Hirianthial stared at the innocuous hilt. It was unadorned, a slim haft of gray metal with plain grip and guard. It was long enough for his hand, but that was all; it did not have even a pommel for counterweight or decoration, only a socket as if something was meant to be screwed into it. It looked like a toy… but then, so did the palmers, and he knew very well how deadly they were.
“How does one tell?” he asked finally. “What one is wielding? With so many choices?”
“The color,” she said, and flicked it on with a chime. And then there was a blade there, a flattish beam of purple light. “It’s a solidigraph—that’s how it works. Both the visual aspect and the physical. Here, try it.”
Try it! He was torn between an aesthetic horror at the contemplation of this unwanted upgrade to a weapon he’d been trained to use all his life… and a fascination, impossible to quell, at the sheer unlikeliness of the thing. When he took it from the Seersa’s hand, it weighed nothing; felt like an extension of his palm and yet it was a blade. Experimentation with the settings shifted it through the entirety of the color spectrum, widened or narrowed the breadth of it, and changed its shape from very nearly a club to something so thin he lost the sight of it briefly while turning it.
“How before God does one remember all the options while busy with one’s enemies?” he said, astonished.
She chuckled. “That’s what practice is for. We have a room set aside for exercise and training; you’re welcome to use it.”
“I think I must.” He turned the weapon off, noting the chime. “Does it always sing?”
“You can silence it,” she said. “And you can add weights to the grip, if you want to change the heft.” Her ears flagged. “It’s not ostentatious, I know. Consumer models are far prettier to look at. But the Fleet model can recharge by kinetic energy, when you’re swinging it, through induction in a gem grid, via solar power, or by batteries, and the solidigraphic generator is so efficient I’ve never heard of one running out of power. That’s not a weapon that will fail you.”
“I admit to surprise that you even have swords,” he said. “It was not a weapon I thought common to the Alliance.”
She folded her hands behind her back as he tested the controls. “Oh, there are thousands of competitive sword tournaments, and that’s just sports. We have a lot of cultures that prefer edged weapons, and Fleet itself has always issued its command officers swords. It’s a hold-over from the first days of the Pads, which reacted badly to palmers. We’ve since solved that problem, mostly, but we’ve kept the sword habit.” She took down one of the other hilts and turned it, pointing at the empty socket. “You’re issued a pommel based on which service you’re in, and your specialty. So I would have a Fleet Intelligence design, with the dark stars and our motto, but someone from Fleet Naval would have the hawk and stars, and theirs.”
He thought of the ornamentation on the Jisiensire swords and studied the modesty of the Alliance version. No, not modest. Austere, perhaps. Strange how both his culture and theirs obfuscated their steel. One would not look at the haft he was holding and think something so simple could be capable of slicing off a man’s head, and his House set had looked like museum pieces: relics not appropriate to real use, to real blood, to sweat and a man’s hand.
“Thank you,” he said, bowing. “I will take good care of your weapon.”
“Good,” she said. “I’ll show you the practice room. You can get to know it better there.”
CHAPTER 9
The new day had not been promising. The confrontation with the Northern Galare contingent yet loomed, and much as she wanted to postpone it, Surela knew it would have to be done today. Thaniet, though sent for the previous evening, had not attended her, and the page she’d sent to fetch forth an explanation for this absence had returned unable to locate her. And now Athanesin had begged a meeting from her, and she could only imagine what new triviality he wanted to inflict on her; he’d been animated by the success of their coup and the receipt of the foreign weapons, and had attempted to sing their praises to her far too many times—men! What did the weapons matter so long as they fulfilled their function? Why trouble her with the details of their operation?
No doubt this would be more of the same, but much as he annoyed her he was still one of her strongest supporters. So after breaking her fast, she summoned him to the receiving room. They exchanged courtesies, as two long-acquainted would, and then she sat in one of Liolesa’s fine chairs in front of a warm fire and waited, with poor grace, for the newest lecture on the possibilities the mortal technologies opened to them.
“My Lady,” Athanesin began. “I know this might not be the proper time for this. But I find it hard to wait any longer, and so I will not.”
The first words, aggressively gilt with the man’s enthusiasm, drew down a cloud of foreboding, and by the end of this recitation, Surela’s teeth were clenched so hard they hurt. Would he really do this to her now? Goddess and Lord, let him be working up to some less ridiculous topic, something less outré—
He went to a knee before her and offered a medallion emblazoned with the Sovenil family seal. “I have admired you all these many years, Lady Surela. I knew then that you were a woman of intelligence and wisdom, as well as beauty and wit. And I know you did not honor my attentions because you were consumed by your plan to fulfill your ambitions. You have done so, as brilliantly as I have come to expect from someone of your quality. I know it is hardly usual to do this, but I put my pledge before you, now. Take me to husband, Lady! How better to consolidate your rule than to take a royal consort and beget yourself a daughter to hold the throne behind you!”
Shocked, Surela gave voice to the first objection she could reasonably speak without revealing the depth of her revulsion. “It is custom to choose a niece for heir, and my sister has a husband—”
“But no daughter, no, nor son yet, and she may never. Why hold to customs that no longer suit your vision for our world? You have taken power for yourself, Lady. You could invest it in your bloodline, direct, and have the training of your heir yourself.”
Of course. Because what she most wanted to do was waste her time raising a child when she should be running a kingdom. Surela said, “Lord Athanesin, this proposal is… is incredible. I hardly know what to say.”
“Say you’ll consider it,” he said, resting the medallion on the table. “I know I am precipitous in advancing it to you, particularly when it is for you to make your interest known. But I feel I can serve you, that I would make a good partner to you, a faithful lieutenant to carry out your aims. In fact, before you decide one way or the other, I beg you, give me leave to prove my worth to you.”
“Prove your worth,” she repeated, numb.
“Let me lead your men to Jisiensire,” he said, his fervor lighting his eyes. “And bring them the news of the change in dynasty. Let me prompt their obedience, and bring back a liege gift from them. Think of how useless rebellion will seem when faced with an entire army in parade dress, banners flying! Just the sight of it will resign them to the inevitability of their surrender. To you, Queen Surela. My Lady. Please, let me do this for you.”
Now she stared at him, finding his vehemence unsettling. “I was planning to lead that army myself. Liolesa would have.”
“You are not the pretender queen,” Athanesin said. “And it would not be seemly for you to ride out yourself. You are above such petty squabbles. I pray you: give this assignment to your truest liegeman. I will make it happen for you, and prove to you my worth. Whatever you answer then, I will accept.”
She considered his bent head. The thought of marrying him was absurd. That was one habit of Liolesa’s Surela thought well worth keeping. Men were troublesome and vain and needed constant attention, and given swords they inevitably turned to rattling them at one another to have something useful to do. And babies! Not that she didn’t find them pleasing, but to spend nearly a full year of her life burdened when she had so much to do already? The whole idea wa
s ridiculous. She would never marry him. Telling him so outright would probably be the easiest course, but… it would also create more instability at a time when she needed all the stability she could foster. Acquiescing to his test would also get him out of Ontine, and away from her, so she might not suffer his constant attentions.
“Very well,” she said. “Go forth to Jisiensire, and carry my standard there. I await the results of your expedition with interest.”
“Thank you, my Lady! You will not be disappointed!”
Left alone in the sitting room, Surela sighed. The petty irritations of ruling a kingdom were somehow more exhausting than the petty irritations of ruling a family. She drifted to the window and looked out on the courtyard, waiting until she saw Athanesin cross it, cloaked against the threat of snow. Preposterous. Marriage! As if she would ever. It was the sort of insult she would share with Thaniet… if she knew where Thaniet was. That she didn’t was ridiculous. Could her pages not find a single lady-in-waiting?
She would look herself. And if she found her quarry where the pages failed, well. She would have words with the palace staff.
The last time Reese had seen someone arrive from Pad-enabled nothingness, she’d been a little preoccupied by the pirates who’d been manhandling her in her own cargo bay, so her recollection of it was distinctly fuzzy. Watching it this time made her stomach twitch, and she rested her hand on it out of a habit that being healed of her digestive issues hadn’t quite broken yet. It was one thing to see someone appear over a Pad, knowing that the Pad was doing the magic. It was another to watch a Tam-illee woman appear out of nowhere, without any warning, without any device to reassure you there were sound scientific principles associated with the sheer unlikeliness of her having melted out of the air.
Malia shook herself, then glanced around. She found the nearest part of the great room with a patch of sunlight and crouched down, unrolling the Pad she’d brought into the light. Tapping it awake, she waited for the colors to stabilize to the blue of an open tunnel, then looked for Reese. “All go, Captain. And we should be quick. We don’t want to run these on active for any longer than we have to without a quick way to power them back up. The sun will keep it on standby indefinitely, but frequent transits are going to rip through the power cells, and recharging them off solar alone is going to take forever.”
“Right,” Reese said. She waved Irine through. Belinor paused for only a moment before passing over. To her surprise, Val glanced down at the Pad once, then followed the younger priest without comment or hesitation. She went next, Malia last.
Her first impression of their destination was not of trees, but of the dim gray-green twilight created by their clustered boughs, and of the smell: bright, evergreen and pungent, carried on moist air so chilly it hurt to breathe. Reese shivered and rubbed her arms. “Why does ‘cold’ have to feel different in so many ways from what I’m used to?” she complained to Irine, who was watching sympathetically.
“I don’t know,” Irine said. “But I admit it’s novel feeling like my fur has a purpose beyond decoration for once.”
It was surprisingly difficult to make out the camp amid the trees, despite the lack of underbrush; most of the activity was underground (“Finally, someone who knows how to build,” Irine said), and the men who came up from those hidden boltholes no longer wore the white uniforms Reese had last seen them in, but were dressed in a grayish green color, with hoods to cover their shining hair and smears of paint to mar their perfect white faces.
“Eldritch in camouflage,” she said to Irine. “I would never have imagined it.”
“They seem pretty serious about all this,” she agreed.
“Thankfully,” Reese said, and followed Malia into one of the holes.
Down below she found the bustle she’d been expecting above… and a maze of high corridors hollowed out of the dirt and shored up with wooden beams. She narrowed her eyes as she kept up with the foxine, stepping out of the way of Eldritch on their way to patrol duties. Catching up with Malia, she said, “They seriously had all this built out in the event of a rebellion?”
“Actually, Lady,” said a voice in front of them in accented Universal, “These tunnels lead into the catacombs under the palace and are much older than any plans Queen Liolesa had for them.”
Reese found herself in a small cave-like room, a nexus for activity if the number of doors leading into it was any indication. At the round table in its center were Olthemiel and Beronaeth, the Swords who’d helped her rescue Hirianthial from beneath Ontine. Olthemiel was the captain of the Queen’s Swords, she remembered; Beronaeth’s rank hadn’t ever been revealed to her but she guessed him to be Olthemiel’s Sascha, someone who acted as a second. A less mouthy one, probably. “The same catacombs they were keeping Hirianthial in.”
“That’s correct,” the Swords’ Captain said. “Welcome to our camp, Lady. We have fresh intelligence.”
“Oh?” Malia said, joining them at the table where Reese was surprised to see a small holo-map. Maybe not the highest fidelity, but still much newer technology than she’d expected.
“Yes,” Olthemiel said. “Lord Athanesin has departed with nearly all the soldiers beholden to the usurper queen.”
“Nearly all of them?” Reese said, startled.
“Where were they going?” Val asked from behind her.
Olthemiel glanced over her shoulder, but if he thought anything of her having arrived with an extra Eldritch he gave no sign. “They are heading south.” Looking at Reese, he finished, “To Jisiensire’s seat.”
Irine’s ears flattened. Reese squeezed her arm and said, “Still armed with our weapons?”
Olthemiel inclined his head once.
Irine shuddered. “It’s going to be a massacre.”
“They could surrender,” Reese muttered.
“Jisiensire?” Malia said. “Never. They loved Sellelvi.”
“The usurper queen may have given orders not to have anyone killed,” Olthemiel said. “We haven’t been able to ascertain Athanesin’s orders.”
“She didn’t go?” Irine asked, startled.
“She remains in the palace, last we heard,” Beronaeth said.
“And the prisoners?” Malia asked. “Lady Araelis’s contingent, and Lady Fassiana’s, and House Mathanith’s?”
“Still inside.” Olthemiel smiled. It was the first smile Reese could remember seeing on him, and it was grim. “An opportunity, thus.”
“Let me guess.” Reese rested her hands on the top of a rough chair, flexing cold fingers on the wood. “We sneak in and half of us help them break out and the other half go chasing pirates, and if it all goes to hell than everyone’s so busy trying to figure out which threat to deal with that at least one part of the mission succeeds.”
Olthemiel inclined his head. “You are not new to this, I see, Lady.”
“Won’t that be dangerous?” Irine’s ears were still flat. “We’re talking about… what, a bunch of non-combatants? Women and children, maybe? And it’s cold. And how will they get far away enough to have a chance to outrun the pirates if we don’t catch them all?”
“The risks are manageable, particularly if you are willing to house them. If you are?”
Surprised, Reese said, “Me? You’re asking me? Where would I put them?” She thought wildly of the Earthrise, anchored somewhere half a sector away.
Taylor, behind Reese, said, “We did just leave a Pad at the castle.”
Malia nodded. “If they can get away from the castle, they can flee over ours to Laisrathera. There’s shelter there, and it’s far from the Queen’s enemies.”
“As long as they don’t use a Pad or a pirate shuttle to chase them there,” Irine said, ears flattening again.
“The risks are manageable,” Olthemiel said again.
Reese wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t know. If Surela hasn’t killed them yet, why would she start now? Liolesa’s still showing up with the cavalry. All we have to do is wait—”
“While slavers converge on our unprotected planet?” Olthemiel said. “If they arrive before the Queen does with reinforcements, we are lost. If she arrives before then, that still won’t stop what’s happening now… and if the usurper queen has not killed off the hostages yet, that does not mean she may change her mind… or that one of them will give her unforgiveable insult.”
Reese said, slowly, “I can’t help but think, though, that if we show up to kill the pirates and free the hostages, Surela’s not going to care enough about the aliens to protect them. Which means most of her energy’s going to be put toward stopping the escape. And if it fails….”
Olthemiel met her eyes. There was sympathy there, but it was a thin veil over the steel in his gaze. “It is their duty, Lady, to protect their families, and their world. It is what it means, to be a seal-bearer. If they are called upon to make the sacrifice that rids us of the pirates and our betrayers, then they will have served as duty requires.”
And this is what she had to look forward to as a lady of her own Eldritch property? Reese tried to hide her shudder. Could she die to protect people she was responsible for?
“It is the plan we have,” Olthemiel said. “It is made immeasurably more feasible by the Pad at Laisrathera and your having someone willing to guide us into the catacombs through the secret ways.” He glanced at Val. “I presume this is the man?”
“At your service,” Val said, touching his palm to his chest and dipping his head.
“And you have vouched for him?”
“I do,” Reese said.
Olthemiel nodded. “Then the sooner we leave, the better. Let us discuss the particulars of the plan, and if we are all agreed, make the attempt tonight.”
Reese wanted to cry, I’m not ready! But when would she ever be? And somewhere east of her, near the sea, the people who’d almost killed Hirianthial and betrayed his entire people—people she was just starting to like—were free and, as one of her books would have said, up to no good. The sooner they got in there and messed with their plans, the better.
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