A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows df-7 Page 3

  The air grew cold soon after the sun went behind the mountains, cold as the brook which bubbled iron-tasting from a cleft in the crater’s lip. Kossara hunched into her jacket, squatted down, held palms forth to the fire. Her breath drifted white through the dusk that rose from the lowlands.

  Before he put their meat on a spit above coals and dancing flamelets, Trohdwyr drew a sign and spoke a few words of Eriau. Kossara knew them well: “Aferdhi of the Deeps, Blyn of the Winds, Haawan who lairs on the reefs, by this be held afar and trouble us not in our rest.” Hundreds of kilometers and a long lifetime from the Black Ocean, he remained an old-fashioned pagan ychan. Early in her teens, eager in her faith, Kossara had learned it was no use trying to make an Orthochristian of him.

  Surely the Pantocrator didn’t mind much, and would receive his dear battered soul into Heaven at the last.

  She had never thought of him as a zmay. Not that the word had any particularly bad overtones. Maybe once it had been a touch contemptuous, four hundred years ago when the first immigrants arrived from Merseia; but later it came to mean simply a Dennitzan of such ancestry. (Did the growth of their original planet into a frightening rival of Terra have anything to do with that?) However, from him and his family she had learned Eriau—rather, the archaic and mutated version they spoke—at the same time as she was learning Serbic from her parents and Anglic from a governess. When finally prevailed upon to stop scrambling these three into a private patois, she kept the habit of referring to Trohdwyr’s people by their own name for themselves, “ychani”: “seekers.”

  For he had been close to the center of her child-universe. Father and Mother were at its very heart, naturally, and so for a while were a doll named Lutka, worn into shapelessness, and a cat she called Butterfeet. Uncle Bodin approached them when he and Aunt Draga visited, or the Vymezals went to Zorkagrad and he took her to the zoo and the merrypark. Three younger siblings, two brothers and a sister, orbited like comets, now radiant with love, now off into outer darkness. Trohdwyr never shone quite as brightly as any of these; but the chief gamekeeper to three generations of her house moved in an unchangeable path, always there for her to reach when she needed him.

  “Kraich.” Having started dinner cooking, he settled back on the tripod of clawed feet and massive tail. “You’ve earned a double drink this evening, Dama. A regular sundowner, and one for killing the dyavo.” He poured into cups from a flask of shlivovitza. “Though I must skin the beast and carry the hide,” he added.

  The hoarse basso seemed to hold a note of genuine complaint. Startled, Kossara peered across the fire at him.

  To a dweller in the inner Empire, he might have been any Merseian. No matter how anthropoid a xenosophont was, the basic differences usually drowned individuality unless you knew the species well. Trohdwyr roughly resembled a large man—especially in the face, if you overlooked endless details of its heavy-boned, brow-ridged, wide-nosed, thin-lipped construction. But he had no external earflaps, only elaborately contoured holes in the skull. Totally hairless, his skin was pale green and faintly scaled. A sierra of low triangular spines ran from the top of his forehead, down his back to the tail’s end. When he stood, he leaned forward, reducing his effective height to tall-human; when he walked, it was not on heels and soles but on his toes, in an alien rhythm. He was warm-blooded; females of his race gave live birth; but he was no mammal—no kind of animal which Terra had ever brought forth.

  By a million signs Kossara knew him for Trohdwyr and nobody else, as she knew her kinfolk or Mihail. He had grown gaunt, deep furrows lay in his cheeks, he habitually spurned boots and trousers for a knee-length tunic with many pockets, he wore the same kind of curve-bladed sheath knife with knuckleduster handle which he had given her and taught her to use, years before …

  “Why, I’ll abandon it if you want,” she said, thinking, Has time begun to wear him down? How hurtful to us both.

  “Oh, no, no, Dama. No need.” Trohdwyr grew abashed. “Forgive a gaffer if he’s grumpy. I was—well, today I almost saw you ripped apart. There I stood, you in my line of fire, and that beast—Dama, don’t do such things.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kossara said. “Though I really don’t believe I was taking too big a chance. I know my rifle.”

  “I too. Didn’t you learn from me?”

  “But those were lightweight weapons. Because I was a girl? Today I had a Tashta, the kind they’ve issued me in the Voyska. I was sure it could stop him.” Kossara gazed aside, downslope toward the bottom of the Kazan, which night had already filled. “Besides,” she added softly, “I needed such a moment. You’re right, I did provoke the dyavo to attack.”

  “To get away from feeling helpless?” Trohdwyr murmured.

  “Yes.” She could never have opened thus to any human except Mihail, maybe not even to him; but over the years the ychan had heard confessions which she did not give her priest. “My man’s yonder.” She flung a hand toward the first stars as they twinkled forth, white upon violet above the lowlands. “I have to stay behind in my guard unit—when Dennitza will never be attacked!”

  “Thanks to units like yours, Datna,” Trohdwyr said.

  “Nevertheless, he—” Kossara took her drink in a gulp. It burned the whole way down, and the glow spread fast to every part of her. She held the cup out for a refill. “Why does it matter this much who’s Emperor? All right, Josip was foul and his agents did a great deal of harm. But he’s dead now; and the Empire did survive him; and I’ve heard enough from my uncle to know that what really keeps it going is a lot of nameless little officials whose work outlasts whole dynasties. Then why do we fight over who’ll sit crowned in Archopolis for the next few years?”

  “You are the human, Dama, not I,” said Trohdwyr. After a minute: “Yet I can think how on Merseia they would be glad to see another Terran Emperor whose spirit is fear or foolishness. And … we here are not overly far from Merseia.”

  Kossara shivered beneath the stars and took a strong sip.

  “Well, it’ll get settled soon,” she declared. “Uncle Bodin told me he’s sure it will be. This thing in space is a last gasp. Soon”—she lifted her head—“Mihail and I can travel,” exploring together the infinite marvels on worlds that circle new suns.

  “I hope so, Dama, despite that I’ll miss you. Have plenty of young, and let them play and grow around me on the manor as you did, will you?”

  Exalted by the liquor—how the smell of the roasting meat awakened hunger!—she blurted: “He wanted me to sleep with him before he left. I said no, we’ll wait till we’re married. Should I have said yes? Tell me, should I have?”

  “You are the human,” Trohdwyr repeated. “I can simply answer, you are the voivode’s daughter and the Gospodar’s niece. But I remember from my cubhood—when folk still lived in Old Aferoch, though already then the sea brought worse and worse floods—a female ychan of that town. I knew her somewhat, since a grown cousin of mine used to come in from our village, courting her—”

  The story, which was of a rivalry as fierce as might have stood between two men of different clans in early days on Dennitza, but which ended after a rescue on the water, was oddly comforting: almost as if she were little again, and Trohdwyr rocked her against his warm dry breast and rumbled a lullaby. That night Kossara slept well. Some days afterward she returned happily to Dubina Dolyina. When her leave was up, she went back to Zorkagrad.

  There she got the news that Mihail Svetich had been killed in action.

  But standing before the slave shop’s audiovisual recorders, Kossara did not think of this, nor of what had happened to Trohdwyr himself on cold Diomedes. She remained in that one evening out of the many they had had together.}

  The chemical joy wore off. She lay on her bunk, bit her pillow and fought not to yell.

  A further day passed.

  Then she was summoned to the manager’s office. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve been bought, luckier than you deserve.”

  It roared in her
. Darkness crossed her eyes. She swayed before his desk. Distantly she heard:

  “A private gentleman, and he must really have liked what he saw in the catalogue, because he outbid two different cepheid houses. You can probably do well for yourself—and me, I’ll admit. Remember, if he sells you later, he may well go through me again instead of making a deal directly. I don’t like my reputation hurt, and I’ve got this switch here—Anyhow, you’ll be wise if you show him your appreciation. His name is Dominic Flandry, he’s a captain of Naval Intelligence, a knight of the Imperium, and, I’ll tell you, a favorite of the Emperor. He doesn’t need a slave for his bed. Gossip is, he’s tumbled half the female nobility on Terra, and commoner girls past counting. Like I said, he must think you’re special. The more grateful you act, the better your life is likely to be … On your way, now. A matron will groom and gown you.”

  She also provided a fresh euphoriac. Thus Kossara didn’t even mind that the servant who came to fetch her was hauntingly like and unlike an ychan. He too was bald, green, and tailed; but the green was grass-bright, without scales, the tail thin as a cat’s, the posture erect, the height well below her own, the other differences unreckonable. “Sir Dominic saw fit to dub me Chives,” he introduced himself. “I trust you will find his service pleasant. Indeed, I declined the manumission he offered me, until the law about spy bracelets went into effect on Terra. May I direct you out?”

  Kossara went along through rosiness, into an aircar, on across the city and an ocean, eventually to an ornate house on an island which Chives called Catalina. He showed her to a suite and explained that her owner was busy elsewhere but would presently make his wishes known. Meanwhile these facilities were hers to use, within reason.

  Kossara fell asleep imagining that Mihail was beside her.

  III

  It was official: the Emperor Hans would shortly leave Terra, put himself at the head of an armada, and personally see to quelling the barbarians—war lords, buccaneers, crusaders for God knew what strange causes—who still harassed a Sector Spica left weak by the late struggle for the Imperial succession. He threw a bon voyage party at the Coral Palace. Captain Sir Dominic Flandry was among those invited. Under such circumstances, one comes.

  Besides, Flandry reflected, I can’t help liking the old bastard. He may not be the best imaginable thing that could happen to us, but he’s probably the best available.

  The hour was well after sunset in this part of Oceania. A crescent moon stood high to westward; metrocenter star-points glinted across its dark side. The constellations threw light of their own onto gently rolling waves, argent shimmer on sable. Quietness broke where surf growled white against ramparts. There walls, domes, towers soared aloft in a brilliance which masked off most of heaven.

  When Flandry landed his car and stepped forth, no clouds of perfume (or psychogenic vapors, as had been common in Josip’s reign) drifted from the palace to soften salt odors. Music wove among mild breezes, but formal, stately, neither hypersubtle nor raucous. Flandry wasn’t sure whether it was composed on a colony planet—if so, doubtless Germania—or on Terra once, to be preserved through centuries while the mother world forgot. He did know that a decade ago, the court would have snickered at sounds this fusty-archaic.

  Few servants bowed as he passed among fellow guests, into the main building. More guardsmen than formerly saluted. Their dress uniforms were less ornate than of yore and they and their weapons had seen action. The antechamber of fountains hadn’t changed, and the people who swirled between them before streaming toward the ballroom wore clothes as gorgeous as always, a rainbow spectacle. However, fantastic collars, capes, sleeves, cuffs, footgear were passe. Garb was continuous from neck or midbreast to soles, and, while many men wore robes rather than trousers, every woman was in a skirt.

  A reform I approve of, he thought. I suspect most ladies agree. The suggestive rustle of skillfully draped fabric is much more stimulating, really, and easier to arrange, than cosmetics and diadems on otherwise bare areas of interest. For that matter, though it does take more effort, a seduction is better recreation than an orgy.

  There our good Hans goes too far. Every bedroom in the palace locked!

  Ah, well. Conceivably he wants his entourage to cultivate ingenuity.

  Crown Prince Dietrich received, a plain-faced middle-aged man whose stoutness was turning into corpulence. Though he and Flandry had worked together now and then in the fighting, his welcome was mechanical. Poor devil, he must say a personal hello to each of three or four hundred arrivals important enough to rate it, with no drug except stim to help him. Another case of austere principles overdone, Flandry thought. The younger brother, Gerhart, was luckier tonight, already imperially drunk at a wallside table with several cronies. However, he looked as sullen as usual.

  Flandry drifted around the circumference of the ballroom. There was nothing fancy about the lighting, save that it was cast to leave unobscured the stars in the vitryl dome overhead. The floor sheened with diffracted reflections from several score couples who swung through the decorous measures of a quicksilver. He hailed acquaintances when he glimpsed them, but didn’t stop till he had reached an indoor arbor where champagne was available. A goblet of tickle in his hand, roses around him, a cheerful melody, a view of pretty women in motion—life could be worse.

  It soon was. “Greetin’, Sir Dominic.”

  Flandry turned, and bowed in dismay to the newcomer beneath the leaves. “Aloha, your Grace.”

  Tetsuo Niccolini, Duke of Mars, accepted a glass from the attendant behind the table. It was obviously not his first. “Haven’t seen you for some while,” he remarked. “Missed you. You’ve a way o’ puttin’ a little spark into a scene, dull as the court is these days.” Shrewdly: “Reason you don’t come often, what?”

  “Well,” Flandry admitted, “his Majesty’s associates do tend to be a bit earnest and firm-jawed.” He sipped. “Still, my impression is, your Grace spends a fair amount of time here regardless.”

  Niccolini sighed. He had never been more than a well-meaning fop; but in these last years, when antisenescence and biosculp could no longer hold wrinkles, baldness, feebleness at bay, he had developed a certain wry perspective. Unfortunately, he remained a bore.

  Shadows of petals stirred across a peacock robe as he lifted his drink. “D’you think I should go to my ancestral estates and all that rubbish, set up my own small court along lines I like, eh? No, m’boy, not feasible. I’d get nothin’ but sycophants, who’d pluck me while they smiled. My real friends, who put their hearts into enjoyin’ life, well, they’re dead or fled or sleepin’ in an oldster’s bed.” He paused. “ ’Sides, might’s well tell you, H.M. gave me t’understand—he makes himself very clear, ha?—gave me t’understand, he’d prefer no Duke o’ Mars henceforth visit the planet ’cept for a decent minimum o’ speeches an’ dedications.”

  Flandry nodded. That makes sense, flickered through him. The Martians [nonhumans; colonists by treaty arrangement in the time of the Commonwealth; glad to belong to it, but feeling betrayed when it broke down and the Troubles came; dragooned into the Empire] are still restless. Terra can best control them by removing the signs of Terran control. I suspect, after poor tottery Tetty is gone, Hans will buy out his heirs with a gimcrack title elsewhere and a lot of money and make a Martian the next Duke—who may not even know he’s a puppet.

  At least, that’s what I’d consider doing.

  “But we’re in grave danger o’ seriousness,” Niccolini interrupted himself. “Where’ve you been? Busy at what? Come, come, somethin’ amusin’ must’ve happened.”

  “Oh, just knocking around with a friend.” Flandry didn’t care to get specific. One reason why he had thus far declined promotion to admiral was that then he’d be too conspicuous, too eagerly watched and sought after, while he remained near the Emperor. He liked his privacy. As a hanger-on who showed no further ambitions—and could therefore in time be expected to lose his energetic patron’s goodwill—he
drew scant attention.

  “Or knockin’ up a friend? Heh, heh, heh.” The Duke nudged him. “I know your sort o’ friends. How was she?”

  “In the first place, she was a he,” Flandry said. Until he could escape, he might as well reconcile himself to humoring a man who had discovered the secret of perpetual adolescence. “Of course, we explored. Found a new place on Ganymede which might interest your Grace, the Empress Wu in Celestial City.”

  “No, no.” Niccolini waggled his head and free hand. “Didn’t y’know? I never go anywhere near Jupiter. Never. Not since the La Reine Louise disaster.”

  Flandry cast his mind back. He couldn’t identify—Oh, yes. It had happened five years ago, while he was out of the Solar System. Undeterred by civil war, a luxury liner was approaching Callisto when her screen field generators failed. The trapped radiation which seethes around the giant planet, engulfing its inner moons, killed everybody aboard; no treatment could restore a body burned by so much unfelt fire.

  Nothing of the kind had happened for centuries of exploration and colonization thereabouts. Magnetohydrodynamic shields and their backups were supposed to be invulnerable to anything that wouldn’t destroy a vehicle or a settlement anyway. Therefore, sabotage? The passenger list had included several powerful people. A court of inquiry had handed down the vaguest finding of “cumulative negligence.”

  “My poor young nephew, that I inherited the Dukedom from, was among the casualties,” Niccolini droned on. “That roused the jolly old instinct o’ self-preservation, I can tell you. To blinkin’ many hazards as is. Not that I flatter myself I’m a political bull’s-eye. Still, one never knows, does one? So tell me ’bout this place you found. If it sounds intriguin’, I’ll see ’bout gettin’ a sensie.”