Crown of Fire by Kathy Tyers

Author:Kathy Tyers [Tyers, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Religious
ISBN: 9781621840480
Publisher: Gilead Publishing
Published: 2015-07-21T05:00:00+00:00

15

Sanctum

tira tutti

use the full organ; pull out all stops

Guard my heart, Singer. Protect me from pride. Feeling like a character in a myth, Firebird followed her golden-skirted heralds into position. They raised their horns and answered the organum’s peal of chords with a harmonized blast.

Then she walked the aisle.

She wouldn’t stumble. She’d rehearsed her lines. There would be cues, too. The aisle seemed a kilometer long. Maybe it was. She let her feet follow the music and glanced side to side through the glasteel, past security posts into a blur of faces. High-commoners in their finery stood next to the low—and even servitors—in their cheapside best, for the first time in the Hall’s history. What a gesture to offer the Federacy, a truly unifying event.

Step on, measured and slow. Had the Shuhr gotten an agent inside after all? She felt Brennen behind her and guessed he, Uri, and Shel walked in cadence, scanning the hall with their epsilon senses. Nearer the sanctum, but short of the now-perilous electors’ boxes, several sashed nobles held cock-hats like Tel’s against their chests. She spotted Tel between a black-coated Enforcer and his bodyguard, Paudan.

She didn’t see one empty seat.

First Lord Erwin stood at the broad steps’ right, dressed in his white ceremonial robes. To her surprise, he clutched the rod of regency across his chest. Rogonin’s presence by proxy, she realized. He wouldn’t be any friendlier than Rogonin.

Maybe Micahel, having seen their security arrangements, was waiting for the motorcade, larger crowds, and easier escape routes. She let herself relax slightly as she mounted the steps. Smoke drifted down from a censer, acrid and invigorating. A half circle of motley faces grinned down from the electors’ seats. She couldn’t help grinning back. Then she hastily composed her face. Who, she wondered, selected the people to sit up here? Maybe the first arrivals got that option, or Hall staff chose them at random. She hoped the Netaians hadn’t minded too much when Federate guards searched them.

With a final crescendo, the march theme ended on three crashing chords. She stood on the trap’s trip plate. She could almost feel the winding of springs.

She spoke her lines in a satisfyingly firm voice, substitutions and all. Near the end of First Lord Erwin’s speech, his words nudged her out of the overwhelming spell of organum music. “And you shall consider yourself at the mercy of your people,” he called in a theatrical, subtronically altered bass-baritone, “should they call upon you to assume the throne. Will you stand ready to serve, should the high calling to which you are now declared an heiress ever fall to you?”

Firebird glanced at the redjacket who stood behind the gowned ceremonials director, guarding the tiara that gleamed with square-cut rubies. Never the throne. Not unless all twenty-six electors changed their minds about her. But she gave the ritual reply, knowing that even modified, it legally bound her. “I hope to serve Netaia’s people,” she called in a clear voice.

Frowning severely, he nodded.

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