Then the import of what he’d revealed hit me. “Gone?” I asked, frowning.
Both Justinian and Jerome nodded. “Just as you described of the priests on Sarmata,” Justinian said. “All of them vanished, as if they’d never been there—and no signs of how or why or where they’ve gone.”
“Your allies flee at every turn, sister,” Jerome jabbed.
Aurelia reddened. She said nothing, instead merely turning away and reaching for her glass of wine. She lifted it, glanced quickly at Alexius, frowned, and turned her full attention to her drink.
“Let us not be unkind to our sister,” Alexius said then, clasping his twin on the shoulder. “A faithful friend of the Church she might be, but she cannot be held responsible for their actions—however bizarre and inexplicable they might be.”
This seemed to mollify Jerome somewhat, and after a couple of seconds he allowed the tiniest of nods.
“I did not call us here to bicker like children,” Justinian declared. He was clearly annoyed, and I suspected it was not just at the behavior of his brothers and sister but also at his own inability to dominate the room the way my father once had.
“Proceed with your business, then, brother,” Alexius said, “so that we might all return to our pressing concerns.”
Justinian shot him a look but let the insubordination pass. He moved away from the rest of us a short distance and then turned back to face us, regarding us with a stern expression and waiting for us to settle down, like some professor before an unruly classroom.
“In addition to coordinating our actions,” he said at last, “I wanted to be certain each of us is primarily engaged in activities that most benefit the family, and our world.”
No one commented. We were all genuinely curious as to where he was going with this.
“I must prepare our forces for our counterattack,” he said. “Jerome, you and Alexius will continue to lead our defenses in the meantime.”
The twins both nodded their agreement or their acceptance—not necessarily the same thing, of course. I was curious which it was.
“Aurelia, the Church seems to me a lost cause at this point.” He paused, possibly to field what we all felt would be an inevitable retort, but she said nothing. Somewhat surprised, he continued. “Therefore I believe your efforts would be best spent at the capital, working with the regent.” He paused again, pursing his lips. “Helping him to make the right decisions, with regard to this war...” He smiled. “...And this family.”
Aurelia closed her eyes and breathed for a few seconds, and we all awaited the explosion. Instead, she surprised us all for the second time in as many minutes. “I will do that thing,” she said, “and Stephanie can accompany me.”
I for one had almost forgotten my youngest aunt was even in the room. I glanced back at her as she was nodding.
“Fine,” said Justinian. Then he looked at me.
“I have a job,” I said quickly.
“I am giving you a new one.”
“I won’t have time to do both,” I said.
“You won’t do both. You’ll do the one I’m giving you.”
“No.”
Justinian froze, staring at me. “No?”
I was growing warm. “Dad gave me my mission. It was the last thing he did before he died.”
“But he did die.”
“But his orders stand,” I said, a bit angrily. “I’m sorry, Justinian—I respect you and recognize your right to lead us now, but Dad’s orders still trump yours.”
“Even from the grave?”
“Even so.”
Justinian seemed poised to argue—or something worse—when Aurelia turned to me and interjected, “Gaius, I don’t know what the point would be of investigating the Church now. As you’ve been told and have seen for yourself, the corindars and corinda have all vanished. To whom will you put your questions? Whom will you interrogate? And—given the current state of affairs—what difference would it all make in the long run?”
I started to point out that, at least to me, discovering why our own Church had murdered our top military leader on the eve of our planned attack on our enemies seemed a perfectly reasonable and timely objective—a question that desperately needed answering. Furthermore, I would have added that not all the corinda were gone—that I had brought two of them back with me from Sarmata and they were waiting in an adjoining room, in fact. Both of those points I opened my mouth to utter, but then something in the back of my mind intervened and kept me from saying any of it. Call it what you will; intuition, suspicion, or just knowing more about my aunts and uncles than perhaps even they were aware I knew... But I was overcome with a sudden and unshakeable sense that I should keep the two ladies’ existence a secret for at least a little longer. And so I instead simply said, “We don’t know what I will find. Why don’t you leave that to me to determine?”
“Hold on, now,” Jerome interrupted. He got out a few words about all of us needing to follow orders before his twin stepped forward and halted him with a gentle hand on the shoulder. Jerome trailed off and glanced back, puzzled.
Alexius smiled, first at him and then at the rest of us. “I agree with Gaius,” he said. “He should have the opportunity to finish what Constantine ordered him to begin.”
I watched the two of them, knowing from a lifetime around them the subtle signs I should look for. Sure enough, Alexius cast his eyes quickly at Justinian and then back at me, his brows knitted, as his twin looked on. Jerome blinked, seemed to understand, and nodded. “Yes—yes. I spoke hastily.” He half-bowed towards me. “My apologies, Gaius. Alexius is quite right—as are you.”
Any normal person would have missed it entirely. But we of our family were anything but “normal.” I got it, and got it very clearly. They were challenging Justinian’s absolute authority and also attempting to drive a wedge; to open a rift—or widen the one that already existed—between him and me. I took that to mean they were not thrilled with Justinian as supreme leader and would be looking for any occasion to undermine his authority and weaken his hold over the rest of us. Wonderful. With our family, the politics never cease, and never cease to nauseate me.
In this case, however, they worked in my favor, and so I wasn’t going to raise a fuss. I turned back to Justinian, waiting to hear what he would say.
He was not happy, obviously. He was frowning at the twins and reddening. Before he could issue any sort of response, however, dear Aunt Stephanie tossed in a grenade.
“May I ask why Justinian is our leader now?”
He turned sharply her way. “What?”
She hadn’t risen from her chair, and the marbled black and silver cat in her lap didn’t stir. She merely cocked her head to one side, her bobbed black hair falling that way, and said, “Gaius is the son of our late commander. Should leadership not devolve to him, rather than to you, brother?”
He simply stared back at her, astonished.
It always struck me as funny when Stephanie referred to Justinian that way—as “brother,” as though they were equals. Certainly it was technically true, given that everyone present—everyone except me, of course—had shared the same father. But Stephanie was less than half Justinian’s age—and a good seven years younger than me, even—her mother a much younger woman who had come along years after their father’s first wife had died.
Justinian sought to gather his thoughts, blindsided by this point as he had been. Stephanie merely gazed back at him, a faint and almost sweet smile playing about her blood-red lips.
“We are not a hereditary monarchy,” Jerome interjected. “Constantine was no king, and there is no crown or throne for Gaius to inherit. It doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work, then, brother dear?” Stephanie asked, the very picture of innocence.
“It works like this,” Justinian said over-loudly. “It works that I am now in charge. Unless, that is, Gaius wishes to challenge my command.” He looked directly at me.
“Not at all, un
cle,” I said, raising an open hand in gesture of submission to his authority. “You are clearly the man for the job. I have no ambitions along those lines whatsoever.”
Justinian regarded me for a couple of seconds, appeared satisfied, and nodded. He turned to Stephanie. “Will that do for now? he asked her.
My youngest aunt shrugged, her Mona Lisa smile still in place. “If Gaius is agreeable with the state of affairs, I am.”
I frowned slightly at her words. Where was this even coming from? Since when did little Stephanie take a part in the family’s maneuverings? And since when did she care about my position in the unofficial family hierarchy? Despite the fact that her argument had been intended to benefit me—or perhaps because of it—I was extremely puzzled.
“It’s a shame dear Octavia is missing out on this performance,” Aurelia stated then. “I’m certain she would have a pithy comment or two that would take each of us down a peg.”
“She’d make some idiotic remark that would insult at least half of us and only serve to drag this business out even longer than it already has been,” Alexius growled. He took a cigar from a box on a side desk, lit it, and strode back over to the big table. Then he jabbed at the holographic display with the burning end, like a pointer, as he spoke. “This still shows Verghasite fleets here and here. I thought we’d beaten both of them back.” He turned to Justinian. “Are we certain we have the most up-to-date intelligence on what the enemy is doing?”
“I believe so, yes,” Justinian replied defensively.
They started into a back-and-forth about the state of our military intelligence services and their appalling failure to anticipate the Verghasite attack. I tuned the whole thing out and was privately working out how I could extricate myself from this increasingly distasteful meeting when Stephanie demonstrated to all of us that she wasn’t yet out of grenades.
“I’ve had serious reservations about this entire plan ever since Constantine first brought it to our attention,” my youngest aunt said.
The room quieted again. My three uncles slowly turned and practically gaped at her.
“You have?” Alexius said—and he most emphatically placed the emphasis on the first word, not the second.
“You take issue with elements of our military strategy?” Justinian asked.
Stephanie made as if to utterly ignore their condescension. “Strategy? Hardly,” she said. “My issues are of a different nature. To wit: Why are we doing it at all?”
“Doing what?”
“Attacking the other worlds.”
Justinian blinked but said nothing. Alexius leaned in and stated, “They did attack us first.”
“That was happenstance—or something more,” she shot back. “Don’t treat me like a fool. We were planning to attack them first—all of them, if necessary. That’s common knowledge. The fact that the Verghasites got the jump on us doesn’t change that.”
The three men simply stared back at her, wide-eyed. For my part, sitting off to the side and watching, I merely wished I’d brought popcorn. It was fascinating to me; the job of needling my uncles had in the past fallen mainly to Aunt Octavia, but in her absence Stephanie apparently now wished to fill the role. She was doing so, all right—and topping anything Octavia had ever managed.
“What makes us—we of Majondra—any worthier, any more suited to do this—to rule the Seven Worlds,” she was asking, “than any of the others?”
“You cannot seriously be asking this,” Justinian said.
“Humor me.”
Justinian frowned. The twins looked to him, deferring. He shrugged.
“Very well. The reopening of the Gates, in Constantine’s opinion and in ours, posed the risk of plunging all seven planets into chaos. We had no way of knowing what sort of regimes had arisen on any of the other worlds. We, however, have kept the old empire alive, through the Regent Maxillus and his family, and through the actions of our own family, supporting his all these years.”
Stephanie nodded once, as if accepting this and encouraging him to go on.
“We of Majondra have the power, the stability, and the wherewithal to restore the old empire very quickly and with as little violence and bloodshed as necessary—something we don’t know about any of the others. We have the forces at our disposal to prosecute such a reunification war and bring it to a successful conclusion quickly, before events can spiral out of control and hurl all of humanity into chaos. To accomplish that goal, however, our late brother felt it necessary to strike quickly, before any warlords or other tyrants that might have seized control of the other worlds during the last six hundred years managed to attack us or one or more other of the Seven Worlds and spark a general conflagration.”
He looked up, meeting Stephanie’s eyes.
“Constantine understood this,” he said. “The rest of us do, as well. Do you?”
The marbled cat leapt from her lap with a loud and angry sound that might have been directed at Justinian.
“And a ‘successful conclusion,’” Stephanie said, “would be—what? You as the dictator of all the human race?”
“A successful conclusion would be for humanity to hold together and resist the darkness, resist anarchy and mass destruction,” Justinian snapped back. “We are in a unique position to see that this happens, and I will not stand aside and watch the Seven Worlds descend into darkness if I have the ability to prevent it.”
He smiled a grim smile, pointing to the holographic display over the table.
“And I do.”
“You hope,” she said, matching his smile. “Don’t you think the Verghasites are preparing another wave of attack, even now?”
Justinian’s eyes narrowed. He glanced over at the twins, then back to my aunt. “I’m certain they are. But we will defeat them.” He paused, then, “What is your alternative, sister?” He said that last word with a heavy dose of venom. “That we simply surrender? That we roll over and allow the Verghasites—or one of the other worlds—to conquer us instead?”
“I believe you are conflating offense with defense,” Stephanie observed. “The alternative to being conquered is not necessarily conquering everyone else. There are many shades in between.”
All three of my uncles started to reply angrily to that, but I’d had enough. I stood and raised my hands, interrupting all of them. “I think I will call it an evening, ladies and gentlemen,” I said. And before anyone could compose an entreaty for me to remain, I quickly exited the library.
How much longer would they remain in there, arguing and accusing and questioning one another—all to no real purpose that I could discern? All evening and into the night? There was no telling. But I was done with it.
Then I remembered my two guests, kept waiting all this time. I hurried over to the side room where I’d left them and, sure enough, they were still there. The younger one, called Halaini, was actually asleep in a large, overstuffed chair. The other—the sister superior, whose name yet eluded me—looked up from a book as I entered and offered me a not-particularly-welcoming look.
“I apologize for the delay,” I told her. “My family can be somewhat... long-winded.”
“Do they wish to speak to us now?” the corinda asked.
“Um... no,” I answered, smiling weakly. “In fact, they don’t even know you two exist. And I now believe we should endeavor to keep it that way for the present.”
The corinda’s frown deepened. “And why should that be?” she demanded.
“It is a fair question, my lady, and one that I cannot fairly answer at this time,” I replied. “Call it a hunch.”
“A hunch?” She appeared quite skeptical.
“I know my family,” I said by way of explanation, “and I believe we should leave it at that. Please—trust me, at least for now.”
Halaini was awake now and the sister superior quickly caught her up.
“So what would you have us do—wear disguises?” the sister superior asked.
“In fact, that would be a
good idea,” I said. “Fortunately, you are already provided in that manner.”
The two looked down at the borrowed clothes they wore as if seeing them for the first time. Meanwhile I sincerely hoped the servants had long since fed their old Church robes into the incinerator.
“I will conduct you to guest quarters near my suite,” I told them. “It would be advisable for you to try to remain out of sight, at least for now.”
“Are we your prisoners?” the older woman demanded, not quite angrily.
“Not at all,” I said. “But we have a mutual interest in getting to the bottom of the mystery we confront, and I don’t feel that interest will be well served if certain members of my family learn of your existence and of your presence here.”
“Which members?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Yet. But I aim to find out.”
“But otherwise we can leave if we choose?”
“You can,” I said, “and in fact I will see you conducted to whatever location—within the limits of current feasibility—you desire.”
“Meaning we cannot return to Sarmata.”
“Not at present, no,” I said. “There’s something of a small war happening between this moon and the Sarmata Gate at present. We were fortunate to get through before.”
The older woman said nothing but did not seem entirely convinced. The younger one was frowning deeply.
“So, in short—you are not my prisoners,” I said, “but I believe we can be allies in the hours and days to come, if you are willing to work with me and follow my advice. Not my orders,” I reiterated, “my advice.”
The two women exchanged looks, then both nodded.
A short time later I had them comfortably situated for the night. An older housekeeper who had been particularly close to me since my childhood agreed to see to their needs and unlocked two very nice adjoining bedrooms for their use, along with giving me her promise to be discreet about their presence.
From there I made my way to my own rooms, pulled off my boots, and dropped heavily onto my bed without even undressing. My body was sore and weary, but my brain was still racing along as frantically as ever. I lay there for all of five minutes, staring up at the ceiling, before I was convinced I wouldn’t fall asleep any time soon. So I rose and, boots again in place, strolled back out into the hallway.
Baranak: Storming the Gates (The Above Book 2) Page 7