by S. J. Ryan
“Then who freed Geth and the others?”
“Valarion, probably.”
“Valarion wouldn't free Britanian slaves.”
“Carrot, we don't have time for a discussion!”
“I'm not leaving. I'm going to clear my name as a Britanian or they'll take retribution against all of Britan!”
Matt paused. “Look, you're not going to have a chance to clear your name. Valarion is behind this whole thing because he needed Hadron out of the way in order to become Emperor. As for you, you're what they call a 'patsy.' He wanted you in this room to have you accused of the murder of the Emperor, and he knew you wouldn't come to the party unless you had a strong sense of personal obligation to thank the Emperor. That's why he got your friends freed. It wasn't a favor, it was a ruse.”
“A ruse.”
“Yes, a trick, a ploy – “
“I know what a ruse is. But Matt, they can't charge me with killing the Emperor! They have no evidence! They – “
She noticed the major was staring hard.
“Can I help you?” she asked aloud.
“I'll say it again,” the major replied, holding out his hand. “Where is your daisy brooch?”
“My what?”
“Witnesses say that you were wearing at the party a jeweled brooch in the form of a daisy. Where is it?”
“What dai – oh, I know what you mean. I left that at home.” Her eyebrows knitted. “How would you know what witnesses at the party would say? You've not been out of the room, and no one has come in.” As far as you know, Carrot thought.
For a moment, the major seemed at a loss. Then he turned to the bed, and his eyebrows elevated in mock surprise. “Ah, here it is!”
He reached beneath the bed sheets – from a place where he could not have seen it – and pulled out a brooch identical to the one she had been gifted with by the 'Emperor.' The major turned it end over end, then seemed to 'accidentally' press a tiny stud. The brooch flipped open, and a white powder spilled out.
“Poison!” he declared. The servants gasped while the major made a show of examining the 'evidence.' He glared sternly at Carrot. “And how do you explain the presence of this?”
“You took it out of your pocket just now and put it under the sheets and pretended to have found it there,” she replied.
“I think her actions in this tragedy are clear,” the major announced to the room, holding up the brooch. “She attempted to surreptitiously poison the Emperor, but he caught her in the act. There was a struggle, and so she killed him by suffocation.”
The soldiers watched mutely, but the servant girl put her hands to her mouth and squealed theatrically. Carrot suppressed an impulse to punch her out. She looked across the room at the accusing eyes and arrow heads. Then she looked at the brooch. It was an exact duplicate of the one she had been given at the house, save that first one doubtless didn't have a secret compartment that she might have opened on the way by accident and come prematurely to suspect the . . . ruse.
“Matt,” Carrot said. “You are right. But how do we get out of here?”
With a glance she surveyed the six bowmen. They were a little fatter than the legion regulars she'd fought in Britan, but their eyes had a glint of greater intelligence, and that meant greater skill. Moreover, there were another half-dozen guards with short swords. Three guards she might have been able to handle in close quarters combat, but a dozen?
Matt better have a good plan, she thought.
"There's a secret passage,” he said. “I'm going to create a distraction, then come to you. Then you follow me.”
“That's it?”
Matt didn't answer. She then saw that, on the far wall, above the heads of the soldiers, a wick snuffer pole was bobbing as it moved from wall lamp to wall lamp, dousing the flames as it went. At first the major was too busy conferring with his subordinates to notice. But when only three lamps remained – one on each wall – he looked up and scowled. His gaze went immediately to the snuffer pole.
“Who's doing that?” he demanded. “Who's there!”
The pole doused the lamp on the far wall. Then it descended out of sight. The major shifted his head back and forth, and then the pole rose again on the wall to Carrot's right. That lamp was doused, and only the lamp on the opposite wall remained.
“Clear away!” the major shouted, making a parting motion with his arms.
The men parted, revealing Matt stooped against the wall and still holding the pole.
“Get him!”
The soldiers drew their swords. Matt threw the snuffer pole. It described a perfect arc and struck the one still-illuminated lamp with cybernetic precision. The room was plunged into darkness.
The major roared and men shouted and swords clanged as in the confusion and darkness they fought one another. Carrot felt a hand grasp her ankle, tugging her downward. She crouched, with her cat's eyes discerning Matt's silhouette on all fours against the sliver of light pouring from the outside hall.
Matt crawled through the crowd. Carrot scrambled after. She felt the wall curtain brush by. She sensed Matt standing and she stood also. She was led in darkness down a ramp, and a panel clicked and they emerged into a well-lit room.
"A kitchen!" she said. "How did we get into a kitchen?"
“The Emperor's secret midnight snack tunnel. He had Archimedes build it for him.”
The kitchen was much larger than the one in the house of Archimedes, with rows of gleaming utensils and towering pantry shelves and an icebox big enough to walk inside. Mola would faint, Carrot thought. But there was no time to gawk. Matt had let go of Carrot's hand and was motioning for her to follow as he checked the next room, where a table for two had been set. Carrot saw the roses in the vases and the graphically explicit paintings on the walls and suspected this had been where the Emperor had his romantically intimate meals with special 'guests.' All so cozy, she thought. But the man was dead now and there was no point in reproving.
They proceeded to the hall, and with the entire building suffused with the scent of the imperial guard, she did not realize that a squad of guardsmen were near until they rushed the corner.
They raised their swords, yelled and charged. Matt and Carrot retreated to the dining room. As the guards burst past the threshold, Carrot grabbed the table and hurled it. She caught two but the rest streamed in. She grabbed a chair and fended off the blades while snapping a guard's wrist bone and expropriating his sword. Throwing away the chair, she kicked off her high heels and ripped a new hem for her dress, one that went above the knee and gave her freedom of movement. She brandished her blade and growled.
Clang-clang-clang! The soldiers pressed in, and Carrot retreated to a corner. They were four against one and their skill was better than she'd ever faced in the forests of Britan. Again and again she barely dodged their blades and points. She eyed Matt standing free to one side and called, “Help me!”
“I don't know how to sword fight!” he shouted.
Clang-clang!
“Just make a show of it and draw a couple off. I can't fight them all at once!”
Matt took the sword from a soldier she had knocked unconscious with the table. He sidestepped warily at the fringe of the battle between Carrot and the four guards. Then a blade nicked her dress and in reaction he yelled and stabbed his point into the fray. His thrust was too short to cause damage, but two guards turned and gave attention to him.
She quickly saw that Matt was right, he didn't know the first thing about fighting with a sword. Soon he was being pushed to another corner, blades coming within centimeters of his throat as the chair he used as shield was hacked to kindling.
But now she was down to two opponents – and two was a number she could handle. Gritting her teeth and bracing her feet against the wall, Carrot slammed her sword against an incoming blade. CLANG! The impact stunned the guard, who fell and lost his grip. Carrot whirled to the other and slashed. His body armor took only a scrape, but the fury of the attack had
put him off balance. Carrot sprang off the wall, launching herself across the meters of separation. She knocked him over and punched him unconscious and whirled to face Matt's assailants. One of them charged and she had him disarmed in three swift strokes, and stunned and reeling in one more.
The sole remaining guard stared at the scene, then at her. She snarled. He bolted.
Matt had fallen and lost his sword in the melee. He accepted her hand and she pulled him standing. He looked at the littering of incapacitated guards sprawled across the carpet and said, “Wow.”
She realized her hair was disheveled and she was perspiring. She heard herself snorting and took a deep, calming breath. Then she met his eyes.
“I look like a ragged beast, don't I?”
“You look like a gorgeous ragged beast.” He cast a side glance and twisted his head, listening to his inner voice as his finger traced above a screen she could not seen. “Ivan has mapped a clear route from here to the east wall of the palace. Let's get outside before Herman sets.”
A twist and a turn and they clattered down steps into clear night air. The garden's knee-high dainty lanterns barely illuminated the path over the light provided by the blazing stars and brilliant moon. Carrot let Matt guide. "This way!" Then, "This way!" She saw and smelled no guards, a positive sign that their pursuers were being efficiently evaded.
Satellite view is wonderful, she thought. She scanned the sky but could not see the spark that was their benefactor in the heavens.
Matt abruptly stopped. She nearly piled into him and started to ask, but then she smelled . . . Her.
Ahead of them, blocking their path to the east wall, Lady Inoldia stepped from behind a hedge. She was dressed elegantly, as if she too had attended the party after all. She was smirking. Carrot snarled.
Matt turned to retreat, but Inoldia called, “Boy, do you think you can outrace me?”
Carrot, growling, interposed herself and raised her sword.
“Carrot!” Matt shouted. “We have to get away!”
Inoldia strolled toward them. She splayed her fingers – which ended in normal nails. Carrot wondered if Inoldia was so overconfident that she thought that she could take on Carrot without transforming from human form. If so, Carrot thought, she'll learn otherwise too late.
“Carrot!” Matt shouted. “Don't do this!”
Carrot didn't hear. She growled once more, clenched the sword, and advanced. Inoldia contemplated her serenely.
“How much have you looked forward to this moment,” Inoldia said. “Your opportunity to avenge the death of your mother. For years you've waited for this. Sad, really.”
Carrot raised her sword, screamed loud enough to be heard in the great hall, and lunged.
Inoldia raised her arm horizontally, twisting her hand vertically. Her palm flashed. Carrot glimpsed a dart that exploded from the palm and trailed a coiled thread as it streaked toward her faster than an arrow. She was too close, there was no time to dodge. The dart embedded in her dress, just below the collar.
Carrot had expected pain from the dart's impact. She had expected a gush of poison through her bloodstream. Instead – she felt as if her body had been possessed.
Against her will she straightened and stiffened. She dropped the sword and collapsed. Flat on the ground, her body trembled and shook. She tried to regain control, but – nothing.
It wasn't pain. It was beyond pain. It's the thing that pain comes to warn you about is coming next, Carrot thought.
“Carrot!” she heard Matt scream.
Her eyes were open but she could not move them. She saw at the corner of her vision, Inoldia twisted to face Matt and raised her other arm and oriented her other palm – and then the Sister of Wisdom fired another infernal dart. Matt jerked and went stiff and collapsed. Carrot wanted to call his name, but her lungs and wind pipe and mouth were all removed from her power.
She remembered the radio. But she couldn't manage even a whisper.
She lay face up, unable to move except for blinks and short, painful panting. Inoldia stood above her and smiled while pulling the coils from bleeding palms.
“So ends the battle of vengeance to which you dedicated your life,” Inoldia said. “I too feel that it was over too soon, but what can I do? You were simply inadequate for the contest.”
Some feeling returned to Carrot's body and she struggled to move her arms – but she could barely do more than gurgle and grimace.
Inoldia stooped over Matt. “Wizardling, or whatever you call yourself. Have your mentor come out of your head now, or I will crush your skull while it is inside.”
She means Ivan, Carrot thought. She knows about Ivan.
After a moment, something white and small like Ivan did emerge from Matt's nostril. But it was in the shape of a beetle, with an ovoid body and numerous crawling legs. It scurried across Matt's face and down onto the garden path and toward the hedges. Inoldia raised her foot and stamped hard, grinding the thing into the paving stone.
She removed her sandal and smiled at the twitching debris. “Filthy, disgusting thing! I do hope that's the last one I'll ever see.”
A score of soldiers arrived, bearing a profusion of lanterns. A imperial guard colonel bowed deeply to Inoldia and she instructed that shackles be placed on Carrot, as they quickly were. They were not ordinary shackles, though, but a kind that Carrot thought might be used to restrain large animals. They were enough for her, she thought, as she was raised to standing and yet wobbled.
A litter arrived and Carrot was pushed inside. She watched Matt being shackled normally and called through numb lips, “What are you going to do with him?”
“He's a present for the new emperor,” Inoldia said. She smiled almost benignly. “And as for you, you will be a present for the Mother.”
Carrot had never subvocaled, but she had an idea of how it was done by having observed Matt do it so many times.
“Matt!” she attempted. “Matt!”
There was no answer as Carrot was borne out of the palace grounds and toward the waterfront.
42.
Matt tried calling to Carrot over their radio link as her litter departed the palace grounds, but then he began to drift in and out of consciousness. He had the strangest dream, of a world with buildings taller than trees, coaches that traveled among the clouds and stars, and printing presses that effortlessly provided all the material needs and comforts that anyone would ever need. In his dreamworld, words and pictures flew silently through the air while inside the ghost in the machine was another ghost who was a machine . . . .
He awakened with a start and opened his eyes to darkness. He was in a sitting position and tried to move his arms and legs, but they were shackled. He seemed to be confined in a closet, one that was shaking and rattling.
"Ivan, where are we?"
"We are in a locked box on a rickshaw, descending on Golden Street, approximately fifty meters east of Victory Square."
"Where's Carrot?"
"I do not know. I lost her transponder signal eighteen minutes ago. Hermanset occurred eleven minutes ago, while she was in transit down Golden Street.”
“Herman has a way of setting at the worst time. Well, let me know if you make contact with Herman or, uh, Ivan Lite.”
“Yes, Matt.” Coinciding with a slowing and twisting of the vehicle, Ivan announced, “We have entered Victory Square and are heading east.”
Matt had guessed the first part, having heard innumerable times during his visits the clatter of rickshaw wheels upon the bricks of the Square. When the sound changed pitch, he knew they had entered the older part of the plaza.
"Ivan, I have a really bad headache. Can you turn it off?"
"Yes, Matt."
"Thanks. Much better, I can think now. Okay, so Inoldia has a taser bio-engineered into her palm. That's an old trick, but new on this world, I guess. Lucky you're electrically sheathed.”
“All neural implant matrices have been electrically sheathed by law since before th
e end of the twenty-first century.”
“So Inoldia doesn't know about you or Ivan Lite. By the way, how did you manage to print that mentor-bug model so – “ Matt had an odd sensation, and felt his face. “Part of my nose bridge is missing.”
“Yes, Matt. I used the bone mass to form the mentor model as it would have taken several minutes to print a model independently, and your life was in imminent danger.”
Matt considered. “You made the right decision. And Inoldia seems to have been fooled by the mentor design we got from the murals, so good job there too. And, uh, since I don't need a third nostril, you are going to fill the hole, right?”
“I have been in the process of doing so. It was originally twice as large as it is now.”
“All right, carry on.” Matt made a conscious effort to keep from rubbing the depression in his face. “Well, now what we need to think about is escape, then get Carrot, then – “
Abruptly, the vehicle stopped. The doors were flung open and soldiers unlooped his shackles – a procedure that reminded him of Palras – so that they were free of the vehicle. He was then pulled out of the rickshaw and shoved through the damp night air across the empty square toward the columned facade of the Imperial Senate Building.
They passed the steps to the gallery and bore straight ahead to a corridor that was lined with reproductions of the murals in the palace. Matt was shunted into a small room. He heard a voice droning from the doors of the other side. Valarion was making a speech in the Senate Chamber.
A soldier drew his short sword and placed it under Matt's chin. “You will be quiet unless spoken to, prisoner. I have been authorized to kill you if you speak out of turn.” Without waiting for Matt's assent of understanding, the soldier re-sheathed his sword and faced the chamber doors as if nothing had happened.