by IIsa J. Bick
Opening her eyes, Chinn looked into the eyes of her tai-sho and then let her sword clatter to the floor. “And so you’ve killed me,” she said.
For a moment, Katana did not reply, and then Chinn saw the bunched muscles of Katana’s jaw relax, her shoulders slacken. Katana lifted her blade from Chinn’s neck, and Chinn saw that the steel was marred by a smear of bright red blood.
“Killed you? No,” said Katana. Then she moved closer, and in the next instant Chinn felt Katana’s tongue tease her neck, linger over her cut flesh. Chinn’s knees went to water, and her breath caught as a sudden wave of hot desire flooded her veins.
Katana took Chinn’s face in her hands. “I haven’t killed you yet,” she whispered, running her tongue along Chinn’s lips, and Chinn tasted the salty metallic tang of her own blood. Moaning, Chinn closed her eyes, drowning in sensation, and she heard Katana say, softly, “Not quite yet.”
5
Imperial City, Luthien
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
15 December 3134
Vincent Kurita ceased speaking, and the resulting silence in the Black Room was so complete that it was almost a sound itself. ISF Director Ramadeep Bhatia was aware of the rush of his breath whistling through his nostrils, the creak of a leather boot as an aide shifted uneasily. Yet silence was also valuable, a tool that was as useful and potentially lethal as the most accurate assassin if one knew how to use it, when to exploit it. Bhatia did, and silence was, he decided, one of Vincent Kurita’s few talents—such as they were.
Bhatia looked through his lashes, his coal black eyes sliding round to the others gathered at the table, the warlords he could observe with relative ease because they sat directly opposite, ranged down the long axis of the smoky glass-topped table. (There were also three irrelevant aides hugging the far wall, one for each tai-shu.) One warlord who had not been the target of the coordinator’s pointed remarks—Pesht’s Doppo Saito—looked decidedly uncomfortable, even a little frightened, and this was probably a good thing because a frightened man was easily tamed. Saito might not be a weakling but he was a worm nonetheless, corrupted by luxury: a florid, doughy man, with puffy cheeks and stubby, bejeweled fingers, fat around as sausages and dimpled at the joints.
By contrast, Bhatia thought that New Samarkand’s Tai-shu Matsuhari Toranaga looked hungry. Solidly built, of above-average height, Toranaga had a square face lit by glittering black eyes. More and more, he always wants more, though his territory is the largest and borders on the Federated Suns. Highly intelligent and motivated by a boundless avarice for more and more power, yet able to bide his time, Toranaga was, Bhatia thought, just the man he might require.
Might. Bhatia’s eyes slid to the third man, a bull: Mits-ura Sakamoto, Warlord of Benjamin, descendant of Ta-hara Sakamoto of the First Sword of Light . . . and a damnable hothead. If he wasn’t so valuable, I’d leave Sakamoto to his wine and women and focus on Toranaga, and what my spies tell me is a rather interesting wild card. But not just yet.
The silence was broken when Sakamoto swallowed hard. “Tono, I must protest. I have nothing to apologize for, and even less to explain.”
And let us see how the Peacock handles that. Bhatia kept his eyes averted, as custom and manners demanded. One did not look to the coordinator for answers until the coordinator deigned to speak, yet Bhatia saw him well enough. The glass was polished to a high gloss; the coordinator was to his immediate left; and from beneath his hooded lids Bhatia observed Kurita’s reflection: ghostlike and a little eerie, the head seemingly floating above the jet shou jacket shot through with rich golden embroidery that twinkled like the light of faraway stars. Yes, Vincent Kurita was a peacock, all pomp and showy feathers and hollow at the core; a bitter pill, and one the Combine had to swallow—for the time being.
“No?” Kurita’s tone was mild, and Bhatia strained to detect any undercurrents—of displeasure or malice—and found none. Bhatia suppressed a sigh. And just what will shake this man from his complacency? He looked up, already knowing what he would see: a broad smooth brow surmounted by raven-black hair coiffed into a high powder puff like a storm cloud (more tinsel and glitter: Bhatia knew that Kurita’s real hair was white as spun sugar); hazel eyes set in an oval, delicate, slightly feminine face just beginning to show its years in the tracery of fine wrinkles fanning from the corner of each eye. Kurita’s features were bland, the corners of his mouth hooked in the quizzical, politic expression of a host who can’t quite place the name of the man to whom he’s just been introduced.
Kurita steepled his delicate, manicured fingers. “You deliberately cross the border into Prefecture I; not once, not twice, but a dozen times? You risk good men and valuable materiel? For what purpose?”
“Purpose?” Sakamoto pushed out a mouthful of air in a breathy grunt of angry amazement. “We are the Draconis Combine, and you ask about purpose? Our purpose should be clear.”
Not cowed in the slightest. Bhatia gave the warlord an appraising look. Sakamoto was big, taller than Kurita by a half meter, with the squashed face and hefty physique of a barrel-chested wrestler going to seed. His bulbous nose trembled with suppressed rage, and a pulsing network of spidery, bloodred capillaries spoke of a man with earthy appetites who took his pleasure in the conquest of women and one too many late-night bottles of plum wine. A drunk and a womanizer, he brays the loudest of the three and makes the Peacock look like a fuzzy dowager decked out in her Sunday best.
Kurita was speaking. “Tai-shu Sakamoto, our purpose lies in the security of the Combine, nothing more or less. We have enough to occupy us. There is no need to expose our people to potential privation and bloodshed.”
“Privation,” Sakamoto grated. “What do they know of that, of anything but their own comforts?”
“And are you so very different, Tai-shu? Yes, true, we’ve only known three decades of true peace after the second war with Clan Ghost Bear, and if memory serves, we defended ourselves. We did not set out to conquer. Since 3102 our armies have been”—Kurita paused—“culled. Of course, we still know how to wage small-unit actions, but do you or any of your troops really know how to wage a full-scale, multiworld operation? What, pray tell, do you know of that kind of war?” Again, Kurita’s tone was mild, and although Bhatia despised Kurita’s pretentiousness—the royal we—he had to admit that the insult was as pointed as the kissaki of a well-honed blade.
Sakamoto opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again, and Bhatia put a hand to his mouth to hide a smile. The man looked like a beached fish that had swum too close to shore and been tossed on the sand.
But it was a man to Kurita’s right who spoke next. His face was square, the skin tanned and leathery from sun, and the features heavier, like the work-coarsened face of a day laborer. But he had the frosted-blue eyes of the Kuritas, and the same broad forehead, though his hair was a lion’s mane of lush black streaked with comets’ tails of silver. “That may be true, Tono, but even you know that a largely unblooded army may be formidable nonetheless. And we’re not talking about an enemy with the resources to mount any serious resistance.”
“Listen to your son, Tono.” An almost silken purr from Toranaga. “Theodore Kurita speaks true.”
“Really?” said Kurita, with a hint of dryness. “And does he speak for you, Tai-shu?”
Toranaga blinked, but before he could reply, Theodore leaned forward. “Father, the Combine is vast. The Republic doesn’t have the will to conquer, nor to defend itself. With the HPGs gone, The Republic will almost certainly fall, the prefectures toppling one after the other like dominoes; we all know that.”
Well played. Bhatia approved. Theodore Kurita might not have the intellectual nimbleness or fiery spirit of his namesake, but he was a prudent, clear-sighted man. A pity he has no heirs, else he might be an acceptable replacement for the Peacock. It was a well-known secret that Theodore’s Chomie was infertile. After four miscarriages there were mutterings about adoption, or else the Combine faced the
unthinkable: a less than pure Kurita as substitute. Why Theodore refused to take a lover mystified Bhatia. Well, perhaps Theodore loved his wife—and that particular display of sentimentality Bhatia considered a fateful flaw. A true ruler never let little things like matrimonial vows and fidelity interfere with the smooth running of the machinery of state.
Sakamoto seized on the brief silence. “Your son is right, Tono. The Republic will not fight, or if they do, they will not do it well and the fight will be brief. Their forces are negligible, and what men they do have are untried and untrained, as soft as ripe peaches.”
Theodore opened his mouth, but Kurita held up a single finger without glancing at his son, and Theodore subsided. “That may be true,” said Kurita, his placid eyes never wavering from Sakamoto’s face, “but we have not given you permission to taste the fruit of that particular tree.”
“And why not?” Sakamoto demanded, belligerent as a mule. “Surely you don’t regard that Vega fiasco last year as a setback? There’s not a shred of evidence The Republic had anything to do with it, and even if they had, why should we let that deter us? If anything, our failure to take Vega should impel us to erase the dishonor! You don’t see The Republic standing in Katana Tormark’s way!”
“Her course is her own affair and will not dictate how we navigate ours, and we say it is not yet our time.”
“Then when? What, are you waiting for a sign to drop from the heavens? An auspicious omen? Every day we do not act is another day the Clans muster the will; every moment that passes is opportunity for the Capellans to launch a new campaign. What better moment than right now, while The Republic’s besieged on different fronts?”
“We have tried.” And now Kurita’s gaze fell on Bhatia. “We have failed. Vega was a sign that we are not as strong as we would like to believe.”
Ouch. Not as caustic a rebuke as other, more paranoid coordinators would have made; Takashi sprang to mind. Still, the barb stung, and Bhatia knew that he couldn’t let the moment pass without an attempt at defense, and most particularly not when this little drama was being played under the watchful eyes of the warlords. “Yes, Tono, we were sabotaged. But we have reason to believe that we were compromised through the misdeed of one particular malcontent, someone with an ax to grind against the Combine, and we are seeking for ways to bring him to swift and certain justice.” (A little piece of flummery and pure fiction, but appearances, appearances: Bhatia was certain they could dredge up some anonymous soul to put to an ignominious death.) “Our intelligence apparatus has been”—and Bhatia chose the word with exquisite care—“hampered by the HPG outage, nothing more.”
“Oh, don’t play at words, Bhatia,” Sakamoto said, his tone just the near side of a sneer. “You and your ISF haven’t the teeth anymore; you’re as ineffective as a toothless old grandmother, and you know it.”
Bhatia heard someone suck in a horrified, melodramatic gasp—Saito, probably, the worm—but Bhatia paid no attention. Instead, he leaned forward, snagged Sakamoto’s gaze with his own, and said, “Take care, Tai-shu, else you might discover that I have no need for anyone to feed me soft, sweet rice just yet.”
The menace was clear, and Bhatia saw by the nervous click of Sakamoto’s eyes away then back that the warning had struck its mark. “I . . . apologize, Director,” said Sakamoto, though he said the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. “I meant no disrespect. I let the heat of the moment go to my head.”
“Indeed,” said Bhatia, and he did not smile. “Someday you may discover that, much to your regret, your head lacks a tongue to wag.” He saw the struggle in Sakamoto’s eyes; could practically hear the ticking in the man’s brain as he calculated just how aggressively—and if—he should respond. Oh, Bhatia’s threat was real enough. The ISF might’ve been scaled down by the original Theodore’s reforms, and those of his son Hohiro. Yet even those mighty rulers had known this truism: One cannot prick a tiger too sharply or often, and expect to live very long.
“Indeed,” Sakamoto finally managed, though his tone was less brutish. His face had drained of color like water trickling through a sieve, and the tremor Bhatia saw twitch at the man’s mouth was not rage but fear.
Sakamoto turned his gaze back to Kurita, clearly the easier target, and when he spoke it was with less heat. “Now is our opportunity to strike. Why do you hesitate? The Republic’s forces are thin as tissue paper, and the miserable excuses they have for their planetary militias—bah! A lowly farmer with a scythe or pike would make for a better adversary. Every moment you delay heightens the perception of our weakness. Look at the Capellans; they’re scum, and yet they honor their dead chancellor as a god and have struck the first blow, driving into the heart of Prefecture V and securing Liao. A prefecture capital! We haven’t slipped a toe across any border since last year!”
“Not counting your unauthorized, illegal forays into Prefecture I,” said Kurita, “no, we haven’t.”
The warning was clear, but Bhatia saw that Sakamoto was too carried away by his own arguments to hear. “Your ancestor ceded valuable lands and planets to a Republic built upon a house of cards that has now begun to topple. They are weak; they will not act, and we must. And what about Tormark? Her family’s disgraced, their lands confiscated, their status worse than beggars, and yet you allow that little girl to use your name!”
Careful. Much as Bhatia admired the man’s tenacity—Sakamoto was like a pit bull that way—first the swipe at him, then Hohiro and now this insult . . . Bhatia’s eyes swiveled to gauge the reactions of the others. Saito was, predictably, nibbling the cuticle of one pudgy thumb; Toranaga’s eyes were hooded in calculation. Perchance a very useful man if Sakamoto fails. And what of our noble heir? Bhatia saw that Theodore was thin-lipped; his cheeks ruddy with anger and . . . was that shame? Bhatia’s eyes narrowed. Yes, he could see it: the quick tick of Theodore’s eyes to his father and then to scrutiny of a spot on the glass table that seemed to be of intense interest. He is ashamed because in his heart he agrees.
Kurita was unruffled. “We remind you that this little girl, as you call her, has managed, with few resources and sheer charisma, to conquer worlds and sway others.”
“Which she has claimed in the name of Dragon’s Fury,” said Sakamoto.
“And which she has now ceded to us,” Kurita corrected. “A little late in coming, and a bit roundabout. The fact that she claims worlds for the Combine reveals our strength, not our weakness.”
“Listen to yourself!” Sakamoto threw up his hands in disgust. “All the more reason to act! First, it was Dragon’s Fury; now she says she battles in the name of the Dragon! Don’t you see, Tono? The people will not care. All they will know is that you sit in your palace day after day, swathed in luxury and decked out in finery, while a female from a dishonored family is the one who gets dirt beneath her nails and blood on her sword. You . . . must . . . act,” said Sakamoto, emphasizing every word. “You. Must.”
“Or what?” Kurita’s hazel eyes were mere slivers now, and when he spoke there was a subdued yet discernible hiss, like the whisperings of a snake. “Do you have other plans for yourself? For us? A replacement, perhaps? If so, then please, share this with us for we are most anxious to know your mind.” He paused, then added as if in afterthought, “Our Tai-shu.”
His meaning was clear: You serve at my pleasure. Nothing less, and certainly not more. And as the mortified Sakamoto stammered out an apology and the coordinator gave orders that there were to be no more unauthorized forays into Republic space, Bhatia had to admit that the man still had a vestige of the old Kurita spark, that fire of history and myth.
A pity that, in Bhatia’s opinion, the flame wasn’t quite bright enough.
6
Imperial City, Luthien
24 December 3134
The teacup was immensely old; stippled brown with smooth, teal enamel. As fingers of scented steam caressed his face, Vincent Kurita inhaled, held the breath, then let go with a sigh. Then he took a small sip, t
he delicate flavors of frothy green tea exploding on his tongue. The taste conjured memories of laughter and his wife and their three children, before things got so . . . grim.
Grim, yes. Vincent eyed Theodore, who knelt upon his tatami and gazed into the middle distance. The balcony overlooked the palace gardens—mossy green hummocks and still pools festooned with green saucers of lotus. Vincent said, “You are very quiet, my son.” They were at their ease, so Vincent felt no imperative to employ the royal we; an affectation that was amazingly effective.
Theodore flinched out of his reverie. “I apologize, Father. It’s just”—and now he turned his blue eyes to Vincent—“maybe Sakamoto has a good point.”
“Indeed? Tell me.” And then, as he saw Theodore hesitate, Vincent said gently, “I am no Takashi. I am secure in your love, my son.” He was rewarded by seeing the tension drain from Theodore’s features.
“I understand your concerns completely, Father. But Sakamoto’s right and you know he’s right. The Republic thinks it’s invincible, with Terra at its center and the prefectures ringing round. But they’re wrong. Devlin Stone’s gone, and whatever he is, Levin’s no substitute. Without something to bind the prefectures together, the core rots, and the tree dies.” He leaned forward, earnestly. “You are the core of the tree that is the Draconis Combine, Father. The Kuritas are the sap running through its veins. But we’ve lost the throne before and might again if you remain silent.”
“Just as I am not Takashi, I am not Robert Kurita either. And who would be my Nihongi Von Rohrs? Sakamoto? I think not. He’s a bully, and his ego drives him to assume too much.”
“Then why allow him to continue as warlord?”
Vincent gave a careless shrug. “Because he serves my purpose. When he no longer does, he won’t be in a position to argue the point.”
