Storm Breaking

remember later, reminding him of past favors they had done for him, offering favors for the future. It was quite astonishing, the sort of things they considered to be 'favors;' he could not for a moment imagine why anyone could think that invitations to incredibly boring social gatherings featuring meaningless entertainments would ever be sought after.

And the women! They were worse than the men! If they were unmarried, they were pressing about him with looks and poses that were just short of open invitations to do as he pleased with them. If they were anything other than blissfully, happily married (and there were damned few of those at Court, especially now!) they were behaving the same. If they had daughters of anything resembling marriageable age—and plenty of these women had very liberal ideas about what constituted 'marriageable age'—they were alluding to their daughters' admiration of him, and dangling invitations on their behalf.

As if any of them had the faintest notion who I am or what I look like—

No, that was unfair, Not all of these people were here because they were blind idiots who wouldn't have their Season spoiled by a few petty disasters. Some were here because they couldn't get back to their Estates, others because of their positions as Imperial Advisers, and some because they had no Estates. There were young girls— and not so young girls—who knew very well who he was and what he looked like, as they knew the identities, properties, and titles of every unwedded man expected to be at Court this Season. That was part of their duty, as they and their parents went about the serious business of husband hunting. He might not have been very high on their list of desirable matches until now, but they knew who he was.

And if he made an appearance at a private party, a musical evening, or other entertainment, each of them would proceed with grim determination to try to convince him that nothing would make him happier than to take her as his lawfully wedded soon-to-be-Empress.

That no less than an hour ago most if not all of these maidens would have cheerfully confessed that the idea of wedding him made them ill was of no consequence now.

Look how these same women throw themselves at Charliss the old mummy! It isn't his handsome face that makes them act like shameless cows in season around him. Furthermore, Melles was well aware that if he had evidenced any preference for young men he would still be under siege from these women and their parents. After all, he would still be expected to try to produce an Heir of his body. The fact that only about half of the Emperors of the past had been the physical offspring of their predecessor didn't matter, he would still be expected to try.

And if some of what I've read in the private Archives is true, some of them went to some fascinating extremes in trying...

Well, that didn't matter either. He wasn't a lover of men or boys, and not of little girls either. But he would wait until he wore the Iron Crown himself before he took a wife, and when he did, his first choice would be an orphan with no living family left whatsoever, just for spite!

'Yes, of course,' he murmured to one of the women—after being certain that he was not agreeing to anything of importance. It would be a grand joke on all of them if he selected his bride from among the common citizens. It would certainly be easy to find an attractive orphan there!

He whispered an aside to one of the other advisers, a man who had been a disinterested ally in the past. This is all going to my head. There will be time to think about women later, now is the time to concentrate on consolidating my base of power, and determining what can best be done to get the Empire through this crisis.

Pleasures of all sorts would have to wait until the Empire was stable. Perhaps sometime in the future there might even be an opportunity to execute the Emperor's sentence of death on Tremane. But that time was not now, and he would wait for it to come to him. Hatred was an emotion that brought him a great deal of energy and entertainment, and he enjoyed it.

It was not for nothing that his enemies often compared him to a spider sitting in the middle of a web. If there was one virtue he possessed, it was patience, for patience was the only virtue that eventually brought rewards.

Now that the dance of courtiers and Court was over and the business of the Empire had been disposed of in Council, Melles got his private audience with the Emperor. Private? Well, not precisely; the Emperor was never alone. But no one of any pretense to wealth or rank in the Empire ever really noticed servants or bodyguards—

Unless, of course, that person was Melles, or someone like him. To the Emperor, without a doubt, they were invisible. To Melles they were possible spies.

The subject of conversation, as befitting the position and duties of the new Heir, was the state of the Empire. Melles was not particularly surprised to discover that Charliss had less information on this subject than he did. The Emperor had not been concerned with the day-to-day workings of his Empire for decades; he had been able to leave that to his underlings.

In Melles' opinion, he no longer had that luxury. 'My Lord Emperor,' Melles said patiently. 'It seems to me that you have been insufficiently acquainted with the desires and needs of the common man.'

They compare me to a spider in its web, Melles thought dispassionately, as he watched the old man glare at him over the expanse of a highly-polished black marble table. They