Being a Security Officer did that to you. Especially, if your name was Valiant.
The crowd labored on through the packed snow, slipping and lurching and fighting for balance. The mists were growing thicker, obscuring the distance. Silence watched his breath steam on the air before him and wondered what lay ahead. If he had any sense he'd be running for his life rather than presenting his head to the Empress so she could cut it off personally, but he knew his duty. The Service was his life, and if it had been a hard life for the most part, he still wouldn't have chosen any other. As a Captain in the Imperial Navy he was part of something greater, in the service of humanity, and he would give his life for it, should that prove necessary. Lionstone might be a vindictive psychotic with a particularly unfortunate sense of humor, but she was his Empress, and he had sworn upon his life and his honor to serve her all his days. He looked about him at the subzero world and smiled slightly. Typical of Lionstone. Here he was, walking to his execution like a good soldier, and she even had to make that difficult.
He looked around sharply as he sensed as much as heard something large moving up ahead, hidden in the mists. Murmurs moved through the crowd as others heard or saw it. Silence's eyes narrowed, and his hand fell to his hip, where his gun should have been. Glimpses of something large moved through the mist, seen and gone in a moment. It moved ponderously, crunching loudly through the snow, and then suddenly raised a shaggy head and roared defiantly. The harsh sound echoed eerily on the quiet, and then the mists came down again, and the creature was lost to sight. The courtiers huddled together for comfort but kept moving. The Empress was waiting.
Silence's hands itched for a weapon, but gun and sword were both denied him. No subject, no matter how trusted or exalted, was allowed to bear weapons before his Empress, without a special dispensation. Which meant everyone around Silence was unarmed, too. Easy pickings if the creature decided it was hungry. The Empress would have to be crazy to risk endangering the Families with a real threat, but no one would have bet against it. Silence scowled, his hands curling into fists. A dim shape roared again, but the sound was farther off. It was moving away. The crowd breathed a general sigh of relief, and the pace picked up again. There was always the chance the shape was just another hologram, but no one was willing to bet on that, either. Silence decided he was going to stick really close to the Investigator. Even unarmed, Frost was death on two legs, and he'd back her against anything Lionstone might have imported. Not that he'd ever tell Frost that. She was bigheaded enough as it was.
More shapes loomed up out of the mists ahead. At first Silence thought they were security guards waiting to escort the courtiers to the Iron Throne, but as he drew closer he could see they were just snowmen. A line of human shapes, made from packed snow, with cheerful scarves around their necks, coals for eyes, and a smile drawn on. They might have been charming if they hadn't all been depicted dying in different, innovative ways. One had been impaled on a lance. Another held its severed head in its hands. Beside it, a third form had been dismembered, its snow limbs lying scattered around its body. Silence started to walk past them, then hesitated as he realized Frost had stopped. The Investigator stood scowling at the snowmen, one hand patting her hip where her sword should have been. Stelmach stood shivering beside her, not particularly interested in the snowmen, but unwilling to move on without the protection of the only more or less friendly faces he knew. Silence moved in beside Frost.
"What is it, Investigator? Problem?"
"I don't know, Captain. Maybe. There's something about these snowmen. Something… disturbing. Who makes a snowman with limbs?"
She stepped up to the decapitated snowman and took the snow head out of its cupped hands. It was a large round ball of snow, with a wide smile cut beneath the blind coal eyes. Frost grunted at the unexpected weight of the head and balanced it in the crook of her arm while she scraped away at the surface of the snow with her other hand. The eyes and smile disappeared. Silence knew what she was going to find before he saw it. The surface snow disappeared to reveal the nose and staring eyes of a real face. Frost carefully swept away more snow to uncover the human features beneath. Silence didn't recognize the face. He moved forward and thrust his hand deep into the snow body. His fingertips thudded against something hard and unyielding that definitely wasn't packed snow. He pulled his hand out quickly, and rubbed it clean against his hip.
"There's a real body in there," he said quietly.
"Can't say I'm surprised, Captain." Frost threw the head aside. "Shall I check the other snowmen?"
"No need. They're all dead men. Lionstone's way of telling us what's coming. I wonder who they were."
Frost shrugged. "People who upset the Empress. Never any shortage of them. Let's go."
"What's the hurry?" snapped Stelmach. "Make the most of what little time we've got left."
"Don't give up hope," said Silence. "Frost and I have been here before, and we survived. Maybe we'll get lucky this time as well."
"No one's that lucky," said Stelmach.
"Don't worry," said Frost. "We'll put in a good word for you."
"Oh, great," said Stelmach. "That's all I need."
They moved on, trudging doggedly through the deep snow to catch up with the rest of the courtiers. Some of them must have seen what was inside the snowmen, but they were all doing their best to pretend they hadn't. Success at Court often depended on being very selective as to what you saw. The snow fell and the mists thickened and still the arctic scene stretched out before them. Silence frowned. The courtroom couldn't be that large. Perhaps they were being subtly influenced to walk in circles. He looked up sharply as an agitated murmur began again among the courtiers. The crowd lurched to a halt, those on the edges looking quickly about them. Nothing moved in the mists. Silence looked at Frost, who was listening carefully. She gestured for him to lean close so that she could murmur in his ear.
"There's something moving under the snow, Captain. It's large and alive. I can feel the vibrations, and I can hear the sounds it makes as it moves."
"A snow snake, perhaps," said Silence. "They have those on Loki. Some of the big ones run to twenty feet long."
"Oh, no," said Stelmach. "Not snakes. I really don't like snakes."
"Don't worry," said Silence soothingly. "If it annoys the Investigator, she'll tie it in a square knot and throw it away. Right, Frost?"
"Damn right," said Frost.
And that was when a set of jaws ten feet wide opened up beneath a courtier's feet, gulped him down, and disappeared back into the concealing snow. His friends and Family shouted in alarm and fell to their knees to dig at the snow with their bare hands, but there was no trace left of whatever had taken him. They looked at each other helplessly, and far away in the snow and mists came the light tinkling of laughter. The Empress was amused. Some of the courtiers began talking calmingly to those still on their knees. There was nothing to be done. Man proposes and the Empress disposes, and that was just the way it was in the Empire these days. Silence said nothing, but his face was set and grim.
The snow surged up suddenly at the crowd's edge as the snow creature's blunt head broke the surface. People scattered with shouts and shrieks. The great mouth opened and spat out the courtier it had taken. The head dropped back into the snow and disappeared. The courtier sailed through the air and hit the packed snow hard, but his plaintive groan showed that at least he was still alive. His friends clustered around him, checked that he was basically undamaged, and got him on his feet again. Lionstone laughed again, and everyone who liked their head where it was laughed along with her. Even the courtier who'd briefly seen the inside of something much larger than he was managed a shaky laugh. Though he was probably just glad to be alive. Frost looked at Silence.
"Big snake."
Stelmach nodded rapidly, his eyes very large.
The courtiers trudged on again, driving their legs through the deep snow. It actually seemed to be getting colder, if that was possible. Hoarfros
t was forming on hair and beards, and melting snow soaked into light clothing. Everyone was shivering, and some were shaking violently. Silence could feel the cold gnawing at his bones despite running the heating elements in his uniform on full. His nose and ears ached, and he could feel crystals of ice forming at the corners of his eyes. Stelmach was shaking as though he had a small juddering engine inside him. Frost, of course, didn't deign to shiver. The courtiers had packed close together for support and shared body warmth, but they still kept clear of Silence, Frost, and Stelmach. They knew pariahs when they saw them. They'd all stopped talking and settled for concentrating on surviving Lionstone's latest practical joke. Everyone agreed it had been a dark day for the Empire in general and the Court in particular when the Empress decided she had a sense of humor.
Strange shapes loomed up out of the mists ahead, huge shards of solid ice thrusting up out of the snow like the only part of the iceberg you ever see. The falling snow swirled around them, as though attracted to the glistening planes of ice. There were statues scattered among the huge shards, curved into sharp-edged, disturbing shapes. Silence looked from the statues to the shards and wondered if they'd been carved and shaped, too, into ancient enigmatic shapes that only mankind's distant ancestors might have recognized and responded to. The ice structures formed a rough semicircle, inviting the courtiers in, and there at the far end stood the Iron Throne, set up high on a great block of ice. And on that ancient chair of black iron studded with jade sat the Empress Lionstone XIV, calmly watching their stumbling approach.
She was wrapped in layers of thick furs, like some ancient tribal leader, her pale face as cold and clear as the legendary Ice Queen, who stole men's souls by sliding shards of ice into their eyes and hearts. She had a long, sharp-planed face, with a wide slash of a mouth and brilliant blue eyes, colder than any ice could ever be. She was beautiful, but that, too, was a cold kind of beauty, like the tall diamond crown on her head. The Empress, the worshiped and adored, whose whims were law and at whose merest word men died and worlds burned. Also known as the Iron Bitch.
She sat at ease on the Iron Throne, watching with a sardonic smile as the courtiers drew up before her, bowed their heads, and then held themselves in that humble and uncomfortable position while they waited for the word from the Empress that would release them. On bad days, she'd been known to keep them there for ages, till sweat dropped off their faces and their backs screamed for release. Today, she gave them permission to straighten up after only a few seconds, suggesting either she was in a good mood after all or she was really looking forward to something yet to come. The courtiers practiced looking polite and respectful and extremely loyal as the Empress's smile wandered over them.
They also kept a respectful distance, not just because of the twenty armed guards spread out behind the Throne, but also because of Lionstone's maids-in-waiting, who crouched snarling silently at her feet. There were ten of them, each more dangerous than any armed man. They wore no clothes, but they didn't feel the cold. They didn't feel anything unless the Empress permitted it. Mind techs had stirred their sticky fingers in the maids' brains until nothing remained there but unquestioning obedience to the Empress. They would die to protect her. Or kill, as required. They were cunning, deadly fighters, with hidden implanted weaponry. They were silent because they had no tongues, and they perceived the world only through grafted cybernetic senses. Their fingers had steel claws. They clustered together at the base of the Iron Throne, glaring at the courtiers, waiting eagerly to be unleashed on anyone foolish enough to displease their mistress. But for once, not even they were enough to hold the courtiers' gaze. Beside the Throne, standing a little to one side in the swirling snow, huge and awful, stood a yoked Grendel alien.
On the planet called Grendel, genetically engineered creatures lay sleeping in deep-buried vaults. Thousands upon thousands of them, an army waiting for an enemy that never came. The alien civilization that created them was long gone, but their work lived on. Unstoppable killing machines, living weapons, programmed to fight on until either they or the enemy was destroyed. An Empire exploratory team made the mistake of opening one of the ancient vaults, and the Sleepers emerged in a fury of blood and slaughter. They wiped out all the team and overran the exploratory camp on the surface in a matter of minutes. Hundreds of men and women died screaming, their weapons useless, and not one Grendel fell. In the end they had no starships, so were trapped on the planet's surface. The Empress gave the order for the planet's surface to be scorched from orbit, and that was the end of the Grendels. Except for those still sleeping in the vaults deep below. Lionstone put the planet under quarantine, and left starcruisers there to enforce it.
But faced with the threat of unknown alien foes massing against the Empire, Lionstone had conceived of a new plan: to waken and control the Grendels and use them as shock troops. And now here one stood, a thick cybernetic yoke gleaming on its shoulders, controlling the creature's thoughts. Theoretically. Everyone eyed the Grendel warily and hoped fervently that this time the scientists had got all the bugs out in advance. The Grendel alien stood nine feet tall, in spiked crimson silicon armor that was somehow a part of it. It had vicious fangs and claws and was roughly humanoid in shape, but its large heart-shaped face had nothing even remotely like a human expression. Just one of the creatures had wiped out a whole company of Silence's men when he went down to the vaults to capture and control the aliens, before he brought it down, as much by luck as anything. And now here one was in Court, with only a prototype yoke holding back its perpetual killing rage.
More than ever Silence wished he had his weapons with him. Or at least some idea which way the exit was. The courtiers studied the Grendel silently and were not happy. They understood the need for increased security at Court, after previous attacks by both aliens and elves, but a personal Grendel on a leash was going a bit far, even for Lionstone. This had gone beyond safety or style and headed firmly in the direction of overkill. Possibly literally. Those at the front of the crowd were seized with a sudden polite wish for others to take up their privileged vantage point and attempted to fade back into the crowd. The rank behind them were having none of this and resisted strongly. If the yoke should fail, everyone knew better than to think the armed guards would try to protect them. That wasn't what they were there for. The courtiers somehow managed to stir rebelliously in complete silence. Frost leaned in close beside Stelmach, who jumped slightly. Frost didn't smile.
"I thought you said you were the only one with a yoked Grendel. And that one was destroyed on Haden. So what's this doing here?"
"Apparently, research has moved on in my absence," said Stelmach, his voice little more than a whisper, trying to talk without moving his lips so as to avoid drawing attention to himself. Frost frowned heavily.
"Just how dependable is that yoke?"
"Depends what you mean by dependable. Unless they've made some major breakthrough, which I strongly doubt, the yoke is strictly on/off. Once the Grendel's been unleashed it will kill anything it sees. The best you can hope to do is make sure it's aimed in the right direction. If that yoke follows the processes my people set up, it should do its job, but I wouldn't like to bet my life on it."
"We are betting our lives on it," said Silence.
"I know," said Stelmach, unhappily.
Silence looked about him, not bothering to hide his interest. He had no doubt there were more armed guards around that he couldn't see, probably hidden behind concealing holograms. Plus any number of esp-blockers, to keep out esper terrorists. And a whole set of other protections he probably wouldn't even recognize. The Empress was said to have spent more than one fortune making her Courtroom as secure as was humanly and inhumanly possible. It wasn't just paranoia. There were a lot of people who would like to see Lionstone dead, who'd dance at her funeral and piss on her grave. Quite a lot of them could be found among the courtiers, which was why they were only admitted unarmed after a complete body scan. Sometimes answering a summons to Co
urt could turn out to be a death sentence for someone who hadn't been as careful at plotting as he thought he'd been. It didn't stop the Families coming to Court. It was, after all, where things happened. The best place to see and be seen, watched on billions of holos across the Empire. The only place where they could have their say in how things were decided. And despite their justified nervousness, a great many of the courtiers were determined to be heard.
For the first time in years, they were pretty sure they had a chance to force power out of Lionstone's hands and into theirs. They had something that if properly handled might just drive a wedge between the Empress and the military that supported her. The rebels' triumphant trashing on the Tax and Tithe Headquarters, along with their breaking open of the planet's defenses, had made the military's position very vulnerable, politically speaking. The sudden alien attack had only emphasized this. And on top of everything else that had happened, the Empire's Warrior Prime, the Empress's own official Consort and good right hand, the Lord High Dram, was strongly rumored to be dead. Killed on some faraway planet, on an unknown mission entirely unauthorized by the Court.
The only people said to know for sure were the crew of the Dauntless, and they were being held in strict quarantine on their ship in orbit. Except for Silence, Frost, and Stelmach. There were a lot of eyes following their every move, but the courtiers gave them plenty of room, too, just in case. They were pretty sure Lionstone had something in mind for these three, and it might well turn out to be messy. Silence was aware of the Court's undercurrents, and the way the courtiers were looking at the Empress. He couldn't help thinking they had a point. If Lionstone and her military couldn't protect her own planet from a single alien ship and a handful of rebels, she and they were in no position to try and dictate terms to the Company of Lords and the Members of Parliament, whose monies helped to pay for everything. The bottom line of which was, if they were going to pay higher taxes for the Empire's security, they wanted more of a say in how that money was to be spent. And preferably before the tax records could be worked out again and the new rates decided.