A Matter of Oaths

by Helen S. Wright

  “What are you waiting for?” she demanded. “You’d better get moving.”

  “You aren’t coming?” Vidar queried, surprised.

  “No,” Rallya said shortly. “Somebody has to stay here and teach the Council their cursed business. Again.” She saw disbelief on both their faces. “You’re big boys now, or you should be,” she pointed out irritably. “I’m not a faffing good-luck charm. You can manage without me for once.”

  And the Gods-be-cursed Council could not, she added bitterly to herself. Sometimes it seemed as if she was the only person in the faffing Guild who did not panic at the thought of rebuilding it from the inside out. And if that had been clear to Ayvar days ago—although she would see him in hell before she admitted to his face that he was right—it must be clear by now to Julur. Which meant—blood and hell!—that it was her duty to skulk safely at Central, out of Julur’s reach. At least until the Guild could survive without her.

  “You’d better get moving,” she repeated. “I’ll have the comms centre tell Rafe you’re on the way. And be damned careful. I don’t want Bhattya’s reputation ruined the first time I let her out of my sight.”

  * * *

  [Attention Rafe. Advise Bhattya will jump within one hour. Please confirm that arrival in planetary orbit has been cleared with the appropriate authorities.]

  The response, half an hour after he had sent his message, woke Rafe from a dangerous half-doze. It was hard to fight the ache seeping through him, the result of nerves stretched with fear, of working too hard after too long out of the web. Gods, he thought gratefully as he monitored the repeat of the message, they are coming, in spite of all the reasons why they might have decided not to … And only an hour before they arrived in orbit—the length of time it took to calculate the jump from Central. Two hours, maybe three, and he would be on his way out of here.

  “There’ll be a ship jumping into orbit within the hour,” he announced, startling Julur. “You’d better give the orders to make sure that it arrives safely. And remember, I’ll be monitoring them.”

  Bluff, but it was the best weapon he had. He prayed that nobody on Julur’s staff had any misplaced initiative…

  “I’m waiting,” he said sharply when neither of his prisoners spoke. “All planetary defenses and the sector defensive sphere deactivated. Now.”

  “Do it,” Julur told Braniya abruptly.

  Rafe listened to her give the orders. “Good enough,” he conceded. “You’d better hope that everyone obeys you. Your lives depend on it.”

  “They’ll obey,” Braniya said confidently. She walked across the room to the locked web and studied him closely through the semi-transparent hood. “I assume we are expecting Bhattya. Shall I also give orders for a convenient shuttle-landing to be prepared, and guides to bring your friends down to us?”

  “And for the crowd outside the door to move away,” Rafe agreed. “All fifteen of them.”

  “Of course.” She did not react to his accurate knowledge. “Immediately?”

  “Immediately,” Rafe agreed.

  He faded out his body control before she spoke again. There was a message to send to Central, and…

  The cramp hit him without warning, flooding signal circuits and control circuits, rendering him blind and deaf and dumb and helpless. As if acid was running along his nerves and spilling out into the web. He disengaged from the web before he could prevent himself, struggled desperately to re-engage before Braniya found a way to take advantage of the spasm. He must have passed out; when he could think and feel and see again, both Julur and Braniya were pulling furiously at the hood of the web, hoping that the lock had failed. It was a miracle that it had not, he thought shakily.

  “Nothing so easy,” he lied to them, blinking the tears out of his eyes and hoping he sounded better then he felt. “None of it depends on my even being alive.” He grinned, although he did not feel like grinning. “You’d better hope I don’t die in here. You’d starve to death before anybody worked out how to free you. Or can’t immortals starve to death?” he added maliciously. “You can die from lack of air—we’ve already established that. What other ways are there of killing you? Are you really immortal, or are you just better than the rest of us at fighting off disease and old age?”

  He was talking to hide the important things he was doing: cautiously re-entering the web, exploring his web-control, checking that the spasm had not done any damage that needed to be repaired, had not weakened his hold on Julur and Braniya. All of the locks had held; he offered a silent prayer of gratitude to the web’s long-dead constructor. The diagram of his own web had several alarm signals pulsing, but told him nothing he did not already know. He realized suddenly that there might be a safety cut-out on the locks; if he lost consciousness for a prolonged period of time—or withdrew from the web to conserve his strength—the locks might open to give access to him. It was an unpleasant thought…

  “You had some more instructions to carry out,” he reminded Braniya, determined that they would not see how weak the spasm had left him. He could send a message to Central—he did it—and he could monitor his immediate surroundings, but to try anything more was to invite another attack. He had to save his strength until Bhattya arrived, until he had to assure the safe arrival of those coming through the palace to fetch him. Two hours, maybe three…

  * * *

  [Outward jump calculated and set in,] Vidar sent. [Return jump calculated and set in.]

  [Acknowledged,] Joshim sent back, suppressing a wave of undisciplined relief that the interminable calculations were complete. [All teams report readiness. Jump in five minutes.]

  This was worse than when the fleet jumped to Central, he reflected as he received the reports from around the web. The defensive sphere that Julur had thrown around Old Imperial was reputed to be impenetrable; two hundred years since the last attempt was made, and that had been as fatally unsuccessful as all its predecessors. True, they had Rafe’s assurance that Julur had given the right orders. If it was Rafe on the far end of that comms channel. And if he was not acting under duress. And if Julur’s orders were obeyed.

  Joshim could not think of any way in which Rafe could have freed himself, put himself in a position to call for help, to propose removing the Old Emperor from his palace. He had said as much when he had asked for volunteers to crew Bhattya on this trip, and the idiots had still volunteered en masse, not one of the web-room agreeing to stay behind. He let his renewed gratitude at their decision seep into the web, wanting them to know how he felt, reckoning that it would do more good than harm.

  [Four minutes,] Vidar sent. [Quit worrying and concentrate.] That was on a private channel. [Rallya will have our hides on her office wall if we foul up. And so will her successor.]

  [Acknowledged.] Obediently, Joshim focussed tightly on the jump and what they expected to find when they emerged. [Query status Rafe’s comms channel,] he sent to Lilimya.

  [Silent.]

  [Acknowledged.] It had been silent since the message about the defensive sphere. But that did not mean that anything had gone wrong, Joshim told himself firmly. Only that Rafe had nothing new to tell them.

  [Three minutes.]

  If they were fired on, they had the return jump already set in; they could be safely back at Central within a few seconds. Rafe would not expect—would not want anybody’s life put at risk when there was visibly no chance of success. If they were allowed into orbit unopposed … They would have to play it as they found it. An armed landing party, Rafe had specified, and again, extreme caution.

  [Two minutes.]

  Rallya had chosen a good time to send Bhattya off without her, he thought resentfully. The damned Council could surely manage without her for a few hours. Unless she thought this was too dangerous, that she was now too precious to risk … No, if she believed that, she would have locked them up rather than let them try it. Or kept Rafe’s message secret; she was perfectly capable of that. What she was not capable of was giving in agains
t her better judgement. She had sent Bhattya to fetch Rafe. Therefore it was possible.

  [One minute.]

  Rallya’s successor, Vidar had called Rafe. If he wanted the berth … Even if he chose to continue webbing, he might not want to do it in Bhattya’s web-room. Not with Joshim, when there was still the tangle around Ayvar to unravel. Anyway, Rallya might not agree to step aside, might still find a way out of the Guild leadership. Although she was no longer struggling as hard as she might … Gods and Emperors, just two messages from Rafe—supposedly from Rafe, he reminded himself sternly—and he was reviving all the possibilities that he had promised himself to forget until he knew that Rafe was safe. And Rafe would never be safe if he did not concentrate on the web.

  [Activating jump.]

  * * *

  “Your friends have arrived in orbit,” Braniya said smoothly. “But you don’t need me to tell you that, do you?”

  “You don’t expect me to answer that, do you?” Rafe countered, squirting a hasty query along his comms channel and receiving a prompt affirmative. “They’re waiting for your clearance to land a shuttle.”

  “I’ll have it transmitted,” Braniya promised.

  She walked to the intercomm. Rafe did not watch her, did not listen to her speak. He would only hear what she wanted him to hear, not the hidden messages in her choice of words.

  [Trust nobody,] he sent to Bhattya, not caring that Rallya would laugh at the warning. It was such a long way through the palace to fetch him and there were so many traps that Braniya could set…

  Odd that Braniya was the one who worried him most, that Julur seemed to have conceded defeat. If Ayvar had been in the same situation, he would have been the one at the intercomm, the one scheming to regain control. Or would he? Would the threat of death reduce him to the same mute acquiescence? Was that the price of being immortal, the sacrifice of everything that made you human to a desperate obsession with living forever?

  Rafe shuddered uncontrollably. How must it feel, to live so long that there was nothing new left to experience? To share that empty existence with just one other man, until love and hatred were meaningless words for what you felt about them. To be caught between the temptation to take the crazy risks that Rafe had seen Ayvar take and the desire to shut yourself away from danger in a paranoiac cocoon. And—surely—always to know the fear that you were not truly immortal. The possibility that there was some disease to which you were not immune, some degree of damage that was too great to survive, some day on which you would start growing old. The fear that, in the end, you would die like everybody else.

  [Shuttle on its way down.]

  The message from Bhattya dragged Rafe out of his reverie. It was fatally easy to lose concentration; to feel the growing sickness in the pit of his stomach; to give in to the gathering light-headedness as his blood-sugar dropped and fatigue claimed him. To lose track of what was going on.

  Shuttle on its way down. That meant it would be thirty minutes before they landed. Another hour making their way through the labyrinth of the palace. Could he last that long? He could not ask them to hurry, could not warn them how shaky his control of the situation was. Not when Braniya’s people must be monitoring his comms. He had to maintain his bluff. Not only for his own sake now, but for Bhattya’s sake too.

  * * *

  “In here,” the guard said sullenly, unlocking the riser. “You’ll be met at the bottom.”

  “I’ll bet we will,” Vidar said, exchanging a wary glance with Joshim before stepping into the riser.

  Joshim and Ajir followed him, Peri and Caruya bringing up the rear, all of them careful not to turn their back on the guard. The further they travelled from the surface, the harder it was to believe that they were not walking into a trap. For the hundredth time, Joshim reviewed the orders he and Vidar had given to Jualla, looking for any eventuality they had missed. If Bhattya was fired upon, if they lost contact with the landing party, if Rafe alerted them to any danger, she was to retreat to Central. He prayed that she had the sense to do as she had been told.

  “How much further?” Peri asked quietly as the riser carried them down.

  “The gods know,” Joshim said frankly. “Rafe told Jualla that he was on one of the deepest levels.”

  He did not add what they all knew, that there had been no word from Rafe since that message. No word, no indication of why he could not come to meet them, no explanation for why he was still relaying his comms through Bhattya instead of using a direct voice-link. Injured, Joshim’s treacherous imagination suggested. Or a prisoner, doing only what he was told.

  “Bottom approaching,” Vidar warned, readying his bolt-beamer to cover the corridor that awaited them. Joshim copied him, gaining a false sense of security from his weapon. If it came to shooting, they could not win but they could refuse to be taken alive. That would be his choice, guessing how Julur would react to the face he shared with Ayvar, knowing how he could be used to torment Rafe, how Rafe could be used to torment him…

  The tunnel they emerged into was vastly different from the corridors above. Joshim shivered, making a comparison with the dungeons that he had known as Salu’i’kamai. The walls pressed eagerly in upon him and their distance from safety seemed to double abruptly.

  There was a single guard waiting for them, faceless in the same dark visor as their previous guide, carrying the same holstered weapon.

  “That way,” he greeted them curtly, pointing to their left.

  “How much further?” Vidar asked.

  “Round the corner, to the door at the end of the tunnel.” He paused, listening to something inside his helmet. “Wait here. Orders are to clear the tunnel before we send you in.”

  “Why?” Joshim asked suspiciously.

  “Orders,” the guard repeated.

  There was the sound of feet approaching from the direction they were to take. Joshim tensed, knew that the others with him were equally alert. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. As naked as the stone walls. From the corner of his eye, he saw Caruya’s finger tightening on the trigger of her beamer, her aim steady in the centre of the tunnel where it turned the corner. Joshim picked his own aiming point, ears straining for footsteps from the other direction, for the sound of more guards coming down the riser…

  He breathed again as a group of maybe fifteen people came around the corner, both guards and civilians, their faces grim—the ones that were visible—but their weapons not in their hands. They seemed to be arguing among themselves, but fell silent as they came within earshot of the small group by the riser. All except one, who said loudly, “He won’t get away with this. None of you will.”

  “The Guild looks after its own,” Joshim retorted angrily.

  “By threatening the Emperor’s life?” the civilian demanded.

  “If you care about it that much, you’d better get out of here,” Vidar intervened. He reinforced the message by gesturing with his beamer.

  Joshim watched without speaking as the riser carried them out of sight. Threatening the Emperor’s life? If Rafe had a weapon aimed at the Old Emperor, that would explain a great deal. And Rafe—with his knowledge of Ayvar—was possibly the only person who could threaten to kill an Emperor and make himself believed. Gods be thanked, they might yet walk out of this safely…

  “Left, around the corner to the door at the end,” he repeated impatiently. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  [Message for landing party,] Rafe sent, using the little strength he had been saving for this moment. [Maximum thirty seconds from reaching the door to enter. Expect two enemies inside plus self in web.]

  The danger would come as Joshim and the others came through that door, when it would no longer be possible for him to control his hostages by threatening to suffocate them, when there would be a chance for Julur and Braniya to escape. He had done what he could to reduce the risk. He had forced them to remove their armour-cloth and force shields, made Braniya drop her weapon, insisted they had the corridor outsid
e emptied. It would have been safest to knock them out by withdrawing the air before unlocking the door but he could no longer do so, not with any certainty of remaining conscious himself.

  [Landing party acknowledges,] Bhattya relayed. [Approaching door now.]

  Rafe started to call up the schematic of the corridor outside, gasped as another onslaught of cramp racked him. Desperately, blindly, he released all the locks: door, web and hood; he could not distinguish between them in the surge of pain before he passed out.

  * * *

  As Joshim pushed through the door, he saw Braniya fumbling inside an ornate metal case, Julur scrabbling on the floor for a beamer. He kept moving fast, to allow the others in. Behind him, he heard Vidar curse and fire. Julur dropped the beamer, clutching a hand burnt by the suddenly heated metal. One part of Joshim noted Vidar’s marksmanship with approval, even as he took his own aim at Braniya.

  “Leave him!” he snapped.

  “Freeze or I pull this,” Braniya countered. In her hand, she showed him the unmistakable braided linkage of a web-contact. “The shape he’s in, yanking this could cripple him,” she added, telling Joshim what he already knew. “If it didn’t kill him.”

  “How do we know he’s still alive?” Joshim demanded, thinking frantically. If he shot her, her falling weight would still drag the contact away from Rafe’s neck. He must be unconscious. Had he disengaged from the web? If not, could he survive that degree of disruption so soon after the overload and whatever Julur had done to him?

  “You’ll have to take my word for it,” Braniya was saying. “Although I can’t guarantee that he’ll survive long whatever I do. Every attack of cramp he has is worse than the one before. Would you care to speculate how long you have to resolve this stand-off before his death does it for you?”