by Sales, Ian
Where are you now?
Returning to Syrena from Shuto. I have seen enough there. Ariman has his sappers building parapets and revetments—I understand little of the vocabulary of warfare. But I saw enough to understand he will be there for many weeks.
And now, it said, I must leave you. If I thought my good wishes would help you in your battle on Geneza, I would offer them.
The blue figure held out its arms and began to reduce in size. The conversation was over. As Ormuz watched, the figure shrank as if moving rapidly away. All too soon, it was no more than a palely glowing dot. And then gone.
Ormuz was once again alone in the nomosphere. He considered what he had been told by the blue figure. The Serpent, dug into the greensward of the Imperial Household District, investing the Imperial Palace. A siege that was likely to last weeks. The defenders of the Palace had proven too effective—or perhaps the Serpent had underestimated their numbers. Whatever the reason, the battalions of Housecarls and household troops manning the trenches had proven insufficient.
Was the Serpent expecting the forces he was sending to Geneza to then help him defeat the Palace’s defenders?
No, the Serpent had told him once that the army gathering there was intended to play no part in the attack on the Palace. Geneza was a trap, the Serpent’s troops its bait and the Admiral’s forces its target. But…
Ormuz turned back to the black sun of data beside which he hovered. He stretched out a hand and willed data to fill it. Prominences and protuberances burst forth from the ebon mass, arced through colourless, lightless space, and into his palm. He sorted and sifted the information raining upon him.
Ah. This was it. Orders for the Imperial Gold Watch. Ahasz was the regiment’s colonel-in-chief. They had been en route to Geneza, but new orders issued only the day before now instructed them to make way for Shuto. They were to bolster the army beseiging the Imperial Palace. Would it be enough to swing the balance against the defenders?
When would they arrive?
By his quick reckoning of the route they must take to the Imperial capital… The Serpent’s army on Shuto would be reinforced in some sixty-five days. Two weeks after the upcoming Battle of Geneza.
Ormuz had learnt—and been told—what he had come here to discover. There was no reason to stay.
And he too was gone.
Ormuz scrambled up from his bunk and set about making himself look presentable. He had only lain down, fully-dressed, in order to visit the nomosphere. A quick glance at the chronometer on the desk told him he had been away for some two hours, and it was now the middle of first watch. Time, it seemed, passed even more slowly in the nomosphere. His conversation with the blue figure and explorations had appeared to take only minutes.
He ran his fingers through his hair, pulled it back and secured it in a pony-tail. Grabbing his sword from a chair, he fastened it to his belt. After pulling on a jacket—it would hide his rumpled tunic—he stepped out of his cabin. He leaned over the balcony railing before his cabin and gazed for’ard the length of the great hall. He saw a pair of officers hurrying about their business. At this time of the evening, those officers on daily schedule would be in their cabins, a wardroom, or making use of recreational facilities. The Admiral would be —
“Komornik,” he said. He turned about. His valet aboard Vengeful was standing behind him. The man must have some psychic connection. The door to the cabin was not so noisy it could be heard above the everyday rumbles, rattles, clanks and humming of the battlecruiser.
“Your highness?” Komornik had heard Ormuz described as “Prince Casimir” and decided that was his true rank.
“The Admiral?”
“In the chapel, your highness.”
Ormuz nodded. Komornik had an uncanny ability to know the comings and goings of all the battlecruiser’s command officers.
For a moment, he gazed at Komornik. Despite ten weeks of service, he had yet to understand the man. Short, fussy and particular, with a head of off-putting roundness and on whose front impassive features appeared to have been painted, he often struck Ormuz as a person of indeterminate gender. But he was efficient, quiet, and discrete—all admirable qualities in a valet. Varä found him amusing. Kormornik had yet to share his own opinion of the marquis.
“The chapel, you said.”
Komornik gave an abrupt bow in acknowledgement, arms straight at his sides. Ormuz smiled in reply, spun about and strode away along the gallery.
When the Admiral chose to meditate in the ship’s chapel, her officers knew well enough to leave her be. None would dare disturb her. Except perhaps Lieutenant-Commander Rinharte, who was no longer aboard. Ormuz pushed open the carved wooden door and slipped inside the silent and hushed chamber. The stained glass window threw rich colours across the wooden pews, tinting the woods and cushions.
The Admiral sat on the front row of benches, her hands in her lap, her head bowed. Golden light from the window stained her shaved scalp, creating the impression of a metal golem at rest. Her head shot up as Ormuz neared, dispelling the illusion. She looked back over her shoulder, and her dark eyes glittered in her yellow-painted face. Her mouth moved in a smile, both grim and welcoming.
“Casimir,” she said. “You have news.”
He nodded, crossed in several long strides to stand beside her, and then dropped bonelessly to sit. His sword knocked against the wood. “Good. And bad.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps the other way around.”
“Speak.”
He told her of his meeting with the blue figure in the nomosphere. He described his findings to the Admiral: the Serpent settling in to a weeks-long siege of the Imperial Palace, battalions of the Imperial Gold Watch diverted from Geneza to reinforce the investiture of the Palace.
“This blue figure,” the Admiral said. “It said it was the Lady Mayna?”
“It said it was the sister of both the Serpent and myself.” Ormuz peered at the Admiral. The gold had slid from her face and now illuminated one shoulder and a section of bench. “Do you know her?”
“Yes.” She nodded slowly. “A great beauty. Charming… As charming as Ahasz himself, certainly. And known for her generosity. I… liked her very much.”
“I don’t understand why she’s helping me.” He grimaced. “Us.”
“It is a mystery to me too, Casimir. But we are no position to spurn assistance. We must take it where we find it.”
“I suspect —” He paused, unsure how to proceed. “I suspect,” he began again, “we would not be here now without her help. I definitely wouldn’t be.”
The Admiral frowned. “What do you mean?”
Ormuz held out his left-hand, his sword hand, flexed his fingers and rotated his wrist. “Varä says I’ve reached master already. We’re evenly matched now. I could perhaps even beat Marine-Captain Kordelasz. Varä thinks there is something in my genes that explains the speed with which I’ve become so skilled so quickly with the sword.”
“Your abilities are astonishing, Casimir, so his proposition is not beyond credibility.”
“No. From something she said… In the nomosphere one time. I think she, Lady Mayna, has been ‘giving’ me these abilities, as if they were protocols and I were a mechanism.”
“In other words, without her help you would still be a rude dogsbody aboard a data-freighter.”
Ormuz grinned ruefully. “Something like that.”
The Admiral sighed. “She has forged you as if you were a sword.”
“No.” Ormuz shook his head. “The knights sinister forged me. She simply… tempered me.”
“To what end?” The Admiral gestured vaguely, as if by indicating the chapel she encompassed both Vengeful and her entire fleet. “This? A fleet en route to Geneza to do battle with the Serpent? A force equal to the task of preventing him take the Imperial Throne? Why should she work against him? She is his sister.”
Ormuz found Varä in the quarter-deck wardroom. He stood a moment in
the doorway and watched the marquis. With his long black hair in twin braids, he would never be taken for a naval officer. And while he had put away his foppish wardrobe at the Admiral’s insistence, his expertly-tailored clothing still marked him as a high noble. For all he presented as a young profligate dilettante, he was actually a junior member of the Order of the Left Hand, a knight sinister. After their adventures together since Kapuluan, Ormuz had persuaded him to break his oath to them.
Some of the marquis’ “habits”, however, had proven too hard to mend. Ormuz signalled to Varä with a beckoning finger. The marquis grimaced apologetically at the lieutenant sitting opposite him, rose to his feet and crossed to Ormuz.
“Don’t abuse the Admiral’s hospitality,” Ormuz told him, having seen the look the marquis had been giving his companion.
Varä pouted. “I wouldn’t dream of abusing anyone,” he protested. “Well, not unless they asked me to.”
“I don’t want to know.” Ormuz strode off along the length of the great hall. He headed for the nearest ladder leading to the deck below. Varä hurried to catch up.
The Admiral had initially exiled the marquis to Tempest, but after three weeks aboard the troop-transport, Ormuz had brought him back aboard Vengeful. He missed his company. The Admiral was mostly dour and humourless, and her officers treated her with a respect and admiration bordering on reverence. The face of Captain Flavia umar Shutan which Ormuz loved, he saw only in private and then less frequently than he would have liked. Ormuz could not socialise with the lower decks, even though he had been a prole longer than he had been a prince. Given his new role, it would not be seemly.
And so he had asked, and the Admiral had reluctantly agreed to allow Varä to return.
The pair descended into the bowels of the ship, dropping from the superstructure deep into the hull. On the lower deck, Ormuz led the way along the gangway towards the stern. He and Varä passed gunrooms, stores and workshops. Although neither wore naval uniform, their faces were well enough known aboard not to cause comment, even here amongst the proletarian rateds and petty officers. Perhaps those proles looked at him, and saw a young prince who had once been proletarian too. If Ormuz could do it, was it not possible they might too?
They were deluded, of course. A prole could never become a noble. Promotion to yeoman status was possible, if rare; but an individual had to be extraordinary for such a promotion. Ormuz had made the impossible leap because his blood was noble. He may have grown up a prole, but he was a clone of a high noble—one of the highest of nobles, in fact; a family of the first rank, the Vonshuans, who traced their ancestry back to Geneza before the discovery of the topologic drive.
Which meant entirely nothing in the eyes of the law. Ormuz’s ennoblement was wholly self-declared; he had only the legitimacy of the Admiral’s acceptance of his princedom. And even then she was only likely complicit because it suited her aims.
The two approached a hatch, outside of which two ship’s corporals stood at ease. They snapped to attention as Ormuz halted before them. One undogged the hatch and swung it wide. Ormuz and Varä entered the gunroom. The three people sitting at a table at the far end of the chamber turned to them. One rose to his feet.
“Lex, Marla, Adril,” said Ormuz, smiling as he crossed the gunroom.
“Cas,” replied Lexander Lotsman. He glanced down at the still-seated Marla Dai and Adril Tovar, then looked up again. “Or should I say, ‘your highness’?”
Ormuz frowned. “There’s no need to stand on ceremony, Lex.” He gestured one-handedly. “And you know as well I do, I’m no prince.”
“Then who’s this Prince Casimir we’ve been hearing so much about?”
Ormuz pulled out a chair and sat down. Varä remained standing behind him. “Lex,” Ormuz said, “you know it’s me they’re talking about. I never claimed to be a prince. A clone of a duke, yes. Even you wouldn’t deny that—it was you who cloned me, after all.”
“Not me, Cas,” said Lotsman.
“You’re a knight sinister. You’re all three knights sinister.” Lotsman, Tovar and Dai had been crew aboard Divine Providence, a data-freighter covertly operated by the Order of the Left Hand. They had been men-at-arms of the ship’s captain, Murily Plessant.
Lotsman, tall, long- and loose-limbed, an unkempt moustache framing his upper lip, had been Ormuz’s closest friend on Divine Providence. Short, tubby, balding Tovar he had always found difficult to take in more than small doses. And Dai, with her platinum hair and melodrama actor looks… Her sharp tongue and abrasiveness had dissuaded Ormuz from too close familiarity.
“We were also your friends,” pointed out Tovar.
“You still are, Adril.” Ormuz placed his hands on the table-top and clasped them together. “Which is why it pains me to know you’re locked up down here. If you gave me your parole, you could have the run of the ship. And when we reached Obok, I’m sure I could persuade the Admiral to let you go.”
“Obok? That’s our next stop?” demanded Dai.
“No. Kunta, capital of the duchy, is our next stop. But I don’t think it wise to let you loose there.”
“You know we can’t give you our parole, Casimir,” Lotsman said sadly. “We have a duty to our Order.”
Ormuz slapped the table. “Duty!” he snapped. “I’d have thought you were beyond that! You’ve been prisoners aboard Vengeful for a quarter of a year. And yet we’ve heard nothing from the knights sinister—no requests for news of your condition, no demands for your release. They’ve forgotten about you, Lex. You failed and they no longer care.”
Dai answered. Leaning forward, arms crossed tightly across bosom, she glared at Ormuz. “No. You don’t know them. They’ll never forget us.”
“You think they’re plotting to free you? They have no agents aboard Vengeful.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “Do they, Varä?”
“Actually, Casimir,” the marquis admitted, “I would be the last to know.”
“But they put you close to me as their agent,” Ormuz pointed out.
“True,” Varä said. “But the Involutes are fiendishly cunning. For all I know, the Admiral herself could be working for them.” He put a hand to his mouth and aped shock. “With them, I should say.”
Ignoring Varä’s giggles, Ormuz turned back to the Divine Providence crew. “I can’t keep you prisoner until this is all over; I don’t want to keep you prisoner until this is all over. But what else can I do? The Admiral won’t let you have your freedom aboard Vengeful. Perhaps I can persuade her to leave you behind on Geneza after the battle —”
“Well, thank you very much,” grated Dai.
Few ships visited Geneza. After Emperor Edkar I had sacked the world almost 1,300 years ago, and declared his own empire, he had shipped most of the planet’s population elsewhere and converted much of its surface to parkland.
Leaving the crew of Divine Providence there would effectively maroon them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Ahasz came awake to a hand shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see his batman, Denever, standing over him. The duke groaned, swung his legs off the cot and sat upright. “What time is it?” he asked. He still felt tired, so he could not have had much sleep.
“Just after five in the morning, your grace,” Denever replied. He proffered a battered tin mug of coffee.
“Damn.” Ahasz had not managed to lie down until two o’clock. His orders had been to wake him at seven. He sipped the coffee, which was hot and bitter. The taste, more than anything, brought home to him his current situation: kipping in a command post in the trench complex he had ordered built in the Imperial Household District. It seemed quite unreal. Despite the constant barrage of directed-energy bolts from the Imperial Palace emplacements. Despite even the assault by the knights militant two days ago. This was a war, and this rude shelter, this poor beverage, this uncomfortable cot, all signalled as such.
He put the mug on the wooden floor, stretched out his
arms and yawned. He felt dirty, unwashed. And well he should: he had not bathed in the last three days. The constant battering by the Imperial Palace Artillery, and frequent assaults by the knights stalwart and knights militant, had taken their toll.
Supplies were running short, the loads being shipped into the District, on the railway his troops controlled, were lighter each day. He had not planned for an extended campaign and the stockpiles hidden on his estate were rapidly depleting. A handful of nobles had agreed to sell his quartermasters much-needed foodstuffs and equipment—at wildly exorbitant prices. Short-sighted foolishness. Once he was on the Throne, Ahasz would ensure their greed was repaid.
“So?” he asked, yawning. He lifted up his jacket and slipped into it. “Why have I been woken early? I left strict instructions.”
“A runner from the District entrance, your grace. Apparently there are troops massing for an attack.”
The duke barked a laugh. “What? Who would be so damn foolish? They’ll be massacred.”
He rose to his feet, blinked at a slight disorientation. “Never mind.” He held out a hand. “Sword.”
Denever picked up the duke’s sword-belt from a nearby stool and handed it to his master. Ahasz quickly buckled it about his waist, and fiddled with the lockets to ensure the sheathed blade hung free and would not impede movement.
“Let’s go,” he said.
A command car was waiting on the back-slope of Palace Road, near the exit from the trenches. Dawn was about to break, a faint orange glow lightening the sky to the east above Mount Yama and the ridge running north and south from it. The sky above, a flawless dome of darkness, was dusted with stars. Ahasz breathed in deeply. The crisp air smelt of burnt earth, scorched grass, the hot ozone left behind by directed-energy bolts. He picked his way between the craters to where the car bobbed in silhouette on its chargers. A hatch swung open, letting out dim red light. Ahasz scrambled within.