"I've worked too hard, swallowed too many insults from socially and spiritually inferior louts, to attain my present position. I've gone without too many creature comforts to see everything I've struggled to achieve come crashing down in ruins. And why is it falling apart? Because you used your fists to bruise a garthan for not licking the mud off your feet! I should feed your worthless carcass to the dragons."

Vos Hoven shuddered violently. No court in Arcana had actually ordered that court-martialed soldiers or other prisoners be fed to dragons in the last two centuries. But the actual law had never been repealed, and there were a handful of shakira lords in Mythal who did still feed the damned to their dragons. In strict and careful privacy, of course . . .

Mul Gurthak straightened, letting let the stupid worm stew in his own juices for long, silent moments, and the stink of vos Hoven's sweat was sharp and foul, the smell of terror.

"I had plans for you," the two thousand said at last, coldly. "Plans that must now be scrapped. Why do you think I transferred you to Jasak Olderhan's company in the first place? Or is your memory so short you've already forgotten the private mission I assigned you to carry out?"

"Mightiest Lord, I-I tried! But I couldn't. He never comes right out and says it, but he hates us-hates shakira. You should have seen him fawning over that garthan. Praising him-recommending him for promotions. But he hated the rest of us Mythalans, the shakira in the Company. He shunned and loathed us. You could see it in his eyes whenever he looked at us."

"He hated shakira?" mul Gurthak asked softly. "Even Halathyn vos Dulainah?"

"Vos Dulainah," vos Hoven all but spat the dead magister's name, "was a filthy traitor. He abandoned his caste, even his wife and son. Yes, Olderhan doted on the old man. And why? Precisely because vos Dulainah had shunned and betrayed the rest of us. The rest of the shakira."

"So you say he treated the shakira in his company badly?" Mul Gurthak glared sternly at vos Hoven. "Be certain of your answer, fool. If you lie, I'll know, and I do not tolerate lies from a subordinate. Not in my command, and not in my caste."

Vos Hoven gulped. For several seconds, he kept his face pressed firmly into the floor, silent. But then, finally, he answered in a low, reluctant voice.

"No. He didn't treat us badly. If a shakira kowtowed and obeyed like a good little garthan, Olderhan treated him like anyone else. It was a double insult. First he demanded that we act like garthan, and when we did, he treated us equally, as if he were just as good as we."

Mul Gurthak was genuinely appalled.

"How in Mithanan's name did someone with your awe-inspiring stupidity get chosen for the great cause?" he demanded.

"My family line is one of the oldest and greatest in Mythal." Pride had crept back into vos Hoven's voice, despite his plight. "My mother's brother is a caste-lord. My father's father is a caste-lord. That's two caste-lords in the near-kin family!"

Nepotism. Mul Gurthak wanted to rend something-preferably Bok vos Hoven-into very small, bleeding pieces. This fool had been sent out on a mission that called for guile and dissimulation, the acting skills of a professional stage player, not because he was fit for it, but because his relatives were politically powerful!

"So you're superior to Olderhan, are you?"

"Of course I am!"

"Did it never occur to you that you'd joined the Army? That in an army, officers give orders to men of lower military rank-regardless of their respective birth ranks? That you are required to give your commanding officer your respect, your instant obedience, be he ever so low-born? Even if that man were a garthan from your own family's fields, you would still be required to obey him and show him respect!"

"Never!" vos Hoven gasped, fiery rebellion burning in his eyes, and mul Gurthak slapped him. Jerked his head up off the floor and slammed a backhanded blow across his mouth.

"Silence!"

Rebellion fled. Vos Hoven stared wide-eyed at mul Gurthak, unable to believe even now that he'd just been struck.

"You were supposed to get close to Olderhan. To win his confidence, his trust. To learn things from him-about his father. Things we can't find out any other way. To become the one who could deliver him to us at the proper time, in the proper place. You say he didn't trust you, but he doted on vos Dulainah. Did it never occur to you that the way to win his confidence would be to act the way vos Dulainah did? To mimic his attitudes, his professed beliefs? No matter what you really felt about them?

"No, it didn't, did it? And because you were too infernally stupid to use the means at your disposal, we've now lost all hope of getting anyone close to him. Not just because he's going back to New Arcana, where it would be difficult to get close to him under the best of circumstances, but because you've made him doubly wary of us. Do think he'll trust any Mythalan now?"

Vos Hoven tried to make himself as small as possible while mul Gurthak glared down at him, still looking for some way to salvage something.

Garth Showma was the key, the linchpin of Andaran political power. If Garth Showma could be brought down, it would be far easier to pick off the other Andaran noble houses, and that had to be done. Parliament trusted the Andaran aristocracy to run the military for it, because Andarans were good at it. Because they liked to do it, and everyone knew they were sufficiently honorbound to be worthy of others' trust.

Which meant that the only way to replace the Andaran military leaders was to destroy that faith in them. The Council of Twelve had spent thirty-plus long, patient years getting shakira officers into the field army, where they could work their way up the command-grade ranks. The plan remained some years short of fruition, but the necessary cadre of highly ranked shakira officers, men with "Arcana's best interests" in mind, who had distanced themselves from the stereotypical shakira arrogance and cultural chauvinism by choosing to serve the mainstream of Arcanan society, would be ready when-if-the time came for them to step into the gap left by Andara's disgrace and take charge.

But for the plan to work, Andara had to be disgraced, starting with Garth Showma, and the imbecile on mul Gurthak's office floor had botched one of the most critical components of the entire plan. Jasak Olderhan had been supposed to be the chink in his father's armor. A source for useful information, true, but even more the tool who could be led into the carefully prepared trap with all the exquisitely devised "evidence" to prove to all of Arcana that the heir to the most powerful Andaran aristocrat of them all had disgraced himself through his gross violation of the honor code he and his fellow aristocrats were supposed to hold so dear.

But Olderhan was out of his reach, now. Out of Mythal's reach. It was entirely possible he would be cashiered over this business, but mul Gurthak had learned a great deal about the way the Andaran mind worked. Whatever happened to Jasak's military career, his fellow Andarans-and the critical members of Parliament-would recognize that his performance throughout had actually been exemplary. Klian's report already made it blindingly obvious that if Jasak's advice had been followed, the entire portal attack would never have happened.

That might not be enough to prevent him from being cashiered, but it would certainly prevent him from being disgraced. And if Jasak left the Army, he would have to find another career worthy of Garth Showma, which meant just one thing: politics. An Andaran might actually turn a disaster like being cashiered, despite having done all the right things, into a political asset, if he were clever enough. And if Jasak Olderhan wasn't, Thankhar Olderhan certainly was.

But what if it turned out that he hadn't done all the right things?

Nith mul Gurthak stood very still, thinking furiously.

If future conflict with these Sharonians was avoided, it would be obvious to almost anyone that a great deal of the credit for it went to Hundred Olderhan. After all, he would be the one who'd saved the lives of the two Sharonian prisoners-made them his own shardonai-who had provided the critical insight into who and what Sharona truly was. Not to mention the prisoners who had taught Arcanan diplomats how to speak the Sharonians' language.

But if future conflict wasn't avoided, then young Jasak would get no credit for preventing it and still have to face the consequences of having started it. And if it turned out that it had all started out of his own incompetence or cowardice, and that he'd then falsified his report, knowing it couldn't be challenged because every man of his company had been killed or captured by the enemy as a direct consequence of his incompetence while he himself was safe in the protection of Fort Rycharn . . .

It wouldn't be easy to sell, but it wouldn't be impossible, either. Not with the proper groundwork, and not with the elimination of so many witnesses who might have corroborated Olderhan's version of what had happened. There were only three survivors from the company, beside vos Hoven and Olderhan himself, and if they couldn't be suborned, there was always the possibility of securing obedience by taking hostages. That had worked often enough in the past. Or they could simply be eliminated. Klian would have to go, too, of course. But with all of them gone . . .

Mul Gurthak drew in several breaths, then, finally, looked back down at the chained shakira on his office floor.

"All right, there may be one way out of this mess you've made. Listen closely, do you understand me? Because if you bungle this, I will personally hunt you down, put the rankadi knife in your hands, and watch you cut your own throat with it. Have I made myself perfectly clear on that point?"

"Y-yes, Mightiest Lord."

"Good. See that you remember, because you're not going to enjoy this process. I don't give a rat's ass about that, either, do you understand me? You'll do exactly what I tell you. You'll swallow the stigma, the shame, and the punishments you've earned, and in the end, you may well fail anyway. But if you succeed, I won't issue the order to commit rankadi. That's the only bargain you'll get; is it one you can live with, or shall I hand you the knife right now?"

Vos Hoven lay trembling under the two thousand's cold, implacable stare for a small eternity. Then, finally, he gulped and nodded convulsively.

"Yes, Mightiest Lord," he whispered. "I understand."

"Good!" mul Gurthak repeated. "Now shut up, and for once in your worthless life, listen!"

Chapter Forty.

Zindel chan Calirath's head ached.

So did his back. And after twelve murderous hours in the instrument of torture some sadistic furniture joiner had managed to pass off as a chair, his backside had gone from aching to screaming to numb, with occasional needles and pins that ran down the backs of both thighs.

Whoever designed these chairs should be shot, he groused. Or chained to one of them for a month or two.

His mood, he thought, wouldn't have been quite so sour if his fellow world rulers hadn't been so utterly, pigheadedly, invincibly, blissfully parochial. All their insufferable demands, excuses, obstructionist arguments, and refusals to simply get the job done were driving him rapidly mad. They needed to suck down their petty personal concerns and vote in a government-even a temporary one-so they could get on with the urgent business of preparing Sharona for war.

Didn't anyone see the dire risks they all faced?

It took time to gear up for a military campaign-especially one of this magnitude. No Sharonian nation had ever fought a war that stretched across multiple universes. The logistics problems alone would be the stuff of nightmares. This Conclave needed to be thrashing through that, not arguing over who would have the right to install traffic signs and draw school zones in local towns and villages.

When the Limathian prince regent stood up and started demanding that any planetary governing authority must have the power to grant guarantees on deep-sea fishing rights, something snapped inside Zindel. It jerked him to his feet. Sent his fists crashing down upon his delegation's table in the vast Emperor Garim Chancellery which had been chosen as the Conclave's initial meeting site.

"Mr. Director! Ternathia lodges a formal protest!"

The prince regent's mouth fell open. Every head in the chamber swiveled, like so many marionettes on strings, as their owners stared at him. Orrin Limana, visibly drooping against the presiding officer's lectern after twelve hours on his feet, straightened abruptly.

"Emperor Zindel," he said crisply, "what is the nature of your protest?"

"Mr. Director, I protest the utter waste of our time into which shortsighted members of this Conclave are forcing us! This is the second day we've met. We sat here for fourteen hours yesterday. We've been sitting here for twelve and a half more hours today, and we've decided exactly nothing. Not one, solitary, blessed thing! The troop movements arranged unilaterally by Emperor Chava and myself, with your cooperation, are the only military preparations anyone outside the Portal Authority has managed to carry out, even though three weeks have passed since the attack on our survey crew."

He glowered around the huge, marble chancellery's gorgeous precincts, as if daring any person present to dispute what he'd just said.

"This Conclave has one purpose. Just one. We aren't here to decide where to put traffic signs. We aren't here to decide which school our children should attend. While we sit here bickering over inconsequential trivia, Sharonian men and women-Sharonian children-are in mortal danger.

"We have colonies-not just forts with garrisons of soldiers, but colonies-within four transits of New Uromath, and by my conservative count, there are no fewer than twenty-three survey crews in that region. The Chalgyn Consortium crew was less than two days away from a portal fort, yet every member of it was massacred. Ternathia's Third Dragoons are en route to Fort Salby, but they won't arrive there for more than another full month, although Uromathia's cavalry regiments, fortunately, will reach Salby in two weeks, and the remaining divisions of Fifth Corps will entrain over the next several weeks.

"I'm sure we're all relieved to know troops are moving towards the front. But those troops are all we have moving towards the threat, and it's another five thousand miles from Salby to New Uromath," he said grimly. "It will take them almost a month and a half just to reach Salby, and then another two and a half months to reach the front, and we have no idea what sort of attacks they may face along the way. No way of knowing what numbers of troops we'll need at the front. And still we haven't taken a single step towards organizing our planet for the sort of war we may face. Not one . . . single . . . step."

His voice echoed in a dead silence.

"It's obvious the other side knows about multiple universes and portals, since Company-Captain chan Tesh found them camped right in the middle of one. I shouldn't have to point out that we have no idea how large their territory is, how many universes they've already occupied. How long have these people known about portals? How many universes have they explored? How many have they colonized?

"How big are they?"

He paused again, sweeping them with his eyes before he resumed.

"We've been exploring for eighty years. That seems a long time, my friends, but it isn't. Not really. It certainly hasn't been long enough for us to build a large population base out there. Most of our colonies have been established in the last thirty or forty years, directly from Sharona. That leaves our out-universe populations stretched thin. We're strung out, like beads on a broken necklace, and none of our colonies have the manpower, out of their own resources, to hold against a powerful attack. None of them is capable of self-defense, yet there are far too many people living in them for evacuation to be a practical option even if we decided to pull them all back to Sharona.

"Our enemies might have just discovered portals in their backyard, but it's just as likely they've been exploring and colonizing for centuries. We could be facing a population two, or ten, or even a hundred times our size. Yes, the point of contact is forty thousand miles from here. Yes, the thought of someone being able to successfully project military power along an invasion route that long boggles the mind. But think about the troop movements rail lines and steamships make possible. We can get troops from here to Fort Salby, even allowing for water crossings, in less than two months. That's how long it took Captain-of-the-Army chan Baraeg to march an infantry army from the Bernith Channel to the Janu River three thousand years ago. Does anyone in this chamber wish to suggest that we haven't fought wars-terrible, destructive wars-over greater march distances and despite far greater logistical challenges than that?

"With modern transport, wars can be fought at distances that great. Never think they can't! I pray that we can avoid fighting any war at all, that diplomacy and sanity can still stop this situation from lurching into an all-out military confrontation with someone we know nothing about. But what if they can't? If diplomacy fails, we do have a war to fight, and however long it might take for that fighting to reach Sharona itself, it will sweep over our colonies far, far sooner unless we prevent that. Are we going to sit here, secure in the safe insulation of distance, and try to use this Conclave to settle long-standing, purely Sharonian problems while combat marches towards those colonies? Are the people who live there somehow less important than where we put our traffic signs?

"We have lives to save, godsdamn it! Do you honestly believe the mothers in the colonies closest to the people who've massacred an entire survey crew of civilians give a single solitary damn about who catches fish off the coast of Limathia? They're too busy wondering when their children will be shot down before their eyes, or burned to death in a fireball!"

He glared at them, and all of his frustration, anger, and driving need to save Sharonian lives, boiled up in a bullthroated challenge roar.

"We don't have time to argue about the godsdamned fish!"

Somebody in a high gallery behind him cheered. An instant later, what seemed like every gallery in the chancellery-and at least a third of the delegates on the chamber floor itself-had broken into thunderous applause. The Prince Regent of Limathia had gone crimson. Reporters were snapping photographs so fast the flash powder half-blinded Zindel, and Orem Limana wasn't even trying to gavel the crowd of spectators to order. He just stood there, watching it roar its approval, while a strange half-smile flickered across his face.

The tumult eventually wound down, and when Limana finally raised his hands for silence, the last of the applause died away. People settled back into their seats at last, but Zindel remained standing. Not only could he not abide the thought of sitting back down in that hateful chair, but he intended to finish this business.

"Emperor Zindel," the Portal Authority's First Director said into the restored silence, "thank you for lodging your protest. It is well taken-very well taken, indeed. If more Sharonian lives are lost because we fail to act swiftly enough, their blood will be on our hands, and no one else's."

"Will the Emperor yield?" another voice asked, half-lost in the enormous chamber, yet firm. Zindel turned his head until he saw the speaker, standing in the midst of the Shurkhali delegation.

"Master Chairman," the emperor said to Limana, "Ternathia yields temporarily, and without prejudice, to the Honorable Parliamentary Representative from Shurkhal."

"Representative Kinshe, you have the floor," Limana said, and actually managed to sound as if he had absolutely no idea what Halidar Kinshe was about to say.

"Your Majesty, I thank you," Kinshe said simply, then turned to face the rest of the assembled delegates.

"As Emperor Zindel has just so . . . eloquently pointed out, we've sat here today for twelve and a half hours-over twenty-six hours, in all-listening to what amounts to no more than opening remarks," he said into the ringing silence. "I suppose that's inevitable, to some extent. This is the greatest gathering of heads of state in Sharona's history. Of course every nation represented here has some problem, some dispute, some need which it wishes to place upon the record, and for which it wishes to seek resolution.

"Yet the fact is, that those very desires, and the very fact that they are so natural, so inevitable, underscore the true nature of the challenge we all face. We are gathered here as representatives of scores of independent nations, yet we face a menace-a danger-to all of our citizens. One which we cannot possibly meet unilaterally, out of our own national resources.

"Every person in this chamber knows of Shurkhal's loss." Kinshe's voice was suddenly harsh, his expression bleak. "Thousands of Shurkhali men have already flocked to the colors, already sworn themselves to blood vengeance for Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr and her husband. Yet Shurkhal recognizes that she cannot seek justice by herself. We must act together, we must act as one, and above all, we must act."

He paused, and silence hovered, unbroken by so much as the rustle of feet or a single cough.

"My friends," he said finally, "we need a system of world governance, and we have no time to thresh out all the details of some new and splendid system with which we will all be content. And since we have too little time for that task, it seems to me most fortunate that we don't have to undertake it."

He paused once more, and this time the silence was so intense it seemed to hurt his audience's ears.

"We already have a working model of governance to draw upon," he said quietly. "A model which has endured the test of time, war, natural disaster, and adversity of every kind. The model of a government which has administered a region spanning half the globe. Governed diverse peoples from dozens of different cultures and languages, and done it justly and well. A government which has fought more successful wars than all the other nations of Sharona combined, and yet one which has never embraced militarism for its own sake. One whose subjects enjoy great personal freedom, and perhaps the highest average standard of living in the world.

"Sharona has no better model for a world government. Indeed, Sharona cannot have a better model. Rather than thrash around creating something new and untested, something whose strength we cannot know and whose stability we cannot trust, let us turn to one all of us know, most from our own history. There is too much at stake for us to settle for anything less. And, perhaps most important of all, its current ruler has already demonstrated the ability to see very clearly the most important tasks ahead of us. The nature and magnitude of the risks we face, and what must be accomplished to meet them.

"I move that we create a united Empire of Sharona, based on the model and institutions of the Ternathian Empire."

Zindel's jaw tried to drop, but before he could do more than draw breath to protest, another voice called out.

"Farnalia seconds the motion, provided that we also adopt the current Ternathian emperor, Zindel chan Calirath, as the new Emperor of Sharona!"

"The Queens of Bolakin second the motion as amended!"

Zindel stared hard at his longtime allies, who merely gazed back at him as if the motion-and its amendment-were truly spontaneous. And, despite his own sudden suspicion, he knew he would never be able to prove they hadn't been.

But if it was a put-up job, the well-organized steamroller wasn't allowed to proceed to its destination unchallenged.

"Uromathia protests!" Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia, was on his feet, his face livid, and another uproar swept the chamber.

It took several minutes for Orem Limana to gavel the chaos back to order once again. He managed it in the end, not without a bit of shouting of his own, then looked very formally at the Uromathian ruler.

"What protest do you wish to lodge, Emperor Chava?"

"I protest the unseemly and improper haste with which certain parties wish to call for a vote on two critical issues at once, without open debate or formal nominations for each separate issue!"

"Those two issues being-?"

"The first being the motion to adopt the Ternathian Empire as the model for a world government, as if Ternathia's were the only great empire in Sharonian history," Chava bit out. "And the second being the question of who would head this proposed Empire of Sharona. They are separate issues. They must be voted on separately!"

"They are not separate issues!" the Emperor of Farnalia bellowed, surging to his feet in furious disregard of the formal rules of parliamentary procedure. Ronnel Karone, a bigger man even than Zindel, towered two feet and more taller than the Emperor of Uromathia, and his expression was not pleasant. "We're not adopting Ternathia as a model. We're adopting Ternathia as our government, and Ternathia has a ruler. A capable, intelligent, honest ruler."

Zindel winced; Chava went purple; Karone didn't even pause.

"We're voting to place all of Sharona under the rule of the Ternathian Empire, so we don't need a separate nomination and vote, because there is no separate issue. Ternathia has an emperor; Sharona will have the same one!"