Chapter Fifteen"Good evening, Your Majesty," His Crowned Eminence, the Seneschal of Othmaliz said as his visitor was shown into his private apartment in what had, until a very few weeks before, been known as the Great Palace."Good evening, Your Eminence," Chava Busar, Emperor of Uromathia, replied.The two men were a study in contrasts in many ways.The Seneschal was a short, round man, addicted to decorating his already colorful religious robes with additional jewels, bullion embroidery, lace, and pearls, while rings dripped from his fingers. He literally glittered when he walked, and the beautiful little silver bells which adorned his unique, stovepipeshaped, gold-encrusted religious headgear jingled musically with every movement.Chava Busar was also short. That, however, was the only real similarity between them. Where the Seneschal was so obese that he seemed to roll along, rather than walk, Chava was lean and athletic, especially for a man in his late fifties. Unlike the clean-shaven, moon-faced Seneschal, the Emperor favored a neatly trimmed, dramatically shaped dagger beard, and his eyebrows-bushy for a Uromathia– floated above almond-shaped eyes dark as still water on a moonless night.
