by Neal Jones
Once the applause faded, Erengaar said a few more words, but Vatra didn't hear them. She was scanning the faces of the crowd below her, and she finally spied Sierik and Lyka near one of the large, ancient columns that supported the vaulted ceiling of the hall. He, too, was looking in her direction, and Vatra felt herself become wet as she anticipated their night together after this celebration was done. It was no surprise to Vatra that Lyka was gazing across the room at one of the younger lords who had been a regular of the royal court for several months now. The lady princess couldn't immediately recall his name, but he was perhaps a few years younger than Sierik, and Vatra felt another stab of relief that Lyka had also found someone outside of her marriage to have pleasure with.
Erengaar concluded his speech, and he signaled to the orchestra to begin playing. He and Larewyn descended from the stage, and the guests moved to either side to clear the center of the hall. Everyone watched the royal couple with expressions of rapture – most of them feigned, Vatra was certain – and after the song finished, Erengaar invited his subjects to join them for the next number. Lord and Lady Tannit descended the stage, but Vatra and Jharek remained in their seats. Many of the lords and ladies stopped by to give their congratulations, and Vatra graciously accepted with practiced poise and charm.
"Mother, are we really going to leave here after you're married?" Jharek asked plaintively as soon as he and Vatra were alone.
"You aren't looking forward to living aboard a dreadnought?" she replied as she reached out to brush his hair away from his forehead.
He scowled and batted her hand away. "Not really. Will we have servants? Will there be a Skelperi Master to teach me my sword lessons?"
"Of course, little one. In fact, I understand that R'Daak himself is a grade nine master in Skelperi. I'm sure that he will make some time to teach you. And as for servants, there won't be as many as there are here in the palace, but we will be taking a few with us."
"What's he like? Will I have to call him father?"
"Of course you will. You will give him your respect as you would to me."
"But what is he like? Does he really command a whole legion?"
Vatra was saved from having to respond by the arrival of the Lord and Lady Denon. Lord H'Kal was a tall, thin reed of a man, and his wife was quite the opposite. Lady N'Qashua held out a plump hand for Vatra to grasp as she congratulated the lady princess in a rather loud and wheezy voice. The skin of H'Kal's hand was as cold as his smile, and Vatra shuddered inwardly after they left the stage. There went another pair of reasons that she was relieved to be leaving this court.
It was time to serve the feast, and the lady princess was unhappy to see that she would once again be seated next to Marija at the head table.
"Congratulations, Vatra," Marija said as they waited for the remainder of the guests to find their seats. "Commandant of the twenty-sixth legion. What an honor!"
"Thank you," Vatra replied as she signaled a nearby servant to fill her wineglass.
"Mother says that Third Lovar R'Daak is a grade nine Skelperi master," Jharek chimed in.
This, of course, caught Lord Gyan's attention. "You're right, young lord. I was at the championship some years ago when he took first place. Sliced his opponent from shoulder to hip, and then decapitated him. Was a bloody mess." He winked at Jharek, and the boy smiled.
"Gyan, please, not at the supper table."
"Not at all," Vatra interrupted. "I'm sure that Jharek would love to hear more about the tournaments. Please continue."
Gyan was happy to oblige, and Marija feigned disgust as she sipped her wine. "I'll never understand why you men enjoy such barbaric sports."
"Oh, I don't think it's just the men who enjoy such barbarism," Vatra said with a hint of ice in her tone. "We women have our own way of eliminating our enemies, isn't that right?"
"Yes, that's true," Marija agreed. "We can do it without shedding so much unnecessary blood."
"I think Doctor Rimshar bled quite a bit, wouldn't you say?"
Marija cast a sideways glance at her husband, who was still busy regaling Jharek with tales of tournaments past. "Yes, he did," she agreed, lowering her voice. "But I wasn't the one who killed him. He was justly executed by our lord emperor. He proved himself to be an enemy of the crown when he tried to poison my daughter. A mother is most dangerous when the lives of her offspring are at stake."
Vatra nodded conspiratorially. "Oh yes, I quite understand. I would do the same for Jharek."
"You must be relieved, then, to be leaving homeworld. It's become so dangerous here in Gtheldron."
"Here in the royal court, you mean." Vatra signaled the servant to refill her glass.
"Oh, I was referring to the war between the Drigald and the Talik'Jhor. So much violence in the city these days. But here inside the palace seems safe enough for me."
"Not for Doctor Rimshar, it wasn't." Vatra, too, had lowered her voice, and she glanced around to see how soon the guests would be seated. A few stragglers were still wandering into the hall, and the Father Intercessor was already standing beside his chair, waiting to say prayer. The hall echoed with the cacophony of conversation, laughter, and the clink of the wine pitchers against the rims of glassware as the servants filled them.
"No, it wasn't. Are you sympathizing with him? He was a traitor to the crown, and he died a traitor's death. I should think that would make you feel more secure."
"Oh, it does," Vatra replied. "I'm grateful to Ryomekk for discovering Rimshar's treachery. I'm just wondering if he was the only...conspirator. After all, he never could find the cure to my father's illness, and his death remains a mystery to the Talik'Jhor."
"That is troubling," Marija replied somberly. "If I were you, I'd be relieved to be out of this city altogether. A fortified dreadnought seems more secure to me than this palace."
Just then Erengaar stood and raised his hands for silence. The murmured babble from the tables ceased, and the Lord Emperor asked the Father Intercessor to lead in prayer.
Much later, when the feast was done and the guests had departed for their mansions and estates, Vatra moaned into Sierik's ear as he thrust himself inside of her again and again. Behind Sierik, Vatra's favorite manservant, Druskk, timed his own thrusts to match Sierik's. Druskk had become Sierik's favorite partner as well, for the same reason that Vatra enjoyed him. The much younger man was well endowed, and Vatra had made certain long ago that he was assigned to her alone. She had even granted him a small room down the hall from her own private quarters. After the men climaxed, Vatra took her turn with Druskk, while Sierik knelt behind the servant and nibbled playfully at the boy's ears as he fucked him.
As she climaxed for the fourth time that evening, Vatra wondered idly if R'Daak was the jealous type, and if he would allow her to bring Druskk with her to her new home.
( 3 )
Rytesa Strytt walked briskly through the crowded Chrisarii marketplace, ignoring the calls of the shopkeepers as she weaved through the midday throng. She had a two hour layover until the next shuttle departed for homeworld, and the young woman had decided to eat lunch in one of the smaller cafés that lined the outer streets of the market. After her meal was served, she bowed her head and said a silent prayer of thanks to Onng Le'Roh. Strytt casually observed the other Chrisarii as they came and went, and through the front window she could watch the shoppers passing by. Many were talking animatedly about the homecoming of the Emissary, and the special service that would be held in Osth tomorrow morning.
After she finished her sandwich and tea, Strytt paid the waiter and walked outside into the warm afternoon sun. Antinega was one of the smaller colonies in the Nel star system, only a few dozen light years from homeworld. As she walked, Rytesa tapped a command into her wristlink to check the status of her hostel reservations in Osth, and then checked her messages. There was only a single note from her sister, wishing her a blessed nameday. In fact, it wasn't Strytt's nameday, nor did she have a sister. The message was a code
from High Cleric Lortait. Rytesa responded with a greeting of thanks, and that she looked forward to the family reunion next year. This was the response that would tell the high cleric that Strytt was on schedule, and all was according to plan.
Rytesa would never make it to homeworld. An hour into her shuttle flight, there was an explosion in one of the secondary power relay conduits. This ignited a chain reaction that should have been shut down by automatic failsafes in the computer's engineering programs. Unfortunately, Rytesa had booked a flight on one of the older shuttles, and a preflight safety check had overlooked a faulty isor coil. The security program that governed the automatic failsafes had not been updated with necessary software for several months, and an unexpected glitch caused them to malfunction. There were no survivors from the explosion. This was the third shuttle of the H'Nad transport company to suffer this type of accident, and, within a few weeks of the investigating committee's final report, the company was ordered to pay a large settlement to the victim's families. This forced the small, independently owned – and already financially strapped - company to go bankrupt within a year.
Rytesa Strytt had no family, and, in fact, H'Nad could not locate any of her relatives, despite an exhaustive search of all Chrisarii database records. It was if she had never existed in the first place.
( 4 )
As Strytt's shuttle was being consumed with the flash fire of an engine core explosion, Namid Raukas' transport was entering its final landing approach to the central terminal in Slair province. The Chrisarii man smiled at a young child who was clutching his mother's skirts as they disembarked. The boy shyly smiled back. Namid followed the crowd to the baggage lines, and, after retrieving his two cases, he crossed to the other side of the terminal where the sildyr depot was located.
An hour later, Namid checked into his hostel in Osth. He found the village to be rather quaint by modern standards. Others would probably call it a town, but compared to the sprawling cities that dominated most of the land mass on homeworld, Osth was most definitely a village. The people here were also friendlier to outsiders than Namid was used to, and he returned their greetings with a nod and a smile.
"Are you here for tomorrow's service with the Emissary?" a portly woman asked, her arms laden with baskets of fruits and vegetables.
"Yes, I am," Raukas replied genially. "I'm actually looking for Shil'Ra Generith's church. Is it near here?"
The woman was only too happy to point the way, and she wished the visitor a blessed afternoon before continuing on her way. As Namid got closer to the church, he observed the number of local constabulary that were positioned on the street and around the empty lot next to the church. A large crowd was camped out in the lot, and many were milling about the church's front steps. The shil'ra himself was walking through the encampment, greeting his parishioners, and Namid continued walking past the church while observing the priest.
The church itself was a modest, two story structure, built in the architectural style of the first century, Second Age, that was used for almost all cathedrals and sanctuaries throughout homeworld and the colonies. Namid guessed that the auditorium probably held a congregation of three or four hundred, at most, and he could see the outside entrance to the apartment in back where the shil'ra lived. A small garden had been planted behind the church as well, and when he returned to the front of the building Namid saw that Generith was now at the top of the steps and bidding a good evening to the small crowd that gathered there.
"Is the Emissary here tonight?" someone asked.
"No," Generith replied. "She and her mother will be here for service tomorrow morning."
After he disappeared into the chapel, the crowd did not disband. Instead, they continued to hold vigil around the steps and in the camp, and someone began singing. Other voices joined in, and Namid scowled as he turned away. Hatred for these believers and their false prophet churned in his gut, and he walked quickly back to his hostel to prepare for tomorrow's service.
Once safely in his room he locked the door and then opened one of his travel cases. Beneath a false bottom were the pieces of his weapon. He began assembling the pistol, quickly and efficiently snapping each part into place, and then he checked his ammunition. It was reasonable to expect that there would be twice the amount of security officers there tomorrow than there was right now, but Namid doubted that the parishioners would be searched before entering the church. There had been nothing in the news feeds recently about attacks against Aliira, only demonstrations by other faiths who denounced her as a false prophet.
However, High Cleric Lortait had implied during his conversation with Namid three weeks earlier that Namid was being hired because someone else had failed. Namid didn't press for any more information, but simply accepted his assignment. He found it interesting, though, that if a previous assassination attempt had indeed failed that there was no mention of it in any of the several dozen local and galactic news services. That was either a testament to the security of Aliira's entourage, or Namid had misread Lortait's implication.
Even if the local officers used standard security scanners, the pistol would never be detected. Its material was a type of hard plastic that would not register on a body scan, nor was it powered by an energy cell like most standard disruptors. This gun fired old fashioned bullets, and even those wouldn't be detected because they, too, were constructed of a hard plastic and topped with hollow points. The drawback to this design was that the weapon needed to be fired at close range in order to be lethal, and that meant that Raukas would not be getting out of this assignment alive.
But neither would he allow himself to be captured. In the inner lining of the other travel case was a tiny capsule that he inserted beneath the skin of his inner right forearm with a hypo-needle. It was deep enough that only a sustained, firm pressure of about two seconds would set it off, releasing its fatal poison into his blood stream. At that point, it would only be a minute, at most, before his heart stopped. The poison worked by destroying the tissue of his heart muscle, thus preventing any attempts at resuscitation.
Namid laid his weapon aside and walked to the desk where he switched on the computer terminal. Because the church had a classical design, it was safe to assume that the layout of its sanctuary was similar to other churches that had been built in the same era. It was obvious from the way that the constables were standing outside the church that none of the parishioners were being let inside until tomorrow morning. But Namid wanted to get a feel for the layout of the auditorium before then, so he downloaded a map from an interweb depot that specialized in architectural history.
That sanctuary would be packed, that much was certain, and, in order to get close enough to Aliira to fire a kill shot to the head, Namid would have to find a seat in either the first or second row. That meant arriving early enough to be among the first allowed through the doors when they opened for service. And, judging by the number of people already camped out in the lot next to the church, arriving early would mean sometime later tonight.
Namid sighed with disgust at the thought of spending all night with those heathens, but it didn't appear as if he had any other choice. He glanced at the time display at the top of the computer screen. It was late afternoon, only a couple hours before sunset, and Raukas' stomach growled. He decided to eat at one of the cafés near the church so he could further observe the building and those around it. He rose, reached for his coat, and tucked the gun into an inside pocket with a specially designed holster. Before he leaving his room he knelt and prayed to Onng Le'Roh for strength and courage.
"Bless me, Guardian of my Soul, for tomorrow I shall come into your Hall. Forgive me now of all my sins, and wash me in your holy blood, as you have done for all saints now and past. Ok'Thra."
( 5 )
Tah'Mor Generith was also kneeling. He was alone in the sanctuary of his church, and his words echoed off the vaulted ceiling as he recited his evening prayers. The silent faces of the Varashok, painted on the wall at the fr
ont of the auditorium, looked down upon him with somber eyes.
When he finished, he rose and gathered up the hem of his robe as he ascended the steps behind the sanctuary that led to his apartment. He set a pot on the stove to boil water for tea, and then changed out of his vestments. He frowned as he scrolled through the menu of his food processor, unable to decide what he wanted for dinner. He poured the tea, and then stood at his kitchen window, looking out upon his garden. The Murdohn lilies were finally starting to bloom, and in the light of the sunset they appeared to shimmer with copper and gold. They'd been a gift from one of his parishioners some years back, and Tah'Mor sighed with regret that he hadn't been able to work in his garden for over a month now.
Not since the rebirth of the Emissary.
The shil'ra sighed once more as he turned away from the window and sipped his tea. The fulfillment of Tor'Ahl's first prophecy gave him great joy, but beneath that was an uneasiness and dread as he remembered the words of the messenger on that stormy night just a few weeks ago. The voice had told him that the Emissary would need his help and protection, and, ever since, Tah'Mor had tried to learn exactly what it was that he – a simple priest of a small church in a rural town – was supposed to do to protect the reincarnation of a three thousand year old prophet who was arguably the greatest religious figure of Chrisarii history.
Aliira was surrounded day and night with a squadron of guards assigned to her by the Conclave of Thardane, the governing body of the Church of the Varashok. Whenever she was out in public, there was at least four officers with her, and while she had no permanent residence yet due to her tour of the empire for the last month, she would soon be housed at the grand cathedral in Lar'A'Tol. While she was on tour, she and her mother had stayed aboard a military warship, and even that ship was in the escort of two other warships at all times. So how much more protection did the Varashok believe their Emissary needed?