A Matter of Oaths

by Helen S. Wright

  “It would be a dangerous precedent to set,” Rallya said slowly. “Let some of Julur’s aristos—or your own—know that it can be done and they’ll be hiring Outsider fleets to try it themselves. The Empires would be run by whichever aristos most recently scared you shitless.”

  “Not if the Guild guarantees our protection,” Ayvar argued.

  “I don’t like it,” Rallya said stubbornly. “And it isn’t necessary. We can break Julur’s hold on the Guild without it, and maybe even renegotiate the Oaths.” She snorted. “For what that would be worth in his case.”

  “But we couldn’t get Lin back safely,” Ayvar said flatly. “I told you, Commander, that matter is not negotiable.”

  Could five thousand years warp a perspective that far, Rallya asked herself in disbelief. “What if the Guild decides that Rafe is expendable?” she questioned. “That we aren’t willing to spend the lives it would cost to get him back.” And it would cost lives, she thought grimly; Old Imperial was not a soft target.

  “Whatever it costs, you won’t leave him,” Ayvar said confidently. “You won’t found your Guild on a betrayal like that, Commander Rallya.”

  Damn you, Rallya thought furiously. I would like to pull the cocky little scut out of the trap he sprung on himself when he jumped into your bed. I would like to drag Julur out of his palace and send him on a one-way jump to the other edge of the galaxy. But I will not condemn the people of the Old Empire to a few hundred years of chaos. I will not throw away webbers and ships to salve your pride. And I will not have my options dictated by you.

  “I’ll need a fleet to dislodge Carher,” she told Ayvar coldly. For now, let him think she had capitulated. “I want every ship you’ve been assigned for use in the Disputed Zone; you can change their orders without anyone questioning it. And I want Khirtin station too—that’s your command centre for Zone operations, isn’t it? I want the ships assembled there in five days time. Flash a message to the Stationmaster to call them in. Tell them to reserve the first arrival slot for your yacht and another one four days from now, also to be notified to you. And I’ll need a coded tight-beam to pass that information on.”

  She would have liked to have Bhattya there earlier in the sequence, but it could not be done. The shuttle with Caruya and Peri aboard would not reach the ship for three more days. And Vidar would want to move out of the rings around New Imperial’s neighbouring gas giant; that was no place to start a fixed-window jump with only a Second and a Third to back him in the web.

  “You’ll have all of it,” Ayvar assured her. “Yulenda, warn Khetya to expect us. Four passengers: Lord Dhur, yourself and two anonymous guests.”

  “You’re not coming,” Rallya decreed, standing up to leave.

  “Commander, you and I still have guarantees to discuss.”

  From The Guild of Webbers’ Guide to Navigation

  Imperial Zone, Old Empire: a Class One restricted zone. Prior authorization to enter must be obtained from the Imperial Palace; access is permitted via a single jump point (O-I-1). A defensive sphere is maintained around the system; any unauthorized ship penetrating this sphere is liable to attack without warning.

  349/5043

  IMPERIAL ZONE, OLD EMPIRE

  It was impossible to know, Rafe thought shakily, which one of them would speak first. Or, if the Old Emperor was first to break the silence, whose victory that would be. Blurred memories—which he was struggling to rebury, in spite of the days that he had spent aboard Havedir fighting futilely to unearth them—told him that, in some warped way, it would be Julur’s victory if Rafe outlasted him, because Rafe dared not speak until he had control of his voice and the same blurred memories had deprived him of that control.

  The waiting had ended without warning, ten days of isolation curtailed by the soporific that had flooded his stateroom. Rafe had regained consciousness strapped into this seat, free only to see, to hear and to speak, in a room brightly lit around him and shadowed at the edges. Julur was in the shadows: visible, not recognizable, but it could only be Julur. Cat-and-mouse would not be Braniya’s style, not once the hunt was over, but Julur took delight in it. Rafe fought off more unwelcome images, of a similar room or the same one, of a similar struggle for silence.

  He had no way of knowing how long it had been between losing consciousness and regaining it, no way of knowing what they had done in that time. Had they sorted through his head, to discover how much he had remembered, and how much he had not? What else might they have done? There had been games that Julur had played the last time…

  “Shall I call you Lin or Rafe?”

  A triple shock. The ending of the silence, for all that he had known Julur would speak eventually. The voice, better remembered than the face, because it had been possible to close his eyes but not his ears … And the name, Lin, indisputably his, bringing with it a stream of fresh associations that he could not dam, ice-clear memories of the man who had bestowed it upon him. And because no reaction was more appropriate to the enormous irony of that shared face: Rafe laughed.

  “The question did not warrant hysteria.”

  “I’d explain the joke,” Rafe said, sobering abruptly, “but as I remember, you’ve no sense of humour.”

  “And yours, I remember, is odd in the extreme. And fails you eventually.”

  Julur came out of the shadows, his appearance no new shock because Rafe’s newly intact memory had primed him. Blond, blue-eyed, slightly plump, even for his unusual height, and his face alarming in its apparent youth. A thousand years or more older than Ayvar, he looked as if he had been frozen as a gauche adolescent while Ayvar looked like a … a forty-six year old Webmaster.

  Let nobody tell me the gods have no sense of humour, Rafe thought bitterly.

  “You do remember me, I see,” Julur remarked, watching Rafe intently. “And how much else?”

  “All of it,” Rafe said flatly. A denial would do him no good.

  “That would be surprising, since you were hardly coherent for much of your time with me. I take it that you mean you remember your life as Lin.”

  “Which you took so much trouble to erase. Yes.”

  It gave Rafe perverse pleasure to think of that wasted effort. There was no other success he could claim against Julur, no information about Ayvar or the Guild that he had withheld, no information about himself that Julur had not drawn from him. He flinched from remembering how easily he had answered questions at the end, answered them before they were asked, volunteered information out of fear of the pain, out of terror of what the drugs did to him. The other choice had been to submit to the pain and the drugs, to pay a higher price for providing the same knowledge with the same scant dignity. His choice had not eventually mattered; Julur had used the drugs anyway, had vindictively inflicted the pain. And in a final, grotesque and unseen gesture to Ayvar—who surely could not know—he had destroyed Lin and given the Oath-breaker Rafe to the Guild.

  “Was I supposed to be grateful that you left me alive?” he asked rashly.

  “You are asking whether I intend to repeat my generosity, are you not? I do, but not perhaps in the same form.” The Emperor stretched his damp lips to show his teeth. “It is unfortunate that the identity-wipe failed. The alternative is more drastic, forfeits more of the original and there are aspects of the original worth preserving. The intelligence, for example.”

  “Has anybody ever accused you of being subtle?”

  “Humour, I believe, is an inevitable casualty of personality disintegration.” Julur returned to the shadows and Rafe heard the whisper of his clothes as he sat down. “Before that, however, I shall discover why the identity-wipe failed. It would be a pity to destroy you so thoroughly when something less might serve.”

  Silence would be interpreted as capitulation; a defiant response as desperation. Neither was far from the truth, Rafe thought miserably, choosing silence. A tactical problem for you, Commander Rallya. You are the prisoner of a mad Emperor—a paranoid Emperor who wears armour-clot
h for every hour of the day, who has not left his palace for over a thousand years, a palace infested with fanatically loyal guards trained from birth. You are unarmed and unable to move. Discuss methods of escape. He sighed wryly, reckoning that even Rallya would not get far with the problem.

  What was she doing now? Probably gathering support against Carher. Lin had known Carher by reputation, an ambitious woman, elected to the Council half a year before he had his "accident". Her record as a patrolship Commander was solid, not outstanding; she had won her place on the Council largely by virtue of being unopposed by anyone better qualified. He felt a flash of guilt over that. The councillor elected for the New Empire in the same election had been equally undistinguished. He—Lin—had been urged by his friends and by Ayvar to fight that election; he had refused, not ready to give up the joy of commanding Janasayan for the responsibilities of a councillor.

  Not that it would have been long before Julur relieved him of those responsibilities, he reminded himself angrily. And if he had joined the Council, he would always have been open to accusations of being influenced by Ayvar, of being the New Emperor’s passport to control of the Guild, as Carher had been intended to be Julur’s. At least Rallya would prevent that, and the scouring she would undertake would be thorough enough to leave Julur—and Ayvar, he acknowledged dryly—no possibility of replacing their pawns for several years.

  “What do you intend to do about Carher?” he asked boldly. Better to concentrate on that than on his own predicament, about which Rallya could do nothing, primarily because she did not know about it. Bhattya probably thought he was dead, he realized with a pang of grief for Joshim. When Ayvar learnt the cause of the conflict within the Guild, he would know that Julur was involved, but by then it would probably be too late…

  “There is no need for me to do anything. Lady Carher will be dealt with by her opponents within the Guild.”

  “It’s unlike you to neglect an opportunity to be vindictive.”

  “You seem to be feeling better.” Julur was moving about; Rafe could hear the rustle of armour-cloth, the chink of metallic items being gathered together. “Lady Carher has a certain utility in distracting interest from you. If she outlives her usefulness, Braniya will arrange her execution.”

  He moved out of the shadow, began to arrange the items he was carrying on the table to Rafe’s left. Rafe refused to turn his head to watch. “You should not use my interest in you to judge my interest in mortals like Lady Carher. You have a certain quality that makes you uniquely rewarding.”

  Or a certain relationship with the only person you care about, Rafe thought bleakly. The only person who is real to you. Gods, Ayvar could be strange at times, when he talked about somebody a thousand years dead as if he had spoken to them only yesterday, when he wore that haunted expression that told of the events around him having been played out before by the same characters wearing different faces … But at least he knew that mortals were real. Real enough to take one as a lover, to bind him with a mixture of fierce possessiveness and brusque insouciance, so that he would hold Lin bruisingly tight all night as if he were the one person who would never leave him and then send him back to his ship at the end of his liberty with a joke about the queue to share his bed when Lin was gone. Sometimes, Rafe thought ruefully, it was a struggle not to be swallowed whole by the man and at others, it was impossible to get close to him…

  “Do you remember the effect of this?” Julur inquired, showing Rafe a injector. “Gadrine. Not unduly unpleasant, but effective.”

  Not unduly unpleasant if you had no objection to losing control over your tongue, to spilling out the contents of your head for Julur to pick through. Rafe remembered Joshim’s support during his arthane trances, the anchor to reality that he had provided. Julur would not be so concerned for Rafe’s sanity, for the necessary distinctions between past and present.

  “We’re going to explore the failure of your identity-wipe,” Julur continued. Rafe felt the injector enter his arm. “The stimuli that caused it, the speed with which it progressed.” He smiled as he withdrew the needle. “If you are fortunate, the failure will not be inherent in the process, but will be due to something in your environment. If that is so, I may not resort to personality disintegration…”

  Gods, Rafe thought frantically. Joshim. Of all the factors—his work in the web, Commander Rallya and Bhattya—Joshim must be the most significant, his likeness to Ayvar the essential trigger. And Julur did not know about him yet. When he did know, how much danger would Joshim be in? If Julur took pleasure from destroying somebody who had been Ayvar’s lover, how much would he enjoy destroying somebody who wore Ayvar’s face? It was painful enough that Rafe had unconsciously used Joshim as a substitute for Ayvar—and that was what he had done, he realized in a tide of raw guilt—but now he was going to expose him to the danger of Julur’s hatred, and he knew that he could not avoid it.

  From the History of the Empire

  by Dhelmen Lady Hjour,

  taken from a copy made in 3087

  …And the Emperor Ayvar came in haste to Khirtin, bringing with him such of his establishment as were loyal to him, and on Khirtin they abided for a year. But Khirtin is a poor world and so Boronya Lady Buhklir came to the Emperor Ayvar and offered him her homeworld of Buhklir to be his home for all time and he was gracious to accept, raising her family high in his affections…

  …And a great assembly was held at Lhorphenir and the Empire was divided…

  351/5043

  KHIRTIN ZONE, NEW EMPIRE

  “So that’s what’s happening now,” Joshim said wearily. “Every ship assigned to Ayvar for the Disputed Zone is coming here. The Stationmaster is going grey watching them come out of jump and praying they all get their calculations right.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Vidar said feelingly. “Five minutes after us, a courier arrived so close we could read the markings on its hull unmagnified.”

  “Stop complaining. At least Bhattya’s got a place in dock. The couriers and the supplyships are stuck in a holding pattern. The priority is getting the patrolships battle-ready.”

  “Uh huh.” Vidar stood up. “Back in a minute,” he promised.

  He was, with a mug of alcad that he put into Joshim’s hands. “Sounds like you need that.”

  “I’ve been talking my throat raw. Every Three that comes in wants to hear the story from the source.”

  “I’ll take that on,” Vidar offered. “After six days in those damned dust rings with nothing else to do, this ship is in better condition than when she left the construction dock.”

  “I expected as much.” Joshim gave him a tired smile of gratitude. “We won’t see much of Rallya before the fleet leaves here. When she isn’t talking tactics with the other Commanders, she’s arguing with Ayvar.”

  Refusing to accept his priorities; refusing to commit herself to anything beyond ridding the Guild of Carher, least of all an assault on Julur. Balancing possibilities and costs: the future of the Guild, the future of the Empires, the lives—all of them, not just Rafe’s—that could be lost if the upheaval she started got out of her control. And Ayvar was insistent on Rafe’s safety, at any price. Gods knew what was driving him: injured pride perhaps, a determination not to yield anything to Julur. Not even an immortal could love Rafe so fiercely that he was willing to sacrifice the peace of both Empires for him. Or maybe I won’t allow anyone to love Rafe more than me, Joshim thought wryly.

  “Is the Emperor here at Khirtin?” Vidar asked.

  “That isn’t public knowledge,” Joshim warned. “Officially, Lord Dhur, the Emperor’s representative is here. Confusing the hell out of anybody who’s met me.”

  “How close is the resemblance?”

  “It’s frightening. Like looking in a mirror.” Joshim blew on his alcad to cool it down.

  “No wonder…”

  “…Rafe fell for me. Yes.”

  “No wonder Rafe started remembering,” Vidar contradicted him. “What�
�s he like as a person?”

  Joshim shrugged. “I’m not the person you should ask. I’m trying not to like him.”

  Vidar grunted. “How many ships will we have at Central?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Twenty patrolships, if they all get here in time. Five armed couriers. The supplyships are staying here.” Joshim yawned. “That reminds me. We’re leaving the apprentices behind too.”

  “They won’t like that.”

  “Fleet Commander’s orders. Says they’ll only be underfoot.”

  Vidar laughed, knowing as well as Joshim that Rallya wanted the apprentices out of danger.

  “She’s expecting a fight then?” he queried.

  “She’s ready for one. Although Carher might run for it,” Joshim said hopefully. “She must know that, even if she wins, Julur will still want her hide. It depends on how good she thinks her chances are of making peace with him.”

  “What opposition will we be facing?”

  “Open a book on it,” Joshim suggested, yawning again. “If it hasn’t already been done.”

  “Not this time,” Vidar said somberly. “You should…” He stopped, held up a hand to silence Joshim while he listened to his messager. “There’s a visitor for you,” he reported. “Lord Dhur.”

  “Tell him to go away,” Joshim said. “Tell him I’m asleep.”

  “You should be,” Vidar agreed. He relayed the message, listened to the reply. “He’s already on his way up,” he reported.

  Joshim swore.

  “I’ll keep him out,” Vidar offered.

  “No.” Joshim found a strained smile. “Let’s not all three of us get on the wrong side of him. Not until Rallya’s got no use for him anyway.”

  There was a tap on the rest-room door, characteristically Fadir. “Come in,” Joshim called.