The Sundering

by Walter Jon Williams

  There were a few stunned, hopeless questions from the board before the officers from the Intelligence Section were sent away, and then a long, numb, despairing silence before Lord Tork spoke.

  “My lords,” he said slowly, “I think it is now obvious that we can’t hope to hold Zanshaa. We must adopt another plan.”

  “The Martinez Plan?” Chen said pointedly, and felt a mean little stab of satisfaction at seeing Pezzini wince.

  Lord Tork turned his pale face toward Chen. “Lord Saïd, when he spoke to me about your visit the other day, referred to it as the Chen Plan. Perhaps it should retain that designation.”

  Lord Chen, who now realized that Tork knew that he’d gone behind his back to the Lord Senior, resolved that he refused to be embarrassed by the knowledge.

  “Your lordship gives me too much credit,” he said.

  Lord Tork’s mournful face turned to the others on the board. “I shall demand an immediate interview with Lord Saïd,” he said. “I trust you will all attend?”

  Lord Chen, as he rose from his chair, thought back to the desperation of the last few days, his frantic lobbying efforts aimed at getting the government to adopt the plan that Lord Tork and the other die-hards had just accepted without question…and then it occurred to him to wonder:

  The Martinez luck. Is it working already?

  Walpurga walked through her wedding with a half-curious, half-thoughtful expression on her face, as if she were observing with considerable interest the quaint rites of a tribe of Yormaks.

  PJ Ngeni, on the other hand, looked as if he were attending his own funeral.

  At the climax of the marriage ritual Walpurga sat on the edge of a bed, her legs dangling over the side, while the groom sat on the floor with her feet in his lap as he removed her slippers. Perhaps in most homes this ceremony took place in an actual bedroom, but in the Shelley Palace—as in the Yoshitoshi Palace two days before—a large bed had been moved into a drawing room for just this purpose.

  The guests at Walpurga’s wedding were a small fraction of those at Vipsania’s. The circumstances of the marriage seemed to call for a smaller celebration, and each family had invited only intimates, a total of about fifty people.

  The ribbons of one slipper untied, PJ paused, his long face drawn with melancholy, to permit pictures to be taken. Lord Pierre Ngeni stood near his cousin, arms folded on his chest, to make certain PJ went through with it. Roland, rather more confident of the outcome, smiled easily in the background.

  Martinez, watching with more sympathy than he’d perhaps intended, wondered what expression the picture-takers would find on his own face, at his own nuptials two days hence.

  PJ completed the ritual to polite applause. Walpurga’s toenails had been lacquered a brilliant shade of crimson to compliment her wedding gown of red and gold tissue. The two rose and kissed, again as cameras hummed about them.

  A sudden anger flashed through Martinez. Let my wedding not be such a farce, he violently thought.

  Afterward, after Walpurga put on her slippers once again and the crowd began to disperse, Martinez approached Terza, who had been watching with a kind of serene smile that Martinez would have found eerie had he not, already in their brief acquaintance, learned that this was an habitual expression of concealment.

  Terza saw him walking toward her, and her gaze shifted to him while the smile altered, he hoped, to something more genuine. He had been trying to spend as much time as possible with his bride-to-be, though with so many last-minute arrangements on the part of both families this had amounted only to a few hours. With her father occupied exclusively with the Convocation and the Control Board, her mother refusing to have anything to do with the proceedings, and many of her relatives fleeing the capital, Terza was forced to plan her own wedding, and on only a few days’ notice.

  You’ve got to get her pregnant, Roland had urged him that morning. Tell her you want children right away, that she should get her implant removed and take Progestene or something to induce ovulation. And when an annoyed Martinez had asked him why in hell he should do that, Roland had patiently explained. When the Chen family’s back on its feet after the war, Daddy Chen may try to make his daughter divorce you. I want you to have fathered a couple of bouncing baby heirs by that point—and if Chen tries to disinherit them in favor of children by some other parent, Clan Martinez will serve him with a lawsuit that will nail his ears to the wall.

  It had not cheered Martinez to discover that Roland was already thinking ahead to his divorce.

  “Shall we walk in the garden?” Martinez suggested.

  “Certainly.”

  The garden in the Shelley Palace courtyard was old and overgrown, shadowed by the rambling structure of the palace, which had been built over many centuries and in different styles. The two stood for a moment before an allegory of The Triumph of Virtue over Vice, the two central figures so old and weathered that their faces had become nearly identical abstractions, corroded blind eyes over hollow, mournful mouths.

  “Who is that person?” Terza asked, indicating an elderly Terran woman in a light summer frock who walked amid straggling forsythia. “She’s not dressed for a wedding.”

  “I’m not certain who she is,” Martinez said. “But we have only the front part of the palace, you know. Shelley relatives and clients and pensioned servants live in the back—there’s a regular crowd of them, and I haven’t been here long enough to know them.”

  “Sometimes I have the same problem at our properties,” Terza said, “though of course I’m supposed to know them, they all work for us.”

  Martinez took Terza’s arm and drew her away from the corroded statues and along an old, uneven brick walk, where the sound of their heels was muffled by moss. “I imagine it’s hard work being the Chen heir,” he said.

  “Not yet,” Terza said. She glanced at him. “My father’s given me some of his clients to look after, and some properties. But it’s nothing like real work—I have plenty of time for my music and for a full social schedule.”

  “Perhaps he wants you to enjoy your freedom while you’re young.”

  Terza looked thoughtful. “That might be part of it. But I think he wanted to know who my husband would be before he charted my course, so that he and I could compliment each other in the way of our goals.”

  Martinez looked at her. “That’s odd.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You’ll be Lady Chen one day. Your husband will be Lord Chen only because of you. He should fit himself to your ambitions, not the other way around.”

  Her heavy silks rustled. Terza gave a close-lipped smile and looked down at the moss-covered walk. “That’s a generous thought. So if I elected to pursue a career in the Ministry of Works, you’d resign your commission to join me in my postings?”

  Martinez felt his heart shift into a faster, far more uneasy tempo. “Let’s hope neither of us ever has to make such a decision,” he said.

  Her downcast smile widened. “Let’s hope not.” She turned her cool brown eyes to his. “But in all seriousness, you wouldn’t object to my having a career?”

  “No, not at all. But isn’t being Lady Chen a career in itself?” His own father had never worked at anything other than being Lord Martinez of Laredo, and it had seemed very much a full-time job.

  “I suppose,” Terza said. “But some administrative experience would come in handy, for dealing with family enterprises and clients, and later for the Convocation.”

  She wouldn’t have any anxiety on that last score, he knew. The head of Clan Chen was always coopted into the Convocation, along with the heads of around four hundred other families, a fact of history that less privileged Peers like Lord Martinez had always resented.

  “And of course we’re at war,” Terza added. “I want to do what I can to—oh.”

  “Hold still.” Martinez went down on one knee and disentangled her trailing gown from an intrusive hydrangea. He looked up at her.

  “Thank you,”
she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  There was a moment’s silence as Martinez knelt at her feet, and then Terza gave him her hand and helped him rise. He could feel the warmth of her hand through the soft, paper-thin leather of her glove as they continued along the garden path.

  “Perhaps I’ll try for a post in the Ministry of Right and Dominion,” Terza said, naming the civilian ministry that, under the Fleet Control Board, governed and supported the Fleet and smaller, related services. “That way I could aid both my father and my husband.”

  “That’s a…worthy idea,” Martinez said. She heard the hesitation in his tone and raised an eyebrow.

  “You don’t quite approve?”

  “No, not that.” Martinez searched his mind for the best way to phrase the thought that had flown on chill wings into his mind. “Perhaps you should choose another ministry, that’s all,” he said. “If the Naxids win, they might be more likely to…leave you alone.”

  Sadness touched Terza’s lips. “I’ve decided it’s useless to guess what the Naxids might do,” she said.

  A chord sounded plangent along his nerves. Ah, Roland, Martinez thought, have you considered we might be getting this girl killed?

  They came to another statue grouping, representing an allegory harder to read than the first. A woman poured water from a jug into a pool, and a man with a mustache and tall peaked hat watched while strumming a bulbous stringed instrument. The figure of a large, self-satisfied bird perched on the woman’s left shoulder. In the air floated the freshness of water and the moist scent of mosses and lilies.

  Before the statuary Martinez took both Terza’s hands. He could see the pulse beat in her throat. She looked up at him for a moment, her eyes inquiring, and then she tilted her face toward him to be kissed. Her lips were warm and pliant.

  He hadn’t kissed her before, not really. There had been formal kisses when the engagement was announced, but that had been for the benefit of an audience. This was for the two of them alone.

  Martinez couldn’t help but think of the excitement he’d tasted on Sula’s lips, the way her kiss had always seemed to promise fire and passion…That fervor was absent here—instead there was a gracious acquiescence mixed with a kind of hopeful curiosity.

  He decided that this was not a bad place to start. He put his arms around her. He breathed the warm scent of her hair. Water splashed and chuckled from the stone woman’s jug.

  His sleeve comm chimed. He gave an apologetic laugh, disentangled himself, and answered. He looked at the display to see the face of Vonderheydte, Corona’s former junior lieutenant.

  “My lord,” Vonderheydte said.

  “Lieutenant,” Martinez said in surprise. “How are you doing?”

  “Very well, my lord, thank you.” Vonderheydte paused, licked his lips, and then broke into a bright grin. “In fact, my lord, I’m getting married tomorrow. I thought I’d extend you an invitation.”

  Laughter burst from Martinez. The marriage motif was being repeated a few too many times. Solemnity, then farce, followed now by parody. At this rate his own nuptials would barely rate a footnote.

  A sobering thought struck Martinez. “Just a moment,” he said. “Haven’t you been married twice before?”

  “Yes,” Vonderheydte admitted, “but Daphne is different. This time I’ve found the right woman.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it,” Martinez said. “I would be honored to attend, if I can.”

  “Empire Hotel, lord captain,” Vonderheydte said, “Empyrean Ballroom, 16:01 hours.”

  “Very good,” Martinez said. “I’ll be there unless something urgent calls me away.”

  Martinez blanked the screen and looked at Terza. “One of my officers,” he said, then corrected, “my former officers.”

  “So I understood,” Terza said.

  “Would you like to join me at the wedding? Perhaps we’ll pick up some useful ideas.”

  Terza smiled. “I have to organize our own wedding for the following day, remember. I don’t think I’m going to have the leisure to attend anything between now and then.”

  “Ah.” He looked at her. “Would you like me to assist? I’m rather good at organizing things.”

  “Thanks, but no. I’d lose too much time explaining everything.”

  A gust of wind found its way into the courtyard and rustled leaves. A sudden impulse seized him, and he took her hand. “Terza,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Could we have children—a child—right away?”

  She was surprised. “I—I’d have to schedule time to get the implant removed, and—” She looked at him. “Are you sure?”

  His mouth was dry. “I might die,” he said.

  Her look softened, and she touched his cheek. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, of course.”

  Terza put her arms around him and kissed him. His mind whirled. He couldn’t tell whether this paternal impulse was his, or Roland’s. He hated the fact that he didn’t know, that he himself couldn’t tell whether his genes were truly clamoring for offspring or whether he was becoming an unwitting expert at emotional blackmail.

  Disgust, he recalled, tasted like copper.

  This time it was Terza’s comm that chimed. With a peal of apologetic laughter she dug into her costume for a hand unit and answered. The voice that came from it was that of her father.

  “Is Captain Martinez with you?” he asked.

  Lord Chen, though he treated Martinez in person with courtesy, hadn’t yet brought himself to address him by his personal name.

  “Yes,” Terza said. “He’s here.”

  “Then I’ll tell you both,” Chen said. “This morning Lord Saïd addressed a closed-door session of the Convocation and recommended the evacuation of Zanshaa. The measure passed on a voice vote with very little opposition.”

  Martinez felt, in his muscles and nerves, the easing of a tension of which he had been unaware; and he looked into Terza’s face and saw the relief that was mirrored in his own. “Excellent, my lord,” he said loudly, in hopes that Lord Chen would hear him.

  Terza turned up the audio for the benefit of Martinez’s straining ears. “Two Fleet cargo vessels are being requisitioned to bring the Convocation to another location—we haven’t worked out where. The Martinez Plan will be adopted, though Captain Martinez should be warned that Lord Tork’s decided it should be called the Chen Plan.”

  Chen’s poached my idea, Martinez thought with a spasm of annoyance. “It doesn’t matter what they call it, my lord,” he said, “so long as it contributes to a successful outcome of the war.”

  As he uttered this blatant falsehood Martinez saw amusement crinkling the corners of Terza’s eyes, and his irritation increased.

  “Good of you to feel that way,” Chen said. “You should also know that the board has agreed to my sister’s request that you serve as her tactical officer. You’ll be ordered aboard her ship as soon as suitable transport can be arranged.”

  Which, since Martinez was on Zanshaa and Michi Chen was currently orbiting Zanshaa’s system at enormous velocity, was a more complex task than it sounded.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Martinez said.

  Terza laughed. “Do you have anything to say to me,” she asked, “or should I just hand the comm to Gareth?”

  Lord Chen lowered his voice so that Martinez had to strain to hear the words. “Just that I’m sorry not to be with you now,” he said. “Things are moving too fast. I wish we could spend more time together.”

  “So do I,” Terza said.

  “I love you.” There was a hesitation, and then, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “See you then. Bye.”

  Terza put her comm away.

  I love you, Lord Chen had said. Martinez had not yet told Terza this, for the simple reason that Terza, an intelligent person, would have known it wasn’t true. He had thought about saying it for form’s sake, or even out of politeness; but something restrained him from beginning his marriage w
ith a lie. Nor did he want to start with an embarrassment of candor: I love another was hardly the best way to approach a relationship.

  He sensed that, for both himself and for Terza, a veil was being drawn very carefully over their private feelings. Not simply because truthfulness would be unwelcome, or even because in their situation it was irrelevant, but because it could wound. For Martinez to mention his involvement with Sula would not simply be to voice an awkward truth, it would be to draw a weapon. A weapon that either he or Terza could use in time, and use to draw blood.

  And so, silence. He took Terza’s hand and kissed her cheek. And in the bright afternoon light he drew her farther into the garden.

  “Walpurga looked lovely,” Terza remarked. “Don’t you think?”

  Irony, Martinez was reminded, tasted like old coffee grounds.

  Martinez knelt before the battery of cameras with Terza’s feet in his lap and smiled out at posterity. The actual marriage had occurred some hours earlier, in an office at the Registrar before Judge Ngeni of the High Court, and since then there had been a number of popular rituals of which this, the symbolic consummation, was the last.

  Above him Terza sat in the canopied bed that had been assembled in one of the parlors of the Chen Palace. She was dressed in a scarlet gown so laden with glistening gold brocade that it creaked. Martinez wore full parade dress, with silver braid and jackboots and—at least for the ride to the Registrar and back—a tall leather shako and a long cloak that draped to his ankles. He had carried the baton of the Golden Orb as well, which meant that Judge Ngeni had to begin the ceremony by snapping to attention and baring the throat ready to be sliced by the sickle-shaped, ceremonial knife Martinez wore at his belt…

  Martinez began to undo the red ribbons that laced Terza’s brocade slippers. The cameras whispered as they came in for a closeup. Martinez unlaced both slippers, then drew one off after the other. The audience applauded. Terza’s feet were small and delicate and the soles were warm to his touch.

  The last ritual complete, one of Terza’s friends handed Martinez a stylish pair of shoes, red leather and bows, which he drew onto Terza’s feet. He stood and helped Terza, awkward in her brocade and tall heels, to rise. They kissed, and again the cameras whispered.