“Well, I don’t think anything will happen,” Elara said. She crossed her legs and rested one hand on Pallino’s knee. “You’re too valuable, Had. So you called the prince a brat. He is a brat. The Emperor’s not going to cast you aside over something like this, surely.”
Mirroring Pallino’s posture of calm repose, I replied, “It’s not the Emperor I’m worried about.”
“What, you think the boy’s going to call for your head or something?” Elara did not seem convinced.
“That boy is a prince of the Sollan Empire,” I said. “He wouldn’t be the first to execute a favorite toy no matter what the Emperor said.”
Siran spoke over me. “All the more reason to get out of here and have done. I don’t know about you all, but I’m tired of fighting.” The whites of her eyes glowed in the dragonfire burning on the holograph.
With a heavy groan, Pallino reached out and slapped the controls to pause the opera. One of the knights—his shield lost and his helmet—stood alone before the dragon on a narrow bridge. The other, who’d mounted the dragon, had fallen off at some point and stood behind with the others, covering the retreat of the princess and the other courtiers. He said nothing, but crossed his arms, staring at each of us with his two, blue eyes.
“I should be an old woman now,” Siran said, one hand going reflexively to her nose. When she’d been elevated to patrician standing, her mutilated nostril had been repaired, erasing her past crimes. Like Pallino’s restored eye, it marked a kind of rebirth, a second life for my old friend. I understood how she felt. Though we palatines might live seven centuries, there is some ancient part of us that remembers we should have died in one tenth the time.
The ancients esteemed the proper span of a man’s years at three score and ten. Seventy. Siran had numbered about half that when we met and Pallino nearly equaled that number. Their patrician enhancements had restored them to the prime of life and kept them there for decades, but such after-market gene tonics and surgeries would hold only so long.
“I feel it, too,” I said. “I feel old.” How young I was, then! But then, I’d felt old before I was thirty, as so many do. It is a folly all of us commit. We imagine youth old age because we cannot imagine age. I am old now, and know I was young—so terribly young—then. I was not yet two hundred. Not yet one-fifty.
I did not know the meaning of the word.
Sometimes I think of Kharn Sagara, who I think must be the oldest man in existence—the oldest ever to exist. Small wonder that he is insane. Discovering new depths of time and age would madden anyone, may madden me in time.
“Do you want to stop?” Pallino asked, peering at me with one eye closed so that it seemed I looked at the older Pallino—the younger one—grizzled and gray-haired. I could almost picture the worn leather patch again, hidden by the shadows. Then he opened his eye, and the illusion faded.
“No,” I said. “The work’s not done.”
“No one would blame you, you know,” Elara said.
Pallino agreed, “Aye. You’ve done more than anyone has for this bloody war. You’re a lord again. You could retire to some nice palace or country villa and fuck your peasant girls raw until that hair of yours goes gray, lad. None would fault you. Ouch! Damn it, woman!” It seemed Elara had sunk her nails into his leg.
I shook my head, glad Valka was asleep. “That isn’t me.”
“No,” Pallino agreed, “you like to be miserable. Would you stop?” He glowered at Elara, who smiled innocently.
“Only if you behave.”
“Behave? I just wanted to watch the holograph. You all had to start talking and ruin it!”
Elara smoothly ignored this, and shook her head. “We’re all tired. I get that. I never thought I’d be in a place like this. On Forum. On a ship at all. Never thought I’d go to a ball at the Imperial Palace!” She was grinning, as if all the years we complained of had fallen away in an instant. “I thought that sort of thing only happens in fairy stories. Growing up in the city, you learn all knights and lords are bastards, you learn not to believe in this.” She gestured at the room around us. Elara and Siran both had been born on Emesh, in the sweating canal city of Borosevo.
I remembered it well, remembered it as a time and place as far from fairy tales as heaven was from hell. But I have lived a long time, and with each passing decade the muggy streets of Borosevo seem to me less real than even the airy halls and soaring towers of Forum, as if they too were only a story. As if we were all stories in the end.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Siran put in, “but I can’t do this forever. I want to stop before I’m old. Old again, that is.” Her eyes swept over Elara and Pallino, over Valka sleeping against my side. “Always thought I’d have a family.” Was that longing in those black eyes? Sadness? Regret? I was doubly glad that Valka slept. That very question hung between us, dampened by my palatine genes and Valka’s lack of desire. Down that road lay a place neither she nor I dared look, and feelings we dared not name.
“Do you want to leave?” I asked, not angry, not resentful. Only wondering.
“Yes,” she replied, voice stiff. She would not look me in the face. “But not today.”
I did my best to smile, and looked from her to Pallino and Elara. I did not dare put the question to either of them. I feared their answers would be the same.
There are endings, Reader, but this is not one of them.
Not yet.
CHAPTER 34
MAJESTY, MONARCH, PROPHET, PRINCESS
I SURRENDERED MY SWORD and shield-belt at the gates of the Peronine Palace and allowed myself to be led by white-and-red armored Martians down uncounted halls to a tramway that ran out over a bottomless gold cloudscape to a lonely white tower detached from the palace proper. As we rode I looked out and down upon the unrolled city and the great bulwark of sails that—with the weather satellites—sheltered it all from the coriolis winds. Far off, a massive warship—a hundred miles long—loomed above the topless towers and aqueducts like the dragon in Mother’s opera, black as a piece of the night and gleaming in the sun.
Soon enough we came to a stop, and mirrored Excubitors escorted me up a stair of flowing marble and along white-pillared halls to a door of pale stone so pure I touched my pendant through the front of my shirt and formal jacket, mistaking it for the same substance.
But it was only a door, and rolled into a pocket in the wall at a silent command.
When I hesitated, one of the Excubitors gestured for me to go inside. I could see my face reflected in his mirrored helmet, image distorted past all hope of recognition by the curve of cheekbone and slant of sculpted nose.
He did not speak. They never spoke, only subvocalized to one another, words relayed by suit comm.
Obedient, I bowed to the masked man and went within.
The Imperial study ran along the center of the tower, rising for several levels to a frescoed dome painted to match not the rose-gold of Forum, but the blue skies of Earth. Level upon level of ring-walk balconies overlooked the middle space, supported by white pillars and black iron arches done in floral arcs and curls. Ancient books stood on display under glass, their brown and yellow leaves climate-controlled and carefully lighted, and where the walls were not given over to the shelves or to the narrow windows that pierced the spiraling outer colonnade, dark bronze statues stood, each holding a sword that pointed inward toward the Table.
In the shadow of one of these I stopped, hesitating an instant, surprised to see the pentangle shield and the name carved in Classical English lettering: SIR GAWAIN. Turning my head, I stopped and looked to the statue nearest me on the other side. SIR LANCELOT. I guessed then I could name the others. Percival, Bedivere, Gareth, and Kay. Gaheris and Galahad. Tristan and Palamedes.
The Knights of the Round Table.
Figures from the Cid Arthurian mystery cult were among the last things I expected
to see in the heart of the Peronine Palace, at the seat of Imperial rule, in the possession of the living Son of Earth, direct descendant of the God Emperor.
“Come forward, Marlowe,” came the voice Imperial.
I advanced until I stood just on the edge of the center of the chamber and bowed but did not kneel. Our audience was a private one and my rank accorded me the small dignity of keeping my feet.
“Radiant Majesty,” I said, raising my eyes without straightening. “You called for me?”
His Imperial Radiance William XXIII, Firstborn Son of Earth and all the rest, looked up from his contemplation of the papers before him and offered me a stiff nod of acknowledgment. He wore a suit of arterial scarlet, unrelieved by any color save the white armband that showcased the Imperial sun and the gloss black of his boots. The outfit ought to have muddied the color of his hair, but it only added to the overwhelming impression of redness our Emperor exuded, casting his color like light on the white chamber around him.
He was not alone; logothetes in gray robes with matching caps clustered around him, some of them clutching tablets, others with terminal pickups in their hands or pinned to their clothes. More than one green-garbed scholiast stood among them, all silently watching. I’d gotten the impression they’d fallen silent the moment the door had opened, for they stood with that awkward tension unique to the newly interrupted and shuffled back against the walls.
All eyes on us both, the Emperor said, “Yes, thank you. Do have a seat, Lord Marlowe. We were just discussing the disposition of the Centaurine border.” He made a discreet gesture with one gloved and beringed hand, and at once the logothetes and scholiasts began to filter out of the room. “There’ve been more attacks along the inner edge of the arm. Five planets razed and emptied.”
I seated myself in the nearest chair facing the Emperor, wincing slightly as the legs groaned on marble tile. I hadn’t heard, hadn’t had a meeting with LIO and the War Council in weeks, hadn’t had so much as a word of the situation in the outer provinces. “Is it Dorayaica?”
I ought properly to ask no questions of His Radiance, but the Emperor did not seem to mind. “We think not. They happened in rapid succession and within a few dozen light-years of one another. Dorayaica’s movements have been more precise. Punctuated. No.” Not looking at me, the Emperor shuffled a few of the pages on the table before him. He did not sit. “There have been rumors of a new chieftain among the Extrasolarians. Muddled references to a Monarch on the datanet and from a number of our informants. Apparently several of the old stations we’ve kept eyes on have disappeared. Whether this Monarch is a man or something else entirely is entirely unclear, but the name Calen Harendotes appears as well, several times. Are you familiar?”
“Calen Harendotes?” I repeated. “No, Your Radiance. It sounds like a palatine name.”
“It does. Doubtless some renegade from a house no one’s ever heard of,” the Emperor said. “A pity. We had hoped your time on Vorgossos might have shed some light on the matter.”
“Monarch could be the name of one of their Sojourners,” I said, referring to the class of massive ships owned by the most powerful Extrasolarian agencies. “Regardless, you think this Monarch—Harendotes or no—is behind these new attacks in Centaurus?”
“It is too soon to say. We fear we may have a new name to add to our growing list of enemies. If the Extrasolarians are taking the field, particularly if they are aligned with the Cielcin, we may have to fight on two fronts.”
I swallowed, nodded. Full-scale war with the Extrasolarians would be a nightmare. The barbarians were distributed throughout all of human settled space, dwelling in star systems without habitable planets or on ships and stations in the dark between the stars. An attack might come from anywhere, and though the Legions and local defense fleets were more than a match for any ragtag armada, a systemic attack against the Empire at points could be crippling, even lethal. And if this Monarch, this Harendotes was gathering the Extras to himself . . . that could be just what he was planning. In the case of the Extras, as with the Cielcin, their primary weakness was their disunity. The Cielcin were tribal, the Extras anarchists or the devotees of petty warlords like the Normans. United, either might prove a serious threat. Together . . . they could burn the stars.
“What do you make of it, Marlowe?”
I did not answer the Emperor at once, but rubbed my eyes, feeling at once the terrible weight of years. Breath shuddering, I said, “Well, they make a likely couple, don’t they?”
“I’m sorry?” The Emperor’s royal we slipped. I felt the temperature in the room drop, and was glad the logothetes and scholiasts had all been dismissed.
“The Monarch and the Prophet,” I answered him, holding out my hands as though they were the pans of a scale. “Syriani Dorayaica and this Harendotes. Times of strife breed pretenders and false kings, and it seems to me that both our greatest enemies are rebuilding themselves in our image. In yours.” I made a weak gesture, intending to point at His Radiance but realizing that to do so would be the gravest insult. “May I ask a question?”
The Emperor opened velvet-gloved hands.
“The statues,” I said, nodding toward the likeness of Sir Tristan over the Emperor’s shoulder, “and this table . . .”
“What?” William XXIII’s brows contracted, expecting some insolence perhaps or annoyed by the tangential slash of the question.
“They’re Cid Arthurian icons, aren’t they?”
“What?” the Emperor said again. “How dare you! First you insult our son, and now this?”
I had stepped out upon a frozen lake, and the ice beneath me was rotten. So he had heard about the incident with Valka in the Cloud Gardens. There was nothing for it. I stood smoothly and bowed low as I could. “Apologies, Honorable Caesar. It’s only . . . you know the story? Arthur and his knights?”
Though I did not look up, I could hear the Emperor bare his teeth. “We are a direct descendant of Arthur, boy. Of course we know the story.”
The Aventine House has always claimed this patrimony: from the God Emperor William to Victoria, from Victoria to Arthur and The Matter of Britain, but I thought and think it unlikely. Accounts from the Golden Age are muddy, artifacts scattered, but I do not think the blood of Arthur flowed in Victoria’s veins. But I sensed my time and His Radiance’s patience were fast nearing their limits, and standing up straight again I said, “It only strikes me that what’s happening here is the same. Dorayaica and his Iedyr Yemani, his generals . . . this Harendotes, too. Gathering their knights. And I wondered.”
The Emperor relaxed visibly, rested one hand against the surface of the round table. “These were our legends long before the Cid Arthurians took them.”
“Forgive me, Radiant Majesty,” I said, “I did not know.” I know better now, have learned to distinguish the Arthur of antiquity from the Arthur-Buddha of the mystagogues. The Emperor made a gesture like waving away a fly. Into the space between us, I rapped my knuckles against the tabletop and said, “I only meant to remark upon the parallel.
“You think it significant?” His Radiance lifted both eyebrows, watching me from across his round table. “An omen?”
“I am not sure I believe in omens, Caesar.” I bowed my head, placed the false-boned fingers of my left hand against the surface of the table. The wood—though petrified—was so ancient it was worn away, the ridges standing like the brindled hair of some beast, and I guessed it had been taken from Earth herself long before the planet was consumed in nuclear fire. Did I dare tell him? “But I have seen their armies marching across the stars, and the Pale King leading them. This Prophet of theirs.”
The King of Avalon and Guardian of the Solar System mirrored me, placing one hand on the table opposite me. “You asked that soldier from Hermonassa if Dorayaica wore a crown.”
“Yes, Radiance.” I looked away sharply, as though the Emperor cast too bri
ght a light on my face.
“Had you seen it before? Dorayaica, I mean.”
“Yes, Radiance,” I answered. “You have read my reports from Vorgossos?”
The Emperor orbited the table, swinging back into my line of sight, a bloody spot against the stark white of stone and ebon bookcases. “A synopsis.”
“Then Your Radiance knows that on Vorgossos I was . . .” I was about to say touched, but checked myself. “I encountered what I believe was a surviving Mericanii artificial intelligence. One of their supercomputers.”
“I do,” he said. No we.
Without alluding to the Quiet—I had made no reference to them in my report—I continued, “I do not have visions, Radiance, but I was shown one. A calculation, I suppose it was.” The Brethren had, in fact, shared many predictions of its own, composite prophecies compiled as an approximated probability of reality, though my vision had been something far more total. “It had run simulations of the galaxy’s future. Of our future. And it predicted this. Predicted Dorayaica would emerge in response to our war effort. An answer from the Pale.” I was walking a fine line, attempting to describe my vision without describing its proper source, a source which I feared no man—particularly the Sollan Emperor—would believe.
“You think this daimon is credible?”
Remembering something both Brethren and Sagara’s golem had said to me, I said, “Daimons cannot lie, Radiance. If they could, they would be of no use to their masters.”
The Emperor accepted this—believing or no—with a bare nod and narrowing of his eyes. Glancing up to the frescoed sky nine stories above, he asked, “And did this daimon say what would come of us?”
Light. The memory of the oracle Jari shouted in my mind. Light! Light! Light!
“No, Radiant Majesty,” I lied, but lied only because I did not fully understand what any of it meant.
William Avent turned away, hands clasped behind his back. He strode across the checkerboard tiles until he stood beneath the statue of Sir Percival. One hand on the knight’s sculpted sabaton, he said, “They say you are a sorcerer, Lord Marlowe.” He asked no question, and I had nothing to say. “I do not believe in sorcery. There is no sorcery. There is only knowledge, however strange or hidden it may be. But you recognized something in that soldier’s report, that I must grant you.” He sighed deeply, and for an instant I beheld that beneath the Imperial silk and samite, beneath the scarlet, the argent, and the gold, there was only an aging palatine, his shoulders slumped with the weight of centuries and star systems. No one man was meant to rule so vast an Empire, and that old William bore that weight so nobly and with no complaint was a credit to him. Stern as His Radiance was and solemn, I confess a deep admiration for the man, who in all the years I knew him was never cruel or cowardly. His mother, the late Empress, had chosen well from among her children. Always he seemed to me the picture of the philosopher-king, like old Winston the Good, like Raphael, like Marcus Aurelius: tired, world-weary, and wise.
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