by Sales, Ian
She said as much to Mubariz. He lay beside her in the bed. They were both naked. She reached out and stroked his chest as she spoke, running her fingers through the thick mat of hair.
“He will likely refuse to see you,” Mubariz said.
She turned her head to gaze at his profile. He continued to stare up at the cabin’s ceiling.
“You think so?” she asked.
“He is not a stupid man, Sliva. If an inspector of the Office of the Procurator Imperial wishes to see him, what is he to think?”
“He’s not without power, Abad. I don’t believe for one moment he’s scared of the OPI, or wouldn’t disobey them if he wanted to. He can get away with it.”
“You would have it that the rule of law does not apply to those with power.” Mubariz let out a sigh.
She let out a trill of laughter, as much from the familiarity of his opinion as from the well-judged weary sigh. “First,” she said, “ if he were that law-abiding, we’d not be here now, would we? Second, I imagine he knows full well it’s too late to back down now.”
“And yet you go to see him with that very hope in mind,” pointed out Mubariz.
She poked him in the ribs with a sharp finger. “A hit, Abad,” she crowed. “We’ll make a conversationalist of you yet.” She rolled on top of him and, arms pillowed on his chest, looked down into his face. “After all, we’ve got plenty of time…”
Rinharte settled gingerly at her new desk, and spent a moment rearranging the files and pens and tidies which occupied its top. Although not normally compulsive, she adjusted the folders until they lined up exactly with the desk’s edge, until every angle was exactly ninety degrees. She peered at the console-glass on its flexible arm, and carefully manoeuvred that until she was happy it was positioned at the angle best suited for viewing.
She looked up. This was not her office, it did not resemble her office. It was bigger, the door was in a different place. There was a scuttle behind her. This was the lieutenant of intelligence’s office aboard Empress Glorina. Rinharte felt like an impostor for two reasons: this was not her office; and she had been captain of a ship. A captain.
There had been no promotion, brevet or otherwise. The captain of a ship was a captain, no matter their rank. But she was a captain no longer. She was once again a lieutenant of intelligence and beholden to a captain: the Admiral.
Through the open door, she could see her staff busy cataloguing the files left behind by the office’s previous occupants. She had fewer men and women than before. Bagasz had managed to survive, but others had not. Rinharte now had Maganda—she had asked for her and the Admiral had agreed. And, happily, confirmed her field-promotion to mate. There was no telling how long she would keep her new rank, perhaps only until they arrived at Shuto and defeated the Serpent.
It would be days before they’d figure out the idiosyncracies—if not, deliberate misinformation—of Empress Glorina’s intelligence data-pool. Rinharte had always been careful to camouflage her own office’s sensitive information—those items of vital data which Navy officers were not really supposed to have. It seemed only sensible to assume Empress Glorina’s lieutenant of intelligence had done the same.
Prompted by the thought, she switched on the console and called up the battleship’s complement: Commander Ozan demar Akta, lieutenant of intelligence. She did not know him, nor did any of the details on his dossier spark any memories. It seemed their paths had never crossed. That was not unusual—in fact, she saw, Akta and herself had never served in the same fleets.
She wondered what had happened to Akta. Had he survived the taking of Empress Glorina?
“Romi,” she called.
In the outer office, Mate Maganda looked up startled and then across through the door at Rinharte. “Ma’am?”
“Put me a list together of all the prisoners. Let’s see who we’ve got. Take Bagasz. We’ll get the data-pool sorted later.”
Maganda crossed to the door to Rinharte’s office. “Just the officers?” she asked.
“The POs and rateds too. They’ll be in the brig. The officers…” Rinharte gestured vaguely. “They’ll have given their parole, so good luck finding them. Try the wardrooms.” Where, she did not add, they were most likely drinking away their empty days.
All the days of the six-week journey from Geneza to Shuto.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“How could you? How dare you?” Startled, Ahasz twisted round in his chair. Princess Flavia umar Shutan stood framed in the entrance to his study, one hand belligerently gripping the hilt of her sheathed sword. He rose to his feet. She wore Imperial Navy uniform, the thick bands of a captain about the cuffs.
“I don’t understand,” he said. He turned back to his console, flicked a switch and the glass darkened. Returning his attention to the princess, he pushed his chair out of his way and moved towards her.
She was furious. He had experienced her temper before—like all members of the Imperial Family, she was used to getting her way, and unbearable when she failed to do so. “What is it?” he asked, hands held out placatingly.
She snatched her kepi from her head, and threw it down at Ahasz’s feet. “Damn you, Ariman. You knew my wishes. I should call you out.”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. “Call me out?” She could not beat him with a sword; few could. Even though Flavia was well-trained.
“What have I done?” he asked. “Is this any way to greet me?”
She took a step forwards, looked up at him as he drew near. “I told you,” she insisted angrily, slapping him on the chest. “You asked and I told you my answer.”
“Ah.” He understood now. “You’ve spoken to Willim.”
He put his arms out to draw her to him. She was having none of it. She squirmed out of his embrace, took a step back to the doorway. Once again, her hand went to her sword. “I will not marry you, Ariman. No matter what my father says.”
“No one is forcing you to. It’s what I want but I’d never force you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “My father told me you did. He said you gave him little choice in the matter.”
Ahasz frowned. He had said no such thing, of course. What game was the Emperor playing? Anyone who knew Flavia would have realised that she would respond in this way.
“Your father is mistaken.”
Flavia rattled her sword. “Don’t lie to me!”
“I never told Willim he must marry you to me, Flavia.”
“You lie.” Her voice was flat, expressionless.
“You believe Him over me?”
“He’s my father, Ariman. Why should I not believe him?”
“Because He’s lying!”
She turned away, dropped her chin. “We will never see each other again. You will make no effort to do so. I will not be blackmailed into marriage. I’ve accepted a posting with the Boundary Fleet. Captain of a battlecruiser.”
He took a step forward, crowding her in the doorway. She pressed back against the jamb, trying to maintain a gap between them. He heard her blade slide an inch from its scabbard.
“Don’t go away, Flavia,” he said quietly. He loved this woman and her fiery ways. He would not lose her.
“I never want to see you again,” she replied mulishly.
Ahasz reach down, grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand from her hilt. She struggled but was not strong enough. He pulled the hand up and held it between them, pressed against his chest.
“Accept my offer. Your father wants it—and not because I forced him to do so.”
“No!” She ripped her wrist from his grasp, placed her palm flat against his chest and pushed.
He banged his spine against the jamb, stumbled and took a step back to regain his balance. She was away. She spun on her heel and marched off, her boots thudding loudly on the carpeted floor. Ahasz hurried to catch up. He grabbed her upper arm, tried to turn her about. She struggled free. Her eyes flickered across his face, not seeing hi
m.
Damn the woman! He released her arm and she strode away toward the lifts.
Ahasz watched her leave. He wondered why he felt no sorrow. He remembered Flavia as a young girl, barely ten, hair a shining gold; and he a young man in his twenties, fresh from the Swava College Annex, about to take up a subalternity in the Imperial Gold Watch on Syrena. He had brought her a gift—she idolised him and he capitalised on it. He enjoyed her hero worship, it fed something in his soul he had not known possessed an appetite. The present—some gewgaw or gimcrack, suitable for a girl somewhat older—had been blissfully received.
They were both a quarter of a century older now. He had offered her the most precious gift he had in his possession: himself. She had not just said no, she had arranged to remove herself to the very limits of the Empire. He should feel something: heartache, remorse, an aching metaphysical pain in his chest.
He felt nothing.
Ahasz sat bolt upright in his cot and flailed as its flimsy construction shifted alarmingly beneath him. He saw mud-streaked wooden walls before him, a ceiling of wooden slats and more mud leaking glutinously between them. A small square light-sheet in a corner cast a warm glow over the rude surroundings, but would persuade no one this was a rustic log-cabin. It was a hole in the ground, the dirt crudely planked in place.
He felt terrible. Half-awake, yet still lodged in his dream. Slowly, he twisted and looked across the command post. He was alone. His jacket—the jacket he had worn for the past seventy days—lay slung across a wooden chair. His sword-belt hung from the same chair’s back. Groaning, he swung his legs off the coat, fumbled around with his stockinged feet before finding his boots and sliding into them. His trousers creaked as he settled his weight forward.
The temptation came over him to take the railway to his townhouse, to bathe and shave and cleanse himself, to dress in freshly-laundered clothes. He would do no such thing, of course. Eighty-one days into his siege and the Electorate’s patience was wearing thin. Away from his army, he suspected some well-meaning noble or other would attempt to take him into custody. Perversely, he was safest here, on the front-line, on the battle-field.
He winced as he reached for his jacket, stopped and put a hand to his side. Beneath his filthy shirt, the bandages felt taut, although crusted with blood. Eight days ago, a battalion each of household troops, Housecarls and Imperial Gold Watch had stormed the front of the Imperial Palace. Every basilisk and field-piece in the duke’s army had been lined up on Palace road’s edge, tasked with keeping the Palace Artillery too busy to fire.
The assault had failed.
Knights stalwart and knights militant had met the attackers at the archways into the Palace and beaten them back. Cuirassiers had followed through, chasing Ahasz’s soldiers back to the trenches. It had been a fierce battle. Ahasz, watching the assault from a loophole, had found himself trapped in the thick of it. He had dispatched three Cuirassier officers and a pair of knight-captains before the spike of a hammer had punctured his side.
The wound was deep, but it had not hit anything vital. Small mercy. Medical supplies were running low—all supplies were running low. A Housecarls field nurse had packed the wound with unguent and stitched it up. It would scar—another badge of honour to add to those already decorating his torso. But those others had been earned in duels, although no one had pinked him in over fifteen years.
Where in heavens was Denever?
Ahasz rose to his feet, ignoring the shooting pain, took a step towards the chair and lifted his sword-belt. Buckling it about his middle nearly proved beyond him. His side hurt but it was his fingers which were clumsy. And then the jacket—the act of pulling it on stretched his injury, and he snapped his jaw shut.
Only then did his batman appear. The command post’s door swung open and Denever slipped into the chamber. His face bore streaks of mud and he carried a steaming mug in one hand. He crossed to the duke, alarmed, a hand out to prevent further exertion by Ahasz.
“Your grace, you should have waited for me!”
“You weren’t here,” Ahasz grated.
“I was coming to wake you. At the agreed time.”
The duke grunted. “I was dreaming. It woke me up.” Dreaming. About Flavia. The day she had left him. In a manner of speaking, that day had led to this miserable, stinking, filthy siege.
He took the mug from Denever and sipped its contents. It was hot and tasted disgusting. But it was all they had. The supplies he had stockpiled had run out in the first two weeks. Enterprising merchants had sold his quartermasters provisions at inflated prices for a week or two following. But the Electorate had brought pressure to bear and that soon dried up. Ahasz had sent to Syrena for supplies. The Imperial Navy, damn them, had blockaded his ships.
“Where’s Tayisa?” Ahasz demanded.
This morning they were to inspect their latest try at breaching the Palace. A sapper-lieutenant had suggested the idea three weeks ago: tunnel from the railways to the Palace’s basements. Today, if their calculations had not gone awry, they should finally reach their intended position. They were not going to break into the Palace. Fighting their way floor-by-floor to the Imperial Apartments would be no easier than storming the Palace entrance. No, instead they would force a charger to implode beneath the Palace.
Ahasz wanted this war over. And if he had to kill everyone in the Palace to do that, he would. Fifty days ago, he wanted Emperor Willim IX taken alive. He wanted him to capitulate before him. To hand him the Imperial Throne and weep at its loss.
Now, he would settle for removing the Shutans from the line of succession and acknowledgement of his usurpation by the Electorate.
“Colonel Tayisa is in the railway station, your grace,” Denever replied.
“Anything happen while I was asleep?”
“No, your grace. Just the usual.”
An almost constant barrage from the Imperial Palace Artillery, in other words.
After downing the last of his coffee, Ahasz handed the empty mug to his batman and crossed to the command post’s exit. Walking still hurt, and it would be several weeks before the pain went away. Just outside the command post, some ten feet further along the trench, a niche gave onto a lighted shaft leading down to the railway beneath. Ahasz thought about taking the long way: walking out via a defile onto Palace Road’s back-slope, making his way down to the roundabout and then taking one of the entrances to the railway station beneath the Pacification Campaigns monument. Climbing down a ladder in his condition…
No, the other route would take too long. He stepped onto the ladder, pulled in a deep breath and began to descend.
Ahasz found Tayisa and a handful of household troops gathered about the entrance to the tunnel the sappers had dug. It led at a downward angle of some ten degrees from an outer pedestrian tunnel of the railway station. The tunnel mouth was a ragged rectangle six feet wide and eight feet in height. The height was important: if men were to run in the tunnel, they should not have to do so stooped. A sapper-lieutenant appeared in the opening. He grinned, though his face was plastered with mud and rock dust.
“All ready, your grace.”
“They’re certain to have worked out what we’re doing, your grace,” put in Tayisa.
“I realise that,” Ahasz snapped. The pain from his wound had him feeling light-headed and edgy. He put a hand to the wall, felt cold tiles beneath his palm. The odour of pulverised rock filled his nostrils.
More calmly, he continued, “That is why we shall not break through into the cellars. They will be expecting that.” He gave a feral grin. “With luck, they’ll have a cohort or two lined up for when we break through.”
The charger would see to them. And, if placed as calculated, should bring down much of the Palace’s façade. That which remained, that is. They were hoping that fracture lines within Mount Yama would spread the damage, cause more of the Palace to collapse. With fortune—a great deal of fortune—they could wipe out the bulk of the
defenders in one fell swoop.
“Where is the charger?” Ahasz asked.
“It should be here soon,” Tayisa replied.
“Who will be setting it?”
“Lieutenant Marutama.” A Roundhead.
“Good, good.” Ahasz nodded absently.
It was a good fifteen minutes before four figures appeared, pushing a large black slab floating some four feet above the ground. The implosive properties of chargers were well known. Dial them up to a certain level, so high that anything immediately above them was squashed flat in a field of intense gravity, feed a little power in and… The whole device collapsed in on itself in a split-second. The outrush of energy was powerfully destructive.
A thick cable connected the charger with a field-piece power-cart. It would provide sufficient energy for their purposes.
“It’s big enough,” Ahasz remarked. “Where did you get it?”
“We cannibalised an aerolaunch at the aerodrome,” Tayisa explained.
That boat would never leave Shuto’s surface until the charger was replaced.
The four troopers followed the sapper-lieutenant into the hole, pushing the charger and power-cart ahead of them. Ahasz waited until they had passed and then entered after them. He did not like it in the tunnel. Although not a tall man, the roof felt uncomfortably close. The walls certainly were. Wooden props shored up the roof at intervals; planks of wood fulfilled the same role along the walls. Small square light-sheets had been fixed to the rock every twenty feet. Their light left puddles and pools of darkness, and Ahasz stumbled frequently in these on the rough footing.
The tunnel led down at a constant angle for a thousand yards, before disgorging into a circular chamber, also chiselled from the rock itself. The ceiling was dome-shaped, the better to direct the charger’s outburst of energy. The troopers pushed the charger to the centre of the chamber, dialled down its power until it settled on the floor, and then stepped back.