Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER 31

AURELIAN


The next day, Sir Canton Kas appeared at the doors of the apartments that had been set aside for Cassandra and myself in the Arx Caelestis, alongside two decades of the Martian Guard. The Arx stood behind the Sun King’s Hall, away from the Peronine Palace and the Campus Raphael. A great, square tower of white stone and steel a hundred stories high, it dominated the plaza of the Campus, overlooking the vast rotunda and gold-tiled roofs of the Hall. It had been built to house the Martians, and to serve as their base and barracks.

Once, the ancient planet Mars had served the first Emperors as a penal colony, the first link in a chain whose latest were Belusha and Pagus Minor. Now it was something else, the home of a warrior people and martial culture whose only purpose was to fill out the ranks of the Emperor’s own legions.

Every Martian boy was subjected to brutal training in the deserts and river valleys of that red and venerable world, and those that lived to their Ephebeia were granted the highest honor: to leave Mars and sail to the service of Mars himself. The Sollan Emperor. The living god.

Theirs was a strange and insular world, theirs a cult—not unlike the cult of the undead god Edouard worshipped—that the Chantry had allowed to persist. They were older than the first litanies, the first sanctums, the first sacrifices to Earth and the icona, and they had served the Blood Imperial almost since the dawn of the Imperium.

And they were then and for a time my protectors.

I felt like a prisoner, marching along between my guards. They conveyed me to a lift, and then to a tram that ran along a closed tunnel. We emerged into a subbasement that seemed more like the deck of some Imperial battleship than the baroque splendor of the palace above our heads. Word of our arrival must have leaked by that point. There were security cameras, logothetes, servants everywhere. My face was known, was infamous, and surely one of the guards or serving women in the Arx the night before had whispered word to some other.

Half my guard left us at the next lift, and I was forced to fold into the carriage with a dozen Martians in crimson plate. The carriage itself was bloodwood and brass, the floor white-and-black-tiled marble with brass inlay, wholly incongruous with the black ship-metal of that secret subfloor. It moved silently, and deposited us into a hallway like itself, richly tiled, the walls and ceilings of darkly paneled wood, the windows of alumglass like crystal overlooking the soaring towers and cloud-wreathed colonnades of that city of mortal gods. Our own apartments had only narrow windows, and I stood a moment, transfixed by the beauty of it all.

The glory of the world, I thought. Of all of them.

The Eternal City was the crown jewel of Imperial achievement, the perihelion of civilization itself. It was worth fighting for.

Crown Prince Aurelian, eldest child of the Emperor, sat behind a massive desk of dark wood with resinous black inlay. His hair was white as snow, and the thin circlet that depressed it just above his ears seemed heavily to rest upon him. He looked up at my approach, and placed the silver stylus he held in a pen stand, banished the holographs that floated before him with a gesture.

“Lord Marlowe for you, my prince,” said Knight-Commander Kas, saluting.

“So I see,” said Aurelian, eyes narrowing. “Very good, knight-commander.”

The Martian saluted, and he and his men withdrew, the last two shutting the heavy wooden doors behind them with a soft but solid sound.

Prince Aurelian did not speak at once, but continued his careful study of me. It was hard not to stand at attention, but I held my ground. I had no rank, no title any longer, and so had no need to act like a soldier.

“You have nothing to say?” the old prince asked, sitting back in his chair. His cloth was fine, his tunic of red slashed with gold, and of gold was the heavy, square chain of office that draped his broad shoulders. The small toga that hung from his left shoulder—not covering the arm—was white as his hair, and on his face was writ the mark of centuries and many cares.

“You were young when I last saw you,” I said, remembering a stoic but handsome prince, red haired as all his kind.

“As were you, Lord Marlowe,” he said, gesturing at the tapestried chair across from him. “I am not certain which of us Time, Ever-Fleeting, has been kinder to. I have marked more years than you, I deem—here on Forum—and yet that two-faced force has ridden you far harder, or so it seems.”

I smiled and said nothing.

“Why are you here?” the prince demanded.

“That is a matter for your father, my prince,” I said. “I am come on his business.”

“I was not aware my father had any business on . . . ” Aurelian checked a printout lying on the desk before him. “ . . . Sabratha? Where is that, precisely? I’ve not heard of it.”

Resting my elbows on the arms of the tapestried chair, I folded my hands before me. “It’s in the Outer Perseus, on the frontier. We came by Tiryns.”

Aurelian rested his chin on one fist, leaned against the arm of his high-backed and richly leathered seat. “My reports on the place say little and less. Some Mining Guild interests in-system and on the planet itself. Ivory exports”—that would be the bones of the native whale-worms—“but little more. It’s a minor outpost . . . of little to no consequence.”

I massaged the ancient cryoburn scar that wrapped my thumb as I listened. It would seem word of the Vaiartu ruins had never entered the general record, else Aurelian would surely have added them to his list.

When again I did not speak, Aurelian’s nostrils flared. “Lord Marlowe,” he said, “let me be frank with you: Word of your infamy has spread across the Imperium. It festers here at court. His Radiance, my father, may have granted you clemency, but the Lions, the Martians, the Chantry—especially the Chantry—will never forgive what you’ve done. Until yesterday, I myself had no knowledge of Father’s pardon, and intended to place you in the bastille.”

“Is that why I’m in the Arx Caelestis?” I asked. “A gilded prison?”

“Just so,” Aurelian snapped, and leaned forward. “You have but few friends at court. I am one only out of respect for the man you were. I would not see you strangled in your sleep here or killed in some shuttle crash, but if you wish for me to help you, you must give me something. Why were you on Sabratha?”

There was a portrait of the Emperor on the wall behind Aurelian. It was the stock portrait one sees in every state office and prefect’s station on every world under the Sun, with His Radiance dressed as a Legion officer, in white instead of black, with the red and gold of a toga over his left shoulder, his right breast festooned with medals—only this was the portrait. The original. I saw Vianello’s signature in the bottom right. The man had painted William’s portrait, and the portraits of the previous fifteen Emperors, going back to Raphael VII and the thirteenth millennium.

Nearly five thousand years. The poor man was kept in fugue, decanted only so long as was required for him to perform his next portrait.

He might outlast the Empire itself.

“I am commanded not to say,” I said.

“I am Chancellor of the Sollan Empire! Lord Director of the Imperial Office! There is nothing in the Empire I do not know.”

The part of me that remained Tor Gibson’s student teetered on the verge of pointing out that could not be true, as the prince was the one asking questions, but I held my tongue.

“You were traveling in the company of one Special Agent Edouard Albé. If I will not have it from you, I will have it from him.”

I hissed, looked round the office. Its high arched windows, its veined pilasters, its carved wooden panels and bookcases, the smell of old leather and yellowed vellum. The prince was quite correct. He could not compel me to speak, but he would have the story from Edouard. I ought to have left the man aboard the Gadelica. I might have played for time.

No, no it was inevitable—had been inevitable from the moment I set our course for Forum, since I left Jadd.

“What do you know of the Monumentals?” I asked, using the Imperial word.

Aurelian blanched. “You know?” His eyes found the camera in the ceiling.

“Of course I know,” I said, unable to keep the acid from my tongue.

Numbly, Aurelian’s hand found a control along the underside of his desk. The windows polarized in an instant, becoming black as pitch. The days on Forum stretched for weeks, and it was necessary to create darkness where it would not otherwise be.

The darkness Aurelian created was of a different kind. The lamps and sconces remained on, but I was certain the cameras and various other recording devices present in the Prince Chancellor’s office were dead as stones.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“The Cielcin worship them,” I said. “There was one of them dead on the world where my company was destroyed.”

Aurelian’s face darkened. “That was not in your report.”

“I have had this conversation with your father already,” I said.

The aged, white-haired prince chewed his tongue, eyes narrow with focus as he studied one of the papers spread before him—not really seeing it. “Your abilities. What you did at Perfugium. On Berenike. Here in the Colosseum.”

“Have nothing to do with them,” I said, though that was not precisely true. “HAPSIS found one on Sabratha.” It was the prince’s turn to be silent. “Your father asked me to find and kill it before the Cielcin could locate it.”

“Why wasn’t I told any of this?” Aurelian asked, eyes locked now on mine.

I studied the man’s aging palatine face, searching for some betrayal, some sign that he was not what he seemed: Aurelian of the Aventine, Chancellor, Minister, Prince of the Sollan Empire . . . 

Demoniacs all.

“Excellency,” I began. “You must know the enemy has spies at court.”

Aurelian brushed this aside with a gesture. “I should have been told.”

“That is academic,” I said. “You were not. It is of no consequence. All efforts at secrecy were for naught in any case. The Extrasolarians successfully secreted a spy among our ranks. The Cielcin attacked Sabratha in an effort to secure the Monumental there.”

Aurelian’s face was then as white as his hair. “Did they succeed?”

“I have reason to believe so,” I said, and told the prince how we had been betrayed, how our forces had been caught flat-footed on the ground. I told him of the coming of Muzugara, of the finding of Ushara in the pantheon, of the battle, and the bombing that had turned the god to stone. When at last I told him of Gaizka’s corpse and of my certainty that the Watcher had ridden on the wizard’s wave, the Chancellor hung his head, and so missed the maniac grin that flickered over my face.

“Are you unwell, Lord Marlowe?” he asked, finding my face in my hands.

I massaged my face and lips. “Yes, Excellency,” I said at last. “You must understand . . . none of this can be reported. None of this can leave this room.” I looked round at the polarized windows, the inert cameras—found myself thinking of Valka. My next words emerged almost wistfully as I brought my attention back around to the prince. “You understand now why it is so important I speak with His Radiance at once?”

Aurelian touched the circlet on his brow with one finger, adjusting it as Edouard might push up his spectacles. “You cannot,” he said.

The Marlowe fury flashed white hot. “Why not? I know the Emperor is not here. I understand he never returned following the disaster at Perfugium, that he has continued the fight in the provinces. But I must speak to him, Aurelian. Where is he?”

The Prince Chancellor’s eyes flashed at my presumption. “He is in transit,” he said at last.

A small sound of understanding escaped me, and I bowed my head. “Of course.” It would not be possible even to telegraph the Emperor, not so long as he remained at warp. “How long?”

“Four years,” came the dreaded answer.

“Four years!” I stood, turning my back on the prince. “We may not have four years, Your Excellency. The sorcerer, Gaizka, might have reached the Prophet already! A Cielcin army with a Watcher at its head will march clear across the galaxy, just as the Vaiartu did a million years ago! We will be facing extinction!” I rounded on the man, struck by how tired and frail he seemed.

Life is very long.

“I cannot make the fleet move any faster,” Aurelian said. “What would you have me do?”

I had thought long and hard about that very question on the flight from Sabratha, knowing I could not come to Forum hat in hand and offer nothing but my apology. My mother’s son, I moved to the window, saw only my own face reflected in its black mirror. Still, I leaned against the carven frame.

“Vorgossos,” I said at last.

“Vorgossos?” Aurelian sounded more confused than shocked. “What has Vorgossos to do with anything?”

I looked at him. “Kharn Sagara must have known about the Watchers.” Turning my attention back to the polished dark of the glass, I said, “He warned me—in his way—said there were creatures out there that burrow in the quantum foam. He said he knew of a creature that attacked a ship’s crew through their dreams.”

“You think he spoke of the Monumentals?”

“Do you know of any other creature capable of such a thing?” I asked. “If I am to renew the hunt, I need better weapons.”

“You said the Perseus weapon was sabotaged,” Aurelian said. “Surely another . . . ”

“The creature on Sabratha was weak,” I said. “It was dying, dissipating over the last million years. So was the one our people caught on Nairi.”

Aurelian rocked back in his seat, wheels clattering on floor. “You know about Nairi?”

“It is not weak now,” I said, and smiled—I saw my teeth in the blackened window. “I need a weapon that can battle the Watchers at full strength.”

“What does Vorgossos have that we do not?” Aurelian asked, gold chain tinkling as he steepled his hands over the edge of his desk.

I hesitated, feeling almost that I had said too much, shared too much of my secret mind. The visions the Quiet had shown me danced like shadows before my eyes, cast by that higher world and time. Visions of that black ship, of light devouring the stars . . . and of myself. Of myself destroying the Cielcin, wiping them from the stars.

But that had been another life, a time that would never happen.

It had been a young Hadrian in the vision, not the graying and much-scarred old raven that peered at me from the window glass. And yet I must seek Vorgossos, as he had sought Vorgossos in his life that never was.

What was it Suzuha had said to me?

Weapons more terrible than anything you can imagine.

“Weapons designed by the Mericanii,” I said. “By the machines.”

Aurelian’s eyes grew round as dinner plates, and he stood. “By the machines?”

“I believe Kharn Sagara can be of assistance,” I said. “The machines developed weapons far beyond our science, not even Sagara understood them—I think.”

“And he’s just . . . kept them? All these years?” Aurelian asked, skepticism entering the edges of his voice. “Why not use them? Why, for that matter, did the machines not use them?”

That latter was a question I’d given much consideration to, and while I thought I had an answer, it was not one I was ready to give. “I don’t believe Sagara is interested in war,” I said. “He’s been alive for sixteen thousand years, and in all that time he’s been content to rule his one planet in relative peace. Why risk his immortal life?”

That seemed to satisfy Aurelian, who circled round to the far corner of his desk, one hand gripping the edge. “What makes you think he has something to combat the Monumentals?”

“The machine lifeform on Vorgossos,” I said, “Brethren—you read my reports?”

“A long time ago.”

“Sagara maintains perhaps the last Mericanii daimon in existence,” I said. “The creature’s consciousness was developed to the point where it could perceive the future, and so perceive other beings across time.” I could tell the prince was not following. “Beings with similar faculties.”

“You’re saying . . . ”

“I’m saying the machines knew of the Watchers!” I said. “The weapons they built are beyond anything we can imagine.”

“You think they built them to fight the Monumentals?”

I came off the wall, hands stretched before me, imploring. “If not them, what?”

“Us!” Aurelian almost shouted. “The machines were trying to destroy us, Marlowe! Have you forgotten?”

I turned away, met once more the gaze of my reflection. “Even if that’s all it is, if Sagara has a weapon that can kill them, Excellency, if there is only the faintest chance I am right, let me seek Vorgossos. If Sagara can be made to help us . . . ”

“Even if I could let you go, Lord Marlowe,” said Prince Aurelian, speaking like a man mastering some barely bottled exasperation, “what makes you think Sagara would aid us?”

“He does not want to die!” I said. “Sagara protects his own interests. A galaxy ruled by the Watchers is not in his interest.”

“I seem to recall he was perfectly sanguine at the prospect of a deal with the Cielcin.”

“The Cielcin are one thing,” I countered. “The Watchers another.”

Aurelian was silent then. Silent for so long I turned back to look at him. He leaned against the corner of his desk like a straw man beaten down by rain. “You cannot go,” he said at last, “and you may not need to. It may not be necessary to seek Vorgossos at all.”

“My prince?”

The Chancellor of the Sollan Empire touched the gilt carnelian egg displayed at once corner of his desk. Its stand was a golden hand, the egg balanced on its fingers. “Selene told you His Radiance has called for a council?” When I said that she had, he lifted the egg entire. Cradled it in his own palm as though it were a grievous weight. “The Jaddians are rushing to grow a new army to combat the Lothrians, the Durantines have sent for aid. Both have emissaries en route. We have reports pouring in from the system governors in Perseus and along the Rasan Belt, and several of the feudal lords are coming themselves. There is a coalition of the surviving Normans coming under the command of one of the Triumvirs of Uhra—the Norman Alliance, they’re calling themselves. The Wong-Hopper Consortium director general is coming himself, along with the Nipponese Emperor.”

“The Nipponese Emperor is coming here?” The lord of House Yamato never left his home on Nichibotsu.

“Along with five hundred of his finest and the other Imperial navy,” Aurelian laughed. The Nipponese had been allowed to retain the title of Emperor at home, though he was considered a prince in the broader Imperium, equivalent to the great houses of Bourbon, Mahidol, Hapsburg, and the rest. Still, the Sollan Emperors and the lords of the Aventine House liked to call them the other Empire, though the princes of the Yamato ruled but a handful of systems.

“We reached out to the Tavrosi. They have dispatched a fleet.”

“The Tavrosi?” I could not contain my shock. “The Tavrosi don’t have fleets!”

“Evidently they built one,” Aurelian said. “It’s coming here under the command of an admiral called . . . what was it? Kull. Sattha Kull Vhad Kvasir.” Aurelian restored the crimson egg to its stand. “Your, ah . . . erstwhile paramour was Tavrosi, was she not? Do you know him?”

I shook my head. “My Valka was Vhad Edda,” I said. “I never went to Kvasir.”

“I see,” Aurelian said. “I only wondered.”

“What has this to do with Sagara?” Kharn Sagara could not be coming to Forum. It was impossible, and to ask was to appear a fool.

“We have invited representatives of several factions among the Extrasolarians,” the prince said, eyes studying my reaction.

“The Extrasolarians!” I exclaimed, evidently not disappointing the prince. “The Extasolarians, Your Excellency . . . are you mad?”

“His Radiance made the overtures himself,” Aurelian said. “My father sent an apostol to the Monarch of Latarra.”

“Latarra was allied with MINOS!” I shouted.

“And we attempted to assassinate the Monarch,” Aurelian said. “Just a moment ago, you were agitating for an alliance with Kharn Sagara.”

Rage is blindness.

I bowed my head and was silent. The prince was right.

“Perhaps the Latarran embassy or one of the other factions might shed light on the Vorgossos question,” Aurelian said, crossing the space between us. “Nothing can be done until His Radiance reaches his destination. Until then you will remain in the Arx Caelestis, under careful guard, barring formal occasions. Your ship will be impounded in orbit, the crew you traveled with kept in fugue. I will not have a repeat of your showing in the Colosseum on your visit, nor will I have your blood on my hands.”

“So I am to be imprisoned?” I said. It was what I expected.

“If you like,” the prince said. “It is for your own safety, and that of your daughter.”

“I understand,” I said, and saluted, looking over the prince’s shoulder—as was martial custom—to where Vianello’s painting of William XXIII hung in splendor.

The prince inclined his head. “Dismissed.”

I turned to go.

“Lord Marlowe!” I stopped, but did not turn. “Not a word of this. To anyone. You are on Forum. In the Eternal City. You may be certain you are being watched—and not merely by my men.”


Back | Next
Framed