A Rending of Falcons

by Victor Milán

  There was a reason Archon Melissa had tapped him to serve as her personal emissary to the khan, knowing as she did his entire résumé.

  ‘‘I apologize for what you’ve found yourself dropped into, Markgraf,’’ Graves said. ‘‘Beastliest time of year on a beastly planet, full of Falcons surly as beasts. And now this beastly mess, to top it all.’’

  ‘‘Put your mind at ease, my friend,’’ von Texeira said in his richest, rolling baritone. ‘‘I can use a little diversion, now and again.’’ If only he knew how true that was, he thought.

  ‘‘I only hope that we can find ample room for you and your retinue, milord,’’ the ambassador said. ‘‘What with the current crisis, the embassy is crowded with Lyran nationals we’ve gathered in for their protection.’’

  ‘‘Splendid,’’ von Texeira said, and meant it. At least the man discharged his duty properly.

  ‘‘Unthinkable for you and your party to reside outside the walls, of course; it isn’t safe. In the mood they’re in, these Falcons are capable of anything!’’

  Timid the man might be, but von Texeira knew he was right about that. The Jade Falcons were volatile at the best of times. They were most definitely not safe in the throes of a political crisis that could well turn on the shortest of notice into a bombardment from space.

  ‘‘No retinue, your Excellency,’’ he said. ‘‘Only my man and myself. We take up but little room; his narrowness compensates for my avoirdupois, you see.’’

  Graves blinked his pallid blue boiled-egg eyes. ‘‘Heh? Heh? Oh, I see. Your Lordship makes a witticism. Very good! Very good! Facing down all those hostile boardrooms has turned your blood to ice, just as the tri-vids say about you. Superb sangfroid, von Texeira, superb sangfroid!’’

  He hunched his head further down into the top of the ovoid of his body and blinked at his guest again, near-suspiciously this time. ‘‘So small a party, then, for a man of your stature?’’

  ‘‘In my youth I came to appreciate the value of traveling light,’’ he said, with perfect if incomplete truthfulness. ‘‘Never fear, my friend: I appreciate the good life as much as any two men, as my girth suggests. But when needs must, even I can tighten the belt.’’

  ‘‘Oh. Ha-ha, yes. Very good. Very g-g-good. Your reputation as a bon vivant rivals your reputation as a businessman.’’

  ‘‘And now,’’ von Texeira said, ‘‘if your Excellency will be so kind as to have our slight baggage conveyed to such quarters as you can spare us . . .’’ And before you keel over from a heart attack, or we both turn into Davions from all this secondhand French. ‘‘And if I might further impose on you for the loan of a car, I should like to present my credentials to Khan Jana Pryde. She requested an emissary direct from Archon Melissa, don’t you know.’’

  Ambassador Graves’ lower lip was purple—Best watch the blood pressure, my man, thought von Texeira—and moist. It trembled, and he blinked rapidly, as if fighting tears.

  ‘‘That will require a fast VTOL, milord,’’ he said, ‘‘not a car.’’

  ‘‘How do you mean, Excellency?’’

  ‘‘An emergency kurultai has been called at their Grand Council Hall in anticipation of the arrival of the b-b-b-battleship. ’’ He had to pause and shake himself after the exertion of forcing the last word between fear-rubbery lips. ‘‘Khan Jana Pryde has already left to preside.’’

  ‘‘It’s distant?’’ von Texeira asked. ‘‘I’d thought their Grand Council Hall was here in Hammarr.’’

  The man actually smiled: a ghastly affair, showing a plenitude of pink-white gums. ‘‘The Falcon’s Perch here is of secondary importance. I fear even you, with your well-known wealth of experience with the Clans, underestimates the perversity of the Jade Falcons in their native environment, milord.

  ‘‘They’ve built themselves a bloody great new clubhouse three hundred kilometers south of here, perched on a perpetually snow-clad peak in the midst of a howling frozen wilderness!’’

  ‘‘As diversions go, this is right up there with running with scissors and riding a motorcycle in a monsoon,’’ Rorion said. He had to shout to make himself heard over the storm howl and the whine of the contra-rotating fusion-driven rotors bashing the passenger-modified H-8 Warrior through the gale force winds. The environs of the Falcon’s great hall were living up amply to the reputation Ambassador Graves had given them.

  ‘‘Courage, man,’’ von Texeira said, gazing out the ferroglass windows with wholly spurious impassivity at the jagged peaks that surrounded them. Like the teeth of a giant diamond shark, he thought. Very like that. ‘‘I’ve already had to deal with a bad case of ambassadorial nerves today.’’

  ‘‘I don’t blame him,’’ Rorion said. ‘‘Being constantly surrounded by the damned Falcons is bad enough. To have them like this would put the wind up a stone statue of Aleksandr Kerensky.’’

  ‘‘The Falcon’s Eyrie is coming into sight,’’ the voice of the pilot crackled from the speaker set in the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the passenger compartment. Von Texeira found himself and Rorion pressing their noses to the chill ferroglass like children at a shop window before Christmas. Though as a child he’d only experienced cold during a Christmas holiday once, when his mother and father had taken them to Tharkad to meet their distant cousin, the archon.

  The Falcon’s Eyrie looked as if it had been designed by a madman who combined a love of growing crystals with an obsession for Gothic cathedral architecture from Terra’s Middle Ages and Renaissance. It was a collection of square and triangular section spines, sprouting from a common base and soaring skyward. They were made of some pale stone or synthetic or even polished metal; in the doubtful light and through the screen of wind-blasted snow it was impossible to tell. It threw off tantalizing glints of prismatic color in the light of a sun that was barely a patch of relative brightness above the western peaks.

  ‘‘Impressive,’’ von Texeira said. ‘‘I’ll give it that.’’

  ‘‘If you scaled it down,’’ his aide replied, ‘‘it’d make a hell of a tank trap.’’

  ‘‘Or, scaled down further, a prickle-burr to place on a teacher’s chair.’’ Though a couple of decades separated them in age, and Lyran social mores separated them further in status, the two men shared much common ground. Not least of which was a wide prankish streak.

  As the VTOL banked for its approach to a landing pad marked by bright flashing blue-white beacons, von Texeira became aware of a rattling around the edges of the window by his side. Vibration swelled slowly through his bones, his body, becoming audible at last as a low rolling rumble.

  ‘‘Thunder?’’ Rorion said. ‘‘In a snowstorm?’’

  ‘‘The primary is a white star. Perhaps its ultraviolet levels promote lightning.’’

  ‘‘At high noon on midsummer’s day at the equator, if the sky by some chance was clear, you could focus the rays of this distant, dwarfish sun to set fire to a clump of dry grass,’’ Rorion said. ‘‘If you warmed it up a touch first with, say, a Magna Mk III heavy laser. Do you think such a star throws off enough high-energy radiation to produce lightning?’’

  ‘‘Doubtless not. Look up there!’’

  He pointed excitedly upward. High above in the overcast a star appeared. Though tiny, it already shone brighter than Sudeten’s sun, and a bluer white. It grew in size and intensity until it could be seen to underlight a swell of globularity.

  "A DropShip!" von Texeira exclaimed.

  ‘‘Bec de Corbin,’’ Rorion Klimt said. ‘‘Beckett Malthus’ personal DropShip. Bet me.’’

  ‘‘I don’t take sucker bets, Rorion, you know that,’’ his master said in a tone of mild reproof.

  The vast teardrop shape settled down through the clouds on the far side of the spiny Jade Falcon fortress. A titanic cloud of steam, now tinged with orange glare, billowed up to mask it even before the Eyrie intervened.

  Von Texeira laughed and shook his great head.

  ‘‘This Malv
ina Hazen knows how to make an entrance. I give her that!’’

  Inside the Jade Falcons perched on tiers and tiers of seats arranged around a central hall. With their capes made of feathers from real jade falcons they had stalked and slain as one of their warrior rituals, they resembled a flock of surly green-winged birds in the dim afternoon light. Their murmurs had an ominous sound, like heavy rain on the roof in a floodplain.

  Over the heads of the assembled warriors the structure soared two hundred meters: a great four-faceted spire. Each facet was made of translucent material, and displayed a stylized, attenuated representation of Turkina, the original jade falcon. Around its base hung banners, some scorched and stained, others pristine: battle honors won by the Clan in its long and tumultuous career.

  Into the hall strode Malvina Hazen, her head held high, her unbound almost-white blond hair streaming behind her like a banner that defied her fellow Falcons to capture it. She wore a dress uniform of her own design: midnight black with green and yellow details, and her jade-feather cape flapping about her shoulders. Behind and to her right came Beckett Malthus, in regulation uniform, tall and heavyset and somber, his bearded chin sunken to his chest, his prominent eyebrows furrowed. Both carried their helmets in the crooks of their arms.

  A rush of frigid air and the blizzard’s bluster accompanied them.

  The Grand Hall’s round floor was inlaid with the Clan’s falcon-and-katana symbol. Across it from the entrance rose a dais draped with the Clan flag. On it stood Khan Jana Pryde in gleaming Falcon dress uniform, with a dramatic helmet like a gold-and-green falcon’s head encasing her own. Beside her stood Julia Buhalin, loremaster of the Clan, wearing the green ceremonial robes, trimmed with yellow, of her office.

  Khan Jana Pryde watched the two Galaxy commanders striding toward her, a little grateful that the helmet hid her face. She was a tall woman, lean to the point of gauntness, with blond hair darker and more yellow than Malvina’s, twisted in a complex braid that hung down her back.

  It was you who decided you could dispense with Bec Malthus’ cunning, she reminded herself sternly. Now show that you at least learned something from observing him in action.

  ‘‘I welcome two heroes of Clan Jade Falcon back to the nest of all Turkina’s brood,’’ she said. A microphone built into her ceremonial helmet picked up her words, and a system of cunningly placed speakers filled the vastness of the hall with them without creating disturbing echoes or sounding strident. Her words were enough to still the subdued flutter of conversation—which, the khan reflected sourly, reminded her more of pigeons babbling in a cote than of falcons. ‘‘You have brought great victory and great glory to Clan Jade Falcon, Galaxy Commander Beckett Malthus and Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen.’’

  There, she thought. That’ll at least remind the little surat of her proper place. And if not her, it will remind the rest of the Clan! Khan Jana Pryde was notorious for her carelessness with the Clan proscription against speaking in contractions; indeed, she was known to be impatient, at best, with many ‘‘sacred’’ Jade Falcon traditions. She was damned if she’d bother trying to think without contractions.

  ‘‘Your return from the front lines, where foes beset our fellow Falcons on all sides, is nevertheless a considerable surprise to us.’’ Verging as it does upon desertion in the face of an enemy. Such an act could be considered dishonorable in the extreme . . . so extreme that instead of a Trial of Grievance against her unruly subordinate, the khan might even call for a Trial of Annihilation. Jana Pryde was tempted to do so just to see the look on Malvina’s face.

  Softly, softly, she told herself. Malvina had allies in this house. Those tainted with her madness—and others who would not be saddened to see Jana herself plummet from her perch. She schooled herself to keep her voice . . . ceremonial.

  ‘‘How can I, your khan, serve you?’’

  Malvina halted far enough from the foot of the dais that she did not have to raise her head much to stare challengingly at her khan.

  ‘‘You can die!’’ she cried, her voice ringing up the heights of the hall like a raptor’s scream. ‘‘I, Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen, declare you, Jana Pryde, unfit to serve as khan of Clan Jade Falcon. I challenge you to a Trial of Possession for the right to rule!’’

  7

  The Falcon’s Eyrie

  Hameward Mountains, Sudeten

  Jade Falcon Occupation Zone

  12 September 3135

  Silence filled the hall.

  ‘‘With what do you defend?’’ Malvina Hazen asked, the question wreathed in echoes.

  Heinz-Otto von Texeira and Rorion Klimt lurked in the foyer through which Malthus and Hazen had come into the Great Hall. Not surprisingly, there were no facilities for spectators. Von Texeira was somewhat surprised they had been permitted to penetrate so deep into the Clan holy of holies without challenge. He surmised that, having made it all the way here, the Spheroids were presumed to be under the khan’s protection; since affront to them would be in effect a challenge to the khan, the Falcons they encountered did not deign to notice them.

  He and his aide looked at each other. ‘‘Uh-oh,’’ Rorion mouthed silently.

  Silence shattered like ice. The assembled warriors all began to clamor at once. Some roared; some screamed in fury. The noise raked the two outsiders like shards of metal.

  Across the floor Khan Jana Pryde seemed to swell with rage.

  ‘‘My Khan,’’ said Loremaster Julia Buhalin, stepping forward. She was a woman of medium height, with dark brown hair, from which the light through the high windows struck red highlights, cut square across her forehead and falling just below her ears in the back. Her eyes were violet, her skin cinnamon. Unlike Jana Pryde she was statuesque; indeed, Jana suspected her heavy robes of office, like the carefully tailored uniforms she wore on other than ceremonial occasions, concealed a certain softness. Not that it mattered: alone of all members of Clan Jade Falcon the loremaster was immune to challenge. Only a majority of a Clan Grand Council could remove her.

  Jana Pryde thumbed a tiny control unit sewn into her tunic that squelched the microphone in her helmet. ‘‘I’ll kill her,’’ she hissed.

  ‘‘Wait,’’ the loremaster said. She had broad cheekbones and an expression of determined calm. She was one of the youngest loremasters in a century but had been handpicked by her predecessor, Earl Helmer, who had died suddenly several years before.

  ‘‘I can’t let her think I’m afraid,’’ Jana Pryde said. In her fury she was slinging contractions all over the place.

  Since Bec Malthus’ exile, Loremaster Buhalin had become the Jade Falcon khan’s main confidante and advisor. She had long since grown inured to such sloppy usage despite her role as guardian of Clan orthodoxy.

  ‘‘Allow me, my Khan,’’ she said. Without awaiting response she glided forward to the front of the dais.

  She raised her staff, topped with a perched Turkina carved in jade. The tumult within the hall stilled at once. Despite her relative youth—in the one role in which Clan warrior culture prized age—she commanded great respect. First for the position itself, which, as custodian of the values of Clan Jade Falcon and most of all its holy Remembrance, exalted her in very real ways above the khan herself. And second for her prowess in rising to loremaster status so early in life, since nothing worth having, not even life itself, was easily come by in Clan Jade Falcon.

  ‘‘What you ask is irregular, Galaxy Commander Malvina Hazen,’’ the loremaster said, her voice amplified to fill the great cold space.

  ‘‘I ask nothing,’’ Malvina said. ‘‘I challenge. This has nothing to do with you, Loremaster!’’

  ‘‘This has everything to do with me. I am custodian of Jade Falcon ways. If we throw tradition to the winds— especially in a matter as core as this one—we risk losing our cohesion, our order. Would you render us no better than the downtrodden inhabitants of the Inner Sphere, constantly striving and struggling for political advantage?’’

&
nbsp; Malvina glared. One of those fierce blue eyes, Jana Pryde knew, was prosthetic. As was a hand and a leg. Although prosthetics were far from uncommon among Clan warriors, there was something about Malvina’s choice to refuse regeneration that ran down the khan’s spine like an icy trickle of water.

  Nonsense, she reproved herself. I cannot permit the wretched little surat to get inside my head.

  Forcing herself back into the objectivity, so difficult for a Falcon decanted and raised, that had played such a major role in her own rapid rise, Jana acknowledged the wisdom of Buhalin’s course of action. There was nothing Malvina could say at this point, least of all to the loremaster, without outraging even those among her listeners who might feel drawn to her bloodthirsty doctrines.

  ‘‘The customary challenge to a ruling khan is the Trial of Position. Why do you offer a Trial of Possession, as if the khanship were a vial of sperm?’’

  Malvina winced as if slapped. It was all Jana Pryde could do not to grin.

  But the renegade recovered quickly enough. ‘‘I so challenge precisely because of my concern for the welfare of Clan Jade Falcon,’’ she said. ‘‘Merely removing the manifestly unfit Jana Pryde will not suffice. A firm hand must immediately wear the glove on which Turkina’s fortunes perch, without an endless string of challenges and Council debates.’’

  Jana Pryde’s vision washed out in a wave of red. Her first impulse was to leap over the dais and land on the interloper like a stooping falcon. The touch of the loremaster’s left hand, hidden from view by the podium, stayed her long enough for her self-discipline to reassert itself.

  I must keep control, she told herself. I am Jade Falcon.

  ‘‘Your challenge remains unorthodox,’’ Loremaster Buhalin said, ‘‘regardless of rationale. Therefore as loremaster I must for the moment take the decision out of the hands of Khan Jana Pryde.’’