In the Courts of the Crimson Kings

by Stirling, S. M.

  While the present-day Martian culture, as did its Imperial-era predecessor, possesses a concept of romantic love, this notion is much more detached from reproduction than in any Terran society. Long-term personal relationships and partnerships and erotic bonds may involve reproduction, but more often do not.

  This pattern, and its biological underpinnings, together with the lower level of sexual dimorphism among Martians, probably account for the fact that no known Martian society has ever segregated the genders or emphasized divergent gender roles to the extent common on Earth. Total or near-total equality of the sexes is the rule; even in folklore, there is no memory of a time when this was not so.

  Mars, Dvor Il-Adazar

  Abandoned sections and pits, Northwest Quadrant

  May 27, 2000 AD

  Cell division is occurring very rapidly, Teyud thought. Full function should be restored soon.

  The dream was an unusual one. She could see the cells splitting and the fluids of her body streaming around them, carrying away waste; vivid colors of red and white and brownish green, and somehow the senses of feel and taste were involved as well—salty and acrid. Stem cells of various sorts rushing to spawn and repair damaged and crushed tissue, white blood cells efficiently combating infectious agents from the soil, antibodies wrapping around them and transporting them away to the lymphatic disposal system, new red blood cells engorged with oxygen and nutrients arriving and being supplemented from the stores in her marrow.

  All of it was as plain as looking through a magnifying device during her childhood, with one of her tutors sharing the neural link to the instrument and giving her a running commentary. Yet the whole was immensely amplified, and as she had the thought, her disembodied point of view stepped back, until she had a momentary sense of her whole body—not as an object, but as an infinitely complex process, a series of interactions and feedback cycles that made of it a complete universe moving on its own world-track through time, yet intimately linked with the world outside. And the rapid on-off-on flashing of her nervous system, the delicate holographic structures of memory . . .

  Teyud blinked her eyes and knew that she was awake, smelling the scents of dry earth and warm stone and blood. She felt wonderful—something that was in itself surprising; it wasn’t the first time she’d awoken after being knocked unconscious, when it was normal to have severe headaches and nausea and general pain for some time. Now the only unusual thing was her lack of motivation to rise. She brought her hand to her face and found that the binoculars had crawled away; something told her that they were neatly contained in their canister.

  Could this be the euphoria and sense of patterned delusions said to precede death? she thought curiously. Of course, such reports are necessarily from those who do not die. And I have not seen a narrow tunnel of light leading to the proverbial concourse of those to whom I owe money or other favors.

  Something like a tent arched over her head; she could see bits of sunlight through its golden mass. It stank, as well, a smell she remembered . . .

  That is the wing of the Paiteng that I killed . . . compelled to die, rather, with the Invisible Crown. I wonder if I can do that again? If so, I truly have the powers of a Despot on the board of the Game of Life!

  She probed at her own mind with her will, as if it were her tongue touching a newly sprouting tooth, trying to find the points where the ancient device melded with her own self. There was a slight soreness there, like an abstract abrasion, an ideational wound on the surface of her inner being.

  Do not do it often, she thought. There is a potentially lethal strain involved; to strike so is to weaken oneself. Like the Game of Life indeed! Yet the Invisible Crown definitely seems stronger and more active here in the Mountain.

  The feeling of lassitude diminished, and she turned and crawled out from under the beast’s wing. That led her past its head; the fierce raptor beak was open, with the purple tongue lying in the dust, and the bright green of the eye faded and glazed. She nodded soberly to it. A thousand feet or so overhead, a score of its nestmates still circled; as she watched, a harsh cry drifted down the air and they formed into a circle, cruising lower in a descending spiral.

  “Supremacy!” Notaj said. “To cover! Here!”

  His parachute was still fluttering, draped over a stone wall carved in the likeness of a reedbed, the ancient, delicate tracery broken in spots but still solid and twelve feet high. She had been unconscious for a brief period, then.

  Odd. My wound feels much better, she thought as she dashed to his side and crouched behind the protective bulwark that some ancient noble had commissioned to adorn his estate.

  She worked her left shoulder, and felt only a slight sting and pull where the sword of Faran sa-Yajir had scored the muscle between shoulder blade and neck. Thoughtful Grace healed quickly, and Tollamunes with yet greater efficiency, but that was still startling.

  “Are you injured?” Notaj said.

  “Not at all. Somewhat repaired, in fact. I find the Invisible Crown increases the efficiency of my physiology to a marked degree.”

  He nodded, awe in his eyes. “We had best seek shelter.”

  “This way,” she said, pointing eastward and upslope.

  They had landed in what had been the walled and terraced outer gardens of a large structure halfway up the cliffs of the Mountain—perhaps a series of apartments, or more likely a palace. Nothing remained of the plantings but the shattered ends of glassine irrigation pipes; that and the brownish red color of the soil, which now bore a rich but wild knee-high growth of atmosphere plant. The building lay above them, rising in three stepped blocks carved from the fabric of the Mountain, cut with balconies and broad windows, columns and whimsical carvings of sinuous vines and trees.

  Downslope was sheer cliff, dropping in veils of frozen lava to the inhabited plains beside the Grand Canal two thousand feet lower and miles distant.

  Notaj nodded and whistled sharply. A dozen of the Useful Burden’s crew had survived the fall and the passage through the gauntlet of the Paiteng riders. Several were too badly hurt to move—slashes, or broken bones. Quick first-aid was given, but it would be safe to leave them here. Coercives did not harm each other’s wounded, in the usual course of things; in fact, they generally would do what they could to help—you might be on the receiving end all too easily the next time. That would hold true even between Imperial Thoughtful Grace and the retainers of Prince Heltaw sa-Veynau; the custom was very ancient.

  Whenever the buildings had been abandoned, the departure had been orderly—the exterior doors were all locked. But they had been built before the end of the long peace, and where a modern structure would have shown only blank stone for twenty feet at least, here there were broad, sliding portals of glassine set in runways. Teyud felt an irrational pang as one of Notaj’s crew wrecked the lock with a brief spray of enzyme, as if the indignant prince or lineage head might return, and demand why Sh’u Maz had been violated through so wanton a destruction of another’s property.

  Within was a broad entrance hall walled in intricate patterns of ceramic tile, a marble staircase leading upward and a tunnel extending back into the depths of the Mountain; the air had a slightly musty stillness that meant the ventilation ducts had been blocked as well, to prevent vermin from entering the abandoned structure. Channels also extended upward, funneling sunlight through their glassine conduits and giving a diffuse glow to the colors of the murals on either side. Notaj looked at her.

  “Shall I command a rear guard to give you more time to break contact, Supremacy?”

  Teyud shook her head. Her eyes glazed slightly as she looked within. The bright, hot minds of the Paiteng were mirrored there, and the fear and aggression-anger of their riders. It was as if she contained her surroundings somehow. And could affect them, within limits, like an atanj player moving pieces—although, as in the Game, the pieces could show wills of their own.

  Indeed, with the Invisible Crown one can hold and sway the world. Could I k
ill them all?

  The temptation was like teetering on the edge of a cliff. There was more vehemence in the way she shook her head than strictly necessary.

  “No,” she said. “They will not follow on foot; they are discouraged by their losses and resent the orders that produced them. They will not exceed their instructions, and so will guard this place and send notice to the Prince.”

  Several of the ex-crew of the airship snorted quietly, and assumed postures that subtly hinted of scorn as they walked. Thoughtful Grace would have been more aggressive.

  “Although,” Notaj observed judiciously, “it would be irrational for them to pursue us too closely. We are Thoughtful Grace and highly trained as combat generalists, while they are not. They are specialists in Paiteng operations. In air combat they showed to advantage, with commendable determination and skill; in confined spaces or underground, it would be too likely that we would turn on them and kill them all without difficulty.”

  Teyud nodded absently. Something was trembling on the brink of her awareness. The Mountain hovered in her mind’s eye, not an abstract concept but somehow a representation that was the whole monstrous thing, as well as the modifications that humanity had made in it, from the first terrified bands crouched in a cave to the latest shaft driven or blocked.

  The knowledge itched at her, and it felt dangerous—as if a single misstep would break a barrier and flood her mind with more than it could contain and crush her consciousness into oblivion.

  To extract what I need . . . and there is something more. Something is watching, even now. My father might know what this implies and what should be done; I do not.

  “This way,” she said.

  She turned into a side corridor and pushed open a set of doors of frosted crystal etched with patterns of stylized songbirds in flight—an ancient form of musical notation still taught around Dvor Il-Adazar. She hummed the tune to herself and felt her brows rise in surprise; it was one her primary nurse had sung to her as an infant. How had the words gone?

  A long journey

  Long journey into night

  Long journey into day

  Rest well, tiny one

  Rest and grow strong . . .

  She stepped through the doorway and looked into the suite of rooms as they hurried through; it had been a nursery, she saw, with murals of pretty gardens and children playing with pets and toys. One made her smile slightly; it depicted two humanized migratory fowl with white heads, yellow beaks, and blue robes supposedly playing atanj, one erupting in sputtering fury as it lost its Despot. There was a suite for the nurse, and a few cubicles for De’ming, and a bed for the children, its circular frame still hanging on coated orilachrium chains from the ceiling, though the bedding had long since perished of hunger and decay.

  This had been a palace; the interior was too rich in rare, shaped stone, worked glass, and fine tiles to be anything else, even in the prosperous days of the High Imperial period. Probably all the infants of the staff as well as the proprietor’s lineage had played here—interaction with others of their own age was supposed to help their psychosocial development. Teyud had never had more than a few brief meetings with other children before her own adulthood. Hers was the more typical pattern, particularly in recent millennia, even in view of the peculiar necessities of keeping her existence secret in an Imperial palace where there were more spies than courtiers—if that distinction had any meaning.

  How strange it must be to have not just companions but siblings of one’s own age, as Jeremy did. From his description, it seemed very agreeable, and certainly his personality is extremely pleasant. On the other hand . . . how could his parents do anything but socialize their offspring, with virtually no gap in age between them? If done at proper intervals, the previous one is fully adult and may even contribute resources to the task.

  It was very puzzling; someday when she had leisure, she must make a study of the vaz-Terranan. Ideally one would do that before plunging into a pair bonding with one of them.

  The vaz-Terranan are headlong and heedless, and it seems to be contagious. Although many say that of the Thoughtful Grace . . .

  She smiled to herself as they left the long-silent nursery. Notaj glanced over at her; she could feel that he was puzzled, and impressed, that she was so pleasantly at ease despite battle and pursuit. They came to a pair of doors cast in bronze—far more expensive than crystal—and shaped like a section of a cylinder. They were worked in bas-reliefs that showed a formal procession traveling from right to left; a prince borne in splendor, attendants with feather fans, Coercives in strange, antique gear, De’ming servitors carrying trays of piled fruits. It was covered in a coat of glassine, and as bright as the day it had come from the foundry. The only thing that could have affected it was photons.

  “We shall descend through this disused elevator,” she said. “The shaft descends to the pits below the palace, and there are old water distribution channels now dry—or rather not flooded—that connect southward to the city proper.”

  Notaj was impressed again. “This is information derived from That Which Compels?” he asked. “I would have suspected it, but . . .”

  “Yes,” Teyud said. “If you find this alarming, I must add that it is even more so from my perspective. The Invisible Crown seems to contain a great deal of data—and continuously updated data, at that.”

  He briefly adopted a posture of consolation, with a slight exaggeration to show that it was in the ironic mode. She inclined her head, agreeing with his humor. She was the first Tollamune to find the ancient artifact in more than six thousand years, so she really didn’t have grounds for complaint.

  Nevertheless, it is alarming to have one’s mind altered so. And the changes are accelerating. I am far from certain that this is entirely a positive development in the long term.

  While the brief exchange went on, two of Notaj’s followers had inserted the thin ends of pry-bars into the middle of the elevator’s doors. Two more tallied on to the outer ends, and then they all heaved in unison. There was a screech as the long-disused bearings beneath the heavy metal portals ground into motion, and they slid back. Pieces of glassine pattered down to the marble. The air would begin to attack the bronze now, turning it green and then eating it away with corruption over the course of centuries. So did time gnaw at the Crimson Dynasty’s work, turning Sh’u Maz to the chaos that entropy wrought.

  For an instant, the thought brought a pang of wistful sadness, like a pressure beneath her breastbone. She pushed it sternly away.

  I am seeing a side of Dvor Il-Adazar I never witnessed while I lived within it, she thought. Though of course I mostly saw the more remote areas of the Imperial centrum.

  One of Notaj’s detachment tossed a fragment into the black maw of the elevator shaft. They all cocked their ears forward and mentally counted time until they heard the faint sound of it striking the bottom.

  “Eight hundred feet,” Teyud said. “Nothing has blocked the shaft. And no sand infilling from below.”

  The others looked at her. She shrugged. “I have been in the Deep Beyond and the dead cities for some time,” she said.

  They nodded and returned to readying a line, clipping together the bandoliers of fine, strong cord they all wore on their battle harness. A vision flashed into her mind: Dvor Il-Adazar, but with the Grand Canal shattered and empty, and the fine pink sand drifting against the barrier cliffs as it did over Rema-Dza.

  That shall not occur, she thought firmly, as the first of the Imperial Coercives slid downward out of sight. Sh’u Maz shall be restored, shall indeed be extended to a previously undreamed-of extent. The recovery of the Invisible Crown is an indication of this.

  Teyud snapped a stop-ring onto the line, one that would squeeze the cord when she tightened her hand on it, and stepped off into the darkness.

  “Your report is remarkable,” Sajir sa-Tomond said. “It contains elements both encouraging, dismaying, and astonishing.”

  Doctor Daiyar had ta
ken knee with a courtier’s smooth grace; now she rose, adopted a brief posture of professional acknowledgment to the Imperial Physician, and returned to respectful attendance, hands folded inside the sleeves of her hastily donned green and gold robe. They were meeting on a flange-balcony of the Tower of Harmonic Unity; a glassine cover bonded to the edges and the wall of the Tower behind kept it pleasantly warm, and the view from the four-thousand-foot height over the multicolored majesty of Dvor Il-Adazar was unmatched.

  Squads of Paiteng riders coasted by, the Sword of the Dynasty on patrol. One flew close and banked as he watched, the great wings flashing across nearly the full width of the enclosure; the blue undersurfaces melded with the horizon, as if a piece of sky had become solid. The shadow slid over his face, like a brush of feathers made of darkness.

  The Tollamune considered Daiyar, blinked, and made a motion. The Thoughtful Grace guards hesitated a fraction of a second, and then one of them slid forward with a stool. That was a very great honor in a public audience—an acknowledgment of great service to the Dynasty. Though, to be sure, this gathering was “public” only in the most technical sense.

  “I respectfully disagree with the compliment done me,” Daiyar said, her voice dour as she sat; she was also visibly exhausted. “If I had succeeded in bringing the vaz-Terranan to the Supremacy, then the piece would be doubled and the Prince’s attempts to defy the Tollamune will would be at an end. As it is—”

  “As it is, you have provided me with very valuable data, and placed me in a better position to favorably resolve this situation. The game is not over until the Despot is toppled . . . or the Usurper.”

  He paused for a moment, enjoying the tinkling sound of water circulating in the nautilus-shaped fountain, and the scent of the blossoms that nodded around it. A foot-long bird whose plumage was a rainbow of blue and red and green and black drank from it, then walked across the jade and marble floor to nudge him sharply in the calf with its hooked, nut-cracking beak.