In the Courts of the Crimson Kings

by Stirling, S. M.

  “Nevertheless, it is the course we will follow. Dispatch one of your personnel as a messenger with the recording; the rest will follow me.”

  “You are taking such risks for a Terran?” Notaj said; he was scandalized, and several of his followers looked at each other doubtfully.

  “Am I now invested with the Tollamune authority, or not?” she said. Then she quirked her lips. “I am Despot on this board, Commander of the Sword of the Dynasty.”

  That depends on whether one speaks of strict accord with the regulations, or political reality, she thought.

  Thoughtful Grace were loyal, yes, but it was an independent loyalty. They would follow what they thought to be the best interests of the Crimson Dynasty; obedience to the actual desires of an incumbent did not always take precedence. And an untried, unknown incumbent who had established no personal aura of respect and command . . .

  “With respect, Supremacy—” he began.

  “Obey!” she said, cutting him off and using the absolute-imperative tense. Then more gently: “This individual will be my Consort.”

  The world seemed to twist slightly, as if it were behind a crystal screen and the two were moving in opposite directions. Sight split along fracture lines; pain twinged in her skull, lancing to the stem of her brain. There was a sense of the irrevocable in her mind, like watching the fall of boulders when a glacier melted away from the side of the Mountain.

  Notaj’s face was wooden as he inclined his head and clasped hands inside the sleeves of his robe.

  “I obey, Supremacy.”

  That Which Compels, Teyud thought with a shiver. I am apprehensive. Such power will grow on one, like a tokmar sniffer’s habit. Though simply to possess the Ruby Throne is power enough.

  Chinta sa-Rokis sighed as she saw the row of Thoughtful Grace in the crimson-edged black armor of the Sword of the Dynasty spread across the loading bay where her personal airship was docked. Her own Coercives looked at each other and then at her; their commander gave a very slight shake of the head. Several of the Imperial troopers carried short stubby launchers for fungus grenades. That was a statement of the seriousness of their intent; so were the recording birds and eyes on their tripods.

  Hopeless, then? Chinta thought, and asked by arching her brows and tilting her head slightly to one side.

  Her commander of Coercives spread his hands slightly in apology and reply.

  But I was never inclined to direct violence in any case. It would be futile and vulgar to play at being a general at this terminal point.

  The sun-dappled stretch of marble between her and the circular docking collar normally would be occupied by the deferential captain of the Gracious Leisure, perhaps with servants carrying trays of spiced juvenile canal shrimp or sweet blossom-paste on little pastries . . .

  Suddenly the movement of sunlight on stone had an unbearable poignancy, a memory of delights so intense as to be visceral; she remembered the first time she had been brought here by her parents, fifty years ago, as young as her own daughter was now, full of the excitement of the treat and the promised travel to their country house. Even the memory of her emotions at that time was sharper than most of her life since—a bright, primary color next to muted, faded pastels. Not even the raw salt of fear could be as intense.

  The entire crew of the airship was there now, kneeling in rows under the muzzles of the dart rifles. A slight, sulfurous smell of charged guns supplanted the usual scent of resin-bud incense. Ahead of the Imperial Coercives stood a high officer, the mandibles and faceted eyes of her lowered visor no more expressionless than the eyes of her subordinates above their fiber-bound ceramic battle masks. The hand resting on the hilt of her sword tapped fingers once, twice.

  You have time, that said. But not a great deal.

  “No need to roll the dice to see how this move will eventuate,” Chinta murmured to herself. “A great pity.”

  The De’ming carrying her daughter whimpered and clutched the silent infant to her. The Supervisor of Planetary Water Control looked behind her at her household, and those of her confederates. There was fear among those of lower status; terror lest the Imperial troops be given orders to make a clean sweep. The other High Ministers sighed as she had and adopted postures of resignation, with heads bent and hands held palm-down by their waists.

  Chinta clasped hands to wrists within the sleeves of her taupeand-gold traveling robe and strode forward. At the proper distance from the Thoughtful Grace officer she took a half-knee, as one must before the Emperor’s personal messenger at such a time.

  The soldier raised her visor and returned the courtesy with a crossing of wrists: With regret, I am bound by the Tollamune Will, as by bonds of adamant.

  A polite fiction; she could tell from the hard yellow eyes that this was not a reluctant obedience. There was always that edge of intelligent savagery in the Thoughtful Grace, a swift directness like a swooping Paiteng—they were a sharp-edged tool that only the Ruby Throne could wield safely, and would be a terror worse still without its restraint. Nevertheless, it was better to die in the presence of courtesy and ancient ritual than by brusque violence; one’s last moments should have some dignity.

  “I am High Minister Chinta sa-Rokis, of the Ministry of Hydraulic Works, by rank Supervisor of Planetary Water Supplies.”

  “I am Adwa sa-Soj, Second Prime Coercive of the Sword of the Crimson Dynasty, currently commanding the Household Troop.”

  “You show punctilious courtesy, according to the precepts of Sh’u Maz, Adwa sa-Soj, as might be expected of a Thoughtful Grace of high rank and good lineage.”

  “Your own deportment, Chinta sa-Rokis, is also a model of Sustained Harmony—in your response to current circumstances, at least.”

  “The terms of the Vermillion Rescript, swaying the Real World?” she asked.

  “Unconditional Apology is required from the following,” the officer said, and read the names.

  There will be many promotions, Chinta thought mordantly.

  “You, High Minister, in recognition of your long service to the Dynasty and the record of your lineage, are, as you see, at the head of the list.”

  I am the most dangerous and the most likely to successfully flee beyond the current boundaries of the Crimson Dynasty’s control, she thought. Still, recognition of one’s importance is always soothing to the ego.

  “There is no supplementary direction to extirpate the lineages?” she inquired in a tone of polite interest. “Not even to the first degree?”

  “No. Infants will be required to reside at court for socialization, but at adulthood a reasonable share of the personal properties will be restored and they will be allowed to perpetuate your lines.”

  “Tollamune!” Chinta said in a crisp ringing tone, taking knee, and the others echoed her. “The Emperor is both firm and magnanimously free of personal spite.”

  “This is both an essential courtesy and, in the main, objectively true; at the risk of seeming to admonish, I state—hypothetical-conditional tense—that event and randomness would in all probability have fallen out more favorably from your perspective if you had kept this fact firmly in mind at all times. Consider the length of the Supremacy’s reign.”

  “I concede that my previous analysis is discredited by event and randomness. From a personal viewpoint, however, this has now become largely irrelevant and I am disinclined to prolonged meditation.”

  The other ministers walked forward and knelt beside her. The chief Coercives of their households gathered and looked a question at the Thoughtful Grace commander, who nodded permission.

  “I acknowledge that your Coercives have not defected,” she said. “Nor have they withheld knowledge of an approach by any under my command from their employer.”

  Another formality, to assist their career prospects. They most certainly would have defected if I were foolish enough to order a battle, nor would any rational being have blamed them. This fight was lost when our assassin failed. Against the entropy embodied
in randomness, there is no victory.

  Aloud, Chinta said, “They have fulfilled their contractual obligations, save for the Last Assistance.”

  A faint sound came from behind her: the whisper of the steel-and-ceramic casing of a pistol being drawn from a holster. A slight pip came an instant later, a sign that the pressure gauge was showing sufficient methane, and then a snick-click as nonlethals were substituted for the usual neurotoxin. A shot into the base of the brain would be quick enough for practical purposes, and would leave her gracefully limp rather than convulsing and spraying the surroundings.

  The Coercives of her colleagues made similar preparations. Two more of her own household troops knelt before her to either side, spreading an absorbent towel; it was always in readiness, but usually simply a matter of ceremony . . .

  I have lived all but a few moments of my seventy years in the Real World by ceremony, she thought. It is appropriate that I terminate my world-line in a congruent fashion.

  “I make Apology without Condition to the Ruby Throne. I express my final gratitude and praise to the Emperor for his mercy,” she said firmly, drawing the small sharp knife from her sleeve. “Tollamune! Tollamune! Tollamune!”

  The edge was kept sharp enough to part a hair drifting downward, and the steel had a slight blood etching; this was not the first time her lineage had made a miscalculation, though few as serious as hers. She set it under the corner of her jaw and drew it down diagonally with a single hard stroke.

  There was an instant of intense stinging pain, hot and cold at the same time, and the world vanished.

  The Thoughtful Grace shrank back a little from Sajir sa-Tomond’s anger. The recorder they had intercepted for him on its journey back to the Palace of Restful Repose fluffed its feathers and hid its head under a wing—memories of cases when the bearer of bad tidings suffered for it having been imprinted on its genes. Then the Tollamune Emperor contained himself with an effort that brought a blue tinge to his ancient lips and a frown to the face of the Imperial Physician.

  “I am disappointed!” he said in emphatic mode, leaning back in his chair. “This chain of events is unfortunate in the extreme!”

  All the chair’s efforts could not massage the tension out of the muscles of his back; he ignored it as he might have the siren call of sleep when alertness was essential. De’ming made small humming sounds of distress as the interrupted meal disrupted the smooth progression of the courses, and the physician frowned again. Sajir’s appetite had been irregular of late, another sign of stress. Suddenly the sweet-musky scent of the incense and the way it blended with the iodine odor of the chilled soup was nauseating.

  There was a ritual to an Imperial meal, even an informal one here in the presence chamber of his personal rooms. The others who had been given the privilege of eating with him stood and took two steps backward from the pearl-inlaid surface, hands in sleeves and faces toward him. Sajir saw, and forced himself to relax, drawing several long deep breaths and feeling his forebrain take command of the hormones. And the deep patterns of the limbic system at the base of his brain, where the club-wielding ape still snarled beneath the most cultured of beings, and the reptile brain below that.

  We are not beasts to be commanded by instinct, he thought. My body readies itself for fight or flight, but neither is appropriate here. I must think, not react. Mindless, hasty reaction is the role in which I have cast Prince Heltaw in this round of the Game of Life. Sh’u Maz!

  “Prince Heltaw will not sacrifice his hostage; this is a mere bluff,” he said meditatively. “To do so would be to lose his last piece.”

  He took up another wedge of fluffy bread and dipped it in the nakaw and nibbled, despite the way it turned to dust in his mouth and caused the threatened closing of his throat. The others sat once more. Several of them were young Thoughtful Grace; it was his habit to invite junior officers of the Sword of the Dynasty to such occasions on a rotating basis, for several purposes. Despite everything, he inwardly smiled slightly to see them eat once more with speed and voracity, trying to finish before he lost his temper again. The food of the Imperial table was quite different from that commonly served in barracks.

  The momentary amusement washed away in an ocean of sorrow:

  If she dies, it will be as if I have lost Vowin again. I do not think I could endure that a second time. Even the Imperial role in Sh’u Maz recognizes that there are limits to what one individual can sacrifice for duty.

  Daiyar cleared her throat in the long-standing signal that meant reluctant-contradiction.

  “Supremacy, he will order a lethal excruciation of the Terran if your offspring refuses to meet with him.”

  Sajir looked at her. She went on, “He will calculate that no amount of acquiescence will be sufficient to spare his lineage in the event of Deyak sa-Sajir’s effective accession to the Ruby Throne. In part this is a projection of his own most likely course of action, were he in her position, and in part a rational extrapolation from the known personality traits of Teyud’s . . . Deyak’s . . . parents. Thus, he will take revenge before ending his own life. At that point, there would be nothing to lose.”

  “All or nothing,” Sajir murmured. The problem with that is the likelihood of receiving nothing, he thought.

  “Bring me the Terran, Franziskus Binkis,” he said. “And mobilize a battalion, with appropriate transport. Transport for myself as well. Heltaw did not specify a meeting within his own demesne. He is not yet so powerful that he can prevent a Tollamune making transit through Dvor Il-Adazar. Pieces may yet be doubled, to his detriment.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Encyclopedia Britannica, 20th Edition

  University of Chicago Press, 1998

  MARS: History of Contacts

  The strategies of the U.S. and Eastbloc missions to Mars have been mirror images of those adopted on Venus. Whereas on Venus the United States landed its probes close to Kartahown, the only large city on the planet, the USASF base on Mars was established on the shores of the Northern Sea, far from any civilized Martian settlement, and made its first contact with the provincial city of Zar-tu-Kan. In turn, the Eastbloc mission was placed close to the curious Petra-like capital of Dvor Il-Adazar, once the center of the Crimson Dynasty’s planetary empire, and still the largest and wealthiest of the Martian city-states. This choice may have derived from a serious underestimation of the power and subtlety of the culture based there.

  Mars, Dvor Il-Adazar

  Palace of Restful Contemplation

  May 27, 2000 AD

  Jeremy Wainman almost missed the pain. “Emphasis on the almost,” he murmured to himself.

  They’d put him back in his old cell. Very Martian, he thought. I escaped because someone outside busted me out. So they take precautions against that, and otherwise just stick me back in the same jar. Terrans would have put me in a different cell, or added all sorts of new locks, whether it made sense or not. But if there’s no problem, they don’t try to fix it. Very . . . sensible.

  They hadn’t bothered to feed him, either. Whatever they were planning would be over and done with by the time he really began to weaken with hunger, so why waste food and water and effort?

  Also very Martian; I wouldn’t have believed that being compulsively sensible can be so goddamned annoying. If it weren’t for Teyud . . . and Baid tu-Or, God rest her . . . and Doctor Daiyar and a couple of others . . . I could become sorta prejudiced about them. Poor Sally—I can understand how she felt.

  At least they’d restored the personal kit he’d come with, so he had depilatory cream and wipes to clean with. Looking and smelling a little less like a monkey fresh out of the jungle couldn’t hurt, and certainly improved his morale. He paced while he thought; the same set of beady eyes stared hungrily at him from behind the ventilator grille, and the same clawed hand occasionally reached hopefully at his face.

  What’s Teyud doing? Where is she now? Is she all right, Goddammit?

  The door opened. Three of Heltaw’s Co
ercives stood there, two with their pistols leveled; one held a pair of manacles, flexing and writhing in his fingers.

  “Extend your hands,” the one with the manacles said. “Cause no additional difficulty, or excruciation will be administered. Haste is essential and the irritation born of frustration is rife.”

  Which boils down to: Don’t fuck with me, it ain’t the time. But I like the sound of it, a little, anyway. Prince Heltaw’s in a hurry. That means things can’t all be going his way.

  He held out his hands; the Martian flicked the . . . whatever it was . . . and it wrapped around his wrists in an instant double loop, tightening until the bare, suedelike surface was just short of being uncomfortable. He had a strong suspicion that if he tried to wrench his wrists loose, it would clamp down harder, and the glinting, wirelike intrusions in its surface would probably make it a stone bitch to cut.

  Well, he thought snidely, even tying people up with worms can work if you’ve got forty thousand years to get everything just so.

  They hustled him out of the cell, down the corridor and into the great, hemispherical chamber where the Paiteng riders had their lair. He blinked in surprise when they entered; it was empty of people and of every adult riding bird, and there was a litter of gear and papers—very unusual for Martians, who tended to be finicky about neatness unless they were in a tearing hurry. Then they turned along a colonnade flanked by arches, and into an elevator. Despite the fear gripping him, he found himself distracted for an instant by the interior—the crystal walls were shaped like the feathers of a Paiteng’s wings, so that you stood as if embraced by them. The effect was striking, even if recent events had made him a little jaundiced about the giant creatures.

  The room the doors opened onto was almost as large as the Paiteng stables below. Would you call it a courtyard? Jeremy thought.

  It was open to the sky above, at least visually, though covered by a high arched dome of glassine; within it was a broad shallow bowl chiseled—or gnawed and dissolved—from the reddish native rock, and shaped into concentric rings of terraces. Those bore gardens, tall lacy trees and banks of plants in stone urns or trays, and pavilions ringed by slender columns of jasper and chalcedony. Those might be open or closed off for privacy’s sake by an ornamental stone carved into the consistency of lacy fretwork. The strong, almost medicinal perfume of Martian flowers was in the air, and the faint musky-spicy smell of incense.