His Conquering Sword

by Kate Elliott

  “I will. I wish you the best of luck, Diana.”

  She kissed him on each cheek, in the formal jaran style, and smiled, and left him.

  Thus dismissed, he had no choice but to simply stand there and watch as she ran over toward the small gate and then jerked to a halt at the waist-high wicker fence that blocked off the egress. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, too nervous to stand still.

  Passengers streamed out. Diana waited. David watched.

  The floor was sloped so that he could see farther into the port tube than Diana could, so he saw the uniformed attendant first, and her companion, a shell-shocked looking young man. Next to the attendant’s dark uniform and olive skin and robust build, the young man looked almost fragile, he was so fair and so slight. But he was here.

  David felt sick with envy.

  It was a little scene, complete in itself. Diana wiped a tear from her face, and then she saw him. The attendant jostled his arm—what need had she to know Diana? It was apparent who was waiting for the young man—and Anatoly looked up and saw Diana.

  David turned away. He could not bear to watch any more. It was too painful.

  He skirted the sandstone statue and trudged back through Scarab Gate and on down the concourse to the gentler lines of Antelope Gate. Thank the Goddess, there was no delay for his flight. He boarded, found his cabin, locked the door, stowed the precious tube between his leg and the bunk wall, and plugged straight into hibersleep for the voyage.

  He had no dreams.

  But he did wake up with the usual horrible nausea and vertigo. Maggie was sitting on the pull-down chair, squeezed into the tiny cabin, regarding him with a frown on her face. Her freckles were prominent today for some reason, making her red hair seem all the more red. Or maybe it was just his eyes adjusting to the lights.

  “You don’t usually do hibersleep, do you, David? I thought it made you sick as a—Aha!” She jerked the siphon out of the wall and caught most of the phlegm that was all he had to throw up, and then wiped his face with a cool towel.

  “You’re a peach, Mags,” he said. His mouth felt like it had a thousand-year-old growth of fungus in it. “I don’t dare sit up.”

  “No sympathy from me,” she retorted. “I hate the fumes of that stuff. Here.” She bent over and extracted the tube of maps. “Do you want me to wait for you to recover, or just take this downside?”

  “Maggie!”

  “Oh, David.” She sat down beside him and smoothed his hair with a hand. “You look rotten. Why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t want to think for that long, cooped up on a ship.”

  She regarded him thoughtfully. “Oh,” she said at last. “I don’t suppose you crossed paths with Diana Brooke-Holt, did you?” He didn’t need to reply. Maggie knew him well enough to read his face.

  “Poor Diana,” she said.

  “Poor Diana!”

  “No, you’re right. Poor Anatoly’s more like it. You know she sent him back a message saying he should stay on Rhui, didn’t you?”

  “What?” David felt utterly confused.

  “But it was already too late. The damned scheming boy had evidently planned it all along. He got himself sent to Jeds and by one means or the other—no one is willing to take responsibility for it—he buffaloed his way onto one of the sloops by claiming he had a dispensation from Tess to go to Erthe, and by the time they realized their mistake, he’d seen a shuttle. So what could they do? They sent him to Odys. We never gave him Diana’s message. So maybe it is poor Diana after all. She was wise enough to see that he ought to have stayed on Rhui.” She broke off. “Oh, David,” she said on a sigh. She bent and kissed him on the cheek. “David, she never could have left the planet. You know it’s true.”

  “I know. I know.” But it still hurt. “Has there ever—been any news of her?”

  She opened her mouth and then shut it again. “Well. We did hear that she had a baby, a daughter, recently. Tess is pregnant again. Did you hear that?”

  “No, I—I haven’t been much in touch with Rhui lately,” he said, and realized how stupid the comment sounded, considering the maps he carried with him. “I’ve tried to put it behind me, that year.” But he thought of Nadine, holding a little child who probably looked like her fair-haired father. “Damn it,” he murmured. “It’s so stupid to dwell on something that wasn’t meant to be.”

  “Oh, my dear friend, I didn’t know you still missed her that much. Let me get you something to drink to settle that stomach of yours. Charles is waiting for you. And I’m always glad to see you. I missed you.”

  David felt comforted, knowing he had the solace of friendship waiting for him here on Odys.

  At the palace, Charles sat in conference with Hon Echido Keinaba in the domed audience chamber that overlooked the massive greenhouse wing.

  Suzanne, seated next to Charles at the ralewood table, saw David and Maggie at the door and beckoned to them to come in. Evidently Echido was by this time used to the casual way in which humans came and went, although he did stand and acknowledge the new arrivals with a pallid nod.

  “…and when I officially open the female wing here on Odys, Hon Echido, I hope your family will be able to provide me with suitable females with whom I can extend my staff. Ah, hello, David. Sit down. Maggie, can you deliver—the gifts—and then go and make sure the reception room is ready? I’m expecting Tai Naroshi Toraokii anytime now.”

  “Naroshi?” asked David.

  “In response to my summons.”

  “It took him long enough,” said Suzanne tartly.

  “Only by our standards,” replied Charles. He turned back to the merchant. “So is it well with you and the Keinaba elders, Hon Echido, that I send twenty-seven apprentices into your service to learn the craft of commerce from your masters?”

  “At your command, Tai-en. The proper arrangements have been made. As well, we have chosen three chay-hon, nine sendi-nin, and eighty-one ke di to enter your female house.”

  Charles glanced at Suzanne, who said in a low voice, “Three of the merchant class, nine of the steward, and eighty-one ke, all female.”

  “I beg your pardon, Tai-en.” Echido flushed blue about the cheeks.

  “It is granted,” said Charles impatiently. He looked at Suzanne, who looked at her slate and shook her head. Charles frowned. “He’s late. Well. Now, Hon Echido, about the other matter.”

  “Tai-en. Neither I nor the Keinaba House have the authority to allow these disciplines you call The Arts free movement along transport lines or, indeed, access to ports of call. But if I may be allowed to take an orchestra back with me to Keinaba Mansion on Paladia Major, I would be triply honored by your magnanimity.”

  “Umm.” Charles turned to look out at the greenhouse that sparkled in the pale sunlight, a swath of brightness thrust out across the curry-colored massif flats. “That will do. Perhaps once guests at your mansion hear the orchestra, they, too, will wish such human artisans to grace their homes and mansions.”

  “Indeed, Tai-en, if it is considered a sign of ducal pleasure, many will be eager for such a mark of distinction.”

  “Aha!” Suzanne jumped to her feet. “Incoming.”

  Hon Echido rose as well, and he bowed to the precise degree due a duke being honored by his least worthy servant. “I will withdraw, with your permission, Tai Charles.”

  “It is granted.”

  Hon Echido withdrew.

  “You know what I think,” said Suzanne, “I think he’s beginning to read us.”

  “Read us?” David asked.

  “I think he’s beginning to get a sense of how we work, we humans. Frightening thought.”

  “Good thing he’s on our side,” said David. “If he is. If any of them can be. Why is Naroshi coming in?”

  “I asked him to,” said Charles. “Maggie is going to send the maps on to Rhui.”

  “Is she going to take them down herself?”

  “No. Marco wants to go back downside.”
>
  “You’re letting him?”

  “We need more survey. Tess needs more intelligence, especially in Rhui’s other hemisphere. He’ll transfer over the maps to her and then head east, as far as he can go.”

  “Until he comes around back to the other side? Wait. Does this have something to do with Diana Brooke-Holt and the sudden appearance of her interdicted jaran husband on Meroe Transfer Station?”

  “What do you think?” asked Suzanne sourly. “I told him he was being a fool.”

  “Which comment,” said Charles dryly, “he appreciated greatly. In part to do with her, yes, but mostly to do with Marco. He’ll be circling that globe for the rest of his life, because he’s too damn restless to settle in any one place, and he always has to be testing himself.”

  “And seeing how close he can come to getting himself killed, without ever quite managing it.” Suzanne snorted and wiped her hands together briskly, brushing them off. “I wash my hands of trying to improve him and his miserable life.”

  Charles and David burst out laughing together, and Suzanne set her hands on her hips, glared at them, and then stalked out of the room. It wasn’t a particularly effective exit, if only because it took so long for her to cross the tiled floor that the drama of her affronted expression had long since expired by the time she reached the far door. When she glanced back at them, David saw that she was smiling.

  “Only twenty-seven apprentices? That’s not very many,” David said to Charles.

  “David, I have three yachts in my private fleet, which are allowed to ferry on the shipping lanes between human regions and Paladia Minor and Major. Each one is manned by a crew of twenty-four, more or less. Of these twenty-four, two of each crew, the captain and the purser, are allowed to disembark at either port. As well, Tess’s old friend Sojourner and her husband Rene are in residence on the Keinaba flagship. And I have one human representative who sits as my shadow in the Hall of the Nobles, in the outermost circle of the emperor’s palace, just as all the other dukes have such shadow markers—well, only theirs are Chapalii, of course. Then again, that one representative changes every three months so the poor soul doesn’t go stark raving mad.”

  Charles walked over to the field that separated the inside air from the outside air and set his hands, palms out and open, against it, and regarded the luxuriant growth within the greenhouse. David could not tell whether he was a nobleman surveying his domain, or a prisoner staring out from his cell.

  “That’s it. That is the entire sum of the human presence within Imperial space. Twenty-seven apprentices is a big jump, compared to that. I don’t want to move too fast.”

  He peeled his hands away from the field and sniffed, dabbing at his nose with a handkerchief. “My hay fever is acting up again. I don’t know how it carries from there into the main building.”

  David chuckled. “That’s the thing about weeds. No matter how hard you try, you can never get rid of them.”

  Charles grinned. “It’s good to have you back, David. I hope this time you’ll stay longer. Oh. Hell. Let’s go.”

  David had deduced one thing about the Chapalii. They loved grandeur. They loved huge, towering spaces and masses of intricate and floridly-overwhelming decoration. So Charles had built a new reception room, a small, intimate reception chamber set into one of the corner towers and furnished to his own taste.

  It was David’s favorite room in the entire palace.

  Two walls were windows, opening out onto a balcony that looked out over the tule flats and the far green glint of the greenhouse wing. David sat on one of the two sofas while Charles went to the bureau and rummaged for drinks.

  “Canadian or Martian?” Charles asked, setting out two bottles of whiskey.

  “Three of those pieces are new,” said David, nodding toward the white wall above the bureau, where Charles displayed his favorite art. He stood up and walked diagonally across the room, skirting the cartograph-lectern, to the opposite corner and stared at the full suit of lamellar armor that stood out on the balcony. The lacquered leather strips and polished iron segments gleamed in the long light of the setting sun. “This is new, too. That’s jaran armor.”

  “Yes, it is.” Charles handed him his whiskey.

  Suzanne came in. “He’s here.”

  Charles walked back to sit down on the other sofa, so that he could look both out the window and at the plain teak double doors that opened into the room. David remained where he was.

  Suzanne opened both doors, and Tai-en Naroshi entered, followed by one of his ubiquitous stewards. The duke held a crystal wand in his right hand.

  “Tai-en,” said Charles.

  “Tai-en,” said Naroshi.

  The room itself was pale, lit by the two walls of windows and by the two white walls and by the furniture, all of it a light teak. Even the accents, the throw rug and the linen cushions on the sofas, were white. Even so, Naroshi’s skin was paler still.

  He examined the room, and Charles allowed him silence in which to do so. He paced slowly along the wall against which the bureau stood, looking at each piece of art in turn: the tapestry of birds; the woven doormat of green and red stripes; a saber sheathed in a gold case studded with pearls and emeralds; a silk robe embroidered with the lion and the moon of the Habakar royal house; the embossed bronze teapot and the enameled vase set on the bureau; a painting of Jeds, seen from the harbor, which was in fact the only piece of art along the wall. The other things functioned, on Rhui, as utilitarian objects, however beautiful they might appear displayed here.

  Naroshi circled back, paused beside the tilted podium which was Charles’s cartographer’s table, and crossed the room to sit on the other sofa. Suzanne and the steward stood silently on either side of the open doors.

  “I received your summons,” Naroshi said. He placed the wand carefully across both knees.

  “I am distressed, Tai-en,” said Charles, “by these charges which the Protocol Office has brought against members of my house.”

  “It would sadden the emperor, indeed,” replied Naroshi, “to have this matter brought to his attention. If only I could be assured that such a transgression had not occurred.”

  Which it had, of course. David glanced at Suzanne, but she was watching the two dukes.

  Charles placed a hand on each knee, echoing the placement of Naroshi’s hands. “My people would never have gone down to Rhui of their own volition because they know the strength of the interdiction, and, indeed, the only reason they would ever have been forced to go down there would be because another house, other Chapalii under another lord, had violated the interdiction and thus forced these, my own people, to investigate.”

  Naroshi’s pallor did not alter. But David waited, breathless, to see how he would respond. It was a classic gambit, of course: I know you sent your people down; yes, but I know you sent your people down.

  “I am certain,” said Naroshi finally, “that it would take considerable provocation for any lord to break an interdiction approved by the emperor himself. I must be mistaken. I will inform the Protocol Office that they must erase all charges on their list.”

  “We are agreed, then,” said Charles. Now they knew exactly where each of them stood—more or less. Did Naroshi know that Tess was still alive? Did he guess? Did he know that Tess had transferred to her brother the cylinder from the Mushai’s banks? Did Naroshi have such a copy himself? David hid a cough behind his hand. He decided that less had the advantage over more.

  “But that is not the only reason I requested your presence here, Tai-en,” added Charles.

  Naroshi lifted his chin, acknowledging the comment. “I am honored beyond measure that you would allow my sister to design the mausoleum for your departed heir. I have brought her design with me, for you to view.”

  “You are generous, Tai-en. May I hope that we can view it now?”

  The two sofas sat perpendicular to each other, one with its back to a windowed wall, one with its back to the bookshelves that lined the r
est of the wall out from the doors. Up from the rug that lay between them, an edifice rose.

  David caught a gasp back in his throat. It was a clever insult. Or perhaps not an insult at all, but a tacit acknowledgment of their shared crime. It was the palace of Morava, clearly, in its essential design, but twisted and turned in on itself, crossed with the starker classical lines of the Parthenon and made feminine by a profusion of bright frescos of elegant ladies in belled skirts and fitted jackets surrounded by flowers, and by the tiers of columns surrounding the central dome. The design was a clear reminder of the rebel duke, the Tai-en Mushai, and yet it was also uniquely itself. It was stunning.

  Charles rose and paced once around the edifice and sat back down again.

  “What site have you procured?” he asked.

  Naroshi inclined his head. “We have received a dispensation from the emperor’s Chamberlain of the Avenue of the Red Blossom to build the mausoleum along the Field of Empty Hands.”

  David had not a clue what or where the Field of Empty Hands was, and he wondered if Charles did, either, but Charles certainly did not show any uncertainty in his reply.

  “That would be well, Tai-en. I am honored by your interest, and by your sister’s skill.”

  “We all mourn, when a member of one of the great families dies, whether by the cessation of breath or the act of extinction, of leaving, that forever separates them from their kin.”

  Charles bowed his head, perhaps the better to shadow his expression. It was true that, by Chapalii law, now that Charles had acknowledged Tess’s marriage to Bakhtiian, Tess did indeed lose her position as Charles’s heir. So ran the Chapalii inheritance laws, and laws of marriage: a female upon marriage takes her husband’s status exclusively. Presumably Naroshi’s own sister was unmarried, else she would not still remain in his house. Naroshi might believe Tess was dead—Bakhtiian had told his agent that. But Cara had also told David that Tess’s original marriage had taken place at Morava; did Naroshi know about that? Or was his comment not about Tess at all but simply a reference to the emperor, who severed all ties of kinship, all ties with his past, on the day he stepped up to the imperial throne? There were a hundred other possibilities, all of them too damned convoluted for David’s taste.