by Kate Elliott
How could she have done this to him?
Why?
He had been a good husband to her, hadn’t he? He had wanted another child. Maybe that was it. Or she had found out about Ilyana’s flower night and misunderstood it. These khaja misunderstood many things. What had she said? I’ve fallen in love with another man, Anatoly, a man whose life and interests are more suited to mine. What did that have to do with anything? Of course he felt a little hurt, but a man expected his wife to take lovers, as long as she was discreet about it. He expected her to respect him. And that was the problem. Diana didn’t respect him. Say what she wanted, she was embarrassed of him, of where he had come from, of what he was.
But how could she be embarrassed now? How could there be any shame in being married to a prince of the Sakhalin who had been confirmed in his rank by the Chapalii emperor himself?
“I beg your pardon, M. Sakhalin. But we have a great deal to discuss.”
Anatoly looked up at Charles Soerensen. Soerensen’s face gave away nothing, but Anatoly had a damned good idea that Soerensen had arranged for Diana to confront him first, to give Soerensen the advantage after. He dug down into his reserves of strength and pushed her image aside. She had already left the planet Odys. A pain stabbed through him, thinking that he might never see her again. How could it happen? How could this be? Then he reined himself in again. He had responsibilities now. Portia was still here, left with him until the hearings that would settle the schedule of parental care. She was asleep on a blanket in the corner made by the stairwell wall, her little mouth partly open, snoring softly because she had a cold. He had to concentrate. But, gods, it was hard.
“You understand,” said Soerensen, “that this changes everything.”
“You are no longer the most powerful human in daiga space,” snapped Anatoly, and was at once sorry he had said it. It was Diana he was angry at, not Charles Soerensen.
“That is true. But I have been associated with Earth and League space for my whole life. I have risked much for them, and so they trust me, despite my position within the Empire. You’re a wild card. They don’t know you, and therefore have no reason to trust you. You have nothing invested in League space.”
“Except my home.”
“Rhui does not properly lie within League space. In fact, it isn’t even in the same prefecture, since Duke Naroshi controls Earth and the other systems that make up—”
Soerensen broke off. It was the first time that Anatoly had seen him make a misstep.
“No,” agreed Anatoly. “You are right. They are all under my control now.”
“How do you intend to assert that control?” asked the other man. Anatoly dredged up his name and title, forcing it past the morass where all his thoughts got stuck: Diana. Diana at their wedding, so beautiful that she had taken his breath away. Diana on stage, a Singer who seemed at those times to be in direct communication with the gods.
Tobias Black. Barrister. There, he had it.
“Please, M. Black, go on,” he said politely, pleased at his little victory over his wife. Except she would no longer be his wife, she was leaving him, except how could that be when marriage lasted among the jaran for as long as the man lived or the mark of marriage scarred a woman’s face, which was for her entire life? Except Diana was not jaran, and she had long since undergone cosmetic surgery to erase the mark from her face, because an actor must conceal such disfigurements. She had called it a flaw.
Portia sucked in a big, snoring breath and rolled half over, still asleep. Anatoly steadied himself with one hand on the table and leaned toward the barrister, fixing his gaze on him.
“M. Sakhalin, there is a difference between authority and power. Before the Chapalii Empire swallowed up League space, humans had after millennia of experimentation with such forms of government as theocracy, tyranny, monarchy, and communalism settled on what we now call diocracy, self-rule and community-rule in opposition and in balance. M. Soerensen remains a leader within the human community because of the authority he has derived from many years of service to the League and many years of proving again and again that he has the best interests of the League and humanity uppermost in his mind. The only power he has is that conferred on him by the Chapalii. You have no authority. You have only power. Without authority to persuade the Parliament and the citizens of League space to follow you, you must resort to force or coercion. That force can only come from the Chapalii and from those human quislings who have chosen to throw their loyalty away for the sake of short-term gain. You have a great deal of power, there’s no doubt about that. You can impose tyranny on humanity if you will. You can impose any kind of rule that you wish. In my capacity as an advocate, however, I would advise you not to take that course. You will alienate most of the human populations of your holdings, and those who flock to your side despite everything will probably prove to be untrustworthy allies. M. O’Neill, you mentioned coram traffic earlier?”
Maggie O’Neill tapped her finger on the table top and squinted at the numbers called up on the luminous surface. “In the last four days we have received eight thousand and ninety-four queries to the attention of one Anatoly Sakhalin. Ah, no, make that eight thousand and ninety-six.”
Eight thousand messages. How could he possibly answer each of those petitions? Anatoly stared past M. O’Neill. This oval table sat in the center of a round chamber roofed by an onion dome molded of clear glass, a material melded with plastic to give it strength to withstand the occasional typhoon that blew in over the plateau. From where he sat, he saw the tule flats extending to a misty horizon, sea and sky blending together in a distant gray haze. Soerensen’s palace extended behind him, but he would have to turn in his chair to see it.
“I have authority within my own tribe,” he said, “because I earned it. I will gain a base of power there first.”
“At what cost?” asked Soerensen quietly.
“At what cost?”
“If you go back, what will you tell them? Will you disrupt their way of life wholesale in order to bring them off planet? How will you get them off Rhui in any case? How many ships would you need? Where will you house them? How will they adapt? If you only take some at first, then who will you take? How will you choose?”
Irritated by this lecture, Anatoly broke in. “Among the jaran, all adults have a say in decisions that affect the whole tribe, although of course the etsana and the council of elders make the final decision.”
“Then what if no one wants to go? What if everyone wants to go? How will they communicate with the rest of us once they are off Rhui? Who or what will you use as interpreters?”
“There are slates—”
“You must get one for every person, then. Who will buy and distribute them? What will all these people do, who are accustomed to another life entirely? What about the khaja? What about the other continents, and the people who live there?”
“I wouldn’t do it all at once! You think I’m a fool. I don’t intend to act rashly. But how can I leave my people behind when I am here now?”
But perhaps it was true. Why should all of them necessarily want to travel to Earth? Valentin Arkhanov had not wanted it. Karolla Arkhanov had never adjusted; she lived by living a lie and by warping her family to match the image on her walls. Even he himself had not truly adjusted, not yet, maybe not ever. They all had such odd khaja ways out here, inexplicable to a civilized man, however primitive he might seem to them. They had it written down that all twenty-year-olds had to perform two years of community service in order to qualify for citizenship in the League. How barbaric to need a law for that, when among the tribes every child knew that she or he had responsibilities to the tribe, that every adult was needed for the tribe to survive.
But the tribes were small. There were so many humans in League space that the number was meaningless to him. And, of course, no one knew how many Chapalii there were…although perhaps a prince could find out. Perhaps a prince could get a census of human and alien species.
He leaned over toward Branwen and whispered the idea in her ear, and she noted it down on her slate. Realizing that everyone else was watching him, he turned back to Soerensen.
“Are you suggesting,” he said, “that I learn more about the League, about these worlds and the Empire itself, before I try to bring Rhui into it?”
Soerensen smiled, touched with irony, and Anatoly saw that while Charles Soerensen did not like relinquishing the power he had gained, that he was willing to, or at least, willing to share it. “That had been my intention all along,” said Soerensen. “Rhui has valuable natural resources. The Chapalii cannot interfere on her because she is interdicted. Therefore, she makes a good base for planning a revolt against the empire.”
“Why do you want to revolt against the empire? I always meant to ask that. The Chapalii do not rule you harshly. They leave you your own parliament for local matters, your lives are stable, and you go about your business much as you did before. What is wrong with that?”
Soerensen stood up, speaking down toward the table. “Call up a two-dimensional map of Rhui, continent A. Blush all territories known to be in the control of the jaran.”
Anatoly knew the map well, the great gulf that marked the northern sea, the spine of mountains that girdled the central mass of the continent, two delicate peninsulas to the southeast, and the large island in the southern sea that was home to the mysterious Byblos civilization, known only through the ancient scrolls and occasional merchant. He had met one, once, many years ago when he was hunting down the king of Habakar. He had bought an old scroll off him, but later lost it.
The red blush marking the territories of the jaran consumed about one fifth of the continent, nestled in the central territories and advancing toward the periphery.
“Do you suppose,” asked Soerensen conversationally, “that the khaja princes overrun by the jaran will give up their power willingly and happily? Do you suppose that their sons and daughters, however justly ruled they might be, will not listen to an old nurse’s story of how once they ruled themselves, and think that they could again? When you first came off Rhui, M. Sakhalin, you fell in with our plans swiftly enough. You did not want to be subject to the Chapalii Empire, nor have your people be subject to it. What has changed?”
The barrister Tobias Black was wrong about one thing: Charles Soerensen knew he had power, and he had come to like having it. Yet, at the same time, he might genuinely want only to further the interest of the human race rather than his own. Self and community, opposed and yet balanced.
“I have changed,” said Anatoly. “I have what Bakhtiian wanted all along. I have achieved his vision, that which he began, that the jaran rule over all the khaja lands. Why should I not lift my people up to meet their destiny?”
“At the expense of all the others?”
“Why should I care about them?” Anatoly asked bitterly. “They are only khaja. They have only caused me pain.”
“I told you it was a mistake,” muttered Maggie O’Neill. “You should have had the conference first and let him meet his wife afterward.”
His wife. Not to be his wife any longer.
“At the expense of Bakhtiian?” asked Soerensen.
“Bakhtiian?” The question startled him, but as soon as he faced it squarely he knew that Soerensen spoke the truth. Even if the emperor would recognize Bakhtiian as a prince—and if any man had the power of a great prince, that man was Bakhtiian—there were only ten princes in the Empire, and all ten now had names again, since he had come into the inheritance of the missing prince. “It is true,” he said slowly, “that despite my great respect for Bakhtiian, I do not intend to give him what I now have, nor will I relinquish my position in his favor. Why should I? Giving it would be insulting to him in any case. And while it is true that, like a Singer, the gods granted him a vision, they did not promise that he would be the one to achieve it. Anyway,” he added thoughtfully, looking Soerensen straight in the eye, “if Bakhtiian came to space, to these worlds beyond, he would want to become emperor. He would die before he admitted it could not be done.”
“You think he could not do it?”
“With what army? With what tools? This place is very different from the plains, as you yourself also know. Horses cannot ride the oceans between the worlds. Sabers cannot defeat…” But there he halted. “It is true that in everything I have read, all the images I have scrolled through, that you know very little about the Chapalii army.”
“We’re not sure they have an army, as we know of one. Only that when they use force, they use it sparingly and ruthlessly, and that their weapons are more powerful than those we brought to bear on them.”
Anatoly looked at Branwen. “Note that down. That is something else we will have to investigate.” He stood up and walked to the wall, splaying his hands on the cool glass, slightly moist inside from the humidity of their breathing.
“Papa?” Portia appeared from behind the stairwell wall, sleepy-eyed, and padded over to him. He gathered her up into his arms and turned to survey the people seated at the table. Soerensen still stood. “You are right,” he said finally, reluctantly. “I can’t go to Rhui yet. I have to consolidate my position here first. I have to understand what I have, what I don’t have, and what I can do with it. So I leave you, Charles Soerensen, with your lands and your authority intact, and I trust you will continue to advise me without concern for whether I care to hear what you have to say. As for the rest of you, I mean that as well.” Portia tucked her head into the crook of his neck and stuck two fingers in her mouth to suck on, eyes open, watchful. She was warm and solid. He wrapped her a little closer into his embrace. Be damned to jaran tradition, he thought suddenly, where the child always stayed with its mother. He would keep her beside him and raise her—let her see her mother, of course, that was only fair—but he would not give her up.
Branwen and the barrister closed their slates. They all rose, made small talk, and one by one left the room, bodies and then heads receding down the curved staircase. Soerensen lingered, staying beside the table.
“There is one other question I’d like to ask,” he said.
“What is that?” Anatoly shifted Portia on his hip.
She turned her head to look out over the tule flats. “Look, Papa. Look. There’s a boat.”
“Why did the emperor make you a prince?”
“And you only a duke?” Anatoly smiled, to take the sting out of the words. “I don’t know. Wasn’t it after you became a duke that the tenth princely house was… what do they call it? It was erased?”
“Made extinct.”
“Yes. But in any case, you weren’t brought before the emperor.”
“But I was. I was brought into a great hall, lined with columns and floored with white tile. There were many Chapalii there, nobles, I supposed at the time, and I believed I supposed rightly. At one end of the hall rested a gilded throne, and when the emperor appeared on this throne, they knelt, and so I followed suit. After that, I was named a duke.”
“Ah.” Anatoly walked around the curve of the room toward the stairwell, and Soerensen turned slowly to keep facing him. “That is why you are only a duke. Women and princes need bow before no man, nor Singers before anyone but the gods.”
“When is Mama coming back?” asked Portia while they were eating dinner, and he didn’t know what to say to her. Nothing in his life had trained him for this. She is never coming back. That was what he wanted to say, spitefully, but he could not say it to Portia, who would not understand.
He tucked her into the bed next to which he had set up a cot for himself and told her a story about the jaran, how a hawk had warned a little girl and boy, a brother and sister, of an avalanche, and so saved their tribe.
“Can birds talk? Birds can’t talk.”
“Singers can understand the speech of birds because they are touched by the gods. That little girl and boy became Singers, and birds became sacred to the jaran.”
“Mama taught me
how to sing,” she said brightly.
He had to turn away, so she wouldn’t see the tears that came to his eyes. “Yes. Would you like to hear another story?” Knowing she would. “A long time ago, when I was a boy, my sister Shura was just the same age as you are now. One morning she wanted to go riding with me and the older boys, but we didn’t want her along with us. So she—” So she had somehow gotten up onto a pony and ridden out after them, and when it had been discovered that she was missing, there had been such a wild clamor and he and his friends had gotten into such trouble for not watching over her and the whole tribe had searched frantically for the whole day only to find her at sunset sitting by a stream contentedly eating from a berry patch while her pony grazed faithfully beside her….
But Portia was asleep.
He sat beside her for a long while, a hand resting lightly on her hair, watching the rise and fall of her breathing, studying the curve of her face, her lashes, the simple beauty of a child peacefully sleeping.
A child needs a mother. A man needs a wife or a sister or a mother or aunt, to whose tent he returns. Now he had nothing, only borrowed rooms, no tent, no home. Repose deserted him. He stood up, stroked up a faint illumination from the door panel, in case she woke up, and left the room. At the outer edge of the palace, a promenade overlooked the tule flats. Clouds covered the stars. The barest mist spattered the deck, and he held onto a railing and stared out into the last remains of daylight, the gray flats receding on and on until they were lost in sea and horizon and the gathering darkness.
It had been a mistake to marry a khaja woman. His grandmother had told him that all along. But she had wanted him to marry Baron Santer’s daughter, in Jeds, so perhaps it was only Diana she had disliked. It was true that it was dangerous to marry a Singer. They had their own ways, their own calling, and the gods might lure them away at any moment.