by Sales, Ian
There was a moment of embarrassed silence.
“‘Today’?” parroted a lieutenant-colonel.
“You are ready, I take it.”
“Yes, but…”
“You never thought it would actually come to this,” finished Ahasz.
The lieutenant-colonel gave a sheepish smile.
“Be warned, I’m serious in this.” He raised a hand to his eight troopers, and they stepped forward and brandished their hammers menacingly. “You knew this day was coming, and you accepted the part you must play. Get your men armed and provisioned.
“Or must I have you killed one by one until you do as I command?”
A regimental-major was the first to obey. Stepping up beside the lieutenant-colonel, he gave a bow, and said, “I shall have my company make ready immediately, your grace.”
More officers moved forward.
“Good.” Ahasz descended the stairs and crossed to the campaign-consultant. He put his hands to the glass and gazed at the map. “Call Tayisa,” he instructed the nearest of his troopers. “Tell him to bring his battlefield-consultant. We’ll pump the data from his plan into this monstrosity.” He slapped the glass before him. “By nightfall, I’ll either have my arse on the Imperial Throne…
“Or we’ll all be dead.”
CHAPTER TWO
The masked assassin lunged, the point of his sword aimed at Casimir Ormuz’s heart. There was no time to raise his own blade; Ormuz twisted. The blade slid by his ribs, whispering against the cloth of his jacket. He had his own sword held high, above his head. He swept it down, hooking the assassin’s blade with his hilt, pushing it aside. A flick of the wrist to disengage his sword—he pulled his arm back, he thrust. The assassin fell back, dead before he hit the ground. He made no sound.
Another blade slashed across Ormuz’s vision, and he turned to defend himself. His last attack had left him open. He danced back, whipped his sword up to parry. The assassin’s blade missed him by inches, but Ormuz did not have room to riposte. Instead, he stepped forwards, inside the assassin’s reach, and pushed him backwards.
Behind him, Ormuz heard Omais mar Puoskari, the Marquess Varä, grunt in surprise. Moments later, Varä was back at his side.
Two assassins lay dead at their feet but another two confronted them. The only sounds Ormuz heard were the rasp of steel on steel, the thudding of his own heart. His sword seemed to move of its own accord, an extension of his will. It arrowed in on his attacker’s weaknesses, darted forth to stab, to parry, to riposte. He had no time to think, his focus was fixed entirely on the point of his blade.
He stabbed the assassin before him in the throat. Blood jetted forwards, splashing Ormuz’s arm. He ignored it. The man stumbled backward, and Ormuz stabbed him a second time, his point sliding into his heart.
A body falling to Ormuz’s right abruptly captured his attention. It wore black, so it was not Varä. Ormuz sidestepped the corpse. He looked up, wondering at the lack of movement about him.
The corridor was empty but for himself and the marquess. They had killed all the assassins.
Ormuz glanced back, and saw a pair of bodies on the floor. There were also two at his feet. Four assassins. Each one clad in black, and masked. Ormuz had seen their like before, almost a year ago on Ophavon. On that night, four masked men in black had boarded Divine Providence and tried to kill him. Ormuz had been saved that time by Marine-Captain Garrin demar Kordelasz of the renegade battlecruiser Vengeful. But now Ormuz could fight his own battles, now he was a master swordsman himself.
“Where did they come from?” asked Varä. “How did they get here?”
“No idea,” replied Ormuz.
He looked at the marquess, and saw the same thought occur to him. They had come down to the surface of Linna to visit Inspector Sliva demar Finesz. She was, for the time-being, staying with her “prisoner”, Commander Abad mar Mubariz, in the pilots’ quarters at the ducal aerodrome.
“A boat,” said Ormuz. “Damn.”
He broke into a run, turned the corner at the end of the corridor, and leapt down the steps into the terminal’s examination hall. To his left, a windowed wall looked out onto the aerodrome’s apron. It was there, on that flat expanse of dressed stone—scarred by the fierce flames of gas-rockets, decorated with black glassy craters where the beams of field-pieces had hit—it was there Ormuz had witnessed the slaughter of the Duke of Kunta’s guests by the Imperial Provincial Foot. Sitting not ten yards from the launch which had brought Ormuz and Varä down from Vengeful floated a second boat. A pinnace, its bow-doors wide open.
“They must have come in that,” said Varä, stating the obvious.
“But which ship is it from?” asked Ormuz.
The only vessels in orbit about Linna were those in the Admiral’s fleet. The pinnace must have come from one of them.
“We have to find out which vessel the boat belongs to,” Ormuz continued. “If there’s a traitor in the fleet, we need to know who it is.”
Ormuz ran across to the door which opened onto the apron. As he approached, it slid aside. He exited under a pale blue sky like deep clear ice, a day so sharp he felt as though he could see for thousands of miles. He could certainly see, even from a distance of a hundred yards or more, dark shapes moving in the scuttles on the boat’s control cupola. He hoped they were not readying the pinnace for departure.
Increasing his pace, Ormuz ran for the boat. The bow-doors were moving now, slowly coming together.
“Faster!” he called to the marquess, but Varä was falling behind.
It was cold. Ormuz regretted shedding his greatcoat when the assassins had appeared, but he would not have been able to fight wearing it. An icy wind sliced across the apron, spurring him to run even faster. He reached the pinnace, out of breath, and jumped up onto the ramp leading into its hull.
Standing there, trying to pull air into his lungs, he saw that the pinnace was empty. Four lines of seats, all deserted. A thump above his head drew his attention. Behind him, he heard Varä scramble aboard. He looked back over his shoulder at the marquess, then pointed up with his sword.
Above his head, accessed by a ladder, sat the boat’s control cupola. If the crew completed sealing the bow-doors—and they were still closing slowly—the pinnace would launch.
The ladder to the control cupola was recessed into the ceiling to Ormuz’s left. He stepped beneath it and reached up. His fingers closed on the bottom rung. He pulled, and the ladder smoothly swung down. Once its foot touched the deck, he stepped onto to it and scrambled up. Someone in the control cupola let out a shout. The head of the ladder was located under the instrument panel between the seats of the pilot and the stationkeeper. Ormuz could see the lower legs and feet of the two crew, so he jabbed the pilot’s knee with his sword, hard enough to hurt but not to wound.
The pilot let out a yelp. Ormuz did the same to the stationkeeper. “Up,” he told them. “Out of your chairs. Move to the back of the cupola. Next to the artificer. Or I stick you through both kneecaps.”
The two crew scrambled to obey. Once they had left their seats, Ormuz clambered into the control cupola. He straightened and, blade at the ready, regarded the three rateds clustered at the rear of the cupola. No, two rateds and a petty officer; two men and a woman. They wore Imperial Navy uniforms, so they must be from one of the warships in the Admiral’s fleet.
Varä climbed into the cupola, and stood beside Ormuz. “What have we got here?” he asked archly.
“I don’t recognise the crest,” replied Ormuz.
On their right shoulders, each of the boat crew wore a ship’s crest. It depicted an old-fashioned timepiece and above it a red crown.
The marquess shrugged. He had no reason to recognise it either.
“What ship?” demanded Ormuz. He brandished his sword threateningly.
The petty officer stepped forward and spoke, “Arnabyad, my lord.”
“What’s that? A destroye
r? A frigate?”
“Frigate, my lord.”
“And you brought the assassins?”
“What assassins, my lord?”
“The ones lying dead in the terminal building.”
“My lord, we were only obeying orders.”
“Not good enough.” Ormuz turned away from the three boat crew. He’d learn nothing from them. It was plain they were scared and confused, so he thought it unlikely they fully subscribed to the Serpent’s conspiracy. No, that would be the officers aboard Arnabyad, those who had cut the orders of these three.
He remembered enough of the workings of Divine Providence’s control cupola to spot the pinnace’s signals console beside the stationkeeper’s instruments. He reached out, selected an open circuit and called Vengeful’s launch. He could see the boat through the scuttle by his head, floating on the chargers in its keel as if it had yet to decide to touch ground.
After instructing the launch’s boatswain to signal Vengeful and let the Admiral know what had happened, Ormuz turned back to his three prisoners. What should he do with them? He could not kill them, he was not so callous. Nor could he let them go free.
With his sword, he gestured for them to cross to the ladder. “Down below, Varä,” he quietly ordered the marquess, and once Varä had descended Ormuz sent the boat crew after him. He looked about the control cupola one more time, but could not determine what else needed to be done. He shrugged, bent forward and peered out of the scuttle beside the signalman’s chair at Vengeful’s launch, and shrugged again on seeing that nothing had changed.
Down below, Varä had made the prisoners take seats, their backs against the hull, facing towards the centre, while the marquess stood at the end of the aisle. As Ormuz stepped off the ladder, a sharp rap sounded against the hull near the prow. There was a scuttle nearby, so he crossed and gazed out. A figure in blue moved into view and waved. Ormuz recognised him: the boatswain from the launch.
The controls for the bow-doors were near the scuttle. Ormuz set them to open, and the ramp to extend down to the ground, and waited. A blade of cold light cut into the shadowed interior of the pinnace, grew wider as the sunlight seemed to force apart the doors. The boatswain was at first just a silhouette; he put a foot to the ramp and strode up to Ormuz. As Ormuz’s eyes adjusted, the man took on form and features.
“My lord? I’ve come to take your prisoners in hand,” he said.
“Ah, good.”
“Vengeful is to shortly send down a jolly boat.”
Which was unexpected news, but not unwelcome. Ormuz gestured for Varä to join him. They exited the boat and, standing once more outside, Ormuz looked about him at the apron and its surrounding steppes beneath the sere sky, and it struck him that there had been no way of undoing the choices he had made for many weeks.
He was set on this path now. And he must get used to having a bloody sword in his hand.
The jolly boat swept the length of the runway, descending as it did so. The thunder of its gas-rockets echoed across the apron. After some two thousand feet, the boat abruptly decelerated, and its prow swung about until it pointed towards where Ormuz, Varä and Finesz waited by Arnabyad’s pinnace.
“Is this wise?” asked Finesz. “What if more clones are hidden somewhere near, waiting for the Admiral’s arrival?”
The Serpent had made an attempt on the Admiral’s life here on Linna before. Mate Leka demar Kowo, Vengeful’s coxswain, had died in her place. Ormuz remembered it well—to his great shame, he had unknowingly brought the assassin, disguised as a young woman called Aszabella, before the Admiral.
“Then we shall protect her,” replied Ormuz.
The gas-rockets of the jolly boat died away to a sibilant hiss, and then stopped. The sudden silence seemed like a hole in the air, and it was a moment before the sigh of the wind rushed in to fill it. The boat floated some two feet above the apron, solid and immobile as if supported upon invisible legs. A black line appeared at the prow, widened to a crack and then further, and the bow-doors slowly swung apart. A ramp slid from the craft’s interior to the ground.
Ormuz moved forward to greet the arrivals. By the time he reached the jolly boat, the Admiral and Major Mattus demar Skaria, Vengeful’s major of marines, had descended the ramp and now stood upon the dressed stone of the apron. Ormuz heard booted feet from within the maw of the craft and, moments later, a boat-squad of marines marched down the ramp. A second boat-squad followed, then a third; and finally a young officer. Ormuz recognised her, but they had never spoken: Marine-Lieutenant Thrima demar Kiserö.
“What trouble have you found now, Casimir?” asked the Admiral.
“It found me,” he replied. “Well, they did.” He gestured at the pinnace behind him. “Four clone assassins.”
“In the boat?”
“No, in the terminal.”
The Admiral turned to gaze at the pinnace. “Who does it belong to?”
“Arnabyad. A frigate,” said Ormuz.
“I know her.” The Admiral looked back at Ormuz and frowned. “She joined us a day ago. I know of her captain—a good man, I’d believed. You are certain these assassins are the Serpent’s?”
“Definitely. Who else would try to kill me?” Ormuz glanced back over his shoulder at the terminal building. “I’ll show you,” he said.
He turned about and started across the apron. Kiserö hurried to join him. “My lord,” she said, and with a jerk of the head indicated the others. “We must stay together.”
They stopped, so the rest of the party could catch up. Varä and Finesz, then the Admiral and Major Skaria within a cordon of marines. Once at the terminal, Kiserö took a boat-squad inside with her to secure the area. Ormuz waited impatiently, and strode within the moment the marine-lieutenant signalled it was safe. He had not expected any danger: the assassins were dead.
Their bodies lay where they had fallen. Blood had pooled and spread about them, black against the polished white stone of the floor. The corpses’ coveralls blended into it, as if black drapes had been thrown carelessly across them. Ormuz approached the nearest assassin, carefully avoiding the blood, bent over and pulled the mask from the body’s head. He winced as the skull bounced against the floor with a wet thud. But now they could all see the clone’s face…
“The ones on Tempest…,” said Finesz.
Yes, Ormuz too had seen the identical clones in the sarcophagi aboard Captain Rinharte’s troop-transport. “The Serpent sent them,” he said. There could no uncertainty now.
The Admiral sighed. “Something must be done about Arnabyad.”
She turned and walked to the end of the corridor, where a short flight of steps led down into the examination hall. Crossing her arms across her bosom, she gazed out at the apron. Ormuz joined her.
“I would sooner not be reminded,” she said quietly, “how little value some place upon their word. I expect every captain in my fleet to stand by the promise he made to me. To think that some would behave so dishonourably…”
Ormuz could not determine if she was saddened or disgusted. Perhaps both.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Remove her, remove the canker in our fleet.”
“You mean, shoot Arnabyad with Vengeful’s main gun?” He was horrified. A frigate’s crew numbered in the hundreds—surely not all of those aboard deserved to die?
“Of course not, Casimir.” The Admiral directed a sharp glance at him. “We cannot know how many other ships would come to her defence. We must do this with care.” She descended into the examination hall and turned to look out at the three boats on the apron: a pinnace, a launch and a jolly boat.
“There,” said the Admiral, “there is our ruse. Do you know the tale of Lord Uma?”
The Admiral had a habit of illustrating points by referencing the lives of Chianist avatars.
She continued, “He was one of the chief architects of the spread of Chianism across Shuto, but not eve
ryone welcomed the message he brought. A city, Wilusa, was one such. She would not open her gates to Lord Uma, and he could not breach her walls. So he devised a stratagem. He built a giant effigy of the god worshipped by the Wilusi, and he and a dozen warriors hid within it —”
Ormuz interrupted, “And the rest of the army pretended to retreat. Then the Wilusi went and fetched the statue and took it inside their city. It’s a famous story. I’d forgotten it was from The Book of the Sun.”
“Perhaps you are more familiar with Maro’s Of Praise? No? It is a classic literary work of the Old Empire. I shall lend you my copy.” She gestured at the three boats floating patiently outside. “But the point I wish to make is: I have there my means of breaching Arnabyad’s wall.”
“The pinnace,” said Ormuz.
“I shall send it packed to the gunwales with my marines. They shall seize her for me, and then we shall see how her captain explains this.”
“I’d like to go too.” He hadn’t thought about it, the urge suddenly came to him, and so he spoke.
“It is too dangerous, Casimir. I forbid it.”
“I need to do something,” he complained. “I’ve dragged you into this, and now I just sit about and do nothing. All those captains up there—everyone up there in orbit—they all wonder who I am and what I’m doing here. They call me ‘my lord’ and ‘Prince Casimir’ but they don’t know who I am. I don’t really know who I am.” He wanted to take the Admiral’s hands in his own, but dare not. “I’m not the proletarian cabin-boy I was a year ago aboard Divine Providence. If I’m to fight the Serpent, then I need to lead. Let me take Arnabyad, let me take the marines aboard her. When others hear of it, it will strenthen our position, our leadership.”
The Admiral was silent a moment. She continued to stare out at the apron, her hands clasped behind her back. “You make an excellent point,” she said at length. “I would not have you thought of no consequence. But neither could I afford to lose you.” She turned to him, unclasped her hands and put them on his shoulders. She squeezed familiarly. “Be careful, Casimir. Show yourself the leader I know you to be, but do it with caution.”