Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  "I suppose that makes some sense. But the fact that it's a good thing for Sharona won't keep it from making some mighty powerful men hate me," Kinlafia pointed out.

  "Probably. That's all part of the game of politics, too. But don't underestimate the power of a man who's been wronged, appealing to the world for justice. Some of the men?and women?whose plans you spike might just fall under the spell themselves, and support you. Others will try to hitch themselves to you for gain, try to find a way to use you, and you'll want to watch out for that, too.

  "Because that's really the most important part, when you come right down to it. Exercising a moderating effect on the rhetoric and fury of the campaign in the first place would be worthwhile all by itself, but the real object of the exercise is to put you into a position where you can actually accomplish something. A position which lets you kick the arses of the carrion eaters out to twist this entire crisis around to their own personal advantage."

  "I see."

  "Actually," Janaki smiled, "I doubt you do. Not the same way I do, anyway?not yet. But I've had politics bred into me for five thousand years. Coming out here," he waved one hand at the entrance to the tent, where the chill stars of a northern autumn were beginning to prick the sky, "was part vacation from my political education, and part necessary political foundation for the job I'll have to do some day."

  Kinlafia blinked in surprise, and Janaki shrugged.

  "A man who commands armies and navies tends to do a better job of it if he's spent time in the army or navy in question. Not always, I'm sorry to say, but on average. And people have greater confidence in a man who's been at the pointy end himself, as it were. Maybe even more to the point, someone who's had personal experience of what 'sending in the troops' can cost the troops has a tendency to stop and think really hard before he sends them into harm's way . . and has more moral authority when he decides he has to do it anyway. Those are just a few of the reasons why emperors of Ternathia are almost always chan Calirath. We're military veterans, nearly all of us.

  "But that's beside the point I'm trying to make. I truly believe Sharona needs the job you'll do, Voice Kinlafia. And," he added softly, "you'll need that job, too, won't you? Badly, I think. Not just for something to do, either. You've got to decide exactly how you want to confront Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's life … and death. Is it vengeance you want, or justice, and what price are you?and all our people?prepared to pay for whichever they choose to purchase in the end?"

  Kinlafia's tightened-down fingers locked together. He couldn't speak at all, just gave Janaki a jerky nod, and Janaki nodded back.

  "That's all I'll say for now, then. We'll talk about this again, if you're half as interested as I think you are. Or will be soon. We'll be traveling together at least as far as Fort Brithik, and I can probably teach you a fair bit?or give you some pointers, at least?along the way. And I can send letters of introduction ahead with you, as well. Hook you up with people who can help you in all kinds of useful ways."

  Kinlafia gazed at him very thoughtfully for several seconds, then produced an off-center, lopsided smile.

  "If Ternathia were a democracy, and if I were a Ternathian, I'd vote for you, Your Highness, in every election you ran in," he said, and Janaki blinked.

  "Why?"

  "Because you care about the people you'll rule one day. And you don't just care about Ternathians. You care about Sharonians?all of us. Hells, Your Highness, if you'll pardon my language, you even care about me, and I'm not even one of your subjects! From where I sit, that's pretty damned rare."

  Janaki frowned in surprise. First, because Kinlafia was surprised. And, second, because he realized Kinlafia might just be right. Perhaps the Caliraths really were a rarer breed than he'd actually realized and he'd simply been too close to see it.

  "Maybe you're right," he told the Voice with a smile even more lopsided than Kinlafia's had been. "I'll have to remember to thank my father, the next time I see him, for pounding that into me. Trust me, it wasn't always a particularly easy job!"

  He chuckled, and Kinlafia chuckled back. But then the Crown Prince's expression sobered once more.

  "Either way, that's probably enough said on that subject, for now, at least," he said. "Which, unfortunately, brings us to the more immediate reason for this conversation. Do you want another whiskey before we begin?"

  Chapter Thirty

  Andrin's fashionable coiffure streamed out behind her in a mass of flying, golden-shot black silk, shredded and ruined by the wind, as she stood at the forward edge of the thirty thousand-ton steamer IMS Windtreader's promenade deck. She paid her hair's careful arrangement's destruction no heed; she had far too much on her mind to worry about that, although her lips twisted wryly in anticipation of her lady-in-waiting?and protocol instructor's?reaction. Lady Merissa was nearly three times Andrin's age and profoundly conscious of her charge's social standing. She would undoubtedly be properly horrified … if she could bring herself out of her seasick misery long enough to notice. Andrin felt genuinely sorry for Merissa, even if she did find it unfathomable how anyone could be seasick aboard such a large vessel. Personally, she would vastly have preferred her father's racing yacht, Peregrine, where the motion would have been truly lively, but Lady Merissa's misery was too obvious for anyone to doubt.

  Yet sympathy or no, this morning was far too glorious for Andrin to spend cooped up in the cabin, holding lady Merissa's hand solicitously. And so she had climbed out of bed the moment the rising sun sent its golden light streaming into her cabin's scuttles. She'd thrown on an appropriate gown and a warm woolen coat, lifted her hawk Finena from her perch to her gauntleted arm, and headed for the cabin door with indecorous haste. Lady Merissa was far too well-bred to protest sharing her cabin with both a grand princess and her favorite falcon, but Andrin knew her seasick mentor would rest easier with Finena out of the room. So she'd carried her companion up into the sunshine with her, which had delighted the hawk as much as it had her.

  And they'd needed that delight. Needed it badly.

  The news of the slaughter of the Chalgyn Consortium survey crew had broken, as everyone had known it must. And the impact on public opinion had been even worse than anyone had feared.

  The print coverage, and the editorials were bad enough. The non-Talented majority of Sharonians might not be able to share the Voicenet reports, experience the events directly, but they understood what had happened. They might not understand why it had happened?in which, Andrin admitted, they were not so very different from their emperors and kings and presidents?but they knew in excruciating detail what had happened to that survey crew. They knew because one courageous woman had held onto her Voice link through hell itself to be certain that they would … and they knew that, too.

  But for those who could See the Voicenet reportage, it was even worse.

  Andrin had forced herself to See the SUNN Voicenet report. She had only an extremely limited telepathic Talent, but it was more than enough to follow Voicenet transmissions. After witnessing that report, however, she found herself wishing passionately that she'd had no telepathic Talent at all. Not even the nightmares she'd experienced in her own Glimpses had been enough to prepare her for the sheer horror of what Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr had endured before her own death.

  The events themselves had been horrible enough, but the sheer power and clarity of Shaylar's Voice had stunned a universe. Everyone had known that she'd been one of Sharona's top Voices, but the intensity of her link with Darcel Kinlafia had been staggering. Every nuance of her emotions, her suspicions, her observations?every spike of terror, every gut-wrenching spasm of grief, every glorious, white-fire instant of courage?had hit every telepath on Sharona squarely between the eyes. The horror of those fiendish fireballs and lightning bolts. The massacre of her team leader, standing there without even a weapon in his hands when they shot him down. The dauntless determination of one young woman, burning her priceless records, her deadly charts, while their friends screamed and di
ed and burned around her.

  It was all there. It had happened to them, to their sisters, and their brothers. They knew precisely what she had experienced, because they had experienced it with her. And because even as they Saw it through her eyes, they had Seen it through the Darcel Kinlafia's, as well. He had relayed Shaylar's thoughts and emotions with agonizing fidelity, but they'd been too deeply linked for him to separate his own from the message when he passed it up the Voice chain. And so, in addition to their own reactions to Shaylar's raw experiences, they saw them through the eyes of a man who had obviously loved her. And that added still more poignancy?and horror?to the nightmare which had devoured her.

  No single event in the entire history of Sharona had ever hit home like this one. Andrin knew that it worried her father deeply. Zindel chan Calirath was no more immune to outrage and fury than anyone else, but he was Emperor of Ternathia. He had to think beyond the outrage, beyond the madness of the moment, and the blast furnace anger and hatred?and fear?sweeping through his home universe threatened to severely limit his own options and choices. As he'd told Shamir Taje he feared before the Voice Conclave, and as Andrin had seen in her own horrible Glimpses, the chance of somehow evading the cataclysmic possibility of open warfare with these people, whoever they were, was growing less and less likely by the day.

  And that was the true reason?little though Andrin was prepared to admit it to anyone, especially her father?that she'd felt such a need to race up to the promenade deck and submerge herself in life and the input of her physical senses. To at least temporarily escape the conviction that some huge inescapable boulder was grinding down the mountainside of history towards her, crushing everything in its path.

  And for the moment, at least, it was working, she thought gratefully in the corner of her mind still focused on analysis. It was a very small corner, because she was nearly drunk on the sensations of sunlight on seawater, of wind hammering past her face, the deep-seated vibration of Windtreader's powerful engines underfoot, and the rhythmic wash and rumble of water, piling away from the ship's stem in a great, white furrow as the liner cut through the whitecaps. Windtreader was slower than Peregrine, the imperial yacht, but she'd been built for the trans-Vandor run between Ternathia and New Farnal, with emphasis on speed and comfort. She was easily capable of a sustained twenty knots, and her furnishings rivaled those of the finest hotel ashore. Designed to transport better than five hundred first-class passengers, four hundred and fifty second-class, and up to six hundred third-class, she had more than enough internal space for the huge staff which had to go everywhere the Emperor of Ternathia went. Which was fortunate, since this time there were several hundred important politicians and their staffs, as well.

  And while Windtreader might be slower than oceanic greyhounds like Peregrine, it was unlikely she'd be called upon to outrun anyone on this voyage.

  Andrin looked to starboard, were one of Windtreader's guardians plowed steadily through the swell. IMS Prince of Ternathia was an armored cruiser?twelve thousand tons of sickle-prowed armor plate, with four twin nine-inch turrets, two each fore and aft, and a broadside of fourteen six-inch guns. Her sister ship, IMS Duke Ihtrial cruised watchfully to port of the liner, interposed between her and any threat, and Andrin wondered just how anxious Master-Captain Farsal chan Morthain, the escort commander, was feeling this fine morning as she stood here, enjoying the exuberant wind. It wasn't often, after all, that the Emperor, the heir-secondary, the entire Privy Council, the speakers of all three of the Ternathian Houses of Parliament, a sizable chunk of the most senior members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the most senior lords justicar of the Emperor's Bench, over seventy members of Parliament, and the Imperial chiefs of staff were all packed aboard a single ship.

  Officially, chan Morthain and his cruisers were out there to guard Windtreader against "pirates," but there hadn't been a single pirate operating in the waters between Ternath Island and Tajvana in centuries. The possibility of some lunatic in a fast boat loaded with explosives probably figured far more prominently in chan Morthain's thinking. Personally, Andrin felt quite certain that the cruisers were intended much more as a precaution?and possibly a somewhat pointed hint?designed to get the attention of some of Ternathia's less scrupulous "allies" than as a defense against any sort of criminals.

  Finena, perched delicately on Andrin's forearm, cocked her sleek head. She eyed the cloud of seabirds overhead with hungry interest, and Andrin laughed as the movement pulled her out of her own thoughts.

  "Perhaps you should breakfast up here, love," she told the falcon. "Poor Merissa would lose the contents of her tummy?again?if you broke your fast in the cabin."

  Finena tipped her head to gaze across at Andrin. Like Janaki's Taleena, Finena was an imperial Ternathian peregrine, but she looked like no other hawk which had ever broken shell in the imperial hatchery. She wasn't quite a true albino, for her eyes were as dark as any other Ternathian falcon's, but she showed none of the bold bluish-grey plumage of male peregrines, nor even the browner tones of the females of the species. Her plumage was a dazzling white, and she showed mere shadows of gray where other peregrines' underparts would have been marked with sharply visible black bars. And while she wasn't a true sentient, like the dolphins and whales or the great apes, she was an extremely smart bird?one Andrin had hand-raised from a chick.

  Now Andrin ran a feather-gentle fingertip down Finena's strongly hooked beak. That dangerously sharp weapon pressed back equally gently, and Andrin's lip curled disdainfully at the thought of the Uromathian kings and princes who would?without the slightest doubt?bring their own falcons to the conclave. Finena wore no jesses, no hood, and was never tethered, whether to her perch or to Andrin's gauntleted hand. Finena stayed with?and returned to?Andrin from love of her chosen human companion. Andrin respected the bird's freedom, and Finena was fiercely devoted to her. Uromathian kings and princes carried falcons as status symbols; that much of the traditional Ternathian practice they'd adopted. But unlike the Ternathian imperial house, they left their birds' routine daily care to hawk handlers and were always careful to fasten the birds securely to their wrists when they carried them?and to hood them, whenever they weren't actively hunting. Andrin considered that a barbaric and cruel practice, and her lip-curl of disdain turned into a sinful smile as she anticipated the expressions of the Uromathians when they caught their first glimpse of a Ternathian grand princess with a white Ternathian imperial peregrine.

  Finena preened on Andrin's arm as she caught her companion's emotions. They didn't share true telepathy, the way a cetacean or a chimpanzee shared with a translator, but their bond was very real, nonetheless, and Andrin felt it glowing between them as she turned and started for the external stair?which the sailors insisted on calling a "ladder"?from the promenade deck to the boat deck, above.

  "You're going to be the envy of every Uromathian male in Tajvana, love," Andrin half-crooned. "For now, though, why don't you go ahead and bring down a bird for your breakfast? Just be a dear and eat it up there somewhere." She pointed to the lookout's fat pod on Windtreader's foremast. "After all, it wouldn't do to irritate Captain Ula or the crew by scattering blood and feathers all over the deck."

  The glowing white bird, whose name meant "White Fire," let out a scolding "rehk," and Andrin laughed.

  "No, that's not an insult to your table manners, dearest. But that deck is clean enough for a baby to eat on, and I'd hate to make extra work for the crew. They're nervous enough as it is, with royalty aboard."

  Someone snorted at her shoulder, and she glanced mildly back at her personal guardsman, who followed the regulation two paces behind her.

  "Laugh if you will, Lazima chan Zindico," she said severely. "But it's true, and you know it."

  "Oh, aye, that it is," chan Zindico agreed solemnly, but a devilish glint lurked in his eyes. "I'm just thinking how surprised they'd be to hear a grand princess of the blood worrying about the condition of their decks."

  "You could
be right," she acknowledged, then grinned. "You generally are, after all."

  "Why, thank you, Your Highness. It's nice to be appreciated."

  chan Zindico's return smile was easy, but even here, on a Ternathian ship with a loyal and thoroughly vetted Ternathian crew, his constantly sweeping eyes remained sharp as flaked obsidian. He was pledged to guard her against all dangers … and at any cost. It was a pledge he'd taken voluntarily on the day of her birth, and that sometimes appalled Andrin. She might have turned out to be a raging, spoiled brat, and still chan Zindico would have honored that oath, thrown himself between her and any weapon that threatened her. She couldn't keep him from doing that, much though the thought secretly terrified her, and so she'd worked hard, almost from the day she could walk, in an effort to be worthy of that kind of commitment.

  She was unaware that chan Zindico and her other personal guards, who traded off the twenty-four-hour-a-day job of keeping her alive, took a fierce pride in their young mistress. Or that they looked with pity on the guards who'd pledged their lives to young Anbessa. The Emperor's youngest daughter had developed quite an imperial little temper?one Empress Varena was grimly determined to correct or die trying. Anbessa's guardsmen vehemently hoped their Empress succeeded. Soon.

  "Still and all," chan Zindico continued, smiling at Andrin as they stepped off the ladder onto Windtreader's uppermost deck, "if Lady Finena wants to scatter feathers, I'm sure the crew won't begrudge her."

  The grand princess laughed and flung her gauntleted arm aloft, launching the glowing white falcon. Finena rocketed upward, slashing high against the crystalline blue skies like a white flame. She circled the ship one, twice … then wheeled and streaked down through the flock of gulls like a gleaming thunderbolt. Feathers flew as the fisted talons struck, then snatched their prey out of the air, and chan Zindico knew his wasn't the only eye on deck drawn to that stunning flight.

  "It's the Grand Princess' falcon!" one of the pair of lookouts on the starboard bridge wing said, nudging his fellow, as Finena perched on the yard spreading the foremast stays and began devouring her breakfast with typical messiness.