That weariness escaped him all in a great rush. His shoulders hunched, he said, “But none of this is why I called you here. Will you not sit again, please?” He turned, offered a seat with a gesture. I sat, and waited. The Emperor stood opposite me, looking down the bridge of his aquiline nose. “Do you know what the most interesting thing about this tower is, Sir Hadrian?”
“No, Radiance.”
“It is the only place in the Peronine Palace—perhaps the only place on all of Forum—that is not monitored. It is one of the only places where I can be truly alone. That is why my Excubitors take their posts at the door so seriously.” He smiled thinly, a smile that betrayed the great age beneath that young-seeming face like sunlight through old vellum. “I tell you this so you understand: we are not having this conversation. Not officially.”
I sat a little straighter, hands gripping the arms of my chair.
The Emperor continued. “There are those on my council and in my ministries who believe that you are a problem. These individuals believe that your popularity with the people—most especially your popularity with the Legions—should be treated as a direct threat to me. That in addition to Dorayaica and this Extrasolarian Monarch, you ought to be considered another pretender—to borrow your word—another false king.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but His Radiance raised one gloved and glittering finger. “But I do not agree with them.” His eyes narrowed again, and a smile halfway between laughter and rage stole over his face. “No one plotting against me would be so foolish as to call my son a brat where I was certain to hear about it.”
“My lord—Your Radiance, I . . .” Color surely flooded my face, and I made to rise.
“Sit down, Sir Hadrian. Whatever your difficulties with my children may be, I can assure you that mine are greater. So I will forget this insult. Besides! The fact remains that you are too valuable an asset to waste.” He rested his hands on the back of the chair before him, gemstones large as quail’s eggs shining on his fingers. In a voice so low it was almost a stage whisper, His Imperial Radiance said, “You were meant to fail, you know?”
My eyebrows rose on their own. It was true, then. Just as Lorian and I had suspected.
“The thought had crossed my mind, Radiant Majesty.”
The Emperor beamed. “Good. Very good. It was an easy choice to make. ‘Give him an impossible task,’ they said. ‘If he succeeds, well and good. If he fails, then we neutralized a potential threat.’” He clenched his fists, hands groaning on the antique chair. “We gave you an impossible task, and you succeeded.” The Emperor turned his back and strode halfway to the ring of statues that separated the meeting space from the library section that ringed the chamber. Wheeling, he continued, “I am a practical man. One does not rule my Empire by being impractical. And I believe that your popularity and your tenacity are assets, Lord Marlowe. I do not believe in sorcery. I have told you this. But you have given me results, and so I wish to make you an offer—a request—one which my counselors have argued most strenuously against.”
A bead of cold and lonely sweat traced its path down my neck. The last time the Emperor had made a request of me, I spent half a century sailing across the galaxy with Alexander under my wing. Men had died—and I had nearly died. I had a suspicion that what the Emperor had in mind this time was a bit more . . . permanent.
He confirmed those suspicions with his next words. “You have met my daughter, Selene?”
There it was. The hand extended. The trap closed. An old trap. A familiar one. One I’d felt close on Emesh long ago, with Balian and Anaïs Mataro. But I nodded and smiled and feigned ignorance, and let the Emperor continue. “She is a good girl. Dutiful, faithful, kind . . . as kind as any princess of the Imperium can be, that is. I am fond of her. Fond as any father of so many children can be. I understand she is quite fond of you.”
“Is she?” I asked, genuinely surprised. I had met the princess on but two occasions, and on the first we had barely had the opportunity to speak. Though I’d sensed the shadow of this plan in our last meeting, I had not expected something so soon. Not two months had passed since my triumph . . .
“Do you like her?” What in Earth’s name could I possibly say to that? My mind raced to Valka, and my heart sank. But the Emperor did not wait for my answer, as any answer I might give was irrelevant. The Emperor had made his plans. “It is my wish that the two of you should be married, that you should join my house.”
I am not certain if I spoke at all. I did not know then—do not know now—if the Emperor’s plan was wisdom or folly. On the one hand, in marrying me to his daughter, he adopted me as a son. It would cool some of the tension others might have perceived between us, but on the other hand, it might inflame the fury of those lords who thought my rise too far and fast already. My mind went to Lorcan Breathnach and Augustin Bourbon, to the great princes of the Houses Bourbon, Mahidol, and Hohenzollern—and Earth only knew who else. The old Lions of the Imperium would roar that one so low as I had risen to the rank of Prince-Consort. How they would sputter and scream that I, a black-barred outcaste restored by a mere pen stroke and tainted by contact with outsiders, by plebeians and homunculi, by inti and Irchtani and a Tavrosi witch, might be permitted himself to taint the Blood Imperial.
The words I’d spoken to Lorcan Breathnach echoed in my skull. I do not have visions. And yet I had seen her, had I not? Had seen Princess Selene seated at my feet in a gown of living flowers. Had felt her move beneath me and her warm breath on my skin. I’d worn a silver circlet upon my brow, and a white gem—the very piece of shell that hung about my neck on its chain, I realized—had shone in its center like a star, like a third eye.
The Emperor Hadrian.
How it might happen I could not say. How every one of His Radiance’s children might be put aside and the Aventine Dynasty ended I did not dare contemplate or dream. I did not want that future. I did not want her. But what choice did I have? Before me was Caesar himself. How could I refuse his gift? To do so would be to declare myself his enemy. With my mind’s eye I perceived the galaxy as an extension of the black-and-white checkerboard floor beneath our feet, the Red King before me. Was I to be the Black?
Like Rome of ancientmost memory, were we to fall to civil war and play chess for the crown while along our borders fires blazed? Barbarians and monsters.
Here there be dragons.
There was Dorayaica, and there this Monarch, Harendotes. I clenched my fists, felt the right ache and the left remain numb, and remembered Kharn Sagara on his throne.
Pale King. Wild King. King-in-Yellow.
And I had garbed myself in white—even if it was not my color.
Dimly I was aware of the fact that I had been silent a long time. It was not the time for silence. Sitting there, trapped, I opened my mouth and said, “I would be honored, Radiant Majesty.”
CHAPTER 35
THOSE THINGS YOU THOUGHT UNREAL
I KEPT SILENT ALL the way out of the palace, speaking no word to my escort nor to the pilot officer who took me from cloud-bound city to the deeper silence of space where the Tamerlane waited at anchor. I did not speak to my men in the landing bay, and acknowledged the salutes of those in the halls with only a stiff nod. I moved in a kind of fog, not truly seeing the faces nor the dark metal of the halls.
I had to see her, had to tell her. Had to know.
She wasn’t in our apartments.
I found her in the hydroponics section, in my private place beneath the hanging basil plants. She was sleeping. A pocket projector stood on the table beside her, still running. The air felt cool and close beneath the bower, and the sweet smell of the herbs hung on the air like perfume. Careful not to wake her, I stood the projector on its end and glanced at the image. It showed an inscription scanned from a monument on Iubalu’s ship. With a brushing gesture, I toggled the scan to the next: a similar inscription taken from the Qu
iet ruins on Calagah. One of the round glyphs was highlighted on each, a circle with a triangle and a pair of arcing lines inscribed within it.
Valka had been scanning the new Cielcin writing for symbols that matched her old scans of Quiet ruins from a dozen sites across the galaxy. A prodigious task, even for one with Valka’s machine-enhanced memory. No wonder she’d fallen asleep. I knelt beside her, restrained the impulse to push a loose strand of hair back into place.
I did not want to wake her.
I did not know what to say.
But my hand moved without my willing it, and found hers.
“What is it?”
Valka did not wake up like normal people. There was no change in breathing, no stirring, no sudden start. The delicate praxis that crouched spider-like in her brain regulated her body’s autonomic functions, augmenting the action of the medulla. She was always stable . . . unless she wanted to be otherwise. She told me once that she could control her endocrine system, could order a shot of adrenaline or dopamine as easily as you or I might make a fist. I envied her her control.
I was losing mine.
“Did you see the Emperor?” she asked. “How did it go?”
“I’m . . . to marry the princess,” I said. My voice shook. “And he’s offered me a seat on the Imperial Council.”
Not letting go of my hand, Valka pushed herself back in her seat. Then she did something I did not expect. Something absurd.
She smiled.
“ ’Tis wonderful news, is it not?”
“Wonderful?” Had I not spoken correctly? Surely she understood me. Foreigner or no, Valka’s Galstani was perfect. “Valka, he wants me to marry Selene.” He wants me to marry someone else.
“So what? You don’t have to love her.” Valka squeezed my hand. “Don’t have to fuck her, either. I thought marriage didn’t mean much to you palatines. ’Tis just . . . business?”
She had a point, but she was missing mine. Holding her hand tighter, I said, “I don’t want to marry her.”
“Can you refuse?”
“No!” My hand was shaking. “He’s the Emperor, Valka. If he ordered me to leap from the battlements of the palace I could not refuse.”
Valka took her hand from mine. “Then ’tis a good thing he did not ask you to leap from the battlements.” I knew that look, those narrowed eyes, those compressed lips. It was the face she made when she remembered what I was. She shook her head. “Anaryoch.” This was not going at all like I’d hoped, nor as I’d feared. I felt unsteady, as if the decking at my feet were sagging beneath me. Valka pulled her legs up beneath her, and despite her rebuke she smiled and lay a hand on my cheek. “What’s the matter?”
“What’s the matter?” I repeated. “Valka, don’t you understand?”
“No!” she said sharply. “We don’t marry in Tavros.” Valka’s hand did not leave my face, and though my vision blurred, she smiled. “Marry this woman. You’ll never see her anyway. What does it matter?”
I almost laughed. “What does it matter?” I was kneeling anyway. “Valka, I want to marry you.” We had touched on this topic before, a hundred times. Touched and retreated as though our hands each found a burning plate of iron. I found her hand again and seized it.
She held mine in both of hers, a bemused smile on her face. “Hadrian. I don’t need your Empire’s approval to keep you. I have you already. And you have me. This doesn’t change anything. ’Tis a gesture.”
She didn’t understand. How could I make her understand? Still on one knee, I said, “It would change everything. A seat on the Council means I’ll be trapped here. Do you want to be trapped here?”
“Of course not!” she snapped. “Do you seriously think the Emperor will keep you here? You’re too much use to him out there.” She leaned toward me, dry lips brushing mine, and when she spoke her breath entered me. “We can run away whenever we like.”
“Run away?” I did laugh then, though it was a weak and feeble sound. “The Empire doesn’t just misplace a prince-consort, Valka. They’ll come after me.”
Her face—so close to my own—darkened. “Then don’t run. Stay here if ’tis what you want.” She pulled her hands away.
“That isn’t fair,” I said.
“You are inventing a problem that doesn’t exist!” she said, almost rolling her eyes. “How many of your lords keep women? How many of your ladies keep men? All of them, surely.”
Valka wasn’t wrong. With child-rearing the province of the Emperor’s High College, the gene looms, and the birthing vats, the marriages between palatine houses built on love were few. If there were any. My own parents had never shared a bed. Never kissed. Never touched one another that I can recall. My mother had kept her lovers, a stream of talented young ladies with bright futures eager to please the master artist. Doubtless the princess in the holo-opera we’d watched together weeks before had been one. My father kept none, preferring the cold solitude of power.
“I don’t want you to be my woman,” I said, exasperated. “I want you to be my wife.”
“Hadrian,” she said, smoothing down her shirtfront, “we have been together for decades. What is the difference?”
She knew full well what the difference was. We both did. It was only that I was afraid to say it. Afraid because I knew she did not want what I desired. She wanted no more of me than me. I wanted . . . “If we were . . . married, the High College would let us have children. Or might.” With Selene, an afterling princess, there would be no children. So few of the Imperial family were permitted offspring. There were enough to keep parallel branches of the family running, distant strains separated so the new Emperor or Empress always married a distant cousin and kept the bloodline pure for the second coming of the God Emperor, but Selene and I would have nothing, I knew.
Unless your visions are real . . . a little voice said to me. Unless you take the throne.
I am not sure when I started wanting children. As a boy, the thought had never occurred to me. I had wanted to be a scholiast, and scholiasts do not marry or father children. When had I changed?
“Valka?” She hadn’t spoken.
She wasn’t looking at me.
“Valka?”
“You know,” she spoke over me. “You know we don’t marry in Tavros. Loving someone more than someone else is, well . . . ’tis a kind of prejudice.” Though she did not turn to face me, she smiled. I’d known that, we’d discussed this kind of thing before. “The clans actually separate people if they stay together for too long. ’Tis not right to keep one person to yourself.” She glanced at me with golden eyes, her smile widening. “Or so they say.”
That was new to me. I felt a sucking horror at the thought and said, “That’s barbaric.”
The irony of my word choice was not lost on her, and she barked her short laugh. “There was a boy in my clan I knew—Soren. The council shipped him offworld when they discovered he’d been with the same girl for six years.” Valka looked down at her hands, massaged the tattooed one with the other. “I saw her after. The girl. She looked like someone drained the blood out of her.”
A weak laugh escaped me, and I said, “I know how she felt.”
One corner of Valka’s mouth rose sadly, and she stretched her legs out on the long chair. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said. I shifted my weight, moving so that I sat now on the deck beside her, staring up at the light fixtures through the curtain of basil leaves. “Hadrian, I don’t want children. I’m no mother.”
“You wouldn’t have to be,” I said. “I’m a lord, Valka. You think the Empress carried her children? Fed them? Told them stories?” Before Valka could reply, I pressed on, “But I don’t want this to end.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
“I don’t want it to end with us, Valka,” I said more forcefully, and retook her hand.
“Hadrian, everything ends,�
�� she said. I pulled my hand away. “What is the matter with you?”
I glowered up at her. “I want you to care,” I hissed.
“You want me to be Lady Marlowe, you mean. To wear those ridiculous gowns and hang on your arm and smile at those disgusting lords of yours,” she said, ice on her tongue.
“If I’d wanted that,” I snapped, “I’d not have wanted you. I’m not trying to change you, Valka. I never have.”
She sniffed. “Yet you wish to—what is that charming barbarian expression? You wish to sire children on me, ’tis right? I am not some fucking racehorse, Hadrian.”
“I never said you were,” I said. The first tears had fallen, but it was anger that had pushed them out. “Not ever.”
Something in my face must have spoken to her, for she quailed and looked away, those golden eyes downcast. “I’m sorry.”
Briefly, a smile broke through my fresh-fallen tears. “I want a family with you because I love you, damn your eyes.” I found her hand again, willed her to feel what I was feeling and could not explain. “And because I’ll love them. Our children. I want us married because I want there to be no question that you matter more to me than princesses and titles. I want everyone to see I love you.”
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