When Sorrow entered the Round Chamber on shaking legs, the Jedenvat were seated at the table in the centre of the room. Someone had brought wine, despite the hour, and they replenished their glasses now, pouring one for her. No servants were permitted inside the Round Chamber, no ambassadors or visitors.
Named for its shape, the Round Chamber had once been a jewel in the Rhannish crown, the walls painted with painstakingly detailed maps of every country on Laethea: Rhannon, Rhylla, Astria, Meridea, Svarta, Nyrssea. The Skae Isles to the north of Nyrssea were rendered so finely that even the fierce water women could be seen frolicking in the grey seas that surrounded them. Whales and sea beasts were painted into the oceans; albino bears dotted the Svartan landscape. Once, a team of five painters had been retained by Sorrow’s grandfather, endlessly painting, erasing, then repainting borders as his battles played tug o’war across the lands, claiming then losing ground so fast the landscape of Rhannon changed almost daily.
The paint hadn’t dimmed, thanks to the curtained windows. The sea-maids’ teeth still glittered in the candlelight; the desert of Astria was still gleaming gold. The only thing that had changed was the scar where the bridge between Rhannon and Rhylla was. Sorrow didn’t know who’d done it, but someone had come into the room and hacked at the wall until the bridge was gone, leaving flaking plaster and paint chips in its place. A lifetime of seeing it never dampened the shock whenever she looked at it. Though she knew the reason for the bridge’s scouring away, and even understood it, it seemed to her to bode ill – that the only land link between their lands had been destroyed on the map, and no one had thought to repair it. Not even her.
“Welcome, Miss Ventaxis. Please, sit,” Charon said.
It chilled her to be addressed so formally by him, and she found herself standing straighter, her shoulders back, in response. When he bade her sit, she moved to the chancellor’s seat, her back to the defaced bridge, her empty stomach churning. When she rested her hands on the tabletop she saw they were trembling, and so she folded them into her lap instead.
Charon was sitting to her right, appearing taller than the rest of them thanks to his wheeled chair; beside him was Bayrum Mizil, merchant councilman and warden of the North Marches, the province that held the Humpback Bridge. Bayrum’s family had defended the bridge for four generations, and next to Charon and Irris there was no one she trusted more.
To his right sat the sea-grizzled Senator Kaspira of Prekara, allegedly descended from pirates and thieves, and round as the pearls that were harvested from the seas beside her archipelago to the north-east; then Lord Samad, minister of Asha, who looked hewn from the sands of the wild desert county to the south. Then Irris, taking the place of her brother, Arran Day, former senator of the East Marches. After being fired by Harun, Arran had returned to his family seat, keeping a low profile, and Irris had represented their family ever since. Finally Tuva Marchant, senator of the West Marches, bordering Meridea, who’d stepped into power when her husband was killed during the war.
Balthasar’s empty seat was like a punched-out tooth between the occupied ones. Sorrow averted her gaze from the gap and took a deep breath as Charon turned to her.
“Miss Ventaxis. This morning the Jedenvat held an emergency meeting to discuss the situation with the chancellor, Harun Ventaxis, 104th chancellor of Rhannon, and First Warden of the Heart. In light of numerous recent events, I, as vice chancellor, moved to pass a motion declaring no confidence in the chancellor, due to his current mental and physical difficulties. The motion passed, with five votes to one, and one in absentia.”
Sorrow wondered who’d voted against. Samad, she decided, from the sour look on his face.
Charon continued. “Following this, I moved to pass a motion to invest you as chancellor presumpt, until such time as an election can be held and you can legally be voted into office. This motion was denied by four votes to two, and one in absentia.”
Sorrow reeled from the announcement, her emotions changing so fast she didn’t know what to feel. Denied? So she wouldn’t be chancellor… Irris had been wrong…
Charon cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him. “Finally, I moved to pass a motion to invest you as chancellor presumpt, with a codicil granting the Jedenvat the power to preside with you, until such time as you turn twenty-one and can govern alone. The motion passed with a majority of six. The Jedenvat of Rhannon move to depose your father, and invest you as chancellor presumpt.”
Sorrow’s ears were ringing, and she blinked, hard, trying to collect her thoughts.
Opposite her, Bayrum Mizil and Tuva Marchant were beaming, and beside them Irris was smiling too, and nodding. When Sorrow turned to Charon, he raised his eyebrows expectantly.
She realized they were waiting for her to speak, but her tongue was useless, her brain empty of words.
“So now…” she finally managed.
“Now we go to your father, inform him of our decision. Depending on his … state, and reaction, we’ll decide how to proceed, but the most important thing is that we invest you. Then we can make our way to the bridge.”
“Wait,” Sorrow said. “I’d like to propose waiting to invest me until tomorrow.”
The look of impatience that crossed Charon’s face told her he’d expected her to do something like this.
“Sorrow—”
“Today is the eighteenth anniversary of Mael’s death,” Sorrow said to the room. “It would have been his twenty-first birthday. To do it today would be the height of cruelty. We can surely afford to wait one more day, now the decision is made and we’re all agreed?” Then she turned to Charon and spoke in a low voice. “I’m not playing for time; I’ll do this. But I don’t want history to remember me as the girl who deposed her father on the anniversary of her brother’s death. I want… I want to be better than he is.”
Charon gave her a long look, then nodded. “Very well. Tomorrow.”
Sorrow pushed back her chair. “Thank you. We should get ready to go to the bridge. I’ll go and see if my father is ready.” She lifted her glass and drained it in one, leaving the room while she still could.
As she walked to the west wing, climbing the great stair that split the foyer, she tried to sort through her feelings. Oblivious to the guards who opened doors to her, murmuring their sympathies, she saw and heard nothing, save for her own thrumming heart, and the faces of the Jedenvat as Charon had announced that final, vital motion.
No matter what Irris had said, no matter how much fun it had seemed last night, it still felt to her as though the trapdoor had opened, the axe had fallen. Her old life, pathetic as it had been, was over.
Unless…