“Why does it still lacerate me so, Asgara?” she said to her baby as she took her into Repro for her six-month checkup. “Why can’t I get used to it?” Her daughter just smiled at her and gurgled happily.
She took Asgara into the maternity wing and tapped in her daughter’s particulars into the receiving comm channel. She approached the diagnostics desk and mutely proffered her baby to one of the two medical attendants on duty. The attendant was young and green. She looked over at her older partner and asked in a stage whisper, “Am I allowed to take the baby, or is she in silencis too?”
The older one came over and took Asgara from Caitlin and opened a comm channel to the on-duty medica, alerting her to the arrival of a new patient.
“She only goes into silencis when she enters junior school,” the older attendant said to the younger one while they were waiting for the medica. “And then only if her mother is still alive.” She cast a sidelong glance at Caitlin so filled with revulsion that she involuntarily shrank back.
Caitlin sat down to wait, focusing her eyes on her feet and trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. All the diagnostics took over an hour. When Caitlin heard the ping of an incoming comm. channel, she opened it to find the test results. She looked up to see the younger medical attendant holding Asgara and waiting patiently.
Caitlin jumped up, retrieved her daughter, and rushed out of Repro. She strapped Asgara into her speeder and drove back the d’Orr palace in a daze. Asgara will go into silencis! she thought frantically. My shame will destroy my daughter! Oh Ma, how can you be so cruel!
She calmed down once she got home. Asgara had fallen asleep during the speeder ride, and Caitlin gently put her down in her crib. She read through Asgara’s test results. The test report was full of praise. The baby had exceeded the statistics of her “virtual” self in all dimensions—intelligence, physical abilities, and social acumen. And her virtual’s statistics had already been in the highest one percent of the Sisterhood’s data banks. Suddenly she realized that Greghar was the only one with whom she could truly share this happiness. Greghar, see what you and I have produced together. You should not have refused me.
Caitlin spent the rest of the day in deep thought, wandering around the palace. She went into her mother’s master suite, which had not been touched since Deirdre’s last trip to Aurora. There were many holographic images of Deirdre in the suite, depicting her in many activities—active, formal, and personal. There was one of her in formal robes and wearing the d’Orr tiara, holding a two-year-old Caitlin.
She opened the large secure store built into one of the walls and retrieved the ancient d’Orr tiara. She put it on and looked at herself in the three-dimensional mirror. On a whim, she took a still hologram of herself and sent it to Megara as a keepsake. I am Princess Caitlin d’Orr, she thought. Would they still hound me if I did not wear this tiara? She replaced the tiara and resealed the secure store.
She drifted into the Ancestral Hall, thinking how ironic it was that she had seldom come here before her troubles, when she had been a proud link in the d’Orr chain. The silent eyes of her ancestors were oddly comforting—they stared but did not judge. She stopped now in front of Simran the Merciless. She could see why everyone said her mother was a reincarnation of the ancient queen. Caitlin herself could have sworn it was Deirdre in the portrait.
Standing in front of her legendary ancestor, Caitlin remembered the well-known story from the Simran Saga, chapter eleven. Her mother had told it to her countless times as a girl. It was the eve of the Battle of Rocky Scarp, Queen Simran’s greatest battle. Shepherding the frightened survivors from the crashed starship Pentheselia with her huntresses outnumbered fifty-to-one by King Larax’s army, low on power and almost surrounded, all seemed lost. Many of the commoners and priestesses begged to be sold into slavery rather than be killed. Her huntresses expected to be dead on the morrow, and some advocated a suicidal head-on attack to end it quickly.
Simran was deaf to all these entreaties. They could see only a small portion of the barbarian army from the low plateau on which they were encamped. But there was a narrow, towering pinnacle on the upland that rose high above the cliffs that blocked their views to the north and south. Simran called for volunteers to climb this pinnacle, dubbed “Rocky Scarp,” and obtain the precise positions of the barbarians. But everyone said that it was an impossible climb.
“Well, it is climb or die,” Simran said, and she did the climb herself. The expression “climb or die” was still a popular Zon expression for a situation where there were no easy choices. From the top of the pinnacle, she had a panoramic view of the barbarian army. She was able to document the precise dispositions of the barbarian forces and locate two key weak points. This information proved crucial in planning strategy for the battle. The Guardians broke the barbarian line at both those weak points and split Larax’s army into three parts. The huntresses now knew exactly where the masses of barbarian troops were and used concentrated ’grator fire to vaporize thousands, causing them to panic and then break and run. As the barbarian captains lost control of their troops, the defeat turned into a rout.
Climb or die, thought Caitlin, an idea germinating in her head. Thank you, Queen Simran. I will follow your lead.
THE NEXT MORNING Caitlin took Asgara to the Temple Heights nursery and registered her. The Zon actively encouraged mothers to leave their children in the state-run nurseries. This served the twin goals of socializing the children into the Zon way of life and minimizing the burden of motherhood. It was considered quite normal for Caitlin to leave Asgara at the nursery without specifying when or even if she would be picked up. It was difficult to part with her daughter, but Caitlin braced herself. I am doing what is right for her.
She returned alone to the d’Orr palace and packed saddlebags for a long trip. She had surrendered her official weapons when she had lost her status as a huntress, but she knew her mother had a personal cache. She found a laser pistol, a set of mini batteries, and some barbarian weaponry, all imprinted with the d’Orr crest. She dressed in barbarian leathers as she had on her earlier expeditions with Nitya. She buckled on her mother’s weapons belt and sheathed Nasht in it, thinking of the quirk of fate that had placed the two historic d’Orr swords with the two parents of the d’Orr heiress.
Going through the pouches of the weapons belt, she again found the crumpled piece of parchment. She sat down and looked at it carefully now, puzzling over the crude map, the dates and times, and the name Lidill Ikren. The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that it was a calling card, a means of establishing identity with whoever held the other pieces of the map. But who were these other people? The holder of this piece had been a Hilson slayer, whose name was probably Ikren. She put the parchment back in the pouch, thinking, What a mystery my mother stumbled upon!
She shouldered her saddlebags and went to the stables complex. When her mother was alive, there had been a full-time groom and a dozen horses, but now there was only Caitlin’s personal mount. He had been a birthday present from her mother, a huge red that she had named Rufus. He whinnied when he saw her. She patted him and fed him an apple before saddling him and cinching on the saddlebags.
She mounted and walked down the long drive. She paused at the gate and twisted around in the saddle to take a last look at the palace. How often she had longed for its luxurious, clean, and familiar quarters when she was roughing it with Greghar and Nitya. Those times I spent with them were full of blissful hardship, she thought. And I have returned to spend so much time in miserable luxury.
The automatic sensors opened the great gates and shut them behind her after she rode through. It was still too early in the morning for much traffic so she was able to ride unnoticed down from Temple Heights to the Daksin Gate. The gate was open, and the drawbridge was down. Caitlin kept her eyes on the ground, avoiding eye contact with the huntresses on duty.
It was a mild autumn day and the ride across the Great Vale throu
gh fields and vineyards was very pleasant. The sun had climbed high in the sky, and it was well past noon by the time the road turned upward. She let Rufus slow as they began their steep ascent to High Crag, one of the high passes in the mountain ring that enclosed the Great Vale. This was her planned point of egress. The guard castle of High Crag straddled the pass, its high white walls bright in the afternoon sunshine and the solar panels on its roofs too bright to look upon without a dark vision. The end of the war had returned the castle to its normal sleepy state, and its beacon flashed the “condition normal” code. The gates were open, and there were no ’grators on the battlements.
There were a pair of huntresses on duty on the outer gates, and they called out to her to dismount and identify herself. Caitlin slid off Rufus’s high back and handed them her communicator. One of them took it and tapped it to bring up her identity screen, while the other asked her to hold still and submit to a retina scan. After confirming her identity, they looked at her curiously for moment, noting the tan lines from her choker and wrist bracers that were still not completely faded.
“Where are you headed, Princess Caitlin?” asked one.
“Rocky Scarp,” Caitlin replied.
“And when will you return, ma’am?”
It was not really their business, but she did not feel like arguing.
“I have not decided,” she said.
The huntress silently handed her communicator back.
Caitlin nodded and remounted. She did not look back as she rode the winding road down from the pass. Only when she reached the Ridge Road far below did she look back up at the white walls of High Crag guard castle. From down where she was, it did indeed look impregnable, for its field of fire commanded every possible approach to the pass.
THE DAY OF the Grand Ball hosted by the Pragarinas arrived. Vivia had insisted that Darbeni get ready in her boudoir, and her small army of beauticians, hair stylists, manicurists, and seamstresses had just completed their work.
“Absolutely lovely, my dear,” said Vivia, appraising her daughter critically. “You have my look in your elegant figure, straight back, and thin nose. But your brown eyes are your own.”
“You were born to be an aristocrat, Mother,” said Darbeni. “The tiara suits you.”
“Doesn’t it?” said Vivia, twirling in front of the three-dimensional mirror. “And I am doubly happy, for today of all days my campaign against the d’Orrs is complete.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh Ma!” exclaimed Vivia. “Didn’t you see the comm edge? It has been making the rounds since this morning, and one of my live sites just picked it up. Princess Caitlin has left the Sisterhood for good and gone into barbarian lands! Huntresses at the High Crag guard castle posted pictures of her. There can be no doubt—she is dressed in barbarian attire and said she does not plan to return. And she left a message for the maintenance crew at the d’Orr palace that she would not be back.”
“So you have gotten your way, Mother,” said Darbeni, trying very hard to sound enthusiastic. “Banishment is almost as good as death.”
“Yes!” cried Vivia and clapped her hands. Darbeni wondered how her mother could take so much pleasure in the misery of one who had done nothing to hurt her, especially when it yielded her no material benefit. “I have used the public to impose the sentence that the court would not.”
To avoid ruffling official feathers, the Grand Ball invitations had asked the guests to join Pragarina Enterprises in celebrating an extremely profitable year and made no mention of Vivia’s damehood, Darbeni’s legitimization, or their elevation to the status of electrae. However, Vivia could not resist completely, so the invitation read, “Please join Lady Vivia Pragarina and Darbeni Pragarina, Priestess Magis, at a ball to celebrate the best year in Pragarina Enterprises history.”
The Lumin Hills palace was turned into a magic kingdom. All the members of staff were dressed as elves and fairies, and there were beautiful laser shows everywhere. The palace had an intricate system of water displays, and all the streams, little waterfalls, and fountains were lighted to highlight the moving water. Vivia employed the best chefs in Atlantic City, and she had given them virtually unlimited budgets to produce a feast that no one else on New Eartha could have matched. Every corner of the globe was represented, and Vivia had tasted every item to make sure it was perfect. Anything that did not meet her standards of perfection had been discarded.
There were several grand halls decked out. They were in different wings of the palace, designed to show the guests its vast size. Each had its own musical theme and featured live musical groups. They ranged from dim lighting and loud, hard driving music with a pulsating beat to one that offered the complex codas of high classical harmonies catering to more refined tastes.
Vivia and Darbeni had spent their first hour in the immense entrance hall, receiving guests, but now they circulated, accepting congratulations and trying to look modest and downplay their achievements. Vivia gloried in wearing her tiara in public for the first time. She was warm to her fellow Guild Mistresses but haughty with the aristocrats, looking down her nose at their clothing and jewelry, for nothing they had could match hers. She worked her cut-glass High Zon vowels, her trained aristocratic accent as perfect as the rest of her ensemble.
Darbeni was more understated and after the initial welcoming line, she stayed with her own friends. She was beginning to enjoy the ball when one of Vivia’s assistants rushed up to her and said in a breathless stage whisper, “Lady Vivia wishes you to join her in the entrance hall! The queen has arrived!”
Darbeni followed her, threading her way through the crowd. Maids and assistants surrounded Vivia in the entrance hall. Liveried staff had formed a cordon along the red carpet. As Darbeni arrived at Vivia’s side, the Guardian detail was just entering the hall, dressed in their ceremonial uniforms. Hildegard followed them, wearing her formal robes and crown circlet. Alex was by her side, and her other handmaidens followed.
The Guardians fanned out to form a semicircle, and Vivia hurried forward to welcome the sovereign with Darbeni escorting her. They both knelt before Hildegard, and their staff immediately followed suit. Hildegard asked them to rise and smiled on Vivia, saying, “You look well in your tiara, Lady Vivia.”
“Your Majesty, it is your indulgence,” said Vivia. “I have done no more than my duty.”
“Oh, I think you have done a lot more than that, Lady Vivia,” said Hildegard. Vivia was too old a hand to give Hildegard the pleasure of a reaction, but points of color rose to Darbeni’s cheeks. Alex was stone-faced.
“We are deeply honored that you have seen fit to grace our little soiree, ma’am,” said Vivia. “May I escort you? I hope that our little amusements can divert you from your heavy responsibilities, at least for a short while.”
“I am happy to accept your hospitality, Lady Vivia,” said Hildegard. “Please walk with me.”
Vivia seemed to have invited half the Sisterhood, so in spite of its great size, the halls of the palace were crowded. Hildegard’s handmaidens created a discreet circle around the duo just out of earshot, so the two had an envelope of privacy. Vivia fell into step beside Hildegard, leading her to a buffet laden with delicacies and crowned by an ornate ice sculpture of a mermaid.
“Vivia, you have fulfilled your end of our bargain,” said Hildegard, taking the roc-glass stem of vintage fitza that she was offered. “You have supplied us war materiel at marked-down prices—though I am sure you still made a profit. And Darbeni risked her life in bringing the killers of Princess Deirdre to justice. I would never have willingly chosen you as a partner, but you have a pistol to my head, so I must work with you. I ask you now to open full trading relations with the new Utrean regime of King Lothar. The government will support you in the usual manner. I hope that we can bring Utrean prosperity to the level we have achieved in Briga.”
Vivia smiled and focused on the positive aspects of what Hildegard had said. We made hundreds of thousands from the w
ar, she thought gleefully. Now we will make millions from the peace!
“Ma’am, you may depend on the full cooperation of Pragarina Enterprises. And I will use my influence to induce the other Guild Mistresses to follow our lead. With cover from the Legions, we will begin refurbishing our Guild forts in Utrea immediately.”
MEANWHILE, AT ANOTHER buffet, Darbeni touched Alex’s elbow and said, “Are we friends, Centuria Lady Alexandra?”
Alex looked down at her.
“No,” she replied shortly. “We have been workmates, and doubtless we will work together again. But I can never forget that you and your mother plotted the murder of Princess Deirdre and that you owe your status as electrae to blackmail.”
Darbeni looked hurt.
“Lady Alexandra, I meant what I said to the queen. I will be true to the Crown and to the Sisterhood for the rest of my life. I cannot undo the past; I can only assure you of what I will do in the future.”
“In spite of your mother?”
“In spite of her,” said Darbeni.
“If you cross Vivia, I wouldn’t give a copper for your life,” said Alex with a harsh laugh. “And pardon my being blunt, but you are no match for her.”
“Not yet,” agreed Darbeni. “But I am young. And she has powerful enemies.”
“Her enemies are your enemies,” said Alex.
“Do they have to be?” asked Darbeni.
“I don’t like word games, Darbeni,” said Alex.
“My mother bears deep-seated grudges against the aristocracy,” said Darbeni. “She grew up poor, was mistreated cruelly, and was never given her due. I, on the other hand, grew up with every comfort. While my legitimacy was recognized only recently, Vivia told me of my parentage when I came of age. And even before that, she saw to it that I lacked for nothing.”
The Empire of the Zon Page 71
