Hell's Gate m-1

by David Weber

  Music drifted across the pier from a surprisingly large band, as the Ternathian imperial anthem floated to their ears in an appropriate salute to the arriving delegation. The imperial sunburst crackled from every mast as the longshoremen ran out the boarding gangway which would allow them to disembark, and Andrin's father lifted his arm from her shoulder, then offered her the crook of his elbow, instead.

  "My dear, shall we greet Tajvana?"

  She gave him a brave smile and nodded, placing her gloved hand on his coat sleeve with careful precision. Lady Merissa removed Andrin's bonnet, so that her dark hair, with its strands of gold, shone in the elaborate hairstyle she'd worked so hard to perfect. Jewel-headed pins and clasps flashed in the afternoon sunlight, like a crown of living fire, and Andrin thanked her softly. Then the grand princess lifted her other arm, crooking her arm and raising her glittering white gauntlet so that Finena rode at the level of her breast as she walked at the Emperor's side.

  When they reached the gangway, Andrin released her father's arm to manage her skirts, concentrating carefully on the placement of her feet. The last thing she wanted to do was to trip and fall flat on her face in front of Tajvana's waiting dignitaries. She made it safely to the quay, shook out her heavy skirts, and placed her hand back on her father's waiting arm with a serene smile that belied the tremors in her knees.

  The band was swirling and skirling its way through the fourth verse of the imperial anthem as she and her father stepped onto a long, purple carpet that ran from the side of their ship to the center of the quay, where an immense crowd waited. A veritable sea of faces peered toward them, leaving Andrin's fingers damp inside her formal gloves. When they'd crossed the carpet, they came to a halt before a semicircle of elegantly attired dignitaries. One of them, a short broad man in the elaborate robes of the Order of Bergahl, was obviously the Seneschal of Othmaliz himself.

  Andrin gazed at him thoughtfully as Finena shifted on her gauntleted wrist. The falcon opened her beak but didn't?quite?hiss, which surprised Andrin, given what she could could sense of her companion's emotions. It was obvious Finena didn't much like him, but Andrin hoped the bird's agitation would be put down to the crowd about them, and not to her reaction to the Seneschal. It would never do to begin their visit here by insulting Othmaliz's ruler, yet, Finena's reaction left Andrin wondering just what it was about the man the falcon disliked.

  She knew the history of the Order of Bergahl, although not in the sort of detail she suddenly wished she could command. Bergahl had been the patron deity of Tajvana before Ternathia had arrived. He was a war god, and a god of judgment, whose followers had been pledged to the militant pursuit of justice. The Empire, with its long history of religious toleration, had accepted the religious beliefs of its new capital's people, although the emperors had insisted that civil law was now the business of the imperial justicars, and not Bergahl's priesthood. The Empire had made no objection to the Order retaining its position as the administrator of religious law, however, and with Ternathia's withdrawal from Tajvana, it had gradually reemerged as the dominant force in secular matters, as well. That was really all she could recall, although she also seemed to remember reading somewhere that the Order had been none too scrupulous about how it went about regaining its previous power in the wake of the Empire's withdrawal.

  A functionary standing in front of the Seneschal bowed low and greeted them in fluent Ternathian.

  "His Crowned Eminence, the Seneschal of Othmaliz, bids greeting to the Emperor of Ternathia and the Grand Princess Andrin. Be graciously welcome in this city. It has been many fine centuries since Ternathia last stood upon its shores."

  Her father's arm turned to stone under Andrin's hand, and she heard someone gasp behind them. She didn't know why that phrase had drawn such a violent reaction, but it was quite obvious her father had just been profoundly insulted, and it had to have something to do with that last sentence. After all, this wasn't the first time the Emperor had visited Tajvana, and everyone knew it. For that matter, Ternathia had withdrawn from Othmaliz less than three hundred years ago, which scarcely qualified as "many fine centuries." So why include the phrase in a formal greeting? What sort of point or message could the man be trying to deliver?

  She didn't have any idea, but she didn't have to understand the insult to realize one had just been offered. Rather than go hot, her cheeks drained white, and her eyes went cold as gray ice as she stared through the Seneschal as though he didn't exist. Neither she nor her father spoke, and an uneasy stir ran through the crowd behind the Seneschal. Even the functionary, who was doubtless repeating verbatim a speech he'd been carefully instructed to deliver, seemed to realize his Seneschal had blundered gravely, and his face did darken … with embarrassment, not anger.

  Shamir Taje stepped in front of Andrin and her father and cast a scathing glance at the stammering official. The functionary's face blazed red as he tried to hold the First Councilor's gaze. He wasn't very successful.

  "You're greeting is received in the spirit in which it was given. Please tell your Seneschal," Taje's words could have been shards of ice, and the title came out as very nearly an insult, "that His Imperial Majesty, Zindel chan Calirath, Emperor of Ternathia and Warlord of the West, requires immediate conveyance to quarters appropriate to his rank and station.

  Taje's icy tone made it clear that he seriously doubted the Seneschal was capable of producing either. Even the Seneschal flushed. But then he lumbered forward, a ponderous man in jeweled robes that made him look like a decorated egg.

  "A thousand pardons for my herald's clumsy greeting! You are warmly welcome, of course, to the city of your ancestors. Please, my own carriage is waiting to take you and your lovely daughter to the Great Palace. Suitable chambers have been made ready for you there."

  Andrin bristled silently. She was no more a "lovely" daughter than the Seneschal was a polite host; but she gave him a chilly smile and a gracious nod, answering his offer as her mother would have, had Empress Varena been there.

  "Your hospitality will, I'm sure, be admirably suited to our needs," she said in flawless Shurkhali, the official language of Othmaliz.

  The Seneschal's eyes widened. Then his gaze was drawn almost hypnotically to Finena, and those same eyes nearly popped. His Adam's apple bobbed with alarm under his ornate, jeweled collar, and Andrin's smile widened as she realized he was afraid of her bird! She found that thought quite comforting and hoped the Seneschal's carriage was a deliciously cozy affair that would allow him an up-close look at the falcon during the whole drive from quayside to palace.

  "May I present Finena," she said sweetly, still speaking in fluent Shurkhali. "She's a Ternathian imperial peregrine falcon and my devoted and constant companion."

  The Seneschal gave her a weak smile.

  "Such a handsome and unusual creature, my dear Grand Princess." It was obvious the man would avoid Andrin's company with all the religious fervor of his holy office. "Ahem. My carriage is this way."

  He gestured elaborately, and Andrin inclined her head graciously. As she did, she caught her father's eye and realized it was twinkling wickedly, which made it a bit difficult for her to maintain her own decorous solemnity as they set out side by side. They had to run a gauntlet of Othmalizi dignitaries, and Andrin did her best to memorize as many as possible of the names and faces. Any she forgot, Lady Merissa would be sure to remember. One of Merissa's most useful talents?it very nearly qualified as a Talent?was an eidetic memory. Lady Merissa never forgot anything. It made her utterly priceless as a protocol instructor for a grand princess of the blood. Tiresome at times, but priceless.

  Beyond the dignitaries waited a sea of common folk, including a double line of reporters?dispatched to Tajvana from every nation on Sharona, judging by their attire. Andrin's eyes were dazzled by flash powder long before they reached the Seneschal's ornate carriage, which proved to be an antique closed coach, literally dripping with gold.

  "Still using the Ternathian Imperial coach, I s
ee," someone muttered behind Andrin's shoulder. "You'd think he could have ponied up the money for his own carriage, at least. He's wearing enough cash to buy several carriages."

  Andrin's lips twitched as she recognized the voice of the Earl of Ilforth. In that moment, she very nearly adored the pompous ass. Only Mancy Fornath would have been so crass as to comment on the Seneschal's carriage, but his observation gave her another insight into their host … and not a flattering one.

  The Seneschal started to offer Andrin his hand to assist her into the carriage, but this time Finena did hiss. He jerked his hand back with unceremonious speed, and Andrin bit her tongue, composing her expression as she allowed her father to hand her up the step into the ornate carriage, instead.

  The conveyance certainly smelled as if it were several centuries old, she thought tartly. The leather seats, while ornately tooled, should have been replaced at least a century ago with something less … musty. She was intensely grateful for her cloak, and she was very careful to make sure it lay between her brocaded skirts and the odiferous, ancient leather.

  Another calculated insult? she wondered. Or simply a host unwilling to spend his own money on fancy coaches when the imperial "leavings" were still serviceable? The coach certainly looked grand from the outside, and given the outrageous expense of the garments he wore, he clearly believed he deserved the grandeur he aped, regardless of whose grandeur it had originally been. Or how musty it had grown since they'd abandoned it.

  Her father sat beside her, and the Seneschal took the seat opposite theirs. Other carriages conveyed the rest of their delegation, falling into line behind the one-time Ternathian imperial carriage as they set out with a jolt through the streets of Tajvana. Her father began to chat easily with the Seneschal, discussing the sights they passed. Andrin listened with half an ear, but it was the sights themselves which absorbed the lion's share of her interest.

  Tajvana, unlike its Seneschal, was more than worthy of that absorbed interest. The main avenues were broad, paved with stone and lined with palm trees. Narrow gardens ran down the center of each avenue, dividing the lanes of traffic, which had apparently been rerouted to make way for the official procession, and spectators lined the streets. They were probably there to gawk at the arriving Emperor of Ternathia, Andrin thought … and that was when she received the biggest shock of the day.

  Roars of welcome greeted them along every city block for miles. Children waved ribbons in the green and gold of the Ternathian imperial flag. Women threw armfuls of flowers. The city's wildly enthusiastic greeting overwhelmed Andrin, who hadn't expected anything like this outpouring of visible joy. The Seneschal remained silent, apparently unaware of the tumult, but his eyes were hooded and dark as he watched his own people greet a foreigner, an Emperor whose family had ruled the Seneschal's homeland for thousands of years.

  Andrin could almost feel sorry for him.

  So many people were waving in such wild delight that she found herself waving back. It was a purely spontaneous response, and she was astounded when her simple gesture caused grown women to burst into tears and toss still more flowers her way. Uniformed police, many of them mounted, were very much in evidence, apparently to keep the crowd's enthusiasm from spilling over into a headlong rush toward the carriage. As she watched, however, she noticed that not quite everyone along the route was openly delighted. Here and there she saw young men of military age whose glances were hostile and suspicious. She saw older men whose eyes were cold, without the fire of youth, but equally suspicious. She even saw a few people carrying signs whose words she couldn't read, since other people in the crowd invariably snatched them out of the air almost before their owners could unfurl them.

  She glanced at her father, whose keen gaze had also noticed those scattered signs of protest, and decided her best course would be to emulate him. He, too, was waving graciously to the crowd through the other window of the ancient carriage. She followed his example, continuing her own greetings, although the first thrill of the moment had faded into a more sober consideration of the deep currents running through Tajvana's society. She wanted very much to find someplace private to discuss the situation with her father and Shamir Taje. Andrin hoped the anti-Ternathian sentiments were a distinct minority, but her eerie vision of the Great Palace in flames drew a shiver down her back.

  Surely no one would be insane enough to burn down a palace full of innocent people?

  The child in her hoped not; the budding imperial heiress, who was beginning to understand that anything was possible when politics came into play, wasn't so sure. She was abruptly glad that her personal guardsmen?and her father's?rode in the carriage directly behind theirs, less than twenty feet away, and that the entire security retinue would be housed in the same Palace wing they were. She wasn't accustomed to thinking that way, but she had a sudden depressing vision of spending the rest of her life taking such dark factors as the very real necessity for full-time security into consideration.

  Davir Perthis stood at the window on the seventeenth floor of the Mahkris Shipping Corporation Building and watched the procession winding its way through the streets of Tajvana. He'd been in this building, at this window, for the arrival of every delegation to the impending Conclave. He'd watched all of them rolling down the city's avenues towards the Grand Palace. Some had been greeted by curious crowds. One or two?like Emperor Chava's Uromathian delegation?had been greeted with near-silent, cold-eyed suspicion. None of them had been greeted by anything like the roaring sea of people who had turned out to welcome Emperor Zindel back to his family's ancient capital.

  Perthis smiled, just a bit smugly, at the thought. He never doubted that thousands would have crowded the sidewalks no matter what he or SUNN had done. But he did doubt very much that as many thousands would have been there, or that the welcome would have been quite so frenzied.

  His smile faded. Whether or not he achieved his goal remained to be seen … as did the interesting question of whether or not he'd still have a job when it was all over. No matter how Perthis looked at it, his last few weeks of effort were a clear violation of both SUNN's internal code of conduct and its official editorial policy against taking sides on political issues. Jali Kavilkan had never specifically said so, yet Perthis strongly suspected that the executive manager knew exactly what he was up to. That probably made Kavilkan's silence either a good thing or a very, very bad thing, but whatever happened to his career, Perthis had no regrets.

  His smile was a distant memory now, as he allowed the horrific images of Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr's final Voice transmission to play through a corner of his mind. He'd convinced Kavilkan to transmit those images raw, without the normal process of editing out the emotions and surface thoughts of the originating Voice. Kavilkan had wavered back and forth for an hour or two, well aware of just how horrible that transmission would be. In the end, he'd shown the moral courage to authorize it anyway. Not because of its titillation value?although SUNN was no more immune to the need to maintain high viewership than anyone else?but because it was important for Sharona's people to know what had really happened out there. Not to be fed some sanitized version, but to experience the terror and the anguish?and the raw, blazing courage?of Shaylar Nargra-Kolmayr.

  And so, every SUNN Voicenet subscriber, which meant effectively every Sharonian with even a scrap of telepathic Talent, didn't just know what had happened. They'd been there. They knew, with absolute fidelity, exactly what Sharona faced. And they knew exactly who had fired first. Who had shot down an unarmed man, holding out his empty hands in an effort to open some sort of dialogue.

  The print accounts had pulled no punches, either, and Perthis was privately prepared to admit that the print journalists as a group had actually done a better job of analysis. But the sheer, raw, punch-in-the-gut impact of the Voicecast transmissions were what had truly awakened the white-hot fury sweeping across the entire explored multiverse.

  And it was also the Voicecasts which had first emphasized the need
for a planet-wide government to meet the emergency. Not some temporary lash-up designed to deal with the immediate crisis. Not even some international military alliance to coordinate the forces of existing nation states. No. What Sharona needed?required?was a functioning government. One which could give orders to anyone's military in its own name. One with no need to debate strategies and accept limitations because it was forced to cajole its "allies" into cooperating with it. One with the force of law behind its decisions. One which could speak for all Sharonians … and which could wage deadly war in their name.

  Whether or not Kavilkan had recognized what Perthis was up to, Tarlin Bolsh certainly had. The international news division chief had chosen his "talking heads" well, and he'd shaped his entire division's editorial policy to point subtly in the direction Perthis wanted to go. For example, the guest lists for all of the various Voicenet discussion shows his division produced had seemed to somehow feature distinguished statesmen and foreign-policy experts who all just happened to have very favorable views of the Ternathian Empire and its current Emperor.

  Bolsh's people had also produced both a series of print articles and a Voice documentary on Tajvana's millennia-long history. They'd made the direct link between the scope of the present crisis and the innumerable crises which had already been met, coped with, and?for the most part?hammered into submission here in Tajvana. And in the process?quite accidentally, of course?they had pointed out exactly which dynasty had done the hammering.

  The documentary had been a superlative historical survey. It had also been scrupulously accurate, which had only made it even more effective for Perthis' purposes. By now, everyone in Tajvana had either viewed the Voicecast version, or read the print version, and been reminded of their city's glory days under the Caliraths.

  Inevitably, there'd been some backlash. Much of it, Perthis admitted, was completely justifiable. Tajvana?and Othmaliz?were independent once more. They had better than two hundred years of independence and achievements in their own names of which to be proud. The thought of being once more submerged into someone else's massive embrace, losing that regained individuality as part of some vast, corporate whole, wasn't going to find a ringing welcome in every heart.