Adrienne Martine-Barnes

by The Dragon Rises (v0. 9) (epub)

  Fagon. They had agreed on that. But Mordell could not shake his sense that something was wrong.

  He was a handsome man, tall and well-proportioned, with black hair and dark eyes. Those eyes were restless now, flickering from the murals to the ceiling to the floor and back again. The presence of the Imperial Temporal Adjudicator did nothing to ease his mind. One didn’t, of course, ask a man of that office what the devil he was doing, landing in one’s provincial capital and demanding one’s presence, however tempting or desirable that might be. It was the Adjudicator’s job to be present at all disputes concerning the great families, planetary infringements and just about anything else which he chose to meddle in.

  So, Mordell waited, surrounded by his guards, hovered over by his secretary and watched by his wife. Halba Armanda Mordell sensed her husband’s unease, but she stood beside him calmly. A beautiful woman, not quite forty, Armanda was tall, full-figured and fair-skinned. She wore a full gown of dark green embroidered along the eight seams of the robe with rust-colored flowers on long, light-green stems. Her straight red hair fell almost to her waist beneath its curious diadem. Her eyes focused on her husband’s restless hands.

  The enormous doors at the end of the hall swung open, and a squadron of men-at-arms wearing the uniform of the Imperial Marines marched in under the charge of a downy-cheeked lieutenant. They marched down the hall, lifted their arms in salute to the governor and wheeled off to the right. The door remained open. After a minute, the Marines were followed by a disorderly gaggle of clerks carrying chairs, desks and recording equipment. They did not salute or even acknowledge Mordell’s existence, but scurried about setting up their gear. Two men staggered in, carrying the Adjudicator’s iron-studded wooden chair. They placed it in front of the clerks’ equipment and adjusted its position at some direction from the Principal Scribe.

  Horns blared. Mordell jumped at the sound. From without the gaping door six robed priests entered, followed by the Adjudicator’s legal staff, twenty men and women in the distinctive black robes of their office. After them came Lorus fan Talba, Imperial Temporal Adjudicator, in his clinging robe of silver.

  Fan Talba walked casually behind his staff, cooling his skin with a pleated paper fan, for the climate of the city was humid even in winter. His movements were indolent, and he seemed to have no concern in the entire cosmos. He was a neutral-appearing man, hair and eyes of no distinctive color, face unmemorable, body neither tall nor short, slim nor fat. Surely a man one would forget as soon as he was gone from sight, and hardly a figure to be acknowledged the finest legal mind of his time. He went to his chair without a glance at Mordell on the dias, certainly with no sign of recognition.

  The Office of the Adjudicator—Imperial in Kardus, Protectoral in Coalchee—was written into the Ten Nations Compact. It was, in fact, probably the best portion of that dubious document. It crossed the boundaries of the members, arbitrating between monarch and president, between master and servant. Its Witnesses might be anyone from peasant to king, for a Witness is an anonymous, sometime job that many were trained for and few actually performed in a lifetime. But as navies absorbed reckless spirits too rowdy for a conservative society, so the Adjudicator’s Office made certain that the inequities natural to such societies did not become oppressive. The unwritten motto of the Ten Nations was “Make litigation, not war.” And when that failed, they let the navies kill each other and kept the planetary populations intact.

  Mordell knew that it was the purpose of the Adjudicator and his staff to create a feeling of uncertainty in anyone having contact with them, but he still felt nervous. The simple fact that the Adjudicator had not approached him told him he was not here to witness some mere squabble over an estate boundary. As Governor of Vardura, he was supposed to be present at all sessions of the court, but he rarely actually attended unless summoned.

  ‘What could it be? Of course, my beastly brother has begun another of his legal battles,’ he thought. He hadn’t heard a peep out of Devar in months, which was remarkable in itself. Perhaps he was suing the Imperium to abandon Vardura as interlopers upon the property of the long-vanished giants. It would be just like him. Such nuisance suits were Devar’s food and drink, and the Adjudicator’s office treated them with the same gravity it treated everything. There, the Adjudicator was studying the walls. It must be a matter concerning Devar.

  The relief he experienced at this conclusion was shortlived. It was swept away almost immediately by the arrival of four squadrons of Imperial Troopers in the red uniforms of naval combat. They assembled themselves on the left side of the hall.

  Then Mordell saw Commander Pers Buschard, elegant in his white dress uniform, beneath the blood-red cape with the black dragon embroidered on it. Buschard marched up the hall, but so easily did he move that he appeared to saunter. The multicolored ceiling made a moving mosaic across the white uniform and fair hair.

  Buschard arrived at the foot of the dias and stopped. He looked up at Mordell and slowly removed the white gauntlets from his hands. He slapped them down on the bottom step of the platform.

  “For two thousand of my comrades, fallen in battle!” His strong voice echoed up and down the hall. He turned and marched away.

  Mordell watched the dragon flutter on Buschard’s cloak as he marched away. He glanced up at Armanda, but she seemed to have withdrawn from him. The hall was almost silent.

  Two squadrons of Coalchee combat troops in blue-and-green uniforms goose-stepped into the hall, counting stridently as they marched. They wheeled into position next to Buschard’s men. Then two officers of the Coalchee Armada entered and strode up to him, each bearing a small golden arrow.

  As they came to the foot of the platform, he recognized Group Commander E-varit. The man looked up at him, the pupils of his triangular eyes narrowed to slits. “For my son’s life!” E-varit said, putting his arrow down on top of Buschard’s gloves.

  “For the lives of eight thousand of my comrades,” added the other officer, placing his arrow parallel to the first. They marched down the hall to their men.

  Mordell could feel the sweat running down under his arms. E-varit, here? What had gone wrong? The plan had been foolproof. Krispin! The bastard must have ratted.

  A security team urged Krispin forward now, ignoring his leg restraints. The Admiral looked exhausted, his uniform stained with sweat and dirt, but otherwise he looked as he always had. He glared at Mordell when the security men let him stop moving.

  Mordell heard Armanda sigh. He looked up at her, but her face told him nothing. Only her hands showed her agitation as she looked across the hall at her older brother, Krispin. Then she looked at Mordell, and he saw something in her eyes he could not define. Disgust? Loathing? Hatred? Not his Armanda. She was incapable of hating anyone.

  He was trying to puzzle it out when the sound of footsteps coming towards him arrested his attention. For a moment, Mordell saw only a blur of red.

  Gilhame ur Fagon stopped at the foot of the dias. In addition to his formal red uniform adorned with the black dragon on his chest, he wore a black-winged red helm of archaic design and red gauntlets. The visor of the helm was shaped like a bird’s beak and shadowed the upper half of his face. All that was visible was the thin line of his mouth and the jut of his jawbone.

  He looked up at Mordell and smiled. Very slowly, ur Fagon removed the gauntlets, but Mordell was mesmerized by the square, white teeth. Putting one foot insolently on the bottom step, ur Fagon cast the gloves down directly at Mordell’s feet, ignoring the white gloves already there and the arrows on the step near his foot.

  “For the lives of my men wasted in battle, I claim recompense!” His voice echoed around the great hall. Ur Fagon walked down the hall to stand near Buschard and some officers who had followed him in.

  The small figure of an Adjudicator’s Witness trotted halfway up the hall, panting beneath its black hood. It looked around, then darted across to one of the clerks and handed over the recorder as if it were burnin
g hot. The clerk smiled at the nervous figure, reached out and patted it on the shoulder, then said something which appeared to calm the Witness.

  The Imperial Adjudicator stood fanning himself for several seconds after ur Fagon had gone to his place. Then he sighed, shifted his shoulders to reset the fall of his robe and handed his fan to a clerk. He placed the black cap of his office on his head and cleared his throat.

  “You may descend the dias, Governor Mordell. This tribunal is called to order,” he said. His voice had a reedy quality. No one sat while the court of the Imperial Adjudicator was in session.

  Mordell rose and offered his arm to his wife. Halba Armanda laid her hand so lightly on his arm that he could not feel it. She looked straight ahead, the diadem of flowers in her hair hardly stirring as she walked beside him.

  “Don’t abandon me,” he whispered.

  “You should have thought of that earlier!” she hissed. “Now is too late.”

  As they took their places facing the Adjudicator, Mordell tried to think of some way of shadowing the truth, of making himself the hapless victim of his brother-in-law’s schemes. A cautious glance at Krispin’s face destroyed that hope. So he waited with as much equanimity as he could muster for the principal clerk to read the specific charges to the court.

  The doors of the audience hall crashed shut.

  It was the purpose of the challenges and charges offered before the opening of the tribunal to diffuse the anger of the complainants and bring a spirit of neutrality to the proceedings. It frequently sufficed, but not on this occasion.

  Gilhame listened to the angry denials and even more furious affirmations of the evidence. He alone offered no comment out of order, even when Krispin resorted to direct lies concerning the events of the Battle of the Vardar Straits.

  “These proceedings are incredible, Magistrate. I am shocked that you should allow yourself to be a party to them! I am no traitor. It should be obvious that this ambitious subordinate of mine has cooked up this entire scheme with that renegade Coalchee. In fact, I do not understand why I am here at all. It is ur Fagon who should be in the dock for disobeying my orders.” Krispin sent little bits of spittle into the air as he shouted.

  “You . . . swine’s rectum!” E-varit roared.

  “Gentlemen!” the Adjudicator said firmly as his clerk banged a staff on the floor.

  “May it please the court,” Commander Frikard said.

  “Yes?”

  “I have here copies of Admiral Krispin’s battle plans and the details of our strength, as well as a similar document pertaining to the Coalchee Armada. Both were issued by his office and are initialed in the Admiral’s own hand.”

  “Forgeries!”

  “It does please the court, Commander Frikard. Give them to the clerk. How did you obtain these documents?”

  “From the ship’s files. Magistrate.”

  “Can you testify that Admiral Krispin placed them there?”

  “I cannot, sir.”

  “Of course you can’t! They are forgeries.” Krispin’s face was red with fury.

  Commander E-varit mastered his anger, for the Coalchee regard truth as one of the primary virtues, and to call a man a liar was a blood insult. “If it please the court, I offer the following documents from my own files. I have here the Kardusian fleet’s position as dictated by Admiral Krispin, and three psycho-tapes on the personality of Admiral ur Fagon. Please note the date upon which these battle lines were transmitted to ine. I believe I received these battle plans in advance of those received by Admiral ur Fagon.”

  “So, you had some spy steal the plans!” Krispin yanked at the restraints on his wrists.

  “If we were not in a court of law, Admiral, I would cry blood-insult and kill you where you stand. The Coalchee are neither thieves nor liars.”

  “You gutless, under-sized weasel. How would you reach me? Have your var-crazed friend hold you up?”

  “Enough!” The Adjudicator snapped. “One more word and I will have you gagged, Krispin. Give the documents to the clerk, Commander. Can you tell the court how you came into possession of these psycho-tapes? From the seal on it, one appears to be the official Navy tape. That should be gathering dust in the Document Center on Gantar VI even now.”

  “It was put into my hands by the Protector himself. He told me that Admiral Krispin had ‘arranged’ for us to have them.”

  “That is hearsay,” said Mordell.

  “Yes, it is,” answered the Adjudicator. “And the Protector is not a person upon whom this court can call for affirmation.” He bent his head to one side to speak to a clerk. The clerk held the Truth Rod of the Witness’s Office in his hand. “However,” he said, straightening up, “Commander E-varit speaks the truth of his experience. Tell me, Commander, have you always enjoyed the Protector’s confidence?”

  The Coalchee did not hear the sarcasm in fan Talba's question. “To some degree, sir. We share a common gran-dam, although we are of different generations,” he said seriously. A sort of sigh went round the hall. Coalchee blood-ties were a serious business even at their most dilute, but first cousins were counted as siblings.

  “Goodness. That close, are you?” Fan Talba give E-varit a tiny smile. He spoke to a clerk again. “The documents appear to be very much in order. Indeed, a more damning set of papers I am hard put to recall. And Governor Mordell’s involvement in this nasty little affair?”

  “Again, I must speak hearsay, Magistrate. The Protector informed me that in exchange for the removal of Admiral ur Fagon, Governor Mordell was prepared to allow the Island Worlds to come into the hands of the Protectorate. As the Magistrate surely knows, those planets have long been desired by my people, their environment suiting us much more than many worlds in this sector. I am only a simple fighting man, and I have no pretensions to a knowledge of politics, but those planets have an emotional place in the Coalchee heart.”

  “I have never heard such nonsense,” snapped Mordell. “The Protector seems to have deluded himself on a grand scale. I am very sorry that you were caught in his machinations, Commander E-varit, and that it is you who will pay the consequences of my libel suit.” Mordell felt he had introduced just the right note of bewilderment and sorrow into his voice. He had decided to let Krispin take the whole blame. The man was lost anyhow.

  Krispin had apparently come to the same conclusion. “May I speak, Magistrate?”

  “Yes, of course. As long as you confine yourself to the matter at hand and refrain from showering abuse on anyone.”

  “Yes, Magistrate. I wish to make a full and complete recital of the events which led to this tribunal. And although it pains me to say this—for my sister will suffer the consequences—the complainants were correct in placing their challenges at the feet of the Governor. I can produce tapes of all the negotiations between the Protector and the Governor. These meetings took place on the pleasure world of Artenii five weeks ago. Governor Mordell’s posture of ignorance and innocence is pure masquerade. I will not be sacrificed for him ... or anyone. I also wish to make clear that my sister, Halba Armanda Mordell, had no knowledge of these matters . . . unless Mordell talks in his sleep.”

  “Be that as it may, wives and children suffer for the errors of husbands and fathers. Where is this documentation?”

  “In the music room at my townhouse here in the city.”

  “Please tell the clerk the exact location of your home and the tapes.”

  “Yes, Magistrate.” Krispin whispered in the ear of one of the Adjudicator’s staff. After a moment, two clerks crossed the hall and left by a small side door. Admiral Krispin looked less tired now. He had come to his decision, and his tension had dissipated. He thought a little sadly of his three daughters, safely away on Grentar. Another clerk came up to him with a recorder, and he spoke into it calmly.

  The Adjudicator looked over his audience. It was not the kind of hearing he enjoyed or which commonly made up his workload. Of course, if he handled it well, it would mean much mo
re rapid advancement than he had anticipated. He looked at ur Fagon, the helm now removed, who seemed to have fallen into a standing doze. He remembered the curt demand for his appearance on Vardura, which had reached him some thirty-six hours earlier. Ur Fagon had cried treason, rightly it appeared, but now seemed to have lost interest in the matter.

  If Lorus fan Talba had any ambition—and men were chosen for the position of Adjudicator for their lack of that curious emotion—it was to be appointed a Law Lord and to spend the balance of his colorless existence researching the history of the legal system which he now represented. That goal seemed closer now, but he was not sure he liked the means by which it would be achieved. He enjoyed the variety of a circuit magistrate’s life, but space travel upset his bowels and he longed for a permanent home.

  “Admiral ur Fagon,” fan Talba began in his neutral voice, “you have been curiously silent in all this. Since you began this matter, it seems appropriate that you should interact in it.”

  Gilhame shifted the helm from his right arm to his left. No man covered his head in the Adjudicator’s court, any more than they sat. He had been staring at fan Talba, speculating as to whether he had been chosen for his job because he was so colorless, or whether the blandness was an outgrowth of the role. He drew himself slowly to attention.

  “I meant no offense to the court, Magistrate. It seemed to me that my former foe, Commander E-varit, and my former allies were sorting the matter out between them nicely. How may I serve the court?” He made a graceful bow.

  “A curious attitude for the victor of Haran’s Deep, I must say.”

  “I appear to have outgrown my youthful need for direct vengeance. Besides, flaying the hide off Krispin would not bring back a single one of my men and women, sir, or Commander E-varit’s. I have learned that not all matters are best served with a weapon.” He smiled at the Adjudicator. “Perhaps I am becoming mellow in my middle years.” He wished that the real Gilhame had not left him with such a record of ruthless violence. At Haran’s Deep he had had three hundred men skinned alive for disobeying orders. Of course, one only needed to do that sort of thing once to get complete obedience and a reputation for brutality.