by P. J. Fox
The shuttlecraft was bluntly shaped, like a large shoe box, in order to help protect its occupants from the 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures caused by friction—or, as the design issue had been explained to Aria, by the particles of oxygen in the atmosphere rubbing against the hull of the shuttlecraft. In other words, the same drag that prevented them from falling too fast to survive reentry could also melt them into a nugget the size of Aria’s palm.
Hoping to avoid this outcome, the shuttlecraft’s designers had given it a flat front that, by virtue of being so non-aerodynamic, created a shock wave that enveloped the hull and protected it from the worst of the heat. Of course, bad piloting could still kill them all; a navigation error of even a few degrees would have catastrophic results. As there were no windows in a shuttlecraft other than the pilot’s viewscreen, the first evidence of their having even breached the atmosphere was their arrival. Aria supposed that, in some circumstances, a degree of surprise was for the best; but she’d have liked to see Tarsonis hurtling toward her.
Kisten reappeared. Naomi blushed. She had a crush on him, Aria realized.
That Naomi referred to him by his given name instead of using his title should have been a clue. Kisten, for his part, greeted her politely enough but seemed otherwise oblivious to her existence. He exchanged a few words with Grace, who nodded, and then turned and offered his hand to Aria. It was pale, thin-fingered, and very strong. He’d be more than capable of beating her to death if he so chose.
“My heart,” he prompted, voice cool.
She placed her hand in his and let him help her up. The blood rushed from her head and for a minute she thought she’d faint. He put his arm around her waist to steady her but otherwise made no comment. They waited as the doors were opened, and guards stepped out onto the tarmac. Nowhere on Tarsonis was safe, particularly not the capital. From now on, Kisten would go everywhere with an escort. He couldn’t afford not to.
Setji appeared, looking uncharacteristically serious, and Aria started. She hadn’t even realized he’d been on the shuttle with them, although of course he had to have been now that she thought things through. It was a measure of her own unhappiness that she’d neither thought about who’d be coming with them to the planet’s surface nor noticed that the girls had already left the shuttlecraft. She stared, transfixed by the square of luminous gray that was the open door.
“Shall we?” Kisten asked.
Aros and Setji, the two ranking civil officials, flanked them on either side. Both men looked haggard with worry, and Aria wondered again what she was walking into. A cold splinter of fear pierced her bowels. Chancing a glance at the man beside her, Aria saw that he alone remained calm. He might as well have been contemplating a walk in a rose garden. She thought, not without some admiration, that he had ice in his veins; and for the first time in weeks, she was conscious of feeling safe. This was not someone who would let himself be cowed, and suddenly everyone’s concern about rebel incursions seemed silly.
Confidence was as contagious as fear. Uniformed guards snapped to attention as Aria took her first hesitant step onto the ramp; even they seemed to be standing a little bit straighter than usual. The ramp, like every surface, was slick with condensation and Aria kept her eyes on her feet as she descended. Having safely reached the bottom, she looked up—and stopped.
They’d entered a featureless void barely large enough to contain them. A double line of men stretched into nothing, swallowed whole by gray. They stood at attention, their uniforms dripping in the mist-like rain. It was the kind of rain that felt more like an oppressive, clammy kiss than actual rain—until the moment you realized that you were soaked to the skin.
Aros kept his face as carefully blank as Kisten’s, years of training coming to the fore as they braved this new world. Only Setji stared openly, surveying his new home with frank distaste. A high, raptor-like screech echoed weirdly through the fog. Setji jumped, the question plain on his face: what in God’s name was that? Aria shivered. Clearly, they weren’t alone. Whatever hazards the rebels presented, Tarsonis presented its own—and this on the outskirts of the capital, the most densely populated part of its most densely populated province. She’d heard rumors about predators in the fog, but up until now she hadn’t credited them.
The gauntlet seemed endless, stone-faced soldiers appearing and disappearing as they moved forward. No one met their eyes. Aria knew it was protocol but something about their stiff posture felt wrong. For every soldier born on one of the Home Worlds, there were ten of his native counterpart. Men who, despite their claims of loyalty, had every reason to hate the Alliance. She had no rational reason to believe that there was hostility, and yet hostility hung in the air like a miasma—as dense as the fog and more oppressive.
Nothing of their actual environment was visible. Aria had heard her new home described as beautiful, and Halstead Province itself as an oasis of rolling, emerald green hills and deep-cut brooks that ran with water as clear as glass. Clumps of fragrant white flowers dotted the hillsides and astonishing rock formations tumbled down all the way to the sea. But of these things, and of the steep waterfalls and glorious purple sunsets and traditional sod-roofed cottages in which many of their new neighbors still dwelled, there was nothing. Only the lifeless, tarnished silver gray that bathes the world before a storm. And, of course, the tarmac. Glancing behind her, Aria saw that even the shuttlecraft had disappeared from view.
Five men waited at the end of the gauntlet, faces grim.
Disengaging himself from Aria, Kisten stepped forward to greet them. She stayed where she was, with Aros and Setji. Setji, at least, seemed infected by the same leaden foreboding as Aria—and wanted to be here even less than she did.
The central man stepped forward. General Khan Bihar was the commander of the Tarsonis Army, the army of the Presidency of Tarsonis of which Kisten himself was now the head. The Presidency of Tarsonis comprised an elaborate network of commissioners, lieutenant commissioners, political agents, police agents, and other operatives. While the army was taxed with keeping the peace, it was the civil service that had to create peace in the first place—a task at which the previous governor and, indeed, his predecessor had failed miserably.
Kisten was arriving to assume control over a government riddled with corruption and a people on the edge of revolt. Tarsonis might have only one inhabited continent, but that continent stretched almost one and a half million square miles. If he survived for the two monsoons that Setji had predicted, he’d have lasted longer than either Governor Iban or Governor Jhansi.
The general saluted. Kisten nodded his acknowledgment.
Flanking General Bihar were his second in command, the chief commissioner of Halstead Province, the director of the Alliance Mission in Haldon, the capital, and, last, the Haldon chief of police. Neither the deputy commissioner nor the political agent for Halstead Province could be present, the former because he’d come down with the flu and the latter because he’d been killed. It was possible, pointed out the mission director, that Deputy Commissioner Saghred really did have cholera. A disease that hadn’t been seen on the Home Worlds in almost five thousand years was, apparently, endemic to filth-ridden Tarsonis.
Yes, attempts had been made to revisit the proposed sewer system; no, they had not been successful. No, the locals did not believe that it was for their own good; yes, a rumor had been spread by certain rebel leaders that running water and reliable sanitation were part of an attempt by their Alliance overlords to poison them.
Aria exhaled slowly in an attempt to calm her nerves. In a more peaceful, refined setting, the change of command ceremony was highly elaborate and hours long. There were prayers, and speeches, and marching bands. Here, it was a matter not of pomp and circumstance but of simple necessity. No one could afford to detract from the issues at hand.
“Children here,” said Setji quietly, “have a tenfold chance of dying in infancy.”
Aria turned sharply.
“Fully half th
e population can neither read a menu nor sign their own name.” His mouth twisted. “And yet they’ve convinced themselves that, by trying to provide them with toilets, we’re trying to kill them. They’re inveterate savages and romanticizing their ignorance solves nothing.”
“Perhaps they dispute our right to civilize them,” Aria replied quietly.
However superior the Alliance thought its way of life, she couldn’t bring herself to agree that such assumptions justified forcing so-called civilization on others. After all, but for the planet’s many resources—Tarsonis was rich in the minerals needed to power propulsion drives, as well as weapons—they wouldn’t be here. The extent of the modernization proposed matched the extent of the modernization needed to maximize use of the planet and its people. The Alliance needed soldiers, secretaries and miners who could read and who weren’t dying in droves from preventable illness.
But, at the same time, were any government’s motives truly altruistic? The Union educated its own people for the same reasons; politicians championed educational and other reforms in exchange for voter support. Aria turned back to the tense scene in front of her, feeling less sure of herself.
“My understanding,” said Kisten, “is that the Blues were three months in arrears at the time of Governor Jhansi’s death.” Most of the regiments in the Alliance army, here and elsewhere, had nicknames; the Blues were the regiment stationed out of the capital itself.
The General nodded. “A good deal of the ill feeling around here is due to the fact that Jhansi, may Satan rot his soul, promised to pay up and then choked at the last minute. Within hours, the regiment was turning on itself. Most of the local Blues fought right along with us; no one wanted to see women and children get slaughtered, and these men have been fighting alongside each other for years. They’re Blues, first and foremost,” he said proudly.
“And Jhansi?”
“He told them to suck eggs, the motherless son of a whore.” The General snorted disgustedly. “It doesn’t take much to excite the local populace around here, and his flat-out refusal to even consider the men’s complaints was a match to tinder. There are two battalions,” he continued, “which is roughly two thousand men. Of those, only a few dozen mutinied; the rest were from one of the purely local regiments, the 7th Foot Guards, who were already in Haldon to demand their pay.
“When trouble broke out—Jhansi climbed right up onto the roof of the Residence and made an admirable target of himself, telling the mob what spineless sons of bitches they were—the pigs turned on their officers and then, what do you know, the 7th and half the rabble in the city were there to help out.”
Aria gathered, from General Bihar’s recitation, that the former governor couldn’t have done anything more calculated to provoke a riot if he’d tried. To think that a city of resentful, oppressed men would accept chastisement like children was beyond insane. And, indeed, Nan Jhansi had been captured by the mob and burned alive in his bed for his trouble. She wasn’t, on the balance, entirely sorry to learn this.
“Get your division commanders—including whoever’s commanding the 7th—to make lists of who’s owed what, and make sure they tell their men that they’ll get paid as soon as the lists are processed. And that includes the mutineers,” Kisten continued. “We’ll pay what they’re owed to their families. It’s a poor recompense for losing a husband, father or brother in battle, or watching him face the firing squad, but at least it’ll show the locals that we’re acknowledging an injustice. Nothing excuses mutiny, but one wrong doesn’t cancel out the other.”
“That is,” replied the General, sounding surprised, “an excellent program.”
“We need the locals on our side,” Kisten said grimly. “There are fifty thousand of us and fifty million of them.” He handed the General, the ranking officer present, a scroll containing his orders. “Lord Governor His Highness Kisten Mara Sant,” he said wryly, “assuming command of the planet Tarsonis on behalf of the Son of the Dragon, Light of Heaven, Lord of a Thousand Stars and Father To Us All, the 69th Emperor, may he live forever.”
Echoing the last part of this recitation under his breath, the General accepted the scroll. “Welcome to Hell,” he replied.
FORTY-ONE
Setji left to find his new house and yell at his slaves. A car was waiting for him on the tarmac, as one was waiting for Kisten and Aria. Aros stayed behind to confer with the chief commissioner; he, presumably, had some means of transportation to wherever he was going—whenever he was going there. In fact, everyone seemed to know exactly what they were doing except Aria, who felt like a buoy that had been cast adrift.
She’d been heartened to learn that the hostility she’d sensed hadn’t been for them. Their honor guard, all hand-picked from this same famous regiment, was disgusted with itself. And still, Aria guessed, with Governor Jhansi for precipitating an entirely avoidable crisis that had resulted in the loss of thousands of lives—including those of the Blues who’d died protecting the Residence and its occupants.
Aria looked around, uneasy. She wished she could see something! The fog dampened even loud noises and made wraiths out of those who’d moved quietly to begin with. And strange, moaning cries drifted across the tarmac, along with those occasional nails on chalkboard screeches that set her teeth on edge and shot straight up her spine. She was so lost in thought by the time Kisten reappeared that she didn’t even notice he was there until he touched her arm. She jumped, startled.
“Admiring the wildlife?” he asked quietly. She glanced up at him, and he favored her with his crooked half smile. She shuddered.
“Unfortunately,” he continued, taking her hand and tucking it into the crook of his elbow, “we won’t have a proper home of our own until the Residence is rebuilt—which could be some months. In the meantime, we have the use of the chief commissioner’s house.”
“And the chief commissioner?” she asked.
“The lieutenant commissioner is a bachelor, while the house assigned to him is meant to house a family of twelve. Which,” he added, “incidentally, is another example of fantastically poor administration. The chief commissioner and his family will have plenty of room.”
“Are he and the lieutenant commissioner excited about sharing quarters?”
Kisten gave her a flat look.
She followed him through the fog, wondering whether she was about to get eaten. Did the fog ever burn off? Were these elephant-sized creatures with six inch fangs or just very loud hamsters?
The car was an enormous black thing, and obviously armored. Its windows were tinted, giving it a sinister effect, and the gaping maw of its open door was the last place Aria wanted to go. Equally as foreboding as the car was the man standing next to it with his arms crossed.
His bearing even more than his robes said that this was no driver. He was tall and hawk-featured, and although he might have been slightly on the wrong side of middle age, Aria wouldn’t have bet against him in a fight. He looked dangerous and, she realized with a start, he looked a great deal like Kisten.
Kisten stopped.
Aria glanced back and forth between the two men. Kisten looked like he’d seen a ghost. He took a step forward, leaving Aria forgotten on the tarmac, and the two men stared at each other. They were of a height. And then the other man threw his arms around Kisten, crushing him in an embrace that would have broken Aria’s spine. Kisten returned the gesture and, although Aria couldn’t see his face, knew that he’d been profoundly affected.
He stepped back. “I had no idea you were even in the sector.”
The older man smiled. “A retired gentleman has no need to inform the world of his comings and goings.” He studied Kisten for a few minutes. “You look so much like your grandmother.” There was admiration in his voice and also, Aria thought, a quiet note of longing.
“Speaking of which, where is she?”
“At home. The nature of this particular jaunt precluded her joining me, alas. But she sends her love.”
W
ith the mention of love, Kisten seemed to remember that he wasn’t alone. Aria still waited where he’d left her. He turned and walked back, bringing the other man with him. “Darling, this is my grandfather, Ceres. And this,” he said, addressing Ceres, “is Aria, the long-suffering creature who has agreed to be my consort. We’re getting married tonight, actually; the charms of shipboard life aside, we wanted to wait until we reached the planet’s surface.”
Kisten’s use of we made it sound like this had been a joint decision and something they both wanted. That same sense of unreality was back, and stronger than ever. Aria didn’t particularly care for his use of such familiar names, either, although from him they sounded natural enough. They implied a possessiveness that made her uncomfortable—which, she knew, was ridiculous. What were a few pet names, compared to the fact that he’d claimed her openly?
“You’re a bit soft, for my grandson.” Ceres eyed him appraisingly, but with some warmth. “I had to have rabies shots after marrying your grandmother.” Aria laughed in spite of herself, and a small part of her tension eased. “See?” said Ceres, “she finds me delightful.” Turning to Aria, he bowed low and formally. “My dear girl, I apologize profusely for the fact that of all your new family, you should have the rotten luck to meet me first.” He turned back to Kisten. “However, it gets worse. Your other grandfather is here.”
“Zerus?” Kisten looked appalled.
“I told Rajesh that marrying your mother was ill-advised.”
Aria absorbed the interchange in silence. She’d never imagined anyone talking to Kisten in such a manner, and found the very concept fascinating—and thrilling. Kisten appeared to accept his grandfather’s teasing with good humor, and she understood for the first time how much strain he’d been under aboard Atropos. And, perhaps, how little she knew him.