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heavy with embroidery and jewelwork that it was probably as uncomfortable as Raj's uniform, even on a cool spring day like this. His face showed as little of that as did the other nine Guards who stood behind the bureaucrats. Or the bureaucrats themselves; this was part of the ritual of power, after all.
    "Rise, Whitehall of Hillchapel," Barholm said. He was more typical of the Descott Hills than Raj himself, lacking the younger man's rangy height; stocky, with a torso like a brick, a heavy-muscled man who moved with a tensile quickness despite a sedentary life. But his accent was pure East Residence, smooth as a hired rhetor's.
    Raj came to his feet, saluted smartly with his free hand and buckled on the plumed helmet; at least on his head it didn't tickle his nose the way it did under one arm. He settled to parade rest beside Hemlt Stanson, the Guardsman next in seniority. Their station was directly behind the Vice-Governor, and they rested their palms on the butts of their pistols. Not that they expected trouble, a very expert crew of chamberlains inspected everyone before they were allowed this far into the Palace. For that matter, there were two dozen very expert riflemen with 'scope-sighted weapons behind various pieces of ornamental grillwork. The status of Guard did not appear on any muster roll, but it could count for a good deal more than formal military rank. The Guards were all well-born, well-connected; fighting men who could be relied on for anything that needed doing.
    a need shared by both vice-governor barholm and myself, Center observed, someday inquire as to the meaning of the term "bucellari."   
    Raj managed not to jump, and subvocalized: be careful, you might distract me .Consciously, he schooled his mind to acceptance; numinous awe was all very well for church, but he had work to do in this world, that was why the angel had chosen him. Act as if everything was normal ,he told himself. Act well enough, and you'll grow to believe it in your gut as well as your head .
    Silence, while the ushers shepherded forward the first batch. Three of them, two men and a woman in expensive but unfashionably up-country clothes, without the hired cicerone who could have shown them how to really penetrate court ritual. They began to go down in the full prostration, to be halted by the hissed outrage of the usher; that was for the Governor alone. Raj blinked, catching slight alterations in Barholm's expression —funny , I was never this good at that before— and decided that the yokels had done themselves no harm and the usher herself no good. It had been a long time since anyone got to the Chair without wanting it bad enough to wet-dream about it waking and sleeping; that was one of the Civil Government's problems. It would probably be better if somebody like Thom Poplanich could inherit the job for once.
    Of course, Thom was a gentleman and a scholar; he wouldn't last a week.
    "Messer Bendict Cromar Buthelesi, representing sundry gentlefolk!" the herald announced. Unusually blunt; somebody must have under-bribed.
    "Your Exalted Vice-Governorship," the leader of the delegation began; Raj placed the accent, Gaur County, about halfway up the Hemmar River. "We represent the Gaur County Locks Association, and the Seven Hills coal proprietors." The voice was gathering a little assurance as it spoke, though his hands fumbled with the sealed package of documents. "As Your Exaltedness knows, the locks are being reconstructed to be passable for steam riverboats." Those had become numerous, over the last fifty years or so.
    Most of the bureaucrats affected an elaborate boredom; an educated man learned of the doings of the unFallen, not the grubby, oily expedients which passed for technology in this degenerate age. Two were fully alert; Chancellor Tzetzas and Barholm. Who, being a Descott man and practical to a fault, was keenly interested in anything that increased the tax revenues of the State.
    "Yes, yes," Barholm said, waving