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CHAPTER 53

FAREWELL


Of the arrival of Prince Matthias I shall say but little. He was—like all his siblings—a Grecian marble crowned with red gold. He was one of the older children, I think. The thirtieth son or the fortieth—not nearly so old as old Aurelian. From his heroic visage and broad shoulders, I guessed that he had spent much of his life frozen and on standby, awaiting the orders of his lord father and the needs of Empire.

But arrive he did, carrying the terms of the Emperor’s new peace. For the first time since the Jaddian Wars, the Sollan Empire had been forced to concede territory to another human power.

It was a blow, and one for which future historians will doubtless smear poor William’s name. And yet there was wisdom in it. By defining the new border with Latarra, we imposed some pressure on the Monarchy to aid in the defense of that border. The Centaurine provinces—where the worst of the fighting with the Cielcin then was—lay between Latarra and the Imperial heartland in the arms of Sagittarius and Orion.

The fight for Vorgossos was—might have been—the first joint action of the combined Sollan and Latarran armadas.

As fate would have it, it would also be the last.

But we did not know it then.

Instead, for the first time in many a long year of war, the talk and mood was of hope. Of change. Of the New Order Calen Harendotes had built, was building. The White City of the King, the Printed City of Latarra was to be the template and model of a new civilization, a challenger to the red pieces and old order of the Imperium, a vision of the galaxy halfway between the chaos of the Extrasolarians and the suffocating order of the Solar Throne.

It was easy to see why Lorian loved it, for it was beautiful, and he had risen so far and so quickly that the rarefied air of his new station had made him giddy. He did not have to think about the guns on his walls—or why he needed them. For not all was polish and glamour in the new city of the king. I saw the poverty, just as I saw it at home. I saw the criminals hanged in the plaza before the Monarch’s pyramid, their bodies left for the birds. I saw the whores on their streetcorners, in their red-rimmed windows dancing—saw too the bodyshops and bonecutters, the gene tailors and natalists hawking their wares from banner signs ten stories high.

Had I been younger—the boy who left Delos, perhaps—I might have been drunk on the electric air of the place myself. Here was the fulcrum of the lever to move the stars, the axis about which a man might turn the whole galaxy. During my brief time on Latarra, often I observed the young men of the Monarch’s army moving about the place. Marching up the streets in formation, hard at work building the city, or else carousing or fighting outside winesinks and brothels. One could feel the energy coming off them, like static lightning, a radiation like innumerable tiny suns.

They were alive, and vital in a way few men of the Imperium were vital, and one got the sense that the sun of Latarra was always rising, where on Forum . . . always it seemed near twilight to me.

And yet, it was not to be. The promise of Lorian’s New Order, his new dawn, was to prove only the green flash of sunset that Earth’s sailors used to say mimicked for an instant the wholesome light of day.

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When the treaty was ratified and all the documents signed and sealed, and when the holographs were recorded and broadcast across the datanet, the time for parting came. As Lorian had portended, Matthias was to take Selene with him. Not back to Forum, but to some other, undisclosed location. Forum was not safe for her, as I had insisted repeatedly to Matthias, to Aurelian in what little communication I’d had with him since arriving in the Monarch’s palace, to Albé—who reported to his own superiors via a private telegraph brought by Matthias’s retinue—and to the Emperor’s own Security Council during my debrief.

It was during these interviews that I came to realize that no one on Forum knew what had happened to me, and I did not transmit my face. Matthias had not asked questions, had perhaps not seen the old man I had become, did not know that I had changed.

The day of Selene’s departure was overcast, the sky a low roof of cloud held up by the columns of steam that rose from the reactors in the Maze. The heavens seemed near at hand, and yet were veiled.

I stood with Cassandra and Edouard—and with Neema, who had come down from the Mistwalker not long after we arrived. Ghoshal’s men stood honor guard about us, alongside Annaz and certain of the Irchtani. I had ordered Ramanthanu and the other Cielcin returned to the Gadelica in anticipation of Matthias’s arrival, and they had remained in orbit.

We were to sail for Vorgossos and rendezvous with the Imperial fleet at the end of that week. The Monarch himself was going to war—a thing that had not happened since the Battle of Ashklam, when Harendotes himself had taken the field against the intractable Norman natives. There had been a parade the day before: the Grand Army marching through the city to the plaza at the foot of the half-built pyramid, below the observation platform where their Monarch and the Imperial prince watched.

Now that prince was leaving, carrying with him one copy of the treaty—signed and sealed.

Matthias emerged from the side of the great pyramid, Martian Guards about him, Selene at his side. A scholiast robed in green and a half dozen Aventine House androgyns followed in their wake, two clutching the train of the scarlet cape the princess wore. Despite the short years we’d spent on Latarra, Selene had kept her hair short. I stood straighter as they approached, hand going to the pocket of my coat and the scrap of paper concealed there.

This was to be my last chance. My only chance.

Across the aisle, Calen Harendotes himself waited, standing with Absalom Black and the Lady Ardahael in her float-chair amid a retinue of masked and helmeted dragoons. Lorian stood near at hand, with certain of the other Commandant Generals about him. I recognized the other former Imperials, Gadkari and Harred—they stood apart, even from Lorian. They alone bowed as the prince and princess passed on the way to their shuttle.

Matthias and Selene halted before the Monarch’s stand. An awning—black and gold—snapped in the wind above his head.

The prince raised a hand in farewell, Selene’s arm in his. “On behalf of my Imperial father, Monarch Harendotes, I thank you for your hospitality. May this be only the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between our nations.”

Prince Matthias did not bow. Neither did the Monarch. But Calen Harendotes smiled, and touched the broad, golden collar that covered his chest and shoulders in what seemed almost a salute. “I share your hope, prince,” he said, “go in peace, and tell your father that we on Latarra are proud to fight alongside the Empire against our common enemy. We shall await your fleet beyond the circles of Merope.”

“Very good!” Matthias said. “My Imperial father will be delighted. May we meet again, my lord!”

Only then did I notice the float-chair following in Matthias and Selene’s train. In it rode a tetrand like Lady Ardahael, a white-haired young man so like the woman I felt certain that he must be one of her own kindred. He was, I later learned, Lord Simeon Ardahael, Lady Jamina’s own son. He was to accompany the prince and princess for the return journey to the Imperium, where he was to serve as his Monarch’s apostol.

He would be counted among the dead of Gododdin, though neither he nor I could guess it then. I only of all those present had caught a glimpse of the final fire in Brethren’s vision, in the images the Quiet himself had showed to me upon the mountain on Annica, in the mirror of Ragama.

But only a glimpse.

The prince and Selene turned to face me, forcing the attendants to adjust Selene’s trailing cape. Matthias’s own cloak fluttered in the gusting wind, his hair a guttering candleflame atop the wick that was his head. “Lord Marlowe,” he said, drawing himself up to highlight his slightly superior height, “it is a pity you will not return with us.”

“My duties lie elsewhere, my prince,” I said. When he had arrived, Matthias had ordered that I surrender myself. I had refused, and Calen Harendotes had refused to let me go.

Lord Marlowe is my guest, as much as he is your subject, he’d said. Possession is nine points in the law.

In truth, I was a prisoner of sorts. Latarra had the stronger bargaining position. They had the tracking technology and the means to lay bare every telegraph transmission from Marinus to Jadd, and thus the means to seek out and isolate the Cielcin fleet wherever they were hiding. The Empire needed Latarra—or believed it did—and while Latarra could not within reason retain the Princess Selene, the Empire was not willing to go to war or compromise its security to retain possession of Hadrian Marlowe.

But still, I was precisely where I wanted to be, where I needed to be, where duty and the cause of Operation Gnomon demanded that I be. The Emperor had made no comment with regard to my disposition. That was proof enough that I was where even he wanted me to be.

How I wished that I had had my chance to speak with William once again. Samek had robbed me of that at least, and done much harm in pursuit of all she thought was good.

“Your duties . . . ” Prince Matthias echoed my words, voice trailing in the wind like his cape. “You have escaped us a second time. Mark my words: There will not be a third.”

“My prince?” I asked, blandly as I could. The hand in my pocket crushed the slip of paper I meant to hand Selene. It was a piece torn from one of my black folios, the paper black as the ink I had used to write on it, that it might prove invisible to any spying eye. The writing of it had seemed only the momentary selection of the wrong pen.

Five words, five words to convey volumes back to the Imperium.

It was all I could risk.

Letting Selene’s arm go, Matthias stepped nearer me. I felt Cassandra grow stiff at my right hand, ready to strike at need. The towering Aventine came close enough that I could smell the floral perfume on him. “Had I my choice, you would be in fetters on that shuttle even now.” His eyes indicated the black scarab shape of the Imperial lander with its dark windows framed in beaten brass, its repulsors already glowing faintly blue, ready for dust-off.

“Then it is well,” I said, “that Calen Harendotes, not Matthias Avent, rules on Latarra.”

The tall prince snorted, drew back a step only to redouble his advance. I did not withdraw, did not flinch. “You gambled with my sister’s life, encouraging her to back this . . . mad course.” His emerald eyes flashed round, taking in the landing pad, the Printed City, the Monarch’s court gathered on the stands. “Bringing her here . . . among these . . . barbarians.” With the wind gusting so, either none of the Extras had heard him, or they all had.

None gave any sign, though I caught Lorian staring at me from his place beside the Commandant Generals Herren and Gadkari. For a moment, our eyes met.

What a farce, I remembered thinking. I, of course, had done no such thing. Selene had volunteered herself, had forced Cassandra, Neema, and Edouard to take her as seeming-hostage, that they might escape the Martians intact.

“This mad course,” I began carefully, “has saved the alliance your father and brother worked so hard to secure.”

“An alliance that would never have been in jeopardy had you not muddied the waters.”

“Is that what I did?” I asked, voice and face studiously blank. “Tell Aurelian that if he wishes answers to the questions he would ask of me, he should speak with the Cantor Samek.”

“Samek?” Matthias’s eyes narrowed. “Cantor?”

“It was not I who soured your brother’s plans,” I said. “But I did what was necessary. I always do.”

The prince withdrew. “So you will sail for Vorgossos.”

“That is my road,” I told him, my own hair snapping across my face.

“If you run again, Marlowe,” he said, “you had better quit the galaxy entire. There will be no world, no place, no airless moon where you can hide.”

Selene gripped her brother’s arm, hissed, “Matthias!”

The prince extricated himself from his sister’s grasp, turned to her. “You could have died, sister.”

“But I didn’t,” she said, and leaning toward him whispered. “You’re playing the fool, brother.”

Matthias looked down at his sister, a smile frozen on his face.

“I wish to say farewell to Lord Marlowe,” she said. “If I may.”

The tall prince looked from his sister to myself. “As you like it,” he said and, snatching at his cape, turned to the shuttle and mounted the ramp without another word. Simeon Ardahael followed in his wake, and all of the Martians, save two.

For a moment, the princess simply looked up at me. There was a circlet of yellow gold on her brow beneath the fiery hair. She looked somehow younger then—more the girl I recalled from my youth, less the woman I had met returning from Sabratha. Eyes falling to the white stone of the pad between us, she said, “Will I see you again?”

“I hope so,” I told her. “You don’t know where you’re going?”

The princess shook her head. “Matthias won’t say. One of the border forts, I’m sure. Possibly to see Father and Alexander . . . wherever they may be.”

That had been my hope for her as well. “The Chantry may still move against you,” I said. “You saw something you shouldn’t have, Selene.” The slip was in my hand, concealed between two fingers. I had but to take her own in mine.

“I know that,” she said, and bit her lip. She seemed to teeter on the precipice of some abyss that only she could see.

“You didn’t tell your brother,” I said. It was not a question.

“Matthias?”

“Aurelian,” I said. “You didn’t tell him what happened to me.”

“I told him the Chantry tried to kill you, that they nearly killed me, and that you and Albé and Aristedes thought that removing me from the palace was the best way to protect me. Aurelian knows more of the past threats against your life than I. Mother and Lorcan Breathnach and . . . and Alexander.” It seemed strange to me that Alexander should give her more pause than her own mother, but then I thought the two of them had been close. They were near to each other in birth order—if no longer in age. I wondered how old Alexander had become, traveling between the stars at the Emperor’s right hand. I wondered, too—and feared—what sort of man he had become.

Coward! he had called me, when Valka was dead. You would abandon us now? When the need has never been greater?

“But I didn’t tell him you died,” she said, voice small enough to be lost in the wind. Selene’s eyes were still on the floor, had slid to a point to my right. I thought I could hear the engines of her mind churning, the pistons of her heart hammering. “I won’t tell him. He wouldn’t believe.”

“He wouldn’t—”

Her hands were on my shoulders then, her face pressed to mine. For a moment, I forgot how to move, was paralyzed by surprised and renewed terror. I could do nothing, could neither reciprocate nor push her away. I was Kyra again. Trapped. Frozen. Helpless.

Shahmat.

And yet I found that part of myself that did not want to be anywhere else. I knew the red paint of her lips would linger, and the taste of that kiss—like strong wine. I was absurdly conscious of my body, of the hands with which I knew not what I might do—and of Cassandra so near at hand. Unseen, I felt the glow of Lorian’s smirk like radiation, and of the shock of the Monarch’s retinue at this sudden display.

Then it was over, and the sudden absence of her was like a missing tooth. My mouth felt strangely empty, and I staggered back.

“Farewell, Lord Marlowe,” the princess said, cheeks more red now than her hair. She turned to go, her Martians—flustered—scrambling with the twin androgyns to fall into her orbit. Before I could reply, she turned to leave.

The note! The note was still in my hand! The note with its five words for the Emperor and the Imperial fleet.

“Selene!” I called after her. No princess, no highness, no title of any kind. My hand shot out, caught her bangled wrist. I held that hand in both of mine, pressed the note into it. I saw her eyes widen. If we came through all this alive, I would owe Edouard a drink, and pour out a libation for the shade of poor Sir Friedrich Oberlin. It had been they who put the notion into my head. The means to get the truth to those that needed to hear it.

Unknowing, Selene had been my accomplice. The kiss would cover all.

I love you, I might have said in answer, as she had said to me as my flesh dissolved upon the floor of the Arx Caelestis. Instead I smiled, heart in my mouth. “I’ll see you again.”

If she was disappointed, she did not show it, but concealed the note in her white palm. Her other hand went to my cheek. “Until that hour,” she said, and turned once more to go.

My mission done, I retreated, found I could not look my daughter in the eye.

Valka, forgive me, I thought, and shut my eyes.

“And Hadrian!” Selene had stopped halfway to the shuttle, her red cloak fluttering in the wind. No Lord Marlowe, no sirrah.

“Yes, lady?”

“Don’t die . . . again,” she said.

And then she was gone, embarrassment turning her round faster than I would have thought possible for one so dressed. Lorian was still beaming at me, but the smile on Cassandra’s face was more conflicted. It was one thing to say that she had wanted such a thing for me, another to see it before her very eyes.

The shuttle ramp retracted, hatches sliding closed. The whine of repulsors filled the air, and at some unheard command, the music of timpani and brass unseen rose about the landing platform. Calen Harendotes stood at the edge of the receiving stand, shading his eyes with one golden hand. The cloak that dripped from the collar of his office was like a piece of night flapping in the air.

Accompanied by the drum and horn of the Latarran martial anthem, the Imperial shuttle rose into the gray and nearly sunless day, apparently untouched by the gusting wind.

Then just as Selene had vanished inside, the shuttle vanished itself, became for a moment the shadow of some skybound fish beneath the surface of the clouds. Then it dove up into the deeps of that infinite Darkness, and was gone.

Kharn Sagara was watching me then, and for a moment I thought he would speak, make some comment, some remark at my expense. I was conscious of the taste of Selene lingering on my lips, of the color I knew must remain in my face. Had he seen more than my embarrassment? Did he know what I had done? That I set the cornerstone of his undoing?

Instead, the Monarch of Latarra—the one-time Lord of Vorgossos—only turned his back, and conferred with his court and council.

I thought of the message I had given the princess, black words on black paper.

Five words.

Only five.

The Monarch is Kharn Sagara.

I prayed it would be enough.


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