[Shira Calpurnia 02] - Legacy

by Matthew Farrer - (ebook by Undead)

  “Arbitor General Actte.”

  “That sounds right. Have we written to him?” They stepped aboard a little viewing-carriage, barely more than a flat platform, designed to skim along right at the edge of the gallery. It glided toward the southern end of the garden; the viewing levels were all packed with chattering spectators and drums were beating. “He’s no longer on Hydraphur. Arbites change more often than rogue traders do. There are four Arbites General commanding on Hydraphur now. One Majore, three Senioris. But no, the problem isn’t with them.”

  “I see.” Varro was waving to a slender woman in yellow who was carrying a squirming little boy through the throng. “Ksana! Here, come up on the car with us.” Ksana and Domasa exchanged cool looks—she did not have her husband’s expansive nature, and had kept at arm’s length from the Navigator ever since her arrival. The boy Dreyder paid no attention to her, although when he had first seen her he had cried and complained about the “cold ice lady”. Domasa had shrugged and avoided him as much as she could after that. Being around Navigators affected people in different ways, that was all.

  Watching them now, Varro bent over the boy exclaiming over his accounts of the “scouting” he had done, Ksana smiling at them both and adding details that Dreyder was too excited for, Domasa decided that she wasn’t going to be able to get the man to concentrate on business matters any time soon. She looked down into the garden again.

  Ten athletes, eight men and two women, had emerged from the staging-rooms and stood in a rough line while the starter capered up and down before them: his glittering suit included suspensors just powerful enough to let him dance on his toes and turn oddly slow-motion back-flips. The racers’ hair had been dyed to match the clinging gymnastic uniforms they wore, brief and glossy affairs that finished just short of elbows and knees. They jogged on the spot, ready for the signal.

  Domasa idly wondered how many variations of this were being played out today across the Imperium. Navigators tended to quickly acquire rather jaded palates for entertainment, and Domasa liked to pay attention to how the connoisseurs amused themselves wherever she went. Wearyingly often, “elite entertainment” boiled down to cheering people on while they tried to kill each other. But apparently these people were volunteers, and the race was only through those parts of the garden that would be challenging rather than deadly.

  The runners got a round of applause, and Dreyder got another one when he was hoisted on his father’s shoulders to give the signal. Domasa slipped her pick-card out of her sleeve. Not knowing anything about any of the runners she’d chosen orange and black, the closest to the russet-and-black robes of House Dorel. Orange was a thick-necked man with a great shock of hair and skin the shade of creamy caffeine that rather clashed with his running colours, and black was a slender, snake-hipped young man who was finishing off his pre-race stretches with some poses that had moved several of the female spectators to thoughtful silence.

  Domasa had come prepared to bet extravagantly—normally that was the way to a host’s good books on occasions like this. She had been a little surprised to find that it wasn’t expected. All she was supposed to do was give a small token if one of them finished. Well, she was equipped for that, too. Another old trick was to bring arrays of flashy but basically expendable jewellery and trinkets to meetings like this, to be given away as presents if that looked like it was going to make things easier. Domasa’s appreciation for physical beauty had been stunted by a life spent among Navigators, whose appearances tended to range from odd to grotesque, but as she watched the runner in black finish off his exercises she found herself thinking that perhaps getting up close to him to hang a gem-thread around his neck might not be such an ordeal.

  Then Dreyder suddenly threw both of his arms in the air and screamed “GO!” The drams gave one almighty beat and Domasa grabbed the railing as the car surged forward to keep pace with the runners.

  It was half an hour before they all came back down the gallery, the younger spectators trotting ahead and laughing, the more sedate ones walking behind with drinks in their hands. Varro’s little son was with the six runners who’d finished, riding on the shoulders of the tallest, kicking his heels and crowing. Domasa walked a little behind the slowest of them, keeping a stately gait, hands shrouded in her long sleeves and tucked demurely at her back. When Cherrick met her the disgust in his face was the first thing she saw—she shot him a warning look and he had the wit to keep his voice low when he finally fell in alongside her.

  “No fatalities! What the hell was everybody supposed to be betting on? What sort of nursery school have we fallen into the middle of, lady? What next, are we going to take turns making each other flower-chains?”

  “No, no fatalities. I made the mistake of talking to our host as though there were going to be and he gave me this look and said “I’m not a savage, you know.” But it was diverting enough and it’s put our host in great good spirits and therefore I will not hear you take that tone again while we are here and in earshot of anyone, Cherrick, you or anyone on your team. I don’t care what the provocation, there’s a flogging in it for you the next time at the very least.” Despite the venom in her words she had kept her tone light and conversational: anyone standing over a couple of metres away would have thought she was sharing an exciting moment from the race.

  “In fact, just to make a point about diplomacy and to make sure we stay at the front of our host’s mind, I believe I’ll take you with me to meet the runners. Paste on a smile for me, now.” A smile seemed to be beyond Cherrick—he made do with cordial nods to the people they passed, while Domasa silently wished she’d been born with too many fingers instead of too few, so it would be easier to count the days until she could start a new assignment on which he would not be tagging along.

  Although Varro’s physicians were waiting back at the starting line, none of the runners had been seriously injured. The woman in green had welts running across her thighs and shins from the stinging tendrils of a lasher plant she’d been too slow to hurdle, and cords stood out on her neck as a nurse plucked out the little thorn splinters and squirted on a sterilising mist. The man with the dazzling silver suit and hair had misjudged the reach of a scissorleaf creeper, and a quick shoot had caught his ankle. Once the rest of the field had passed him the gardeners had gone in to help, but by that time the horn-plated leaves had succeeded in twisting his foot to a nasty angle—he now sat and stoically watched as the swollen joint was bound up.

  Over by the garden door itself the lithe young man in black whose card Domasa had drawn was sitting on a bench surrounded by nurses and well-wishers, all female. Domasa had missed whatever it was that had happened to him but it didn’t seem all that serious. On the other side of the gate the wounds on the finishers were being tended to—the winner, the man in blue, was the only one unscathed.

  Varro and his wife and son were sitting around the last of the non-finishers, a man in early middle age, stocky and sallow, dressed in bright white and riding out the last of the jitters from the stingmoss juice that still stained his hands and bare feet. As they came off the bridge over the garden’s central pond the runners had had to ran holding their breath for about half a minute through a cloud of soporific pollen. The runner in white was the only one to have misjudged and taken a breath, which had sent him staggering over the stingmoss to fall to his hands and knees. Dreyder sat cross-legged in front of him and watched with huge eyes as the man’s legs and arms jumped and shivered. For some reason the movements reminded Domasa of the shivering of the tripleaf when they had gone too close to it.

  “Domasa!” Varro called as they drew near. “I was wondering where you were! I hope you enjoyed the race. These people are quite something to see, eh? Aedio here is one of the trainers at the Whitroc Citadel up on the Escarpine Lock, where they train the PDF officers.” Varro shot a grin at the twitching Aetho, whose answering smile was a little strained. “I’m sorry your corps colleagues had to keep pace on foot. Hopefully we’ll be ab
le to arrange a spectators’ car for them if you’re here for the next meet.” Varro caught himself and laughed. “What am I saying? We’ve got a voyage ahead of us, haven’t we? Ridiculous of me.”

  Instead of agreeing, Domasa gave Aetho a regal nod.

  “Your race certainly made an impression on Cherrick, my head of entourage,” she said. “He claims never to have seen anything like it.” Both statements were technically true, she thought, wondering what Cherrick’s face looked like at this moment. “Varro, the part of the classic business-obsessed, world-hopping trade envoy is one I hate to play at a…” she blinked as the stung woman behind them let out a pained yelp, “…happy occasion like this, but I really would like to continue the conversation we were having before the race. There are things you need to be thinking about.”

  Varro nodded earnestly and gave Aetho a reassuring clap on the shoulder.

  “Perhaps Cherrick can wait here and go over the finer points of the garden race with Aetho?” Domasa suggested sweetly, steering Varro away from the other guests with no particular subtlety.

  “Will you navigate my ship?” Varro suddenly asked, catching her by surprise.

  “I… no. No, I’m far too junior for the responsibility of a voyage as important as this.” She’d made herself sound like a bloody novice, too, which hadn’t been her intention, but if playing the helpless-junior card was the way to keep Varro’s guard down, then fine. “I’m here for you, Varro, to help and advise you and to make sure that my family helps you too. You’ve got three whole Houses of the Navis Nobilite and their allies and friends looking after you, Varro. Don’t you go doubting your ship will have the keenest eye we can provide.”

  “Three Houses? I thought you said it was just yourself and some associates.” Varro was looking back to see what his son was doing, and Domasa ransacked her memory for anything she might have said that she couldn’t contradict now. She had only had a few hours’ notice of her change of assignment, and she had been too taken up with skipping out on the pilgrim-hauler and actually getting here to be able to concentrate on her story.

  “There are a lot of people who want to see this charter pass smoothly from hand to hand, Varro,” she said before he could notice her concentration. “My own family as well as the Krassimal and Yimora. I won’t pretend that we are great Houses in the scheme of things, certainly not with lineages like yours, but we are working hard on your behalf to—”

  “Really?” She had his full attention now. Varro wasn’t stupid, she reminded herself, however he might appear.

  “What needs doing on my behalf, exactly? I had assumed that a little thing like ten millennia of tradition would be enough.”

  Domasa’s family had been founded before anyone named Phrax had even heard of a charter and had survived the toxic politics of the Navis Nobilite by never, ever assuming anything. Oh, Varro was a puppy alright. But puppies could be trained, provided you didn’t get too sentimental about them. Now, how to word this…

  “The spacefaring class is one of the oldest in the Imperium,” she said after a pause. “The Navigators, the rogue traders, the officer classes of the Imperial Navy and the explorators and others. The regrettably spreading habit of granting low-level charters and so-called ‘wildcat warrants’ is creating a callow breed who don’t really grasp the ventures they’re taking on, but I believe the core of the Imperium’s essential travelling aristocracy remains. We remain because we… understand things. We have values like tradition. Continuity. Order. We believe that there is a way of doing things.” She was quoting from one of her uncle’s lessons, back in her days in the Segmentum Solar when he had been her tutor. “The inheritance of the charter is important to us just because of those values, as a point of principle. You want it to pass to you at Hydraphur, and of course you are fully entitled to do so, and so that is why we are on your side. My family and my associates and I.”

  Varro was staring at her. Behind them there were cheers and shouts: the second stage of the entertainment had begun, with acrobats leaping and swinging and vaulting around and over spiny cacti and thorn trees. Coloured paper lanterns were appearing overhead, strung from tiny wires, and the drumming was back: a light, fast beat that the guests could clap to. Domasa and Varro walked deeper into the garden again, where the light was dimmer. When they reached the point where the plants were starting to rustle at their approach, Varro stopped and turned to Domasa again.

  “I’m not completely naive, you know,” he said. “I am a member of the Gunarvo Mercantile Chamber and I’m a rogue trader-in-waiting, too. You’ve told me that yourself enough times, Emperor knows. So come on. You’ve been so frantic to talk business to me all night and now you won’t get it out. What aren’t you telling me?”

  There was a cry behind them as an acrobat did something amazing. Or maybe fell on his face and died. Domasa didn’t care. She was watching the look on Varro’s face.

  “There’s been a counter-claim.”

  Varro blinked once, twice, then stared back at the party. Domasa looked the other way, less trusting than Varro of what the assortment—five hundred and sixty-eight species, he had boasted—of carnivorous greenery was doing.

  “Impossible,” he said, finally.

  “If you think so.” Domasa replied, “you only have to wait a day or so until the message reaches you. It’s an Adeptus communiqué, authenticated by the Arbites command precinct on Hydraphur. The flotilla will go before whoever the Arbites have appointed to oversee this thing, as they’re supposed to. But what they’re going to do then is announce that there’s someone with a better claim on the charter than you who should become the new Rogue Trader Phrax instead.”

  “Impossible.” Varro’s voice was not angry, just disbelieving. “How idiotic do these people have to be to think that someone else can walk in and have the charter handed to them? The Arbites supervise the succession to stop exactly that.”

  “The charter stays in the Phrax family, Varro. That’s all. What do you think happens when more than one heir contests the succession? That was why the Arbites were written in. If there’s more than one viable heir the ruling between claimants is theirs.”

  “Yes. Well, maybe that’s so. I never really paid much attention to how the succession would work with more than one heir, Domasa, because I am the sole heir. The one and only.” Varro’s voice had risen enough to set a nearby Kendran feather-tree groaning as it tried to spit still-unripe spores in the direction of the noise. Domasa shot a warning look over at the party, and Varro took a deep breath while he got his equilibrium back.

  Finally, Domasa spoke: “Sole heir you might have been, Varro, but you’re going to have to change your thinking. You’re going to have to get a lot less comfortable about the idea of just putting your hand out and taking the charter. Now I’m going to say this again. Some very powerful people believe you are the rightful heir whose claim must be protected. They found out about this communiqué and they arranged for me to see you, to let you know that we’re on your side and to make sure you’re ready for your voyage. You’re going to be facing a challenge from Hoyyon’s other son. Your half-brother. Petronas Phrax.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Flotilla of Hoyyon Phrax,

  Deep Space outside the

  Antozir Proxima system

  There had been chop and eddy in the immaterium on the long, looping route from Shexia towards Hydraphur. Not enough to be dangerous, but the flotilla masters were grim about taking any chances at all, so at the great empty shell of Antozir Proxima with its beautiful, sterile garlands of gas clouds, the flotilla broke warp and rested. As always, the vox-traffic danced between the ships as they drew in and coasted through Antozir’s fringes; the occasional shuttle, too, as those with errands or cargo that couldn’t wait to move between vessels took advantage of the freedom of real space.

  Two teams of cooks and slaughtermen had come over to the Bassaan from the Proserpina Dawn with a shuttle-hold full of fattened verdikine from the sprawling pasto
ral decks, to be slaughtered in the Bassaan’s own kitchens. Eight of those cooks had visited the Bassaan for a single day just before the flotilla broke warp on the outskirts of Shexia, and that made them the targets of Flag Ensign Nils Petronas, who waited hidden in the shadows in the flagship’s vast galley with vomit down the front of his uniform coat and his right fist taped shut around the grip of a punch-dagger.

  Two hours ago he had haltingly, blearily looked over the weapons rack in his stateroom and decided that he was too sick to reliably use a gun, and he had nearly lost his balance when he took a test swing of his rank-cutlass. The dagger was the least risky, the hardest to miss with. Petronas could tell his vision was beginning to blur, so he probably would not have been able to see to use a pistol anyway.

  It had started within hours of the dinner for two dozen or so flotilla personnel, all about Petronas’ age and including several of his friends, hosted by Petty Officer Intendant Gensh.

  Gensh, the vain little poisoning bastard with the little blond beard he was so damned proud of, Petronas squeezed the dagger grip until his hand tingled. He could hear the man’s voice in his head, wet and smug as though he were gargling his words through cream.

  “Why’ve I invited you all here?” he’d asked. “Isn’t it obvious?” No, a couple of voices had answered. Few of them knew Gensh personally. “Meetings like this are a new directive from the masters of the flotilla, Crewmistress Behaya is enthused by the idea.” Rubbish, they had agreed later as they ate. “The fact would have been better known. The flotilla goes to meet its new trader,” Gensh had said, “and Emperor bless Trader Varro! This is a time to come together as crewmates and brothers and sisters,” he had said, sloshing drink. “We shall make sure that every soul on this fleet knows he is pail of a brotherhood, a united crew…”

  That was what had struck Petronas as the lie, although he didn’t think at the time that Gensh knew it was a lie. And all the stirring, wine-fuelled talk of the golden days of Trader Varro soon to dawn only served to keep his mother’s face hanging in the front of his mind. He hadn’t dared let his anger out at the dinner, but walking back to his quarters afterwards he had found a pair of deckhands he didn’t know and roared that they had been looking at him insubordinately. His friends had held one of them back while Petronas had torn into the other, and he had finally returned to his room with his knuckles raw and bleeding and his head ringing with exhaustion. There was none of the beautiful calm he normally felt after finishing an evening that way, but with the state his thoughts had been in since the alley on Shexia a night of dreamless sleep had been reward enough.