Assassin

by Kali Altsoba

  Chalice

  How sharper than a degen blade it is to birth a thankless child. Pyotr seeks out leaders of the banished Order of Sword Brothers in Ordensstaadt exile. His envoy preempts Mary’s planned move to partly recover the monks to the Jade Court and to high politics in the Imperium. She delays her approach while the threat of civil war looms, even as he makes a bold secret offer. As the eldest male heir and most likely Tennō, Pyotr buys secret aid with promises to restore Brethren privileges and properties which he says his mother wrongly stole. The High Council seizes on this unexpected chance to win the Imperial favor and bring down Mary Oetkert, to pay her back with a poison chalice for the genocide and their exile from power. Pyotr is desperate, more generous even than they ask. He thinks he cuts a hard deal. He doesn’t realize that they would help to kill the Dowager Regent for far less than he offers them.

  They would do it for hate’s sake.

  They would do it for vengeance.

  They would do it for their God.

  They would do it for nothing.

  Brethren send an envoy to Pyotr on Kestino, traveling in disguise. He’s hard to hide, but they manage it. He’s an unprepossessing centagenarian and scholar-priest named Maximilian Kahn. He’s also a bastard son of a nagas mother-wife, bred in the clone vats. A ‘nagas putra,’ in the contemptuous phrasing of the old tongue of the Black Faith. As are all his sons, as are all Brethren: slave owners and slave sons all at once. Masters to their own bonded, clone mother-wives.

  Kahn hands Pyotr an exquisite flower poison drawn from the Order’s deepest arsenal. It’s the perfect assassin’s weapon: clean, quick, utterly untraceable and unprovable. Pyotr must move quickly. Fighting is breaking out on more worlds. There are clashes at three bohr zones where one fleet faction blockades another. Riots rock the backstreets of Novaya Uda. Ground troops and orbital bases are dividing into hostile camps, readying for a full civil war. The Imperial Family is living in tense proximity inside the Waldstätte. Each family faction lives in a protected partition. Each refuses to surrender its half of the fortress to the other, knowing its enormous symbolic value to any successor regime and to all the divers peoples of the Imperium. Outside, riots spread, burn out whole sectors of Novaya Uda while mass violence wracks Kestino’s worker cities. Heavy fighting spreads beyond Glarus, Lucerne, and Huertgen, threatening to engulf still more worlds.

  “Possession of the Waldstätte Palast and proximity to the Jade Throne is half the battle of our claim to higher legitimacy,” Mary tells her daughter. “Pyotr can’t and won’t dare try to remove us physically from these chambers.”

  “Yet, we don’t have the force to remove him from his side of the palace. What shall we do to end the standoff?”

  “Wait for the politics of the hour to shift. My agents in the Council of Elders say there’s a clear majority that favors the changes to the succession law I have proposed. They vote in three days.”

  “And then, Mother? What if Pyotr refuses to acknowledge the vote?”

  “When the Council formally approves of you as rightful heir and successor to Karl Joseph, and I sanction and proclaim the succession law as Dowager Regent, Pyotr’s support will melt underneath him. His supporters will vanish like spring snow deserting an alpine valley. He should have waited.”

  “What will you do with him?”

  “You mean, soon to be Empress Chiyoko Shaka Oetkert, the First, what will you do with your miscreant brother? My time as Regent ends the moment the crown lies heavy on your head.”

  “I cannot sanction his rebellion or abide his life. Pyotr will be declared traitor, and must die a traitor’s death. I’ll behead him in the Jade Square. All will see the price of defying an Empress.”

  “That is as it should be. It will show the worlds that you make a strong start and that you’ll be a fearsome monarch, daughter.”

  ***

  It’s all resolved in a single night. An abscess of jealous, royal anger is lanced as Pyotr pulls off a palace coup. He does it with nameless thugs, offworld ethnics he draws from the Novaya Uda underclasses. He infiltrated them into the Wache over two years, for he has been planning this move even longer than that. He got away with it because no one questioned recruitment into the Household Guard by the Crown Prince, the ‘Honorary Colonel of the Palast Wache.’

  He met the brutes years ago while drinking and whoring in the Farfolk Quarter to displease his disapproving mother, or when out with wilder SAC men and his circle of Admitted. Killers know killers. Pyotr got on well with the new men right from the start, from the first shared drink and passed around girl or boy. He quietly added his hired thugs to the Inner Wache, one-by-one.

  As the grim hour arrives, Pyotr’s men rush and overcome and murder other men wearing yellow or black bird uniforms they meet in the Waldstätte hallways. Lord Simon, the chief adviser, has his throat cut before he can call out to the last guards standing directly outside the Dowager’s bedchamber. Pyotr gives his own cohort of Royal Canaries the secret codes to all the inner chambers. They barge into Mary’s and Chiyoko’s rooms without opposition.

  Chiyoko screams, and submits. Mary struggles against the gross impertinence of lowborn guards daring to touch her, laying out two with a sudden flash of a hidden blade. She wields it in wild, flashing strokes, slashing like a raptor’s tooth. It leaves great red gashes in one man’s face and another’s neck. He drops prone, bleeding onto green inlaid tile. It’s the degen the Hashâshīn meant to use to kill her and Chiyoko the night they strangled her husband. She has carried it on her person ever since. Only when jagged blades are held to the lifted throats of two of her grown children does Mary Oetkert stop slashing and submit.

  Pyotr’s canary men hold Mary’s head tightly. They grip and lift her face as Royal Canaries once held his. He walks over to where she kneels. He’s dressed in a bright yellow uniform over which he wears a new, blue ermine robe. “Well, Mother. It has come to this at last.”

  It’s hard to speak with her face clenched by rough hands, but she manages. “Folklore says a man’s greatest enemies are in his own household. It seems to be true for women at the Jade Court as well.”

  “Never at a loss for words, are you Mother?”

  “I warned your father, but he already knew. Your vain and weak character was clear to us before you turned ten. It’s why we made two more sons, after you. Because of you.” Her words rise up on a hint of vanilla scented hate.

  “Yes, one boy addled of mind because you failed in your primary duty as a mother, to give him a proper birth. The other son dead with your cord around his neck on the night you lost your husband. Which only means you killed my second brother for me, or I would do it tonight as you watch.”

  “No doubt. It’s easy for you to kill children.”

  “You should know, Mother. You have quite a record of it. How many dāsa children died upon your order, in the Red Purge? How many infants were pulled from incubators, their heads dashed on walls? How many were cut down before their parents? Don’t lecture me on killing children!”

  “You murder your own family. Not the lowest of beasts does that!”

  “You killed two of your own infant sons, one in mind and the other in body. Your firstborn son will now kill you. It’s the way of all the worlds, when you choose to rule them. Perhaps you should have stuck to making daughters.” He looks over at gagged Chiyoko with high contempt. His older sister is being held by two of his thug recruits. The new canaries are all noticeably shorter than the men loyal to the Regent whom they killed in the hallway.

  “I despise you less for what you do than for what you are, and for the thing you’ll now become. They shall call you ‘Pyotr the Matricide,’ a stain on your line and namesakes and royal houses.”

  “The afterbirth of murder is on you, too, Mother.” They glower at each other in mutual memory of another bloody night in these inner chambers. “With me, you gave birth to your own death.”

  She taunts back: “Can’t you face your mother alone, weak
ling? Do you want me to call over your nanny? Or will you order your bird guards to do it? Get on with this, if you’re half a man.”

  “Hold her face steady. Open her mouth!” He dribbles Maximilian Kahn’s colorless, odorless poison from a small purple vial into a stemmed glass. He fills the goblet halfway with red wine, then leans over his gaping mother to pour it.

  “I have another folk saying for you, who are so oddly fond of them: ‘beer is made by men, wine by God.’ It’s time to drink your wine and go to meet your god. Goodbye, Mother.” His men pull back her head and force open her mouth. Chiyoko looks on aghast, her mouth gagged with a black velvet cloth. Friedrich is held back by two squat, strong men. He’s whimpering in fear and confusion, a yellow puddle of warm piss under his slippered feet.

  “I’ll drink your poison chalice. Tell your men to release my arms, so that I may die by my own hands as a monarch should, and the stain of matricide does not mark and ruin your reign.”

  “No Mother. You must let me pour it for you.” He does.

  Mary dies with dignity nonetheless. She doesn’t spit the wine into Pyotr’ face, as she might. She swallows it deliberately, holding his gaze so that he reads her fathomless contempt in jade eyes that slowly cloud then lose all color. When they let go her head, she slips to the tiles in a loose pile of emerald ermine and finest silks. Her lips bleach white with a taint of floral poison, then their color returns in a few seconds more, leaving no biotrace behind of the poison or deed.

  Chiyoko tears away from her guards and rips off her gag. She falls down wailing at Mary’s head, before she’s bound, gagged once more, and hauled away. Thirty year-old Prince Friedrich just looks baffled. He won’t stop calling for his Mutter, or stop pawing at her still body like an orphaned bear cub. On Pyotr’s order, they don’t bind him. He goes with the guards on his own.

  ***

  A grand announcement of the Dowager Regent’s unexpected death is made, and mourning drapes the Imperium. Voting on the Succession Rites and Law is cancelled. Instead, the coronation date is advanced. Pyotr Shaka Mobuto Oetkert III mounts the Jade Throne ten days after Mary is laid out in the Imperial Tomb, her crypt filled with living ivy and white stargazer lilies. Playing the good and respectful son, Pyotr has “my beloved mother” encased in a casket ornamented with inlaid green marble. He lays her to rest in a solemn state ceremony broadcast live across the whole Imperium. Many are moved to weeping by the young emperor’s obvious loss, his grief and filial piety, his dutiful respect for all the old and proper rituals. He kneels in profound silence beside her dark green sarcophagus, not rising from a loving son’s prayers and devotions for a full hour.

  Calm returns.

  Order is restored.

  The suns also rise.

  The dawns still break.

  Birdsong and birthings.

  Dogs bark, boys shout.

  Fried garlic is on the air.

  Not everyone believes Mary’s too timely passing is a natural act. Heads of Old Families, generals, admirals, farfolk ambassadors to the Jade Court do not. No one dares ask what illness seized Pyotr’s robust mother so suddenly? Or why his sister and brother are missing during the state funeral? Or where they disappear during a month long mourning period, or where they are now? Yet the ugly rumors suit Pyotr’s purposes. Fear in the inner circles is useful. Murder is the Oetkert way. Everyone knows it. You just don’t speak that truth aloud. Besides, everyone is glad to abort a looming civil war. Most are also ready for a fresh start. They look up in hope at a young and vigorous Tennō in his prime. That, too, is the accepted way. Emperors come and go. The Empire lives on.

  “The Dowager Regent is dead!”

  “Long live the Emperor Pyotr!”

  “How may I serve, majesty?”

  “What high office will be my reward?”

  “What new policy will you declare?”

  “Play the Ave Imperium for Pyotr!”

  Eliding the fatal moment and his own foulest deed, Pyotr rallies hundreds of billions who grieve his mother. With him, they embrace ideals of geneticism. He promises renewal at home and conquered worlds to come, and great riches to be stolen and shared by all in the Imperium. OK, he doesn’t say it quite that way before the peoples, or to listening farfolk ambassadors. But everyone gets his meaning, all the same.

  “I speak for the first time to my peoples, as your Tennō. We gird for a hard future. For 300 years we wanted to be loved, not feared. That changes now. Our neighbors who infringe our borders will respect us again. They will learn again that we are still proud and powerful Grünen. We will defend our stolen rights and our honor. All farfolk should tread carefully along the frontiers. No border question is closed. Ready yourselves.”

  His peoples think they understand, and cheer him. The economy rises with new war production, and young men hurry to enlist. He kills no more internal enemies than prior emperors, and far fewer than Mary Oetkert did. Old Families see tradition reaffirmed. SAC hopes to steer him into a future war. Rikugun and Kaigun celebrate expansion of their forces. Brethren are still in exile but their leaders know that the Tennō is in their secret debt. His early successes confirm his own genius, persuade Pyotr that he’s in control of events, master of all things. The balance in Orion is coming apart. Chaos will be unleashed into the worlds.

  ***

  Neutrals are deeply alarmed. They monitor Jade Court politics realistically, because they’re small and vulnerable and hence can’t afford to be wrong. Their ambassadors say the new Tennō bears close watching, that Purity is stirring the masses. That even without Purity’s bad ideas, the Imperium is growing more restless by the day. They say the danger of war isn’t imminent, but that it’s real. In the Three Kingdoms and Helvetic Association, politics decisively shifts: more credits are allotted to military preparedness in annual appropriations. But not all governments bordering the Imperium heed dire advice coming from the diplomatic quarter in Novaya Uda.

  On Aral, capital world of the United Planets of Krevo, there’s too much confidence in the constraints of the Golden Peace of Orion, and disbelief that anyone could want another war. Life is peaceful, quiet and good. Don’t rock the boat. Also on Aral, far removed from any politics, Zofia Jablonski runs excitedly into her house wearing a short cotton dress and pigtails, after her first ever day at preschool. She drew a big picture of a spaceship for her mother. She expects to be praised, as she always is. She’s overflowing with keen intelligence and talent.

  On the sleepy agrarian world Genève, young Jan Wysocki is in late middle school. The ancient cycles of sowing and harvest continue. Tourist luxury liners come and go. Two Imperium civilian ships, the Meiji and Wilhelm Rex, are docked at elevator platforms. Tens of thousands of disgorged passengers fill Toruń City hotels and take long treks through permitted sections of Old Forests. Gold and Silver homeworld divisions train bored youths lazily and poorly. Most of the older model warships in Toruń spaceyard are already outdated and in dire need of repair and paint. Jan’s mother is making garlic soup, humming happily to herself in the kitchen. His father is in the fields, working in silence as is his habit.

  On beautiful Helena, college graduate Georges Briand is smoking his first pipe of tobacco, discovering that he has a real talent for blowing smoke rings. As he puffs, he contemplates whether he should pursue a career in politics. On his knee he bounces his niece, a vivacious and startlingly beautiful child who is already his best critic and worst tease. Robert Hoare is a junior cabinet minister, but making a real impression on Kars. There’s talk that he’s a man with a great future, maybe even a prime minister one day. Virgiliu Nicolescu, his best friend from school and a rising intelligence superstar, is talking him up on the memex and in quiet dinner party circles that count far more to a public career than public opinion.

  Calmari diplomats report that Pyotr is just engaging in necessary rhetoric, strutting as all new Tennōs must in the long military shadow cast by the founder of the Imperium, Karl Ferdinand I. Ambassador Adlai Stimson
in Novaya Uda sends reassuring messages back to Kars and Caspia, saying “it’s just coronation rhetoric of a kind heard at every succession. Nothing unusual at all. He’s young. He boasts.” Then he goes to dinner with Pyotr’s Minister of Interstellar Affairs and gets roundly drunk. Later that night, he says far too much that’s stupidly indiscreet. Six months after, he joins the Cabinet on Kars, as Minister for Peace.

  Well, what did you expect? There has been no war for almost 300 years. Even the Historia Humana assures us that war is a thing of the atavistic human past. No one wants war. No one is planning war. It isn’t even possible, we are so advanced. It’s confined to museums, like old dinosaur bones. Stop worrying, be happy! If they only knew that to his allies of the moment in Sakura-kai Pyotr says: “War is a form of collective theft. You only have to convince others to help you steal. I need but persuade Grünen to follow me to war and we shall not just recover all the Lost Children, we’ll reave the Thousand Worlds!”

  “And fill and remake them with purification of the galactic genome?”

  “Err, yes of course. We’ll make the greatest and Purist empire in history.”