Shadow of the Warmaster

by Jo Clayton

  The Palace defenses belonged to the days of the first Imperator and they were badly maintained; until recently no one, not even the professionally paranoid Grand Sech, had expected an attack on the Palace itself. During the past months there’d been some attempt to refurbish the alarms and automatic killers, but slave techs don’t make all that reliable a workforce when there’s a thought hanging in the air that the men in power are about to lose their footing.

  Down and around they went, N’Ceegh leading, Zaraiz Pa’ao watching his sides and back, sweeping away resistance, not stopping to ask those they met what side they were on; the agile uninvolved dived for cover, the guards and slow reactors died. Down and around, going for the CommandCenter, multiply defended, massively armored spherical chamber, buried in the earth, resting on bedrock, built to resist intense bombardment, fire, flood, whatever. Half a dozen Tassalgans guarded the single entrance, a hatch with a complex wholebody lock programmed to open for two people and only two, the Imperator and the Grand Sech: The security was impressive, it looked impeccable, but no Imperator in all the long millennia of Imperacy, back on Huvedra or here on Tairanna, not one Imperator had ever ever locked himself in a room with only one exit; he always had a bolt hole known only to himself.

  Before he escaped, N’Ceegh had spent nearly three years local in the Palace as one of Pittipat’s favorite toys. During those years he’d built weapons and other elaborate playthings for the Imperator and used his spare time to make spy eyes and ears for himself. He planted them everywhere, collecting data for his escape and his vengeance. Among his other unlovely attributes, Pittipat was a voyeur. He liked to spy on his own people and went slipping from peephole to peephole sometimes all night long. N’Ceegh laid a bug on him and tracked him a couple of nights and after that explored the web of passages on his own, mapping security systems and finally the area about the CommandCenter. Pittipat was on N’Ceegh’s vengeance list because he’d ordered a weaponmaster from Bolodo and thus had a share of bloodguilt for the ashing of the Pa’ao kin. After N’Ceegh was in the palace a month, his cold determination went hot where Imperator Pettan tra Pran was concerned, the old rip had an inherited talent for creating passionate enemies.

  N’Ceegh led Zaraiz Pa’ao to the outlet of the Imperator’s bolthole.

  He melted it down. Two minutes later the Pa’ao and his son leaped into the CommandCenter and confronted the Imperator, the Grand Sech and the clutch of Huvved techs busy at sterile white work stations.

  Looking down melter snouts at the swarming Hordar, swinging back and forth, wiping away rank after rank of the marchers, flesh running like water off bones that ran like syrup into a puddle around the feet of men women children who kept coming on and coming on.

  Talking with Seches in the Fekkris of Littoral cities. The faces all saying the same thing: the cities are emptying, the Hordar are leaving. Saying to the Seches: stop them, shoot them down if you have to, don’t let them leave, don’t let them come here, stop them however you can. We can’t send you anything right now, it’s up to you, stop them.

  N’Ceegh burned the head off the Grand Sech while Zaraiz Pa’ao plinked the techs. As the Imperator woke from his initial shock and started scurrying toward the main exit, N’Ceegh sent a beam from the burner sizzling past him. Pittipat stopped and turned slowly, working on a smile as he turned. His eyes opened wide as he recognized the intruder. “Ceeghi?”

  “!Hi-Vagh!” N’Ceegh muttered. Leaving Zaraiz Pa’ao to guard the exit, he stalked the Imperator, cornered him against a work station. “Down you,” he growled, “on the floor, Bitvekeshit.”

  The Imperator’s head went up, his tentative smile vanished. “Nonsense,” he said.

  N’Ceegh lifted the burner, pressed the front end of the tube against Pittipat’s stomach. “Ba’okl, choose, flea.”

  The old man reconsidered his objection and stretched out on the floor where he lay blinking up at the Pa’ao. With visible effort he managed a smile, then broadened it into a genial grin that lit up watery blue eyes sunk in a nest of pseudo laugh-wrinkles. He was calm now, confident; despite his uncomfortable and humiliating position, he was sure he could manipulate the situation to his benefit, that he could pacify this old friend. “Come, Ceeghi, you’re a good fellow. What do you want? Just tell me. There’s no need for all this.”

  N’Ceegh knelt beside him and touched a spray to his neck. The Imperator stiffened, worked his mouth; he couldn’t speak and he couldn’t move his limbs.

  Zaraiz left his post and stood beside the Pa’ao, watching what he was doing.

  Hobbling on his knees (plushy gray fur worn thin over the bone), N’Ceegh moved down the Huvved’s long spindly body, unbuckled the Imperatorial sandals, slid the long bony feet out of them. “My village is ash,” he said, speaking with emotionless precision in unaccented Hordaradda. He took a thin surgical blade from a sheath on his forearm and sliced off the Imperatorial great toes; he set them aside while he applied cauterizing patches to stop the blood flow. He slit the Imperatorial trousers up past the knees. “The house of my fathers is ash,” he said. He drew his knife across the hamstrings, severing them. He hobbled up a little farther. “My children are ash,” he said. With a deft twist of his knife, he popped out the Imperatorial testicles and dropped them beside the severed toes. He moved on. “My lifemates are ash,” he said. He lifted the left hand, drew his knife several times across the back of it, severing the tendons. “My craft-heir is ash,” he said. He removed the thumb, dropped it on the Imperatorial chest and applied a patch to the wound. “My bloodkin to the third degree are ash,” he said. He dealt with the right hand in the same way, edged along until he was bending over the Imperatorial head, looking down at the old Huvved’s face, ignoring the terror in it. “You are the prime cause of those things,” he said. “The bloodghosts of my kin cry for vengeance. Zaraiz, help me, keep his head steady.”

  While Zaraiz Pa’ao held the Imperatorial head locked against his thighs, N’Ceegh drew the blade delicately along the top of the Imperatorial eyesockets, cutting away the eyelids without touching the eyes beneath. “Never close your eyes again to the death and pain you decree,” he said. Working with the same care, he cut through the skin and cartilage of the Imperatorial nose and lifted it away. “Never ignore again the consequences of your demands.” He used the point as a stylus and cut into the Imperatorial brow the Pao-teely glyphs for bloodguilt. “May the world know your soul, you who command death without thought. Let him go,” he said, “gently, my son, if you please.”

  N’Ceegh got to his feet, brushed his hands together: “The paralysis will wear off in about an hour,” he told the old man. “Do what you will then.” He touched Zaraiz Pa’ao on the shoulder. “Time to go.”

  They fought their way back to the roof against a stiffening but disordered resistance, reached the garden breathing hard from the climb with a few holes in unimportant places, a burn or two from richocheting pellets, nothing serious.

  Stretching and yawning, so sleepy he didn’t like thinking about the ride back to the mines, Zaraiz Pa’ao strolled to the parapet and looked across the grass at the faint lines of rose and purple at the base of the clouds in the west; the sun was down and the dark was lowering quickly. He yawned again, glanced into the gardens below. He saw the tug. “Look, N’Cey-da, isn’t that the machine they were talking about at the Mines?”

  N’Ceegh crossed to him. “!F-doo-ya! must be. Talk was the Outsiders come looking for disappeared who might be slaves.” He frowned at Zaraiz Pa’ao. “You my son now, Zhazh-ti,” he said, “my craft-heir, but you born Hordar. It is Torveynee I ask you, come with me away from Tairanna? Come with me to hunt the ghostblood?”

  Zaraiz Pa’ao rubbed at his eyes. He was so tired; it wasn’t fair that he had to decide this without time to consider. He reached out a trembling hand and warm furry fingers closed around it. On the other side, there were lots of times before this when he’d chewed things over and over and sometimes he was right and sometimes h
e was wrong. Prophet help me, he thought. “I will come, I will hunt,” he said. “Promise you’ll teach me? Everything?”

  “You my craft-heir, Zhazh-ti. What else? Everything, ya.” N’Ceegh grinned at him, hugged the boy hard against him. “!Fi! let us go push in on that line.”

  4

  The pen had small sleeping chambers arranged around an assembly hall with a horizontal lattice displayed across the ceiling, tracks for the slides of the tether chains. At night around a hundred slaves were locked onto those chains and left to negotiate their way into their assigned sleeping places. Because of the Surge and the attack on the Wall, the Palace slaves had been herded into the pen early, the Huvved didn’t want them getting ideas about escaping. When I burned the latch and kicked the door in, most of them were still in the assembly chamber, gathered in clusters, talking, arguing, fidgeting or just sitting and staring in deep depression at stains on the walls.

  I stood beside the door, looking over that very various crowd in that long narrow room. “Tom’perianne,” I called. I waited a minute, repeated the name, yelling over the noise. “Remember a dancer name of Kante Xalloor? She asked us to have a look for you and your sisters.”

  A thin vital woman, vaguely pteroid, moved away from a group of the back wall, her chain clinking musically. “Xalloor, eh?” She had a deep contralto. So much voice from so frail a body. She looked to her right at two others who might have been clones instead of sisters they were so like her.

  “Xalloor,” Nym’perianne said (or it might have been Lam’perianne). Whoever, her voice was a liquid lovely soprano. When I learned their names, I could tell them apart by voices if not their faces and bodies.

  “What cha know,” Lam’perianne said (or it might have been Nym’perianne). This one had an oboe’s reedy notes, less immediately enticing than her sister, but maybe more interesting as time passed.

  “Good kid,” they chorused.

  “You know us,” Tom’perianne said. “Who’re you?”

  “Name’s Quale,” I said. “Ship Slancy Orza. You want a ride to Helvetia?”

  “That’s the dumbest question I ever heard.” She laughed, flutesong.

  “I assume that means yes. Pels, cut the three of them loose. Someone here called Jaunniko?”

  The noise got louder. Two men struggled, one fell; the one still standing moved away from the tangle he’d created. “Here, Quale. I’m Jaunniko. The dancer ask for me?”

  “Someone did. Described him too and you’re not him. Jaunniko, stick your head up, will you? Or your hands, sculptor.”

  Behind the scowling claimant, pushing impatiently at two men and a woman trying to help him up, a lanky young man got unsteadily to his feet and ran strong square hands through hair with a remnant of purple dye still clinging to it. As his biceps flexed, the lavender butterfly tattooed on his arm seemed to flutter. He tried to speak, but a partially deflected blow in the mixup had shoved his collar against his larynx and left him temporarily mute.

  I gave him a nod. “Yeh, you match. Pels?”

  The Omperiannas hurried over, dancing away from hands grabbing at them.

  “What now?” Tom’perianne fluted at me; Xalloor said she did most of the talking for the three of them. “Wait by the door, hmm?”

  Pushing the steel collar up and rubbing at his neck, Jaunniko reached me and I waved him over to join, the three musicians.

  “The rest of you-” I started.

  The slaves began fighting to get to me, tangling their chains, struggling, desperate, yelling, grunting, wrestling with each other.

  “Quiet,” I roared at them. “Get back. Give me trouble and you can sit here and rot.” I waited until the noise subsided to a manageable level. “Untangle those chains, dammit, how do you expect us to cut them when they’re messed up like that? All right, right. The more you help, the sooner we can get out of here. You have any idea what’s cranking up outside? This place is going to be rubble before the sun comes up. Bloody rubble. And they’re not caring who does the bleeding.” I turned my head. “Tom’perianne, come here.” When she was at my side, I gave her my stunner. “It won’t kill anyone,” I said. “It’ll just lay them out and we’ll leave them laying.” I raised my voice again and repeated that, so everyone could hear it, went on, “Use it on anyone who looks like trouble. You out there, when you’re cut loose, back up against the inside wall if you want us to run shotgun for you; if you figure you can handle yourself outside, take off. Up to you, I’m no nursemaid.”

  I plunged into the crowd and began helping Pels sever the chains; the job got easier when the yells and screams from outside came in loud enough for them to get an earful; they calmed down fast and sorted themselves out as we cut them loose. When we were ready to go, Pels led, with the Omperiannas and Jaunniko immediately behind him. The rest of that motley crop followed, organized into squads that kept together and made good time once they were out of the pen. I followed a few strides behind so I could scan the whole and have a better chance of spotting trouble.

  When they saw the tug’s snout, they really put on some speed. I started hoping we’d reach Chicklet without much trouble. Pels flattened a couple of cats before they made up their minds to jump us, that was about it. The two-legged guards were too busy to bother with anything not coming at them. The attack on the walls was more intense, I could see strings of Hordar coming up and over like lines of ants, and the yizzies were thick overhead. Not over us at first. I was hoping they’d keep away; they were circling high up, beyond the range of the guard’s pellet guns, spilling fire over everything and everyone below them, even the front lines of the Surge. The yizzy riders were acting like they weren’t part of them on the ground, like they were a Surge on their own. Since most of them were street kids or divorced outcasts, I suppose they had to be a separate force, a third force striking at Huvved and Hordar alike.

  We were too big a target. Half a dozen yizzies came at us dripping fire, They stayed high up, my stunner wouldn’t reach them. Nothing I could do. Like an idiot I’d left the launch tube and my darts in the tug.

  Another yizzy came swooping by, looked like it was carrying two, one draped over the knees of the other; the one in control rested a black tube on his passenger’s back. Even that far off I could see what it was-a heavy-duty cutter. It slashed across the inklins attacking us and turned them into ash on the wind.

  As the newcomer bagged himself some more twelve year olds, I ran for the tug, cursing Bolodo and Adelaar and Pittipat and Huvved snots and bloody-minded rebels and the Surge and him up there and everyone and everything that got me here and made me look at these things. Children killing. Killing children. Made me want to vomit.

  As Pels finished loading the ex-slaves, a fifth wave of fliers formed up and headed our way. I cupped my hands around my mouth and bellowed at our friend on the yizzy to come on board if that’s what he wanted, we were going to get the hell out of here.

  He brought his yizzy down until he was hanging over the edge of the lift platform. “N’Ceegh Pa’ao,” he said, his voice was a hoarse roar that had trouble cutting through the noise around us. “Escaped slave asking transport offworld. My son Zaraiz Pa’ao.” He patted the boy’s buttocks. “Surge got hold of him and I had to put him out. Give me a hand with him.”

  “Right. How you want to do this?”

  “Let me get the straps off.” He produced a wicked-looking scalpel from an armsheath and sliced through the braided thongs that tied the boy in place.

  I got my hands around the child’s waist and lifted; he was small like most Hordar children, slight, a featherweight. I held him while the Pa’ao swung from the saddle and let the yizzy drift off. “We’ll go up to the bridge,” I said. “We can talk while I’m taking Chicklet back to Base. Mind leaving that cutter in the lock?”

  “Uhnh, Fiddoodah’ak.” Before I could ask what that meant, his mouth split into a lipless grin. “Sure, no problem.”

  He stripped off the battery and dropped it and the tube near
the inner hatch. I gave him the boy and got busy; by the time I had the lift folded in and the outer lock dogged home, Pels had the drives humming.

  When we reached the bridge, the Pa’ao laid the boy he’d called his son on the floor mat and dropped down to sit cross-legged beside him. He lifted the child’s head and shoulders into his lap and sat with one hand resting lightly on his son’s tangled black hair.

  I took a last look at the chaos around us, goosed the tug into the air. I’d had more than enough of Tairanna, the Hordar and this whole rescue business.

  XV

  1. Three days after the taking of the Warmaster.

  Karrel Goza in Ayla gul Inci/mid-morning/cloudy day, gusts of gray rain.

  Gul Inci was empty. Empty even of death. No bodies in the streets. No bloodstains or char marks where inklins and others had burned. In the beast courts the stock complained, udders heavy with curdled milk, feed trays and water troughs empty, pet animals whimpered, whined or howled, hungry and parched, abandoned by those who were supposed to care for them. The wind snapped wash left hanging on the line when the Surge impulse came down on gul Inci, it banged doors left unlatched, rattled and banged shutters. It blew scraps of paper and other debris against and around Karrel Goza who came walking south from Sirgыn Bol where he’d left Windskimmer noselocked to a mooring mast.

  He passed House after House emptied by the Surge impulse. He walked slower and slower, drew his fingers across the bright tessera inlaid in the brick of the courtwalls, Family marks and signs taken from Family history. He named the Houses as he touched their signs, a slow invocation of what had been. House Falyan. House Umtivar. House Borazan. House Ishlemmet. House Tamarta. Empty, echoing, disturbing. A kind of walking nightmare. He moved deeper into the city, walking streets he’d taken so many times before, Sirgыn Bol to Goza House, Goza House to Sirgыn Bol; he did not hurry, he pushed against a growing reluctance to see his own House empty like these others.