The Gathering Flame

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  She recognized the warning for what it was, and nodded acknowledgement. “So. And why can’t this person be presented to me here, like an other ambassador?”

  “Incognito has its advantages, my lady. What the Domina says is law. What some minor aristo says is gossip.”

  “And a simple tourist isn’t any ambassador, either. It cuts both ways. But I do like the idea of getting out of the palace. I assume you’ve already arranged—”

  The door at the other end of the passageway slid open. Perada schooled herself not to show annoyance.

  My private apartments are about as private as a shopping arcade … . I don’t think there’s one single lockplate in the whole palace that has my ID on it and nobody else’s.

  Her irritation faded slightly when she saw that the newcomer wore a Fleet uniform. “You have news?”

  “From Central,” said the messenger. “A report of a ship from Galcen landing on the field at Wippeldon.”

  He handed over a folded piece of stiff paper sealed with a wafer of gold foil. The Fleet might use voicelinks and printout flimsy to handle its internal communications, but when word went out to the Domina, only the best would do. If the best was slower, as it so often was, custom didn’t allow a ruler to complain about the honor.

  Perada broke the seal with her thumbnail. The contents of the message proved to be much the same as the news Ser Hafrey had brought, with the addition that the Fleet was going to put up the new ambassador in the Orgilan Guesthouse.

  She passed over the message to Hafrey. “Where exactly is the Orgilan? I have to admit I don’t know An-Jemayne as well as I ought to.”

  “It isn’t far, if memory serves,” the armsmaster replied. “I’m sure we can find it without undue trouble.”

  “Very well, then.” She quit trying to hide her enthusiasm any longer. Let Hafrey and the messenger think it was eagerness for a brief adventure—they’d be half right, anyway. “Let’s go.”

  “You’ll need an incognito, my lady,” Hafrey reminded her.

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” she said. “Will this do?”

  As she spoke, Perada pulled off the Iron Crown and handed it to the Fleet messenger. She shook her head, and the half-dozen braids that had supported the black metal tiara, freed from their formal arrangement, fell onto her shoulders. The messenger was staring at her as if he’d never in his life seen a grown woman with her braids down—living in the Fleet, maybe he hadn’t.

  She took off her baldric of state and handed it to him as well.

  “Keep these until I get back,” she said. She turned again to the armsmaster. “I’m ready.”

  Garen Tarveet—once a citizen of Pleyver, and now, he supposed, a citizen of nowhere at all—wasn’t feeling as happy as he ought. The Palace Major was open to him, as the Summer Palace had been, but he wasn’t deluded into thinking he was a person of any significance at the Domina’s court. The rooms he had been given were comfortable, at least by the standards he’d grown used to at school, but the wing of the palace they occupied was clearly reserved for pensioned-off palace servants and the Domina’s indigent relatives. For the former heir to all of Tarveet Holdings, it was a lowering experience.

  He’d had more than enough leisure time to contemplate his declining fortunes. At least while the Domina and her entourage … he hated being thought of as part of somebody’s entourage! … at least while the Domina’s household was in residence at the Summer Palace, he’d been able to talk with ‘Rada once in a while. Nobody else on Entibor seemed to have a proper appreciation for galactic politics; as far as most of them were concerned, the universe ended at the edge of the planet’s atmosphere. As for Captain Metadi … General Metadi, thanks to ’Rada! … if the man couldn’t carry a thing off and sell it he probably didn’t believe it was real.

  Here in An-Jemayne, though, Garen never got a chance to discuss things with ’Rada at all. Every hour of the Domina’s working day was filled with formal audiences and informal receptions and traditional presentations of everything from dramatic performances to giant wheels of cheese. The long-range plans they’d talked about so often and worked out so carefully seemed to have been forgotten altogether.

  He spent his time, most days, as he did today: reading translations of what passed for political philosophy here on Entibor and nibbling on the small hard biscuits that people in An-Jemayne liked to serve alongside their wine. He didn’t care for the wine, but the dry pastries had a brittle, dusty flavor that suited his prevailing mood.

  Trash and drivel, he thought, scowling at the text reader in his lap. The book it displayed was supposedly written by the foremost political philosopher Entibor had ever produced. Garen was not impressed. The author should have given thanks that breathing is controlled by the autonomic nervous system—if he had to think about respiration in order to do it, he would have turned blue and died.

  He didn’t hear his door slide open, and didn’t look up until a familiar but unexpected voice broke into his concentration. “Garen! Come on—I think I need you!”

  It was Perada. With her long hair hanging down in half a dozen braids and her eyes lit up with excitement, she looked like a schoolgirl on a spree. Hafrey the armsmaster stood a little behind her, looking grave and reserved as usual. Garen thumbed off the text reader and put it aside.

  “‘Come on’? Where are we going?”

  Perada grinned at him—a most unroyal expression, and one that Hafrey obviously didn’t approve of. “To see the Galcenian ambassador,” she said.

  Garen sneered, more or less as a reflex. “Him? Whatever for?”

  “I think our chance has finally shown up,” she said. “These are new envoys, just arrived from Galcen. I need you to listen while I talk—help me find out what’s on their minds. You’ve studied this a lot more than I have. You can tell me if what they’re saying makes sense or not.”

  “My lady,” said the armsmaster. Not impatiently; Hafrey was never impatient, any more than a ticking bomb was impatient.

  She waved a hand at the older man. “Yes, yes—are you coming or not, Garen?”

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  He followed her out of the room and down through the backstairs portions of the Palace Major, with the armsmaster a watchful shadow at their heels. Somewhere in the basement depths, they came to a tunnel of arched stone where a hovercar was waiting. Once they were settled into the hovercar and on their way, Garen turned to Perada.

  “This is unusual,” he said. “There’s already one Galcenian ambassador here in An-Jemayne—why send out another one?”

  “I don’t know why,” Perada said. “That’s what I want to find out, and I want you to help me. In fact, I want you to do the talking.”

  Garen felt his ears turning red. “It won’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m an outlander. I don’t have any status in your court. And I’m a terrible liar. If I tried … he’d see through me in a moment.”

  “Oh.” She paused, looking at him for a moment with sharp blue eyes. Then she turned to Hafrey.

  “Witness me,” she said to the armsmaster. “I am creating this man a citizen of Entibor. I am creating him Lord Meteun.”

  She turned back to Garen.

  “You are now the lord of one of the districts in the northern hemisphere, including a seaport and a spaceport, and open lands adjacent to the royal park surrounding the Palace Minor. Your duties include advising me on economic and interstellar matters.”

  The Domina relaxed again in her seat. “So now you don’t have to lie.”

  Lord Meteun. Garen contemplated the name uneasily. “Wouldn’t there already be a noble by the name of Meteun? How is he going to feel about having his title coopted?”

  “I am the Domina,” Perada said. “And there isn’t a Lord Meteun anymore. The last one was in Veratina’s day, and the family line ended with him—no females in that generation.”

  “My lady,” said the armsmaster. He was looking out of the heavi
ly reflective window of the hovercar, and something about his voice and expression made Garen nervous.

  Perada followed Hafrey’s gaze. “Yes—what is it?”

  “We’re going too slowly.” Almost before the armsmaster had finished the sentence, he was working the latch on the hovercar’s passenger-compartment door. He kicked the door up and open with both feet. “Get out! Assassination! Jump! Move, move, move!”

  Long skirts and yellow braids flew wildly as Perada flung herself out the open door. Garen recognized the tuck and spin; they’d practiced it three days out of every week in gymnastics class at the Delaven Academy. He’d never been very good at it.

  He didn’t have the chance to hesitate. Hard fingers caught him by the upper arm, and the armsmaster half-pulled and half-slung him out the door after Perada. More of the academy’s gymnastics lessons had stuck with him than he’d expected; in spite of the awkward exit, he hit the ground in a creditable if bone-jarring roll. A few seconds later, Hafrey joined him, and they dashed toward the public comm-link kiosk where Perada had taken cover.

  In the street behind them, the hovercar exploded.

  Garen saw a blaster in the armsmaster’s hand, and wondered where it had come from—but not for long, as an instant later bolts of red and green fire started coming down at them from the roofline on both sides of the street. Hafrey began firing back. Garen couldn’t tell if he was hitting anything or not, but the fire from above slackened.

  The armsmaster fired a single bolt at the wall ahead, where a closed door blocked the way to safety. The door swung open. Garen saw Perada throwing herself into the dark interior. A moment later—without ever having a very clear memory of how he traversed the open ground to get there—Garen was inside the building also, with the armsmaster close behind him.

  Perada was breathing hard and the color was high in her cheeks. “Are they likely to come after us?”

  “Not immediately,” said Hafrey. “Once the targets are out of the killing ground, most ambushes are useless. But we may be dealing with optimists; pending arrival of security troops, I suggest we relocate ourselves.”

  “Very well,” Perada said.

  Garen, for his part, was happy to defer to the armsmaster’s expertise in the matter. They were in the downstairs vestibule of what looked like a low-rent office block. A flatvid notice display filled the back wall with a list of suites and occupants. There was a set of lift doors on one side of the vestibule and another door on the opposite side with a label on it in Entiboran block letters. Judging by the graphic posted next to the label, the door opened onto the emergency stairs.

  The armsmaster gestured in that direction. “Up,” he said. “And back.”

  They headed up the narrow stairway. Another emergency door opened onto the second-floor landing; Hafrey pushed the door open and they went out into an empty corridor. Perada spoke for the first time since they had left the downstairs lobby.

  “Who knew where we were going?”

  She had her breath back, and her face was set and pale. Her voice had an edge to it that Garen had never heard her use before. He realized, with a sense of shock, that Perada was no longer a schoolgirl excited by her close escape, or even a young and frightened woman. She was the absolute ruler of a planet and all its colonies, and she was angry.

  “Who knew?” she demanded again.

  The armsmaster remained calm. “I knew,” he said. “The driver knew. Anybody who was eavesdropping on our private communications also knew.”

  “And somebody tried to kill me. Do you think it was done out of general discontent with me and my policies, or do you think there was a specific cause?”

  Hafrey remained unruffled. He was palming lockplates and rattling doors on either side of the corridor—looking, Garen guessed, for a door that would open and let them through.

  “It could be either one, my lady. But if you’re asking me for a professional opinion, I’d say it was specific, and designed to prevent you from meeting with this new Galcenian.”

  “Who does that leave us with?”

  Hafrey shrugged. “Anyone who knows or can guess at the Galcenian’s mission. Nor can we leave out the possibility that the Galcenians themselves sent this ambassador, for no other reason than to draw you away from the palace without a guard.”

  “I see,” said Perada. “You will provide me with a list of suspects, in order of likelihood. And include on your list yourself, with a convincing reason why it couldn’t be you who arranged this affair.”

  “My lady—” Hafrey began.

  Perada ignored his protest. “After all, Ser Hafrey, I’m certain that the Minster of Internal Security will be eager to provide me with a convincing reason as to why you could.”

  Nivome do’Evaan didn’t wait to see if the officer at Fleet headquarters obeyed his order. Later, if the man failed him, there would be time for making the entire Fleet regret the oversight—but right now there was too much else to do. Instead, the Minister of Internal Security turned and strode back to his hovercar.

  “Get me to my office,” he told the driver. “The one in the old Executive building—not the palace. Stay well clear of the palace.”

  The hovercar rose and surged forward through the city streets with a flagrant disregard for safety and traffic regulations. The driver had worked for Nivome long enough to know that the wrath of the Interior Minister was more to be feared than any slight problem with the officers of Domestic Security.

  Nivome spent the time during the ride drumming on his thigh with his fingers. Once inside the Executive building, he snapped to the receptionist, “Get all the department heads in my office. Immediately.”

  By the time he’d taken the lift to his top-floor suite, the department heads—who hadn’t needed to come as far—were all assembled in the outer waiting room.

  “Right,” he began at once, not bothering to move on into the inner office. “Who has a location on the Domina?”

  “She left the palace a few minutes ago in an unmarked hovercar,” said the head of Royal Intelligence. “She was with Hafrey and that friend of hers from Pleyver. Garen somebody.”

  “I didn’t ask where she isn’t,” Nivome snapped. “I want to know where she is.”

  The head of Royal Intelligence flushed and pulled out his pocketlink. “One moment.”

  Nivome cut him off with a chopping gesture. “No electronic discussions. Face-to-face only.”

  The head of Royal Intelligence left, and Nivome turned back to the others. “All right, the rest of you. I am issuing arrest warrants for Hafrey the armsmaster and for the Galcenian ambassador—both Galcenian ambassadors—hell, any damned Galcenian you can find. I want to know what happened to communications with the palace, and I want to know who in this office is leaking information to Hafrey and the Fleet.”

  “All of that without using electronic comms?” said the chief of staff.

  “All without electronic comms. Now get to work!”

  The department heads scattered like leaves before the wind. The head of Royal Intelligence, returning, had to fight his way through the crush at the office door. Nivome regarded him impatiently.

  “Well?”

  The other man caught his breath. “Her Dignity’s hovercar has been located at the intersection of Fairing Street and Mercers’ Row. The car is on fire and the Domina herself has not been located.”

  “Locate her. Wait. You and I are going to locate her. But first—”

  Nivome stepped into his inner office. There was a safe on one wall, disguised as a framed scrap of late-Diffusionist tapestry. He hit the safe’s ID plate with one hand and reached inside with the other as soon as the door slid open, bringing out a heavy blaster on a dark leather gunbelt. He strapped on the belt, then reached into the safe again to pull out another, smaller weapon.

  “Here,” he said to the head of Royal Intelligence. “Take this. We’re going to the intersection of Fairing and Mercers’.”

  “What am I to do with my wretched
reputation?” Festen Arlingher asked himself. The open countryside blurring at high speed past the windows of the railcar obstinately refused to supply him with an answer.

  Even to him, his decision to buy a ticket on the first available pod-rail leaving Wippeldon for An-Jemayne looked like he was going to break his long personal rule against getting involved with politics.

  “Imagine. To be thought reliable. By politicians.”

  He shook his head and told himself not to be so hasty. Not every plan launched by the Galcenian Council came to fruition. They prepared for potential events as much as for real ones. The chances were that no call would ever arrive on that little machine now packed among the socks in his carrybag.

  “A philosopher. I should be more of a philosopher,” he said at last, as the railcar slid into its berth at the An-Jemayne Transit Hub.

  He left the hub pod-rail station and ambled through the main concourse like a man with nothing in particular on his mind. Behind the façade, he chewed frantically over the questions of where to go and whom to speak with in order to gain an audience—informal and private—with the Domina. He could hint at great knowledge. He could strike up an acquaintance with a familiar and attempt to worm his way in that manner. He could disguise himself as a lady’s maid and go to the employment office … .

  This wasn’t getting him anywhere. With an effort, he forced his wayward mind into more sober channels. By the time he reached the front entrance of the concourse, he had something that passed for an idea. He summoned a hovercab and requested transit to the Palace Major. By the time the cab was halfway to the palace, he had worked up the idea into a definite plan—thanks in part to the young man from the vintners’ guild. He rummaged for a moment in his carrybag, looking underneath the textcomm and the extra change of clothes to pull out a folded piece of black velvet.

  I knew this would come in handy.