"I can do that," Clara said.
"Bell—you're going to find out everything that's going on that I don't see. I want you talking to anyone and everyone who'll talk to you, finding out any gossip or useful information you can. If the Mariks are planning some surprise, or have something up their sleeves, I want you to know about it long before they spring it on me. If you're half as charming as you think you are, this should be a good assignment for you."
"I'm twice as charming as I think I am," Bell corrected. "But I have a question."
Danai had a feeling she would regret this, but said, "Go ahead."
"How come I'm Bell?"
Danai blinked. "What?"
"How come I'm Bell? This is a nice dinner meeting, so you call Sandra, Sandra, and Clara, Clara. But you call me Bell. I don't think I've ever heard you say my first name."
"I think she used it as a curse once," Clara offered.
"I'm not going to count that. I want to know why you never call me Jacyn." He assumed a look of wounded dignity. "It's because I'm a man, isn't it? You Canopians— okay, I'm one too, but that's not the point—you're all the same. Judging us solely by our anatomy. Gazing at our shapely behinds as we walk by, but then not even deigning to treat us as people. We're mere cattle to be prodded by you, aren't we? But we're just a different gender, not a whole different species. Are we not human? If you prick us, do we not bleed?"
Sandra rolled her eyes. "Please."
"I just knew he'd work the word 'prick' into that monologue somewhere," Clara said.
"Are you done?" Danai asked.
Bell took a deep breath, raised one hand with his index finger as if he was about to launch on an extended oratory, then he abruptly exhaled and lowered his hand. "Yes," he said.
"A discourse that touching deserves an answer. You are Bell because that's what I feel like calling you. When I feel like calling you Jacyn, that's what I'll do. And since I'm your superior, there's not much you can do about it. Good enough?"
Bell nodded in mock respect. "Of course," he said. "Just as long as your reasons aren't, you know, totally arbitrary."
Danai figured she must really be in a good mood, as she was suppressing a smile instead of preparing a tongue-lashing (or another punch).
"All right," she said. "Do you think you can do what I asked you to?"
"Be charming?" Bell said. "Of course. I can't not be charming."
"Yes, you can," all three women said at once.
Bell's grin slowly spread across his face. "You make a strong case," he admitted.
"There's one more thing," Danai said. "When I met with the chancellor, he mentioned an oral agreement he had with Jessica Marik, but he didn't give me any of the details. While you're talking to people, try to find out what that agreement entailed. It would help me to know. I've got a holovid from the chancellor I'm supposed to watch before we arrive on Oriente, but there's no guarantee he'll give me the information I want. I may have to rely on you."
"In that case, God help you," Sandra muttered.
"God will help her or I will," Bell said. "Either way, the quality of the assistance is about the same."
The rest of the meal passed in pleasant conversation and light banter. It was only a few hours, but the failures of the past and the pressure of the near future faded for a time, and Danai relaxed. The ever-present icicle in her chest didn't go away, but there was at least a small thaw.
18
Oriente
Oriente Protectorate
21 March 3136
The time had finally come. She had put it off for as long as she could, but after nearly two months on the JumpShip, her cabin had run out of distractions. She'd written letters to everyone she could think of (including Nikol, hoping they could meet on Oriente outside of the normal diplomatic encounters), watched every holovid the ship carried that seemed vaguely interesting, and planned fifteen different ways to take Aldebaran in case she ever had the chance to go there again. She didn't have much left to do except watch Daoshen's message.
She'd already waited until about the last minute. Orbital insertion would be starting soon, and she'd be making her grand, official entrance into the Protectorate in a day or two. Just in case Daoshen said anything really important in the message, she'd need time to digest it.
She took a deep breath and cued up the holovid. Daoshen's spectral image appeared in front of her, his eyes dark hollows under his brow. Danai paused the vid briefly and slapped her brother's image around. As her hands did nothing but pass through him, she found it unsatisfying. She sighed and restarted the playback.
Daoshen said five words, and she paused it again. She looked quizzically at the machine. Something must be broken. Something in the audio output. She didn't just hear what she thought she had heard. There must be a glitch.
She restarted the playback, her hands shaking because her heart had started pounding.
She made it through twenty-two words the next time. Then her hand fell, heavy as Yen-lo-wang's ax, and stopped the playback. Her vision filled with multicolored stars, and she felt the JumpShip lurching beneath her. The only thing she could hear was a pounding throb in her ears.
Something's wrong with this, she thought. Something's wrong something's wrong.
She restarted it again, somehow managing to see the controls through a pinpoint of clear vision in the middle of the field of stars. She listened carefully to make sure she hadn't misheard anything.
She hadn't. It said the same thing as the first time she had played it, the same thing as the second time. It wasn't going to change.
She might have screamed. Her throat felt sore, as if wordless torrents had repeatedly ripped through it. She thought she could hear the echo of her own shriek in her ears, but she couldn't be sure over the sound of the blood. But there, there was Daoshen's voice. She tried to scream, intentionally this time, not a reflex, but only a hoarse rasp came out. Just enough to keep her from hearing Daoshen. She rolled on the floor—somehow, she'd missed her chair entirely—and yelled her near- silent yell as she tried to keep from ever hearing anything Daoshen said to her again.
Eventually, the playback stopped, and so did Danai's screams. She lay on the floor, panting. Her vision was returning. Everything—the bunk, the plastic table, the narrow desk—was right where it had been. But they shouldn't be there. The whole world, the whole universe, had just changed. Nothing should be the same. Nothing could, be the same. But the furniture had remained the same.
She had no idea how long she stayed on the floor, gasping for air. She wasn't sure what day it was anymore, and she didn't really care. She finally pulled herself into a sitting position and looked at the holovid player. It sat there, innocuous, ignorant of the sentence it had just pronounced upon her head.
Then a curious thing happened. Danai's arm reached out. She didn't tell it to. It just moved on its own toward the player. Danai watched it curiously as it stretched, and when it reached full extension it pulled the rest of her body forward, like a small dog pulling a weary owner.
It was a strange sensation to be dragged, almost levitated, by one's own arm. The oddness of it all helped her ignore what her arm was doing, which was reaching for the holovid player. Her index finger extended and once again pushed the playback button.
Its mission accomplished, Danai's arm went limp. She collapsed, leaning against the desk that held the player. She heard Daoshen's voice again, and she was helpless to stop it. She felt too tired to move, too tired to scream, too tired to do anything but let Daoshen's whisper bore a hole into her head.
"Danai, product of my loins, it is time for you to embrace my personal heritage and accept the glory of my blood that flows in your veins in service to House Liao.
"I have had reasons for concealing my parentage of you in the past, just as I have reasons for revealing it to you now. Neither are your concern. All that must worry you now is the task in front of you, the goal I have set for you to further the glory of the Confederation. That goal
should be of increased importance to you now, as you realize you are under the direction and guidance of, not your brother, but your father.
"I am well aware of your belief that I do not care for you as a person. You must now know that to be untrue.
You are my daughter. You are the heir of my glory. How could I not care for you?
"It is true that I have asked you to make many sacrifices, but that is the nature of sovereignty—to sacrifice for the state, which is greater than you. You—each of us—is only important as we strive to build the Confederation. We all make sacrifices toward that greater good.
"Of particular note at this time is the sacrifice being made by your sister llsa in the Duchy of Andurien. She has proposed marriage to Duke Ari Humphreys, a marriage that would bring the Magistracy of Canopus and the Duchy of Andurien into an alliance of equals—with both of them, naturally, acting in the service of the Capellan Confederation, whether they are aware of that fact or not.
"I assume I need not explain to you the worth of the alliance with Andurien. I give this to you as a wedge to use in your negotiations, though a wedge I hope you will use with prudence and foresight. Captain-General Marik must know that she is being increasingly surrounded by those loyal to the Confederation, and that her lofty goal of reuniting the Free Worlds League under the false Marik name is nothing more than an empty dream. Used properly, the pending nuptials of llsa and Duke Humphreys should prove quite persuasive in prompting the Protectorate to treat the Confederation with more deference than they have shown in recent months.
"You have my blood flowing in you. You have power. You will succeed. You will return to Sian in glory, because you have furthered the glory of the Confederation. And when you return, I will welcome you, my daughter."
The word "daughter" in Daoshen's voice was a sharp dagger in Danai's heart. Each time she heard it, she winced. But on this listen, she at least retained enough presence of mind to notice a few interesting facts.
The first, and to her mind the saddest, fact was that in all likelihood Daoshen was telling the truth. He was manipulative, he had little respect for individuals and in many ways he was unscrupulous, but he still valued honesty in his speech. And this was especially true when he spoke of something as sacred as the blood of Liao. To lie about such a thing would be a great dishonor to Daoshen and his ancestors. Or at least, to tell someone they were of his direct lineage when they weren't would be a grave dishonor—he did not have a similar compunction against telling someone who was of his lineage that she was his sister for more than a quarter of a century. In any case, she was resigned to the fact that her father was not the dead, distant Sun-Tzu whom she never really knew, but rather the quite living Daoshen whom she knew too well.
The second interesting fact was that while Daoshen was prepared to let her know the truth of her parentage, he did not seem quite ready to make the matter public. She noted his last sentence—"And when you return, I will welcome you, my daughter," not "And when you return, I will welcome you as my daughter." Apparently this was to be their little secret for a time.
And then there was the third fact, which was actually an absence of a fact. Daoshen had come forward as her father—who, then, was her mother?
She stayed on the floor a long time, contemplating that question and considering her new place in the universe. She hoped she would recover the will to move before she landed on Oriente.
Jojoken, Andurien
Duchy of Andurien
Just because the inevitable sometimes takes a little longer than you might have expected doesn't mean it was not, in fact, inevitable.
Duke Humphreys had consulted with his advisers. He'd made a military evaluation of the entire Duchy, together with an evaluation of the Magistracy of Cano- pus. He had taken Ilsa to dinner once, and once accompanied her to a visiting Canopian pleasure circus, where he had a grand time losing vast sums of money at the baccarat table. He had considered, pondered, then considered some more. And in the end, after three and a half months, he had done what Ilsa had known he would do the moment he looked at the proposal she passed to him across the desk. He had said yes.
Ilsa had already sent a courier to take a holomessage to Daoshen. She would be following it, but she did not want to engage in the JumpShip-hopping that most couriers relied on for speed—she preferred a more leisurely journey. After all, she needed time to prepare for her upcoming nuptials.
She wished she could be there when Daoshen received the news. In truth, she wished she could tell him herself. He would be pleased and . . . well, mostly pleased. Still, it would be worth seeing his face when the news came. He was expecting it, he was even hoping for it, but his reaction might be strong enough to actually provoke a flicker of emotion on his face.
He would recover his mask quickly, of course. He was a god, after all.
Ilsa smiled. She had watched the evolution of Daoshen's divinity with curiosity and amusement over the years. He had never lacked for self-confidence, even from his youngest days, but believing in oneself is not at all the same as believing oneself to be divine. She could pinpoint no single moment where he made the transition from human to god; it had been a slow growth, a boy growing into an oversized coat of armor. When he first became chancellor, it seemed he insisted he was God Incarnate because he needed others to believe in him so they would trust his word. Then, as his military adventures grew bolder and he took more risks, his need to believe in his own divinity increased, as a way to justify the blood he ordered shed and to boost his confidence after his failures. Finally, there came a time when he no longer pushed people, including himself, to believe in his divinity. He simply assumed it. He carried himself like a god, and he believed all those with eyes to see would recognize his divinity.
If he had been anyone but the Capellan chancellor, he likely would have been institutionalized long ago—
Ilsa was under no illusions about that. But he was chancellor, he was expected to act godlike, and so in context his actions and demeanor were perfectly appropriate. And the fact that the Confederation grew stronger under his direction could not be ignored. Whatever the boundaries of his sanity, he was a shrewd diplomat and a cunning general, and he served the Confederation with the entirety of his being.
As she had just shown here on Andurien, she did the same. Their methods and behavior might be different, but their dedication was equal. Daoshen would see that now, possibly in a way he had never seen it before and, oddly enough, he might feel a small pang of regret at that fact. Though that pang would be buried so deep in his godly heart that no mortal would ever notice it. .
19
Amur, Oriente
Oriente Protectorate
23 March 3136
Spring rains had washed the air over Amur clean, and the sky sparkled. The sun shone warm, reflecting off the helmets of troops patrolling the DropPort.
Danai had spent the entire morning organizing her personnel. She was going to make as impressive an entrance as possible. If she had learned anything from accompanying Daoshen on diplomatic tours, that was it.
Daoshen. Her brother. Her father. Daoshen was her father.
Her legs trembled and her hands shook. This was exactly why she was busying herself with organizing her entourage—so she wouldn't think about the chancellor (she was trying to avoid even thinking his name).
She had her entire first company, including Bell, in dress uniforms. The chancellor had sent her with a fine group of aides and attaches, and Ben Wong, the Capellan ambassador to the Protectorate, had come aboard with some members of his staff. She had them all put on the finest clothes they had with them, splashing their outfits with as much Liao green as possible.
Still, with all that she only hat bout twenty people. Not impressive enough. So she spoKe with the DropShip captain, and enlisted him and half a dozen crew members to walk with her into the Amur Palace. Then she had the ambassador send for a few more guards from the embassy, putting her procession at thirty. She would arrive at
the head of four columns with seven people apiece (with her at the head and one extra, maybe Bell, bringing up the rear). That would do.
Now the only trick was the timing. She clearly couldn't march toward the palace without being invited, as it seemed like a bad idea to cause a minor incident as her first official action. But she wanted to be on the move promptly once the captain-general sent for her, so she couldn't let her entourage go back to their quarters and lounge.
She thought of what the chancellor would do—he would organize his people near the DropShip exit and have them stand in place, ready to march out when the word came through. They'd all be uncomfortable and grumpy, but their fear of the chancellor (or, from his point of view, their respect) would keep them disciplined anyway, and they would march out promptly.
She rejected that idea. Instead, she invited all thirty members of her entourage to a large breakfast. She exhausted the DropShip's stores having the crew prepare a vast dim sum feast, wheeling bowls of steaming dumplings and other delicacies between the tables in the mess. She only put one condition on her people—they had to wear protective bibs to keep their dress clothes spotless.
Beyond that, they were free to enjoy a meal that, if necessary, would continue for hours.
It wasn't necessary. The carts made a few circuits around the room, and then the announcement came. The captain- general was ready to receive the Capellan delegation.
Danai stood immediately. She was gratified to see her entire entourage stand with her and promptly follow her out the door. She might have been a good minute slower than what the chancellor would have accomplished in the same circumstances, but she found that gap acceptable.
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