By Heresies Distressed by David Weber Page A

betters’ competing factions, as well, which probably helped to explain why they’d been so impervious to aristocratic blandishments or threats once the nobility finally woke up to what was happening.
    With Sailys shrewdly playing the nobility’s factions off against one another to prevent them from combining against him while Green Mountain adroitly managed the Kingdom’s financial affairs and Halbrook Hollow commanded the Army, the king had broken the three most powerful of those factions, one by one, within six years of taking the throne. The other factions, made wise by the misfortune of their fellows, had finally combined against him and attempted to cut off funding for the Army through their control of Parliament, rather than face it in battle. But while they’d been looking at Halbrook Hollow’s campaigns in the field, they’d missed Green Mountain’s rather quieter yet ultimately more deadly efforts inside Parliament Hall. Until, that was, the traditionally browbeaten Chamber of Commons had suddenly defied its rightful lords and masters and ranged itself at the Crown’s side under Green Mountain’s leadership. Even worse, the alliance Sailys and Green Mountain had quietly concluded with a sizable chunk of the lesser nobility (who had resented the great nobles’ self-aggrandizing monopoly of power just as much as the Crown had) made common cause with the Chamber of Commons. Instead of depriving the Army of funding, Parliament had actually voted to increase its size!
    Ten years after assuming the Crown, King Sailys had made himself the master of his own house. In the process, he’d established the precedent of the Crown’s alliance with the Commons which had been maintained during Sharleyan’s reign. The Chisholmian aristocracy was far from resigned to the permanent curtailment of its power, but it had at least learned the rudiments of discretion. The fact that Chisholm had become progressively more powerful and prosperous under Sailys had probably helped it swallow the painful medicine he, Green Mountain, and Halbrook Hollow had forced down its collective throat. Unfortunately, that power and prosperity had also posed a threat to Prince Hektor of Corisande’s plans, which explained Hektor’s subsidization of the “pirates” who had ultimately succeeded in killing Sailys.
    The more disgruntled of Sailys’ nobles had publicly mourned their king’s death even while they laid quiet plans for dealing with their new child-queen as their own great-great-grandfathers had dealt with Queen Ysbell. But if Sailys had been killed, Green Mountain and Halbrook Hollow were still very much alive, and Sailys’ daughter proved even more capable—and, when necessary, ruthless—than he had been himself . . . as the Duke of Three Hills and his allies had soon discovered.
    There was no doubt that the aristocracy retained a larger share of political authority in Chisholm than its Charisian counterparts did in Tellesberg, but that authority had been drastically reduced. And it was only a shadow of that which the nobility continued to enjoy in most other Safeholdian realms. Yet the trappings of its four-generations-ago dominance remained in Parliament Hall’s decoration and procedures, and Cayleb made it a point to keep reminding himself that the Chisholmian tradition of royal authority was younger—and probably weaker—than the Charisian tradition.
    On the other hand, we’re establishing all sorts of new traditions, aren’t we?
Cayleb thought.
And—so far, at least—Alahnah and Green Mountain have the situation in hand. Probably
—his lips twitched in an involuntary smile—
at least partly because these people
really
don’t want to see Sharleyan coming home to deal with any . . . unruliness herself!
    As always, the thought of his wife’s proven capabilities was deeply comforting . . . and sent a tremor of