Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 30

THE ETERNAL CITY


Aureate light shone through the forward windows as we descended, Ascalon rattling beneath us as we skimmed the upper airs of Forum, passing through domains of screaming wind a hundred miles high to that place where the air ran clear. After days queuing in the starlanes above the rosy gas giant awaiting permission to descend, we had left the Gadelica in orbit at last, and cleared quarantine procedures put in place to protect the capital from the Rot.

Gilt fliers emerged from banks of cloud vast as moons to accompany us on our approach. Seated in one of the foldouts behind me, I could hear Cassandra gasp, for there it was, shimmering like a palace of dream upon the gleaming line of the horizon, vast as any of the greatest vessels built by human hands.

The Eternal City.

Her towers, not topless as the spires of mythic Ilium, but fathomless as the sea, stretched like pillars of ivory and marble from cloud to cloud, the greatest a thousand stories high, with balconies and tall windows, connected one to the next by tramways and viaducts and slim, graceful bridges. Whole islands sat on massive plates buoyed by repulsors, their surfaces thick with castellated buildings and dotted with hanging gardens rich with green. Above it all, the saucer of the Campus Raphael floated, where the Sun King’s Hall stood, and the houses of government, the many-columned halls and white-domed towers that housed the vast and incomprehensible machinery of Empire.

It was an Olympos made real.

“ISV Ascalon, this is Martian Knight-Commander Canton Kas. I have orders to escort you to Porta Leonora, Landing Pad Alpha One-Seven. Repeat. Landing Pad Alpha One-Seven.”

“One-Seven, Commander Kas,” said Edouard Albé in the pilot’s seat. “Understood. We’ll follow your escort.”

The Martian flier to our left accelerated, bringing us in under the shadow of the outmost branches of the Eternal City. Here great spires descended, stalactites of white cladding and steel a hundred stories deep. We followed our escort slowly among their branches, and saw fliers and shuttlecraft wending in among them.

Cassandra unbelted herself and came to stand behind me. “It’s incredible!” she said. “I thought Jadd was beautiful, but the Alcaz du Badr is small compared to this!”

She was not wrong, for all Jadd’s grandeur and all its great beauty, it was a little nation. The Eternal City was power itself, a statement to the vast achievements of the human intellect and of Sollan Imperial will. Nothing so vast should fly—and yet it did.

The Porta Leonora lay low upon the margins of the Eternal City, one of the city’s seven starports, and the farthest from the Campus Raphael and the houses of government.

“They want us brought in with as little fanfare as possible,” I said, unbolting from the navigator’s seat as Edouard brought the ship in above the pad—a vast metal plate rimmed only by a narrow rail. Rosy clouds blew across the pad, at this altitude mostly water vapor. In the distance, the great mass of the sail wall could be seen, far beyond the farthest towers of the city itself. “See that?” I asked Cassandra, pointing. “It’s a windbreak. That keeps the Coriolis winds from tearing the city apart and blowing us off the platforms.

“They’ve rolled out quite the welcome,” said Edouard. “Who do you think’s in the chair?”

I followed his gaze to the receiving stage at the far end of the landing platform. Men in the white-and-red jumpsuits of the port authority hurried toward us as the Ascalon settled onto the pad.

I watched two men drag a fuel line from a coil at one side, while still more hurried about. Beyond them, on the stage, waited a full century of the Martian Guard in scarlet plate, the red planet—white capped—with its twin moons emblazoned on their breastplates. I marked their commander by his red plume. Behind them, arrayed on the stage itself, stood an assemblage of honorable persons: logothetes in uniform gray. A pair of scholiasts in green. I spied none of the Chantry in their black robes and tall, Egyptian miters. All gathered before a shielded palanquin hung with curtains of argent samite, vermillion, and cloth of gold.

“Those are Aventine House androgyns gathered about,” I said, indicating the knot of red-uniformed servants near at hand, identical under their white perruques. “It’s one of the family.”

“Not His Radiance, surely?” Edouard looked up at me. An adorator young Albé surely was, but the stamp of Imperial divinity was a thing difficult to deny to its face. I felt Cassandra stiffen in her chair. She had been reared on stories of Caesar, had grown hearing how her father had struck the face of that living god and survived.

She was right to fear, as I feared, but said, “Caesar is with the fleet, last I heard.”

“He might have returned,” Albé countered, smoothing his Delian-oiled hair. “Mère de Dieu . . . ”

“It’s not His Radiance. The train’s too small. There’s no flabella,” I said, referring to the feathered staves carried before the Emperor’s gestatory throne, “and I don’t see Lord Nicephorus.”

“Who’s that?” Cassandra asked, standing herself.

“The Lord Chamberlain?” Edouard inquired.

“The Emperor’s shadow,” I said, and smiling at Cassandra, added, sotto voce, “His Neema.” Nicephorus was far more than that. Chief of the palace androgyns who served the Blood Imperial, it was William’s closest confidant—possibly the Emperor’s only real friend.

Cassandra made a soft oh with her lips.

“Open the ramp,” I said, clapping Edouard on the shoulder. “Let’s go and make our proper prostrations, shall we?”

* * *

Despite my easy air, I felt fear move in me—a leviathan of unknown mass and charge roiling just beneath my surface. The Emperor had ever been my only true ally at court, my patron and protector. The mission he had set me on, conjuring me from my Jaddian exile, had been one of the utmost secrecy, which meant that whoever it was come to meet me, they almost certainly had no understanding of how or why Lord Hadrian Marlowe—notorious fugitive, apparent traitor, and would-be regicide—had come to Forum.

The ramp had lowered entirely by the time I reached the hold, and the cool breeze and omnipresent cloud-fog of Forum drifted across the opening. No sooner had my bootheels rung upon the top of the ramp than a clarion rang, and the voice of some herald cried out.

“The Lord Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe!”

All my titles had been stripped away. Gone was the Supreme Commandant, gone the Knight-Commander. The Order of Merit had been plucked away, and the Grass Crown knocked from my head. Even the Victorian had been slashed from my name, though whether that reflected any official change to my house or heraldry or only some petty slight I could not guess.

I had donned the blacks of an Imperial officer, the long, belted coat with its high collar and wide sleeves. Red aiguilettes, gold tipped, hung from my right shoulder. Neema and young Albé followed just behind Cassandra and myself. Neema had repaired her red-and-golden mandyas with care, and the garment hung loose on her left shoulder, the flowing sleeve empty, her arm cradled in the garment like a sling, just as Olorin so often did. Beneath it she wore Marlowe black, though with her braided hair black as ink, there could be no denying the kinship between us.

I had brought only the smallest complement of guards. Annaz followed, with Inamax and ten of their Irchtani warriors. Their clawed feet rattled on the ramp as I descended, and drank in the rarefied airs of Forum.

At the sound of that silver trumpet, the Martians moved as one to attention, and their centurion—a hulking man with a sephiroth of phalerae fixed upon his breastplate—bellowed for his men to present salute. They did, all right and formal.

I stopped short, Cassandra a step behind and to my right.

No one stirred in the palanquin.

A whistle sounded from the speakers in the centurion’s armor, and the Martians broke rank, forming an aisle between them.

Another Martian, this one in gilt plate with a full cape of scarlet, with no helmet on his bronze, scarred face, strode along the channel. He stopped five paces from me, shock evident on his blunt, ugly face. From his harness, I took him for a commander, and guessed that here was Knight-Commander Kas, the man who had directed us to land.

“Per Mars ipsham!” he said, speaking the vulgar Martian tongue in his shock. “It is really you.”

“Commander,” I said, eager to set the tone, and saluted. “I’ve come a long way on a matter of the utmost urgency. It is imperative that I—”

“Hadrian Marlowe!” The knight-commander drew and kindled a highmatter sword, thrust its point squarely at my chest. “In the name of Mars, God of War! In the name of William of the House Avent, who is the God Emperor come again! You are under arrest!”

“Arrest!” Neema stammered, stepping forward. “Arrest? For what crime?”

“For assaulting the Imperial person,” Knight-Commander Kas intoned. “For treason against the Imperium. For fleeing Imperial justice!”

“Now listen here, you villain!” Neema stepped forward, fumbling in his jacket. “My master has a letter of Imperial pardon issued by your Imperial master.” He produced the letter in question, brandished it like a sword. “Cleared of all charges, it says! Under your Emperor’s own seal!”

Knight-Commander Kas snatched the document from Neema’s fist, eyes tracking each line in turn. He stiffened, and turning gestured for the centurion. The lesser Martian approached, and Kas proffered him the letter. “Show her.”

My ears pricked at the words, and I looked sharply at the commander and his centurion, at the rank and file, and the androgyns in their white perruques.

Her.

I could guess the identity of the person in the covered palanquin, who it was that had come to arrest me the moment I arrived, and why she had come with so small a retinue.

The Empress Maria Agrippina had ever been my enemy, believing I had struck her august husband, after all, and so proved myself the ill-bred villain she had always thought I was. She had come for me, with the Emperor hidden offworld. Had ordered me land in so private a place—on the very fringes of the Eternal City, and far below—that I might vanish in that cloud-bound labyrinth, never to be seen again.

The centurion reached the palanquin, handed the letter to an androgyn who passed it within.

“Who’s in there, Abba?” Cassandra asked, whispering in Jaddian.

I made a discreet gesture for her to be quiet, hand at my side.

The androgyn who had handled the letter advanced a step, and spoke in a clear castrato, saying, “My mission was incomplete,” it said. “Those were your words—if indeed the message came from you. What was your mission?”

“They were indeed my words!” I said, standing free, leaving Cassandra, Neema, and Edouard behind, so that I stood almost level with the knight-commander and centurion. “But my mission, my business, is a matter between me and His Imperial Radiance. I will speak to Caesar, and Caesar alone.”

The androgyn paused a moment, listening to the words of its mistress before shouting, “Caesar is not here! He is at the front!”

“I know that!” I replied, and had known—though a part of me had hoped he had returned in the years since I’d departed from Jadd. “I had no means of contacting him directly, and what I have to say can be entrusted to no other.”

“You might have gone elsewhere!” the androgyn replied after the requisite response lag—almost it was like speaking with someone in deep orbit. “Why come to Forum?”

“Because I have nothing to hide!” I said, “Which is more than can be said of you, Radiant Majesty. Why the secrecy?”

“Because you wear your infamy like a crown, my lord!” came a richly feminine voice from within the covered palanquin. “I see the centuries have not dampened your cheek!”

A sandaled foot emerged from one side of the palanquin, and the androgyn nearest hurried to assist the woman seated within. One ringed hand emerged, and the servant took it, folding back the cover to permit the woman an easy exit. She turned to look down at me, her other hand touching the confection of fine gold that restrained her voluminous red hair.

Behind me, I heard Cassandra’s indrawn breath, and shared it.

The women of the Aventine House are—it is said—the loveliest in the human universe. Maria Agrippina herself was beautiful as any of the houris of princely harems in Jadd, as the eugenic marvels of Vorgossos, as Ushara herself. The woman who rose from the palanquin wore a gown of luminous white, with dagged sleeves whose interiors glowed red as her hair. Gold embroidery glittered at her cuffs, decorated her bust and the front of her gown. A slim gold circlet—without gem or device—gleamed upon her snowy brow, and her eyes were like chips of malachite polished smooth by the actions of some celestial river.

She smiled at me, and I must have been an amusing sight.

The woman standing on the receiving stage was beautiful as any I had seen in the Empire or on Jadd: tall and regal as any queen, lovely as Galatea wrought by Pygmalion’s hand . . . lovely as the Empress herself, as so like her then as to be almost identical—for she was a scion of that same royal, red-leafed tree.

But she was not the Empress.

“The look on your face!” she said, smiling like the sun. “I’d have gone to the trouble of arranging this little meeting for no other reason, but Aurelian and I thought it better that I meet you here before the others caught wind of your arrival.”

“Selene?” I cocked my head, staring up at her, bewildered.

Time had polished the girl into a woman complete. Where before the princess had seemed unsure and unassured of herself, she stood there now with the calm composure only centuries of politicking could provide. The girl I had known had been young—as young then as Cassandra. This was a different creature entirely. There was a power in her, a confidence I had not felt when last we’d met.

“Yes,” she said, “It is I.”

I bowed then, left hand thrown wide, right pressed over my heart. “Your Highness, it is exceedingly good to see you again. This is an unexpected honor.”

Selene inclined her head, fidgeted with one of her rings. “Unexpected for us both. I did not think ever to see you again, after . . . ”

“After I struck your father,” I said, not denying it.

I could feel the Martians clench their collective jaws.

“Just so.” The princess’s face fell, and she passed a moment, fingers still twisting her ring. “You still have enemies at court, my lord. My brother, Prince Aurelian, is not one of them. Nor am I.”

“He sent you?”

“I sent myself,” she said. “I am, I think, the only person here on Forum that you would call . . . a friend.”

I marked her hesitation, and guessed its meaning. We had been betrothed—Selene and I—if never formally.

“Are we friends, Selene?” I asked, studying that eugenic sculpture of a face. How like her mother she’d become! The same wide eyes, the same arched and sculpted brow, the same slim nose and full mouth, the same pointed chin. It seemed strange that any friend should so resemble an enemy. How many years had she lived since we parted? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred? No, not so many as that. Here was a woman in the full flower of her youth and potency, a princess of men. Without having to ask, I knew that she had passed much of the intervening years in her glass coffin, dreaming frozen dreams.

She had been awakened the moment we arrived.

She was lying. She had not come on her own initiative.

Aurelian had sent her.

She had been preserved against this day.

“If . . . that is your wish,” she replied. “I hoped that you would trust me. It is why I came in secret. We have a place prepared for you. It’s quite secure.”

“Can I get a message to your father?”

Selene shook her head. “Aurelian will speak with you.”

“That isn’t good enough, Your Highness,” I said, voice rising. “I must speak with the Emperor. I am commanded to say nothing of my mission to any save him.”

Knight-Commander Kas could no longer restrain himself. “Traitor! You profaned yourself attacking a living god! And now you demand the privilege of an audience?”

“Silence, knight-commander!” Selene said, and Kas hung his head. “You must forgive Sir Canton, my lord. He has a stout heart, and he loves my father as all his order do.” She descended the first step from the receiving stage, hair tossed by the wind. “But he is right. When last you saw my father, you struck him. Why should we grant your request?”

The lie came easily. “I struck him,” I said, looking round. “I struck him, and everyone knows it. There were witnesses, recordings, stories of my villainy spread across the datanet. Ask yourself: Could one unarmed man—even Hadrian Marlowe—escape from a cell aboard an Imperial battleship—escape from that battleship—entirely unaided?”

Selene blinked. “You’re saying you planned it? Father and you?”

Let her believe whatever she wanted to believe.

“I am saying that I was where I needed to be,” I said, glancing to young Edouard—to Special Agent 2, Imperial Office, Contact Division. “Jadd is nearer Sabratha than the front. Is it not?”

Silence from the princess, from the Martians and the androgyns all. The logothetes and scholiasts stirred, muttering.

“It is.” Princess Selene had reached the lower level by then, heels brightly ringing with every step. I saw the glimmer of shield about her as she drew level with the centurion and his commander.

Sensing that it was still my moment, I pressed, “I have information vital to the war effort. There has been a battle—I can say that much at least—and while we were victorious, there exists now a threat to mankind more terrible than any we have yet faced. Your commander calls me traitor. I am many things, Your Highness, but that is not one. Why would I be here, risk all, if not in the direst need?”

Selene’s eyes had gone to Cassandra, and for a moment it seemed that she had not heard a single word of all I’d said. Her mouth was open, tongue teetering on the precipice of speech. “You are . . . ” she began, eyes sliding from Cassandra’s face to my own, “ . . . his daughter. Aren’t you?”

Remembering herself, Cassandra curtsied. “I am, Your Highness.”

“Princess,” I said, bowing. “My daughter, Cassandra.”

“I see,” Selene’s eyes returned to me, and there was something in them—a sadness, almost, and almost an understanding. She looked once more to Cassandra. “Your mother . . . the Tavrosi doctor? Onderra, was it not?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” Cassandra said.

“I see her in you, though I regret to say I did not know her well.” She inhaled sharply, returning her gaze to me. “I have read my father’s pardon. It shall make things somewhat easier. We have prepared a place in the Arx Caelestis for you and your people.” She surveyed Neema and Edouard and the Irchtani. “Are there more?”

“In orbit, Highness,” I said. “We traveled aboard the troop carrier Gadelica, but thought it better to leave them in orbit in light of quarantine concerns. It was easier to vet just the four of us . . . ” I gestured at the four humans of my company. “The Irchtani are immune to Lethe’s Sickness.”

Selene nodded her understanding. “Very good. Let them remain there.”

“We have no cause to suspect the plague. It was not on Sabratha.” The Princess had turned as I spoke, and taking my arm led me through the blocks of her Martian Guard.

“We have thrice beaten it back here,” she said. “You passed through the quarantine yourself. You know how stringent it has become.” We reached the top of the steps to the receiving stage, and I saw the nondescript, white government fliers waiting on the deck behind. I stopped her there. “You planned to arrest me.”

She smiled. “Only to get you undercover with all speed. There are doubtless those here loyal to . . . to other concerns, let’s say. They will report to their masters, but Father’s letter provides us coverage. Sir Canton will be heading your security while you remain in the Arx.” At this I peered back at the scarred, bronze-faced soldier. “I must say, Lord Hadrian,” Selene continued. “You have impeccable timing.”

“Why is that, Highness?”

She stopped and looked at me. I had forgotten the stately tallness of her. She was nearly my own height. Shadows faintly red painted the lids of her eyes. “You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“The Lothrians have crossed the Rasan Belt in force. They have assailed Jadd and the Upper Sagittarius.”

It had come at last. The fall of that second hammer upon the Imperial anvil. I thought of Jadd encircled, of bombs falling on Jaharrad, on the Islis du Albulkam. Of commissars in armorial black and of the Conclave Guard sacking Volcano House. With the Lothrians streaming across the Belt into civilized space, and the Cielcin hammering the eastern provinces along the gulf between Centaurus and Sagittarius, the Empire was assailed on two fronts. The Jaddians might be forced to recall their clone armies to defend their home, leaving the vast spaces of the east to our shredded legions.

Of all the realms of men, the Lothrian Commonwealth was second in size and power to the Empire itself, and they had betrayed Earth and all her children, had sold their souls and their people to the Cielcin. Long had we awaited the coming of their armies, and if that time was now . . . 

“Has Jadd fallen?”

“The holy planet itself? No,” Selene said. “But Aurelian has called a war council. Messages have come from across the galaxy. Delegates are coming to Forum, will arrive within the next few years. And they’re bringing their armies.”

“Their armies?” I asked. “Coming here?”

She gripped my arm. “Oh yes,” she said, “all of the Children of Earth still true are coming together at last.”


Back | Next
Framed