Beyond the great crystal windows, a few leaves were starting to turn on the beeches. The vases on the dressers held chrysanthemums. Summer was aging.
In the center of all the activity, the imperor lay like a corpse, his vellum-coated skull on a silken pillow: toothless, eyes closed. Thus had his dominion shrunk. Now he did not rule even as far as his hands would reach, those spidery, misshapen fingers. Now he did not reign even as far as the edges of his bed, else he would surely make everyone go away and leave him to die in peace.
To the left of the bed, Centurion Hithi pulled another scroll from the hamper at his side. There was an extremely interesting rumor going around about that centurion! Umpily had not been able to confirm it yet. The man had been Ylo’s superior, years ago, and now he was Ylo’s assistant. Gossip whispered that Ylo had told the man he was going to remain a common clerk until he knelt and kissed Ylo’s sandal! If true, that was an exquisite revenge. No Praetorian centurion was going to kneel to any man before the Gods died!
“Sentence of banishment against the earl of Wastock,” the centurion muttered, passing the scroll to Shandie.
Umpily pricked up his ears. All documents relating to punitive matters had supposedly been removed and set aside for Shandie’s personal confirmation, for the old man had been far too vindictive with his proscriptions in the final few months.
Frowning, Shandie checked carefully for Ylo’s initial, then he unrolled the top and scanned the text. Umpily waited with anticipation and felt glee as he saw the prince’s shocked reaction. Banishment was leniency in the Wastock affair. It had been a clear case of abuse of a ward, with many titillating messy details; Emshandar had wanted to hush up the scandal. Ylo had verified the facts with Umpily—a very thorough young man, that Ylo.
“Another one, Grandsire!” Shandie held out the scroll. The sunken eyes opened. The old man started awake. He took the roll in a trembling, blue—veined hand, and passed it across to the legionary, who proceeded to affix the seal. Done.
It was all legal, if barely so.
Documents passed from hamper to centurion, from centurion to prince, from prince to the old man in his bed, and across the bed to the legionary clerks, and then into another hamper. The imperor had approved another law, edict, warrant, or something. It was legal.
“Recall of Proconsul Ionfeu.”
“Grandsire?”
That was new business—Umpily and Acopulo had proposed Ionfeu as one of next year’s consuls and Shandie had agreed. It was time to start working some of his own people into the administration. The imperor might not have noticed; he passed the scroll on to be sealed.
Umpily sat at the foot of the bed, with Sir Acopulo and Marshal Ithy. They had a table also, littered with papers. When Shandie had doubts about a document, he would refer it to his advisors. Thus was the business of the Impire transacted, in the dying time of Emshandar IV. Thus was the Impire governed. One day Umpily’s memoirs would reveal it all.
It was six weeks since the prince had returned, just in time to avert a complete collapse of the realm, six weeks since Umpily had seen that unthinkable vision in the preflecting pool . . . and lied about it.
The great backlog was shrinking slowly, and Ylo now reported that nothing truly urgent remained. The onrush of new matters left little time for catch-up, but the pile was dwindling. Umpily had nightmares when he thought what would have happened without that remarkable young lecher and his brainwave of using Praetorians as scriveners. Of course the unfortunate victims had come close to mutiny—there was even a rumor of an attempted suicide—but the prince had insisted. And the motivation was superb. They were said to be working all day and half the night in their haste to clear up the work and be released from the humiliation. Ylo had already let one go, just to spur the others on. Civilian clerks would have made a life’s work of it.
Eventually there would be only the centurion himself left—and Ylo’s sandal unkissed! That was a marvelous rumor, but Umpily just could not think of a way to verify it. In fact, he wasn’t sure who could have started it, except maybe Ylo himself.
“Charter for the Polity of Gurp,” the centurion said with schooled impassivity.
Shandie did not bother to look at that one. Doubtless someone had paid well for it, although a few more crowns might have bought them a better name for their city.
“Another, Grandsire!”
“No! Tired. It’s ‘nough.” The skull-like face on the pillow did not even open its eyes, but it clenched its gums stubbornly. Shandie frowned and glanced at the ornate dwarvish clock on the mantel. “We’ll take a break and do some more later. A quarter of an hour, gentlemen?”
The Praetorians rose and stalked for the door, the centurion trailing an empty hamper, the two guardsmen clutching full ones. Shandie rose and stretched and then wandered over to the coffeepot. The others rose also and went to join him.
Umpily could certainly use something to brighten up his wits. Shandie had a luncheon meeting scheduled with the Ilranian commissioners. If there was one thing calculated to drive a chief of protocol out of his mind, it was elves. Nordland, now, dealt with the Impire through a single ambassador. If he could not speak for individual thanes, at least he would say so. But elves! A dozen of them would twitter like fledglings in a dozen different directions and you never knew which one to listen to, although there would usually be one there with enough authority to negotiate seriously, if you could only figure out which. Even if you knew what their absurd rigmarole titles meant, you never knew whether they represented the real distribution of power. A fair rule of thumb was that the one in the most subdued clothing was the senior and the brightest dressed the least important, but if they knew you knew that, they would certainly switch the order. And their thought processes would madden the Gods. Umpily’s mouth watered at the thought of elvish cuisine. The portions were always too small, though. Jotnar, now, ate little except fish, usually boiled tasteless, but they did know how to heap a platter . . .
The marshal was clutching papers in both hands. “These are all right, Highness. These I recommend you reconsider.” Shandie smiled at him over the lip of a steaming cup. “I gave you only two choices; you old rascal.”
“Chuck them, then!” Ithy attempted to smile back. He was a sick man. His face was swollen and hideously discolored by some recent dentistry and must be very painful. He wore civilian clothes, which was just as well. He would look like a turtle in a breastplate. Ithy had been trying to retire for years. Shandie would grant him his release as soon as things were settled.
As soon as things were settled—that phrase cropped up a lot these days. What it meant was when Emshandar dies.
The old wreck became hysterically incoherent if anyone suggested a regency. Shandie could make formal application, of course, and the Senate and Assembly would appoint him in less time than it took a clerk to dip a quill, but Shandie absolutely refused to do so. Evidently he couldn’t bring himself to submit the old man to that last humiliation. Sentiment was a very poor basis for government, but his grandfather had been father to him and half a mother as well.
And—as even Umpily would admit—for most of fifty years Emshandar had been a fine imperor. Not great, but better than most. In the six weeks since Shandie’s return, he had rarely left his bed.
But they could cope. They could run the world like this for a while yet. It wouldn’t be long now, until things were settled. Umpily thought they could cope. Shandie thought they could cope. Acopulo wasn’t so sure. Yesterday he’d been pointing out that the caliph was rattling his scimitar again in Zark, stronger than ever, the dwarves were being even more impossible than usual, and the goblins threatening. Even the fauns of Sysanasso were starting to cause trouble and they’d been quiet for a century. The harvest had failed in the east. A severe earthquake had shaken Ambel. Not one but two comets burned in the northern sky every night, and everyone knew that comets foretold the death of imperoros. Even the least superstitious were counting the days until the end of the millennium.
The Impire, the scholar said, was shaking on its foundations. He had given Umpily a very shrewd inspection as he said it, almost as if he knew what Umpily had seen in the preflecting pool. Acopulo didn’t believe that Umpily had seen nothing, no matter how much he insisted. He himself didn’t even think about it. A dwarf! It was unthinkable. The pool had been malfunctioning, or the whole thing had been a hoax.