by Lucia Ashta
Shadows danced across the candlelight, playing tricks on the tavern’s clientele. Those few who were more innocent than their fellows appeared menacing, with long shadows darkening their usually friendly faces. Others, who were plainly sinister, hid within the anonymity of low definition, their severe expressions and threatening stances softened. Trilles Tavern was an equal opportunity establishment where everyone was treated the same. Each man was allowed to drink his misery away, or to attempt to find courage at the bottom of a glass of ale, or to forget the responsibilities of this hard life, for a night at least.
I reined in my natural curiosity. I still noticed the hooded man who concealed his eyes beneath the shadow his hood cast and drank alone in the corner. I noticed the table of three men, and how one of them seemed unusually nervous, his eyes continually darting between his companions’ knives at their belts and the main door. I noticed every patron and situation that might pose a threat, as any good soldier would, but I stopped there. I had enough to think about without looking for problems.
I constrained my roving eyes to my friend across the table. He looked tired. How long had it been since we slept? When did we leave my quarters for the splicing facility? Had it really only been three suns ago?
I sat back in my chair; the wood creaked. I rubbed my hands over my face, then crossed my arms over my chest. I scanned the room again, checked the front and back exits, made sure the cloaked man remained where he was, that at the table of three no one had gone for his knife—it was a habit that had saved my life on multiple occasions and was difficult to relinquish.
I angled my chair toward Dolpheus. We’d chosen a corner table where we could both sit with our backs against the wall. I offered him a tired smile. “You’re a good friend, you know that?”
“You’re damn right I am.” He smiled back, a smile as weary as my own. “I could be sleeping in my bed right now, on my feather-filled mattress, with my silky sheets and fluffy pillows. Blackout curtains drawn, I could sleep all the way through the Auxle Sun and into the Suxle Sun.”
I took a moment to imagine my own inviting bed. “We’ll be able to sleep soon. We just need to do this first.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep. You have no idea when we’ll be able to sleep. Things never go precisely as planned.”
“True.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“We go to the palace to see the King.”
Dolpheus nodded. “He’ll be there. Now that he’s recovering from the latest assassination attempt, he won’t leave the palace until he’s regained his strength. The palace is the safest place for him right now.”
“Yes. And he’ll grant me an audience now that he knows what it is I’m coming to speak with him about. I’ll likely be able to see him today.”
“Remember, it’s nighttime. I imagine that the King will be sleeping, especially in the state that he was in when we last saw him. Maybe we should go home and rest and try again in the morning.”
“No. I don’t want to wait any longer; I’ve waited long enough. We have no idea what kind of situation Ilara’s been in for the last three years. We don’t know how stable the situation is on whichever planet she’s on. There’s a chance that the King might be awake and willing to see us. At least chance enough to make it worthwhile to go to the palace to try. Ilara told me that her father barely slept at night anymore. Since she was a child, he rarely slept more than a few hours a night.”
“He’s convalescing now.”
“Yes. You’re right, and that might change things. But there’s only one way to find out. And we’re already here.” The Trilles Tavern was just outside the boundaries of the royal palace. It was the nearest tavern to the towering resin and glass and the main reason for its popularity.
“What are you going to tell the King?”
“I’m not sure yet. But I do know that I’m going to tell him as little as possible.” I didn’t have to explain to Dolpheus. The King was the kind of man that would use whatever he could to his advantage. He’d forced me into doing something I didn’t want to do because he possessed information I wanted. After proving useful to him, he’d likely try to do it again. It was important that I hold onto as much information as I could for potential future use. When compared to the King, my power and sphere of influence were small. I needed to preserve every advantage I could.
“I would keep Lila’s theories on the inherent evil of the splicing process to myself,” Dolpheus said.
“I was already thinking that. I intend on limiting the information I give him to the procedures used to achieve splicing, which I believe is all that he’ll be expecting. I don’t desire to become an accomplice to the more alarming aspects of my father’s splicing empire. But I also don’t wish to throw him to the mowabs, especially not when it’d be based solely on Lila’s version of things.”
“Maybe you could deal with your father. Trade your silence about the more nefarious of his practices for Ilara’s safety.”
“You have an ambitious mind, Olph. Maybe I could deal with my father. But even if he were to give me his word that Ilara would be safe from him, I don’t know if I could believe him. I’m not sure who’s more dangerous, the King or my father.”
“It’s definitely a close one. Well, something to think about.”
“Aye. One more thing to think about that I don’t feel like thinking about. Why can’t life just be simple?” I knew Dolpheus wouldn’t respond. We’d been asking ourselves this same thing since we were adolescents and first began to recognize Origins for the tainted place that it was, where power and fortune were wielded with a heavy hand, silencing goodness and justice.
Dolpheus pushed his chair back. “Ready?”
“Ready. Let’s get this over with. I can’t wait to be scanned a million times.”
We walked the hundred or so feet to the wall that enclosed the royal palace’s grounds. The stone wall was more elegant than anything else around it, each stone that composed it possessed of a homogeneousness absent in the natural world. It was also lighter in color than the stones of the streets that radiated out from its base to set the foundation for the royal city, where things were as bad as they looked and smelled.
We waited our turn to step into the steady traffic that flowed through the gate to the royal grounds at all hours. We stepped onto the stone walkway that appeared to hover in the air, as if it were a trick of faithum instead of a feat of engineering, unaware that, already, our plans had no chance of turning out the way we intended.
Four
I realized something was wrong before we reached the royal palace. We were within seventy feet of the entrance when one of the guards, a young, crisp-looking one, picked us out of the group of oncomers. He was in the middle of scanning someone for admittance, yet he stopped without finishing to approach the guard next to him. The fresh guard whispered something to the taller, more weathered one that caused him to snap his head up and search us out of the crowd like a weapon honing in on its target. He found us right away. We were taller, with larger builds than those around us—advantages as soldiers—with better quality dress.
“Uh oh,” Dolpheus said. “Should we turn around?”
“Unfortunately,” I said under my breath, “I don’t think that’ll help.” The two guards were approaching us, each with a hand at his waist, where he likely carried a weapon. The other two guards, that remained at the entrance to the palace, watched them advance, ignoring the people queuing up in front of them, waiting to be scanned. We were a priority.
The lips of the older guard were moving, as if he were speaking to someone invisible, while he closed the distance between us. I imagined he was requesting backup. All the guards wore a crystalline cone with a tail that hooked over one ear so the cone could lean against their heads; it amplified their natural abilities to communicate through brain waves. Told they couldn’t speak with each other with their minds without this device, they relied on it for communication.
Mo
re guards were likely to flood the walkway soon. I looked down, beyond the edge of stone. Beneath the walkway was a drop with no visible end. I knew it did have a bottom, eventually, but that was no comfort. Our only options were to continue forward or to retreat, and the guards drew nearer with each step.
Dolpheus and I had slowed our pace but not halted; we didn’t want to draw additional attention. Now, it seemed pointless to keep up the ruse. There was no one else the guards could be coming for.
I grabbed Dolpheus’ shoulders and spoke with urgency. “Whatever the reason, they must be coming for me, not you. Get out of here now.”
“I’m not going to leave you, Tan.”
“Yes, you are. I need you to. Having both of us in trouble won’t serve any purpose. It will just tie our hands doubly. I don’t know what they want with me, but they can’t have anything against you. Go. Now. Go back to Lila and see if you can get her to help you find out where Ilara is. Maybe she can track down how Ilara was sent off planet and discover information I didn’t, something kept elsewhere in the lab that I didn’t access.”
We flicked glances toward the guards. They were close. I continued, “If the King’s guards are coming for me, then something has changed with the King. We can’t rely on his help any more. Do what you can to find a different way of discovering her location.”
The guards were nearly upon us.
“How do I help you?” Dolpheus asked.
“I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as I discover it. Remain alert for my messages. Now, go. Spare yourself.”
Dolpheus held my eyes for a second, then nodded, and walked away, back the way we’d come. He was within earshot when the scruffy guard reached me and called out for all to hear, “Lord Tanus, you are under arrest for suspicion in an attack against the great King Oderon of the Andaron Dynasty, Liege of Planet Origins.”
I held my hands out in front of me. There was no point in resisting. I couldn’t flee successfully since I couldn’t transport within the royal palace grounds. I’d wait. I would gather information to discover what on O was going on, and why I was being blamed for it. The younger guard held out the same device used to scan palms for entry. He waved its opposite end around my wrists in a complete circle. A flash of bright light followed the point of the wand, with a delay of a fraction of a second. When he retreated to stand next to the seasoned guard, a band of crystalline energy bound my wrists to each other. The crystalline particles within the bindings were programmed to bond with one another until such time as a guard waved his wand the opposite way around my wrists. Not even I, who could do many things others had forgotten, knew how to break free of them.
I would have to learn.
When I looked up again, I couldn’t find Dolpheus. He was gone.
Five
The King was dying—maybe. I had unconfirmed suspicions that the Andaron bloodline might be extraordinary, that death didn’t come as easily for its members as it did for the rest of us—but he wasn’t dead, which was perhaps the only reason that I wasn’t yet being threatened with my own death.
Once more, by association, my father’s ambitions left me tainted. It wasn’t me but my father whom they suspected of the third and latest assassination attempt on the royal family. This, the last of the attacks, they couldn’t begin to explain. Security had been higher than ever before. Additional guards were slotted to all shifts. No one of any considerable risk to the King was admitted to the palace.
Save me. I’d been in the palace in the days preceding the assassination attempt. I believed this, and the fact that I was son to Lord Brachius, were all they had to tie me to their accusations that I’d harmed the King. After all, I knew that I hadn’t, so whatever they had against me had to be a mistake. Or worse, and far more dangerous, a fabrication. If it were a well-constructed fabrication against me, then my odds of getting out of here alive lessened. But who’d be willing to sacrifice me for their cause? My father? I didn’t want to believe that he was capable of such a thing. Approaching me with cold indifference and occasional anger was far different than constructing a web that would snare me and bring about my death.
I wasn’t certain what had happened to the King. Right now, I was a prisoner and not a courtier. I wasn’t owed the usual courtesies afforded to my station. I was being held in a containment cell a floor above the dungeons. I was grateful for that, even if it was a minimal concession to my name that identified me as the son of a wealthy and powerful empire of industry. Whoever was responsible for my imprisonment—I assumed it must be Lord Drakos, the Minister of Government, usually a nominal title with little authority to enforce decisions without the King’s approval—was walking the fine line of irony. Certain concessions were made because of who I was and the fear of offending all the nobility, that undoubtedly knew I’d been arrested, through my improper treatment. Yet I was here only because of who I was and not because of anything I’d done.
Clearly, this cell was reserved for higher ranking prisoners than those poor wretches taken to the dungeons below, where few ever managed to leave once they entered. The cell was small yet comfortable, with a few luxuries that seemed out of place in a prison. There was a small bed, hard and lumpy, that was far better than the scattered straw provided in the dungeons, and a table with one candle on its otherwise bare surface beside it. There was an upholstered chair wrapped in a brilliant damask fabric that had seen better days, however it had once been a fine example of the elegance a king could purchase. A small stack of books—The Divine Rule of a King, The Value of Monarchy, A History of the Great Andaron Dynasty, The Official Biography of King Oderon the Great—were provided in deference to the educated class of person this room was designed to hold.
I was unable to cull much information of use from the conversations of the guards stationed outside my cell. But I heard enough to conclude that the King had received some kind of near-fatal blow to the head. Lord Broon, the royal physician, was unwilling to predict whether his only patient would recover. The blow must have been hard and well—or ill, depending on perspective—placed.
The King’s condition didn’t bode well for me for he was the only one within the palace walls that knew I could be trusted. He was the only one to have completed a mind merge with me.
If the minister Lord Drakos were to become my sole judge and executioner during King Oderon’s incapacitation, well, I was in more trouble than I’d originally thought. Lord Drakos was an impetuous, arrogant man who embodied the stereotypical snobbery of the aristocracy with understated flair. He wore a neutral-colored cape to underscore his importance for any that had missed it. I’d wondered many times before why King Oderon, a sharp and brilliant leader and military strategist by all accounts, had selected this man to be his temporary replacement. There had to be something I didn’t see in Lord Drakos, for I knew that King Oderon was no fool.
As to King Oderon’s men, however, I could lay no claim to their lack of foolishness. It seemed obvious to me, even with the little information I possessed, that the problem in the royal palace was a mole. Within the magnificent edifice of near-white stone and glass that sparkled at all hours of the day with light and color, a traitor had infiltrated the King’s system and security. How Lord Drakos hadn’t seen this I couldn’t imagine. Perhaps he had. Maybe my capture was a ruse (I could hope) while the real traitor was smoked out under the false sense of security of my arrest. That would explain why I’d been captured with so little proof tying me to the attack.
But I couldn’t rest on hope. I’d have to find my own way out of this entanglement. I could work out who the real attacker was. But then I would have to find a true willing ear, and I couldn’t be certain who that was. I could prove my innocence beyond doubt, but the only people to testify to my innocence were Dolpheus, whom no one would trust to put truth before his loyalty to me, and Lila, a woman we’d kidnapped and who could say a number of incriminating things if she were given the opportunity. My father, whom I assumed was the force behind the at
tack, could potentially prove my innocence, but he would have to implicate himself to do so; I didn’t think he would.
There were too many ifs and maybes involved, and my life relied on their outcome. The surest plan was to find the way to escape first. Then, once I was safe, I could attempt to figure out the rest of it. The problem with plans was that they rarely turned out the way I wanted them to—the turns of this day alone had proven that.
I was deep within a palace that had security meant to be impenetrable; my hands were bound with bindings that no one had ever broken out of as far as I knew. In the palace grounds, transporting, my easy way out, was forbidden, and there might also be a block on mental communication—unless they thought too few people capable of this skill anymore to bother with it. On top of it all, I had a pounding headache that seemed to sprout from nowhere and my mind was clamoring for a sleep I couldn’t afford to give it.
The day, that began for me several suns ago, had already been a shitty one. Now I had to see if I could perform the miracle of turning shit into roses.
Six
I’d worn a trail through the layer of dust that covered the stone floor of my prison cell. I was afraid that if I stopped moving exhaustion and the throbbing pain in my head would catch up with me. I knew Dolpheus would be doing everything he could think of to save me, but there might not be anything he could do.
If I was to get out of here, it was up to me.
I couldn’t die this way. If I had to die today, then let it be an honorable death worthy of a good man who devoted his life to fighting for good causes, I prayed (or something like praying as praying had never been my thing.) I wasn’t certain that I was a good man, but there was a good chance that I was. I wasn’t certain that I’d always fought for good causes either. Early on in my career as a soldier, I’d carried out the orders of men who claimed to fight for good causes. Afterwards, Dolpheus and I’d become mercenaries. We chose our causes now, and we didn’t always prioritize payment. We’d never chosen sand when it meant we had to do something terrible in exchange. We’d taken payment for causes that might have been dubious, but never outright wrong. Did that make us good men?