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  He stepped out of the doorway that appeared silently in the mirrored sphere, into the tunnel with its carpet of bones—the bones of those Center had rejected over the years as it waited for the man who would be its sword in the world.

  Then again, he thought, stasis isn’t so bad, when you consider the alternatives.

  “Bloody hell,” Major Ehwardo Poplanich said, sotto voce. “How long is this going to take? If I’d wanted to sit on my butt and be bored, I would have stayed home on the estate.” He ran a hand over his thinning brown hair.

  He was part of the reason that Raj Whitehall and his dozen Companions had plenty of space to themselves on the padded sofa-bench that ran down the side of the anteroom. Nobody at Court wanted to stand too close to a close relation of the last Poplanich Governor. Quite a few wondered why Poplanich was with Raj; Thom Poplanich had disappeared in Raj’s company years before, and Thom’s brother Des had died when Raj put down a bungled coup attempt against Governor Barholm.

  Another part of the reason the courtiers avoided them was doubt about exactly how Raj stood with the Chair, of course.

  The rest of it was the other Companions, the dozen or so close followers Raj had collected in his first campaign on the eastern frontier or in the Southern Territories. Many of the courtiers had spent their adult lives in the Palace, waiting in corridors like this. The Companions seemed part of the scene at first, in dress or walking-out uniforms like many of the men not in Court robes or religious vestments. Until you came closer and saw the scars, and the eyes.

  “We’ll wait as long as His Supremacy wants us to, Ehwardo,” Colonel Gerrin Staenbridge said, swinging one elegantly booted foot over his knee. He looked to be exactly what he was: a stylish, handsome professional soldier from a noble family of moderate wealth, a man of wit and learning, and a merciless killer. “Consider yourself lucky to have an estate in a county that’s boring; back home in Descott County—”

  “—bandits come down the chimney once a week on Starday,” Ehwardo finished. “Isn’t that right, M’lewis?”

  “I wouldna know, ser,” the rat-faced little man said virtuously.

  The Companions were unarmed, despite their dress uniforms—the Life Guard troopers at the doors and intervals along the corridor were fully equipped—but Raj suspected that the captain of the 5th Descott’s Scout Troop had something up his sleeve.

  Probably a wire garrote, he thought. M’lewis had enlisted one step ahead of the noose, having made Bufford Parish—the most lawless part of not-very-lawful Descott County—too hot for comfort. Raj had found his talents useful enough to warrant promotion to commissioned rank, after nearly flogging the man himself at their first meeting—a matter of a farmer’s pig lifted as the troops went past. The Scout Troop was full of M’lewis’s friends, relatives and neighbors; it was also known to the rest of the 5th as the Forty Thieves, not without reason.

  Captain Bartin Foley looked up from sharpening the inner curve of the hook that had replaced his left hand. His face had been boyishly pretty when Raj first saw him, four years before. Officially he’d been an aide to Gerrin Staenbridge, unofficially a boyfriend-in-residence. He’d had both hands, then, too.

  “Why don’t you?” he asked M’lewis. “Know about bandits coming down the chimney, that is.”

  Snaggled yellow teeth showed in a grin. “Ain’t no sheep nor yet any cattle inna chimbley, ser,” M’lewis answered in the rasping nasal accent of Descott. “An’ ridin’ dogs, mostly they’re inna stable. No use comin’ down t’chimbly then, is there?”

  The other Companions chuckled, then rose in a body. The crowd surged away from them, and split as Suzette Whitehall swept through.

  Messa Suzette Emmenalle Forstin Hogor Wenqui Whitehall, Raj thought. Lady of Hillchapel. My wife.

  Even now that thought brought a slight lurch of incredulous happiness below his breastbone. She was a small woman, barely up to his shoulder, but the force of the personality behind the slanted hazel-green eyes was like a jump into cool water on a hot day. Seventeen generations of East Residence nobility gave her slim body a greyhound grace, the tilt of her fine-featured olive face an unconscious arrogance. Over her own short black hair she was wearing a long blond court wig covered in a net of platinum and diamonds. More jewels sparkled on her bodice, on her fingers, on the gold-chain belt. Leggings of embroidered torofib silk made from the cocoons of burrowing insects in far-off Azania flashed enticingly through a fashionable split skirt of Kelden lace.

  Raj took her hand and raised it to his lips; they stood for a moment looking at each other.

  A metal-shod staff thumped the floor, and the tall bronze panels of the Audience Hall swung open. The gorgeously robed figure of the Janitor—the Court Usher—bowed and held out his staff, topped by the star symbol of the Civil Government.

  Suzette took Raj’s arm. The Companions fell in behind him, unconsciously forming a column of twos. The functionary’s voice boomed out with trained precision through the gold-and-niello speaking trumpet:

  “General the Honorable Messer Raj Ammenda Halgern da Luis Whitehall, Whitehall of Hillchapel, Hereditary Supervisor of Smythe Parish, Descott County! His Lady, Suzette Emmenalle—”

  Raj ignored the noise, ignored the brilliantly-decked crowds who waited on either side of the carpeted central aisle, the smells of polished metal, sweet incense and sweat. As always, he felt a trace of annoyance at the constriction of the formal-dress uniform, the skin-tight crimson pants and gilt codpiece, the floor-length indigo tails of the coat and high epaulets and plumed silvered helmet. . . .

  The Audience Hall was two hundred meters long and fifty high, its arched ceiling a mosaic showing the wheeling galaxy with the Spirit of Man rising head and shoulders behind it. The huge dark eyes were full of stars themselves, staring down into your soul.

  Along the walls were automatons, dressed in the tight uniforms worn by Terran Federation soldiers twelve hundred years before. They whirred and clanked to attention, powered by hidden compressed-air conduits, bringing their archaic and quite nonfunctional battle lasers to salute. The Guard troopers along the aisle brought their entirely functional rifles up in the same gesture. They ignored the automatons, but some of the crowd who hadn’t been long at Court flinched from the awesome technology and started uneasily when the arclights popped into blue-white radiance above each pointed stained-glass window.

  The far end of the audience chamber was a hemisphere plated with burnished gold, lit via mirrors from hidden arcs. It glowed with a blinding aura, strobing slightly. The Chair itself stood four meters in the air on a pillar of fretted silver, the focus of light and mirrors and every eye in the giant room. The man enchaired upon it sat with hieratic stiffness, light breaking in metallized splendor from his robes, the bejeweled Keyboard and Stylus in his hands. From somewhere out of sight a chorus of voices chanted a hymn, inhumanly high and sweet, castrati belling out the chorus and young girls on the descant:

  “He intercedes for us—

  Viceregent of the Spirit of Man of the Stars!

  By Him are we boosted to the Orbit of Fulfillment—

  Supreme! Most Mighty Sovereign, Lord!

  In His hands is the power of Holy Federation Church—

  Ruler without equal! Sole rightful Autocrat!

  He wields the Sword of Law and the Flail of Justice—

  Most excellent of Excellencies! Father of the State!

  Download His words and execute the Program, ye People—

  Endfile! Endfile! Ennd . . . fiiille.”

  On either side of the arch framing the Chair were golden trees ten times taller than a man, with leaves so faithfully wrought that their edges curled and quivered in the slight breeze. Wisps of white-colored incense drifted through them from the censers swinging in the hands of attendant priests in stark white jumpsuit vestments, their shaven heads glittering with circuit diagrams. The branches of the trees glittered also, as birds carved from tourmaline and amethyst and lapis lazuli piped and sang. Thei
r song rose to a high trilling as the pillar that supported the Chair sank toward the white marble steps; at the rear of the enclosure two full-scale statues of gorgosauroids rose to their three-meter height and roared as the seat of the Governor of the Civil Government sank home with a slight sigh of hydraulics. The semicircle of high ministers came out from behind their desks—each had a ceremonial viewscreen of strictly graded size—and sank down in the full prostration, linking their hands behind their heads. So did everyone in the Hall, except for the armed guards.

  The Companions had stopped a few meters back. Now Raj felt Suzette’s hand leave his; she sank down with a courtier’s elegance, making the gesture of reverence seem a dance. He walked three more steps to the edge of the carpet and went to one knee, bowing his head deeply and putting a hand to his breast—the privilege of his rank, as a general and as one of Barholm’s chosen Guards. It might have done him some good to have made the three prostrations of a supplicant; on the other hand, that could be taken as an admission of guilt.

  You never know, with Barholm, Raj thought. You never know. Center?

  effect too uncertain to usefully calculate, the passionless inner voice said. After a pause: with barholm even chaos theory is becoming of limited predictive ability.

  Raj blinked. There were times he thought Center was developing a sense of humor. That was obscurely disturbing in its own right. Dark take it, he’d never been much good at pleading anyway. Flickers of holographic projection crossed his vision; Barholm calling the curse of the Spirit down on his head, Barholm pinning a high decoration to Raj’s chest—

  Cloth-of-gold robes sewn with emeralds and sapphires swirled into Raj’s view. The toes of equally-lavish slippers showed from under them. A tense silence filled the Hall; Raj could feel the eyes on his back, hundreds of them. Like a pack of carnosauroids waiting for a cow to stumble, he thought. Then:

  “Rise, Raj Whitehall!”

  Barholm’s voice was a precision instrument, deep and mellow. With the superb acoustics of the hall behind it, the words rolled out more clearly than the Janitor’s had through the megaphone. Behind them a long rustling sigh marked the release of tension.

  Raj came to his feet, bending slightly for the ceremonial embrace and touch of cheeks. He was several centimeters taller than the Governor, although they were both Descotters. Barholm had the brick build and dark heavy features common there, but Raj’s father had married a noblewoman from the far northwest, Kelden County. Folk there were nearly as tall and fair as the Namerique-speaking barbarians of the Military Governments.

  The two men turned, the tall soldier and the stocky autocrat. Barholm’s hand rested on his general’s shoulder, a mark of high favor. Behind them the bidden chorus sang a high wordless note.

  “Nobles and clerics of the Civil Government—behold the man who We call Savior of the State! Behold the Sword of the Spirit of Man!” The orator’s voice rolled out again. The chorus came crashing in on the heels of it:

  “Praise him! Praise him! Praise him!”

  Raj watched the throng come to their feet, putting one palm to their ears and raising the other hand to the sky—invoking the Spirit of Man of the Stars as they shouted, “Glory, glory!” and “You conquer, Barholm!”

  Every one of them would have cheered his summary execution with equal enthusiasm—or greater.

  Suzette’s shining eyes met his.

  not quite all, Center reminded him. Behind Suzette the Companions were grinning as they cheered, far less than all.

  The cheering died as Barholm raised a hand. “On Starday next shall be held a great day of rejoicing in the Temple and throughout the city. For three days thereafter East Residence shall hold festival in honor of General Whitehall and the brave men he led to victory over the barbarians of the Squadron; wine barrels shall stand at every crossroads, and the government storehouses will dispense to the people. On the third day, the spoils and prisoners will be exhibited in the Canidrome, to be followed by races and games in honor of the Savior of the State.”

  This time the cheers were deafening; if there was one thing everyone in East Residence loved, it was a spectacle. The chorus was barely audible, and the sound rose to a new peak as Barholm embraced Raj once more.

  “There’ll be a staff meeting right after all this play-acting,” he said into Raj’s ear, his voice flat. “There’s the campaign in the Western Territories to plan.”

  He turned, and everyone bowed low as he withdrew through the private entrance behind the Chair.

  So passes the glory of this world, Raj thought. Death or victory, and if victory—

  observe, Center said. Holographic vision shimmered before his eyes, invisible to any but himself:

  It took a moment for Raj to recognize the naked man: it was himself, his face contorted and slick with the burnt fluid of his own eyeballs, after the irons had had their way with them. Thick leather straps held his wrists and ankles splayed out in an X.

  The hooded executioners were just fastening each limb to the pull-chain of a yoke of oxen. The crowd beyond murmured, held back by a line of leveled bayonets.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Governor Barholm stood while the servants stripped off his heavy robes. The Negrin Room dated to the reign of Negrin III, three centuries before; the walls were pale stone, traced over with delicate murals of reeds and flying dactosauroids and waterfowl; there was only one small Star, a token obeisance to religion as had been common in that impious age. The heads of the Ministries were there, and Mihwel Berg as Administrator of the newly-conquered Southern Territories and representative of the Administrative Service; Chancellor Tzetzas, of course; General Klostermann, Master of Soldiers, Bernardinho Rivadavia, the Minister of Barbarians, and Lady Anne Clerett as well, the Governor’s wife. She gave Raj a sincere smile as they waited for the Governor to finish disrobing.

  There’s one real friend at court, he thought. Suzette’s friend, actually.

  Barholm sat, and the others bowed and joined him.

  “Well, messers,” he said abruptly, opening the file an aide placed before him. “It’s time to deal with the Western Territories and the barbarians of the Brigade who impiously hold the Old Residence, original seat of the Civil Government of Holy Federation—since we’ve reduced the Southern Territories quite satisfactorily, thanks to the aid of the Spirit of Man of the Stars, and Its Sword, General Whitehall.”

  There was a murmur of applause, and Raj looked down at his hands. “I had good troops and officers,” he said.

  “Your Supremacy,” Tzetzas said. “We all give praise to the Spirit”—there was a mass touching of amulets, most of them genuine ancient computer components, in this assembly—“and to our General Whitehall, and to your wise policy, that the barbarian heretics were defeated so easily. Yet I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to point out that the Civil Government is still reeling from the expense of the southern campaign—completed less than a year ago. Which has, in fact, so far served to enrich only the officers involved in the operation.”

  observe, Center said.

  Muzzaf Kerpatik was on the docks in Port Murchison, capital of the reconquered Southern Territories. He was a small dark man from Komar, near the Colonial border; once a merchant and agent of Chancellor Tzetzas, until the latter’s schemes had grown too much for even his elastic conscience. Since then he’d proven himself useful to Raj in a number of ways . . . although Raj hadn’t known about this one, precisely. He was overseeing the loading of a ship, a medium-sized three-masted merchantman. Bolts of silk were going aboard, and burlap sacks filled with crystals of raw saltpeter, bales of rosauroid hides, and slatted wooden boxes stuffed with what looked like gold and silver tableware. A coffle of women chained neck-and-neck waited to board later: all young and good-looking, some stunningly so, and in the remnants of rich clothing in the gaudy style of the Squadron nobility—families of those barbarian nobles who’d refused to yield to the Spirit of Man of the Stars or missed the amnesty after the surrender, heade
d for Civil Government slave markets.

  Raj thought he could place the time: about a month after the final battle on the docks. It had taken that long, and repeated scrubbings, before the rotting blood stopped drawing crawling mats of flies.

  I’d heard about streets running with blood, he reminded himself. Never seen it until then. Vice-Admiral Curtis Auburn had landed ten thousand Squadron warriors on those docks, unaware that the main Squadron host was defeated and Raj in control of the city. Curtis had been lucky enough to be captured almost immediately, but less than one in ten of his men had survived the day.

  The vision couldn’t be much more than a month after that, because Suzette was riding up and leaning down to examine the checklist in Kerpatik’s hand, and both Whitehalls had sailed home when Raj was recalled in quasi-disgrace.

  “Should we not pause and recoup our resources?” the Chancellor concluded. “Especially when our internal situation is so delicate.”

  Due in no small measure to Your Most Blatant Corruptibility, Raj thought ironically. There was a popular East Residence legend that a poisonous fangmouth had once bitten Tzetzas at a garden party, the unfortunate reptile was believed to have died in horrible convulsions within minutes. The Chancellor had raised enormous sums for Barholm’s wars and public works projects, and a good deal of it had stuck to his own beautifully-manicured fingers.

  Raj’s expression was blandly respectful and attentive. On the expedition to the Southern Territories, Tzetzas had seen that Raj sailed with weevily hardtack and bunker coal that was half-shale; Raj had returned the favor in his last stop in Civil Government territory by exchanging the goods for replacements from Tzetzas’s own estates and mines, at full book price.