The Dance of Time b-6

by Eric Flint

  A few minutes later, the business began. The Sarmatian girl posing as Irene came into the square on horseback, surrounded by her usual little entourage of female guards.

  Watching from the same window, Kungas was amused. Irene often complained that the custom in the area of insisting that women had to be veiled in public was a damned nuisance, personally speaking-but a blessing, from the standpoint of duplicity.

  Was that Irene down there? Who could say, really? Her face couldn't be seen, because of the veil. But the woman was the right height and build, had the same color and length of hair in that distinctive ponytail, wore the proper regalia and the apparel, and had the accustomed escort.

  Of course, it was the queen. Who else would it be?

  Kungas knew that the assassins across the square wouldn't even be wondering about it. True, Irene was almost certainly not their target and the assassins would make no attempt here. They'd wait for Kungas to show himself. Still, the appearance of the queen in the square so soon after their arrival would be a good sign to them. They'd want to study her movements carefully. All their attention would be fixed on the figure moving within range of the bows in the windows.

  He waited for the explosions that would signal the attack. For all that Kungas was prepared to see Irene's girl warriors suffer casualties, he'd seen no reason to make them excessive. He didn't want to risk destroying the walls with the implanted shaped charges, true-but there was no reason not to use the much smaller charges it would take to simply blow open the doors.

  Blow them open-and spray splinters all through the room. That should be enough to give the inexperienced girls the edge they'd need.

  * * *

  A bigger edge than he'd expected, in the event. A moment later, the explosions came-and one of the Malwa assassins was blown right out the window. From the way he toppled to the ground twenty feet below, Kungas knew he was already unconscious. A big chunk of one of the doors must have hit him on the back of the head.

  He landed like a sack of meal. From the distance, Kungas couldn't hear the impact, but it was obvious that the assassin hadn't survived it. Most of the street square was dirt, but it was very hard-packed. Almost like stone.

  "Ruptured neck, for sure," Vima grunted. "Probably half his brains spilling out, too."

  Another assassin appeared in the same window. His back, to be precise. The man was obviously fighting someone.

  A few seconds later, he too toppled out of the window. Still clutching the spear that had been driven into his chest, he made a landing that was no better than his predecessor's.

  Worse, probably. This assassin had the bad luck of landing on the flagstones in front of the building's entrance.

  The shouts and screams and other sounds of fighting could be heard across the square for a bit longer. Perhaps ten seconds.

  Then, silence.

  Kungas glanced down into the center of the square, to assure himself that the decoy was unharmed. He had no particular concern for the girl in question-in fact, he didn't even know who it was-but he didn't want to face Irene's recriminations if she'd been hurt.

  Self-recriminations, really. But Irene was not exempt from the normal human tendency to shed blame on others as a way of handling guilt.

  That left the question of how many of the Sarmatian squad that launched the attack had been killed or injured. But that was a different sort of matter. Getting killed in a fight with weapons in hand didn't cause the same gut-wrenching sensation as getting killed serving as a helpless decoy.

  "Odd, really," Kungas murmured to himself. "But that's the way it is. Someday I'll have to ask Dadaji if he can explain the philosophy of it to me."

  He turned and headed for the door. "Come. Let's find out."

  * * *

  It was better than he'd thought. Certainly better than he'd feared.

  "See?" he demanded of Vima. "Only one girl dead. One badly injured, but she'll probably survive."

  "She'll never walk right, again," Vima said sourly. "Might lose that leg completely, at least from the knee down."

  Kujulo chuckled. "Will you listen to him? Bad as a doddering old Pathan clan chief!"

  For a moment, he hunched his shoulders and twisted his face into a caricature of a prune-faced, disapproving, ancient clansman. Even Vima laughed.

  "Not bad," Kujulo stated firmly, after straightening. "Against five assassins? Not bad."

  * * *

  Irene was upset, of course. The dead and injured girls were names and faces to her. People that she'd known, even known well.

  But there were no recriminations. No self-recriminations, even. Her Sarmatian guards themselves were ecstatic at their success, despite the casualties.

  It probably wasn't necessary, but Kungas put it into words anyway.

  "Make Alexander the Great and the Buddha's son the forefathers of a dynasty-this is what comes with it, Irene."

  "Yes, love, I know."

  "They were all volunteers."

  "Yes, love, I know. Now please shut up. And go away for a few hours."

  Axum, in the Ethiopian highlands

  Ousanas glowered at the construction crew working in the great field just on the outskirts of the city of Axum. Most of the field was covered with the stone ruins of ancient royal tombs.

  "I ought to have the lot of them executed," he pronounced, "seeing as how I can't very well execute you. Under the circumstances."

  Antonina smiled. "Approximately how much more of your Cassandra imitation will I be forced to endure?"

  "Cassandra, is it? You watch, woman. Your folly-that of your husband's, rather-will surely cause the spiritual ruin of the great kingdom of Axum." He pointed an accusing finger at the radio tower. "For two centuries this ridiculous field given over to the grotesque monuments of ancient pagan kings has been left to decay. As it should. Now, thanks to you and your idiot husband, we'll be resurrecting that heathen taste in idolatry."

  Antonina couldn't help but laugh. "It's a radio tower, Ousanas!"

  The aqabe tsentsen of Ethiopia was not mollified. "A Trojan horse, what it is. You watch. Soon enough-in the dark, when my eagle eye is not watching-they'll start carving inscriptions on the damned thing."

  Gloomily, his eyes ranged up and down the huge stone tower that was nearing completion. "Plenty of room for it, too."

  Antonina glanced back at the Greek artisan who was overseeing the project. "Tell me, Timothy. If I understand this right, once the tower is in operation anyone who tries to climb onto it in order-"

  The artisan winced. "They'll be fried." Warily, he eyed the tall and very muscular figure of the man who was, in effect if not in theory, the current ruler of Ethiopia. "Ah, Your Excel-"

  "See?" demanded Ousanas, transferring his glare to the hapless artisan. "It's already starting! I am not an 'excellency,' damnation, and certainly not yours. A humble keeper of the royal fly whisks, that's all I am."

  Timothy sidled back a step. He was fluent in Ge'ez, the language of the Axumites, so he knew that the title aqabe tsentsen meant "the keeper of the fly whisks." He also knew that the modesty of the title was meaningless.

  Antonina came to the rescue. "Oh, stop bullying the poor man. Timothy, please continue."

  "Well. . it's hard to explain without getting too technical. But the gist of it is that a big radio tower like this needs a big transmitter powered by"-here he pointed his finger at a huge stone building-"the steam engine in there. In turn, that-"

  The next few sentences were full of mysterious terms like "interrupter" and "capacitor bank" that meant absolutely nothing to Antonina or Ousanas. But Timothy's concluding words seemed clear enough:

  "— every time the transmitter key is depressed, you'd have something like two thousand watts of power shorting across your body. 'Fry' is about the right word for what'd happen, if you got onto the tower itself. But you'd never make it that far, anyway. Once you got past the perimeter fence you'd start coupling to the radials implanted around the base of the tower. Your bod
y would start twitching uncontrollably and the closer you got, the worse it'd get. Your hair might even catch on fire."

  Ousanas grimaced, but he was still not mollified. "Splendid. So now we will have to post guards to protect idolators from idolatry."

  Antonina laughed again. "Even for you, Ousanas, this display is absurd! What's really bothering you? It's the fact that you still haven't figured out what I'm going to decree tomorrow regarding the succession. Isn't it?"

  Ousanas didn't look at her, still glowering at the radio tower. After a moment, he growled, "It's not so much me, Antonina. It's Rukaiya. She's been pestering me for days, trying to get an answer. Even more, asking for my opinion on what she should do, in the event of this or that alternative. She has no more idea than I do-and you might consider the fact that whatever you decide, she will be the one most affected."

  Antonia struggled-mightily-to keep her satisfaction from showing. She had, in fact, deliberately delayed making the announcement after telling everyone she'd reached a decision, in the specific hope that Rukaiya would turn to Ousanas for advice.

  "I'd have thought she'd mostly pester Garmat," she said, as if idly.

  Ousanas finally stopped glowering and managed a bit of a grin. "Well, she has, of course. But I have a better sense of humor than the old bandit. She needs that, right now."

  So, she does. So, she does.

  "Well!" Antonina said briskly. "It'll all be settled tomorrow, at the council session. In the meantime-"

  She turned to Timothy. "Please continue the work. Ignore this grumbler. The sooner you can get that finished, the sooner I can talk to my husband again."

  * * *

  "And that's another thing!" Ousanas grumbled, as they headed toward the Ta'akha Maryam. "It's just a waste. You can't say anything either secret or personal-not with that sort of broadcast radio-and it won't work anyway, once the monsoon comes with its thunderstorms. So I've been told, at least."

  Antonina glanced at the sun, now at its midday altitude, as if gauging the season. "We're still some months from the southwest monsoon, you know. Plenty of time."

  Chapter 9

  Constantinople

  "You'd be putty in your father's hands," Theodora sneered.

  "Which one? Belisarius or Justinian?"

  "Either-no, both, since they're obviously conspiring with each other."

  The dark eyes of the Empress Regent moved away from Photius and Tahmina to glare at a guard standing nearby. So far as Photius could determine, the poor man's only offense was that he happened to be in her line of sight.

  Perhaps he also bore a vague resemblance to Belisarius. He was tall, at least, and had brown eyes.

  Angrily, Theodora slapped the heavily decorated armrest of her throne. "Bad enough that he's exposing my husband to danger! But he's also giving away half my empire!"

  She shifted the glare back to Photius. "Excuse me. Your empire."

  The correction was, quite obviously, a formality. The apology was not even that, given the tone in which she'd spoken the words.

  "You hate to travel," Photius pointed out, reasonably. "And since you're actually running my empire"-here he bestowed a cherubic smile on his official adoptive mother-"you can't afford to leave the capital anyway."

  "I detest that smile," Theodora hissed. "Insincere as a crocodile's. How did you get to be so devious, already? You're only eleven years old."

  Photius was tempted to reply: from studying you, Mother. Wisely, he refrained.

  If she were in a better mood, actually, Theodora would take it as a compliment. But, she wasn't. She was in as foul a mood as she ever got, short of summoning the executioners.

  Photius and his wife Tahmina had once, giggling, developed their own method for categorizing Theodora's temper. First, they divided it into four seasons:

  Placid. The most pleasant season, albeit usually brief.

  Sour. A very long season. More or less the normal climate.

  Sullen. Not as long as sour season. Not quite.

  Fury. Fortunately, the shortest season of all. Very exciting while it lasted, though.

  Then, they ranked each season in terms of its degree of intensity, from alpha to epsilon.

  Photius gauged this one as a Sullen Epsilon.

  Well. . Not quite. Call it a Sullen Delta.

  In short, caution was called for here. On the other hand, there was still some room for further prodding and pushing. Done gingerly.

  "I like to travel myself," he piped cheerfully. "So I'm the logical one to send on a grand tour to visit our allies in the war. And it's not as if you really need me here."

  He did not add: or want me here, either. That would be unwise. True, Theodora had all the maternal instincts of a brick. But she liked to pretend otherwise, for reasons Photius had never been able to fathom.

  Tahmina said it was because, if she didn't, it would give rise to rumors that she'd been spawned by Satan. That might be true, although Photius was skeptical. After all, plenty of people already thought the Empress Regent had been sired by the devil.

  Photius didn't, himself. Maybe one of Hell's underlings, but not Satan himself.

  Theodora was back to glaring at the guard. No, a different one. His offense. .

  Hard to say. He resembled neither Belisarius nor Justinian. Except for being a man, which, in Theodora's current humor, was probably enough.

  "Fine!" she snapped. "You can go. If nothing else, it'll keep Antonina from nattering at me every day once the radio starts working. By now, months since she left, she'll be wallowing in guilt and whining and whimpering about how much she misses her boy. God knows why. Devious little wretch."

  She swiveled the dark-eyed glare onto Tahmina, sitting next to Photius. "You too. Or else once the cunning little bastard gets to Ethiopia he'll start nattering at me over the radio about how much he misses his wife. God knows why. It's not as if he's old enough yet to have a proper use for a wife."

  Yet a third guard received the favor of her glare. "You can celebrate your sixteenth birthday in Axum. I'll send the gifts along with you."

  Tahmina smiled sweetly and bowed her head. "Thank you, Mother."

  "I'm not your mother. You don't fool me. You're as bad as he is. No child of mine would be so sneaky. Now go."

  * * *

  Once they reached the corridor outside Theodora's audience chamber, Photius whispered to Tahmina: "Sullen Delta. Close to Epsilon."

  "Oh, don't be silly," his wife whispered back, smiling down at him. To Photius' disgruntlement, even though he'd grown a lot over the past year, Tahmina was still taller than he was. "That wasn't any worse than Sullen Gamma. She agreed, didn't she?"

  "Well. True."

  * * *

  The announcement was made publicly the next day. Photius wasn't surprised. It was usually hard to wheedle Theodora into anything. But the nice thing was that, if you could, she'd move quickly and decisively thereafter.

  * * *

  The Emperor of Rome will visit our allies in the war with Malwa. All the way to India itself! The Empress will accompany him, sharing the hardships of the journey.

  All hail the valiant Photius!

  All hail the virtuous Tahmina!

  * * *

  After reading the broadsheet, the captain of the Malwa assassination team tossed it onto the table in the apartments they'd rented. It was all he could do not to crumple it in disgust.

  "Three months. Wasted."

  His lieutenant, standing at the window, stared out over the Golden Horn. He didn't bother, as he had innumerable times since they'd arrived in Constantinople, shifting his gaze to study the imperial palace complex.

  No point in that, now.

  The three other members of the team were sitting at the table in the kitchen. The center of the table was taken up by one of the small bombards that Malwa assassination teams generally carried with them. The weapons were basically just simple, very big, one-round shotguns. Small enough that they could be hidden in trunks, even if
that made carrying the luggage a back-breaking chore.

  All three of them were glowering at it. The captain would insist that they bring the bombard with them, wherever they went. And, naturally, being the plebeians of the team, they'd be the ones who had to tote the wretched thing.

  One of the three assassins spoke up. "Perhaps. . if we stayed here. . Theodora. ."

  The captain almost snarled at him. "Don't be stupid. Impossible, the precautions she takes. Not even Nanda Lal expects us to have a chance at her."

  "She hasn't left the complex once, since we arrived," the lieutenant chimed in, turning away from the window. "Not once, in three months. Even Emperor Skandagupta travels more often than that."

  He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. A moment later, the captain did the same.

  "We had a good chance with the boy," the lieutenant added. "High-spirited as he is. He and his wife both. Now. ."

  He looked at his superior. "Follow them?"

  "Yes. Only thing we can do."

  "Not one of us speaks Ge'ez, sir," pointed out one of the assassins. "And none of us are black."

  Gloomily, the captain shook his head. "Don't belabor the obvious. We'll have to move fast and reach Egypt before they do. Try and do it there, if we can. All of us can pass as Persians among Arabs-or the reverse, if we must."

  "We may well have to," cautioned his lieutenant. "The security in Egypt is reportedly ferocious. Organized by Romans, too. It'll be easier in Persia-easier still, in Persian-occupied Sind. The Iranians insist on placing grandees in charge of security, and grandees tend to be sloppy about these things."

  "True." The captain stared down at the broadsheet. Then he did crumple it.

  The Iron Triangle

  "They're not even going to try to run the mines, I don't think," Menander said. He lowered the telescope and offered it to Belisarius.

  The general shook his head. "Your eyes are as good as mine. At that distance, for sure. What are you seeing?"

  Before answering, Menander came down from the low platform he'd been standing on to observe the distant Malwa naval base. Then, stooped slightly so that his head would be well below the parapet. That brought his face on a level with the general's, since Belisarius was standing in a slight crouch also.