Torquas was badly frightened; he had never seen dead troopers before, nor had he ever seen blood. But he was Galacton, and as the Veg touched him, he found his courage and struck out, bruising his naked fist against the war-man’s helmet.
“That’s the star king you’re manhandling, you Vegan pig!” the Floridan yelled, outraged by the act of lese-majeste and thrusting forward to intervene.
The Vegan signaled one of his men. “Kill him,” he said.
The Veg warman brought the engineer down with a quarrel between the shoulder blades. The big Floridan struck the floor heavily and was still.
Torquas fought to hold back the tears, but he could not. The Vegan officer gathered him in, and for a dreadful moment the boy thought the man was about to shove him over the parapet. But he only held him so that he could not struggle and carried him inside.
The Veg released the boy and gave a command in Vegan. “Take him down into the tel.”
Torquas drew back against the wall and said in a shaky voice, “I am the Galacton, warmen.” His voice sounded strange and thin to him, and he wished with all his heart for Mariana or Lady No, or even for Landro, to appear and discipline these murdering, rebellious soldiers.
For a moment the troopers hesitated, remembering now, when it was too late, that the penalty for mutiny and treason was a long and painful death.
The officer snapped out, “Take him. Now.”
And the son of Glamiss Magnifico, symbol of the Vykan Dynasty, changed from prince to prisoner in that moment.
Mariana’s rooms lay on the third terrace of the citadel, a suite set far back amid gardens planted on the roofs of the second-story guardrooms and armories.
Kier waited, hands bound, between two Vegan Imperials armed with short swords. Landro was taking no chances with The Rebel, the Rhad thought ruefully.
He could see the rain falling steadily beyond the heavy, crude glass panes. The trees and shrubs in the gardens looked black-dark in the dusk. The season on Earth was spring, but the days were still short, and the weather tinged the last of the day with a bluish, mournful light. Within the hour darkness would fall. Kier thought of his cousin and murmured a silent prayer: God be with him, and may his skill be everything it should be. To handle a great starship so delicately in the atmosphere would require the precision of an almost magical touch. Kier, religious in his way, prayed for the intercession of his dead kinsman, the beatified Emeric. Rhada and perhaps the Empire rode with Kalin’s skill as a Navigator now.
Kier heard a flurry of activity in the gallery, and Landro stepped into the room. He still wore court dress, with his long hair clubbed and caught in a silver clasp. But he carried a battle sword now, naked in his hand. Kier wondered if this were the end of it--a swift thrust, and then the great mystery of death. Landro read his thoughts and showed his teeth in a smile. “Not yet, cousin. Have no fear.”
The Rhad met his eyes steadily. Landro pointed to a chair with his blade and said, “Rest. You’ve had a tiring time.”
Kier measured the distance between them. He could not reach him before the Vegans cut him down, nor were his clubbed fists enough against Landro’s sword. He walked instead to the chair and sat, regarding his enemy with unveiled contempt.
Landro dismissed the troopers and stood looking at Kier speculatively.
“You surprise me,” he said finally. “I did not really imagine you would come here like a steer to the slaughter.”
“It’s to be slaughter, then,” Kier said quietly.
Landro arched his eyebrows. “Very likely, cousin.”
Kier remained silent and thought of Sarissa. They were gathering there now, the star kings of the Rim worlds. Soon they would send an emissary to Earth, and when they learned of treason and usurpation, no power in the galaxy could stop the armies that would fall on Nyor. But after that would come the quarreling among the captains and the warleaders and the petty kings--and the Black Age would return. This time, perhaps forever.
The door opened and Mariana entered. She no longer wore Vykan yellow. Her dress was scarlet, the state color of hereditary kingship.
At twenty-three, Mariana of Vyka was reputed to be one of the most beautiful women in the Empire--and one of the most ambitious. Daughter of a collateral branch of the royal Vyks, she had been married to Torquas by The Magnifico himself, who had once told Kier’s father, “I cannot kill her, so I must breed her to my son to heal old wounds.” The old wounds were the deaths of members of her family who had tried more than once to enforce their claims to the ancient throne of the Vykan kings.
The business of kingship was a harsh one, Kier thought. Unity and Empire were often bought only at the price of the blood of kinsmen. Perhaps it had always been so. Cavour, who studied the ancient writings, said it had been since the dawn of man. The death of a royal few brought peace to the worlds sometimes. But not now, Kier thought bitterly. Not this time. If Torquas and his sister were dead, the Vykan Dynasty would fall in a rain of blood, a terror to last a thousand years.
Mariana faced the two men unsmilingly. She said to Landro, “Well?”
Landro shook his head. “I have not asked him.”
Kier looked from one to the other and waited.
“Why did you come, Kier?” Mariana asked bluntly.
“I was summoned by the Galacton. Why else should I have come?”
“You can’t be such a fool.”
“Loyalty blinds him,” Landro said ironically.
“Are you loyal?” Mariana asked.
“To the Galacton,” Kier said. “The Rhad have always been.”
Mariana made a cold and imperious gesture. “To the dynasty.”
“Do you want me to beg for my life, Mariana?” Kier asked, controlling his growing anger.
Mariana spoke to Landro. “Show him the instrument.”
Landro held a parchment before Kier’s eyes. It was the Instrument of Abdication signed “Torquas Primus.”
Kier remained silent.
Mariana said, “Well, Rebel?”
“The boy would sign anything you ask,” Kier said. “Does that make you Queen-Empress?”
“It takes care of legalities,” Landro murmured.
“It’s a death warrant for Nyor,” Kier said, rising to face the warleader.
Mariana glanced significantly at Landro. “What are you saying, Kier?”
The Rhad cursed his own quick anger that would make him betray Sarissa and the rebellion forming there.
“Torquas is dead, cousin,” Landro said smoothly. “Mariana is twice over Queen-Empress--as successor named in this paper and as heiress to the Galacton.”
Kier thought about the twelve-year-old son of his onetime general and sovereign. By all that was holy among the stars, a child should never have been made king, but there had been no better way at the time. He said a prayer for the soul of Torquas. He had no reason to doubt that Mariana and Landro would have him killed.
“If what you say is so,” he said, “then Ariane is Queen-Empress--not Mariana. She is the heiress to Glamiss and Vyka and all the worlds. We fought to make it so.”
Landro said, “Ah, yes. At Karma. You were a favorite of The Magnifico’s. It will pain his spirit, wherever it is, to see you die.”
Mariana said, “Who speaks of dying?” She regarded Landro with calm tolerance. “You men would settle everything with killing. That is not the way of it now. Nor shall it be. I’ve no use for dead men. They cannot speak and they cannot serve.”
But there was a cutting edge veiled under her fair words, Kier thought. With Mariana as Queen-Empress, the star kings would trade domination by the mailed fist for the greater tyranny of the cat’s claws.
“You said ‘a death warrant for Nyor,’ Rebel,” Mariana said. “What do you mean by that?”
Kier shook his head.
“The Questioner, Queen?” Landro asked, giggling eagerly.
“Not yet.” Mariana’s eyes rested speculatively on the Rhadan. “But we will know, Rebel. O
ne way or another.”
Kier thought of the kings on Tallan’s world. He had imagined that he might bring them to their senses with assurances of redress from The Magnifico’s son. Now that hope was dead with the boy. What remained was tyranny on the one hand, bloody war on the other. And torture for himself if he remained silent. A bitter choice for a star-voyaging warman.
“The Empire could not be ruled by a child,” Mariana said, guessing his thoughts.
“It could have been,” Kier said, “by a boy well served.” He regarded Landro contemptuously. “Well served by honest men.”
Mariana smiled. “You are an idealist then, Rebel. No, the troops are loyal to me.”
“You’ve bought them, Mariana. But when did bought men ever stay bought? And what do you have, really? The Vegans.”
“Tell me what you meant, Rebel, when you spoke of a death warrant for Nyor.”
“The dynasty was new, Mariana, and Torquas too young to rule unless he was well served. But it was the only way we knew to try to keep the peace-- You have destroyed all that with your bedroom rebellion. You may have me, but what of all the others? The Centauri, the Lyri, the men of Kalgan and Aldebaran and Deneb and Altair and a hundred other systems? What good will your fifty thousand Vegans be against them?”
Mariana said, “Say more, Rebel.”
“No more. It’s done now. Everything we fought for at Karma and a dozen other places is finished.”
Mariana moved closer to Kier. He thought: She is beautiful, the way a tree of ice is beautiful. Intelligent, ambitious, cruel. To have married her to a boy was The Magnifico’s disastrous mistake, the act that would bring the young Empire crashing down.
She said, “You have fifteen starships, Kier. And twenty thousand warmen--Rhadans, the best in the Empire. Give them to me. Serve the Empire as you always have. I do not want to destroy the Rim worlds, but if I must, I will. You could prevent it, Kier of Rhada.”
Kier smiled bleakly. Mariana’s ambition was royal enough. But war would not start on the Rim. It would begin here, on Earth, as the disaffected star kings blackened the capital with fire and sword. And the Rhad would be among them, led by Willim of Astraris, burning and killing to avenge their warleader Kier--dead in the hands of Mariana’s Questioner. That, he thought resignedly, was the way it would be. The Rhad were a melancholy race, and Kier felt the weight of the dour centuries in his heart, so it jarred him to hear Mariana’s laughter.
“Oh, you out-worlders,” she said. “What an ancient breed you are! Glamiss used to say, ‘The Rhad see doom beyond every hill.’ Is it because you live so far away, Rebel?
Out on the edge of the sky where there are no stars to see in the night? Where is your ambition, you brave captain? I’m offering you the Inner Worlds if you are man enough to take them!”
“You mean treacherous enough,” Kier said.
Now Landro laughed. “You see, Queen? He fought at Karma, and he still dreams of his great king. There’s only one way with the Rhad.”
Mariana turned for a moment to look through the window at the night falling over the city of Nyor. “Glamiss is dead, Kier. The times are changing. Will you speak?”
Kier shook his head.
“I have sent the Vykan guard across the river into Jersey. There are no Floridans in the tower. The city is in the hands of the Veg. In the morning we will take your star-ship. What choice have you, Rebel?”
Kier thought of Kalin and breathed a silent prayer to the beatified Emeric.
Mariana turned and looked coldly at him. “One last time, Kier. Think carefully.”
“You will never hold what you have stolen, Mariana. This I know,” Kier said.
She turned away angrily, her patience at an end. She snapped out a command, and four Vegan Imperials stepped into the room and saluted her. “Take him to the Questioner,” she said.
The guards moved Kier to the door. Mariana said, “Good-by, Rebel. We won’t meet again.”
When they had gone, Mariana turned to Landro. “Find out what he knows of Sarissa.”
“What can he know?”
Mariana said impatiently. “The issue is still in doubt there.”
“You don’t trust the cyborg?”
Mariana’s eyes narrowed as she regarded the Vegan. “Far more than I’d trust any man,” she said.
Landro inclined his head. There was a touch of mockery in his manner. “Then, Queen, you will be interested in my latest news.”
“You’ve had word from Sarissa? Why wasn’t I told at once?” Her lovely face was set in anger.
“There was no time. Until now, Queen.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s Kelber,” said Landro, smirking foolishly.
Mariana waited, reining her impatience and anger. In time, Landro would have to be taught a lesson. When all this was done, her lover would have outlived his usefulness.
“A Sarissan starship landed in Connecticut late this afternoon. A courier arrived only an hour ago.”
“From the cyborg?”
“Please. From the Sarissan star king,” Landro said. “It seems that there has been a fire in the city of Sardis. The entire Street of Night was destroyed.”
“And Kelber?”
“Dead, Queen.”
Mariana walked swiftly to the window and stood in thoughtful silence. Full night had fallen over Nyor. The torchlights of the watch flickered in the rainy darkness. “You think the cyborg killed him,” she said finally.
“Who can say, Queen?”
Mariana turned, a decision made. “All right. You leave for Sarissa tonight. Within the hour. Tallan can’t be left alone.”
“As you command, love,” Landro said.
“Why do you look like that?” Mariana asked irritably.
“I was only thinking that before you learned of Kelber’s death, you spoke of ‘the cyborg.’ But now that you suspect an act of murder, it’s become ‘Tallan,’ as though he were a man.” Landro fidgeted nervously with the silver clasps in his hair and asked in an arch voice, “So who can you trust now, my queen?”
7
The maneuvering of starships at low speeds and in atmosphere requires the coordinated efforts of a control team specially trained in Ionics, Planetary Magnetic Effects, and Pilotage. In the absence of such rated personnel, close maneuvering at low levels should not be attempted.
Golden Age fragment found at Station One, Astraris
To study, to learn, to safeguard that which is holy, and above all, to dare: that is the duty of a Navigator.
Attributed to Emeric of Rhada, Grand Master of Navigators,
early Second Stellar Empire period
Kalin, the Navigator, stood in the entry valve of the Rhadan starship and watched the swift and orderly withdrawal of the last warmen of the perimeter guard. As the horses padded aboard, he could hear them complaining at a new confinement. They were restless because there had been no battle with their armored cousins of Vega.
The arbalests had been stowed, and Nevus paced the landing ground, urging the warmen to greater speed and more silence. Through the rainy darkness Kalin could see the cooking fires of the Imperials and, beyond that, barely visible in the gloomy night, the few torchlights of Nyor.
The young priest-Navigator stood tensely, waiting moment by moment for the alarm that must surely come from the Imperial pickets when they discovered the swift and secret withdrawal of the Rhadans. But there was no sound but the soft padding of the disgruntled war horses and an occasional soft chink of iron as a weapon touched against harness. The rain and the darkness were covering the maneuver perfectly, as Kier had foreseen that they would.
The last troopers filed through into the interior of the starship, and Kalin rubbed his sweating palms against the coarse cloth of his robe. Underneath he could feel the unyielding scales of god-metal that protected him from neck to thigh.
Now Nevus stepped through the valve and stood for a moment looking back at the darkness where the Imperials rested ar
ound their fires.
“Well, it worked the way he said it would,” the old warrior said. “At least so far. Is it time, priest?”
“As nearly as can be figured without the stars to see,” Kalin said.
Nevus regarded him unsmilingly but not unkindly. “Anxious, boy?”
Kalin was about to reply with some unctuous remark from the dogma but thought better of it. “Yes,” he said. “I don’t know if I am good enough, General.”
“He thinks you are,” Nevus replied. “The Rhad don’t fail.”
Kalin nodded, lips compressed. He was thinking of the darkness and the search through the rainy air for the spire. But the ship’s own glow would give some light. His mind abandoned anxiety, and he concerned himself with the technical problems of pilotage involved. He drew a deep breath and tried to look soldierly. If Kier thinks I can do it, he thought, then I must. “We will start now,” he said.
Kalin entered the sacred part of the starship, stepped swiftly over the coaming into the control room, and made a perfunctory sign of the Star in the air. The two novices already at their posts before the banks of ancient instrument panels looked up, acknowledged the priest-Navigator’s blessing, and stood by for orders.
Their faces were pale under the cowls. Kalin felt a sudden decisive confidence invade his spirit. He wondered briefly if it was the shade of his beatified ancestor Emeric coming to aid him in his moment of trial. If so, he was well served. It was said that no finer pilot of starships had ever lived than Emeric of Rhada.
“Brother John,” Kalin said. “Close the valve.”
“Yes, First Pilot,” the novice replied respectfully, using the holy title that was never used in the hearing of unconsecrated persons.
“Brother Yakob, start the power sequence.”
The two novices, their confidence increased by having something familiar and important to do, bent to their Sacred tasks.
The Rebel of Rhada Page 6
