Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  “Forgive me, majesty.”

  “Forgive you what, Lord Simon?”

  “Forgive me for saying it. He, too, may not wait.”

  “If this is so, it is good that there are no Hashâshīn left.”

  “As far as we know. The Ordensstaadt is far from here, and locked down.”

  “Keep it that way.”

  “Of course. But new threats are rising, majesty.”

  “Even Pyotr is not so foolish as to try to kill a sitting Regent. Not when he’s already so close to a legitimate ascent to power.”

  “One hopes. Yet, it’s a most flattering thing to whisper to a prince, to tell him that once he holds unrestrained power on the Jade Throne he can change all, remake the Thousand Worlds.”

  “I have taught him differently, and more modestly.”

  “You have taught him well, but did the lessons take? He meets with Sakura-kai in secret, in the barrios of the city where he goes to, well…”

  “Again you pause! I told you, my lord, you’ll not surprise me. I know very well what he does at night. He’s cut from his father’s cloth in that regard. You give me no offense to say it.”

  “Alright, I will speak clearly. SAC and Sakura-kai think they can seduce a man who grew up with no father and under a powerful mother, who still rules all that he does and says in public. They offer him a path to rebellion, to get out from under your influence and power as Dowager Regent.”

  “If it’s true he’s tempted by that then he’s more the fool even than I think. Three years from his lawful ascent and he would play at treachery? All he need do is wait on a triple rotation of Kestino around its star. Patience is a virtue he lacks, but not so badly as that. I don’t believe it.”

  “You must try to believe it. And there’s more, majesty.”

  “Tell me.”

  “SAC wants to control your son, it’s true. But much more than that. It wants to control the future of your lineage, the way the Brethren once did. They want to be the new secret power behind the throne, from where they’ll manipulate us into war. They’ll start a fight with other Great Powers that we may not win, and surely need not wage. They dream of this because of the Red Purge. It removed the one force from the center that might counterbalance them, majesty.”

  “Thank you, Lord Simon, for your frankness. But that is the one error I made that needs no reminding. I live with its consequences every day.”

  “Apologies, majesty.”

  “Leave me. You have given me too much to consider, councilor. I must think.”

  ‘The gray men already have too much influence over the mind of my overly romantic son. Pyotr must learn the power of balance and of the balance of power. He must learn who the real enemies of our family are, or they shall come in the night with a sharp sword and hack off our arms. It’s past time. I must speak to him about these deeper things. He must accept his role.’ She has an unconscious habit of steepling her fingers as she thinks, pushing her spread apart hands against each other over and over at the fingertips. It gives them the look of a fat spider sitting in the middle of its gossamer web, slowly bobbing. Waiting on ... something.

  She does it now.

  She does it faster.

  Orbs begin to spin.

  Balance

  Mary calls Pyotr to audience in her chambers, just under three years before he reaches the age of primogeniture succession to his father, who’s been dead for 22 years. She’s worried by lurid tales her advisers and spies tell of his debauchery in the slums of Novaya Uda. He goes there nightly in the company of young SAC officers or intimate friends he calls ‘The Admitted.’ She knows they’re all as reckless and debauched as he is. Maybe more so. ‘I should’ve married him off before today, though I doubt that would keep him home. It’s not sex he seeks in the city. It’s a fool’s danger and a prince’s toy rebellion.’

  Pyotr leans back in a purple draped chair with ornate high arms, embossed carvings and fine gold inlay. His clothes are fancier than that. The latest high fashion, worth a large, not a small, fortune at every layer. He’s draped in the finest red and green silks, perfectly showing off his healthy, smooth skin and fit physique. A radiantly white, armored dog collar snugly fitted around his neck has a function beyond fashion. Yes, it frames his handsome, angular black face and suggests a rougher kind of sex he indulges in the city. But it also protects against choking by Hashâshīn silk cords. Or these days some far less traditional killer’s sharpened blade that aims to slice open his throat and be done with it.

  The main distraction from the impression of strength and vitality he makes is that he’s really quite short. He’s not yet fat, as he will become, but he’s well below average height; especially for a man with so much Shaka in him, easily the taller of the two royal bloodlines. The other flaw is a thin scar running down his left cheek to his neck, stopping just shy of his thick jugular. The memex and Jade Court officially say that it’s a dueling mark, a signature of courage and honor won during his High Akademy days. Rumor says he got in a backstreet barrio cathouse, that a whore’s quick knife reached bone before Pyotr grabbed her arm, then cut her down with his own white diamond blade. Others say a rent boy did it. It’s the same sordid tale, told either way. The next day, the girl (or maybe it was a boy) was disappeared offworld, a nameless throwaway from the slums of Novaya Uda. It’s what Oetkerts do. Just because they can. Because no one dares say “no” to blood royale. Certainly not to the crown prince and heir. Saying no could get you killed.

  He doesn’t want to be here, in his mother’s commanding presence. Inside her vanilla scented private chambers. Like he’s ten or twelve years-old and called to her. The malevolent look in his glowering jade eyes says: ‘I’ll endure this forced talk, Mother. But I’ve other plans for tonight.’

  She sits across from him assessing his angry mood and posture. The disdain behind every flickering look that he just can’t hide from so skilled an observer; the resentment that he feels over this Dowager Regent tethering his early manhood and blocking him from the Jade Throne. She smells a too familiar odor of bitter almond in the air, mixed with fish oils. ‘So, he has also taken up his father’s snuff habit. How tiresome is this flattery of a failed father and flawed man!’

  “You sit, carelessly, in your father’s old chair. You have not done so before today.”

  “I’m trying it on for size. It fits me well, don’t you think?”

  “I also smell snuff on you. Do you so need to replay your father’s part?”

  “Doesn’t every son?”

  “No. The best find a play that’s all their own.”

  ‘You have no idea how truly you speak, Mother. But the play I will write, as well as act, is not going to be a comedy. It will be a high drama. What part in my tragedy should I write for you?’

  “Enough of this small talk and idle banter. I intend to be blunt in a way I have delayed too long. I will speak as you’ve not heard me before. At least, not on this level of policy and survival of our lineages.”

  “Proceed, Mother. I’m sure I shan’t be shocked by what you’ll say. I know you too well.” ‘Nothing you do could shock me, not after the night you came into my room soaked in infant’s blood and your own red rage, and bled Brother Luther at my feet like a like a spring lamb on a backwater Dauran world.’

  “You were taught that your job as ruler will be to keep the family business alive, the dynasty maintained. You need to understand that we Oetkert-Shakas are in trouble. The virtuous founders of our entwined lines and early generations of more stolid Imperators were followed in recent decades, even over the last three centuries, by mediocrities. We are siring too many less capable men.”

  “You mean, men like Father?”

  “Yes, and his father before him, and his father before him. The acorns grew smaller trees with each generation that followed since the Jade Eye planted the Imperium oak. It makes one wonder about what rings you will make, if any?”

  “I understand, Mother. Father flirted with ma
king basic changes under the Mandate of the Stars, but only managed to lose his life, flopping and floundering in a backstreet whore’s dank bedroom.”

  “You would know better than I do about that!”

  “Indeed, and so I do. But you must admit to me, since we are being so frank this day, that you have a passion for dark and lusty men. You married one and you have raised another. Are you not proud of what you see?”

  ‘So, I’m wrong. He doesn’t ape his father’s ways with whores and drink and snuff out of respect. He does it to annoy me. Well, I won’t have his insolence! Either this child prince takes the lesson taught or he’ll not take the throne.’

  “What’s wrong, Mother? I have never heard you at a loss for words.”

  ‘Our dynasty shall survive. It won’t fail because my eldest son refuses to grow up, and is as careless a libertine and debauch as his feckless father ever was. I care nothing about Karl Joseph’s barrio whores or my arrogant son’s pet girls and boys. But I will not let a weakling sit on the family throne. I’ll tighten the silk threads myself, before allowing that!’

  “Well, Mother? You summoned me to this audience. Time to speak.” His resentment is overflowing. He sharply underestimates her as a woman, and far more as an Oetkert matron and Dowager Regent with the weight of ruling the Imperium sitting on her brow. “What is it you want to say to me? So you know, I have business I must attend to soon.” His disrespect stirs her to small anger.

  “Playing with child whores and toy boys in the city?” She realizes as she speaks: ‘I love my son, as any mother should. But I don’t like him.’

  “Yes, Mother. I mean girl whores and boy whores. Why, I feel a throbbing coming on! Best hurry what you intend to say.”

  “Your bed is your own to fill as you please! Yet, let me say it to you once: you shouldn’t linger in the sex dens across Lake Isis. It’s there that I hear slick men dressed in rat’s gray pour poison ideas into your drink, and in your ears. They are not your friends. They conspire to make you their lifelong puppet.”

  “I’m no one’s puppet, Mother!” He answers with a burst of anger she lets pass as blustering of a spoiled man child, but also likes to see in him at last. If she only knew… ‘I’m not their puppet now, nor ever will be! But I’m not yours, either. As you’ll learn on the day I teach you a deeper lesson about the meaning of motherhood and what is true statecraft.’

  “No, you’re an Oetkert. Act the part! You’ll be Tennō in three short years. So think on the company that you keep today and what you do and say, anon. Consider the image you present to our worlds and peoples. Your acts and words have far more weight than those of ordinary men.”

  “I know the weight of my words. My acts are all my own.”

  “You should be less certain than you are. Choose your nighttime company more carefully, but choose the companions of your days most carefully of all. The men in gray are not true friends.”

  “Your spies tell you of my rutting, and what words spill from my mouth when I’m in my cups. You will know then, I have views. That changes must and will be made when I am Tennō.”

  “Yes, you have strong views, I’m told. And it’s clear that you don’t doubt them. Are you afraid of entertaining doubt, that any little bit of uncertainly must sap your will to act?”

  “No, I fear nothing and no one. Doubt least of all, for the slightest ‘doubt is the enemy of progress.’”

  “Spoken like a fool! You think that I don’t know that you parrot the Sakura-kai slogan?” He’s shocked that she knows about that, but pushes ahead.

  “Never doubt that a small group of committed men, organized around a true idea can change all the worlds. You made me study history, so you know that’s true. Karl Ferdinand and a few companions founded the Imperium, then just a few more men expanded it to a third of Orion.”

  “You compare yourself and your Admitted to the Jade Eye? Until just now I had no idea that you are that arrogant, to have no doubts at all and yet harbor so much unearned vanity.”

  “Doubt leads to weakness. And what you call vanity, others see as a ruler’s confidence.”

  “You shouldn’t think that a man who refuses to reflect can’t be torn apart by doubts. But let in a few, and you start down the path to wisdom.”

  “I prefer the strength of certitudes.”

  “More foolishness! Caution is a superior virtue, in a man and a ruler. You’re young, whatever airs and scents of your father you wear. The wisdom I impart was his wisdom, but it eludes you.”

  “I listen Mother, and I try. But you sit up there in rustling silk and lace and fine perfumes, astride my throne as Dowager Regent and dynastic protectress. As you’ve said so many times in these charming yet rare chats we have, only experience will teach me how to guard myself and against myself.”

  “It is not your throne. It belongs to the dynasty, to the Imperial Family. I’m merely a caretaker for you, as you will be for your son when he’s born. If we can get you to lay with a woman one night!” It’s a weak effort to insult his manhood. He was with a woman just last night, in fact. He has no fears in that area or that he can’t father sons when the time comes for that. Of course, after he was done with the barrio whore he hastened to be with a fine young boy.

  “My recreational romps, and fondness for rumps, are neither here nor there.”

  She changes tack. “Let’s not be distracted by old arguments. We two have more important things to discuss today. We must speak of ruling and the ruled.”

  “I’m grateful, Mother, but soon your burden of rulership shall be lifted. I come of coronation age in less than three years. My crowning is preparing. Already, it takes up much of my time.”

  “That’s why we’re speaking so frankly to each other now. Time is short, your experience is shorter. I’ve erred in that, relying too much on myself, holding back from you responsibilities that might have framed a better man and ruler. In the absence of practical experience thus far, you favor wild dreams and hopes too much. A prudent ruler must respect his own fears more.”

  “I’m an Oetkert. We fear no one, Mother. You taught me that.”

  “A child’s boast, taught to you as a child. You need to unlearn it. We royals are more wise. We fear whoever deserves to be feared.”

  “Yet, it seems to me, in my naked and innocent youth,” a sneer curls over his lips, “that eternal truths are more important than fearful knowledge of the present state of things.”

  “The wisdom of experience trumps all theory, especially in a monarch.”

  “I disagree. Experience of all the Thousand Worlds can’t produce a genius like a Newton or a Euler or a Wang. Not even all your years as Dowager have pierced through the iron laws of Nature as did they, alone in their studies. Yet, their truths shaped and reshaped all the Thousand Worlds, as you have not.”

  “Experience counts more than abstract truth, in a ruler. And wisdom in the ways of the worlds more than both. If you seek truth for its own sake, become a scholar and no one will care! If you want to rule as Tennō and survive, and keep this family in power, only experience and listening to more sage advice than given by the gray ideologues or your own arrogance will suffice.”

  “There is also intelligence. I have it in spades. It will carry me until I age into silver as you have, and add to my native wit a lifetime of experience.” He smirks at her, again.

  “Enough banter! It strikes me dangerous that you think you are a genius.”

  “I don’t say that, Mother.”

  “You think it, nonetheless.”

  Pyotr’s face turns into a defensive scowl at her too keen insight into his thoughts. “I am not so much a fool as you deem, to think that I’m a genius and can’t be fooled.”

  “Yet, you do. You believe your superior intuition perceives truth at every point, that what’s unknown, your native talent can guess to a certainty. There’s a very great difference between a natural talent and a trained one, and we don’t yet know whether you are either.”

&nb
sp; “Be careful what you say, Dowager. Your last years will pass quickly.”

  “Don’t threaten me, boy! I instruct you in the Oetkert way! You stand for now, first in line at the foot of the throne. But not every Crown Prince has made the final climb, to sit in its high seat. Be more careful yourself, Pyotr Shaka! You have siblings. They are of blood royale, too. As much as you are!”

  Pyotr knows that he has gone too far. He submits. “Very well. What must I do, Mother? Teach me the one, true Oetkert way.”

  The sneer is faint.

  Barely detectible.

  Hardly meant at all.

  She sees it, nonetheless.

  “It’s best to stick to the practical truth rather than fancies such as your SAC friends play with, these wild fantasies about ‘biopolitical science’ and restoring ‘Purity’ and regeneration of Grün and Imperium greatness that we Oetkert-Shakas and the Imperium have never in fact lost.”

  “There’s more hard truth in SAC’s claims than you’ll ever know or admit.” Is it genuine belief? Or is he bluffing again, riling and poking at her pridefulness?

  “Abstractions! Ancients imagined republics and utopias that never existed at all. The way we live is removed from the way the old philosophers, or your new biopoliticians, say we ought to live. Any ruler who abandons ‘what is’ for ‘what should be’ pursues downfall and destruction rather than uplift and preservation. Your role as Tennō is only to preserve what your ancestors built.”

  “Preserve? No more? Not embellish or expand our Empire? What about the ‘Lost Children’ whose recovery we tout to our peoples daily? Surely a Tennō’s reach should exceed his grasp, else what’s Orion for?”

  “Be careful, princeling! Preserve the Oetkert holdings and ways in your own time on the Jade Throne and you’ll do well enough. Better than some and no worse than the rest of our two lines, dating to the Founding.”

  He says: “I want to do that, at least.” He thinks, ‘but more besides.’

  “A good start, then.”

  “I’ll listen, Mother. You have a lifetime of ruler’s wisdom to impart. My ears are open to it.” ‘But you’re wrong about the new way, the genetist way of Purity. There lies the path forward to fresh greatness. Not in the science, which is false as you say, but in the sparkling politics; in the way its slogans move the masses.”