Chapter Thirty-Nine
All documents are rooted in falsehood anyway. I only filed my papers that way to protect myself.
—Francella Watanabe, journal notes
On the morning of her scheduled audience with the glorious Doge Lorenzo del Velli, Francella entered the Audience Hall of the Palazzo Magnifico. The tall, redheaded woman carried a sheath of documents under one arm, and found a place to stand in the designated waiting area of the immense marble floor.
It was an intimidating chamber, as large as a prince’s villa, with a platinum filigree ceiling towering seven stories overhead. On the walls and ceiling were frescoes depicting Human technology, trade, religion, and science, along with heroic portrayals of the most famous doges in history. At the center of the great room, Lorenzo sat upon a throne carved in the shape of a merchant schooner, typical of the commercial vessels that carried his goods to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, inside the bellies of podships.
For a moment, she caught his gaze, but he didn’t smile, as he normally did upon seeing her. He seemed preoccupied, agitated, and looked away.…
The peculiar and as yet unexplained destruction of Earth two weeks ago had unsettled Lorenzo’s mind, and he really didn’t know if he could ever recover from the shock. As a boy, he and his family had gone there on pilgrimages and vacations, and he had always felt roots on that world, strong connections that were unseen but nevertheless existed. Everywhere he went in those days, he learned the ancient histories of the armies and passions that had flowed across the landscapes, the hopes and dreams of mankind that had eventually spread into the rest of the galaxy as they reached for the stars and built spaceships to take them there. In the centuries before the appearance of podships, Humans had settled a dozen solar systems—and had expanded from there with the sudden and mysterious gift of faster-than-light travel.
The podships had been such an unexplained boon to mankind’s desires to spread throughout the galaxy. But were they really a boon, after all? Hadn’t they brought severe problems as well as benefits? The terrible, never-ending war against the Mutati Kingdom, for one thing, a conflict that had undoubtedly caused the demise of Earth. Humans and Mutatis hadn’t even known one another existed until the strange, sentient spaceships brought them together. Was that done by design, to cause a war that would result in the destruction of two civilizations?
Or only one? he thought nervously. If our enemies were responsible for what happened to Earth, there may be no safe refuge from them in the entire galaxy. How could the Mutatis possibly have accomplished such a terrible thing?
It galled the greatest prince in the realm that he had to be dependent upon the mute podships, which showed up regularly and performed their tasks day after day, year after year, at no charge. Aside from his suspicions about their intent, it was a failure of Human technology, and a big one, that the mysterious system of space travel could not be figured out and duplicated—or exceeded.
Unaware of the fact that Tulyans controlled podships in ancient times, and Parviis did in modern times, Lorenzo thought that all attempts to capture podships were doomed to failure. He knew of examples in which Humans—and other races that used these creatures for transport—got too aggressive, causing the large pods to react forcefully, shutting their transport systems down and disappearing into space. A decade ago, a squad of Vandurian troops had tried to commandeer one of the podships by force of arms, while riding inside as passengers. None of them survived the attempt, or at least they were never seen again. For a year afterward, the podships refused to provide any transport service to or from Vandurian planets, and then, as if lifting the suspension, the services resumed. All without any explanation or communication of any sort. Just ships showing up or not showing up.
It was all very unsettling, and he wished that the princes and their allies had not grown so dependent on such strange, uncommunicative creatures.
Podships were, without question, living organisms. Anyone traveling aboard one sensed a strong presence around him, and felt a faint pulse within the walls. Some passengers even claimed to have seen the vessels change their appearances in small degrees, slight adjustments in the cabins or basic amenities. The process by which the creatures fashioned themselves into spacecraft was not at all understood, nor was it known from where they came. One theory, among many, held that they were cosmic chunks of space debris, each bearing a speck of the soul of God.…
With such far-reaching issues on his mind, the gray-haired Doge raised a jeweled tigerhorse scepter to begin the audience session. His attaché, the furry Hibbil Pimyt, guided an old woman to the base of the dais, and then whispered, seemingly to himself. In reality, he was speaking into a comm-unit, transmitting to a receiver implanted in Lorenzo’s ear.
“She was your mother’s most trusted housekeeper, Takla Shoshobi.”
“Nice to see you again, Takla,” Lorenzo said, although he didn’t recognize her at all, or recall the name.
“I don’t wish to waste your valuable time,” the crone said in a croaking voice, “I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for my family.”
“Yes, yes, of course. I am pleased that you are here.” With a broad smile, he looked around the audience chamber, as if she was just one of many examples of his magnanimity.
“I am the last of my family,” she said. “All of the others died in the war, in your prisons, or of starvation in one of your roachrat-infested ghettos.”
“My ghettos? I have no ghettos!”
“Then why are they called “lorenzos?”
The Doge caught Pimyt’s gaze. Looking suddenly alarmed, the Hibbil grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away.
“Thanks for nothing!” she shouted. “All of our allegiance to you, all of our sacrifices, and what do you give us in return? Nothing!”
Guards took charge of the struggling, ranting old woman and escorted her out of the chamber.
“That was all staged for your entertainment,” Lorenzo exclaimed to the men and women in the chamber, with a twisted smile. “Just a little change of pace to get things going.”
Uneasy laughter carried through the great room.
“I’m very sorry,” Pimyt whispered over the private communications link. “So terribly sorry. She said she wanted to give you a blessing, and since her credentials were above suspicion, I thought it would be all right. Of course, I should have known that no one is above suspicion. It won’t happen again, Sire.”
Lorenzo the Magnificent rolled his eyes, but actually felt pleased with himself for the way he had handled the situation. Leadership was like that. He had to respond to unexpected problems, always maintaining his composure and never allowing the bubble to burst, never permitting his subjects to see through the barriers he had set up.
For the rest of the morning, he conducted a typical audience session, responding to commoners and dignitaries as they come to him with requests. He granted and denied favors with a wave of his tigerhorse scepter, and finally gazed down upon the last person—Francella Watanabe. According to her appointment summary, she had estate documents for his review and approval. She handed them to Pimyt, and he scurried up the stairs of the dais with them.
Looking over the estate papers, Lorenzo said, “I’m very sorry about the death of your father, the eminent Prince Saito. He was a great man, one of the beacons of the Alliance.”
Murmurings of concurrence passed through the chamber.
“Thank you, My Lord,” Francella said, with a pretty smile.
The Doge pretended to read the papers in detail, although he had already reviewed them beforehand. A commoner by birth, she was applying to be made a Princess of the Realm, which the Doge could grant to important families. With her father gone, as she stated in the papers, she was the logical person to be elevated in status. To support her case, she included a certified copy of Prince Saito’s will, which had already been filed and probated. He had bequeathed everything to her and nothing to her twin brother. Additional documents showed that he had formally disinherited Noah.
Asking her a few official-sounding questions, Lorenzo nodded solemnly at her answers. The two of them had known each other for years, on the most intimate basis. She was an attractive, statuesque woman, and as she addressed him, the womanizing Doge found himself increasingly captivated by the comeliness of her figure and her dark brown eyes.
For several minutes, they engaged in a formal discussion for the sake of the onlookers, but her submission was a fait accompli. Finally, waving aside the whispered concerns of his attaché, Pimyt, he openly invited her to his private chamber to discuss the matter further. There, they pulled one another’s clothes off and made love, as they had done so many times before.
Then, while the scheming woman was dressing, Lorenzo summoned Pimyt, and formally approved her documents, making her a Princess of the Realm.
In reality, even though Saito Watanabe told many people that he had disowned his son, he had never actually completed the necessary documents, hoping that he and Noah would reconcile one day. Without the Doge’s knowledge, Francella had brought forged estate papers with her.
In the actual documents, which she had destroyed, Prince Saito had left half of his estate to his son.