The Thrones of Kronos

by Sherwood Smith

  No one answered.

  Vannis turned back to the air car. “The Panarch will be here in two days, and you will be standing at the booster field with everyone else in the Resistance, and all the children in the Thousand Suns will be watching what happens. What gift can the Rats of the Resistance give to them?”

  She climbed into the car and closed the door.

  Fierin took her place, and started the air car, grimacing at the charge hovering just above the redline.

  She started out at a sedate, energy-conserving pace as Vannis sagged back against her seat. “I hope it works,” she said. “How many tragedies like that one are being enacted all over the Thousand Suns? Peace,” she said, her voice low and bitter. “Peace.”

  GROZNIY: ARTHELION ORBIT

  The comm chimed.

  “Admiral,” came Captain Krajno’s voice. “It’s time.”

  Ng acknowledged him, and hastily finished scanning the last of the priority reports that had come flooding in as soon as they emerged from skip in the Arthelion system. Then she sealed it all under her code, to be dealt with after the official landing fuss. She needed to be moving down to the shuttle bay, unless she wanted to keep the Panarch waiting.

  Looking at herself in her mirror, she was satisfied that her uniform was straight, its lines crisp. But her face looked as tired as she felt. Except for that first off-shift after the battle, when she had slept straight for sixteen hours, her rest had been sporadic since. The battle already seemed a far-distant dream; the reality now was the accelerating responsibilities of the aftermath.

  She wondered what had been in the coded message for the Panarch that had come through at the same time as her reports, then dismissed the question with a grateful shake of her head. Doubtless from Steward Halkyn, or the former Aerenarch-Consort Vannis, or one of the others in charge on Arthelion, and probably concerning the civilian equivalent of the mess facing her on the military front.

  Now that the alliance was no longer needed, each new day’s briefing contained yet more reports of greedy prize-grabbing, or enterprising political maneuvering, or outright cowardice. She did not want to know what the Panarch had to deal with. She had enough of her own mess to face.

  A profound sense of depression hit hard, freezing her in place. She knew it for what it was: the aftereffects of the stress of battle. Yet she couldn’t seem to get herself to that door and out.

  Then the annunciator chimed, a quiet note in the oppressive silence. Wearily she tabbed the intercom. “Ng here.”

  “May I speak to you a moment, Admiral?”

  Surprise brought her out of her chair, at least. She keyed the door open and stood as Brandon Arkad entered her cabin, dressed in white and gold: formal mourning, by a Panarch for a Panarch. He wouldn’t be wearing it much longer, she thought hazily as he stepped into the room, his blue gaze searching. Despite the odds stacked against him the last time he was in this space, he would soon be seated in the Emerald Throne, and crowned. Enthroned Panarchs did not mourn their predecessors, whatever their private emotions.

  “I must call upon you once more,” he said, smiling, “for your forbearance through yet another ceremonial. It is important that the high admiral be there to greet the leaders of the Resistance.”

  “Is there some problem, sire?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “It’s just that I know you are tired and that—if your own inclinations were to be consulted—you would prefer to land quietly, out of the public eye, and take up your life with a minimum of publicity. But you are a symbol, as am I, and we are meeting people who have become symbols. It is necessary for us to go through with symbolic actions that will imbue the chaotic lives of our citizens with a shared emotional bond.”

  His tone, his attitude, were faintly apologetic, and his words meant more than they seemed—she knew that by now. But she was too tired to sort for deep meaning. She knew only that once again she must subsume self into the greater demands of duty.

  “I am ready, sire,” she said.

  o0o

  “They just hit atmosphere!” Keas was shrieking like a five-year-old, his face crimson with excitement. He backed out of the dorm room and dashed down the hall to the boys’ wing, his voice echoing. “They’re here, they’re here!”

  “Hurry up, Moira,” Gweni groaned. “By the time you finish dressing they’ll land, come in, and be halfway through dinner!”

  Moira’s fingers shook as she picked up the last of her mother’s decorations. “These are going on right,” she said fiercely, fighting against the thing choking inside her chest and choking her throat. Her eyes burned, and she shook her head as hard as she could: she would not cry, she would not. But she was so tired, and this was the last time anyone would ever wear these decorations, and her mother should have been here wearing them herself . . .

  “Oh, I’ll do it,” Gweni said, not angry now. “You’re getting it crooked.”

  Moira closed her eyes, fighting against the thing. Gweni’s breath was soft on her face, smelling a little of apple and the cheese they’d eaten at midday, and her fingers were sure and quick as they pinned the decoration onto the row on Moira’s new tunic. Moira found it soothing to be taken care of.

  “You’re done. Look.” Gweni took her shoulders and turned her to face the mirror.

  Moira opened her eyes and saw her own face staring back, plain and thin and unhappy above the new tunic. Across her skinny chest gleamed her mother’s naval decorations, to which she’d added one of her father’s fresh blooms. He would have had a decoration, too, if there’d been anyone to give them out to civilians.

  As Moira turned away, she wished with a sudden passion that she had ignored the Masque’s order about the Rats staying away from that last exercise, and had joined her father in trying to secure the hyperwave in the Palace computer room. Though they haven’t done much lately, those Tarkans still know how to fight. You children are to stay put, the Masque had said—and a few hours later, instead of triumphant word of one last win against the withdrawing guks, the horrible news had come that everyone in the hyperwave action was dead, Moira’s father among them.

  Her mother was still missing, and Popo, her dog.

  She might never find either of them.

  The something in Moira’s chest welled up and she gave a deep, hiccupping sob, right in the hallway where everyone could hear her. Embarrassed, angry, she looked around for smirks or pity, and then the anger dissolved when she saw several of the other Rats, boys and girls, silently wiping tears away, Coll with his face buried in his handkerchief. Oh yes. The guks had shot his dad the first week, and his other dad had been at the Node; some said he was the one who killed the consoles right before the Node was destroyed. Gweni at least had her little sister.

  Most of them had no one left.

  The Masque waited out in the Palace school entry hall. No—not the Masque, for he was not wearing the red cloth that had covered all his face up to his eyes. Now they could see his lower face, with its livid purple scarring, though his eyes were still the same. They noticed you. He was wearing the dress whites of a destroyer captain, and he stood motionless, at ease, waiting for the whispering to cease.

  Then he said, “You have put in two excellent days of work. Because of what you have done, the site of the Panarch’s reception has been changed from the new booster field to the bay, and you are to stand with the survivors of the adult Resistance. Get in the transport. We have very little time to get there and take up our position.”

  The Rats let out a cheer, which they kept up steadily, as they ran out to the air cars and piled in.

  Moira cheered until her throat hurt. She bounced on her seat like some of the others, as if the cheering and bouncing would take away the ache in her hands from hauling soil, in her back from the endless hours of shoveling, and from her heart under its weight of memory.

  When they reached the bay and tumbled out of the air cars, she looked over the flat, featureless land, now covered with fresh soil.
A little pride, and a little contentment, made the ugly thing in her chest seem a little smaller.

  Gone were the bodies, and the burned shrubbery and buildings: all during that first day, after the Aerenarch-Consort had issued her challenge and they had decided what to do, somehow the adults had found out, and they showed up in carloads and helped to do what had to be done. Many, many adults, some of them completely unknown, others judged by whispers as collaborators, coming out of the houses where they had been hiding. They and their children appeared, and helped, and no one said anything to stop them.

  It was the adults who removed the bodies for proper burial, and who later brought the heavy equipment to plow the ground under, and who dropped tons of fresh soil brought from the far extent of the Palace gardens to cover the blasted ground up to the sandy part of the bay, and who dredged sand to cover the rest.

  But it was the Rats who worked through that day and through two succeeding nights to shovel fresh soil into the crater that Dol’jhar had made in the place that the Havroy had occupied for two thousand years. First they’d used the big ground-movers that Moira had learned from her father how to operate, and at the last they had used hand shovels, smoothing out a gentle mound into which, just as the sun crested the eastern horizon that morning, they planted carefully cultivated seedlings of plants brought from Lost Earth so long ago, and nurtured and bred ever since by a long line of gardeners.

  Moira stared at the little plants stirring in the sea breeze, until her eyes blurred. How proud her father would have been—but he would never see them grow.

  “Here they come! How do we stand?” That was Theslar, who sent an ugly look at Moira before adding, “We don’t have any real rank.”

  “Just line up,” Captain Hayashi said, and he took his place next to Steward Halkyn—who was only a civilian—with every evidence of pride.

  Moira was silent as she stood beside Gweni, who clutched her little sister’s hand on the other side. Gweni’s sister hadn’t talked since the day the Havroy was destroyed. Moira wondered if having the Panarch come back would make Denni talk again, but then she thought, nobody can make my parents come back, or bring Popo barking and wagging his tail.

  She stole one more look at the distant mound on which the little green shoots could be made out, feeling a little like she was just wakening from a bad dream, and a little like she was still in one. They were safe, they didn’t have to be afraid. They had enough food. They had clothes, and clean beds, and someone made sure the lights were turned out at night. Someone had even mentioned school again.

  But the bad dream was the memory of the things she’d done and said that made the Aerenarch-Consort angry, and the Masque, and that other children hated her for—and would probably hate as long as there was memory.

  It had been her idea that the Rats make their own rank according to how many times they’d encountered the Tarkans, because she’d known she’d come out way ahead. And all the others had gone right along with the idea until several Rats got killed instigating actions with the guks, just to get rank points, and now everyone blamed Moira. She had done brave things and stupid things, and as her family seemed to be dead she was now to be a ward of the Phoenix House, which meant that the Panarch would eventually sort through the record—good and bad—and decide where she ought to be.

  She didn’t know herself where she ought to be. Her own house was empty, and she felt empty inside. But one thing she knew, after all those hours of shoveling and thinking: that she had liked the war more than she hadn’t, and this was probably one of the reasons why her father, who didn’t like war, had been so ready to volunteer for that last mission.

  “Look up,” Gweni said softly. “That’s him.”

  Moira had to blink several times, but then she saw it, at first a bright pinpoint of light in the mild blue sky that slowly resolved into the Panarch’s shuttle.

  Moira tipped her head back, ignoring the protest from her tired back muscles, and watched it come, the sunlight making a blaze of the Sun and Phoenix on the sides. How very different this was from the advent of the Avatar, of whose descent now no trace remained.

  The small ship glided to the beach without fuss and grounded silently, its hatch precisely aligned with the rows of the Marine honor guard, the annuncios with their long, golden trumpets, and the assembled Douloi beyond. The hatch swung down and the trumpets swung up, glinting in the bright sun as the Phoenix Fanfare pealed out.

  Moira wasn’t sure what she’d expected. Not, surely, someone three meters tall with flashing eyes and shoulders two meters wide, like a hero out of the Tale of Years—but certainly someone more impressive than the man not even as tall as her dad, though he was dressed all in white and gold. But then she noticed how every eye turned to him, and she saw in those faces that he might as well be three meters tall. She felt it herself, though she couldn’t say what the feeling was, except here was the Panarch. He’d won. He was back. He was going to keep them safe.

  She looked at him so hard, trying to figure out how he made her feel that way when he didn’t even see her, so at first she barely noticed the small figure emerging behind the Panarch, not much taller than Moira herself, dressed in white with the markings of—

  “The high admiral,” Gweni said, awed. “It’s the high admiral herself, with the Panarch, and they’re coming to us!”

  Moira stared at the woman who had won the battle of the Suneater. She was around Mother’s age, ordinary brown of hair and skin, and even smaller than Moira’s mother. She must have liked war, too, or she wouldn’t be the High Admiral. And lots of people had lost their lives at her command. Did she feel their weight on her, as if she was to blame?

  Moira straightened up, hoping the high admiral would glance her way. Suddenly it was very important that Admiral Ng notice her. Admiral Ng’s eyes squinted against the glare of the sunlight, her gaze slightly unfocused as if she really didn’t see all the people standing in rows before her.

  They walked closer, and the Panarch tipped his head and said something too low for Moira to catch, his lips barely moving.

  The high admiral looked up and scanned their faces, stopping when she saw Captain Hayashi. Admiral Ng’s eyes grew wide, and gone was the military precision, and her face had turned a nasty, pasty color. With a little wordless cry she sprang forward, toward the man whose harsh breathing and tear-filled eyes surprised the children around him, and he and the high admiral locked their arms round each other and stood there for a time in wordless happiness before the Resistance, and the highest officers of the returning warriors, and the rest of the Thousand Suns through the ajnas of the novosti lining the perimeter of the field.

  The Panarch spoke, and the Aerenarch-Consort in her beautiful white gown spoke, and then the high admiral and the Masque fell apart with a little laughter and spoke, but Moira didn’t hear the words. Through pride and tiredness came the desolate thought that the last time she had been with her mother and father and Popo had been not far from this very spot, but there would be no mother to run to throw her arms around her father, and no father to welcome her home, and Moira bowed her head and covered her face with her hands, but Gweni dug her elbow into Moira’s side.

  “Stop it.”

  “No, Moira, look.” Gweni pointed at the new mound, with the little plants that Moira had put in with her own hands. A pack of scrawny dogs had appeared from somewhere, sniffing all over the new earth.

  Moira’s breath stuck in her chest when she saw among them an Arkad dog, its black and brown fur matted, a hairless weal across one flank. “Popo?”

  She took a step, then two steps, as the dogs scattered, noses down, following invisible trails.

  Then she ran and threw herself on the earth, for she was crying too hard to see, until a cold nose thrust itself in her hand, and whuffled in her ear, and her arms locked around a shivering, thin warm body.

  EIGHT

  Margot Ng traced the scars on Metellus’s face with her fingers as they lay together. He took her
hand and kissed her palm. “I should put my head in a sack.” He smiled.

  “Don’t,” she replied, shuddering. That’s what the Dol’jharians would have done, had they caught you.”

  “Well,” Metellus said, “that’s pretty much what the chirurgeons will do when the reconstruction starts. You think you’ll enjoy making love to something out of ‘The Curse of the—’”

  She stopped his mouth with hers. After an endless time, they drew apart again and she buried her face against his neck, lest he see the tears in her eyes.

  But it’s happiness, not sorrow. How strange the exigencies of war and peace! So long had their relationship endured, moments snatched against the demands of duty, that it seemed strange to contemplate the months of togetherness ahead. For the reconstructive surgery on her beloved would be long and painstaking; and for her, the necessity of close coordination with the new government moored her firmly to Arthelion and the Mandala for at least as long.

  “It’s strange,” she said at last, knowing he would divine her thoughts if she did not distract him.

  “What?”

  “We only had the hyperwave for a couple of months, but in that short time we became so dependent on it, it’s now like being deaf and blind.”

  Metellus laughed. “Right. Imagine Nelson having it to chase down the French on the way to the Battle of the Nile, then losing it before Trafalgar.”

  She raised her head, astonished. He’d never before volunteered a simile based on her fascination with ancient naval history. “That’s exactly what I was thinking! But—”

  Metellus laid a finger across her lips. “I have a surprise for you.” He reached over her body with one long, muscular arm and tabbed the bedside comp. A voice spoke.

  “A port wriggle is a corruption of a term from the era of wooden warships on Lost Earth. The correct term, port wrinkle, is a small awning-like wooden projection over the gun port of a wooden warship, designed to prevent water streaming down the hull from running into the ship.”