by David Weber
"Yeah," Roger said. "A 'tinker.' "
"You caught that, too?" Eleanora observed with a smile.
"I wonder what he really is?"
* * *
"You succeeded, Kheder Bijan," the king observed. He took a nibble out of a kate fruit and tossed the remainder on the floor. "Congratulations, 'Scout.' "
"Thank you, O King," the commander of the Royal Scouts replied. The Scouts actually did some scouting, especially when meeting with the informants they maintained among the surrounding tribes, but he was in fact the commander of the Marshad secret police.
"Once again you have avoided having your head lopped off," the monarch added with a grunt of humor. "One of these days, you won't be so lucky. That day will be a great pleasure to me. A day of comfort."
"I live to serve, O King." The spy knew he was on the edge of the knife, but that was what gave the role spice.
"Of course you do." The king gave a disbelieving chuckle. "It is a well-known fact, is it not?"
He turned to the commander of the Royal Guard. The commander had been nothing more than a common mercenary before being given his position, and the king had been careful to ensure that plenty of hatred was directed at him. It was one way to ensure the Guard's total loyalty, for if the king fell, so would the Guard.
"We will continue with the original plan."
"Yes, O King," the guard commander replied with a brief glance of fury at the spy. "The forces are at your command."
"Of course they are," he whispered. "And with Our mighty army and the power of these humans, We shall rule the world!"
* * *
Roger took another bite of the spiced meat. He'd run an analyzer over it and gotten all the usual warning about alkaloids, but it wasn't poisonous. It just tasted that way.
The locals used a spice that tasted exactly like rancid fennel, and it was apparently wildly popular, because it was in every dish. Roger picked a bit of the purple leaf off the meat and checked. Yep, that was it. He surreptitiously spat, trying to get the rotten taste out of his mouth, then gave up. At least there were only fourteen more courses to go.
The diners were seated on cushions, arranged in pairs and trios around low, three-legged tables. The courses were borne in by silent servants, and the empty platters were borne back out picked over or finished off. Most of the diners were members of the Marshad court, but there were also some representatives from other city-states. They were neither exactly ambassadors nor simple visitors, but seemed to occupy some place in between.
Roger was seated with two such representatives near the king. He had initially engaged them in desultory conversation, but they'd rapidly dropped into a complex discussion of trading futures that drifted first out of Roger's interest, and eventually out of the local dialect. Since then, the prince had occupied himself picking at his food and observing the dinner party.
He looked over at Pahner. The captain was seated on a cushion, legs crossed as if he'd been born to this society, calmly chewing and swallowing the horrible food and nodding as if he actually heard every word his seat mate was saying. As always, the Marine was the perfect diplomat, and Roger sighed. He was never going to be that good.
Eleanora had stopped eating after only a couple of mouthfuls, but she could excuse that on the basis of the steady conversation she'd been maintaining with both her table mates. The chief of staff was doing her usual job of probing every nuance of the local culture, dissecting it as a biologist would dissect an invertebrate.
He didn't look over his shoulder, but he knew the Marines were standing at the ready. They lined the wall at his back, weapons at low port and ready for instant use if it dropped in the pot.
He felt mildly naked without the additional presence of Cord, but the shaman lacked the nanites of his human companions and was still recovering from the terrible shrapnel wounds he'd taken in Voitan. Whatever might happen, the shaman would have to ride it out from a pile of cushions in the visitors' quarters.
Everyone was still as nervous as cats in a roomful of float-chairs. Including, unless he was much mistaken, Radj Hoomas.
The king sat at the head of the room, with his back to the large double doors leading into one of his many throne rooms. He was surrounded, literally, by guards and hard to observe through the obscurement of the armored behemoths. From what Roger could see of him, however, he, too, was picking at his food, speaking occasionally with the armored commander seated beside him and glancing nervously around the room. It might be a victory party, but the host didn't look very victorious.
* * *
"The Prince isn't eating!" the king whispered angrily.
"He's eaten enough," Mirzal Pars responded. The old mercenary clapped his hands and grunted in humor. "They're so smart, but they don't even recognize miz poison. It may be tasteless, but you can see the leaves clearly. Everyone knows about it . . . except these humans." He grunted another laugh.
"But will it be enough?" Radj Hoomas demanded. The plan had to be executed flawlessly, for the power of these humans was terrifying to contemplate. Holding onto it would be like holding an atul by the tail.
"It will be enough. They've all eaten more than a large enough dose. If we withhold the antidote, they'll die within a day."
"And the guards are ready?"
"Assuredly," the commander chuckled. "They look forward to it."
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
The celebration had moved into the throne room, where the king presided over the conversation swirling around him from his throne. Much of the court had excused itself after the dinner, pleading the excuse of work to complete, and the majority of the room was sparsely filled with the prince's party and the representatives from the surrounding city-states.
Eleanora sipped from a cup of warm, flat water and squinted at the representative from Pasule.
"The king is the sole landowner?" she asked incredulously. Even in the most despotic regimes in Earth's history, power had been more diffuse than that.
"Yes. Radj Hoomas owns not only the agricultural land, but all of the buildings of the town, and all of the houses of the Council outside the city wall." The representative, Jedal Vel, was short for a Mardukan, but he still towered over the chief of staff. She'd ended up talking exclusively to him after finding him a mine of information. The "simple trader" from Pasule was a student not only of commerce, but of government and history. He was, naturally, biased towards Pasule's oligarchical form of government, but having Marshad as a horrible counterexample would tend to do that.
"Two generations ago, in the chaos after the fall of Voitan, there was a great rebellion among the Houses of Marshad. Three of them were the most prominent, and the king of that time, Radj Kordan, Radj Hoomas' grandfather, allied with one of them against the other two. It was a terrible battle, but the king finally prevailed over all but his single surviving ally. Most unfortunately, he was, in turn, assassinated shortly after the end of the war by a son of one of the defeated Houses. He had intended simply to reduce their power, fine them heavily, and strip them of guards, but his son, Hoomas' father, killed every member of the defeated Houses. Then he forced a marriage with a daughter of the single surviving ally, and absorbed that House, leaving the House of Radj as the only power in Marshad."
The representative sipped his wine and gave a lower handclap, a Mardukan shrug.
"Pasule's actions in this were not the best. We supported both sides, trying to drag the war out and damage Marshad as much as possible. We've always seen the city as a rival, and since the fall of Voitan it's come to war more than once. But when Radj consolidated all the power under itself, it was clear we'd made a serious mistake. Since then, Radj has taken more and more power and treasure, and left less and less for others.
"The only thing that Marshad exports anymore is dianda, but it makes a tremendous profit on it. The crop is hard to grow, and takes up valuable land which might otherwise be used to grow food. Naturally, Radj Hoomas could care less. The land produces barely enoug
h food to support the farmers; the city poor are left to starve and work the looms."
"It seems like a situation ripe for a revolution," O'Casey said. "Surely there's some group that might rise up?"
"Perhaps," Jedal Vel said carefully. "However, the profits from the dianda trade also permit him to support a large standing army. Most of it is composed of mercenaries, but they recognize that they need Radj in power as the only way to preserve their own positions. They've crushed the few attempted rebellions easily."
"I see," O'Casey said. Take the army out of the picture though, she mused silently, and things might change. She glanced at the guards lining every wall. Another, separate contingent formed a half-moon crescent around the throne, and the ostentatious display of force finally made sense to her.
"Millions for defense, not a penny for the poor. . . ." she murmured with a low chuckle.
"Pardon?" the Pasule asked, but it was only an absent courtesy, for he was looking towards the throne. Radj Hoomas had called over the guard commander, and it looked like he might finally be ready to make the announcement that would permit everyone to leave gracefully.
* * *
Pahner nodded to the prince as Roger walked up to him. The squad parted as the prince neared the captain, and the Marines expertly swallowed up both officers in a protective ring.
"Roger," the captain greeted him, and glanced at Despreaux. The Marines had been specifically tasked with eavesdropping on the king and his guard captain, but the sergeant shrugged her shoulders. Nothing clear to report.
"Radj is definitely planning something," the prince said, tucking a stray hair back into line. "But so far, so good."
"That's what the jumper said as he passed the thirtieth floor," Pahner pointed out. He looked at Despreaux again. "What?"
"Just something about the guards, Sir," the sergeant said. "Maybe something about poison, too, but that wasn't clear."
"Joy," the company CO said.
"I don't like being surrounded like this, Sir," she added. "We could take the king if it dropped in the pot, but I'm not sure we could keep the Prince alive."
"If that happens, Sergeant," Roger said quietly, "take the king. That's your primary mission. Understood?"
Despreaux glanced quickly at Pahner, but the captain only looked back at her without expression.
"Yes, Sir. Understood," she said.
"Let's be on our toes," Pahner suggested as conversation died down and the king climbed to his feet. "Looks like time to party."
"We are gathered here tonight," Radj Hoomas said, "to honor the brave warriors who crushed the Kranolta and reopened the road to Voitan. Puissant warriors, indeed," he said, and his voice echoed hollowly through the wood-paneled hall.
"Puissant warriors, indeed," he repeated, and glanced around at his own massed guards. "I ask you, Your Royal Highness, Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock, could your puissant warriors defeat all the guards in this room? Before you fell yourself?"
"Possibly," Roger replied calmly. "Quite probably. And I would be trying very hard to survive."
The king gazed at him for a moment, then glanced at one of his guards . . . who stepped forward, and, with a smooth motion, shoved his spear into the back of the representative from Pasule. Jedal Vel screamed in a froth of aspirated blood as the bitter steel spearhead emerged from his chest, but the guard only grinned cruelly and twisted his wrist as he jerked his weapon free once more and the envoy thudded to the floor.
"Are you so confident?" the king asked, grunting in humor.
"What?" Roger asked, with a smile he didn't feel, as O'Casey recoiled towards the Marines and away from the twitching corpse at her feet. "You think that the 'puissant warriors' who defeated the Kranolta have never seen blood?"
He booted up the assassin program he'd used in Q'Nkok, and as the aiming reticle appeared, superimposed on his vision, he dropped it onto the forehead of the laughter-grunting guard captain.
It required more than well-written software to be truly phenomenal with an assassin program. Even with hard encoding, it required smooth, practiced muscles that could handle the high twitch-rate strains placed upon them. But Roger had practiced, and the pistol came up with the blinding speed which had so surprised Pahner in the Q'Nkok banquet hall. The weapon simply materialized in his hand, and the supersonic crack of the bead's passage blended with a meaty thump as the decapitated guard captain hit the floor.
The king opened his mouth to shout, his face covered in the bright crimson spray of the captain's blood, then froze as he found himself looking down the barrel of the bead pistol.
"Now, there's an old term for this," Pahner said quietly, his own pistol out and trained as he transmitted furious orders to hold fast over his toot. The orders had to be in text, because the subvocalization equipment was part of the combat helmet he wasn't wearing at the moment, and his toot had to rebroadcast it through the systems of the bodyguards' helmets. That meant the orders were necessarily one-way, but he could imagine Kosutic's distant cursing just fine.
"It's called a 'Mexican standoff,' " he continued. "You try to kill us, and our company blows your little town to the ground. Not that you personally will care, Your Majesty, because you'll die right here, right now."
"I don't think so," the king said with a grunt as guards moved to interpose their bodies between him and Roger's weapon. "But I don't intend to kill any humans today. No, no. That was never my intent."
"You don't mind if we doubt your word, do you?" Roger asked, deflecting the pistol's point of aim to the ceiling as the tension eased slightly. "And, by the way," he added, nodding to the guards between him and Radj Hoomas, "we'll cut through those fucking bodies like they were so much cloth when we start. Bodies aren't going to stop us."
"But doing that would take time and prevent you from killing all the other guards that would be killing you," the king said. "But, again, that was never my intent."
"Ask him what his plan is," O'Casey hissed, now relatively safe between the bulks of Pahner and Roger. She was a fair negotiator, but these were not, in her opinion, optimal conditions. In fact, her mouth was dry with fear and her palms were sweating. She couldn't imagine how Roger and Pahner were staying so calm.
"All right, O King, what's your plan?" Roger asked, carefully not swallowing. If he did, it would be obvious his mouth was as dry as the lakebed they'd landed on.
"I have certain desires," the king said, with another grunt of laughter. "You have certain needs. I think we could come to mutually acceptable terms."
"All right," and Pahner said grimly. "I can see that. But why in hell did you choose to open negotiations like this?"
"Well," the king responded, with yet another grunt that this time turned into a belly laugh, "your need is food, supplies and weapons. Unfortunately, there is no great supply of either in Marshad. My desire, on the other hand, is to conquer Pasule, where it chances that both are readily available. I was fairly sure you wouldn't care to conquer Pasule for me, so it seemed advisable to discover an incentive to . . . encourage you."
"An incentive," Pahner repeated tonelessly.
"Precisely. I feel confident that your warband will take Pasule for me when I tell them it's a choice between that and the death of their leaders."
* * *
"Okay, okay," Kosutic said, waving for quiet. "Let's just stay cold here, people."
"We should extract them immediately," Jasco said. "I know those aren't our orders, but orders given under duress are invalid."
"Sure, Sir," Kosutic said. "Tell it to the Captain."
"Well . . ."
The conversation was taking place in the third-floor "officers' quarters" of the visitors' area. The pale yellow room where the prince had prepared for the fateful dinner party was now filled with the temporary command group.
"Lieutenant," Julian said, tapping his pad, "we have upwards of a battalion of scummies outside this building. They hold the high ground, and our pack beasts. We would have t
o fight our way out and up to the throne room."
"The Captain's right, Lieutenant Jasco," the sergeant major said. "We wait for the right moment, and play along in the meantime. We have to wait until the odds favor us, instead of the other way around. We have the time."
"This isn't right!" the exasperated officer said. "We should be taking down that throne room right now. This is a member of the Imperial Family!"
"Yep," Kosutic said equably. "Surely is. Dangerous one, too."
* * *
Roger listened calmly to the brand-new guard commander's bloodthirsty pronouncements about what would happen to any human who did not obey orders. The new, heavily-armored commander explained at considerable length, and when he finished, Roger bared his teeth in a smile.
"You're next," he said pleasantly.
The guard captain glared at the prince, but the Mardukan's eyes fell before Roger's did, and the scummy withdrew, closing the door behind him.
Roger turned from the door and looked around. The suite was large and airy, with several windows which overlooked the back side of the castle. The far curtain wall, he noticed, was covered with torch-bearing guards watching the shadows for any attempt to escape.
The floor was scattered with the ubiquitous pillows and low tables of the Hadur, and there were "chamber buckets" for relieving wastes. It was quite pleasant, all things considered.
"We have to get out of here," he muttered.
"And you propose to do that, how?" Pahner asked, handing Despreaux back her borrowed helmet. Unlike the prince, the captain was the very picture of sangfroid.
"Well, I feel like taking a rifle and killing a guard an hour until they either let us go or figure out to stay out of sight," Roger snarled, glaring at the guards manning the wall.
"Thereby suggesting retaliation," the captain said coolly. "Until we're actually in combat, we aren't decisively engaged. We should maneuver for room until then. Violence at this stage will only limit, rather than expand, our maneuver room."
"Do you have a plan?" O'Casey asked. "It sounds like you do."