Now for the delicate part.
I took the tablet and filled out the simple form with ease, tapping the screen with the stylus as it converted my handwriting to Galstani’s neatly ordered script. Then I repeated the process in a new tab. My work nearly finished, I paused, knowing my moment had come, and set the tablet down on the table. “You know, M. Balem, it occurs to me that we could help one another out.” I gave her my best, least-Marlowe smile.
Her weak-chinned plebeian face darkened. “How is that?”
I maintained my politest smile. “You agree that one hundred and twenty thousand is an . . . adequate sum, yes?” With the air of one waiting for a Eudoran sorcerer to complete his bit of hand magic, she nodded. Once. Slowly. Saying nothing. “What would you say to one thirty?”
Absurdly, my mutinous heart beat faster against my still-sore ribs. I had spoken softly, felt sure that my guards had not heard me from the hall. Not through the plain rolled steel of the door. Why should I fear? I held all the power here; I had the money, the name. The Guild factionarius had . . . what? The means to expose me? But that would only implicate her, if she accepted. And she would accept. I knew she would accept, and knowing this, I spoke my offer. “I will sign this contract in the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand marks if”—and here I swiped my hand across the tablet twice, shooting the pair of documents across to the wall holograph—“you sign this parallel contract for one hundred and thirty, which I will keep on my person. Unfiled.” I saw confusion in her eyes and pressed on. “I want you to give me the difference on a universal card, or—even better—in hurasams, if you have them.”
“Do you know how many hurasams that is?” Balem sounded incredulous. “Do you have a lift palette?”
Chastened, I waved this away. “The card, then.”
“You’re asking me to launder money.”
“No, I’m not,” I insisted, hoping I could keep up with the ploy in my own head. “I’m asking you to . . . to feel guilty about the large sum of money I’m gifting you and to return a paltry amount of it to me quietly. To salve your conscience.” I smiled, only this time it was the crooked Marlowe smirk. Carefully I unscrewed my signet ring from my left thumb, held it ready to seal the two contracts and so pass on the terabytes of formal encryption keys. I thought of all the ring signified: my name, my blood, my genetic history, my personal ownership of twenty-six thousand hectares of land in the Redtine Mountains.
Balem glanced from my face to the contracts on the wall holograph, then at the door. I could see the cupidity alight in her muddy eyes. Her cigarette was burning down in her fingers, momentarily forgotten. “And if I refuse?”
Did I have to spell it out? “That’s what the other contract is for. I file it with the treasury and say someone on your end must have hacked the contract file and amended the sum. Who do you think will be believed? Father’s already rather cross with you after that mess with the Consortium.” I saw her rough complexion go a shade paler. “Of course, you’re welcome to turn down my offer.”
She bared her teeth, eyes aglow with contempt. “This was never about charity.”
I smiled sadly, a proper smile again. “I do want to help, M. Balem. Whether or not you believe that doesn’t matter, but you must help me as well. These are my terms.” I held the ring up, ready to apply it to the two documents. “Shall we?”
* * *
With twenty-thousand marks writ to a numbered universal card tucked into the inner pocket of my coat and the data for both the public contract and the one I thought of as my insurance policy stored in the matrix within my ring, I sat in the rear of a flier as we took off again for Devil’s Rest. The old fortress looked like a thunderhead above the city today, itself beneath skies overcast with the threat of summer storms.
“It’s decent of you to donate to the miners like that,” Kyra said over her shoulder.
From her of all people, this statement filled me with shame. After all, I hadn’t done it for the miners, had I? My tongue felt suddenly thick, and I turned my face away. “Thank you.” Should I say something to her before I went? Tell her she was beautiful? Strong? My hands clenched into fists in my lap, the right one aching horribly, bones sore. But I forced the pain on myself, feeling somehow deserving of it. I had read once that the priests of one religion or another would scourge themselves with knotted cords that their pain might redeem their sins. I have not found it to be so, only that pain so often feels like justice.
“Lieutenant,” I said at last, voice hushed.
“Sire?”
“Could you change course, please? Take us to the city penthouse.”
One of my two guards objected. “Sire, do you really think you should go into the city after the last time?”
Midsentence, I turned and glowered at the man, glad perhaps for the first time in my life that I had the same eyes as my father. I spoke over him. “Corpsman, I remind you that I am your archon’s son.” There was a sudden venom in me, brought on by my newly grown sense of shame. “I appreciate your concern, but let’s consider the damage from that affair done, shall we?” I snapped my attention back forward. “The penthouse, Kyra, if you would.” I did not want to go back to the castle, not that day.
* * *
Now I had the other problem to consider, and it was by far the more complicated one. In a sense I had less right of travel than the meanest plebeian. Any common dock worker or urban farm technician not planetbound by blood might earn passage offworld, or else enlist in the Legions—there was a war on, after all. But I . . . I was scrutinized, guarded, protected. At least when I wasn’t getting myself pummeled nearly to death by a bike gang in the streets of Meidua. And yet that particular episode did inspire in me a measure of confidence. I had slipped away from my watchful sentinels once, hadn’t I?
I could do it again.
The sun was sinking, yellowing to gold above the western mountains, and below and about me the lights were coming alive in the city of Meidua, the snaking trains of groundcar traffic slowly flicking their running lights into night mode. A holograph panel taller than a house began to glow brightly from the tower across from me, first advertising the Meidua Devils—the gladiators—and then displaying a recruitment ad featuring a strong-jawed woman in the bone-colored armor of the Imperial Legions. I leaned heavily against a carved stone balustrade, sagging against the rail. Already my guilt over blackmailing the factionarius was fading, and a part of me was giddy with my success. I had twenty thousand marks in my possession, totally unknown to my father, and when or if the logothetes and the house bankers checked my accounts, they would see only my generous donation to the Meidua chapter of the Delian Miners’ Guild.
Who could object to such civic piety? I was going to be a priest, after all.
Weakly, I laughed into the crook of my arm, hoping that Kyra and my guards could not see me. My actions that day had left me with a powerful need to remain unbothered, unobserved. Alone with my thoughts. As much as I longed to leave my ancestral home, I feared that parting just as much. The stars blossoming in the growing dark pressed themselves upon my mind, looming as Devil’s Rest never had.
The ancients had a saying, a kind of curse, that reads: May you live in interesting times. I suppose I did. With the sun setting and the black of space becoming visible above, I felt somehow that the Cielcin grew closer. I felt almost as if I could see their vessels descending like castles in the night air, though I had never seen one in truth. In my mind their towers stretched like the fingers of frigid hands, delicate structures rimed with ice that shone like a palace of grim faeries. Was it a vision or a waking dream? Or else the future pressing on my present? Perhaps it was only a dull fist clenched around my soul—the aching terror that I was about to leave home.
It only began to hit me then. Father’s declaration that I was to join the clergy had never felt real because I had rejected it so handily. But with the plastic of the univ
ersal card tucked into my breast pocket and the taste of blackmail still sour on my teeth, the thought that I was leaving that miserable city—the only home I’d ever known—came upon me sharp and sudden as those plebeian thugs on their motorbikes.
“My lord?”
“Lieutenant?” I started, stepping away from the rail. Kyra stood primly just outside the door to the penthouse proper, hands clasped before her, eyes downcast. “Is something the matter?” I smiled at her and found that hers was a face I could keep looking at without glancing away as I must with Father. Her hair was the color of beaten bronze, curling like some Petrarchan vision about her heart-shaped face, the curves of her body gone to slimness.
“I only came to tell you the suite’s locked down. No one’s coming in or out without triggering house security.”
“What?” It took the words a moment to penetrate the clouds in my brain thrown up by her beauty and my shame. “Oh, yes . . . Very good, Kyra.” I smiled again, more weakly this time. “Tell the two hoplites they may retire, then. Or take up shifts, if they wish.”
“Sir?”
“The shifts thing,” I said, wagging a finger. “Have them do that.”
The lieutenant pressed a fist to her breast in salute. “Of course, sire.” She turned to go.
“Kyra.” She stopped, shoulders tense, though the meaning was lost on me.
“My lord?” Her voice was soft. Then a moment of bravery: “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?” I blinked, genuinely lost.
Her back still to me, she said, “Call me by my first name. It isn’t proper.”
My father’s voice echoed within me, cold. It isn’t proper, my lord. I silenced it, unsure how to answer that. But caution outweighed desire, and I said, lamely, “I wanted . . . to feel close to someone, is all.” She turned back, and there was understanding in her green eyes—understanding and . . . fear? Surely not. “I’m sorry if I’ve given offense.”
“I am your servant, sire. You’ve no need to apologize.” She shook her head fiercely, then shut her eyes and asked, “But . . . why me?”
“I’m sorry?” A flier swung low overhead, coruscating the penthouse shields so that the air shimmered with disturbed lines of force. Briefly I turned to watch it go, running lights blinking red and green in the twilight.
The lieutenant stood a little straighter, thrusting out the fine point of her chin. “You’ve ordered me to take you about on your errands for weeks now, even before the accident.”
Accident, I thought bitterly, ordering my face into stillness as I recalled my mugging.
But Kyra was not finished and repeated, “Why me?” Her face was still downcast, eyes closed. I crossed the infinite space between us, reached down and clasped her small, calloused hand. She grew tense as a coiled spring and stopped—I think—to breathe. Braver then than I had ever been and lacking any words to explain, I kissed her.
She froze.
I squeezed her hand in what I hoped was a comforting way. I was barely more than a child and didn’t really know what to do. They say time freezes in these instants, but it is only your breathing that does.
And Kyra. Kyra was still as stone.
I drew away, embarrassed and afraid. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. I . . .” One of her hands pressed against her breast; the other still clasped in mine. I let it go, stepped back. Her tanned skin had drained of its color. Still babbling, I looked away, formal again, and said, “Lieutenant, I . . .”
In a dead, dry voice, a voice that confirmed her deepest fears about me, she said, “If my lord wishes, I . . . I could . . . I could join him in his . . .”
I never heard her say “bed,” for I shouted, “No!” Not like this, damn it. Not like this. I froze too, realizing that it could have been no other way. I was palatine, the son of an archon, slated to be a prior of the Earth’s own Chantry. How could she, a lieutenant in household guard, ever refuse? I felt sick, cheap. A coward. I brushed past her into the suites without another word, not trusting myself to speak.
CHAPTER 12
THE UGLINESS OF THE WORLD
I HAD NO NOTION of how I was going to get myself offworld. I toyed with the idea of shipping out on a merchant vessel, working my way to Teukros or Syracuse or any world with a scholiasts’ athenaeum. But I was no sailor, nor had I any particular skill that would make hiring me attractive to a ship’s captain. Besides, such a posting would doubtless have called for a blood scan, which would have instantly revealed my high birth and flagged my father’s office. Any passenger liner would require a scan as well, lest our planetbound serfs escape in violation of their bond.
Thus logic called for a less scrupulous class of businessman, even as prudence argued against the same.
And yet what other choice did I have?
In my youth and ignorance, I had hoped Kyra might share whatever childish hopes I had of some dalliance or tryst. In my long life I have known too many palatines, men and women both, who so abused their underlings. There are words for creatures who so abuse their power, but none shall ever be applied to me. In the innocence of my affections, I thought I was different. I had not thought that I could be no different. No amount of honesty or honest intent on my part could close the gap between Kyra and myself, and if she submitted, it would not be from desire but out of duty—or worse, out of fear. I had made a grievous error and been—if only for a moment and against my intentions—the very worst sort of man, which is almost no man at all.
So I hid from her and from much of the castle, save my teachers. Tor Alma administered a battery of medical tests before my departure, subjecting my already substantial immune system to a series of slight enhancements that would protect my cells against offworld pathogens and the subtle radiation common even in the quietest parts of space. Sir Felix and I concluded our martial appointments a month before my departure when it was announced that I was to leave by way of Haspida, spending my final week planetside with my mother at the summer palace. And of course there was Gibson and our frequent walks about the castle grounds.
* * *
“Pirates are a terrible idea!” Gibson said, grunting as I helped him up the stairs to the rock garden below his cloister. “Leastways hiring one off the street is. They’re not . . . well, they’re not the most reputable sort, are they?”
I conceded this point with a shrug, letting the scholiast lean on my arm as we crossed the courtyard, careful that we might not again be overheard. We were speaking Jaddian, the lilting syllables tripping like confused poetry so quickly that even the attentive might mistake seven words in ten. “I can’t think of anything else,” I said, turning to look the old man in the face and speak more directly into his deafening ears.
“Well, you may not have to,” Gibson replied, then pressed a crooked finger to his lips for silence at the approach of three passing servants in the deep red uniforms of the housecleaning service. One man bowed as I passed, but I waved them all on with a thin smile. We held our silence while we moved into the shadow of a colonnade, the inner pillars overgrown with ivy so dark it was almost blue. Anxious, I glanced up at the watchful little cameras studding the shallow vaults above, hidden but not completely concealed by the neat scrollwork in the molding. Thence we passed out into the topiary garden. The bushes—fantastically clipped into the shapes of men and dragons—appearing almost black in the silver sunlight.
Keeping up with our Jaddian, I said, “What do you mean, I might not have to?”
Gibson shook his head, hiking up the hem of his heavy viridian robes so as not to trip over them on the stones as we mounted an inner stair up to a wall-walk that fed into one of the castle’s many raised viaducts. “Not just yet. Wait.” Then, “Are you nearly ready to go?”
“I’ve finished packing, more or less. I’m not sure what to take. No matter what happens, I don’t expect to have very much to my name.” I did not mention the twenty thousand
marks charged to my new universal card. “I can’t keep anything, can I?”
Gibson stopped a moment, and I hung back as he caught his breath, waving me away with a flapping hand. “The Chantry permits you one chest of personal effects, as I recall. Wasn’t that in the instructions your father passed along?”
I blinked. I hadn’t even read them. I’d been thinking that as a scholiast I would be expected to forswear everything I owned, so I hadn’t made any serious preparations. At last I admitted, “I’m sorry, I haven’t read them.”
Gibson looked at me long and hard, switching from Jaddian to Classical English. “You had best see to that.” He raised his eyebrows in such a way that said, Or else people will start asking questions. Once Gibson started walking again, we passed a pair of peltasts with high lances gleaming in the sun. They saluted as we left them and rounded an exterior spiral staircase that curved around a tower leading up to the seawall.
On seeing the sea, people believe it is the water that first captures their imaginations, that first transports them and makes them dream of sailing and of lands unknown and undescribed. They are wrong. The sea’s first actor is not its waters but the wind. And that struck me first and fully as we mounted the huge, nearly semicircular arc of black stone that formed the easternmost expanse of Devil’s Rest. Though the age of siege warfare had died long before the vanished Earth, my ancestors had raised this massive wall as if to defend against armadas. The ramparts snarled with triangular merlons like the teeth of a saw blade, and between them even a small man could look out on the steel-gray waters where they broke on the cliffs below.
I took in a deep lungful of the wind and sighed, speaking in Standard for the first time that day. “I wish it would be all over with, Gibson. Everything decided.”
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