The Road to Hell - eARC

by David Weber

  “Darcel Kinlafia and I have much in common in this way. I do for Uromathia what I can to protect the people from those who would wish us ill. And sometimes, regrettably, always regrettably, there is a conflict of understanding in the need for these protective acts. And,” Chava’s accent was thinning as the interview went on, but Trebar suspected few viewers would notice, “Mister Darcel with his Voice report of the Arcanan brutality brings us warning of the danger. We must have this man in the Parliament. His warning must be repeated again and again until all of Sharona demands a leader who will defend our universes properly.”

  Trebar held back a blink and shifted focus to Drubeka who took the volley.

  “Your Excellency, we all saw you agree to the Unification Treaty establishing the Empire of Sharona for the fight against Arcana. Are you saying Emperor Zindel can’t defend our universes?”

  “He tries.” Chava shook his head as if in concern for a small child. “But we can see what it costs the Caliraths. His own firstborn dead already? And this after losing how many universes to the Arcanan horde? I say only that Sharona may not be able to afford the Calirath style of protection. Must we lose that many more universes for every one of the Grand Princesses? I would not see Sharona so splintered or let my friend and fellow emperor, Zindel, suffer so much.”

  Chava stood and perforce, Drubeka came to her feet as well even though this was far from the note on which she would have chosen to end the interview.

  “My friends at the SUNN,” his accent returned, “I must say goodbye and return to my work.” He gestured at the audience chamber where the court page had brought in a young woman with three sobbing children. Trebar turned his head back to the Emperor and correspondent quickly, not wanting to linger on the staged setup.

  Drubeka made her bow, and the very smug court page saw them out.

  * * *

  An old friend at SUNN contacted a politician’s wife with news of the Uromathian Emperor’s words, and Alazon Yanamar’s eyes widened in shock, and then closed in disgust.

  “A problem?” Crown Princess Andrin whispered in her ear. “We could cut back on the wedding flowers a bit, if you really hate them.”

  “Just a negative Voicecast piece, Your Highness” Alazon explained and tried to narrow her focus back to just this room of the Grand Palace. Ulantha Jastyr would be more than able to relay the newest set of aspersions being cast by Emperor Chava. Today Alazon was supposed to pretend to like wedding planning.

  Lilies—enormous lilies, and piles of other flowers she couldn’t begin to identify—bedecked a massive display the very proud florist had rolled into the center of the Tajvana main ballroom.

  “Pretty! So pretty!” Nine-year-old Grand Princess Anbessa squealed in delight. The girl danced a circle around the thing pointing out this and that flower from places Darcel Kinlafia had worked survey missions.

  Crown Princess Andrin patted Alazon on the shoulder. “They aren’t actually from the border universes.” She whispered. “Don’t tell Anbessa.”

  “But we got all the right ones, yes? Picked from the geo-match locations here in Sharona.” A young florist’s assistant hovered, clearly concerned about a possible failure of diligence in meeting the latest elaborate wedding request.

  Andrin reassured the young man, and he calmed immediately. The Crown Princess’s falcon Finena nuzzled her beak into her feathers for a nap, expressing about the same level of interest as Alazon herself felt.

  Still, there were roses in the mix, and Darcel had given her a massed bouquet of them the day after the election results came in. He didn’t have to do that. They were psionicly-paired lifemates. She knew exactly what he felt and how much he cared for her…but he still sent flowers out of the blue, just to see if they might make her happy.

  Anbessa completed another turn around the flowers and twirled around Alazon.

  “Mistress Yanamar, you do like them right? Can we keep them in the wedding?” She looked uncertainly back and forth between Alazon and the florist. Empress Varena, Marithe Kinlafia, and Anbessa’s other sister Razial stood a little way off, surrounded by a pile of silks, making some kind of plan for table linens—too preoccupied to make another wedding decision on Alazon’s behalf this time.

  Alazon laughed and pulled Anbessa in for a hug.

  “I’m going to let your mom plan my wedding however she wants it,” she whispered to the youngest grand princess, letting her in on the secret.

  “Oh.” Anbessa whispered back. “It is going to be really big. Lots and lots of flowers,” the girl cautioned, wide-eyed.

  Alazon nodded. The grand princess was more right than she knew. Empress Verona had been robbed of the opportunity to make a grand spectacle of Andrin and Howan Fai’s wedding, so she’d redirected all that energy towards this one, throwing all the wedding planning zeal she hadn’t been able to spend on her daughter’s state wedding into the reception she and Zindel were throwing for Alazon Yanamar and Darcel Kinlafia.

  She and Darcel got to keep the service itself simple and traditional, with full respect for the ceremony before the Holy Double Triad. And in exchange for this one hard line, the grand princesses and the empress (especially the empress) had an entirely free hand in the reception festivities.

  Thank the Triad they were also paying for the reception, or Alazon imagined she’d be indenturing her great-grandchildren to cover the price of the meticulously planned party. The newlywed Crown Princess Andrin gamely stayed at Alazon’s side during these wedding planning sessions, offering few suggestions of her own. But, Alazon noted with some suspicion, the crown princess delighted in encouraging her younger sisters in their greater flights of fancy. She was beginning to suspect that Crown Princess Andrin had received exactly the kind of simple wedding she’d always wanted, and that she was delighting in redirecting all the hoopla onto another couple.

  If Darcel’s mother, Marithe, hadn’t turned out to have a surprising appreciation for over-the-top festivities, Alazon would have put her foot down on a lot more than the ceremony. But since her future mother-in-law was also enjoying participating in the spectacle, Alazon left them to it.

  Andrin winked and covered her exit, and at least being a Voice made it easy to arrange to sneak off with Darcel. She’d have to stop in again before dinner to agree with everything the four women had decided on, but in the meantime she got to spend a lovely afternoon walking with her fiancé: the Honorable Mister Kinlafia, Member of Parliament in the House of Talents.

  She rather liked the ring of that. Perhaps she could attempt to introduce herself as MP Kinlafia’s wife later and see if any of the other newly elected delegates were politically naive enough to accept that summation of her identity at face value.

  She suggested as much to Darcel. He first laughed and then actually thought it through and agreed. Some politicians were elected because politics was simply what their families did and the voters were used to choosing that name, and most members of the new House of Talents were from long established political families. This test might be a way of finding out which of them had taken their seats with intent to actually do something. Anyone who intended to show up for debates and make their own choices about votes would know Alazon Yanamar had been the Emperor’s Privy Voice.

  And she would be again, very soon. She’d actually tried to convince Emperor Zindel to retain Ulantha in the position, and he’d admitted she was doing very well. Unfortunately, she lacked both Alazon’s experience and the strength of her Talent. Ulantha was a very good, very strong Voice, but she wasn’t a Projective Voice. Alazon was, and there were times when that could be a critically important ability for Privy Council meetings. On the other hand, Alazon had been thinking about her protégé’s future, and it seemed more and more likely to her that Ulantha would make the perfect Personal Voice for Andrin, which would also guarantee the younger Voice’s career.

  In the meantime, it amused Alazon immensely that some people thought she’d become a quiet politician’s wife.


  The security concerns for the wedding nagged her a bit. Crown Princess Andrin and Prince Consort Howan Fai had discussed sitting in the balcony with most of the Calirath family to watch the ceremony, and she felt almost physically queasy at the thought of putting so many eggs into one basket. On the other hand, Telfor chan Garatz, the Chief of Imperial Security, had everything in his capable hands. Alazon had to trust him to outwit any threats.

  Empress Varena was hosting the after party back at the palace. Surely the house guards would be in attendance in some form, but that particular chapel had been expressly nixed in favor of the Conclave floor for the Andrin-Howan Fai wedding because it lacked sufficient defenses. Alazon didn’t think it had been reinforced in the meantime, and while Howan Fai’s marriage to Andrin might have sealed the unification of Sharona, it hadn’t brought peace to the tempestuous Ternathian relationship with the Uromathian Empire.

  She hoped the Imperial Guard had a plan to see to the Imperial Family’s safety.

  * * *

  The interview ran as the lead story in every SUNN market that evening with bits and pieces shared out for further discussion in the talk shows the next morning. And Privy Voice Ulantha Jastyr did indeed discuss it with the emperor. Meanwhile the SUNN correspondent team took the first train back to Tajvana.

  Noriellena Drubeka’s promotion had come through, but not for Features Correspondent. Instead she was offered Lead Uromathian Political Correspondent…along with a warning from corporate that an appearance of favoritism towards the emperor could result in firing.

  Trebar sometimes wondered if corporate paid any attention to the news the company collected. If SUNN wanted a permanent political correspondent in Uromathia, they’d have to accept the appearance of bias in Chava’s favor.

  He also checked SUNN’s staff directory. SUNN had no other permanent Uromathian political correspondents, but “lead” came with a significant pay bump, and as her assigned Voice, he’d get a raise too.

  Drubeka suggested they think of it as a hazardous duty bonus and work as many features as possible from the seat of Parliament in Tajvana.

  Trebar heartily agreed.

  Now Drubeka grabbed her diner-train glass and toasted her reporting teammate.

  “To surviving the election season!” She lifted the glass and gulped down half of it.

  Trebar tilted his own and sipped while his partner gasped at the kick.

  The harsh Uromathian liquor from the bartender hadn’t been miraculously improved by the dining car’s price markup. After a few gasping coughs, Drubeka tossed back the rest of the glass with a grimace.

  “I don’t understand how you can sip this stuff,” she said.

  Trebar chuckled and added his own toast. “And here’s to getting out alive.”

  “Hey now, all that insinuation made for good copy, but—” She waved it away.

  Miles away from Uromathia’s capital city and on a fast train to their new office in Tajvana, she indicated with a wiggle of her fingers why SUNN supervisors always paired her with paranoid, or at least highly cautious, Voices. Noriellena Drubeka would never quite be brave—not with the cold blooded courage which truly recognized danger and accepted it. Hers was the sort of personality which protected itself by denying threats, not grappling with them. In the moment, she’d know there was danger and do the work anyway, but in the in between times, she never really acknowledged that that danger had existed. Trebar knew that perfectly well, and now he waited for the inevitable justification.

  “You know what I think,” she said. “This battle of the two emperors is all showmanship. Uromathia clearly accepted the Treaty of Unification, and the drama with the Crown Princess’s wedding has all blown over. Yes, I agree with the VBS commentators that the wedding clothes left something to be desired. But really? Complaints about clothing hardly amount to a true attack on the Winged Crown, and we do have this multiversal war with Arcana going on.”

  She caught an attendant’s eye and signaled for another round before continuing.

  “I mean, surely all these people will put aside their local issues for the war. When all’s said, we’ve got to make sure we still have a Sharona—we’ll need something to fight over amongst ourselves after we smash the barbarians back into fairy dust! Speaking of which, did you see that new shooting gallery promo stunt?”

  Trebar shook his head, giving her all the encouragement she needed to keep going. Running commentary was one of the things occasionally required when waiting for something truly newsworthy to occur. Thus some commentators needed to practice near monologues on random public interest topics just to fill the time. Drubeka didn’t need any more practice, but Trebar let her talk anyway.

  “What’s the shooting gallery thing?”

  “Well the reports are that Arcanans look pretty much like us, so they haven’t been able to come up with any really interesting new targets to sell. But some of the Voice reports say the Arcanans’ magic comes from some kind of crystals, so Tajvana’s shooting galleries have taken to making sugar crystal targets. The first one called it Metal vs. Magic, but the competitor’s branding of Crack the Crystal seems to sell a bit better. I gotta say, I like the idea. Triad forbid the Arcanans ever break as far back as Sharona, but at least if they do, all the shop keepers will know what to shoot at!”

  The chances that a crystal powering anything truly deadly would be marked off with concentric circles and held fixed at twenty paces struck Trebar as unlikely, but he grunted acknowledgement.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  February 14

  “…and the last of the steam drays should be swayed aboard by midday, along with their mud tracks, Sir.” Battalion-Captain Rechair chan Ersam flipped his notepad closed with something between a grimace and a smile. “After that, gods only know what else will go wrong, but I don’t think it’s going to be my people’s fault when it does. Of course, I’ve been wrong before.”

  “No! Really?!” Brigade-Captain Desval chan Bykahlar looked back at his silver-haired Delkrathian quartermaster in mock disbelief.

  “Really, Sir,” chan Ersam replied solemnly. “Why, I remember the last time clearly. Three years ago, it was, I think, during those maneuvers at Fort Erthain.”

  “Actually,” Regiment-Captain chan Therahk said dryly, “I believe there may have been at least a time or two since then.”

  “I’d hate to disagree with a senior officer,” chan Ersam told 3rd Infantry Brigade’s executive officer,” but I distinctly remember that it was three years ago.”

  “Are you sure you don’t mean three weeks ago?” Battalion-Captain Fernis chan Klaisahn, 3rd Brigade’s chief of staff sounded a bit more sour than the XO. Chan Klaisahn was a native Ternathian, six and a half feet tall and immensely strong, with huge hands, who’d won more than a few beers by straightening horseshoes without benefit of an anvil. Now he cocked his head at chan Ersam. “Something about Regiment-Captain chan Ferdain’s tents, I believe it was.”

  “That was entirely TTE’s fault,” chan Ersam asserted. “My people had all the right paperwork. It wasn’t our fault TTE put them on the wrong train.”

  That won a chuckle from the officers seated around the utilitarian desk. That desk sat in in the quayside office which had been made available to chan Bykahlar while the men of his brigade—and the mountain of food, equipment, and ammunition accompanying them—filed aboard the transports which would carry them across the Vandor to what ought to have been New Ternath. And while that chuckle was entirely genuine, it had a sour edge which had quite a lot to do with that logistical mountain, because the truth was that chan Ersam had a point.

  The battalion-captain was a bit long in the tooth for his current rank (at fifty, he was only three years younger than chan Bykahlar and three years older than the XO), but that was entirely due to the six years he’d spent in forced medical retirement after losing his left leg below the knee in a training accident. It had taken him that long to browbeat the Personnel Board into letting him and his peg ba
ck into uniform. The sheer determination that accomplishment had required—coupled with his undoubted capability and the closeness of their ages—was one reason he got along so well with chan Bykahlar, and during his career, he’d probably seen just about every mistake a quartermaster could make. No doubt the Quartermaster’s Corps was thoroughly capable of inventing new ones, but that hadn’t happened in the case of the tentage for Hahlstyr chan Ferdain’s 312th Infantry Regiment. It wasn’t really the Trans-Temporal Express train masters’ fault, either, chan Bykahlar supposed. They were shoving things into every nook and cranny aboard the torrent of trains pouring down the chain of universes from Sharona to Traisum, and it was inevitable that at least some of those things would end up misplaced. In its way, that was stupid—military logistics depended on things arriving where (and when) they were expected; simply getting them there early if no one knew they were coming was pretty useless—but he certainly understood why it was happening.

  What bothered him, truth to tell, was less that the tents had arrived when they did—they had been early, not late—than the reason the space they’d been pushed into had been available. According to the official lading transmitted down the Voice chain, that train ought to have been full of Uromathian infantry, at least as far Frayika. In chan Bykahlar’s opinion, the fact that it hadn’t been didn’t bode well.

  “If pressed, I will concede—unwillingly, but concede—that I can’t really blame you for that one, Rechair,” he said after a moment. “Which doesn’t mean I won’t have your guts for gaiters if we have any major screwups on the move to the front.”

  “In all seriousness, Sir, I don’t expect any.” Chan Ersam’s tone and expression were much more serious than they had been and he rested his palm on the closed notepad. “The truth is that all of the reports coming back from Shosara sound like this is actually going to work. Assuming TTE’s people are their usual efficient selves, we ought to be detraining in about five weeks in Resym.” He shook his head. “When I first heard about this brainstorm of the Division-Captain’s, I thought he was crazy. I was much too respectful to say so, of course, but any experienced quartermaster could’ve told him the whole idea was insane. Push an entire corps down a seventeen thousand-mile corridor through six different universes in only four months? With an ocean crossing thrown in for good measure, and with fifteen hundred miles of unimproved travel after we run out of railroad?” He shook his head again. “I suppose it’s a good thing Division-Captain chan Geraith isn’t a quartermaster. If he was, he’d never have tried it!”