All in all, not bad for a F’rar beating.
“I know you,” she said quietly, the viciousness in her voice tempered by thoughtfulness.
She continued to stare at me, and her eyes dilated again.
One of the guards said gruffly, “He was at the dinner where the K’fry bitch tried to assassinate you, m’lady.
Without looking at him, Frane waved him quiet with the movement of a single finger. “I know that, you idiot. There’s . . . something more here. What were you doing at that wagon?”
I said nothing, and Frane turned her cold gaze on one of the guards.
Trembling, the man said, “The guard on duty swore this cook was about to crawl underneath the wagon when he nabbed him. We’ve given the man a medal, my Queen.”
Frane cocked her head to one side and resumed staring at me.
“A cook . . .” she said, and a sudden thin smile drew across her lips. It looked like it was etched in acid.
“He’s not a cook. He’s Haydn’s boy,” she said.
The other guard said, “That can’t be, my Queen! The runt Sebastian was lost in the caves of Olympus Mons six weeks ago! Our spy Jift –”
She looked at him sharply. “Quiet your tongue before I cut it out of your head!”
There was instant silence in the tent.
“So,” Frane said, turning her attention and mock sweetness back to me. “Are you Sebastian of Argyre, or not?”
I said nothing, but only stared at her.
She reached out the thin, wizened fingers of her right hand and cupped my chin. I felt her claws extend, their sharpened tips digging into my flesh. Her eyes blazed with an unnatural fury, and her breath was like fire.
“It is him,” she said, and when she withdrew her fingers her claws were dripping red with my own blood.
She continued to stare at me with a mixture of glee and hatred, and then a placid look came over her face and she turned to her waiting dressers and make-up artists.
“I know what to do with him,” she said, as if speaking to herself, and then waved the guards away, who dragged me away, and beat me again.
I looked out at what I thought was dawn, through still swollen eyes.
At least a day had passed, perhaps two. I had not been fed, and had been given water only once, just before a beating, and so had choked it up, along with my own bile. My mouth was as parched as the desert. There were bruises on my legs, my thighs, my buttocks, my chest and back and head. It felt as if at least one rib was broken.
But these fellows were experts with their beatings, and they never abused me past my own endurance. There was always something left for the next time.
Which was overdue.
And I had never told them anything.
I tried to focus on the light above me, which did not look like daylight, though it was bright enough for it.
The light receded, and then gained in intensity again.
This happened over and over.
With an effort of will, I forced my right eye all the way open, and tried to focus.
The lights were on the ceiling of a cave, and I was moving. I looked to the right, which caused me a shooting pain through my head and neck, but I persisted.
I saw the running edge of an open wagon, and red rock walls.
So, I was underground once more, and moving.
I concentrated on my hearing, which had diminished; it sounded as though things were far away, and heard through a wash of surf.
I heard the distant clop of hoofs, and of many wagon wheels moving.
With an extreme effort of will, I tried to sit up.
I cried out in pain, and fell back.
A voice sounded through the wash of surf, answered by another. There was a short laugh, and then a grinning face appeared above me – someone I had never seen before, or perhaps one of the many torturers.
A fresh bolt of pain lanced my right side.
“Give ‘im another kick, then!” I heard someone say.
The grinning face lowered over me evilly. “No, ‘e don’t need it, do ‘e?”
I tried to mouth the word, “Please –”
The grinning face grew to cartoon proportions, and began to laugh. “‘E’s tried t’ speak!”
Again came the lancing pain in my right side.
“Listen, mate,” the cartoon face said; it looked to me as if the mouth was moving before I heard the words, “it’ll all be over soon. So jus’ be a good boy, and be quiet. We don’t want to wake up the Queen, do we?”
“Wha –” I began, but the lancing pain came again, more intense. The grinning face was not grinning anymore.
“Keep your mou’ shut, is all,” the voice, unattached to the lips, said. “If y’ wake ‘er up I’ll cut your throat now.”
The face went away, and I was quiet, watching the ceiling lamps flash by one after the other, and trying not to die.
I was awakened by another sharp pain. I was being pulled, and not gently, from the wagon. I opened my right eye and saw a wagon behind us, covered in blood red cloth with the crest of the F’rar clan stitched prominently on the side. I saw a flash of bright red robes and a smiling thin face before I was carried in the opposite direction.
Someone was speaking but I could not hear. I was dragged past an impossibly long tube, gleaming white. It looked familiar. Then I felt cold metal at my back, and saw the winding lash of a rope being moved over me again and again, holding me fast.
The thin evil face of Frane appeared before me.
Someone held my head so that I faced her.
From a great distance I heard her speak, and even then her words sounded like acid.
“Even now, Xarr and the other fools of the Second Republic are fighting desperately above, on the foothills of Olympus Mons, to destroy the weapon that will annihilate them. But it is only a partial force guarding a decoy weapon that they fight. Those men were expendable to me, and they will die for a great cause. In the end, Xarr will do anything to destroy that weapon.
“But of course the real weapon is right here, at your back. And by the time Xarr finds this out, it will be too late.”
She brought her face within inches of mine. Once again I felt her hot, sour breath.
“Good-bye, Sebastian of Argyre. Say hello to your mother in hell.”
Then she turned, and I heard her say languidly, “I am hungry. Get me out of here and feed me.”
And I saw, before unconsciousness claimed me, amid the bowing and scraping of her handlers and hangers-on, a flash of albino white, and a face I thought I knew . . .
Twenty Six
I came back from a faraway place.
My mother was there, and my father, and my sister and Thomas and Xarr and Quiff and many others. There was a great Elysian plain, all in soft green, and a strange blue sky so deep it hurt the eyes.
And there were Old Ones there, too, tall and stately, stentorian-voiced and filled with wisdom. And One was there, too, only she wasn’t a machine, waving what looked like a magic wand but was in reality a machine, and there were other machines in the air and in the ground. It was a world unlike anything I had ever imagined, and yet it didn’t seem like a dreamland – it seemed real. It seemed like it might be like on another world, Earth perhaps.
And then I awoke, into another dream even stranger than the first.
“He’s awake.”
It was a voice I knew, but I could not open my eyes to make sure. And then I remembered the beatings, and slowly, painfully, forced my right eyelid open.
But there was only a blur.
“Don’t move, sire. And don’t worry. You’re safe now.”
There was a mewling sound, and I realized it was me. I forced it to stop, and then let myself relax, settling into the dream as if it were real. Every inch of my body hurt, but it did not feel as if I were on hard ground.
“Poor fellow. He’s a hero and he doesn’t even know it.”
I knew that voice, too, and wanted to shout, “Newton!” b
ut my voice wouldn’t work. Only the mewling sound came again.
So I let myself slip back down into real dreams, Elysian dreams, and for a while the real voices receded and nothing hurt . . .
This time I was able to open my right eye.
There was a blur, but it slowly focused, as if someone were bringing a telescope to focus on an object. I remembered Newton’s voice, but decided to relegate that back to dreams for the moment. Instead I concentrated on seeing one sharp thing.
The thing moved, still a bit of a blur, but then it drifted into crisp outline.
It was Newton!
“Sire, I see that you’re awake.”
With difficulty, I raised my right paw, and held it out to him. I saw that it was covered in bandages.
He smiled and took it in his own, patting it with his other paw. Now another face came into view, and I was sure that my waking dream had been real.
“Don’t speak, Sire,” Thomas said, and a feline face had never looked so good to me.
I tried very hard, and managed to croak out a word: “Xarr...”
“Xarr is well, and busy chasing the F’rar army, which is scattered to the low hills at the base of Olympus Mons. I’m afraid we’re not out of the woods yet, Sire, but after you disabled Frane’s weapon she was forced to choose between running and fighting. For the moment she has chosen to run. But her army is a big one, and we may yet have to deal with it.”
I nodded, weakly.
Another thought was rising in my head, and I tried to bring it out. For a moment it was up there on the tip of my tongue, “Ji . . .” but then it slipped back down, like a coin slipping into a pool of water.
Thomas and Newton were waiting, expectant, but then I closed my eyes and could not muster the strength to open them again.
“He is healing well,” I heard Newton say, and then, for a while, I heard no more.
The next time I awoke, which, I was informed, was nearly a day later, I felt a renewed strength beginning to fill me. I could move my legs without swift pain, and I brought both of my bandaged hands up and examined them with both my right eye and, now partially open, my left eye. My face felt sore, but now it at least felt like a face and not a sack of cold wet oats. I could move my jaw, and could breathe without my healing ribs burning like hot coals.
In short, I wanted to get out of bed.
But they wouldn’t let me, Newton scolding that I still had plenty of mending to do, and Thomas concurring, as well as the returned Xarr, who stood over me like a brooding beast, dirty from battle.
“You smell awful, Xarr,” I said, my lips slowly pushing the words out. I wanted to laugh, but it hurt when I did so.
He didn’t know what to say, and began to blubber that he would bathe immediately, until I did laugh, immediately yowling at the sharp pain it gave me.
I put my paw out and grasped him. “It is good to see you, old friend.”
“It is good to see you, my King! The last time, you were so . . .” He gestured with his hands, and I laughed and finished his thought for him:
“Small?”
“Yes!” he said helplessly, and then laughed himself.
“I’ve been through a lot, and did a bit of growing,” I said.
He nodded. “Indeed you have.”
The thing that had eluded me now rose into my mind like an urgent stab.
“There is something you must do,” I said slowly.
And then I told him.
“Are you sure?” he asked, surprised and then angry. “It would explain some things on the battlefield, and especially off. And it would mean . . .”
Now real anger flushed his face. “It would mean . . .”
“Rella was innocent.”
Real pain was replaced by even greater anger. “I will attend to it immediately.”
“Yes,” I said. “And someday we will erect a monument to Rella, who was F’rar and wanted only to stop this war.”
He stormed from the room, swearing oaths and calling for his aids.
Newton, who had watched all this with quiet interest, said, “You have been very busy, Sire. I understand One summoned you, over my objections.”
“Yes.”
He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment. “My opticians have also been busy.”
“You don’t mean . . .”
He gestured to two apprentices who left the room and momentarily returned bearing a slick black tube mounted on a tripod made of gleaming red junto wood.
“My telescope!”
I immediately tried to push myself up in bed, and was rewarded with bolts of pain in my arms and legs.
Newton helped prop me up as the telescope was set down beside me.
I brushed a paw over the cool metal tube, the focuser, the diagonal with its replaceable eyepiece.
“There are three eyepieces,” Newton said proudly, “and the objective glass is very fine, almost five inches in diameter. My people did a graceful job.”
I was lost in admiration.
“When you are feeling better, we will set it up on the volcanic plain, where it is safe, now.”
“Then I must get well very soon.” I looked at him. “Thank you, Newton.”
“It is good to have you back with us, Sire.” A gleam came into his eye. “You must tell me about your adventures with One.”
“I will –?”
“She is . . . very special . . .” he added.
I was suddenly tired, and he sensed it.
“Rest now, sire, and we will speak again. We have much to discuss.”
“Yes, we do.”
“One thing,” Newton said, pausing in the doorway. “When Xarr and his men found you, there was a young fellow, his fur almost albino white, who was nursing you. He refused to come back to Olympus Mons with Xarr, but said he had business to attend to first –”
“Darwin!”
I felt a sudden pang, and missed the little fellow very much.
Newton nodded. “He said he had promised to bring you the one thing you needed most of all . . .”
“I wish he hadn’t left me.”
“You will tell me of these things?”
“In time,” I said. “It is nothing you need to know of, now. But it could end this war.”
“You are being enigmatic, Sire.”
I nodded. “For the time being, I must be.”
And then Newton left me, and I was left feeling better and worse – better in body, but hurting in spirit, missing the two felines in the whole universe who meant more than anything to me, and were out of my reach.
Twenty Seven
I healed, and, as promised, Newton had my new telescope mounted on the plain outside our fortress on Olympus Mons.
It was a beautifully cool evening. Winter was coming, and the stars, sensing it, rode in a crisp clear sky as sharp as pinpoints.
As Newton had said, the instrument’s objective glass was excellent, and with the help of a star atlas we had soon examined countless wonders, including clouds of what looked like luminous gas, some of them formed into whirlpools.
“There is a theory that some of those gas clouds are actually huge collections of stars like our own, held together by central gravity,” Newton said.
I took my eye from the eyepiece and stared at him in wonder. “Could it be?”
He shrugged in the darkness. “I do find it intriguing that some of these gaseous objects are so structured, with spiral arms and such. They are almost too elegant to be mere clouds of particles. But no one in the Science Guild has been able to resolve individual stars in any of these objects. At least not yet. If there were peace, we might be able to build a large enough instrument, using mirrors instead of glass. There is a book of the Old Ones that will help us.” He chuckled, a low rasping sound not usual to his serious demeanor. “In fact, these mirror telescopes were invented by my Old One namesake. I have the feeling the Old Ones resolved this question of nebulous clouds long ago.”
I angled the telescope toward a
nother object listed in the atlas, this one in the midst of the constellation Kit’s Kite – it was a tiny smoke ring sitting in space, and looked beautiful.
“Sire, regarding One . . .”
His voice had taken on a strange tone, and I looked up from the eyepiece, but he only stood silent, pursing his lips.
“You were going to say something?”
“This is not the time, Sire. It seems I must be enigmatic about certain things.”
He took up the star atlas, and began to study it.
“There are two nebulae in the Big Pot that can be seen in the same field of view,” he said, helping me swing the instrument around in the direction. “Then, I think, we should study Jupiter, and then Earth.”
I did not attend the execution of Lieutenant Jift. He was not worthy of my presence. He was worse than a traitor to his people – he was a traitor to his planet and had sent an innocent woman to her death only to cover his own cowardly tracks. This was the worst kind of treachery, and after General Xarr had confirmed my accusations, the former military commander of the Olympus Mons region was unceremoniously hanged. I was told he did not go quietly, which gave me no pleasure.
My first council meeting was a contentious affair. It was not my insistence that the F’rar be engaged in battle that was in dispute, but rather my insistence that I lead the troops myself.
“Sire,” General Xarr proclaimed, “you are barely healed and, if I might be so bold as to say, you have never been in battle.”
“Then this will be the first time.”
“But Sire –”
I pounded the table with my fist. “I will hear no more of it, general. I’ve heard stories that the same arguments were used with my mother. I will give you her answer. How can my people respect a leader who hides behind his own army? I will be at its front. We will ride out tomorrow, and finish this thing. How many troops do we command?”
Xarr threw up his paws in frustration and answered, “About four thousand.”
“And the F’rar? I estimated at least ten times that when I was among them.”
“Not anymore. They’re scattered, and many have turned tail or just gone home. Frane –”
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