My hand relaxed on the hilt of the blade, and I was about to crawl back to bed, and needed sleep, when the sound came again. A scrape, followed by a clang.
I kept edging toward the window.
As I reached it I was startled by a metal object which flew close by my head and fell into the room. Instantly it retreated, and then caught at the sill of the window, digging in. It was a three-sided hook, with a rope attached.
So...
I crept all the way to the window and peered out.
A figure, dark-cloaked, was climbing the long rope, which reached to the ground. I need only stand here and wait for him to reach a suitable height, then cut the rope and watch him plummet to his death.
I waited, as the cloaked figure scrambled up the makeshift ladder.
I reached out, blade between wall and rope, ready to slice the rope with a savage jerk as the figure drew closer, closer...
I began to cut through when he was six feet away.
He suddenly looked up –
“Clara, no!”
But the rope was cut, and I threw the blade aside and grabbed at the rope as it fell, watching in horror as it dropped below my grasping claws.
“Darwin, I’m sorry!” I shouted.
The rope slid through his fingers and he gave me a savage look as he tumbled down and away, grabbing fleetly onto the sill of the window below mine.
A light instantly shone out, and I heard a scream.
“Darwin, wait!” I shouted down, and by now there was commotion in the hallway outside my door. I heard a key rattle in its lock. It was thrown open, showing the night guard, who stared at me with wild purpose, drawing his sword.
“My princess–!” he began, advancing into the room, but I waved him off.
“It’s all right! Everything’s fine!”
“But—”
“Get out, Stapleton! Please!”
His oafish features finally relaxed, and he withdrew. “As you wish, princess.”
I looked down, and Darwin was nowhere to be seen. For a moment my heart caught in my chest, and I peered at the ground below, fearing to see Darwin’s white, battered body lying in a heap.
“Boo,” came a soft whisper over my head, and I looked up with a start to see Darwin hanging above me, upside-down like a cave bat.
“Dar–!” I began to shout, but he had already pounced, landing lightly on my window sill and jumping past me into the room.
“Thought you had me that time, did you?” he laughed.
“Not bad for an old coot,” I countered.
“Who’s old!” He made a mock show of looking around the room, under the bed, behind the curtains. “Where’s your wet nurse, kit?”
Anger flared up in me. “I’m not a kit anymore!”
“Then prove it!” he laughed, and drew two wooden swords from his belt, tossing one nimbly to me.
“Be on guard!” he shouted.
I went into position, but he had cheated, thrusting forward at me before I had my footing and knocking me down with a blunt point blow to the belly.
“Cheater!”
“In battle, everyone cheats!” he laughed, and in the next ten minutes he sprang from every piece of furniture at me, even swinging from the overhead lamp at one point.
Finally, he sat down on the floor, breathing heavily, and dropped his wooden sword beside him.
“You’re right,” he said, shaking his head as I curled on the floor beside him. “I’m not as young as I was.”
“None of us are,” I replied.
His eyes darkened. “My, you’re serious tonight, princess.”
“There has been much news.”
“I’ve heard.” His eyes sparkled, and he smiled. “But there’s always bad news – and always will be!”
“I wish I could be as sanguine as you.”
He shrugged. “You have a more serious nature than me. Too serious. In fact, without me to lighten your moods, you would look like this all the time—”
He pulled his mouth corners downward with his paws, and shook his head mournfully.
“I wish I could be like you, Darwin,” I said, and I’m afraid my face must have looked much like his own exaggerated version of it. “But I’m afraid I have just too much to worry about.”
“Bah!” he said, brightening. “We all have too much to worry about. It just depends on how one deals with it. You brood. Me, I find something to divert me. In the end, we both have to deal with our troubles – but I’ll bet I have more fun in the meantime!”
He threw back his head and laughed.
Retaining my dour demeanor, I shook my head and said, “You’re the older brother I never had, Darwin. Thank you for being such a good friend these last years. Without you I would have had no one to cheer me up.”
He put his paw on my own, and his face grew serious. “I will be with you in that Assembly Hall meeting tomorrow, and I’ll be with you whenever you need me after that. I watched you grow up from a skinny little sprite, into what you are now.”
“And what am I, Darwin? Sometimes I feel like a skinny little sprite stuck in a slightly larger body.”
“You’re growing up, is all.”
“And awkwardly, at that. I feel all out of proportion. My paws and feet are too big and my body is getting too long and my nose is too small and my eyes are too wide apart and...”
He drew back, looking at me curiously for a moment.
“What is it?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” he said, and for the first time since I had known this jovial young man, this all white-furred fellow save for one roguish black striped on his crown (which contrasted nicely with my own black fur save for a thin white stripe on my own crown), this inventive, constantly moving clown, who never spoke about his own unhappy past but was always eager to share my own woes, he was at a loss for words.
“Are you blushing, Darwin?” I asked in astonishment.
“No, it’s...just a skin rash.”
I furrowed my brow, and held a paw out to touch his face. “It doesn’t look like a rash...”
He shrank back as if I had a disease, and warded off my touch.
“It’s nothing, princess!”
“But—” I said, uncomprehending, taking a further step toward him.
“Please let it be!” he shouted, nearly backing to the wall.
“Very well.” I shrugged, and lowered my paw.
This was puzzling, because he had never acted this way around me before. But I carried it no further because he deliberately changed the subject.
“As to the Assembly Hall tomorrow, they will want you to be silent, but of course you must not be...”
Later, when I was alone curled up in my bed with the window locked tight and Darwin long gone, the way he had come, I thought about what had happened.
And thought on it again, until sleep finally robbed me of all thought, and unfurrowed my brow, and the strange, unknowable stirrings in me were quelled for the night.
Four
If Frane were to drop a bomb on this place at this time, I thought, all of her problems would be solved.
I had never seen so many politicians and dignitaries in one place. From my prominent position, wedged securely between fat, scar-faced old General Xarr and the empty seat that represented my absent mother, I looked out upon a sea of expectant Senators and ambassadorial representatives from the four corners of Mars. The tunic and pennant colors were astonishing, with, among the twenty expected hues of red from deep cranberry to a light pink, were bright lemon yellows mixing with jade greens and blues as rich and deep as the theorized oceans of Earth. There were pastel shades and bold primaries side by side, a rainbow blur that extended to the deepest recesses of the hall. Indeed, the only empty seat was that beside me.
We truly are still a world of clans, I thought, and a slight shiver went through me to think that this republic was still so fragile, held together with little more than...
Me.
Another shiver ran
through me, and old Xarr leaned over and rasped, his breath still redolent of last night’s wine, “Are you all right, princess?”
“As much as I will be,” I said, and he frowned.
“There is little for you to do today, missy. Just sit still, and pay attention.”
“I’m not a kit, and don’t call me missy,” I ordered.
He sat up straight as if an arrow had hit him. “Yes, Princess Clara.”
I felt a pang of regret for the rebuke I had given him, but only a slight one because of the churning inside me.
Newton, at the dais to my right, called for order, and the shuffling and whisperings of the huge assemblage quieted.
“We gather here today,” Newton’s voice, rather reedy but strong enough to ring out in the hall, “to discuss the most serious threat to the Republic since the last rebellion, five years ago. This may, in fact, be the most serious threat our planet has ever faced. Thankfully,” he said, holding his paws out in an inclusive gesture, “we face it together, and not as a world divided clan against clan.
“But that does not decrease in any way the urgency, or the danger. You have no doubt read the literature which was distributed before this meeting began, and know the basic facts of the re-emergence of Frane in the far western wastelands. You have also been made aware that she has secured the Republic’s most important scientific facility, which was located in that area. We are still assessing what weapons and instruments of war she has obtained, and what she may do with them.
“But, believe it or not, there is a greater danger than Frane at this moment. Many of you who have kept up with our work in the Science Guild are aware of our warnings of the last five years that Mars is losing its atmosphere. Slowly, inexorably, the life-giving oxygen of our planet is leaking off into space. And to this point we have been able to do nothing about it.
“Today, rather than bring just bad news, I also bring good tidings. For the Science Guild has now been able to bring one of the oxygenation stations that the Old Ones left behind back to partial life, and we are confident that we may soon go far beyond that and have all of these facilities – which in the dim past initially, we believe, provided Mars with its breathable atmosphere – back in operation. If this occurs it will avert the single greatest danger our civilization has ever faced.”
Though Newton held up his paws for quiet, the thunderous roar of ovation that broke out could not be quelled. He stood stoically while this outpouring of good will, a release, rolled over him and finally dissipated.
“Thank you, my friends, but there is much work for all of us to do. For with this new threat from the west, there is the possibility that Frane may interfere with this planet-saving work of ours. That is why I need all of you to make sure that your local governors secure their own territories, and patrol their own borders, and guard especially any of these oxygenation facilities that may exist nearby. Many of them are in ruins, but they must be protected at all costs. All of our lives depend on it.”
A senator, dressed in the resplendent robes of the K’fry clan, peacock blue and a deep, liquid yellow, stood and asked for recognition. Newton bowed and gave it to him.
“Newton,” the Senator boomed, holding a paw out clenched in a fist, “do you believe that Frane would be insane enough to destroy the entire planet?”
“We cannot assume anything. The woman is mad. It is a possibility against which we must protect.”
The senator sat down, grumbling.
“We have only an outpost!” cried one of the ambassadors from the northern cold climes of Arcadia Planitia. Not as startling as the previous speaker, his tunic was a plain, tasteful, light green fringed in gold. “There are two of these oxygenation stations in our borders, and we nothing to protect them with!”
Newton held up a paw. “Protection will be provided, and troops will be sent to help you.” He looked around the hall, forestalling any further outbursts. “This goes for all the stations. We will do everything we can to assist you, both the government and the Science Guild. This meeting was called merely to alert you to the danger, so you could notify your localities of the threat.”
“The government is too weak!” came a thunderous voice from the back of the hall. I knew that voice. It belonged to Senator Thell, of my mother’s – and Frane’s – clan, the F’rar. He stood up, a massive feline dressed in deep blood red, his fur, like my own, black as night. Even from where I sat I could see the amber fire of his eyes.
“Senator—” Newton began, holding a paw out for silence.
“Let him speak!” came another voice, from the left of the hall.
“Yes, let Thell speak!” from the right.
“Yes!” just in front of me, the oily Prine, of the Sarn clan, clad in dark robes as viscous looking as himself.
Newton bowed, and Senator Thell stood tall.
“The problems we have,” he thundered in his basso voice, “can be traced to one source.” After waiting a moment, no doubt for theatrical effect, he threw out one massive paw and pointed with an almost violent gesture at the empty seat beside me. “And that is it! There is no figure at the head of this government to which all these wonderful delegates can hold allegiance. It shames me to say that one of my own clan, and a distant cousin at that, spends her days unable to cope with her duties. Queen Charlotte grieves for her husband still, as do we all, but while she grieves, and while we wait for a kit to grow into a woman, Mars is run by committee! And in the meantime, the outer fringes of the republic remain soft, and Frane – again to my greater shame, another of my clan who I once fought for! – sneaks in and steals from under our noses the very things we need to say strong. This is not right!”
There were thunderous shouts of “Here, here!” and “He is right!” which threatened to become a din.
Without thinking, with a knot in my stomach the size of a fist, I slowly rose and walked to the podium. I heard nothing, until I realized that the Hall of Assembly had quieted below a whisper. Newton stepped aside, and as I looked out I saw that Senator Thell, his mouth agape, was sitting unsteadily down.
I counted to five, thinking about the things Darwin and I had discussed. He had said I would have no trouble with my little speech, but he was not here now and for a moment I went blank.
Then it all came flooding back to me.
“Esteemed senators, honored dignitaries and welcome guests,” I began, wondering how strong my own voice sounded – surely a pip next to Thell’s roar, “I welcome you today not as a kit, but as your Queen.”
I remember little of what happened next – how Darwin, on cue, appeared with the administrator of the oath, how the Hall of Assembly broke out in cheers and celebration, how the bells in the clock tower in Wells center city chimed, I was told later, for a full hour. I remembered none of this, nor little of the impromptu parties I attended nor the dignitaries I was introduced to nor the senators who kissed my ring. I remember briefly sitting on the throne and then, recalling that my grandmother Haydn had refused such pomp, sending it away with a wave of my paw. I remember dancing with Darwin before he was spirited away by another female, and his disappointed look when that happened. I remember dining on delicacies, and the receiving lines, and the blaring of trumpets, and playing (very briefly, and with mistakes) on the tambon while those around me clapped politely, and I remember drinking wine, though not for the first time (I had often stolen a sip at one function or other) and I remember the bells chiming again at midnight as Newton, sensing my exhaustion, removed me from the festivities with apologies all around and whispered in my ear, not without admiration, I thought, “That was an act of theater worthy of your grandmother!” and I remember falling asleep almost immediately with all of these things swirling in my head like those waltzing dancers, and I remembered last of all, amid all these dancing thoughts, I am Queen of Mars.
Five
It was the next day that old Xarr died.
He took to his bed, I learned later, during the coronation ceremonies. Never one t
o pass up good wine, or bad for that matter, he had been thoroughly inebriated the last time I saw him, dancing badly with a senator from my own home district, Argyre. She was homely and stiff as a board on the dance floor, but this had not deterred the old general from circling her in a rough stumble that was anything but graceful.
But he had looked happy, and fit for his years – and then I was summoned to his bedchamber the next morning with the news that he did not have long to live.
Newton was there, scowling, and when I entered old Xarr fought to rise from his bed, and growled weakly.
“Let me address my queen!” he shouted hoarsely, and laid back exhausted but smiling as I stood over him.
“Your majesty,” he croaked out, his scar ravaged face even more grotesque, shrunken, the patchily furred features pulled back in a rictus of death.
I turned to Newton and said, angrily, “What happened to him? This can’t be some sudden illness. I saw him not ten hours ago fit and hale as ever.”
“We don’t know, your majesty,” Newton said in a low, even voice, and by the hooded flat look in his eyes, and his grim visage, he told me that there was more to the story he would not tell me now.
I whispered, “Is there any hope for him?”
“No,” was his curt reply.
A claw drew me around, and I turned to see the old general fighting off a spasm of pain which bowed his body as his paw gripped me.
“Your majesty!” he hissed.
The episode passed, and he lay back, exhausted, and smiled weakly at me again.
“Come closer, sprite,” he said.
“You may not call me that,” I chided him affectionately.
“Of course I can.” And for a moment his eyes closed, and I thought he was gone.
I bent closer, smelling a strange odor from his lips – an herb or medicine, vaguely weedy. It reminded me vaguely of another odor I knew...
He opened his eyes and looked straight into mine.
Queen of Mars - Book III in the Masters of Mars Trilogy Page 2
