She also wondered what could possibly prey on them—and then found out, for they came next to the lions. She’d seen lions before, the African Panthera leo, when she and Will visited the zoo in Indianapolis. And clearly these were lions, though their winter fur—white tinged faintly with pink—was thicker than the African, and the males wore ruffs instead of manes. She hadn’t imagined lions existing on this continent. And what lions!, the males much larger than the African. The Cloister school hadn’t mentioned lions of any sort, while on Farside, the long-extinct American lion, Panthera atrox, she’d never heard of.
Probably the Cloister’s teachers hadn’t known of lions, she told herself. But surely someone there had known of Duinarog, and the Northern, Middle, and Imperial Seas, yet they hadn’t been mentioned either. At the Cloister, the world virtually ended at the Big River. The Marches, and the Western and Eastern Empires which lay north of them, were spoken of only in political terms. It occurred to her that Sarkia didn’t want her people to know wonder or feel curiosity, and certainly not to be honestly informed. Everything was seen in terms of her own explanations, ambitions, and hatreds.
The dire wolves were next, conspicuously larger than timber wolves, and more strongly built. They hunted the plains bison, Raien told her. After the dire wolves they saw tundra caribou, and shaggy musk oxen no larger than ponies. Next were animals from nearer climes. Moose: tall, gangling, and nearly black. She’d seen them wild near Aaerodh Manor; they’d looked better there. In the next enclosure were timber wolves, looking lazy and bored, which was hardly surprising. She liked them better than she had the dire wolves; they seemed less—less dire.
And ah! Northern jaguars, particularly beautiful in their winter coats. Physically they were much less impressive than the lions—two hundred pounds she guessed, three at most—but regal, even here in the zoo. It was partly their auras. She smiled at Raien, whom she knew had a special love for these cats. And wished they were still at Aaerodh Manor, where she would have learned to run on skis, and they’d have gone stalking together. How fulfilling it would be to see these wonderful ice-blue creatures crossing a frozen lake, or padding along some moose trail in a cedar swamp. Now the odds seemed poor that she ever would. They planned to go back for a few weeks each summer, circumstances permitting, but she didn’t expect to live there year-round, ever. For being the Emperor’s Chief Counselor meant he’d probably be chosen Emperor when Paedrigh declined.
Raien didn’t covet the throne for itself, but for what he could do as Emperor: Continue and perhaps even complete the reforms and other projects he and Paedrigh had plotted and planned, back when Paedrigh had been Chief Counselor, and Raien his military adviser. Notably the end of ducal armies large enough to threaten the imperial peace; the end of slavery; and the beginnings of peace with the rest of the continent.
All to be accomplished in the face of factionalized and discordant politics, as reflected in the Imperial Council.
Braighn IV had reformed the slave laws, and Paedrigh had modified them further, but slaves were still subject to abuses, particularly the girls and women. Abuses that degraded the abusers as well, Raien had told her—nobles and gentry who took advantage of their position, and justified it by insisting that slaves had no souls.
There was a faction, an important political party, based on the concept that the ylver had a natural right to rule and dominate “humans,” whom they looked at as an only quasi-sapient species. The same party upheld fiercely the rights of slaveholders, though many slaves were descended from ylvin prisoners of ducal wars long past. Almost always they were conspicuously only part ylvin. It had become awkward to justify ylvin slaves, thus they’d been deliberately crossbred with human slaves. The more they looked like ordinary humans, the easier it was to rationalize their slavery.
Raien had pointed out what the books she’d read had slighted—that there were few if any ylver without some non-ylvin ancestry. To speak of half-ylver was a simplification. A half-ylf was someone who had enough human ancestry—especially recent human ancestry—that it showed plainly. The race of ylver, he said, was a blend, with a preponderance of ylvin ancestry.