by T S Hottle
The man shook his head, looking down at the ground. “I’ll never understand the Realm’s silly laws. And we’re a monarchy, just like you.”
Not like us, thought Tishla. We don’t see war as a reasonable means of first contact.
“I am Delda Rallis,” said the man. “Kai calls me Rall, which means you may call me Rall.” He pointed at his scar. “You probably noticed this. That whelp gave me this in a border skirmish when he was still a…” His eyes did a rolling motion as he paused. “Well, the humans call it a ‘squire,’ but I’ll be damned if I can make heads or tails of your feudal system. Why don’t you just sell titles like us or do away with them like the humans?” He looked past her at the window. “Well, these humans. A few of them pine for hereditary in-breds ruling them, but thank Unseen not here.”
Tishla reached up and traced the scar down Rall’s face. “So this is the wound he gave you.” She took out the dagger, still secured in its sheath. “Then you recognize this.”
Rall’s somewhat amenable expression vanished. “A man sends me a fine weapon like that, especially a Gelt, it means he’s sending a message.” He picked up the dagger and admired its sheath, ornately carved ivory from a large reptile predator that prowled the forests of the Throneworld. He slid the dagger out and stared at it. “And if Kai is sending this very one to me, then he’s calling in a favor. Which means he’s worried he’s about to die.”
Tishla started to speak, but her throat tightened, cutting off her voice.
Rall nodded solemnly. “Then again, lovely thing like you, he probably wanted to Free you since it’d be easier than to have you stay willingly. Tell me, are you the real brains behind his estate?”
That made her relax in this strange alien’s presence. “He confides in me. I agreed to be purchased in exchange for my honors in genetics. I help him govern his colony.” She omitted the second world Laral and Marq promised to secure for him. For all she knew, the people there probably fought back.
“Oh, dear Presence, he’s gotten into planet wrangling. Bet he’s at war with one of those Warrior Caste idiots, too.” He motioned for her to follow him. “Come on. Let’s see if I can find out what’s happened to him. Then we’ll see about getting you home. I may even take you myself.”
“Don’t you have duties here?”
“What duties? Selling humans round trip packages to Laputan space? Tell me, have you ever been to the Guardianship outside of Ramcat’s orbital city?”
***
The authorities came looking for her a few hours later. Delda Rallis stalled them as his staff tried to bundle her into a taxi to the spaceport. She could overhear what the police were saying as they rushed her out the door.
“We cannot find Marq Katergarus,” said a female officer, one who sounded like she could roll a few Warrior Caste types in a fair fight. “And we know the Gelt woman came here.”
“This consulate is sovereign territory,” said Rallis. The door closed behind her before she heard whatever else was said.
The taxi smelled of various human body odors, none of which Tishla found pleasant. Already battling evening sickness from her pregnancy, she feared she might vomit if she had to stay in the cab too long. Rall’s assistant, whom Tishla soon learned was called Chosay, piled in with her. “Spaceport. Diplomatic entrance. Drive.”
Tishla noticed an intense light scanning both her and Chosay’s faces. “Gelt detected. This passenger is a fugitive.”
“This passenger is under protection of the Laputan Guardianship. Now move it, or your owners will be guilty of a felony under Compact law.”
The taxi sat there as its primitive AI turned that little fact over in its quantum-rigged mind. Then it pulled out into traffic.
“It can’t report you,” said Chosay. “You’re under a diplomatic umbrella, at least until someone intervenes.”
“Intervenes?”
“If they think you killed that man…”
“I cut him, but just enough to scare him. On a Gelt world, he’d not only be dead, but I’d be able to present his scalp as evidence if I were tried.” She looked around. “Do you know what happened to Marq Katergarus?”
“We do. After you attacked him, the police had some questions for him.”
“Why?”
“Have you heard of another entity called ‘Juno’?”
Tishla’s blood ran cold at the mention of Juno. “No.”
Chosay looked at her strangely. “Me, either, but apparently, they want to talk to him about it really badly.”
Tishla wondered what exactly it was Marq had tricked Kai and Laral into. “Do you know anything about ‘potatoes’?”
Chosay laughed. “Yes. We fought a war with the humans over them. Why?”
FIVE: Homecoming
“Well, well, well,” said Lattus Brac as he stepped out of the boarding tube. They were on Ramcat, or rather Araneeya, Ramcat’s giant orbital city. “If it isn’t my new concubine.” The pudgy Gelt sniffed the air. “And you’re pregnant. Lovely. I always wanted a son.”
“So Kai really is dead?” asked Tishla.
“Afraid so. Laral challenged him over the new world, Cyal.” He shook his head. “Kai had a brilliant mind. His sword work… He had a brilliant mind.” Brac strode over to her and wrapped his arm around her waist. “Guess that makes you my property. At least until your indenture contract… What?” he said, noticing the look on Tishla’s face.
“The nanites are still in my blood,” she said. “Go on. Activate them. Put that virtual slave collar on me.”
“Well, if you insist.” Brac held up his forearm, turned the back of his hand in toward himself and fingered a small bump on his wrist. The nano-tattoo embedded in his hand gave him a message. “Deed nullified. Target person is Free due to transfer of deed to a citizen of a nullifying authority.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Compact, Brac. They have banned slavery, even our benign version of it.” She patted him on the cheek. “And as the mother of Kai’s child, I am Kai’s heir. Which makes you subordinate to me.” She pinched the cheek she had just patted. “But don’t worry, my new little brother. Daintier things than me have felled mightier trees than Laral Jorl. Tell me, do we still have possession of Hanar?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, that makes me their queen. Are there any Tianese left alive?”
“Some. Why do you care? We’ll have them wiped out by the end of the turn.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I want them alive. And I want them allied with us. And I want the best swordsman in the Realm you can find.”
Brac stepped back and looked at Tishla, already bewildered to find himself subject to the whims of a former concubine. “But why?”
Tishla withdrew Kai’s dagger from the coat Athena had given her. “Because, my new little brother, I am going to open Laral Jorl’s throat and cut out his testicles. Then I’m going to cut his heart from his chest and eat it while it’s still beating.”
***
Laral Jorl paced the deck watching the blackness of space for…
Well, he expected seven large colony transports, all smooth saucer-like craft, to emerge from projected wormholes. So far, that had not happened. He gazed at the back of his hand, where the live tattoo mocked him with his homeworld’s time. The transports should have arrived over two hours earlier.
“My Lord,” called out one of the technicians, “wormhole opening thirty degrees starboard, eighteen degrees nadir.”
Naturally, the wormhole would be blurred on the display. Almost no primate species Laral knew of could look directly into a wormhole without becoming ill. The Gelt, he lamented, were particularly susceptible to that phenomenon. Even the Warrior Caste had to trust in technology when it was there and look away or shut their eyes like a cub when it wasn’t. The wormhole (or rather, the blurred mask of it) disappeared, leaving behind…
A yacht? The craft that appeared had markings of the Realm but was
no larger than an orbital transport. Beanstalks, which moved people and cargo between orbit and the ground on some worlds, had bigger lift compartments.
“Where are the colonists?” asked Laral.
“Message coming through,” said the technician. “It is Lady Shorees from Council.”
The name made Laral smile. Shorees had once commanded this very vessel for him. A cone of light appeared at the center of the command deck, Shorees’s slender figure materializing within. “General.”
Laral crossed his arms across his chest and bowed. “My Lady, it is…”
“Council summons you to return to Hanar,” Shorees continued, not even acknowledging his greeting. The hologram flickered. “An heir of the Lattus family has contested your challenge against Lattus Kai. You must answer.”
“But we are about to…”
“Your transports are being held at Essenar until this dispute is resolved,” Shorees continued. “The transport now docking with your vessel is automated. You have one hour to board before it undocks and returns to Hanar.” Shorees’s arm disappeared as she reached for something out of view of her recorder. When it reappeared, it held a scepter every Gelt knew from childhood. “The Sovereign Himself has ordered this. If the transport returns empty or fails to return at all, you will forfeit possession of Essenar, of Hanar, and, quite possibly, your original holdings.” The hologram disappeared.
Blood thudded in Laral’s ears. His temples pounded. “Evart!”
The short, pudgy man whose gray skin showed the purple lines typical of heavy drinkers appeared at his side. “My Lord?”
“I have been summoned by Council. Leave Master Visni in command of the fleet. You go to the surface and take command of our… troops.”
“Shall I setup in the northern city?”
The last thing Laral wanted was Evart using the drones in the northernmost city for target practice.
“I want you in the plains,” said Laral. “Try to keep these dregs from tearing up the place once there are no more Tianese to shoot at. I will be returning to Hanar to resolve an important matter for the Sovereign.”
Evart’s expression brightened at the word “Sovereign.” “Does this mean…”
“It means that Cyal had better be pacified when I return. Otherwise, I will pacify you.” He turned and marched off the command deck.
***
The heat rose from the tarmac as Laral stepped off the shuttle. The air hit him in the face like a wet blanket. Essenar might have been a rainy, mud-clogged acidic hell, but no one had warned him of Hanar’s oppressive summers, at least where the Tianese had settled.
No honor guard met him. No music played. His own civilian governor made no appearance. Instead, two law enforcers and a short little man in the gray robes of the Legal Caste awaited him.
“General Jorl Laral,” said the little man. “You are required to surrender your sword to these enforcers until further notice.” He glanced at one of the law enforcers. “Take him. Place him under house arrest until Council and the heir arrives.”
“Has anyone pointed out that Lattus Brac already took his share of his family’s inheritance?” asked Laral. “That he forfeited his share of Kai’s estate?”
“I think you know less about your situation than you think, General.” He reached in and withdrew Laral’s sword from its sheath. “Blooded. I take it the most recent blood is that of Lattus Kai? Or did you find someone else who got in your way while at Cyal?”
The enforcers bound him and led him away.
It took him a few moments to realize the enforcers were human.
***
They kept him in a slum. Four rooms, a water closet, and no servants. He would have to cook his own food, such as it was.
“These people live like animals,” he said as his guard escorted him inside. “Disgusting apes.”
The guard said nothing. Why would he? He clearly didn’t speak the Mother Tongue. “So they feed you well, ape man?” he said in his unpracticed Tianese. “Where’s your leash?”
The guard thrust his fist into Laral’s face. Then he spat at him. “Butcher.”
It took a second to realize that the alien was not speaking the Mother Tongue, but that degenerate language Laral had extrapolated from several prisoners. It sounded different coming from an angry person. “How…?”
The alien kicked Laral between the legs. He acted surprised that Laral remained standing. “Oh. Right. That’s not where you keep your balls.” He punched Laral in the throat.
For the next ten minutes, Laral felt like he was suffocating.
*****
Brac finally appeared around sundown. He looked around the shabby settler’s dwelling that now served as Laral’s prison. “Still taking all the prime property for yourself, I see.”
“You realize this challenge will result in your death,” said Laral. “You’ve never been able to handle a sword without hurting yourself.”
Brac moved into the dwelling’s tiny kitchen, not even a room unto itself and helped himself to some Tianese fruit. “Have you tried one of these? The Tianese call them ‘oranges.’ They’re delicious, if a bit acidic.”
Laral grabbed him by the arm. “What is it you want, Brac? You’re lazy, indifferent. To you, High Born status is a burden. Why are you doing this?”
Brac set the orange aside, its juice now leaking out onto the counter, and removed Laral’s hand from his arm. “First of all, don’t touch me. Those humans guarding the door to your house? They know stamping out their colony was your idea. They’ve even forgiven Kai now that they know his heir.”
“How did you achieve this? You’ve never shown the slightest inclination toward leadership.”
That made Brac laugh. “You underestimate me, General. I guess you get to keep your rank. Anyway, you forget. I can talk a High Born daughter out of her dress and into letting me kneel with her all night long.” He flicked his tongue at Laral, an obscene gesture in Gelt culture. “This tongue has tasted the daughters of everyone from the poor dirt farmer praying his creeper weed will cover his field to one of the Sovereign’s nieces.” He stopped as if suddenly lost in thought. “Oh, I forgot to mention, the Sovereign will be presiding over your retrial. Guess you wish you showed my brother more respect now, don’t you?”
“You will not win this challenge, Brac,” said Laral. “You’ll be dead, and I’ll have your estate, your brother’s, and your parents’.”
The smile Brac gave him in return chilled Laral in a way nothing else could, except the words that followed. “I never said I was the heir, Jorl. In fact, that’s what I came by to tell you.” He grabbed the half-eaten fruit and headed out. “Hey, thanks for the orange. I’m hoping we can make a treaty with the humans. I want more of these.” He looked at it. “If not, I hear Metis is pretty nice. They apparently grow these there in vertical farms.” He patted Laral on the shoulder. “Be nice to the humans. Maybe they won’t punch you in the throat again.”
***
“Here’s your knife, butcher.”
The hew-maan taunting Laral sported a weapon of some sort, bluish-black metal with a mechanical trigger and a long tube. Stripped of his armor, Laral decided not to push back against it, puny as it was.
The hew-maan shoved a short sword, nearly a child’s weapon, at him. It was a child’s weapon. Laral recognized his own personal crest on the sheath. “What is this?”
“Hell if I know, butcher,” said the hew-maan. “I only know your own people are mad at you, and some nice lady is giving us our farms back.”
Lady? What lady? Did Brac find a female Warrior to defend his challenge? But then Brac had said he wasn’t the heir in question. Then who…?
Laral dare not let the thought tickling his brain form.
***
Kai’s challenge had taken place in the square of Hanar’s makeshift main settlement. Not this time. For this challenge, two hew-maans and two Gelt Warriors escorted Laral to one of the saucer-like colony transports that hovered over t
he plains just outside of what was once the main settlement. What usually served as the transport’s processing center had been cleared into an arena. Thousands of Gelt and a smaller number of hew-maans filled the temporary seats ringing the room. The Gelt stamped their feet and chanted. They did not sound as triumphant as they had a few weeks earlier.
A long makeshift dais had been setup at the far end of the room. Upon it sat Council, nine members on each side with the Sovereign sitting dead center. Laral tried to mask his contempt for the Sovereign. He remembered him when he had a name, when Laral’s own sister cared for the young Heir Apparent, when that little boy cried and sniveled because the bigger kids beat on him. How could such a soft man lead such a hard people?
“Laral,” He said. “You have drawn Council here for a second Confab. This time, you have drawn the Presence Itself.”
“The Presence Itself,” a royal affectation dating back millennia, always annoyed Laral. The Sovereign seemed to relish it.
Under a holo projector’s cone of light, an image of the Tianese man known as Marq appeared.
“Tell me,” said the Sovereign, “who is this man?”
“He is Marq Katergarus,” said Laral neutrally. “He is from Juno.”
“Juno is not a world,” said the Sovereign Consort. She did not sit with her husband, or rather Her Husband, because she herself represented the Scholar Caste on Council. “Juno is merely an entity, of what kind no one here is entirely sure.”
“Tell me, General,” said Fulsaad, leader of the Medical Caste, “do you know what happens to an indentured servant when his or her Master takes that servant into space where the authority does not recognize our system of servitude?”
“Why should I care?” asked Laral.
“We remind thee that thou art the defendant,” said the Sovereign in the Archaic Tongue. “Thou wilt answer questions as put to thee.”
