looks
like an emperor
, Mahrak Sahndyrs thought from his place among his fellow nobles as the Speaker ushered Cayleb to the lectern which had been draped in the new imperial flag to await him. Personally, Sahndyrs would have preferred to be seated on the western side of the Hall, among the commoners who were his staunchest allies. Unfortunately, he was a peer of the realm, and tradition demand that he be seated among his fellow aristocrats.

Besides, it gives them all the opportunity to remind themselves—and me, of course—that while I may be First Councilor, I'm also still a mere baron
.

Sharleyan had offered several times to do something about that, but Green Mountain had always declined. He could put up with the pretensions of snobbish earls and dukes all day long, if he must, and his decision to remain a “mere baron” was important to his commoner allies. They understood that the queen's senior minister had to be a nobleman, but they found a “mere baron” far more acceptable than they would have found an earl or a duke. Now he watched the young man in the embroidered thigh-length tunic and loose-fitting breeches which still looked undeniably exotic to most Chisholmians standing where Sharleyan had stood so often, the emerald-set chain of a Charisian king flashing about his neck, and leaned back comfortably in his own chair. He'd half-expected Cayleb to come in full imperial regalia, and he still wasn't sure the younger man's decision not to hadn't been a mistake, but the baron had to admit that he'd never seen a more kingly young man in his life.

Clothes don't make the man, nor a crown a king
, he reminded himself.
Not really, whatever certain other people may think. That has to come from within, from a man's own strength, confidence, and willpower, and this young man has those qualities in plenty
.

Somehow, he expected to enjoy the next half hour or so rather more than one of those earls or dukes he wasn't one of.

“My Lords and Ladies,” Cayleb said after the Speaker's fulsome, flowery introduction had finally ended, “I greet you in the name of Charis, and I bring you a message from your Queen and Empress.”

He paused for a moment, letting his eyes sweep over the assembled members of Parliament's houses. Even those who undoubtedly least wanted to hear what he was about to say were listening attentively, and he smiled as he pitched his voice to carry to every one of those ears.

“Your Empress—my wife—bade me tell you that she wishes she could be here to speak to you in person. Unfortunately, the great challenges and tasks which our new Empire faces do not always let us do what we would like to do. Queen Sharleyan—
Empress
Sharleyan—remained behind in Tellesberg because she, and only she, has the power and authority to make binding decisions in both our names. While I take the field against our common enemies in Corisande,
she
has assumed the heavy burden of governing both our realms, and I need not tell
you
that those realms could not be in better hands.”

He paused again, waiting while what he'd already said sank home. There was nothing new in it, not really. Yet this was the first time he had formally enunciated to Chisholm's Parliament
his
acceptance of Sharleyan's full equality as his coruler.

“At this time, as we face the Group of Four and the mainland realms under its sway across the Anvil and the Gulf of Tarot, Her Majesty finds herself confronting not simply political and financial decisions, but the military decisions required to defend our people against our enemies, as well. Even now, our forces will have completed their operations against Delferahk in punishment for the Ferayd Massacre, and it will be her responsibility to decide what other actions may be necessary. It is not a task anyone else could conceivably have undertaken, and it is one which I implicitly trust her to discharge successfully, but we must not delude ourselves that she will find it an easy one.

“My Lords and Ladies, the dangers which we face, the decisions we must undertake, the prices we must pay are unique.” His eyes swept slowly across the seated peers and the members of the House of Commons. “No one else in the history of Safehold has faced the enemy we face. No other realm, no other people, have found themselves at war with the Church which was meant to be mother to us all. We, the combined people of the Kingdoms of Charis and Chisholm, know our enemy. In Charis we were forced to defend ourselves against a totally unjustified—and unjusti
fiable
—onslaught ordered by the corrupt men in Zion who have perverted everything Mother Church was ever meant to be. Thousands of my father's subjects—and my father, himself—gave their lives stopping that attack, defending their homes and families and the belief that men and women are meant to worship
God
, not bow their heads at the feet of four corrupt, venal, arrogant, blasphemous men whose actions profane the vestments they wear and the very air they breathe.”

He paused again, for just a moment, then continued in a softer voice, clear and yet pitched low enough his audience was forced to listen very carefully to hear him.

“Oh, yes, My Lords and Ladies. Thousands of Charisians died. But so did thousands of Chisholmians. Chisholmians whose only ‘crime' was that the Group of Four had
ordered
Queen Sharleyan to join her own kingdom's worst enemy in an attack upon a friend who had never harmed Chisholm in any way. She had no choice. They spoke with the authority of God—or so they claimed—and all the coercive authority of the Inquisition and Mother Church. And so she was forced to bend to their will, and how many of
your
fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers died with
my
father because she had no choice?”

Dead silence reigned in Parliament Hall, and he let it linger. Then, slowly, he drew himself up to his full height.

“My Lords and Ladies, never doubt the courage your Queen showed when she accepted my proposal of marriage. It was not a decision she reached lightly, but it was the
right
decision. It was the decision of a queen who will not see her people's lives sacrificed, thrown away as if they were no more important than deciding which shoes to wear today, at the whim of four corrupt and evil men. The decision of a queen who knew that if the Group of Four's ambition was not checked, if their corruption of Mother Church was not cleansed, the Kingdom of Charis would have been but the first of many victims, and the keeper of men's souls would have become the means of their destruction.

“I know there are those here in Chisholm, as in Charis, who fear the course upon which we have found ourselves forced to sail. Do not think your Queen and I don't understand those fears. That we don't share them. To set our own mortal wills, our own mortal hands, against the might and majesty of Mother Church? To set our understanding of God's will against those who wear the orange? To set our defiance against those who grip eight in ten of all Safeholdians in the iron fist of their power? Of course we have tasted fear of our own. Of course we came to this moment in trembling, and only because those vile men in Zion left us no choice . . . and because the other men in Zion did not stop them. Only because we will live and die as men and women who worship God joyously, not as the cringing slaves of a corrupt clique who have set their own power, their own greed, in the place of God's will. Make no mistake; we will
never
bow the knee to Zhaspahr Clyntahn and his cronies!”

Spines straightened throughout Parliament Hall, and Cayleb nodded to them slowly.

“That was the reason your Queen agreed to become my wife. The reason she agreed to merge our realms into a single greater whole. The reason she, too, has drawn the sword of resistance. This is not Charis' war. It isn't Chisholm's war, or Cayleb's war, or Sharleyan's war. It is
everyone's
war. It is the war of every child of God, of every man and woman who believes in justice.
That
is the war your Queen had the high courage to join when she might have tried to close her eyes to the truth and avoid that dreadful decision.”

Even some of the peers seemed to sit taller in their seats, eyes brighter, but it was in the eyes of the Commons that Cayleb saw the true fire.

“There is not a single soul in Tellesberg, or anywhere in the Kingdom of Charis, who does not recognize the decision Queen Sharleyan made,” he told those burning eyes quietly. “No one who fails to understand the danger she chose to face with her eyes wide and her head high. And that, My Lords and Ladies, is why the Kingdom of Charis has taken her to its heart. They, as you, have come to know her, and in knowing her, they have come to trust her. To love her. Perhaps the subjects of another realm might question whether or not they have. Might be unwilling—or unable—to believe anyone could win the heart of a strange and new kingdom so quickly. But you already know her, have watched the girl who was forced to take her father's throne untimely grow under the challenges she has faced. Seen her grow from the sorrowing child into a queen who is Queen indeed, in the full power and majesty of her reign. You
know
what the people of Charis saw in her—what
I
see in her, every time I look at her—and because you know her, you know how she could have won her new subjects in Tellesberg so quickly.”

There was sober agreement and satisfaction in faces throughout Parliament Hall, and nods, and—here and there—smiles of memory and pride, as well. Cayleb saw them, and smiled back at them.

“We have not yet been granted the time to complete the arrangements, the reorganization, which was a part of the marriage agreement between Queen Sharleyan and myself—between Charis and Chisholm. The press of events, the threat of our enemies, has forced us to move more quickly even than we had expected. But those arrangements are too important, too fundamental, to be put aside, and so I charge you, My Lords and Ladies, to select from your number those who will represent you in our new, imperial parliament. You must choose them within the next month, and you must send them to Tellesberg, where they will sit with the men and women chosen by the Parliament of Charis, under Empress Sharleyan's personal direction, and forge that new
Imperial
Parliament. I entrust this vital task to your hands, to the hands of Queen Mother Alahnah and Baron Green Mountain. I do not fear that you will fail me, or Her Majesty, in this essential duty.”

He saw astonishment in the faces of many members of his audience, and disbelief in not a few of them, as they realized what he was saying. When they grasped the fact that he would allow
Sharleyan
to create the new institutions of imperial government without even looking over her shoulder the entire time. That he truly trusted her
that
much.

“For at least the immediate future, My Lords and Ladies,” he told them with a crooked smile, “my own time bids fair to be more occupied with tasks of the sword than with tasks of the council chamber. I wish it were not so, but what I
wish
cannot change what
is
. Yet never doubt that whatever Empress Sharleyan does, whatever decision she makes, it will also be
my
decision, and if I cannot join her in the council chamber, I can—and will—support her outside it.”