by Sales, Ian
The Admiral was not on the Captain’s Bridge nor in her suite. Her secretary was not yet on duty, and her footman gave only a vague apologetic smile when Ormuz demanded his mistress’s location. Heavy-footed, Ormuz made his way around the gallery to the lift and stepped out into the conning-tower well. A lift-shelf appeared beneath his feet. Once he was stood entirely on it, the shelf began to descend. At each deck of the conning-tower, Ormuz stepped off and searched for the Admiral.
She was not in in her suite, nor in Fire Control. The Chartroom was locked, and in Registrations/Acquisitions the plotting tables clattered quietly to themselves. The Signals House was empty, as was the Computational Office. Entering the chapel, Ormuz wondered why he had not tried it first. But she was not there.
The Admiral would not be in a wardroom. She ate in her suite. Unless there was some celebratory meal or other event and she had been invited by the wardroom. But at such an early hour? Besides, Ormuz would have been invited as well. He remained on good terms with the battlecruiser’s officers. Standing outside the Computational Office, hands to the railing before him, he gazed blankly for’ard, across the conning-tower well. The door he could see gave onto the Signals Distribution Office. That had been Commander Mubariz’s bailiwick. The executive officer was responsible for signals distribution, among other things. But Lieutenant-Commander Voyna was executive officer now, and he would not be on duty for several hours.
But, perhaps? Ormuz strolled along the gallery to the Office’s entrance and pushed open the door. He stood there in the doorway and smiled as the Admiral turned from a rated and frowned at him.
“I have more information,” he told her.
“Is it good?” she asked.
“I think so.” Unbidden, an image from his nightmare came to mind and he scowled.
“You do not appear to be sure,” the Admiral remarked.
“No, it’s not that.” Ormuz shook his head, as if to dislodge the image. “That’s… something else.” An idea occurred to him: the Admiral was well-versed in Chianist scripture and creed. “I’d like to talk to you about it, if you permit.”
“Your news first, I think.” She gave the rated beside whom she stood a terse nod, then turned about and crossed towards Ormuz in the doorway.
He stepped back, still holding open the door. Once she was on the gallery, he let the door to the Signals Distribution Office swing shut. “Ahasz,” he said, “is besieging the Imperial Palace. His attack has failed.”
“So far,” the Admiral corrected. “He may succeed yet.”
“The Emperor will defend himself,” he pointed out. “He has the Imperial Regiments and the Martial Orders.”
“You yourself have said the Housecarls are the Serpent’s,” replied the Admiral.
She put up a hand before Ormuz could respond. “Somewhere more private is required.”
At a smart pace, she rounded the conning-tower well and entered the chapel. Ormuz trailed after her and, once inside, followed her to the front pew. They were alone. The Admiral sat, indicated that he should join her and gazed implacably at him.
“Speak,” she said.
Ormuz sorted through what he had discovered in the nomosphere. “The Serpent attacked the Palace but was beaten off. He’s now caught in a siege. And has been for several weeks.”
“You are certain he will remain there until our arrival?”
“After Geneza? Yes. From what I saw.” Ormuz frowned. “One thing puzzles me, though. It all seems too… convenient.”
“I do not follow. What is convenient?”
Ormuz sat back and tried to order his thoughts. Going over his discoveries from the nomosphere with the Admiral, certain facts had fallen into place and he now wondered at the pattern they revealed. He was no strategist, nor was he well-educated in Imperial history. Despite his ducal blood, his “princedom”, he had been schooled with proletarians.
“Your father did nothing, although he knew about the Serpent. He just sat back and let you defend the Throne. But you could only do that by removing yourself from the Navy chain of command. He must have known that, but I’m having trouble believing He’d rely on you to mutiny.”
“You may be seeing more than exists,” the Admiral replied. “I know my father and such forward-thinking is not in his nature. Nor is a reliance on events that may not happen.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Ormuz, “your father knows you better than you think.”
The Admiral stared at him icily.
He quickly continued, “It’s not just that, ma’am. We have to go to Geneza first—the Serpent has forces gathering there and we can’t allow them to reinforce his attack on the Imperial Palace. So it will be weeks before we reach Shuto. So what happens? Ahasz attacks… and is immediately stuck in a siege. He’s probably going to be there for many weeks. Long enough to still be attacking the Throne when we arrive.” He paused, gave a puzzled smile. “Don’t you find that suspicious?”
“What are you suggesting, Casimir?” asked the Admiral, her voice low.
He opened his mouth to respond, when it suddenly struck me what the Admiral meant. “No!” he said quickly. “No. I’m not saying I think the rebellion has been planned like that. I know you and Ahasz are enemies —”
“I allow you certain liberties, Casimir,” the Admiral snapped. “Do not abuse them.”
He jumped to his feet, agitated by his inability to communicate his meaning. “No, no,” he insisted. He strode back and forth. “It’s like it was all planned. But not by us. Perhaps by Ahasz. Although I can’t understand why. A quick victory would be better for him.”
He came to an abrupt halt. “Maybe it is just coincidence, the way events there have transpired. Perhaps there is no pattern. Or none that was designed.” He turned to gaze up at the chapel’s stained-glass window, but saw little more than shapeless blobs of glowing colour. “Geneza will tell us. We know the fight ahead of us is difficult. The Serpent has numbers on his side.”
The Admiral completed his thought: “If victory is too easy, then there is more to this rebellion than there appears.”
Ormuz nodded vigorously. “Yes!”
“What makes you think this is a scheme?”
Ormuz wondered if he should make some excuse, or mention what had really occurred to him. It did not sound sane; it might even possibly be offensive to a religious person. But…
“I think,” he said, “I met Konran.”
He had anticipated several reactions—from disbelieving laughter to mild scepticism. He did not expect what the Admiral actually did. She gazed at him intently, her face expressionless, and said, “Explain.”
He told of his dream, how he had been returning from a visit to the nomosphere when he had found himself in unfamiliar surroundings. And the creature he had seen. It had not been human, for all that it possessed a human shape. No person could grow so large. Ormuz had heard of near-giants, approaching eight feet in height; but the creature of his dream was near twice that again.
“You think it was Konran?” the Admiral asked.
“Is his shape described in scripture?” returned Ormuz. His catechism had been years before and he’d not concentrated much during it.
“No. It only describes Him as the antithesis of Chian.”
“So it could be him.” Ormuz did not really believe it. The heavens and hells enumerated in The Book of the Sun were not real physical places.
But neither, he realised, was the nomosphere.
He sat back, stunned by his epiphany. He remembered nothing from Chianist scripture which might describe the nomosphere—or even the toposphere, the existence of which had been known for several millennia. But it might well be that there were other dimensions nestled alongside the three of which Ormuz knew. His dream could have been a visit to one such realm. And his strange detachment during that visit a result of the fact he was not of that universe. He did not manifest as himself in the nomosphere, after all, but as a black featu
reless human-shape, almost a shadow.
“I want to believe my dream was real,” he told the Admiral, “and yet I want it to be anything but real.”
“Perhaps you simply wish it to have meaning.”
“Do dreams have meaning?”
The Admiral made a noncommittal gesture. “Some would have it so. Myself, I sometimes feel the thoughts and actions of a day may appear, disguised or transformed, in that night’s dreams. Recognising them in these states may give useful information, may show how you feel about those thoughts and actions.”
“You think the creature I saw was something I invented to represent the Serpent?”
“Possibly.” The Admiral looked away. “Lieutenant Sorio could tell you more. He is trained in these matters.”
She gazed at him a moment. “I had not thought your beliefs strong in this area.”
“They’re not,” he admitted. “But my dream was so vivid, so real, I’m convinced it was no dream.” He gave a shrug. “I visit the nomosphere and I go there while I sleep. So why could this place not have been somewhere like it?”
“An interesting theory. Certainly your description fits no scripture of which I am aware.” She gestured vaguely. “No matter. Speak to Lieutenant Sorio, if it will set your mind at rest.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A lake of light filled the valley below Ahasz, stretching to left and right and spilling up the sides. Across from his vantage point on Shield, the golden dome of Congress glowed with an inner light, like a sun seconds away from setting or rising. He put his foot on the embrasure before him, bent and rested an arm on his upraised knee. Life in Toshi continued as normal. He could see so before him.
A train rattled along a raised track, traversing his view from right to left. Passengers visible through the carriage windows were rendered silhouettes by distance. Above the railway, vehicles flew along Imperial Boulevard, itself a path of stars across the night sky.
How, the duke wondered, could they be so oblivious to what was occurring in the Imperial Household District?
He glanced back over his shoulder and, as if to underscore the thought, witnessed a bolt of brightness shoot from an upper level of the Imperial Palace. It hit somewhere near his trenches. The barrage was almost constant.
Turning back to the city, he watched its nightly routine continue for several long minutes. At this time of day, an hour or two after working hours ceased and shortly before the night-life began to take over, there was little to see. The streets were hidden between the blocks of buildings, so foot traffic was invisible to Ahasz. The Electorate and its ancillaries had closed for the day, only a few windows on Congress shone golden. Some were still lit too on Ministries. Bureaucrats working late, Ahasz surmised. Busy siphoning funds into their private accounts, ruining the lives of people they would never meet, bettering their lot at the expense of others… He wished he could bring a field-piece up here onto the knights’ stalwart fortress and blast the butte across the valley.
But no. He had been “permitted” to besiege the Imperial Palace because he had assured the civil government he would target only the regnal government. They saw no reason to come to its aid.
Footsteps rang out on the stone flagging behind him, sharp against the background hum of the city. They were not, Ahasz thought, the dull heavy thump of military boots. A lighter step and more of a “click”. He dropped his foot from the embrasure and turned about.
Mayna!
This was a surprise. He had thought his sister left Shuto weeks before. Either to Syrena, the Vonshuan home world, or Angra, her personal fief world.
She glided forwards through the darkness, her long gown hiding her feet but not the noise they made on the flags. The duke and the marchioness were alike enough to be twins, although she was a handful of years his senior. Those years, however, had been kinder to her than to him. Her hair, as dark a red as his own, hung loose and artfully styled about her bare shoulders. Her face was carefully made-up, as though she had just wandered outside from some noble assembly.
“This is foolish, brother,” she said once she was within earshot.
“You’d not have said that if it had gone according to plan,” he replied testily. She always had him on the defensive, could make that handful of years seem an entire generation. Especially when she was in this mood.
He could recognise the signs for each of her “moods”. It showed not only in her expression, but in the way she dressed, held herself, used her cosmetics. There were, it often seemed, many personalities in there and different ones would come to the fore at different times. He was used to it.
“No,” she replied, halting beside him. She cast a dismissive glance at the city and then turned her luminous eyes towards him. “No, even if you had taken the Palace on the first day, I would still call it foolish.”
“Because I told you nothing?” he countered. Yes, he had kept his attack secret from Lady Mayna. She cleaved closer to their masters than he had ever done. And now he no longer followed their instructions.
“I read the signs.” In this mood, she would often make maddening claims to omniscience. “I’ll give you this: you’ve done a better job than I had expected.”
“But still not good enough?” Ahasz gave a wry smile.
“And a wasted effort.”
“Putting myself on the Throne could never be a ‘wasted effort’, Mayna. Even you must admit that.”
“But now you have the added difficulty of holding onto it until Dis arrives.”
Ahasz barked a laugh. “The least of my worries.” He turned and gestured at Congress and Ministries across the valley, great dark ships of rock moored amidst the city of light. “Providing I keep my promises to them, they care little who sits in the Palace.”
“But you won’t keep your promises to them, will you?” Lady Mayna smiled archly.
The duke smiled back. “No, I won’t. I’ll root out corruption and make this Empire a fit and just place for all.”
“As I said, a wasted effort.”
It had taken Ahasz many years to come to know his sister, and even then she felt a complete stranger to him on occasion. He had grown up away from her: his father dead, he had been brought up by seneschals and retainers. His mother had seen no reason for brother and sister to be together. There had been visits, of course; but they were infrequent and short. Until the age of eighteen, Ahasz had held Lady Mayna in no small degree of awe.
“So what brings you here?” he asked. “Other than just to tell me I’ve done wrong again.”
She hitched her glossy stole up about her bare shoulders and crossed her arms under her bosom. “I’m leaving for Angra,” she told him. “Tomorrow.”
“You’ll find out what’s happening with the Admiral? Her fleet must have left for Geneza by now.”
Lady Mayna nodded. “Some weeks ago. But it will be weeks yet before it arrives.” She smiled. “Perhaps I’ll meet your young nemesis in the nomosphere.”
Ahasz grunted. “Possibly.” Ormuz’s involvement had not been part of Ahasz’s plan. In fact, he had sent out assassins to destroy all of the knights’ sinister clones. But given that Ormuz had catalysed the Admiral into action… Well, Ahasz could not complain.
Mayna turned and watched as another cannon in the Imperial Palace fired. She sighed. “What have you done, Ariman?” she asked. “And why? In no more than a couple of decades, all this will be gone.”
“I can hardly surrender now,” Ahasz pointed out.
“True.” She turned back to him, and reached out and laid a hand against his upper arm. “It’s not necessary for our ultimate victory for you to sit on the Throne and welcome Dis with open arms. We will prevail.”
Ahasz shrugged. He had no intention of revealing his true motives to his sister.
“What if you were to throw down your arms?” she asked, dropping her arm.
“I’d be punished. Corruption of blood, possibly.”
Lady Mayn
a’s hand flashed up and slapped the duke across the face. “You dared risk that?” she demanded. Clearly, the thought had just occurred to her. “Without our position, we can do little.”
Corruption of blood… A loss of all titles and privileges for the family and all subsequent generations. No duchy of Ahasz. The Vonshuans struck down to the proletariat. Five millennia ago, at the end of the Great Winter on Geneza, the Zimi, warriors of the frozen wastes of the north, had migrated south. And over the course of centuries, they conquered the entire planet. The Vonshuans had been Zimi. A five thousand year noble lineage.
Ended.
Ahasz ignored his stinging cheek. “Unlikely,” he replied, trying for nonchalance. “Execution, I expect. The Electorate support me; they’d never allow corruption of blood.”
“You put more trust in them than I would.”
“And so I should,” said Ahasz, smiling. “I’ve paid for it.”
Lady Mayna shook her head, then brushed her disordered tresses back from her face. “I’ll never understand this,” she admitted.
“Expediency,” put in the duke, before she could speak further. “The single most effective tool of politics. The Electorate will do whatever is necessary to maintain its power.”
Ahasz’s sister was plainly not interested. “I must go,” she said. “If I learn anything, I shall see it is passed on to you.”
She turned about, not bothering to make her farewell.
Ahasz had never sought his elder sister’s approval—he had grown up without her presence. Now, however, and for the first time, he felt sad at her censure. Of course, she still followed Dis’ orders, while he only pretended to. In that respect, it mattered little what she thought. But they were, after all, of the same blood—more than that: of the same DNA, albeit of different genders.
She left him, moving smoothly across the fortress’s roof before being swallowed by the shadow cast by a tower. Her footsteps grew fainter, the exact moment of their disappearance buried beneath the explosion of a cannon bolt hitting the earth by the trenches.