So, I thought, this was why the Emperor had so casually executed young Timotheo. He was the son of a mere Consort. Expendable. And he might have been a nuisance later, since he was technically the eldest. I found myself remembering that varnished courtroom and young Timotheo’s incredulity when they pronounced the sentence of death on him. I missed quite a bit of what Rob said next, and I am not sure how he got on to the subject of the colony on Thalangia.
“Knarros is my uncle,” he was saying, when I could attend. “That’s why I’m here – me and Kris, we’re both his nephews. We’re the only ones who are allowed out. There’s very strict security. Kris and I spend half the year there and half with the rest of our family, and we’re not supposed to talk about Knarros when we’re outside. I shouldn’t really be saying this – aagh! – but the Emperor’s dead, so I suppose it doesn’t matter now. Anyway, as I was saying, Knarros has charge of the children of the True Wives and knows how they’re graded and what their real names are, and how to identify them when the time comes. The children themselves have no idea who they are, of course.”
It was not easy to interrupt Rob now he was talking. I tried to at this point. If Rob himself knew which Imperial child was which – and it sounded as if he might – it would make my task that much easier. But he talked through my attempt to interrupt him and Maree was the one who broke into his talk, frowning, while she took another threaded needle from me.
“What a crazy idea!” she said. “A kid’s got to be an Emperor and he’s no idea even who he is, and not the least idea what it takes to govern a country, and he’s never even been outside this colony of yours. It makes no sense! Does your uncle educate the heir in statecraft at least?”
“No of course not,” said Rob. “That wouldn’t be safe. As he is, he’s safe. And the Empire’s safe from the sons trying to overthrow their father, or unscrupulous people using the sons to—”
“Piffle,” Maree said. “Piffle and propaganda. Nick, didn’t someone try that here? The Ottoman Empire, or one of those?”
“That’s right,” Nick confirmed from my bed, studiously not looking Maree’s way. “And it didn’t work. I can’t remember which Empire it was either, but I do know they shut all the heirs away in a sort of palace-prison. And when they let the new Sultan out, he hadn’t a clue, and he was scared of everything. They were dreadful weak rulers.”
I sighed. So I went and let the new ruler out and this was how the Empire fell to pieces. As was Intended. I was fairly sure Nick and Maree had got their facts right. I seemed to recall something of the kind too.
“Knarros has trained them all in the right kind of ethics,” Rob protested. “And blood will out. The new Emperor is no coward and he’s no one’s fool, you’ll see.”
“Do you know which he is?” I managed to ask at last.
“No. Only Knarros knows that,” Rob replied. “I wash – was shpeaking generally.” His head slumped down on his arms. “Ish – is it going to take mush – much longer?”
“Nearly done,” said Maree.
This sudden collapse of Rob’s was understandable, and probably genuine, but I was fairly sure he was letting it happen because he thought he had said more than he ought to have done. I did not pester him. I would be seeing Knarros myself soon enough.
Rob remained with his face in his arms until Maree tied off the last stitch and said, “There. Done.” Then it was clear that Rob was truly in a state of collapse. It took all four of us to support him on his sliding, folding legs over to my bed, where we laid him carefully down on his good side. Luckily it was a large bed. He filled most of it.
Maree leant over him to say, “How about your top half? I think you’ve got a cracked rib there, but I can’t do much for that.”
Rob muttered something we took to mean that he would be more comfortable with his shirt off. It was a sleeveless blue jerkin with no fastenings. We managed to ease it off over his head. He muttered again, anxiously.
“You’re all stitched up,” Maree said, leaning over him again. “There was no skin missing, so I could match it all together almost perfectly. With luck, it really won’t show very much when the stitches come out.”
“I hope it won’t,” Will said. “He’s such a beautiful kid.” This was true. With his shirt off and a gold medallion with the Empire crest on it glinting against his brown neck, Rob was practically perfect. Even with dark smudges of pain and shock under the one eye we could see now his head was on my pillow, even with one side of his horse-body laced with stitching and grey with powder, he was beautiful. The young human torso flowed like a harmony into the shapely horse-body.
“He can hear you. You’ll give him a swelled head,” Maree said.
Rob had certainly heard. There was a faint, satisfied smile on his ravaged face. He knew he was beautiful all right. I suspect he had been terrified, as he rushed round the hotel, that his beauty had been spoilt for ever. Now, reassured, he visibly relaxed and fell asleep.
We covered him with the duvet and wearily cleared up.
“God!” said Maree. “I’m pooped! I’m going to lie down. Nick, come with me and make me some coffee.”
The two of them departed, taking one of the kettles. It was very convincing. And I had enough on my mind. It never occurred to me, or to Will, that there was any duplicity.
Rupert Venables continued
Will and I made some cardboard-flavoured Earl Grey and sat at the other end of my room so as not to disturb Rob. Here Will fed the quack chicks the last biscuit but one and made himself a badge like mine out of the last biscuit, while I briefed him on the current state of the fatelines. As I was definitely going to wipe that list, it was really only necessary to hold the lines as they were until I had time to do something about the puzzling behaviour of Andrew.
“Very strange, that,” Will mused. “It sounds almost as if he might have been stripped.”
“I’d thought of that,” I said, “except that stripped people are usually dead.”
“Not all of them,” said Will. “There was a Mage in Thule who went round as two people for years.”
“Yes, but if Nick’s right, Andrew’s four people at least. I saw two of him myself,” I said. “No, I don’t think that can be the answer. God knows what is, though. Anyway, keep firm hold on his line – and if you find someone’s been messing with the node again, just put it quietly back. I think it’s a fellow called Gram White who’s doing the messing. I’m going to put a stopper on him tomorrow if I can.”
“The sooner the better,” Will agreed. “Amateur mage, is he? Probably hasn’t a clue what he’s doing. What do all the people at this convention think when they don’t find their rooms where they left them?”
“They all say this hotel’s very confusing,” I said, “but they mean they think they just keep getting lost.”
“There’s why I don’t live on Earth,” Will said. “Everyone always has to have the rational, scientific explanation for something, even if it’s so obviously wrong you could scream.”
Rob was deeply asleep when we got up to leave. He was another matter I was going to have to deal with later. Meanwhile, to make sure that no one from the hotel or the Convention happened to barge in on him, I put the strongest possible wards round the room. It would be difficult for people to find a rational, scientific explanation for Rob, not if they met him face to face in my room, hard though they had all tried earlier. Will promised to keep checking up on him. He left the quack chicks running about in there on the carpet. This, he said in his blandest way, would help him remember to keep coming up here. Typical Will, that. I think he does things like that because he knows I like to be orderly. At least, if he had got round to winding me up, it meant that Will was recovering from the shock of hitting Rob. I was glad about that.
We went down in the same lift Rob had come up in. Zinka, bless her, had expunged the blood, but the thing seemed to be running now at half speed. Another thing I had to see to later. When we finally reached the ground floor, I lef
t Will in his false badge mooching inquisitively along to the main function hall and went out to the staff car park. Scarlatti met me just outside the hotel door. It was – perhaps – fainter than before, but you could hear it everywhere. To say I was angry is an understatement.
The sonata stopped with a guilty tink as I opened the car door. “Stan!” I said.
“What?” he said jauntily.
“You know very well what!” I told him, flinging myself into the seat and starting the engine. “It’s probably the last straw. Don’t say a word. Don’t excuse yourself. Don’t speak to me. I have just had to assist someone to sew the skin back on a half-flayed centaur and I am probably at the end of my tether. I want to throw up. I want to scream. But because Will and Nick both did that – or more or less – I was the one who had to be sensible. The story of my life! No, don’t speak!” I yelled, as we screamed out through the narrow archway.
“I was only going to ask where we’re going,” Stan said humbly.
“Thalangia, in the Koryfonic Empire,” I told him. We were already on our way. By car, the way looked like a bumpy unpaved lane, running sharply downhill.
“Hey, you can’t do that!” Stan cried out. “The Upper Room didn’t say I could go anywhere but Wantchester!”
“I am sick of the Upper room,” I said, “and all of Them Up There into the bargain! They’ve thrown everything in the book at me lately. If they don’t want you on Thalangia, they can come and take you away personally. That will stop you terrifying the hotel staff just as easily.”
“Is that why you’re doing the transit by car?” Stan said. “I never knew you could.”
“Will always does it,” I said. “No. I’m going by car because last time I went into the Empire, someone shot at me. With any luck, this time they’ll disable the car and I’ll have the perfect excuse to leave you there!”
By this time, we had reached Thalangia. A car is that much quicker. We drove into an incredible spread of evening light, and I found I had miscalculated slightly. I was not used to making transit at such a speed. I could see a wooded hill something like a couple of miles ahead and a walled place on top of it. Over to the left of it, there was a strong gleaming of more than one Empire troop carrier, where Dakros was presumably waiting. The carriers were probably more like three miles away, across a flattish plainland cross-hatched with vineyards. There was no direct route to them from where I was, but the vineyards had mud roads running hither and thither among them, and I supposed I could get there eventually if I zigzagged often enough. I set off along the likeliest mud road, bumping slowly in second gear and raising such a cloud of golden dust that I could see next to nothing in the rear-view mirror.
“Ah, come on, Rupert!” Stan said. “This is the first I’ve heard of any of this – shooting and centaurs and all. Give us a break and explain a bit. All I know about is that blasted hotel car park, hour after hour.”
I simply turned down another rutty golden lane without answering.
“Please!” he said. “OK, I’m sorry about the music. That do? I did try to tone it down, but they were all so worried by it that it was amusing to spread it around a bit and get them really scared. I know it was wrong. Please?”
“That’s better,” I said. “I was beginning to think your conscience died with you. And?”
“I won’t do it again,” he said, rather sulkily.
“Good,” I said and, as we wove from lane to lane in an ever bigger cloud of dust, I told him what had been going on in the hotel.
“I wonder why Knarros thought he needed to send this centaur for you,” Stan remarked. “He must have known that whoever was in charge was going to scream for a Magid anyway. Maybe it was the sight of those carriers sitting under his hill. They make me feel threatened. How many of them are there, for goodness’ sake?”
We were now near enough to guess that there were at least six. This does not sound many by Earth standards, but this is because we have nothing like them. Probably the nearest military thing we have, in terms of firepower and size, is an aircraft carrier – if you can imagine an aircraft carrier on land. Empire carriers are even more powerful, however, and much more variously armed. They cost a bomb too. Usually there are only two or three deployed on any one world. Dakros had brought six or so to show he was in earnest. But he had very carefully not surrounded the hill. The carriers all sat in a cluster to the west of it, huge shiny things, blaring orange sunset light off the armour intended to deflect beam-guns. Round the base of them, I could see small dark figures bustling in numbers, and one or two smaller vehicles that were probably only four times the size of my own car.
One of these vehicles now set off towards me in a dustcloud of its own. I realised, uneasily, that I was well within range of the smallest weapon on those carriers and that my car was not equipped to deflect it. I stopped and prudently got out. The oncoming vehicle acknowledged I was recognised by flashing its several oddly placed headlights, and roared on towards me in a rising streamer of dust.
“Keep your door open,” said Stan. “I want to hear this.”
Accordingly I leant on my open door and watched the vehicle come towering in over me and stop. Dakros jumped down, followed by Lady Alexandra, who was now wearing complete battledress and looking very good in it. I felt more than a twinge of envy for Dakros. She smiled at me as they came towards me and I found myself reflecting that, according to Rob, she was only a second-class wife (and wondering what number she was graded at), and also speculating that, if this lady was only second-class, what incredible beauty it must take to be a True Wife. Or maybe those were chosen politically. When it came to High Ladies, the Emperor had probably been able to please himself – and he evidently had.
Next to jump down was the Mage Jeffros, whom I had not seen since the day the palace fell down. He looked awful, ill and sallow, as if he had had no chance to recover properly from that wound on his arm. That gave me the measure of how hectic things had been in the Empire. But he gave me a smile, although it was a worried one. He was followed by various military types, each with a big-barrelled hand-beamer ready at their belts, and closed, wary faces.
“We weren’t sure if it was you in that dustcloud, Magid,” Dakros said. I took it as an apology for the armed guard. “Are you alone?”
I wondered what he, or even Jeffros, would say if I said, “No, there’s a disembodied mentor with a taste for Scarlatti in my car too,” but I answered sedately, “Yes, there’s only me. I came in the car because of that sniper the other time.” They looked at the car, all of them, with a slight, puzzled contempt that riled me a little. But I went on just as sedately, “Now, what’s the position here? Knarros sent me a message this afternoon. Have you had any dealings with him?”
Dakros took off the official-looking soft hat he was wearing and ran a hand through the wriggly lumps of his hair. “Well, thank goodness he’s done something! We’re completely deadlocked so far. He’s standing us off – barely even talking.” I looked at him as he raked worriedly at his hair, and I suddenly knew why it was that I kept on trying to help Dakros. It was not just that he was valiantly struggling with a job because it had to be done. It was because he reminded me of Will. They had the same sort of hair. In Dakros it was dark and woolly, but the resemblance was there. Will had been similarly overburdened when he first became a Magid. Will had settled to his burden, but I was much afraid that the burden Dakros carried was too great for anyone.
“Knarros says he’ll only speak to a Magid,” Lady Alexandra explained. “So Panthendres told him you were coming, and all Knarros would say is that you have to go up the hill and prove it.” Panthendres? I thought, who? Oh. Dakros of course. Dakros was his surname.
Jeffros said, “The blasted centaur seems to mean that only a Magid can break the defences he has for that hill. I certainly can’t. I did try, but whoever the Emperor employed as mage here was too good for me.” He added, looking weary and fretful, “It even deflects beams. We tried that too. We got annoye
d, frankly.”
“I got annoyed,” Dakros said. “I told him Lady Alexandra was here and would help the heir in his duties. And he said a High Lady wasn’t adequate.”
“The arrogant bastard!” I said. Lady Alexandra was flushed and unhappy. I said to her, “If I was the heir, I couldn’t imagine anyone nicer to teach me the job.”
She looked up at me with one side of her face smiling. “Thank you, Magid. I will give it my best try.” Very ruefully, she added, “Besides, I’m the only one left who can.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said. “Well, how do we go about sorting this centaur out? I can’t understand what he’s playing at. He sent for me himself.”
“Wants you to prove you’re you, I suppose,” Dakros said. “Has instructions to proceed with utmost caution and so forth. Jeffros will tell you.”
There was a path up through the wood. Jeffros had tried to go up that and also up among the trees, but the ambient magics had defeated him. They were assuming I could do better. They said that if I got to the top and if I got inside the walls of the colony and if I then persuaded Knarros to relinquish the Emperor’s son, I could signal to them and they would do the rest; but I could see they had no real doubts about it. I felt slightly less confident. It seemed to me that Knarros was behaving oddly. But I put my doubts down to the pressure of their faith in me and pinned my own faith on the fact that Knarros had, after all, sent Rob to get me.
Dakros said, “If the heir turns out to be on another world…”
“I think that’s one possibility we don’t have to worry about,” I said. “The messenger strongly implied that Knarros looks after all the children of the True Wives. What are you planning to do with the rest of the children?”
This had been worrying me. Empire paranoia could well mean that Dakros would have the kids executed in order not to confuse the succession. Lady Alexandra said eagerly, “Give them the life they should be living, of course! They’re being brought up like rustics up there. It makes my blood boil.”