“I keep eyes on you,” she said coolly, thumbing the wall console that turned the bank of windows from transparent to an opaque, metallic gray, shutting out the world. “Especially after the incident at the Colosso.”
Gingerly I removed the item at the bottom of the attaché case, drawing it out as if it were a viper or a severed hand. “How did you get this, Mother?” It was the book, of course—the little brown leather volume Gibson had given me that day upon the seawall. The King with Ten Thousand Eyes, purporting to be the autobiography of the ancient pirate Kharn Sagara, King of Vorgossos. I opened it, withdrew the yellow envelope Gibson had placed beneath the front cover. My name was written on the packet in Gibson’s spidery hand. Someone had opened it, and I peered within, tucking the book under my arm.
“He’d made plans with one of Lord Albans’s scholiasts,” Mother said, moving a little closer to me. “Apparently the woman knew a merchanter vessel that’d take you to Nov Senber on Teukros.” She scowled. “Not the best plan in the world. You can read about it in there.”
A hundred little questions formed and burst, foaming within me. The most important rose to the top. “How did Father find out?”
“About the letter?” She smiled. “Oh, Al has no idea. Lord Albans’s people alerted his office when the man’s scholiast flagged unauthorized transmissions with the merchanter in high orbit. The plan unraveled on the other end.” I placed the letter back inside the novel while she spoke, intestines turning Gordian within me. “Your father knows you had a hand in it, but he figures he’s won after . . .” She trailed off, a strange expression clouding the aristocratic severity of her face. “I’m sorry about Gibson, by the way. I know the two of you were close.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
She shook her head. “Packed aboard some cargo freighter headed Emperor-knows-where. Your father had him listed on nine ships’ manifests, four of which are heading out-system. I can’t wave them until they come out of warp, and even then I’d have to clear a telegraph wave with either my mother or your father.” I grimaced. Telegraph waves were expensive and carefully monitored by the Earth’s Chantry, being dangerous technological artifacts.
“He’s gone, then.”
“Alive,” Mother replied, “if that helps.” It didn’t. I looked down at my feet, at the self-lacing gray running shoes. My words fled me, retreating through the opaqued windows and over the towers and glass domes of the palace to vanish in the next valley’s glades. Then something happened that I have never forgotten, something that changed my world as surely as if a passing comet had altered my orbit. My mother wrapped her perfumed arms around me, not speaking. I stood there paralyzed. Not once in nearly twenty standard years—not once—had either of my parents shown me an ounce, an instant of physical affection. That one embrace made up for nearly all of that. I didn’t move for the longest time, and it was only with a sort of shellshocked slowness that I moved to embrace her in return. But I did not cry; I did not make a sound.
Mother said, “I want to help you.”
I pushed away, looking up at her from closer than I think I had ever looked at her before. “What do you mean?” Nervous, I looked around the room, sighting the cameras high in the smooth metallic walls.
Seeing this, Mother smiled, smoothing her cerulean blouse. “Cameras are all off in here.” Her smile widened. “Privilege of running the household.” Nearly two decades of experience cast doubt thick and heavy over me, but she smiled and repeated, “The cameras are off.” Still numb, I nodded and swallowed, but before I could speak, Lady Liliana said, “You still haven’t answered my question.”
“Which one?” My knees felt weak, and I crossed to sag onto the divan beside the attaché case that had held The King with Ten Thousand Eyes.
“The one where you explain what on Earth you think you’re doing.”
Reassured by her promise about the cameras, I told her everything. My fear of the Chantry, my hatred of them, my desire to be a scholiast and join the Expeditionary Corps. She winced when I told her Father had struck me, and her eyes glazed over when I recounted Gibson’s treatment in Julian’s plaza, but she listened attentively and never once interrupted or raised objections. As I spoke she found a low stool in a distant corner and wheeled it just across from the divan where I sat. When I was done she pressed her lips together, reached out, and took my hand, repeating the words that had barely registered the first time I’d heard her say them. “I want to help you.”
Youthful petulance cracked its whip within me, and I snapped, “How, Mother? How? It’s over. Father’s gotten his wish. In four days I’ll be on a ship for Vesperad.” Crispin’s little laugh came back to me then, rattled me. Anagnost. Odd word. I wondered where Crispin was in that moment. I hoped he was far away in the arms of his blue-skinned girl and not wondering why I wasn’t in the main palace. “He’s won. It’d take days to come up with some kind of plan . . .”
She squeezed my hand. “Where do you think I’ve been, hmm?”
I straightened as if Mother had shocked me, felt my eyes go wide. “You’re serious.”
Lady Liliana only looked at me. “I was in Euclid tracking down a Free Trader, someone to take you offworld.”
“A Free Trader? That’s no better than a pirate. You can’t trust people like that.”
She raised a placating hand, letting mine go. “Director Feng vouched for him herself.”
That caught me off guard. “The director is still on Delos?”
Mother smiled, rubbing her thumb along her lower lip. “Why do you think I was in Euclid, of all the godforsaken places in Mother’s domain?” I wondered at that and at the distant look in Mother’s eyes. “No, this fellow’s good. A Jaddian. Ada says he used to run Lothrian orbital checks for some of their . . . more sensitive cargo.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Ada?”
“Director Feng,” Mother amended, looking away. She stood smoothly, pacing toward the foggy windows.
“I got that,” I said. “But ‘Ada?’”
Lady Liliana smiled a private smile—an expression I understood all too well. “You want to do this or not?”
Seven words. A single question. I was as a man balancing on a wire, ready to fall either left or right. Never to climb back up. “What about you?” I asked, looking up at my mother from my place on the divan. “Aren’t you worried about what Father will do once he learns that you helped me to escape the Chantry?”
She turned back from where she stood by the opaqued windows. It suddenly struck me how much taller than me she was. It was from her bloodline that Crispin got his monstrous size. She towered like some alabaster Venus, or like an icon of Justice blown from white glass upon a Chantry altar. “My mother”—she tipped her head back, summoning all the aristocratic hauteur she could muster—“is the duchess of all Delos and one of His Radiance’s own vicereines. She has your father’s balls in her hand.”
“Why are you doing this?”
She thrust out her chin. “Al never once asked me about this Vesperad business. So damn him to the Outer Dark. You’re my son, Hadrian.” She ran her tongue over her teeth like a bored lioness, her attentions captured by something only she could see. “Is this what you want? Life as a scholiast? With the Corps?”
I cleared my throat, desperate to stifle the swelling of emotion the words You are my son had placed in me. “Yes.”
CHAPTER 17
VALEDICTORY
THE DAY BEFORE MY departure came at last, dawning a sunny silver and painting the green-black countryside with its glow. The sky above was the color of turbulent, storm-tossed seas, but it was sunny and fair as any I’d ever seen. That seemed wrong to me—the rain and storms I’d encountered leaving Meidua struck me as by far the more appropriate weather for such an end. Officially I was to be on a shuttle the following morning, carried up to the trading cog Farworker for a steady circuit of the inne
r Imperium that in time would bring me to Lorica College and exile on Vesperad. Officially. I had it on good authority that I would vanish sometime in the night and instead be transported to the island city of Karch in the middle of the Apollan Ocean, back east of Devil’s Rest, to meet Mother’s mysterious contact.
Attempting to appear casual, I waited near the landing field for the approach of Father’s shuttle, the orbital lifter meant to take me to my rendezvous with the Farworker and my fate. Emissaries from Devil’s Rest were coming to see me into exile, and propriety begged that I greet them. Crispin stood beside me—whether out of boredom or genuine interest I couldn’t have said. He had been astonishingly quiet for the past several minutes, allowing me time to order my mangled thoughts. I was thinking of the scholiasts’ meditations, of the apatheia. I was trying to carve out as clear an image of this moment as I could, to take in every detail. Focus blurs, Gibson used to say. Focus blinds. You must take in all of a thing by seeing the totality of it, not by focusing on minutiae. This is as important for a ruler as it is for a painter.
A lump settled in my throat as I stood with my brother watching the approaching shuttle. It appeared at first as a tiny shape, birdlike, a blur at the edge of my vision, falling from the sky like a lance. The bird shape grew, became a dragon, and brought with it a scream of metal fury grinding at the sky—first a low rumble like thunder, then the sound of several hundred swords being sharpened on the firmament. It slalomed back and forth across the sky, shedding massive amounts of speed with every turn, just as we had on our arrival.
“I wish they’d let me go up with you,” Crispin said. “I’ve never been to orbit.”
I didn’t answer him but shielded my eyes in time to see the shuttle’s retrojets burst for a moment, killing more speed as it hurried in for it final approach. Around us and on the landing field below, technicians in Kephalos livery hurried about, preparing. Thirty Imperial legionnaires, their white armor immaculately polished, their faceless, eyeless visors down and helmets sealed, took up position at parade rest, rifles in hand, standing shoulder to shoulder with the ten Marlowe hoplites we’d brought with us from Meidua.
The shuttle slewed into its approach vector, canted upward as its attitude jets helped it shed more and more velocity, aided by the shuttle’s onboard suppression field. The craft looked more like a knife blade than an aircraft, not at all like the carrion-bird that had brought Crispin and me to this place. Twenty meters of black adamant, the hull bonded to a titanium chassis, capable of withstanding micrometeor impacts even without the shield projectors mounted fore and aft, little concave dishes shining like quicksilver.
The underside of the hull still smoldered from the friction of reentry as it settled onto the landing field, the ship wreathed in tongues of smoke like some evil dragon. Technicians ran forward to cool the glowing adamant with chemical sprays, and the whole thing hissed like a nest of adders as the gangway descended. For one terrible instant, I felt sure that Father’s broad-shouldered silhouette would come stumping down that ramp, that Mother’s carefully laid plan and Gibson’s sacrifice—and the money I’d secreted—would come to naught and all would be lost.
But it was only Tor Alcuin with his shaved head and dark skin, his voluminous robes flapping from his shoulders like an embassy of flags. Sir Roban, just as dark, followed in his wake, not armored but dressed in simple semiformal blacks, his highmatter sword swinging free from his shield-belt. My farewell party. A trio of lesser functionaries followed them down the ramp, followed by a senior flight officer . . . and Kyra. The lieutenant looked out of place in their company, younger than the others by a decade or more. I marveled at the unhappy odds that had ensured that of all my father’s pilot officers, she had been chosen to fly the shuttle. It was almost enough to make me believe that there was a God and that he hated me.
The young scholiast and the functionaries bowed deeply. Roban saluted, his fist pressed to his breast, and the other officers followed suit. “It is an honor,” Alcuin said in unctuous tones, “to accompany you on your journey from Delos, Lord Hadrian.”
I inclined my head, eyes darting momentarily to Kyra in the back of the party. I looked away quickly, praying I had not reddened. Emboldened by Father’s absence and Mother’s plan, I said, “I would be more honored, Counselor, if Gibson could have joined us.” If I had expected a reaction from the scholiast, I was disappointed. Alcuin’s dark face remained impassive, his eyes flat and smooth as agate. The others all betrayed disquiet in the uneasy way they shuffled about on their feet. Deep beneath my surface, an ember of hot ash blew into flame, a fury with this man—this adding machine—who felt nothing, nothing at all for the brutality visited upon his comrade and brother-in-arms by the man they served. Alcuin must know the story, must know that Gibson’s treatment was a gross injustice.
And he didn’t care—couldn’t care. Caring was an alien notion to him, as alien as the Cielcin xenobites in their labyrinthine worldships. As alien as any of the coloni races, enslaved on their own worlds. As alien, indeed, as the dark gods that whisper quietly in the night. He only said, “Gibson’s treason was unfortunate.”
“Hadrian,” Roban said, stepping forward and offering a hand, “it’s good to see you again before you go.”
I clasped Roban’s hand, but my attentions barely flickered from Alcuin’s face. “It’s good to see you, too, Roban.” I trailed off, finally peeling my gaze away from the scholiast to look the knight-lictor in his blunt-featured face, at the wide nose and deep-set eyes beneath the heavy shelf of brow. Feeling at once awkward and still, I said, “I should have thanked you more . . . more appropriately for saving me. And for everything.” Remembering suddenly, I craned my neck to speak to Kyra past the three uniformed functionaries. “And you, Lieutenant. Thank you.”
She bowed slightly, and Roban clapped me on the shoulder. “One last trip, then, you and I. Are you all packed?”
Giving the lictor a smile that I fear failed to reach my eyes, I said, “Of course!”
“I know that this is not the future you envisioned for yourself, young master,” said Alcuin, voice like dry leaves, “but your role with the Chantry will serve the greater glory of your house. A Marlowe in the Chantry will allow—”
To my surprise, Crispin cut him off. “He doesn’t need the speech. He knows.”
Alcuin went stiffly silent, bowed his head. Eager to inject some calmness back into the proceedings, I said, “I understand the necessity, Alcuin.” And I smoothed all expression from my face, watching the scholiast—my father’s chief advisor—with an expression as apparently empty as his own. Only my serenity was skin-deep, a layer of ice atop turbulent waters. Alcuin was frozen solid. I could hear Gibson’s cries of pain as the lash bit into him resounding in my ears and felt myself slipping further away from this meet-and-greet on the landing field. I felt an instant need to be alone.
“Of course you do, young master.” Tor Alcuin bowed past his knees, tucking his hands into his flowing sleeves before him. “Forgive me.”
Coldly I said, “There is nothing to forgive, Counselor.” I had another mystery to unravel, and so I turned, blood creeping into my face, to speak to Kyra. “Lieutenant, I am surprised to see you here.” What are the odds? I wanted to ask, to joke, to try and salvage a bad situation, to smooth over my earlier mistake.
Kyra averted her gaze quickly, bowing her head so that the short bill of her flight officer’s cap hid her eyes. “I was told I was personally requested.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “By whom?”
She looked up sharply, and there was nothing of the fear I expected in her face, only something lean-edged and hard. “By yourself.”
She’s lying, I thought, smiling at her. We both knew it. I could see it in her face, in the way she held my gaze as she had not done before. Often I have found that liars do this: they watch their dupes closely, searching for the moment when belief sets in. Cons
cious of the onlookers, I said, “Oh, yes! Of course, I’d forgotten! I’d like a private word, when we have a moment.” Inwardly I frowned. Something was going on, but what it was I didn’t guess. I had known the delegation was coming, but even so I did not relish the task of escaping the Haspida palace—however Mother intended to see it done—under the noses of Roban and Tor Alcuin.
“Where is Lady Kephalos-Marlowe?” Alcuin asked, taking a mincing step forward.
Crispin moved to join the counselor, pivoting to indicate the domes of the palace on the hills above us. “Just this way, everyone. Please.”
CHAPTER 18
RAGE IS BLINDNESS
THE FIRST KNOCK CAME late that evening, when the silver sun had fattened to gold and was setting over the western hills. For what seemed the thousandth time, I sat on the floor of my suite in the Haspida palace, sorting through and repacking the items I was meant to take to Vesperad—or to Teukros, if Mother and I had our way. I straightened a stack of books, called over my shoulder, “Enter!”
Crispin sauntered in, barely waiting for my permission to do so. He had a half-eaten apple in one hand, his gray shirt only buttoned partway.
I stood quickly, upsetting a stack of carefully folded shirts. I swore under my breath, hurried to straighten them. “What do you want?” The presence of Father’s watchdog committee made me nervous, Alcuin especially. The man was sharp as nanocarbon wire and just as dangerous to someone moving fast and carelessly.
“You’re leaving in the morning,” Crispin said, spreading his arms. “Early in the morning. I . . . well, I guess this is goodbye. For a while, at least.”
I crouched, replacing the clothing in the bottom of the heavy plastic trunk. “You know, it’s about eleven years to Vesperad. By the time they pull me out of fugue, you’ll be the older brother.” I stood up, smoothing the front of my shirt and fixing my fringe of dark hair.
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