The Bear glowered into his mug, then looked up, eyes glinting. "Stomach and spleen, I think you are wrong, both of you. And I think that before you leave you two will pay me the money you owe me."
"So much for our trusty allies," said the Warlord dryly. He gestured toward the screen. "Still, I can hardly blame diem. That, Your Majesty, is the result of your refusal to act."
Dion stared at die screen, frowned, the foil lips petulant. "You're not angry at them?"
"Angry? Over what?"
"This—this disloyalty."
"Loyalty!" Sagan snorted. "The vapor-breather's translator device wouldn't know how to interpret the word. Your royal blood is so much water to him. Talk to him of your divine right to rule and he'll drift off to sleep in a cloud so thick you'll never find him. Talk to him of money and the mists will part. His star systems are impoverished, with only one resource: people. A mixed bag of human and alien life-forms, they have one thing in common—they want what others have and they don't and they're willing to die to get it. And they're willing to back you because they like the odds."
Dion switched the cam to himself, saw his own image on the screen. He was startled by his appearance. His skin was pale, purple smudges shadowed his eyes. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept the night through.
"Meaning," he said coldly, "that they would back another if the odds were right."
"If the odds were right . . . or if they improved."
Dion heard the implied threat, chose to ignore it.
"As for DiLuna," Sagan continued, "she is loyal only to her Goddess. She despised the Blood Royal once because we worshiped the Creator; she was jealous of the power of the Order of Adamant. Now that the Blood Royal are, in essence, gone from the universe, and the Order of Adamant is no more, DiLuna sees her chance to bring the worship of the Mother to the galaxy. Hers is a holy war."
"How could she expect me to help her in that?"
"DiLuna has a daughter about your age, I believe; a priestess ordained in the worship of the Goddess. Rest assured, young man, that if you manage to overthrow Robes and gain your throne, DiLuna will plot to make this daughter your queen. You might not find it all that bad, however. Her daughters have the reputation for being as skilled as their mother in bed."
Warm blood rushed to Dion's cheeks. He turned stiffly away, but not before he caught a glimpse of the Warlord's sardonic smile. Dion's shame burned; he felt like a schoolboy caught watching a porno vid.
How did Sagan know? Was my unease and discomfort around the baroness that obvious?
Dion was not quite sexually inexperienced, not anymore. Kings throughout the ages have always had their pick of amoretti and the attractive, vibrant, and exciting Starfire was no exception. But Dion's ventures had been less than satisfactory.
The women in whom he took an interest were screened, examined, searched. The evening was directed, managed, staged. The centurions remained standing outside the door the entire time. And although the women had assured the young man in the morning that he'd been wonderful, an angel, he knew himself that he was clumsy, awkward, inadequate. It is difficult to enjoy the softness of silken sheets when you are surrounded by a ring of steel. But at least he'd always supposed that those feelings were private, his to hide and nurse like a wound in the darkness.
Now he saw that even his shame was laid bare. Dion suddenly hated Sagan for knowing, hated him for displaying his knowledge, for using it as a weapon.
"And then, of course, we still have the problem of Abdiel. Or perhaps not a problem for you, Your Majesty. Have you been in contact with him?" the Warlord asked with cool nonchalance.
Dion flared, rounded on him. "Meaning is he the one advising me? Is he attempting to use me?"
"Well, is he, Your Majesty?"
"No more than you, my lord," Dion replied. "And with about the same measure of success."
The two eyed each other, blade tips touched, sparked. It was Dion, this time, who lowered his weapon, stepped out of the circle.
"And where does Your Majesty think he is going?"
"I'm tired. I'm going to lie down."
"You still have a great deal of work to do, sire."
"Work! I've done nothing but work these last three days! I don't count sheep when I try to sleep, I count battalions. Supply lines trail me through my dreams. The flash of laser fire wakes me and the sound of bombs ..." The screams of the dying, the dead eyes staring at me, the blood on my hands, on my uniform.
He bit off the words, shook off the memories. "One problem remains, my lord, that you have not seen fit to address. I've stated publicly, time and again, that I will not make war upon my people. Now, suddenly, you want me to announce cheerfully that I've been lying through my teeth?"
Sagan waved his hand, brushing away gnats. "It is a king's prerogative to change his mind. Say you're giving in, bowing to public pressure. Say the people demand that you free them from a corrupt, defiled presidency. Say you've had a sign from God—"
Dion looked up swiftly at the Warlord, thinking that Sagan might have spoken those last words with some deeper, underlying meaning. He half expected—half hoped—to find the dark eyes staring into his, their shadowed gaze probing his soul.
The Warlord wasn't paying attention to Dion at all. He was glancing over some reports that had just been relayed to him. He had not spoken from penetrating insight, but out of exasperation.
"Two more systems have seceded," he announced with satisfaction. "They haven't yet thrown in with us, but they will, once we make it clear where we stand. Well? Has Your Majesty made his decision?"
The sarcasm flicked like a whip on already bleeding flesh. Dion flinched, remained silent.
"It may not even be necessary to go to war," Sagan pursued. "Fear of the space-rotation bomb will drive many to support your cause."
"I don't want them to come to me out of fear!"
"Then it's quite likely, sire, that they won't come to you at all!"
"It's a terrible responsibility," Dion said softly, "knowing that I hold the lives of billions of people in my care. Knowing that with one word, one command, I can end them. . .
"And how you love it!" Sagan spoke each word clearly and distinctly, moved a step nearer with each word until he loomed over the young man, surrounded him with metal and with flame. "How you love the power, the adulation. Like a bright and shining silver globe, falling into your hands from above. Think back to your rite of initiation. Do you remember the silver globe, Your Majesty?" His voice was low, lethal. "Do you remember it falling, remember the spikes, remember your hands impaled upon the spikes?"
Dion remembered. He stared at his hands, saw the spikes tear flesh, sever tendons, shatter bone, felt the pain flash up his arms, explode in his brain. . . .
"Power is like the bright and shining silver globe, Your Majesty. You won it and now you hold it easily. You see yourself reflected in its silver surface, you see youth and beauty and adoring crowds. And then, suddenly, the spikes! Your hands impaled upon the silver, shining globe. Not so easy to hold on to now, is it, sire? Not so easy to look on your reflection and see it smeared with blood! But you must hold on to it and endure the pain."
The Warlord's hand opened, palm empty. "Or drop it."
Illusion. The silver ball, the spikes, the blood, the pain—all illusion. Special effects, created by Sagan and Maigrey to impress him. An All-Seeing, All-Knowing Being controlling the universe, flaunting His Omnipotence by impaling a boy's hands on a silver ball!
Isn't it? Isn't it, Platus? Dion cried silently to his dead mentor. You and I—we reasoned away God before I was six years old. I am alone. I alone am responsible. I alone hold the bright and shining silver ball. That's right, isn't it? Tell me that's right, Platus!
Dion's hands shook. He clenched them to fists, lowered them to his sides. "And if I refuse?" Blue eyes, clear and bright as silver, looked into eyes darkly shadowed behind a golden helm. "If I refuse to go to war?"
Derek Sagan stood silent.
The blue eyes did not waver, did not lower their gaze.
The dark eyes narrowed, grew darker. "I will not let this moment pass me by."
"And what about me, my lord?"
Sagan raised an eyebrow, lips twisted. "Kings, especially foolish kings, have been imprisoned before now ... or worse. You've been of use to me. You started the ball rolling. It will speed along now under its own momentum."
"I see. You swore your oath of allegiance to me before God, just as you swore it long ago to my uncle. You broke your oath to him. Now you will break it to me."
"If my soul is eternally damned for the first, Your Majesty, it hardly matters what happens to me over the second. I expect you will want to announce your decision this evening, following the banquet that is being given in honor of our guests. Consider well what that decision will be. By your leave, sire."
The Warlord bowed, red cape falling in a tide of crimson over his shoulders. He turned, walked out of the room, left Dion standing, alone.
From somewhere deep inside him, or from somewhere far beyond him, came the voice.
It wasn't Abdiel's. Dion knew the mind-seizer's voice, had heard its seductive whisperings often in the past months. It had been easy to evade him, refuse to respond. He knew the mind-seizer, or thought he did. He assumed he knew the man's game. Offers of power, glory, wealth. Meaningless. Abdiel, after all, could give Dion nothing that he didn't already have.
This new voice offered him nothing. It appalled and terrified him, because it was a voice that he didn't know how to question, a voice he didn't know how to answer. It was still and small, yet he heard it clearly.
Wait, it counseled. Wait.
Chapter Seven
". . . who knew
The force of those dire arms. Yet not for those,
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage
Can else inflict, do I repent or change ..."
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Tusk ran his finger around the tight collar of his dress uniform, attempting, for the hundredth time, to ease its iron grip on his throat.
"Stop that!" Nola hissed out of the corner of her mouth. Champagne glass in hand, she smiled on the arriving guests.
"It doesn't matter to you that I'm being slowly strangled!" Tusk retorted.
"Look at Sagan's officers—Captain Williams, for example. He isn't squirming around like a man with his head in a kij vine."
"Yeah, well, maybe that's 'cause his uniform fits. This damn thing shrunk." Tusk gave the collar a final vicious, hopeless tug.
"That's impossible." Nola cast Tusk a cool, appraising glance. "If anything, you've gained weight. All this high living."
Tusk opened his mouth to make a smart rejoinder. Nola was not the tall and willowy variety of human female. Her short, compact, muscular figure fought a constant battle against pudginess. But she, as Dion's social secretary, seemed to always find time to exercise. Tusk, as Dion's road manager and unofficial guardian, always seemed to find himself in a bar. Tusk looked down at his protruding gut that had once been hard and flat as sheet metal, and gloomily snapped his mouth shut.
"Champagne?" offered a waiter.
Tusk snarled. A look sent the man and his tray of crystal glasses dashing off hurriedly into the crowd.
The banquet chamber, located in the diplomatic section aboard Phoenix II, was slowly filling with officers and the Warlord's guests.
Baroness DiLuna arrived, escorted by four of her female guards, all clad in armor. The metal, specially made for them, fit close and tight to their strong, lithe bodies, gleamed like a fish's skin, and left one breast bare, as was the custom among the female warriors. They kept apart, flashing eyes staring boldly and disdainfully at all the men. The only person in whom they seemed to take any interest at all was Nola, who found that interest extremely disconcerting.
Bear Olefsky entered the vast room, seemed to fill it with his hairy, leather-covered body, and rumbling, booming laughter. His two sons, taller and broader than their father by a half meter in all directions, followed after him, grinning sheepishly at the women and accidentally trampling a midshipman.
Rykilth and his party of vapor-breathers wafted into the room. Faint, breath-snatching whiffs of their poisonous atmosphere seeped out of their helms, causing those standing near to cough and gasp. Captain Williams put in a hurried, quiet call to the bridge to increase air circulation in the banquet hall.
Warlord Sagan strolled about, red and gold as flame, speaking to his guests and darting shadowed glances at the door.
His Majesty, the king, had not made an appearance.
Tusk lifted his chin, tried to stretch out his neck. Leaning down, he whispered in Nola's ear, "Let's get married."
"Sure," she said, smiling at Captain Williams, who bowed effortlessly, gracefully, and smiled back.
"I mean let's get married now, tonight," Tusk said urgently. "That'll be our excuse to leave."
Nola turned, stared at him. "You're serious."
"Damn right." Tusk drew near, caught hold of her hand. "There's gonna be war—"
"You don't know that for sure." Nola looked troubled.
"The hell I don't! They've been talkin' nothing else for three days, building the kid up for it, shoving him into it. Hell go along, he's got no choice. And I ... I just don't want to be around when it happens."
"I never knew you to run from a fight before, Tusk."
The voice belonged to General Dixter, standing slightly behind and to one side of the couple.
Tusk had been so intent on his conversation, he hadn't noticed the older man's approach. He realized how his words must have sounded, frowned, and shook his head. On second thought, he decided he'd have a glass of champagne. He reached out to a passing waiter, snagged one, gulped the bubbling liquid.
"I'm no coward, but there's no percentage in getting involved in a fight that can't be won, sir."
"On the contrary, Dion has a very good chance of winning," Dixter observed.
"Yeah, that's what I mean, sir," the mercenary mumbled, face in his glass. He looked up, met Dixter's shrewd, weary eyes. "If he wins, he loses. I got to admit I don't know much about bein' a king, but it seems to me that it must be hard to keep your seat on a throne that's slippery wet with the blood of a billion or so of your own subjects."
Dixter nodded slowly, understanding. "But he doesn't have many alternatives, Tusk. He's pretty well chained himself to the rock."
"Yeah, well, maybe he has and maybe he hasn't. All I know is I don't have to hang around and watch the eagles swoop down and rip his guts out. C'mon, Nola, what do you say? Williams'll marry us. It's the least he can do after trying to kill us. Dixter can stand up with us and we'll get the kid, too. Make him forget about all this for a while. It'll be like old times. Then we can take XJ and the spaceplane, fly to Zanzi. I should see my mother again before she forgets what I look like—"
"Tusk!" Nola squeezed his hand, stemmed the flood. "I'll marry you anywhere, anytime you say. I'll go anywhere, any place you want, anytime you want. Okay?"
"Okay." Tusk sighed, relaxed, tugged at the earring in his left ear. "Okay. Okay with you, sir?"
"I'd be honored," Dixter said gravely. "You should talk to Dion, though. Don't spring it on him like a land mine. Which, by the way, was what I came over to ask you. Have you seen Dion? He should have been here by now."
"No." Tusk grunted. "Last I saw of him was this afternoon. He looked terrible, like he hadn't slept in days. I told him to go lie down, take a nap. Maybe that's what happened, sir Maybe he just fell asleep. I could go check—"
"No need. Someone else is looking for him, too," said Nola softly.
Lord Sagan had turned from a conversation with Rykilth to speak a few words to Agis. The centurion left the room. The crowd had grown quiet, except for patches of desultory conversation started by Admiral Aks, conversation that went nowhere and straggled on to an uncomfortable end. DiLuna stood among her women, arms crossed beneath her bare breast,
making no attempt to conceal her impatience or suspicions. Olefsky was patting his stomach and looking hungry, an alarming prospect to those who recalled the ravages committed by the big man when he wasn't fed on schedule. The vapor-breather's fog had turned a nasty shade of orange.
The Warlord resumed his discussion with Rykilth smoothly, acting as if nothing were amiss. His voice carried in the silence, the deep baritone calm, level, even. Those who knew him read his anger in the still, unmoving folds of the red cape, in the rigid muscles of war-scarred arms, of the barely shivering red feather crest on the golden helm.
Agis returned. Everyone in the room fell silent, straining to see and hear, waiting with the eager, nervous intensity of an audience who senses that one of the players has abandoned the script and is launching out on his own.
"I don't like this," Tusk muttered. "Something's happened to the kid—"
"Shh!" Nola dug her nails into his flesh.
The centurion, who, it seemed, would have preferred delivering his line off-stage, spoke to his lord in a subdued undertone, made a slight motion with his head toward the door.
The Warlord, an old trooper, apparently realized that such a bit of bad theater would merely increase the audience's excitement, draw out the tension. Better to end it and ring down the curtain swiftly.
"Captain," said Sagan, his deep voice maintaining a pleasant tone, God alone knew through what effort of will, "did you inform His Majesty that we eagerly await his arrival?"
Agis took his cue, delivered his line in a crisp, disciplined monotone.
"His Majesty regrets that extreme exhaustion confines him to his quarters this evening. He trusts his guests will enjoy themselves—"
There might have been more to the message, but the captain, facing his Warlord, suddenly seemed to find it difficult to deliver.
No one moved or spoke or even seemed to breathe. The Warlord continued to stand still, but the folds of the cape began to stir, as if ruffled by a hot wind. One hand, the right one, clenched, unclenched, then slowly became a fist. He walked suddenly and swiftly from the room, his cape flaring crimson behind him like a tidal wave of blood.
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