The room thus revealed had little of splendor to recommend it. Within rested a plain desk of metal, and a chair of the same. A weapons rack against the wall showcased two spare swords and a rifle. She had seen the excellence of his swordplay and his marksmanship eight years gone.
“I’m honored by your attention, Master Khev,” Anjen said with a calculated touch of breathlessness.
Khev sat behind the desk, frowning, and ignored the overture. “Forgive the precipitous summons,” he said. “The mayor-commander is dead.”
Anjen grasped the significance immediately, unexpected though the news was. The mayor-commander had designated no heir despite the pleadings of his advisers, in an effort not to favor one House over another. While the mayor-commander formally cut their ties upon ascension, the ideal was better honored in theory than in practice.
“Was there any warning?” she asked. She’d never heard that the mayor-commander was ill, but such knowledge would have been suppressed. What she really wanted to know was whether or not the man had been assassinated. After all, he had declined to appoint a new head duelist to serve as his bodyguard after he dismissed Lio the Catastrophe Hand.
“I was one of six people called in to witness the autopsy,” Khev said. “Ship surveillance caught the whole thing on camera. He slipped on a wet bath tile and cracked his head.”
“What an ignominious death,” Anjen murmured. “And my part in this is—?”
“Your maneuvers have not escaped my notice,” Khev said. “Azalea may be much diminished, but every time I treat with the Common Houses, they defer to your opinion. You govern them in all but name, in the way of shadow. They may not rule the ship’s high positions, but there is power yet in numbers. When I put myself forward for the mayor-commander’s seat, I want the Common Houses’ support. You are the one who can deliver it.”
Pretending ignorance would have insulted him. Anjen tipped her head up, meeting his eyes. “No Supreme Tournament?”
“The other five High Houses will not oppose me,” Khev said.
She believed him. “Make your offer, then.”
“Your pride is not dead, I see. That’s good.”
She ignored his condescension. She’d endured worse.
“I will adopt Azalea,” Khev said, “as a cadet branch of Luna, should everything go as planned. A generous offer, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
He was right, as much as it rankled. She would have to give up her independence and be explicitly subject to Luna. But herself, Rohaz, and little Kihaz, the youngest—the three of them could not afford to be choosy. It was unlikely that any of the other head duelists would offer Anjen better.
“And if you fail?” Anjen inquired. If Khev had judged poorly, and even one of the eligible duelists insisted on a Supreme Tournament—if Khev lost a duel—
Khev lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “Then I don’t see that I owe you anything.”
This came as a relief, although she was careful not to let him spot it. After all, she didn’t want Azalea beholden to a failed candidate. She nodded, biting her lip in pretended dismay. “When will the mayor-commander’s death be announced?”
“Tomorrow morning,” Khev said. “The mayor-commander’s seat will be determined four days after that.”
Eight years ago, Khev had been one of the City’s finest duelists. Anjen herself would have hesitated to face him. But here he was, going out of his way to avoid the Supreme Tournament. She was certain none of the eligible Houses had a duelist his equal. What was he afraid of?
* * *
On the morning after the High Houses announced the mayor-commander’s death, the woman named Lio walked out of the ice-vaults, newly awake, and toward the shadow-turbulent Seven-Sided Stage.
People parted for her, not because they held her in any regard, but because they recognized her. They remembered how she had failed the mayor-commander. Through the crowds she walked, and murmurs rose around her.
Six-and-one head duelists already stood before the City’s wolf-priest, Khev of Luna House foremost among them. Lio didn’t fear him; didn’t fear anyone who stood in that great and grim company. The Common Houses were entitled to a representative, and that seventh duelist had already been determined. Lio saw them in their ceremonial white-and-gold, a spider brooch gleaming upon their breast.
The crowds parted again, this time for a woman in a floater chair. Lio did not slow. The woman, magnificently garbed in magenta silk and pearls the color of scalped stars, her face half hidden behind a mask of unliving petals, accelerated to plant her chair in Lio’s path. A sword of office rested in her lap.
“You of all people cannot claim ignorance of the City’s traditions,” said the woman in a voice that was as deferential as satin, and just as deceptive.
“I do not recognize you,” Lio said, “or your authority.” A dangerous thing to admit: her years in the ice-vaults had fractured her memory. For all she knew, she had once supped with this woman, or tested her blade, or dealt her the injuries that required her to use the chair.
The woman met Lio’s gaze squarely, although she had to raise her chin to do so. Then Lio knew that she had, indeed, been a duelist; that the sword in her lap was not for show. “There are six-and-one duelists,” the woman said. “Six for the High Houses and one for the Common Houses. I speak for the seventh, Peris. There is no place for you here. There will be no Supreme Tournament; it has been agreed.”
“Who are you,” Lio said, as direct as a sword-thrust, “that you answer for Peris?” Indeed, the person known as Peris, the one with the spider brooch, stood fidgeting, watching the confrontation sidewise.
“I am Anjen of House Azalea,” the woman replied, “and no blade is drawn by the Common Houses but that I will it so. No word is spoken in the Common Houses but that I know its purpose. And I know of your long exile in the ice, and I say to you now: turn back.”
Lio admired Anjen’s forthrightness. She had a fencer’s excellent posture even seated; her voice rang with the clarity of glass on glass. Lio would have liked to duel her, once upon an injury. “You have spent the past years well hidden, Anjen of Azalea,” Lio said.
The wolf-priest gestured impatiently. “Is this a substitute for Peris of the Common Houses?” he asked. “We are ready to declare Khev of Luna the new mayor-commander by unanimous acclamation.”
“I am better than a substitute,” Lio said, raising her voice. “I represent the interests of a party on whom we all depend, and who has heretofore been shut out of the Houses’ decisions. I represent the silicate mind of the City itself.”
The shadows upon the Stage shifted and stirred, taking on the shapes of the Houses’ emblems, from Anjen’s own Azalea in its full-skirted splendor to Luna’s extravagant Moth, and more besides. There were birds of shadow, their wings primly folded, and trees of shadow with poetically curved limbs, and an entire array of shadow ornaments, some more abstract than others. Even the unfortunate Peris’s seven-limbed spider could be seen, in honor of the Common Houses. Each shadow represented the soul of its House.
But a greater shadow yet swallowed the throng, sparked through with filaments of silver light. Everyone recognized its silhouette, born as they had been upon the City Unbreachable: the shape of the ship itself. The lights above and the lights below turned silver, brightening and dimming four times, and a light rose up around Lio herself.
“A bold gambit indeed,” Anjen said, inclining her head, and Lio fancied she glimpsed admiration, however reluctant, in her eyes. “If we do not permit a Supreme Tournament, then the ship itself will turn against us. Is that the threat?”
“It is,” Lio said. Moved by impulse, she reached out for Anjen’s hand, and Anjen allowed her to take it. “Wish me the flowers’ own fortune,” she said, “whether I rise or fall.”
“I will do better than that,” Anjen replied cryptically, her eyes smiling like a new-kindled star.
“Then that is good enough for me,” said Lio, who had never relied on any luck but her s
word-arm, and pressed forward for the wolf-priest’s blessing.
* * *
Anjen receded into the crowd, deliberately avoiding Khev’s glower.
“He’s frowning,” Rohaz commented, as if she couldn’t tell. “He will have words for you, cousin.”
“It’s not important,” Anjen said. Either Khev would win, in which case it was the same as if he had won the seat by acclamation, or he would not. She had rallied the Common Houses to his cause, and now that the Supreme Tournament was going to take place after all, the duelists would face Lio upon a terrain of the Common Houses’ hopes and fears.
Peris was young, and hotheaded, and easily seduced by whispers of glory. But they would not win; Anjen had not selected them for their ability to win. They would duel flamboyantly, and please the Common Houses—Anjen knew well their love of spectacle, and just as importantly, she knew that Khev would not be able to resist prolonging the match by toying with Peris.
Lio—Lio was another matter. Anjen had never faced Lio’s sword, back in her dueling days, and counted herself lucky even as she mourned the lost opportunity of challenge. To face a duelist of such consummate skill—she missed those days. Her skills were other, now.
“She’s going to win,” Anjen breathed.
Rohaz blanched. “You can’t let her,” they said. “That’s as good as backstabbing Khev. If he thinks you’ve backed someone else—”
“Look at her,” Anjen said. “Look at the way she walks. The way she’s stopped calculating distances because it’s gone instinctual. She’s the better fencer. If I had only known she’d walk out of the ice-vaults—”
“She’s the Catastrophe Hand,” Rohaz said, still disbelieving. “She failed at her job. She’s bad luck all the way down.”
Anjen smiled at them, her heart merry. “Then we have something in common.”
* * *
Three hundred forty-nine years ago, when the City Unbreachable had another name, the tyrants of the heptarchate upgraded their starships. “Upgrade” was the preferred euphemism. The new starships were space-faring aliens, unparalleled in their fleetness, cyborged and slaved for the convenience of their human passengers.
The City’s original crew discovered the truth of the upgrades and fled in protest—a long, slow flight, using outdated stardrive technology. It would take them generations to reach a world beyond the heptarchate’s shadow, there to settle. By Anjen’s time, most of the crew’s descendants had forgotten this original purpose, or dismissed it as irrelevant. The late mayor-commander had not had any intention of continuing the original mission, and his would-be successor, as represented by the six-and-one duelists, were of like mind.
But the ship itself—the silicate webs that formed its mind had gained at first sentience, and then cunning. The ship had other ideas.
* * *
Lio the Catastrophe Hand faced a gauntlet of six-and-one duelists, but she faced them not alone. Her shadow stretched out behind her, in the shape of the City itself, and its jeweled circuitries.
The dueling arena was thick with shadows, forming a dark terrain. Some of the shadows came from the Common Houses. Hostile elements, unpersuaded by Anjen’s influence, swarmed Lio like hornets. She did not cut them down—couldn’t have, even had she desired it. But the light of her sword, ashen, drove them back.
This was an art peculiar to the fencers of the heptarchate and preserved in the City, however much its people would have preferred to deny their heritage. Slay a shadow, stay a shadow, went the old sere chant: the idea that the soul could only properly be viewed in darkness, and from darkness roused.
Not for nothing had Lio been head duelist of the City entire. With scorn she met her first human opponent, and the second, and the third. She could read entire volumes of intention in a flick of the gaze; gave away nothing of her own, except in feint. Her opponents were skilled; she was better.
The fourth and fifth opponents fell as easily as the first three had. It was over so quickly that only an expert eye could have traced the parries and counter-parries, the clever angulations of the blade. Lio did not toy with them, out of respect.
Then Khev of Luna fell back, so that she faced Peris next, and out of sequence.
Peris fenced bravely. With another five, ten years of experience, their aggression would have been backed by an equal measure of cunning, and they might have had a chance. Not for nothing had they become a favorite of the Common Houses. Their shadow was an agile, seven-limbed spider, and the onlookers cheered to see it rear up.
But bravery was not enough. Lio invited Peris to attack too deep, and this they did, believing that the subtle opening was an opportunity. Lio’s answering counterattack took off their hand at the wrist. It was her idea of mercy, for she didn’t want to kill such an earnest fighter.
At the last Lio stood before Khev of Luna, her blade marrow-pale and blood-dark. He had not yet unsheathed his own sword of office, although the gray jewel in its pommel shone the color of rain and regret, and his moth-shadow fluttered its wings in warning. “You could have slept in the ice-vaults,” Khev said, “and lived until the journey’s end. It’s a shame I will have to cut down such a master of the blade.”
“I will not kill an unarmed man,” Lio replied. “Not here of all places. Draw your weapon.”
“I had hoped to do this peacefully,” he said, “but very well.”
Khev drew into parry prime, and then a perfect en garde, and the duel began. His moth-shadow wavered, but the man himself was unmoved.
Lio feinted at his blade, to which he replied with cunningly timed disengagement; his blade made a tight circle about hers, without making contact. She invited attack, as she had with Peris, which he disdained. Her next feints met with similar patience, and he refused to be drawn out.
Khev lowered his blade then. Lio wasn’t fooled. His arm remained in perfect alignment, and she had noted the uncanny speed of his responses. If she attacked him carelessly, his blade would whip up and pierce her arm. Cautiously, she tested his defenses, and indeed, only her own reflexive parries, as fast as his, kept him from running her through. Each time, he returned his blade to that lowered position, an open taunt.
They remained at impasse for some time. Lio noted the strange wavering of his shadow, and wondered at its significance. But she had been in the ice-vaults for too long, and she did not know what internal conflicts Luna House might hide, that might challenge the legitimacy of Khev’s position.
Then the fragrance of azaleas swirled through the air, and Lio knew that Anjen had kept her promise, whatever her reasons. Khev’s face darkened, the first emotion he’d betrayed since entering the Tournament Supreme. Suddenly his shadow changed shape, and a murmur of dismay went around the arena. Here he was able to disguise his true allegiance no longer: instead of Luna’s Moth, his shadow took on the form of the heptarchate’s seven-spoked wheel.
Now Lio understood why the City’s silicate mind had intervened. She was its instrument; she could not suffer the traitor to live, even if he had the support of the City’s Houses. If the terrain-of-shadows remained favorable to him—
Lio had not reckoned on aid from that quarter, but the hostile elements among the Common Houses’ shadows, which had previously buzzed around her and threatened to foul her blade, instead drew back, allowing her an unimpeded view of Khev. The smell of azaleas ghosted through the air.
Khev, who must have sensed that the terrain of shadows was turning against him, lifted his blade and advanced. Lio gave way again and again, forcing him to sweat over every centimeter. Her blade bobbed up and down, making a moving target of her arm. She circled his point, feinted, circled again. Am I going to riposte yet? she asked him in the language of the sword.
Again and again she feinted until his attention slipped toward the City-shadow at her back. It was only for a second; a second was all she needed. Lio lunged with a whipcord swiftness that drew gasps, had she been listening. Khev brought his sword up in a belated circular parry. She saw it c
oming, disengaged neatly, and slipped past to pierce him through.
Lio pulled her blade out, and he fell. “Why?” she asked him in the rustling silence. “Why betray the City, which once you served so well?”
“It is a long journey to the nameless world we seek to colonize,” Khev replied, “and I wanted its end.” He smiled faintly. “I have found it after all, if not in the way I expected.” Then his grip slackened, and the sword with the gray jewel fell out of his hand, and the heptarchate’s wheel dwindled until it was an ordinary man’s shadow again.
Lio stood unseeing as the shadows everywhere in the arena resumed the ordinary laws of light and geometry.
The wolf-priest approached her, cautious of her blade. “It’s done,” he said, and repeated himself when she looked at him blankly. “You’ve won the Supreme Tournament. You’re the new mayor-commander.”
It took a moment for the words to penetrate the adrenaline haze. Then she shook her head, impatient, and scanned the crowd until she saw the floater chair and Anjen splendid in her dress of bright magenta. “No,” Lio said, beckoning with her off hand until Anjen approached.
Anjen’s eyes met hers, intent and smiling.
Lio smiled back and saluted her with her sword, still stained with Khev’s blood. “I didn’t win. We did.” She bowed then, with all the elegance of her station. “She is your new mayor-commander. After all, she knows the ways of the City and its Houses, and how to govern. I am but her blade.”
“You do me too much credit,” Anjen murmured as she maneuvered her chair up to Lio.
Lio wiped her sword clean and sheathed it. She leaned over, perfectly balanced all the while, and pressed a kiss to Anjen’s lips. Their eyes met. Anjen’s eyes were bright as stars and dark as shadows, and Lio knew they would partner each other perfectly in the days to come.
The Commander and the Mirage Master’s Mate
Silk & Steel Page 26
