Ninth Euclid's Prince

by Daniel M. Hoyt

  And where were Oswald’s Angels?

  “Okay, Foster,” I said steadily, with great effort, “I need you to find Prince Oswald’s retinue and tell them to get packed for New Rome. I think it’s best if I go and fetch the prince as soon as possible.”

  A sour expression crossed Foster’s face, as if he’d swallowed a lemon. “Where would I find the time to locate your retinue? I’m busy with my Lady’s needs.”

  Narrowing my eyes at the small man, I tried to look menacing, which wasn’t that hard for someone of my size and bulk, and pressed my face right down to his, nose to nose. “Your Lady won’t have any needs worth satisfying,” I yelled, “if I don’t get back to New Rome immediately. Understand? Find that retinue!”

  I stormed out of the room and headed for Oasisis jumpport at a run, shouting into my personal comlink along the way.

  The port master, as demanded, had a jumper waiting for me. I sped past him and leaped through the open hatch, nearly slamming into the other side of the tiny vessel. Strapping in as I took off, I flew to Telsor in record time, breaking several Oasis laws in the process.

  Telsor jumpport was a blur as I shot past, landing in Lord Redwing’s courtyard instead. I vaulted from my jumper and hurdled a surprised gardener on my way to the door of the estate. Redwing’s guard took one look at me and attempted to block my way, but I growled, “Prince Oswald’s personal secretary,” and he vanished from my path.

  I stalked into Lord Redwing’s receiving room and demanded to know where the governors were meeting. A petite man with a thin moustache politely showed me the way, and even announced me at the door.

  Most of the governors stopped talking for a few seconds and turned their heads to me, acknowledging the interruption, if only briefly. But three of the roosters continued arguing, ignoring me pointedly.

  “—not the point,” Governor Dwelman was shouting, the top of his bald head bright red. “I don’t care how it’s been, I want to know how it’s going to be.”

  Governor Vynger nodded vigorously, his curly blond hair bobbing down to cover his eyes with each nod. “Exactly. Why, I heard that the overlord in Gre—”

  Vynger glanced at me for the first time and stopped dead.

  “I’ve heard that on some planets,” Vynger said, glaring at me, “tribute goes from the overlord to the governors, rather than the other way around.”

  I wondered what planet he was going to say, that he didn’t want me to hear. Greengarden? Or Greenerpasture? Mentally flipping through the names of the eighty three worlds in the Eternal Empire, I was surprised to find that nearly a dozen of them started with the word green. What does that say about our ingenuity and desire for uniqueness?

  The third governor, Templar, glanced at me then. “And I heard that some planets don’t even pay a tribute.”

  I sighed. This kind of disinformation was nearly impossible to refute. I could quote facts and figures to them, and they’d just keep insisting, “But, I heard that....”

  It was a no-win situation for me. For all of us.

  The other rooster governors, sensing that I wasn’t going to offer them any resistance, squawked louder and louder, each one shouting to be heard over the din of the others. Eventually, just like roosters, they made such a racket that it was impossible for any of them to hear themselves screaming.

  I only caught bits and pieces by that time.

  “—Redwing—”

  “—pay tribute to an over—”

  “Never!”

  “When I was a boy—”

  I sat down in a chair by the wall and let them squabble for an hour.

  Early in my career with Lord Oswald, I’d been privileged to attend a meeting of about seventy of the planetary governors in New Rome. It was an eye-opening experience for me.

  Each one of them had their own method for dealing with their governors, ranging from having all the governors vote on every decision, even if it only affected one of them, to executing any governor that so much as mentioned the overlord’s name in the wrong tone of voice. From what I could see, there didn’t seem to be much difference to the common man, no matter what was happening at the top, and I mentioned this to my Lord.

  “And that’s where you’re wrong,” Lord Oswald said quickly, before I could embarrass myself further with my ignorance of mass psychology. “See, the common man has the same wants and needs as we do. Security, prosperity and some entertainment. Happiness comes from a particular mixture of those things, usually heavy on the entertainment, and each man has a different recipe. Security might mean a farm and a cash crop to one man, to another it might be a jumpyacht and the freedom to live wherever his jumpyacht lands.”

  Lord Oswald sneered at the other planetary governors. “These fools here each think that they know the best way to handle the plebes, but swap planetary governors on any two planets and watch what happens. Eventually, the overlord has to strike some kind of compromise between the way he did them on his old planet and the way it’s been done on the new one. Voila! A brand new system is born, out of necessity. System A’s people, not used to System B’s government, naturally think that it’s bad before they even experience it. It’s different; therefore, it’s bad by default, since they may have to adjust their personal happiness recipes to live under it. If the new overlord tries to force the new system on them, they’ll revolt.”

  Smiling smugly, Lord Oswald added, “Bread and circuses, my boy, bread and circuses. That’s the key. The Old Earth Romans had it right; that’s why we’ve gone back to that system to a certain extent. The common man rarely gets upset if you add in more entertainment to his recipe; he grumbles a bit when you reduce it, but he won’t fault you for it the way he will if you reduce his security or prosperity. So, if you’re smart, you increase his entertainment along with any reductions of the other ingredients. Trust me on this. If a man is happy to pay a quarter of his income in tribute and get nothing discernible in return — except, of course, for the legion protection on the off chance the Empire gets invaded again — then he’ll gladly pay another ten percent if you throw in some feasts and celebrations, too. Which are paid for, naturally, from the increased tribute. And if you really want to be popular, collect just a little too much tribute for a while, then reduce it and throw a big party to celebrate the reduction.”

  I thought about Lord Oswald’s lecture for the remainder of the meeting, and tried to apply his wisdom to whatever I heard from the overlords. Ultimately, I concluded that the prince was right to a large extent. It was after that meeting that I suggested the change in the legion inspections. My Lord was impressed with my plan and, seeing that it followed his advice, implemented it immediately upon our arrival home on Oasis.

  One subtle point that I learned from the trip to New Rome was that most people strove for the status quo. Whenever it was upset, that was when problems occurred. And unless the overlord of a planet was incredibly restless and changed policies along with his underwear, those times of strife tended to occur after some type of outside influence.

  I wondered, during that hour that the governors of Oasis argued, if there was some external influence at work here, too.

  At some point, the rooster governors had to quiet down, but my ears were ringing by the time that happened. Vynger’s voice was the first one I could pick out as the clamor reduced in volume slightly.

  “—even need a planetary governor for?” Vynger asked, I hoped rhetorically. There was a word for that kind of question. Treason. And Lord Oswald didn’t take kindly to treason.

  I decided the arguments had gone on long enough. I stood up slowly, took a deep breath into my huge lungs, and bellowed, “Quiet!”

  The room fell silent faster than I could have hoped for. I glared around the room, paying particular attention to Dwelman, Vynger and Templar. “I think that’s enough for one day. I’d like to remind you of a few things. First, Oasis is profitable, all the way from Prince Oswald to the legionnaire still wet behind his ears. And that includes all of
you. Second, some planets, and I will name names here,” — I stared at Vynger, who’d stepped lightly around the name of the planet starting with Gre — “Copse, for instance, would have collapsed without a planetary governor. It was collapsing, economically, until your prince rescued it, by the way. Third, under the prince’s predecessor, you were all at war with each other. Now, there’s peace, with minor skirmishes only when one of you gets too big a head. And you want to throw it all away? What’s wrong with all of you, anyway?”

  I glared at the roosters in disgust, then turned my back on them. “Go home,” I said loudly. “Think about it rationally for a minute. Nothing good can come of this stupidity.”

  The fighting cocks filed out of the room, muttering and whispering. What I heard in passing was uncomplimentary.

  Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time I had to deal with the rooster governors on this subject.

  But what else could I do? I hoped only to forestall the inevitable long enough to fetch Lord Oswald from New Rome and find out what happened to his Angels. Once he mobilized them, I was sure, the governors would fall in line again and the status quo would be returned to Oasis.

  Unless there was an outside influence that continued to pick at the governors in my absence. And I had a needling suspicion that there was.

  I rushed out of the empty room and nearly ran down General Zanuck.

  “Am I glad to see you, General.”

  “Euclid,” the general said, surprised. He looked around frantically. “Where’s Oz?”

  “Still in New Rome. Where are the Angels? I didn’t see any of them in the palace.”

  General Zanuck nodded. “Quite right. I pulled every available man for this crisis. I’ve got men following each of the governors, as well as each of their minions that might have enough power to sway the masses. There are spies in the masses, too, just in case, ready to cloud the issues using whatever means necessary. Our goal is to stop any revolts before they gain enough momentum to do any harm. Civil wars can be ugly.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. At least now I knew where the Angels were. “Good work, General; I’m sure the prince will be proud,” I said truthfully. “I’ll let him know when I see him.”

  The general nodded and started to turn away, but I grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “One more thing,” I said. “Do you have any idea how this got started? Who’s involved?”

  Zanuck shook his head. “Not really, but, honestly, I haven’t paid that much attention to how it got started. I’ve been focused on getting it stopped. But, now that I think about it, it seems to have started with rumors all up and down the political ladder at the same time.”

  “From outside Oasis?” I asked.

  “Possibly.”

  Definitely, in my opinion. Grass roots movements have a single starting vector, like a contagious virus. If there’s a bunch of vectors all starting at the same time, it’s usually because of some malicious external behavior. A virus doesn’t generally occur in that many places at the exact same time without some help.

  General Zanuck offered to check with some of his officers, and I asked him to go ahead. He ducked into a room, so he didn’t have his personal comlink announcing sensitive things in the hallway for anybody to hear. A few minutes later, he emerged with a grim look on his face.

  “You may be right,” he said. “Several of my people have reported seeing some of Prince Vere’s men around lately.”

  And Prince Vere’s planet was Greengarden, which fit with Vynger’s slip when I walked into the meeting of the governors.

  But why would Vere be interested in fostering discontent on Oasis? What reason could he have for trying to turn the tide of satisfaction against Prince Oswald?

  Unless ... Vere expected to inherit Oasis from my Lord somehow. And soon.

  Unless ... Vere had already inherited?

  My skin crawled and cold sweat poured down my back as the facts arranged themselves in my mind.

  One. Lord Noir and Prince Vere were involved in something together. Two. Lord Noir appeared to have set up Lord Oswald for murder. Three. Just in case the murder charge didn’t stick, Noir was poised to denounce my Lord for adultery with the empress Jewel. Four. Prince Vere’s men were starting a civil war on Oasis in Lord Oswald’s absence. Five. From what I’d seen of the rooster governors so far, that civil war might start before I could get Lord Oswald back to Oasis.

  If my Lord was still alive, that was.

  I sprinted back to my jumper in Lord Redwing’s courtyard, praying that I wasn’t already too late returning to New Rome.

  Chapter 16

  Return to New Rome

  IN MY MINDLESS PANIC, I FORGOT WHY I WAS IN TELSOR. I leaped into my jumper and furiously set course for Oasisis before I remembered with a shock that Lady Redwing was still unwilling to return to New Rome.

  I punched my comlink en route, hailing Lady Redwing on a private frequency. “Lady Redwing,” I yelled, still excited.

  “Euclid?” she said cheerily.

  “Yes,” I said, forcing myself to sound calmer. “We need to leave for New Rome immediately. How soon will you be ready?”

  “Yes, of course you do,” Lady Redwing said dismissively, but didn’t elaborate on her casual tone.

  “Please, Lady Redwing—”

  “Phoenix.”

  “Phoenix,” I said, sighing. “When can you be ready?”

  “I’m not going,” she said flatly.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. Still, my purpose in coming back to Oasis — at great personal risk, too — was to convince Lady Redwing to return to New Rome. How could I return to New Rome without her? Lord Oswald needed her there at the emperor’s succession announcement party, and it was already midday Tuesday, which meant we had about a day and half tolerance for the Phoenix to get us there in time.

  Mentally, I kicked myself for letting myself get distracted by the threat of civil war. What was I thinking? Even if I left for New Rome immediately and managed to convince the prince to come back to Oasis to quell this insurrection, we’d never be able to return to New Rome in time for the succession announcement. Assuming my Lord was still alive, if Prince Oswald was to be named, his absence certainly would nullify that possibility. And if he wasn’t named, his failure to show for the announcement wouldn’t help his favor with the emperor or his successor.

  Prince Oswald needed to remain in New Rome through Saturday, at least.

  Assuming he could leave Saturday night, it would be Monday night before he’d be back on Oasis to quash this civil war.

  Nearly a week.

  Considering the kind of damage that had occurred already in that amount of time, I wasn’t sure that ignoring the Oasis governors was a very good idea. There might not be an Oasis for the prince to return to.

  I needed a miracle.

  “Euclid?” Lady Redwing asked after my long silence.

  Thinking about it, I didn’t see that I had much of a choice, really. If I left Oasis now — without Lady Redwing —Oasis was sure to be in ruins by the time Prince Oswald could return, and Lady Redwing would fail to appear in New Rome’s court, despite an imperial order for her to do so. A no-win proposition. If I stayed, I still had a day and a half to convince Lady Redwing to go back to New Rome, and to see what I could do about this silly uprising.

  Guiding the jumper sharply around, I set a new course back for Telsor, this time bound for the parking area at Lord Redwing’s mansion, rather than his courtyard.

  “Euclid, did you hear me?” Lady Redwing asked again, sounding concerned.

  Flicking the comlink, I answered, “Yes. I hope you’ll reconsider going back to New Rome.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said frostily.

  “Phoenix, may I stay with your father for a couple of days? I’d really like the opportunity to convince you to go.”

  “That’s sweet of you to ask, Euclid,” Lady Redwing said. “Of course you can stay here, but it won’t make any difference
. I’m not going and that’s final.”

  I smiled. I’d seen enough of the lady’s moods to know that her final answer could change in the course of two days.

  “I’ll be there momentarily, then,” I said, as I started my landing in Lord Redwing’s parking area.

  Once I was grounded, I unstrapped myself from the pilot’s chair and flicked the switch to release the safety lock on the hatch. I opened the hatch just as my personal comlink chirped.

  “What is it?” I answered viciously.

  It was the port master at Oasisis jumpport. “Personal message from Emperor Seraphim VI in New Rome.”

  My heart skipped. Why was the emperor sending me a message, personally? How did he know I was on Oasis? Only Prince Oswald and the New Rome jumpport knew.

  And Willow.

  “Return immediately,” the port master said. “That’s it. No more explanation.”

  My heart sank. Returning to New Rome now without Lady Redwing was the wrong option, I knew, despite my initial inclination to do so after I’d found out about the civil war, but now it appeared I had no choice.

  “Verify the message, please,” I ordered the port master.

  It was a few seconds before he came back, but I expected that. He’d have to check the message code against the emperor’s known code, then verify the decryption code — all messages from the Emperor were encrypted to prevent fraud. Then, if everything checked out, the port master would check the transit time for the message to verify that it was consistent with New Rome’s distance from Oasis.

  “It’s authentic,” the port master said, finally.

  I hadn’t expected anything different, but it still put me in a quandary. I was sure that I could convince Lady Redwing to return with me by tomorrow, but I wasn’t sure if I should wait. New Rome wasn’t providing any explanations, just an imperative. If the goal was simply to ensure my presence at the succession announcement party, I could probably get away with taking the extra time to convince the lady. But, what if it was something else?