Flight of the Gazebo

Chapter 12 - An Audience with the Emperor

"It's a damned waste of time!"

Zharvak's booming voice shook the polished wood panelling in the small dressing chamber. Like many of the rooms, offices and chambers in Skarnelm's royal palace, it was windowless, carved as it was in the interior of the great mountain, Kressgir.

The room reeked of age from the heavy, intricately carved wooden bench, the ceramic washstand, the glass clock with the paint peeling off its face, to the oil lanterns attached to the walls two centuries ago when the lighting panels in the ceiling had stopped working.

The Master of the Robes, polishing Zharvak's already gleaming pauldrons, hesitated and looked towards Vester, the emperor's Master of Ceremonies, tall, lean, hawk-faced and dressed entirely in black, who stood near the door. Vester motioned for it to continue.

Casting anxious glances at the exit - the door opposite the one that led into the throne room - the Master of the Robes, an eight-limbed pirch, dabbed its polishing cloth at Zharvak's breastplate.

"Damned priests!" growled the emperor. "Nothing but glorified tea-leaf readers! Why do I have to go through this sham every month?" He was tall for a skeeple - his species - and cut an imposing figure with his broad shoulders and muscular arms swelled by red and gold armour. His helm, bearing the flared wings of the House of Skarnelm, artfully set off his dark eyes under massive, beetling brows. Gold leaf adorned the blunt, bony horn thrusting from the centre of his face. The yellow metal contrasted with the thick, black beard that concealed the lower part of his face. His short, powerful legs were made longer by the addition of thick soles to his armoured boots.

With one pair of arms, the Master of the Robes brushed away invisible specks of dust from the glyph painted and embossed on the breastplate of Zharvak's cuirass. At the same time, its other pair of arms polished his helm.

And every month we have this conversation, thought Vester. Cretin. No sense of style and the attention span of a gnat.

Fortunately, the thick door at Vester's back kept Zharvak's voice from penetrating to the throne room where nobles, dignitaries, courtiers and ambassadors were gathering for the day's proceedings.

"If I may say so, my lord, Panslatch is a seer of some distinction. As I recall, it was he who warned of the Temtooig uprising. A warning which gave you ample time to reinforce your presence in that region thereby forestalling the unpleasantness which would have otherwise arisen," said Vester. He gauged his tone precisely: deferential but without sounding meek, acutely aware he was dangerously close to overstepping his role.

Zharvak chuckled. "It was pretty damned unpleasant for those ringleaders though, eh? Nothing like a public execution to settle the masses."

"Quite so, my lord," replied Vester.

"Still, I don't see why Panslatch has to do all that mumbo-jumbo nonsense. Why can't he just tell me what I need to know without capering about like a damned slunkie?"

Vester suppressed the urge to raise his eyebrows. Coming from Zharvak, accusing the High Priest of attention-seeking was more than a little rich. "It adds to the sense of occasion, my lord. People expect it of him."

The Master of the Robes looked at the clock, then quietly shuffled around on its four legs to face Zharvak. It made a small throat-clearing noise. "The hour is upon us, my lord," it said.

"What? Oh, it's time to go in. Why don't you just say that instead of... whatever it was you just said?"

The Master of the Robes kept its head lowered and said nothing, well aware the previous incumbent to his position was still being treated for multiple injuries gained from Zharvak's notion that it had been too plain talking.