He meant it. He did everything he could to prove to her that he meant it.
It caused her untold agony of heart, trying to discover why Father gave such love and loyalty to the man who exercised power and received honor that by rights should have belonged to Lord Peace. Was Father so weak that he could not even reach for what ought to be his own?
Once, when she was ten years old, she hinted to him of how this question perplexed her. And his only answer was to place his fingers on her lips, not as some traitors had done, to receive the kiss of blessing from the mouth of the King's daughter, but to silence her.
Then, gazing intently into her eyes, he said for the first time: "The King cares only for the good of the King's House. But the King's House is all the world."
That was the only answer she got from him. In the years since then, though, she had begun to grasp what he meant. That the Heptarch, the true Heptarch, always acted for the benefit of the whole world. Other lords could act to preserve their dynasty or enrich themselves, but the true Heptarch would even give up the Heptagon House and let a usurper rule in Heptam, the capital of Korfu-if, for some unfathomable reason, such a thing was to the greater benefit of the whole world.
What she could never understand was how her father's displacement from his proper place benefited anyone. For as she grew more learned and skillful in the arts of diplomacy and government, observing the great public councils and hearing of the delicate negotiations and compromises that gathered ever more power to Heptagon House, she saw plainly that the most brilliant mind, the prime mover in consolidating King Oruc's hold on Korfu, was Lord Peace.
As always, she had finally had to conclude that her education was not complete. That someday, if she learned enough and thought enough, she would understand what Father was trying to do by working so loyally to keep the usurper in power.
Now, however, she did not face so theoretical a problem.
She was thirteen years old, far younger than the age at which a diplomatic career usually began, and King Oruc had called her to begin service. It was so obviously a trap that she almost believed his purpose might be innocent. What good could possibly come to King Oruc by inserting the rightful heir to the throne into the middle of a delicate dynastic negotiation? How could it help Oruc to remind the Tassaliki that his own family had held the Heptagon House for a mere fifty years? That there was a marriageable daughter of the original ruling family, whose claim to the Heptarchy went back hundreds of generations, five thousand years to the first human beings to set foot on Imakulata? It was so reckless that it was hard to believe Oruc stood to gain anything that might offset the potential risk.
Nevertheless. I will go where the King requests, do what the King desires, to accomplish the King's hopes.
He did not receive her in the public court. It was too early for that. Instead she was led to the Heptarch's chambers, where the smell of the breakfast sausage still spiced the air. Oruc pretended not to notice her at first.
He was engaged in intent conversation with the head of Lady Letheko, who had been his Constable until she died last year. She was the only one of the King's household slaves who understood as much of the nuances of protocol as Lord Peace did; in his absence, it was not surprising that King Oruc had ordered her head brought in from Slaves' Hall to advise him during the visit of the Tassal embassy.
"There may be no wine served," Letheko insisted.
She moved her mouth so vigorously that it set the whole jar moving. King Oruc let go of her air bladder to steady the jar. No sense in spilling the gools that kept her head alive, or slopping messy fluids all over the fine rugs of the chamber floor.
Deprived of air, she nevertheless kept moving her mouth, as if her argument was too important to wait for such a trifle as a voice. Oruc resumed pumping.
"Unless you want them to think of you with contempt as a winebibber. They take their religion seriously, not like some people who act as if they thought Vigilants were mere..."