The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 779

"Father."

The crown prince did not touch the cards. He stood over the table with both hands at his sides and looked at the Emperor instead.

"Is this really necessary?" His voice was careful now. "I have been the crown prince for twenty-two years. I've sat on your council. I've represented you in meetings you couldn't attend. Haven't I already proved I can do this?"

"Father." That was the Second Prince, narrow and pale at the far end of the table. "Why not simply choose? Name one of us, here, now. Say whose name you want on the throne." He spread his hands. "I promise you, none of us will hold it against you."

"Yes, Father." The Third Prince was a heavy man in his early thirties with a banker's haircut and a signet ring he kept turning. "And forgive me, but think about what you're asking. If I hand over every company I have and then I lose — I've lost everything. Isn't that too much to risk?"

"My children."

The Emperor said it gently, the way you speak to people who have said something foolish and do not know it yet.

"No pain, no gain. If you are not willing to lose your companies to win this seat, then that only tells me you do not have the mind of an Emperor. And if you don't have that, you are not worthy of the chair."

He nodded at the door. "So step back now. Go and join your brothers and sisters. You would never have passed the selection anyway."

The Third Prince stopped turning his ring.

He did not step back.

"Father." That was the Fifth Prince — younger, sharp-faced, standing a little behind the others. "What is the purpose of all this? Really?"

"Have you ever heard how a lion raises its cub?"

Nobody answered.

"It throws it into the valley," the Emperor said. "Off the cliff, down onto the rocks, alone. And the cub that climbs back up is the only one worth keeping."

He looked along the table, face by face.

"That's what I'm doing. I want every one of you to let go of every privilege your title has ever bought you. Go in as nobody. Start from the bottom of a valley. Because that is the only way I will ever see what is actually inside you. Not your mother. Not her family. Not your friends at court. Only you, and what you can do with your own two hands."

"But Father." The crown prince picked up one of the wooden cards at last, turned it over, and set it down again. "Isn't this too much? Look at these. Look at the names on them."

He swept a hand over the table.

"I know half these places. They're nothing. They're corners of the map where we sent barons and counts into exile when they embarrassed somebody. There's nothing there. There's no road. There's no money. There's nobody."

"Then you'll fail," the Emperor said, "and somebody else will be Emperor, because they were more capable than you."

"Father, that's harsh."

"No. I think I spoiled you. No — your mother spoiled you, and I let her." He leaned forward slightly in his chair. "So listen to me, all of you, because I'll only explain this once."

The room went quiet.

"I am not asking any of you to take a ruined county and turn it into an empire in five years. That is not the test. This chair is mine, and it stays mine until I'm finished with it." He tapped the arm of it.

"You only have to do a little better than the brothers and sisters standing next to you. That's all. I will measure each of you from where you started to where you finish. And whoever has climbed the furthest — that is my heir."

Six people around a narrow table all understood the same thing at the same moment.

Not a miracle. Not a kingdom out of a swamp.

Just better than the others.

"Understand one more thing," the Emperor said.

"From tomorrow, I am going to announce to the whole Empire that the six of you have no right to the throne. That you've been passed over. That you're finished." He smiled thinly.

"This is a test, and part of the test is who stays with you when you're worth nothing. Every flatterer, every hanger-on, every man who was planning to ride your name into a ministry — they'll be gone within a week. Good."

"Then who will you name, Father?"

"One of the ten who stepped back tonight. I'll say they're the one being prepared." He shrugged. "It's camouflage. So whether you go in incognito or whether somebody recognises you, the world will believe you have no value at all."

His voice went hard.

"And if any one of you tells a friend, a lover, a servant, anybody, that you are still in the running — you're out. Instantly. No appeal."

The prince in uniform looked up at the gallery at the back, where the new ministers in their new suits stood behind the rail.

"Father. What about them? They already know."

The Emperor laughed.

"Those men are the most loyal ministers I have. Not one of them has ever sat at your mothers' tables." He did not look round at them.

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