There was another series of explosions, and the stage shook slightly. Fleare looked back. There was more dust and people were beginning to panic. There was a wet crunch near her feet, and she glanced down. The furry quadruped had picked up the stick-insect thing, still helplessly thrust through the now dead-looking six-legged warrior, and had bitten off the end of it. It looked up at Fleare and grinned round a half-chewed mouthful. She shuddered and ducked under the curtain.
Back of house in the Tanks very quickly become somewhere people weren’t meant to be, at least if they were people who paid to get in rather than people who were paid not to leave. The spaces were cramped and dirty, formed from the left-over lower-ranks underbelly of old war machines. The walls were oily and the ceilings were low and full of things to bang your head on.
Jez ducked under a fat bunch of cables, and grinned. ‘Remind you of anything?’
‘Yeah.’ Fleare ducked too, but not quite enough. ‘Shit.’ She rubbed her forehead. ‘Battlecraft I have known. Where are we going?’
There was another explosion somewhere behind them. Kelk was in the lead; he turned back. ‘Away from that, for a start,’ he said. ‘You checked any social lately?’
Fleare shook her head. ‘Should I?’
‘Might be worth it, as long as you’re quick.’
‘Okay, if you say so.’ She stopped by a sawn-off section of armour plate and blinked some sites. A couple of levels into the menus she stopped, and swore.
Her face was everywhere. Not her healthy, outdated, pre-Monastery face. Her present-day face. There were several images, all obviously from candid shots. The sequence started with her on the gangplank of the airship. The most recent image was of her looking doubtfully at a smoking goblet. Jez and Kelk were fuzzy shadows in the background.
An icon on the corner of one of the screens offered a live feed. She blinked into it, frowned, orientated herself, and froze. ‘What the fuck?’
It showed a wobbly image of the city wall at the entrance to the Tanks. The camera was at about twice human head height, and the street it looked down on was packed with what looked like at least three competing private armies and a lot of spectators. Some big, ugly-looking remotes had formed a defensive semicircle in front of the entrance, which looked as if it had already taken some major damage. As she watched, a squat machine lumbered forward to the edge of the defensive ring. There was a flash, and the image whited out. At the same time there was another muted boom and the floor jumped under her feet.
Fleare blinked out of the view and found Jezerey staring at her. ‘You okay, girl?’
She nodded. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. Wherever we’re going.’
They followed Kelk and Muz past storerooms, kitchens and piles of stage equipment, along corridors that became narrower and narrower. The air began to smell of machinery, and the frequent distant explosions competed with a near-subliminal rumble which became stronger as they went. Eventually they emerged into a larger space.
Fleare blinked. It was ridiculously familiar. ‘Kelk, is this what I think it is?’
‘Engineering space of a Ground Engine, Type 2. Glad you spotted it.’ He swept a hand round. ‘A classic. Several careless owners. A total we are about to increase by one.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Well, this is one of the units they keep powered up.’ He pointed down at a thick cable loom that snaked out of the space and back along the corridor. ‘Big old reactor. Loads of heave. They use it to power the club.’
‘So?’
Muz made a sighing noise. ‘What Kelk means is, it still goes.’
‘Really?’ Fleare chewed her lip for a moment. ‘But it’s joined to the rest of the place.’
‘Purely temporary. It’s only joined on at the airlock.’ Kelk grinned. ‘That’s why I suggested we meet here – in case we needed a quick way out of Catastrophe jurisdiction. Loads of heave, remember? More than enough.’
Great Stadium, Citadel, Taussich
ALAMECHE THREADED HIS way through the crowds that milled around the edge of the Great Stadium of the Citadel. It was firelight; the two smaller suns had just dipped below the horizon, and the big reddish sand-stained disc of the Overlord was low in the sky above the Basin Ranges, casting long shadows in between splashes of light the colour of hot clay. Despite the late hour the air was still hot; heat rose in a pernicious cloud from the sun-broiled stone floor of the Stadium and fried everyone, noble, payman and peasant alike.
The celebrations of the Elevation had been going on all day, and Alameche had made the start with minutes to spare after a wild dash across the planet. He felt fresh and alert – but that was entirely thanks to his Apothecary, who had left Alameche in no doubt that he disapproved. ‘The body will exact payment eventually, sire,’ he had murmured as he let the milky drops fall on to Alameche’s tongue.
Alameche swallowed the bitter stuff with a scowl. ‘The master will exact payment from the servant, if the servant doesn’t hold his counsel,’ he told the man, who had bowed gravely and retreated. It had been a mild rebuke. The Apothecary was one of the only two people Alameche really trusted. The other was Kestus. Both had been with him for decades.
It had been a long journey.
Alameche Ur-Hive had not been born with a noble name. He had been born with no name at all, the illegitimate child of a minor courtesan whose master had expelled her when she refused a termination. After living rough for a few months she had finally given birth on her own in a small room above a smoking parlour. The birth had been breech; she had delivered her child but bled to death shortly afterwards. It was almost two hours before the child’s cries roused the somnolent smokers in the room below.
The baby had been given to an order of Anti-Sophists who were known for taking in foundlings. They washed him, fed him and named him Alam, because that was the next name on the list. Under their careful formality and spartan discipline he grew first into a quiet, obedient infant, and later a reserved, rather scholastic boy. He had been quick to learn but slow to mix, a combination that suited his carers very well, and no one had been surprised when at the age of nine he had won a scholarship to one of the court schools.
The court schools were a hang-over from the days before the Patriarchy. Then, they had been meant to train the upper echelons of society in the diplomatic graces necessary to survive the social bear-pit they were to inhabit. But those echelons had fossilized while others, more energetic, grew rich and powerful. By the time Alam arrived, the court schools were reduced to giving the brighter children of the lower classes a liberal education that could have been set out a thousand years before. With luck, hard work and the right level of patronage, a diligent student might end up as a clerk to some minor civil servant. It was still better than most of the alternatives.
It wasn’t enough for Alam. He was bright enough to recognize the constraints being placed on his future; he studied, easily achieving the highest marks in the school, kept apart from his peers and watched for his chance.
It came when he was two days short of his thirteenth birthday, in the form of Helmer Ep-Hive. Ep-Hive happened to make a grudgingly dutiful official visit to the school, somewhere he regarded as a social and educational backwater. He also happened to be both highly observant, and a full colonel in the Security section of the state apparatus. He registered the presence of the dark-haired boy with the hooded eyes within ten minutes of arriving in the building, and went out of his way to engage the lad in conversation.
The brief talk confirmed Ep-Hive’s first impression. The boy was exceptional in intellect, ambition and also in a certain capacity for unpleasantness which might or might not prove useful. Ep-Hive tended to follow his hunches. He made some calls, and a few weeks later the Senior Tutor of the court school found himself saying goodbye to a young man who suddenly looked older, and very much in control of himself.
Alam would finish his education in one of the private colleges run by State Security. He thrived, l
earning technical and management skills with equal ease and concealing a quickening temper behind a studied reserve. He graduated a year early with the highest honours on record, and from then on his rise was inexorable. Ep-Hive was proved right on all counts ten years later when his former student sentenced him to execution by progressive disembowelment – ostensibly for corruption and incompetence, but actually for the far simpler and more serious offence of getting in Alam’s way. By that time, Ep-Hive had been one of the last people who could, and no one else felt like trying because the capacity for unpleasantness had blossomed into a controlled streak of imaginative cruelty. Ep-Hive’s demise had taken several days, during which his shuddering body had been suspended from the ceiling of one of the Security section’s main conference rooms, directly over a prettily decorated porcelain tub that held a loop of his own intestines and a swelling colony of ants. The room remained in use throughout, hosting some of the most sober, focused and above all short conferences the building had ever seen.
That sort of thing gets people noticed. It got Alam noticed by the newly elevated Final Patriarch, who told him he was the most unpleasant individual he had ever met, before making him Head of Security and awarding him the dead man’s title, his estate and his two wives.
The newly anointed Alameche Ur-Hive had never looked back.
He ran his eye over the crowd until he saw Kestus; the man was standing a few metres away, apparently on his own, which probably meant that he had plain-clothes staff all over the place. Alameche gave him a slight nod, and then turned away and headed for his own box. The Night Games would begin when the Overlord had dropped below the horizon. It was time to make himself comfortable, and besides, he had guests to think about.
His private box was well up the high-sunward wall of the Stadium, just at the point where the curve of the bowl became difficult to climb. Those in higher boxes often paid slaves to haul them up the slope in woven baskets, but Alameche thought that was a stupid affectation. He paused before crossing the threshold, gave Kestus another glance – the man had kept station with him – and then crested the stone lip and strolled into the interior.
Inside, the box was cool and dark. Alameche faced away from the entrance for a few seconds, partly to check that the refreshments he had ordered were in place and partly to allow his eyes to adapt. Then he turned round quickly to stare back the way he had come, over the stunning vista of the Great Stadium.
Alameche did not generally use superlatives, but stunning was the only word. He must have allowed himself this private little game scores of times but the impact of the sight in his sensitized eyes never lessened. First, of course, there was the sheer scale. The Stadium was a hyperbolic bowl five hundred metres deep and three times that in diameter. It was carved out of one side of the Great Basin, so that if Alameche turned to his left he could see straight out over the Citadel, while to his right the cliff walls of the Basin reared up nearly another kilometre. At this time of day their furrowed profile was thrown into dramatic relief by the low sunlight that lanced across them.
Then, if he raised his eyes, there was the mass of the Refractor: the enormous faceted crystalline thing that hung above the centre of the Stadium like a flattened, incredibly complicated jewel. The acoustics of the Stadium were perfect – a single whisper on the main stage far below could be heard anywhere – but vision needed help and the Refractor provided it, projecting three-dimensional images of whatever was going on to tens of thousands of focal points at the same time. Alameche didn’t begin to understand how it worked. The Apothecary had tried to explain it once but Alameche had lost interest after a few minutes and the old man had wisely given up.
The flap-shush of sandalled feet on stone roused him. He lowered his eyes and saw Fiselle walking up the steep slope towards the entrance of the box. Alameche raised an eyebrow. ‘Alone?’
The thin man smiled. ‘For the moment. Garamende follows, together with an entourage, but on such slopes as these his girth argues against him.’
‘Quite.’ Alameche gestured to the table behind him. ‘Well, we are thoroughly provisioned. His girth is not at risk from me.’
Fiselle looked at the table and raised an eyebrow. ‘His might not be. Mine, though?’
Alameche laughed. ‘You haven’t got a girth. You only have a height.’
‘True.’ Fiselle looked down at his body. ‘I seem destined to exist in two dimensions. But don’t worry.’ He pointed downhill. ‘I think the third one approaches, and it has brought some friends.’ An s-shaped chain of bobbing lights was working its way up the slope, dividing the crowd as it came. Alameche followed the gesture and then grinned to himself. It was not so much an entourage as a procession. Garamende had obviously decided to arrive in style.
At the front of the queue were four slim, androgynous youths who looked like perfectly identical quads. At first their naked bodies seemed dark, but then Alameche realized that they were pale-skinned but covered with intricate full-body tattoos. He squinted. The tattoos were definitely erotic.
A much heavier body followed the slim youths. Garamende was stamping up the slope, followed by several more people. He was carrying a torch in one hand and a flask in the other. Alameche raised an eyebrow. ‘Going very well,’ he said.
Fiselle snorted. ‘The last flare of a dying sun.’ He stood aside as the front of the party came to the threshold of the box. The tattooed quads split into pairs and stood to attention to either side while Garamende strode through them as if they were an honour guard, throwing his torch into the air as he did so. Fiselle took a step forward and caught it before it landed on the back of Garamende’s procession.
The big man thumped Alameche on the shoulder. ‘God’s knob, man! You make a chap walk a long way uphill for a drink.’
Alameche nodded at the flask. ‘At least you brought one with you.’
‘Not one. Several.’ Garamende waggled the flask. ‘But only part of the way. I’m empty.’
‘Then feel free to refill.’ Alameche gestured to the tables behind him. ‘There’s plenty for all. Including your company.’
‘Company? Oh yes.’ Garamende waved at the people who had followed him. He raised his voice. ‘Everyone, this is My Lord Alameche Ur-Hive, grand something-or-other to the Patriarch. He’s a complete bastard and a good friend of mine. Introduce yourselves to him, will you?’
Alameche smiled and nodded at a succession of breathless people, seeing eyes that were anxious or calculating, and smelling breath that was generally corrupted with spirits. It seemed Garamende’s party had been under way for a while. When he had finished he turned to Garamende. ‘What about your four decorated young friends?’
‘Them? Oh yes.’ Garamende grinned, reached out a hand and slapped one of the youths sharply on the bottom. ‘My latest toys. Androgynes. Whatever you want, whenever you want it, and four times over. Good, eh?’
Fiselle frowned. ‘Bred or Doctored?’
‘Bred, of course. No sense in half measures. Besides, Doctored’s not the same. You can always see the join.’
‘I suppose so.’ Fiselle smiled. ‘But I didn’t realize your tastes were so – flexible.’
Garamende frowned and wagged a finger in Fiselle’s face. ‘I don’t believe in denying myself, man. And what’s a bit of cock between friends, eh?’ He turned in appeal to Alameche. ‘What do you say? Adjudicate, for fuck’s sake!’
‘I don’t think so.’ Alameche patted Garamende on the shoulder. ‘Besides, there’s no time. We’re about to begin.’
As he spoke the low light across the Stadium flared and vanished as the last rim of the Overlord dipped below the Basin Ranges. For a moment everything was dim and silent. Then there was a blaring fanfare, and a whoomph as thousands of braziers burst into flame. The orange light reached the Refractor, setting a fractured glow which seemed to spread out from the thing until Alameche felt he could almost touch it. Then it shimmered and coalesced in an image of the main stage.
Even Alameche drew in a
breath and he had known, if only intellectually, what was going to happen.
The stage was occupied by a three-dimensional image of the Cordern. The definition was superb, down to the scale of individual cities, rivers and groups of islands. The night sides of the planets sparkled with city lights, and the day sides were vivid with colour, and with landscape relief that seemed almost hyperreal. Only Silthx was less interesting, shown in soft greys at the far edge of the stage.
Despite the realism there was something wrong with the scene. It took a moment to work out that the day sides of all the planets faced in the same direction, as if they were all lit by the same sun, whereas in the real Cordern these five planets shared three suns and one disputed object that only qualified as a sun by some definitions. Once the brain had worked that out, the eye naturally travelled towards where the single anomalous sun should have been.
When it got there it found the Patriarch.
The scale of the illusion made him about a third the height of a planet. He was wearing a simple grey robe, the least ostentatious of his state wardrobe, and he was watching the planets of the Cordern with paternal good nature. After a few moments he turned towards the audience.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘We are here both to celebrate, and to look ahead. First, it is the anniversary of my elevation to the Patriarchy – a heavy honour, and believe me I struggle every day to live up to it. Tonight concludes our celebrations, and I am glad so many of you are here to share them with me.’
There was solid applause. Fiselle leaned towards Alameche. ‘Remind me, what was the penalty for not attending tonight?’
Alameche didn’t answer. The question had been rhetorical; there was no ‘official’ requirement to attend these events. The unofficial one, with its unspoken sanction, was quite unspeakable enough. He kept his eye on the stage.
The Patriarch held out his arm towards the planets. ‘Do you see these? Well, do you?’ The stadium roared. The Patriarch smiled as the cheers swept over him. Then he made a downwards motion with his hands and the noise quietened. ‘A generation ago, there were three. Two generations ago, there was just one. My friends, I believe there can be more. Many more!’ He swept his arm round and, as if following it, the images around him multiplied until the Patriarch seemed to be standing in the middle of a vast tract of space.
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