The Captive's Rank

Tales of the Concordat

Book Three

By

Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Copyright © 2016 Jefferson P. Swycaffer

All Rights Reserved

Version 2.A.02

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Several of the concepts and nomenclatures used in this story are from the games Imperium ™ and Traveller © published by Far Future Enterprises and designed by Marc W. Miller, to whom all my thanks for his kind permission regarding this use. -J.P.S.

This novel has never been previously published.

Dedication

To Robert Rose, friend and pizza-companion, for his support and kindness. If I had three wishes, one of them would be his.

To the memory of Scott S. Norton, 1952 - 2014, who read and reviewed this book in manuscript. We argued cheerfully over every comma.

Introduction

This book was written in 1981. My first four novels were published by Avon Books in 1985 and 1986, but, for some reason, this book wasn't included. It should be — and now it is — the third of five books.

The "Tales of the Concordat" series is all about the efforts of a very few people to keep their civilization from collapsing. It may be obvious that I was inspired — very heavily inspired — by Poul Anderson's series of stories and novels featuring Dominic Flandry as a protagonist. I would never be soo egotistical as to say, "If you like the 'Flandry' stories, you'll like the 'Concordat' stories," but I think the converse is fair to assert: if you like what you've read of my work, go and hunt up Anderson's tales. I'm quite sure I've stayed on the safe side of the line, and never veered into the realm of plagiarism, but I do acknowledge a kind of "dependent homage." Without the Flandry stories, my stories could not have existed.

Back in 1981, there was still a large body of belief regarding U.S. servicemen being held in North Vietnamese prisons as Prisoners of War (POWs.) Secret prisons. The war was over in April of 1975, but diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Vietnam would not be normalized until 1995.

The prevailing consensus was that the Vietnamese had, in fact, turned over all the prisoners they held. But quite a lot of people had their doubts. This was the era when people regularly flew the "POW" flag, with the slogan, "You are not forgotten." It hovered on that unstable verge between conspiracy theory and plausibile hypothesis. There was no evidence for any actual POWs still being held, but there certainly were a great many U.S. and allied servicemen Missing In Action (MIAs.) It was universally acknowledged, even by the leadership of the POW theorists, that most of these had actually died in the region and their remains never recovered. But all? Was that the explanation for all the MIAs? Here, there was no unanimity.

(As I write this, thirty years onward, the unanimity has essentially been restored. Almost no one, today, holds that there are any allied servicemen held by Vietnam in secret prisons.)

For the purposes of fiction, however... What do the captors do with secret prisoners when the war is over? They can't keep them indefinitely...and they don't dare to kill them. If that happens, and is discovered, it would trigger a new phase of war, with reprisal bombings and the harshest of diplomatic and economic sanctions. Killing the prisoners is suicidal. But turning them over, and admitting to the crime of keeping them in secret for years, is also devastatingly harmful to the captors' interests. It's a grisly case of "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."

Now, imagine that one of the prisoners is of very high military and political rank.

This is the "thought experiment" that inspired this novel.

(If anything I have said in this introduction gives offense to anyone -- former POWs, families of POWs or MIAs, political activists of any variety, or anyone of any ideological stripe at all, I very sincerely apologize. This is a book of fiction, only loosely inspired by the abstract philosophical notion of POWs maintained beyond the end of a war. I mean no harm and intend no offense.)

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Praise for the Books of Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Other Books by Jefferson P. Swycaffer

"He was imprisoned by his leadership, and fastened by his duty to a ball-and-chain."

anon

"Perfect freedom, for him, could more readily have been found in a stone cell with an iron door."

anon

"I do perceive here a divided duty.

Shakespeare: Othello.

Chapter One

The Light Cruiser Velocis, guided by a pilot boat and carefully monitored by a low-orbiting Improved Dreadnought, accelerated gingerly into a loading and unloading orbit above the clouded daylit side of the world of Tenh Sonallae. From the nearest high port, itself in a deeper orbit, three cargo shuttles approached the Cruiser, which had smoothly switched ends and was now decelerating into a stable ground trace.

"I won't venture to predict whether or not you'll enjoy your stay on this world," Captain of Marines Karen Schauband said, and tilted her cap back upon her head to drink from a mug of iced gin.

Commodore Athalos Steldan, across the small table from his head bodyguard, spread his hands. "I'll find out soon enough, I suppose."

"Do you like pomposity? Do you like having great, noble lords and ladies watching you as if you were something that just crawled out of a fishtank? I learned to hate that, and to hate them, too." Schauband said. "But when you least expect it, their stuffiness becomes stately..." She shrugged. "It's a complex world."

Steldan smiled. "In theory, I know more about the world than nine out of ten officers in the occupation force. But I've never been out here before; I haven't any practical knowledge."

"The populace does a fair job of hiding their resentment, but..." Schauband grasped for the words to describe what she felt to be the essential problems. "I guess," she said at last, "that what makes the world so uncomfortable is that you're always aware that they're hiding their resentments." She glanced at a wall-clock, and stood. Steldan stood likewise.

"I'll meet you at the shuttle in five minutes," Schauband said hurriedly. "I'd lost count of the time."

"We're in no great hurry," Steldan assured her. "Our military occupation of this world is three years old, and may possibly get older." He smiled, a happy, careless smile. "I'll see you in a bit."

An elevator dropped him the length of the warship to a shuttle-entry airlock. Waiting for him, lined up along a section of corridor, were the eight men and women of his bodyguard squad. A quick check of equipment turned up nothing missing. A non-com keyed the door open, and the group filed through an access tube into the shuttle's interior.

Schauband arrived somewhat breathlessly, less than a minute later. She hastened forward, and passed through the hatch to the pilot's compartment.

A four-minute warm-up delay followed, at the end of which the shuttle bay was depressurized, open to space. The shuttle launched itself backwards into the orbital void on a silent flare of jets. Steldan began his long descent to the surface of the occupied world of Tenh Sonallae.

#

A world with a history of greatness, Steldan thought, sitting in comfort in a padded couch. Through his window he could see the planet upon whose surface he would be living for the next few weeks.

The site of Tolam Spaceport, which Steldan's shuttle now approached, was a double row of rolling hills overlooking a ninety-mile ribbon of beach. The place had been an important trading location for a dozen centuries. The King's distant ancestors had grounded their long canoes here, to trade for ores with wagon riders from the south. Over time, as the world of Tenh Sonallae haphazardly built up its technology, the trading vessels had come to be galleys, steamers, airplanes, and finally starships, all arriving here to barter, to trade, to buy and sell.

The first starships, however, had come from another star, another culture. While the proud Sonallan people still smarted from the failure of an expedition to their nearest planetary neighbor, an alien fleet arrived, its Captains self-important, from stars that were not visible to the unaided eye, from a star-spanning government that called itself the Concordat of Archive.

They offered technology for sale; the Kings of the Sonallans paid gladly for the knowledge that would, someday, give them the power to right this very unfortunate imbalance. Seventy years later, Tolam Spaceport grew, surrounded by sprawling and mighty Sebascodegan city; it became the center of the Sonallan race's outleap into a small, yet burgeoning, stellar community. Its first purpose, however, was as a fighting port, and it was the center of war operations, when the time was right, against the people who had come to them with the secret of the space-drive.

A scant four years ago, while Steldan had been a Captain in the Navy Records Office, the Sonallans had launched their war. Approaching the enemy's homeworld, Steldan now recalled the brief bitter history of the struggle. Lives, ships, economies, cities, and planets: all had burned. The war had ended in the only way it could have, with the Concordat's utter and final victory.

Tolam Spaceport had been battered into submission, and Concordat Marines had marched through the cities of Tenh Sonallae.

#

On his tracking display, a young Sonallan Spaceport technician saw and read the symbols that indicated an inwardly accelerating passenger shuttle. Methodically, he double-checked its velocity and thrust, and noted the entries into the Portmaster's log.

As the regulations stipulated, he beamed an inquiry for landing permission to the orbiting Fair Phyllis, the massive flagship of the enemy blockade. The reply returned swiftly by tightcast: permission for the shuttle was granted. The technician grinned a sour, mirthless grin. Obviously they had been going to approve the landing; the ship was one of theirs, after all.

He cleared an appropriate channel for landing telemetry, and alerted the port facilities overseer that the landing grid would be needed soon. The shuttle, with typical Concordat callousness, would be depending on the Spaceport to supply the energy needed.

One of the Tolam Spaceport gravitic boost grids began to warm up; by the time the shuttle had descended into its reach, the field would be ready to envelop the small craft in a precisely-defined grip of pure acceleration. The field would lower the craft feather-softly to the landing field, maneuvering it as if gripping it in a great, inhumanly deft hand. The Sonallan technician took an abstract satisfaction in the knowledge that the lives aboard depended upon him. Everything before him — his console, instruments, and computers — were ultimately of Concordat origin; only his lowly status made it lawful for him to handle them. His caste, his gens, and his theme were all for dealing with the foreign technology and with the offworlders themselves. But not even his low status could overcome the resentment he felt toward these aliens who had so thoroughly disrupted the life of his world.

It should not have been an effort, but by strength of will, he restored his mind to tranquil efficiency. It was not his place to think upon matters of policy. For now, his duty was clear in the matter of the shuttle. His hands flew over his keyboard.

#

Steldan, in the shuttle, read over the list of the members of his bodyguard. Captain of Marines Karen Schauband was ranking; Steldan had chosen her for her knowledge of xenology. At twenty-six, she was eleven years Steldan's junior, but already her list of publications was credible, foretelling her eventual prominence in the field. The rest of the team were recruits and conscripts, probably with no previous experience away from the worlds they called home.

A twinge of irony crossed Steldan's deeply expressive face. His wide, grey eyes focussed on infinity, as he relived his duties of the war. Experience, he knew, was not a commodity easily given to a recruit. His hand automatically reached up and lightly brushed his Commodore's rank-chip. How many times had he needed to overcome naivete or downright foolishness before achieving his current rank?

By the standards of the years before the war, he was too young to hold such a rank. The attrition — wholesale slaughter! — that the war had wreaked upon the higher echelons was difficult to appreciate, even three years later.

The Navy's had three Grand Admirals in four years, he thought, and I personally removed two of them from office. That, indirectly, was the reason for his mission here.

His reverie was interrupted, briefly, when the artificial gravity of the shuttle cut out, fading smoothly and swiftly into disconcerting weightlessness. The Spaceport's boost and landing grid would supply the energies from here, and the shuttle's interior field would generate undamped harmonics if left active. The shuttle was now completely in the care of the port's computers.

I seek one man, Steldan mused. And I have an entire planet to search. He sought for Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne, whom the Concordat had thought lost in battle. Is he a prisoner? Or is he dead? Steldan shrugged. His job would be difficult enough without unnecessary speculation and guesswork. He rather hoped that the Grand Old Man, Rothar Sienne, Concordat military leader and war-casualty, listed as missing in action, was still alive. The two would have quite a lot to tell each other.

#

In the forward pilot's compartment, Captain Schauband stretched comfortably in the co-pilot's couch, overseeing the landing with part of her mind, and at the same time reviewing what she knew of the Sonallan race and culture.

They're humanoid in every important respect, she mused, and, although her first tour of duty here had been brief, just after the conquest, she had gotten to know the people. They were as human as human could be; haughty, disdainful men; sour, withered, hampered women; saucy, laughing children. Schauband remembered the children, and smiled fondly. The race was indisputably human.

They're so incredibly like us, and yet that only brings the differences into painful evidence. Their state was built around a government of dispersal, carefully divided into competing powers. The differences between their loose, fragmented interests and the Concordat's strong centralization and continuity of policy could not have been more pronounced.

Look at the economic differences, Schauband told herself. For us, efficiency is foremost. They maintain an unwieldy action-reaction economy, where competition offsets stability.

What offended her the most, however, was the Sonallans' hereditary nobility, justified by a direct claim to divine approval. Families and titles held the most highly recognized franchise, and extended family holdings divided the planet, as well as their several hundred colony worlds.

Schauband sighed to herself. The Sonallan system seemed too complex for anyone not born to it to fully understand.

Here, on the homeworld of Tenh Sonallae, the nominal leader of the race was the Grand Lord Mansivigan Okemo, High King and Ruler-in-Grandeur, First Citizen. Schauband had seen him, at a distance, and she marvelled, now, remembering. He not only looked utterly human, he looked quite a bit like her. He, like she, was tall, pale-skinned, dark-haired, with deep features, a sharp nose and a long neck, and dark, dark eyes, a brown so deep as to be nearly black. Recalling this, Schauband laughed: the man was a non-human alien, cast by natural laws into a man-shaped mold. The similarities — and they were many — had to be coincidental. Didn't they?

She brushed aside a half-recalled line of theory that the two races had a common ancestor, long ago, in an era before spaceflight. It seemed so unlikely...

Mansivigan Okemo claimed the title of King, and his will was said to be absolute. Schauband knew better: his direct authority covered no more than the spaceport and some familial holdings hither and yon about the world. Between the Nobility, the Church, the wealthy aristocracy — who were scorned as merely influential commoners but who held the whole of the economy in their begemmed fingers — and the Themes, which were anomalous organizations like political parties or sporting clubs, but were actually neither — it seemed that power was irretrievably fragmented. Perhaps that was the source of the King's primacy.

#

Schauband's reveries were interrupted, as an intant flicker of red — a warning-light — showed on her half of the forward-encircling instrument panel. Beside her, the pilot swore, and wrestled with the control yoke. Schauband's mental reflexes took over, and her hands that had been resting comfortably on the thick-padded armrests snaked automatically to her own controls.

No more warning than that was given; the gravitics segment of the panel flipped all-red, indicating what was immediately evident from the craft's looping pitch: the spaceport's boost-grid had cut out.

Schauband and the pilot set quickly into an immediate-action drill, struggling to set the situation right. The craft pitched down, then up again, slammed about by turbulent and building winds. Schauband was whipped back and forth in her seat, and her head struck the instrument panel to her right again and again, despite the restraint of safety straps. Only after a long moment of horrible jarring did she notice that her pilot was no longer with her. In the periphery of her vision she saw him then, head lolling at a limp angle, his arms moving lifelessly in the shifting cockpit of the tumbling shuttle.

This, thought Schauband, gripping the yoke and throwing her weight onto it, is going to hurt. The altimeter... Either the altimeter was wrong, or she and her passengers were already dead. Visible through the front wraparound window was a glimpse of the geometrically perfect layout of the main boost-grid: tungsten steel rails set into concrete. She got the one quick sighting, and acted by sheerest pilot's reflex, wrenching the yoke to the left and hauling back upon it with main strength. She fired all attitude and braking jets, and inhaled deeply, her belly cramped into a solid shield of knotted muscles.

The passengers — she thought... The shuttle hit. The impact shook her forward and back, snapping her safety belts against her hips like broad flails. To the left and right, the shuttle's stubby wings sheared away, snapped directly down onto the landing field with a great squeal of parting metal and plastic. After a final settling thump from behind, as one landing wheel crumpled, the shuttle quivered, and was still. The feeling of stability as the ship lay flat, belly-down on crumpled landing gear, was as vertiginous as the pitching tumble of the nearly uncontrolled descent.

Schauband lost consciousness, regained it, and was back in control of her emergency drills without ever knowing that she'd blacked out. The instrument panel was a solid bank of red, until the emergency backup computer blanked all but the indicators that could be considered useful. Part of Schauband's mind registered the anomaly of the view through the front window: the shuttle was down, stationary, in an unused corner of the flat expanse of the landing field. Above the horizon, itself marked by buildings, trees, and a radar-tower, she saw a wide, blue, cloud-wisped sky. Most of her attention, however, was on her swift and precise motions in the darkened cockpit. A flipped toggle shut down all power; another triggered fire extinguishers. Within moments, gouts of pale foam slid from beneath the craft, slipping slowly downwind along the cold concrete.

Tiny heat-ripples in the air before the craft spoke of a fire burning; Schauband couldn't know whether or not it was safe to open the emergency escape doors to the outside. So far, there had been no interior fire, but the danger was far from over, and a fire, now, would be instantly and thoroughly fatal. Still working methodically, quietly, without undue hurry, she activated the first line of interior fire extinguishers, and only noticed for the first time the bruises and cuts marring her arms and wrists. For the first time since the emergency began, she smiled, a quick, tight smile of relief. Who cared about cuts or bruises, when death had just been cheated?

She hesitated, preferring not to switch on the second rank of extinguishers, since the flame-suppressing chemicals sometimes extinguished people as well. Her hand was forced when two console indicators began flashing urgently for attention. Fire in the cargo space and in the engine compartment. She flipped another toggle, spilling oxygen-absorbing foam into the passenger cabin, and into her own cockpit as well. Afterwards, she had no recourse but to wait for the arrival of an emergency team of spaceport crash-landing specialists. The loathsome jelly-like foam spouted from a recessed vent above her, clinging tenaciously to her skin, hair, and uniform. Her last thought before the lack of air robbed her of consciousness was a subdued observation. Has it really been no more than forty seconds? I'd have guessed otherwise...

#

Chapter Two

Laura Murchison sat at attention in an open-topped air-car, ignoring her driver. The car slid slowly, low to the ground, manuevering across the flat, rigid expanse of the spaceport's landing field. The varicolored sunlight waxed slowly, coming up from cool red to blistering white. Beside Murchison in the passenger compartment, tall in comparison with her slightness, sat General Matthew Vai. At the moment, he, as Commanding General of the occupation force, held precedence over Murchison, who was the unofficial Concordat envoy to the world of Tenh Sonallae. Her official functions had been handicapped by that unpleasant and abnormal hierarchy. The Sonallan leaders would have been far more sympathetic to a standard set-up of a senior ambassador, herself, with Vai as her military attaché. At the moment, Vai's blunt attempts at maintaining his end of the conversation wearied her, and only a sense of duty prodded her to respond politely.

"Foreign Secretary Vissenne is certainly a capable man," Vai said, somewhat defensively. "It's only that — "

"Foreign Secretary Vissenne is an imbecile," Murchison retorted, her voice a bored monotone, her eyes elsewhere.

Vai rubbed absently at his shoulder, running his fingers over the fused seam where, beneath his jacket and his shirt, the hard plastic prosthetic arm and shoulder-joint blended into the flesh of him. The probing touch was as unconscious as was the defensive attitude that crept into his speech. "I've met him, and I don't have that impression."

Murchison swung her gaze upon him. "He's a diplomat, right? That means he's trained as a smooth liar."

"And you, having worked with him for so long, can see right through him?"

"That's right."

"I'm certain that you're being so disrespectful for a purpose. Vissenne is no ally of the military. He's set himself against the Navy and the Marines for years now, and he has no respect for the new Grand Admiral — "

Murchison turned away with an expression of poorly concealed distaste. "Neither Vissenne nor Grand Admiral de la Noue have the slightest idea of what conditions here are like. De la Noue can be forgiven; she inherited the mess from Telford. Although she's taking her damned time about acquainting herself with her new responsibilities. But Vissenne..."

Vai's stiff and formal military outlook left him with an uncomfortable feeling at Murchison's free disdain of her superior. Was the Foreign Service as a rule so disrespectful of rank?

"General Vai," Murchison said at last, her voice and expression frank, "you've been very good about letting me run my mission my way. Thank you. But you're a soldier, and you outrank me. You've been left in charge of this world. Now if you and I can ignore that, and operate as equals, the Sonallans cannot. For them, with their fixation on appearances, I'm an underling, and thus I'm to be dealt with only by their own underlings. It's not your fault, but your position has left me with virtually no influence here. There's only one thing about this entire world that I resent more."

"What's that?"

"Their total, obstinate, and offensive incapability of seeing me as a valid ambassador because I'm a woman."

Vai nodded grimly, himself unhappy at the strange dichotomy of sex-roles that the Sonallans persisted in imagining as the natural order of things. Very quickly he'd discovered that being on the benefitted side of things, as a man and thus perceived by the Sonallans as being somehow superior, was in no way flattering or reassuring, but instead was awkward and discomforting. For him, and for most of the men with whom he'd discussed it, the feeling was similar to what one would feel upon being given an undeserved gift, or, more poignant, of receiving an official pardon for a crime one had not committed. The freedoms and benefits carried with them the taint of an oddly reversed condescension. The women with whom he had discussed the problem were more certain in their dislike, and more unanimous in the aggressive reaction to the affront. By the gods, they would not walk at the rear of any mixed party, and demanding such of one of Vai's Marines was a fine way to invite being shouldered aside and to the rear.

"Vissenne..." Vai began.

"He knew all this before he chose me to fill the post. It was his was of dealing the Sonallans an insult, and putting me in my place." She rubbed at her wrists as if they pained her. "None of this is your fault, however. You're my unquestioned superior, until the exchange ceremony...unless that gets cancelled. Now shut up and let me enjoy this sunshine with no business talk, all right?"

Vai was in agreement, and leaned back. The warm, quivering sunlight pulsed against his eyelids. The heat brought droplets of sweat to his forehead and upper lip. The hottest part of the sun's cycle passed swiftly, and the light began again, slowly, to wane.

Murchison's driver, alert and not nodding, was the first to notice that anything was wrong.

"Ma'am?" Without waiting for acknowledgement, he continued, stuttering, "The gravitic field just cut out." Vai followed the fellow's outstretched arm, and looked high into the air above the landing field, where the barely visible glimmer of the falling shuttle could be seen: a twinkling, dropping glint in the sunlight.

Helplessness clamped down hard on Vai's middle. He and envoy Murchison had come to the port to greet Commodore Steldan, and instead they were witnessing his death. I've watched my men die in battle, he thought numbly, but I've never yet lost a superior.

Alarm sirens sounded across the flat expanse of the field. Vai could see some indefinable, hurried activity taking place near a dense cluster of low, grey buildings. His feeling of helplessness, of futility, rose to a trembling crescendo; he tagged the driver on the shoulder, and in a quiet, unanswerable voice, told him: "Get us in there. Get me closer."

Vai's voice of command pushed the driver into frightened and immediate obedience. He seemed very uncertain, and in his confusion had no choice but to obey.

"Swing wide," Vai said, and the driver nearly stood the vehicle on its side as he cut back.

The shuttle came down at an impossible angle, righted itself at the last moment, but was still out of control when it hit. Every control and attitude jet on and under its hull spurted; the vessel leaped awkwardly ahead and impacted explosively onto its belly.

As it skidded at an angle along the concrete, leaving a trail of debris, Vai had time to observe with relief that the craft still held together. The landing gear had been down, though, and the heavy-duty jacks had been pushed up, through the ship's belly and into its pressure-sealed compartments. More alarms could be heard from the port terminals. From behind a blast wall, three low-skimming emergency vehicles slid rapidly toward the now-stationary wreck.

"Wait here," Vai snapped to Murchison and the driver; with that, he vaulted out of the nearly stopped air-car. Two quiet gusts of superheated air puffed from the rear of the shuttle. Vai continued to sprint toward the scene.

He leaped onto the broken-off wing-stub that bent low, almost to the ground, and worked himself up along the slippery surface. When he came to the fuselage, he gingerly spread his prosthetic hand against it. Plastic began to melt.

I'm glad I couldn' t feel that, Vai thought; already, though, the invisible heat of the bent wing was coming up through his boots. Through a porthole into the passenger compartment, he saw the pastel-green of the fire-eating foam that had been known to smother passengers.

"Ouch, gods!" swore a voice behind him, and he spun about to see Murchison leap from the wing, smoke trailing from her burnt-through shoes. Vai nodded, and, less precipitously, dropped off of the wing. He ducked under it, carefully walking below the lean-to shape of the scorched metal, and came from beneath it to find the emergency hatch. It was partway open, having become sprung loose from one of its heavy hinges as that part of the hull had crumpled.

Murchison, limping on burned feet, came up to him, rigid determination on her face. "Are they alive, inside?" she asked, her voice intense with her eagerness to help.

"Yes," Vai said, not loudly. "Help me pull on the door handle." He gripped the scalding metal with both hands. One hand felt it; he gripped more tightly and turned. Murchison moved promptly in beside him and joined him in the effort.

The hatch gave, gaped, swung away. An updraft of scorched air sighed into the passenger cabin, and dripping gouts of green fire-retardant foam fluttered through that breeze.

Emergency vehicles began to arrive, sliding along gravitic cushions, rocking slightly as rescue crews leaped from the sideboards. They were all of Sonallan origin and species, no matter how human they looked.

Projectors appeared, and suddenly foam was everywhere. Vai took a deep breath from the air that was rapidly losing all of its oxygen. Murchison grabbed a breathing mask from a white-suited firefighter, and picked another up from the concrete where it had fallen. She threw the first to Vai, who caught and donned it gratefully. He waved a cheery salute of thanks to her; she returned it. In the midst of the frantic haste of the emergency, it seemed just an instant of courteous civility. Then, ducking and scrambling, Vai rushed upward through the hatch and into the downed spacecraft.

He popped his head up through a thin-panel plate, metal on the bottom and carpet on the top, to emerge into the passenger compartment proper. Several cubic meters of the foam poured down through the opening. Vai, swiftly developing a distaste for the stuff, swept enough away so that he could stand up into the aisle between the passenger seats.

He was greeted by Commodore Steldan, who took his hand and wiped the residue of foam away from his faceplate. Vai grinned, relieved to see that Steldan had already gotten his men into shipboard oxygen masks. Together, they ushered the six shaken but unharmed individuals — Marines all — down through the hatch and into the capable hands of the Sonallan ambulance teams.

Still inside, Steldan gave Vai an unreadable arm-signal, and waded through the clinging foam to the hatch that separated the passenger's compartment from the pilot's cabin. Vai stood by.

Steldan returned, helping Captain Schauband carry the limp figure of her pilot. Vai dropped out through the emergency escapeway, scrambled past the twisted door, and helped an anonymous Sonallan medic reach up and bring the pilot out.

Schauband followed, and Steldan.

"Everyone is out; the engine is off," Schauband informed the nearest firefighter.

Vai and Steldan gave in to the rescuers who were forcefully urging them to a safe distance from the craft. Murchison joined them, and relaxed as she saw the last of the shuttle's crew pushed or carried to safety.

The firefighters began to work the craft over in earnest, flooding it with a fast-hardening second-agent foam, which, expanding, brought the temperature inside the wreck to an icy thirty below zero. Water began to condense, drip, and then to freeze.

Without taking his eyes from the spectacle, Vai murmurred quietly to Steldan, "Welcome, Commodore, to the home of your enemies."

#

Chapter Three

In a dressing room high in the towering mass of the stone and steel castle that was the devotional center of the Sonallan race's nobility, the King and Queen donned their elaborate ceremonial array.

Mansivigan-Okemo, King of the Sonallans, stood and fumbled with the closure of his first undertunic. After nearly completing the task, he noticed that there was one flat button of silver at the top, at the base of his long neck, without a matching button-loop.

"I am going to close my eyes for an instant," he muttered, his voice low and tight, "and count to sixty-five. Then — "

"Why sixty-five?" asked Lirelpeset, his Queen, in a voice that left no doubt of her own frustrations.

"The number of buttons on this undertunic that I fastened askew." An unspoken laughter lurked behind the voice, and behind his eyes. Haven't I more urgent things with which to be concerned? The royal presence was not required for another hour. Mansivigan worked his long fingers back down the column of tiny silver buttons.

The Queen stood likewise, working on her own foundation garments. Perhaps she dreamed, idly, of the long-past days in which the King and Queen had a battery of squires and maids to assist with the laborious costuming. Those days could be returned to her, instantly, by one command from her lord Mansivigan. His pride, however, and his eternal refusal to make even the slightest break with his father's reforms, left that possibility hopeless.

His fire, his drive, his relentless nervous energy, dominated the room; Mansivigan was a young man very much alive with a carefully controlled urgency. Lirelpeset, while sharing his dark hair and finely polished features, stood less tall, less slender, her face built around a happier, if more wry, expression. She worked around him, finding corners left over from his control of the room's space. She had always adapted to him, bowing to his greater status, rank, family, and energy.

"Have you spoken to a chamberlain about what our...guests will be wearing?"

Mansivigan wore a bleak face as he answered. "Uniforms. Drab and plain, flat panels of solid colors. You may expect to be unimpressed."

"I wouldn't suppose them to have anything like full ceremonial dress uniforms," Lirelpeset said cooly.

"Our military in uniform would leave those Concordat yokels looking absolutely like the peasants they are." He turned a happy, twisted grin to her. "This is probably why they've outlawed our military. Perhaps we couldn't defend our planets against their invasion, but our appearance and demeanor, at least, is clearly the superior."

Lirelpeset said nothing, and bent to tighten the lacings of her knee-stocks.

"And what's the use!" Mansivigan burst at last, his facade of sardonic impassivity dropping from him. He swept his hands in short, choppy gestures of helpless anger. "They won't tell me whether I'm King or slave. They permitted me to maintain my title and lands, but they've disrupted the course of law and allegiance. What good is a King, if he has no certainty? Their General Vai is the only one in the entire occupying force whom I can respect, and in virtually every decision he defers to that meddlesome Murchison woman."

Lirelpeset rested a hand lightly on his forearm. "Your language, my love."

Mansivigan nodded a quiet deference to her. "I suppose I ought to be a bit more respectful of her. Now I certainly can't call her a lady, let alone a demoiselle. But harsher terms or colloquialisms...ah, now, those would be inappropriate."

"I've talked to her. I've spoken with her at great length, actually," Lirelpeset said softly. "I don't understand her. She is so often angry, just like a man. When she's not angry, though, she carries out the functions of an ambassador so well that for a while I'll even forget she's not one."

Mansivigan shouldered into his slip-tunic, and fastened it down to the undertunic. He glanced into a mirror, and combed his hair with his fingers, restoring it from disarray.

"She thinks she's an ambassador," he said, solemnly, a faint sparkle in his eye revealing the amusement he couldn't help but feel. "General Vai is the true master of this world. He and his troops hold all strategic locations, and patrol untiringly. Since I am not master of the planet, I can receive no ambassadors, now can I? Until tonight's ceremony has fully taken place — fully! — I will not receive her, and I will not speak to her. Even then... Who ever heard of a female ambassador? Am I supposed to accede to her every whim, when she'll return none of the proper forms?"

"Treat her as if she were a man," Lirelpeset suggested.

"I can see the scandal," he responded darkly.

"You know I'd say nothing."

"So much worse that would make things."

"In what way?"

Mansivigan turned about and struck a forward leaning stance, posing, actor-like, unconsciously. "Since the time of my Grandfather, Manfolotan, the nobility of the King has been something not to look up to, but to drag through the mire. In days gone by, the King's status wasn't a mark, a measure; it was far above that. Now, it no longer is unthinkable for men to compare themselves to me, and make judgements. The people are split in their condemnation. It's said that I'm 'not the man my father was,' as if...as if..."

"As if every son is expected to exceed his father's fame? You are our youngest King."

"No." Mansivigan smiled, and pulled on his overtunic. He straightened his back into the narrow, confining garment. Lirelpeset came closer to him, to help him adjust the hang. "No. Centuries agone, in times that only books recall, there was Tivasigash, the child-King..."

They stood, each very aware of the other's state of undress.

Mansivigan knew himself to be lucky, for, although his marriage had been an arranged affair, he had truly come to love his wife of eight years. Their love yet lived, while the families that had united them for reasons of alliance were now only radioactive dust, drifting beneath far stars.

Mansivigan drew a deep breath, and groped behind him for the next item of dress. "Historians will call me a child-King someday. Just you wait and see. It won't be my fault, though. I'm going to give my destiny a bitter fight." He paused, and laughed a stiff, small laugh. "Besides," he added, "many of the nobles, and some of the technically trained commoners — spaceport lords and orbit-dancers — still support me with only a few doctrinal reservations."

"It's more than just the times, isn't it?" Lirelpeset asked, already knowing."

"It's everything. Because you've..."

"Because I've borne you no heir."

"...The Church and some of the peerage are making me to be less than a man. Because the favor of The God seems to have been withdrawn from us...with the two battles...they are delving deeply into the palace records, looking for proof of some obscure wrong or affront. They've even gone so far as to hint — quietly, but where I'd learn of it — that I'm not the rightful King."

Lirelpeset nodded sadly. She, too, had been mired by the slanders of a world that had never known defeat before meeting the outworlders of Archive. Her world desperately needed something or someone to blame.

"I know it's foolish," Mansivigan continued, "but they don't care any longer for the prerogatives. The Book of The God tells us that 'By the hand of the King, the Kingdom lives or dies.' The nobles, alas, merely see my helplessness, and wish for a little more action."

"What can you do? What could anyone do?" Lirelpeset sat, and hobbled her legs to each other with a short, two cubit braided cord. To lengthen her stride, she pulled the knots brutally tight, just beneath her knees. The pain would remind her to behave graciously in the presence of the off-world conquerers. Another, slightly longer cord connected her ankles.

To these cords she fastened down her five layers of underdresses; over her soft feet she forced a tight pair of high gloveleather boots, slitted to pass the soft braided cord. Buttons fastened the slits closed, and pins held down the masses of painstakingly folded dresses. Much of the ensemble had been her mother's, until her mother had died with virtually the entire royal court at the Second Battle of Binary. Harshly, she blinked away the tears that threatened to blind her.

How I envy those women of the Concordat. It isn't that they are like men; it's that they're proud to be women. She had watched them walk, secretly observing their long, straight strides. She, or any other highborn Sonallan woman would have been utterly ashamed to strut so wantonly. The Concordat's women — soldiers, pilots, drivers, and businesswomen — walked so without thinking. It was as if their boast was true, and all sexes, classes, and families were equal. Lirelpeset knew that she would never come to an understanding of the Concordat's people.

She lifted her head and looked into her mirror at her husband and lord. The uniform that hung from its hook would look proud and efficient upon him. As she watched, he slid into the crisp pants, very careful not to crease them. Standing, he fastened the inner and outer cinctures, and folded down and buttoned the waist-collars.

Noticing Lirelpeset's silence, he turned. His face softened. "Go along. Cover yourself. We've only got three-fourths of an hour."

"I know. And you're nearly dressed."

"Think of the Concordat soldiers, in their stiff double-breasted uniform tunics. Ten seconds to put on. I doubt that they have even the most rudimentary sense of ceremony, decorum, or tact."

"I'm sorry. There's so much bothering me."

"This should be a night for celebration. We're getting our planet back, after all."

"But the documents that you've signed aren't totally accurate. We still have — "

Mansivigan frowned, and Lirelpeset bowed her head before her lord's displeasure.

"Yes," he said. "I lied to them." His voice was stiff and muted. Neither he nor she had wished to discuss this.

Mansivigan Okemo, King of the Sonallans, had submitted falsified documents to the Concordat invaders. The long, tedious prisoner exchange operations had been a sham in one important respect. He still held the Concordat Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne in secret captivity, in a dungeon deep below the palace.

The danger was obvious. But Mansivigan had considered the problem from every aspect, and had no solution. He could kill the prisoner, and hide away the remains...but if he were caught, he would die. He could hand the captive over to the Concordat, as Chancellor Tinwamus so urgently insisted. That plan, also, had drawbacks.

"Why can't you give him up to them? Why can't you bring him out, here, to tonight's ceremony, and say, 'In return for our planet back...'"

When her voice had trailed off, Mansivigan raised his eyes to her. "Tinwamus suggests the same thing. Often. And I wish that I could do that. But after I did, I would no longer be King. They'd take me away, back to their home planet: pitiless, damned Archive. From that fortress, not a thousand loyal war-fleets could ever free me. And what would become of you?"

"I would survive."

He held her to him. "No, you would not. Without a King to bring The God's favor to Tenh Sonallae, the world would surely end. Perhaps already The God has withdrawn his favor from us." Stroking her hair, holding her trembling form close, he went on, speaking for his own benefit as much as for hers.

"My father spent The God's favor as lavishly as he spent the money that built the Great Proud Warfleet. He disrupted things, changing forever the ways of the past. I doubt that he ever knew it, but chief among his models was his enemy, the ancient Concordat of Archive. He stirred together the worlds, so that caste and class were confused. Certainly efficiency was gained, and money, and warships...

"Surety was lost. To stir up an abstract profit, he set himself against the maxim that 'The son of a Sailor, a Sailor is always, and a Slave the son of a Slave.'

"The God punished him for this folly, and He will punish us, as well, throughout every generation to follow, until some King comes who will right the wrong. Our job, then, is to give our world, and all of our worlds, the chance to rebuild. If I'm taken away, all is lost. And if they find their luckless Grand Admiral in my captivity... They might merely kill me on the spot; then my troubles would be over, wouldn't they?"

Lirelpeset hugged him all the more tightly, weeping now without dignity.

"I'm sorry, my love," he said softly to her. "Get dressed. Time is slipping away. Slipping away faster than you know it. Get dressed, in that enfolding beauty of an ivory-silk. It was my Grandmother's, did you know that?"

He held her, and brushed away her tears.

"Our descendants will take up the fight again, someday. Time is passing faster than we know.

"Your children shall crush Archive beneath their sandals."

Lirelpeset looked away. "Please..."

"We will win, in time," he repeated. "But for now, we must make our peace, and be hospitable to our foes."

Almost to himself, he spoke on. "And I must think of a way to maintain control of events. The night reeks of chaos..."

#

Chapter Four

"Commodore Steldan," Murchison called, sweeping into the cramped office of one of the Tolam Spaceport's assistant portmasters. "Why are you delaying now? We're awaited at the governmental palace." There was no likelihood of her saying "Royal palace." The phrase would have been doctrinal anathema.

Steldan arose from the chair he'd occupied next to the desk; the harried portmaster likewise rose. The portmaster was a tight-lipped, well-padded man, normally nervous of disposition and doubly so now because of Steldan's ungentle grilling. The portmaster wore a gray uniform, with a stylized white bird of prey stenciled onto the upper left front of his jacket. Steldan's own tunic was gray, but undecorated.

"I am trying to discover a little more about the grid's failure," Steldan said quietly, but with the excited anxiety of a hunting creature upon a scent.

"We are due at the palace of the King of the Sonallans in less than forty minutes," Murchison intoned with pedantic hyperformality. "Although you will be needed, if you don't come along quickly, I'll leave you behind."

Steldan turned back to the portmaster, and stood with his fists at his hips, wordlessly demanding a full and total explanation of the morning's crash. The portmaster shook his head in agitation.

"I cannot allow you to speak with the Port-Lord at this time. But I may assure you that he is insisting on looking into the problem personally and immediately."

"Where is he?" Steldan's voice left the portmaster no room for further exposition.

"He'd need to be in the computer room, but..."

"Then we'll go there."

"You may not!" the portmaster asserted, his head raised proudly. "I am his securior, his day-watch; I intercede! The Port-Lord is an exalted personage. It is not for such as you to approach him. Do you not see? Is your alien pride totally unassailable?"

"Totally," Steldan said softly. "Nearly being killed has that effect upon us."

The portmaster tried another tack. "Do you think it's no more than throwing a switch, shutting down the largest spaceport in the world?"

"No, no, of course not," Steldan said, speaking with mock cheerfulness. "He'll need my help." He took the portmaster firmly by the arm and ushered him out the door, brushing by Murchison on the way out. He paused only long enough to give her a hurried appeal. "Just wait for me, please. I'll be only a moment." Then he was gone, pushing the portmaster ahead of him with rude urgency. Murchison watched after them, favored their retreating backs with a sharp stare of disgust, and stalked off in another direction, heading for her car.

Steldan found Schauband in conversation with two Sonallan men behind a counter. Data terminals before them busily scrolled up endless files of numbers and acronyms, an account of the day's disruption. Other operators in the room pointedly ignored the aliens, preferring to oversee their tasks with brusque dutifulness. Steldan tapped Schauband's elbow and continued down the spaceport hall, still herding the portmaster before him. She would follow, or not, depending on how successful she felt in her interrogation.

Further along, he met General Vai, striding purposefully toward him down another corridor. The two military officers and the now-frightened spaceport official came to a halt directly in front of the outer door to the port's main computer room. Vai had evidently been given an identical run-around, and was similarly disposed to bypass further delays in favor of a direct confrontation.

"Uncooperative?" Steldan asked.

"Playing with fire — " Vai muttered, and, throwing the door wide, thundered inside. The door gave onto an antechamber, a receiving room where Sonallan clerks stood about in startled attitudes.

"The Concordat aliens," muttered one. All eyes were fixed upon the trio of invaders, and it seemed to Steldan as if much silent blame were being fixed upon the portmaster. Force, it seemed, was no excuse; the man had failed to deter this arrival, and thus he was equally at fault. Steldan's grip on his arm loosened, and, given the chance, the man turned and bolted, shame, more than fear, lengthening his stride.

"Where is the Port-Lord?" demanded Vai.

Two men immediately sprang up, and interposed themselves between the intruders and the computer room. A general flurry of desperate motion ensued, as employees and clerks sought to cover the hasty retreat of one man. Vai took a quick step forward, but checked himself; Steldan watched carefully, eyes narrowed in concentration. Try as he might, however, he never managed to get a clear look at the man, seeing only a youngish male who stood and slipped out through a back exit.

With the Port-Lord's escape secure, the rest of the roomful of clerks and aides relaxed a trifle, and prepared to deal with the Concordat barbarians on a more cooperative basis. A new assistant portmaster approached Steldan and Vai, and favored them with a deep, welcoming bow. Steldan smiled, recognizing the irony of the gesture. He waited for the official to speak.

"Did both of you ride down on that crashed shuttle? If so, I can only offer apologies at this time. An explanation may be possible at a later moment." His voice was firm and unwavering, although his eyes shied away from Vai's unforgiving sternness.

"He survived the crash. I was here to meet him. I am General Matthew Vai."

The portmaster looked back and forth between the two Concordat officers. "General Vai, the Governor in Occupation? I see..." To Steldan: "I can understand your anger, and again offer my most sincere apologies." Steldan's face, however, bore no trace of anger, only his patient desire to ask his questions.

After a few more rigidly formal declarations, the portmaster fell silent; Vai and Steldan waited a moment, to let the silence bear in on the man.

During this brief respite, Captain Schauband came in, moving up between Steldan and Vai to widen the phalanx facing the Sonallan official. Steldan, without looking at her face, sensed that she bore dire news, and let her have the first word.

"The pilot of the crashed shuttle is dead," she said. Vai turned to her, distressed; Steldan studied the portmaster's face for any reaction.

"I am sorry to learn this," the portmaster said, standing back slightly on his heels. In the silence that followed, the soft churning of air-conditioners and of computers could be heard. The stillness was unlike any spaceport in Steldan's experience. There was far more indeed to shutting down a major spaceport than merely throwing a switch; far, far more. Steldan realized that much had already been accomplished, but the tension that he was putting onto the portmaster would be subject to interruption at any moment. In the center of his gaze, the portmaster stood, undecided, uncertain of his status or presumed complicity in the accident. And Steldan could see beyond the man, and he took in the larger picture of computers, files, and airspace traffic monitors, all tended by Sonallan men. All looked on in interest. Beyond them was an innocuous-seeming door, through which the Port-Lord had fled.

"It was sabotage," the portmaster said at last. Schauband stepped half a step forward, her face grimly and firmly set.

"Spaceport gravity grids are built with trebly-redundant safety interlocks," Vai said, his voice calm, rational, rather than accusing. "That probably should have pointed us to the possibility of sabotage earlier."

Steldan was still intently conscious of the portmaster's state of mind. Hitting hard upon the relief that Vai's thoughtful observation had brought the Sonallan, he rapped out, brusquely, "Do you have a prisoner? Do you have a suspect? Do you know where and when sabotage was done? We expect answers, mister, and we expect them sooner, rather than later." He would have preferred to behave in a more genteel fashion, responding properly to the urbanity of the portmaster's first remarks. But time was speeding away from them all, and Steldan was willing to sacrifice gentility when it was utterly necessary to do so.

"A prisoner?" The portmaster's momentary loss came as no surprise to Steldan. "We have no suspects... The grid was shut down from this room, we know that much. We don't know by whom. One of the computers in this room — " he waved an arm vaguely behind him " — had a grid interrupt put into it at some unspecified time." He began to regain his poise; Steldan let him. There simply was insufficient time to interrogate the man properly, and Murchison might already have left for the palace.

"Why would the Port-Lord not see us?" Steldan demanded, seeking for clues.

The portmaster's face clouded. "It is not for such as you to confront a one with the dignity and reserve of the august Port-Lord." The portmaster's voice was austere. "Messages for him may be left, and will be forwarded properly."

"A Company of Marines could find him and bring him out of his hiding hole," Schauband snapped.

The portmaster drew himself a bit away from her, as if she had favored him with a lurid and obscene proposal. "Doubtless they could. Such actions would serve only to justify the views of such men as plant interrupts in spaceport computers. Allow us to pursue matters through channels, I entreat you."

"How quickly can you get me a complete dump of all computer activity for the past forty eight hours?" Steldan asked quietly.

"I can't do that at all."

"You can," Vai informed him in a flat, certain voice.

"Very well. If you wish it. I'll try to have it for you tonight, in approximately five hours. It will require the consent of the Port-Lord."

"Who is the Port-Lord?" Steldan wanted to know.

"Why, Lord Mataconet, as all men know."

Steldan let that pass. Schauband stepped forward, glared fiercely into the portmaster's eyes, and said, in a voice both low and dangerous, "One of my Marines will be here in five hours, to receive the tapes. We'll be able to analyze them, and fix the true blame."

With that, they made their withdrawal, the abruptness of their departure making as much of an impression upon the portmaster as had any of the more pointed facets of the interrogation. When one of Schauband's Marines arrived, substantially less than five hours later, the file that Steldan had demanded was already accessed and on hand. The cover of the document bore the approval that had been penned by Lord Mataconet personally.

#

The long Sonallan day wore into a warm and comfortable late-afternoon, with the giant sun swelling and diminishing over the hours. Its level rays redly lit the shallow terraces of the city that climbed clay hills fronting an endless strip of shallow beach. The sun was only a few degrees above the sea's horizon, shining straight into the eyes of Murchison's driver. He nevertheless spun the aircar with fastidious haste over thousands of low roofs, dark plazas and parks, and widely scattered salt-marshes. Evening fowl harbored there, birds that were well-inured to the wingless flight of their co-habiting keepers.

Steldan, Vai, and Murchison sat facing one another in the circular rear passenger well, reading each other's expression in the waning light.

"I don't suppose you've had the time to completely memorize your address, General. Have you?" Murchison was in something of a sour mood, although Steldan had noted that she'd held her car at the spaceport despite her threats of leaving without waiting further.

"I don't intend giving any 'address' at all. I have nothing to submit to you for approval. I'll make some quick remarks, and bow out in a hurry. They have no love for me, and I think they'll be happier with as little of me as possible."

Murchison looked sidelong at Vai. "Privately, I agree with your decision. You ought to have informed me, however. Legally, I am entitled to preview your speech — even your 'quick remarks' — for compliance with Foreign Service continuity." She smiled, an open, disarming smile of momentary good humor. "Yes, that means censorship by prior restraint." She soon fell back to a sullen, unhappy mood, however, and Vai seemed unable to elicit more cheer from her.

"The upcoming ceremony," he said, giving Steldan what he considered to be fair warning, "is going to be long, ornate, and replete with typical Sonallan traps. I'll be releasing the planet from my Governorship, and restoring Sonallan autonomy, but there are still going to be limits. Murchison will become fully accredited as ambassador, subject to certain restrictions. But the Sonallan ceremonial form is something to be reckoned with. Their heraldry, their protocol, are all so involuted that it is thoroughly conceivable that a calculated and profound insult will be put upon us, without any of us being aware of the shame!"

Murchison swiveled around in her seat, turning her back on Vai and his discourse. For a moment she regarded the harsh, lopsided sun sinking into the sea. "What holds your interest, Commodore?" she asked abruptly.

Steldan blinked, taken unawares by the subtly expressed hostility in her tone. "I'm told that a Sonallan sunset is worth seeing," he said simply. He felt caught in the conflict between Vai and Murchison.

"You've never been here before? I thought all Navy personnel were given a duty tour here."

"No, this is my first visit." Steldan hesitated, then plunged ahead. "I have never been here before, but my actions have shaped this world's fate. Several million deaths are on my head, and my only excuse is rather foolish: I acted in ignorance."

Murchison asked the question with her eyebrows; Steldan answered carefully. "The Sonallans attacked us first; perhaps that forgives all that followed. Our fleet met theirs near a contested system of planets. What followed — the First Battle of Binary — was an unmitigated disaster for our side. Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne, our supreme commander, was lost, and was never recovered. That was only a few short years ago — "

"Three years, Commodore. Only three years." Vai's voice was contemplative.

Steldan nodded. "I caused his defeat."

Vai did not move, but he tensed, and slowly, slowly he turned his head to look at Steldan. "Did you, now?"

"I had been ordered to adjust the guidance frequencies of our missile stocks to a certain parameter. The Sonallans, it turned out, used the same wavelength for navigational radar. Not a one of our missiles was able to function in battle. We were decimated."

Vai regarded him cautiously. "Why?"

"Sienne's successor, Grand Admiral Scott North Telford, led a great revenge fleet to the same battlespace, and met the Sonallan fleet in a return engagement. The Second Battle of Binary was rather more successful from our point of view."

"Rather more, yes. You haven't answered me. Why?"

Steldan met his gaze, and sighed. "My orders came from Admiral Telford, and I carried them out unwitting. Later, Telford, realizing the nuisance I could cause by my testimony, undertook arrangements to have me assassinated. I escaped, and caused quite a nuisance indeed."

"Telford's resignation last year...?" Vai asked softly.

"He resigned because I lived long enough to testify against him. He would have been removed from office had he not left peacefully."

"Were you aware of this?" Vai demanded of Murchison.

"I'd heard tales," she said, nonchalantly. "Steldan is telling the truth, if that's what you wanted to know."

"Go on."

Steldan shrugged. "There's not much left to tell. When Telford's fleet won the Second Battle of Binary, he moved on, bombarded and conquered this world, and put you in charge of the military occupation. Now he's gone, and Grand Admiral de la Noue is our unquestioned master."

Something in the way he said that caused Vai to look his way. "Well, finish it, man. There's more to tell, isn't there?"

"There is one question left, and it needs an answer. Is former Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne alive?"

Vai and Murchison both sat forward. Murchison hadn't heard this aspect of the matter, and she immediately perceived its import. "Of course he isn't," she breathed. "He died in the First Battle of Binary."

"Did he? His body was never found. His flagship, the Cathedral, was a drifting wreck, and it had been boarded by Sonallan troops. Many prisoners of war were released when Telford took this world, and more were turned up later, whom the Sonallans had tried to keep secret. There is a possibility — "

"A foolish possibility!" Murchison snorted, leaning back in her seat.

Steldan nodded in full agreement. "There is a faint, vague, foolish possibility, which we cannot afford to overlook, that Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne is still alive."

"What leads you to this suspicion?" Murchison asked cannily.

"A word." Steldan paused, then went ahead. "We received a note, a brief, anonymous report, which passed along a circuitous route, and eventually found its way to me. It made the claim, and we cannot ignore it."

"Sienne, then Telford, and now de la Noue," Vai muttered. "And now a new war of succession is possible?"

"Possible, but not likely. I've been sent here as an investigator, and only to ascertain the answer to the one question." Steldan looked back and forth between the other two. "I don't need to tell you how sensitive this information is, although I'm breaking no rules by telling you. If Sienne is alive, it will be vital — vital! — that he be gotten off-planet in safety and in silence. His legal status can be wrangled over at a later time, once his physical status is confirmed." He took a deep, unhappy breath. "And since I was responsible for losing him, it seems only fair that I be charged with finding him."

As he spoke, and as the air-car sped through the clear, cooling air, the sun set, passing beneath the far horizon with a momentary triple-blink of faint, faint purple. Then, just for a brief bit, the sun rose again, passing a narrow sliver of limb above the sea, only to disappear again for the night.

Steldan was never even aware of it, and only later came to realize that he'd missed it.

#

Chapter Five

The air-car at last approached the heart of the city, where the highest-born of the nobles kept their enclaves. It flew low, over a magnificently built-up district, where winding streets passed up hills and down canyons, all heavily canopied with tall, ancient trees. Estates ringed with hedge-rows showed their twilit splendor: vast lawns, deep and monumental fountains, and rock gardens set about with ancestral totems. The largest of all the grounds surrounded the palace, and a high double wall of stone surrounded the keep itself. The wall, topped with pointed zig-zag crenelations, was a remnant of a revered medieval heritage; near the top a row of carvings ran, showing scenes from the lives of heros and demigods. Beyond it, lit by colored floodlamps, rose the cut-stone tracery of the castle's sweeping grace. Rising from several low, outflung extensions of itself in the east, it curved steeply up, with artfully contrived flying buttresses blended into the wall and into its various towers and houses. Up it rose, pinnacle above spire above turret, with gaily lit windows sharing light with the darkness. At last the cathedral and the King's Tower shot vertically into the air, balancing the precipitous plunge of craggy basalt cliffs into a black and sluggish sea.

Murchison's driver put the aircar into a slow and respectful curve, and grounded it in the space reserved for Concordat representatives. Murchison exited gravely, and went to join her staff, most of whom had long since arrived.

"I'm glad that Telford held back from bombarding this place," Vai said, his first words for some time.

Steldan couldn't trust himself to reply for a moment. The notion of such beauty and such wealth accruing to an individual solely by virtue of his parentage caught at his moral sense. For the architecture, he could feel only wholehearted admiration. He and Vai climbed from the car and walked silently side-by-side through a well-tended garden, lit by small lamps atop slender columns. Topiary shrubs cavorted in comic attitudes; a footbridge led them across a sparkling watercourse; a carved totem leered from a shallow cavern or niche behind a transparent sheet of falling water.

Yes, Steldan admitted, marvelling at the contrived beauty, Telford was right when he refrained from destroying this monument. I wonder, though: will it ever revert to the public who paid for it, and who built it?

He and Vai were free for the moment. No one had called for them, nor had anyone greeted them when they arrived. But even as they strolled, anxious officials might be looking about, wondering at their absence. Steldan was unimportant to tonight's ceremony; it behooved the military attaché for an embassy to maintain a subdued profile. Vai was indispensable.

They wandered aloof between the gigantic twin guard towers of the gate, and over a bridge of half-meter planks. The chasm below dropped away beyond sight. A whimsical impulse crossed Steldan's mind; he began to look about him, seeing the fortifications with the eyes of a besieging general. He scanned for a route of attack, seeking to lead an army of medieval soldiers to storm and sack the place. His mind's eye populated the walls with defenders, outfitted in antiquated arms and armor, nocking long arrows to their bows to ward away the assault. From this point of view he saw much that might ordinarily have escaped him: high embrasures for archers; deep runnels in the stonework underfoot to wrench askew an attacker's wheeled mantlets; the well-planned killing grounds and the covered ways for reinforcements to arrive upon the walls.

"You'll never take it by storm, Commodore," Vai said softly. Steldan was recalled to the present.

"Were you looking at it the same way I was, General?" But of course he had been. The game was irresistable for any military mind, and Steldan was delighted, although mildly embarrassed, by Vai's quiet discovery of him.

"Before the introduction of airborne operations, the only way to take a fortress as secure as this one would be by a long and arduous siege." Vai smiled. "My Marines could take it in a matter of hours; orbitting ships could vaporize it and its entire outcrop of cliff with one missile. But I'll admire it on its own terms. This is one marvelous piece of military stonework."

They soon passed through the long tunnel beneath the wall, and found themselves within another lantern-lit garden, at an informal diplomatic reception. The affair was already breaking up, with the Concordat officers and representatives and their Sonallan hosts all moving toward the palace. Most were engaged in subdued conversation, although many of the Sonallan nobles held themselves away from the upstart invaders.

"General Vai," a Colonel of Marines addressed him. "We had become concerned that you might not arrive in time."

"There was a problem at the spaceport. That's taken care of. Have you seen my aide?"

"No, sir. But Ambassador Murchison was through here just a moment ago, and she told me that she had all the papers and suchlike. Shall I make any calls for you?"

"No need. Let's get in there and give them their planet back." He turned to Steldan, and gave him a stiff, appraising look. "Your investigations aside, you're the police force now, or you will be soon. It will be you, and not Murchison, who keeps the order. I'm going to be fading into the background, and she'll be completely tangled up in her diplomacy. Just try not to forget that she's in charge, and that, on this planet, she outranks you."

"Yes, General." It didn't matter that Steldan, as a Navy officer, technically outranked Vai. The General was an older man, and an officer far more accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. His comments, however, were not orders, but were his bequest to Steldan in terms of advice. Steldan was sensible enough to listen.

"Do you honestly feel that...the man we named earlier is alive?" Vai asked. "Do you think he's on this world?"

"Yes. I do."

"Get him out alive, then. We owe him that much. Come along, though, for now. I've got a planet to hand over."

#

Orenatha stood, as did all others in the packed nave of the high-vaulted palace cathedral. He was tall, yellow-haired, green-eyed, with a face that could never, never be called solemn. In mirth, he was a great companion, a heavy drinker who could keep his wits about him well after liquor had caused his friends to totter and babble. But at serious occasions — at church, at debate in the councils of the nobles, or, worst of all, at the endless rounds of funerals that had followed the war — his perpetual grin turned from a welcome smile into an intrusive smirk. Tonight, at the most jealously awaited evening in recent history, when the world would be, legally at least, free of Concordat subjugation, he desperately wished he could muster a straight face. But that was a vain and forlorn hope. His very nature was too bound up in good cheer, and his ever-merry smile was no longer his to change.

He had learned, from many years of being pushed to the back of assemblies, that one could see a great deal from that vantage that was not visible from the front.

In a row farther forward, where his friends Pirasnah and Canpenou stood, basking in the reflected honor and glory of the highest-ranking nobles, much more would be visible of the ceremony itself. They would see every stitch on the ornamented robes of the priests of The God, and they would be able to easily attend each word of the short, ceremonial speeches. No detail of what transpired would escape them...so long as it transpired before them.

Orenatha, socially unwelcome because his face would not mold itself properly to grief, would be able to see far, far more.

The passages of the church-nave were three in number, and parallel, leading past the ranked pews to the ceremonial stage in front, where the Shadow of The God was cast menacingly over the high, gilded altar. The flanking aisles, against the unadorned stonework of the deeply-niched walls, were broken in several places with doorways that led to two galleries, narrow, yet as high-arched as the nave itself. These, normally vacated and silent, were now crowded by large numbers of Concordat dignitaries waiting to enter. It was they that Orenatha watched.

As he watched them, he judged them. I've read their history, he mused, gazing curiously at the officers of the Concordat Navy, Marines, and Foreign Service. Not eight hundred years ago they held their revolution. They took their rightful King — whom they called an Emperor, but where's the difference? — and they cast him down. They turned away from their gods; they destroyed every trace of the nobility. It was a bloodletting without parallel! They even admit it, without any shame at all: they slew their King.

A nation may not kill its King! He suspected that it was unlawful for him even to think these thoughts in a church, let alone in the King's Cathedral. But the thoughts stole over him without his ability to deny them.

Look at these people! They stand, and gossip, and prepare to enter into the prime Cathedral of The God, and I can't see any shame upon them.

They're human. They're as human as I am. I've seen them afraid, angry, embarrassed, hurt. But something in them refuses to acknowledge the existence of anything divine, anything truly worthy of worship.

But he could see clearly that they were not degraded savages. They were tall, true, energetic, and their might had reached all the way from distant stars to his homeworld, to the central shrine of his faithful worship.

Our priests look at the facts, and wonder; 'How was this permitted to happen.' I look at their General Vai, and wonder if there was ever anything we could have done to stop it.

There he was: General Vai: the star-tyrant: the blood-drinking ogre: the man who'd led his troops in an unstoppable sweep of the planet's ground defenses. Orenatha watched him stiding to and fro along the gallery away to the right. Vai passed forward, along the line of officers waiting to enter and take the section of pews reserved for them. Orenatha glimpsed him, moving past the open doorways. The man seemed to the Sonallan as if The God had taken pure energy and molded it into man-shape. How could anyone with such a wealth of dignity ever be satisfied with the meager ostentation that his plain green-and-black uniform gave him?

Orenatha shook his head. He swung his head to the left, searching for familiar faces within the hall. He saw several he knew: friends of his, or distant relatives. And forward, a pasty-faced Tinwamus, the King's Chancellor, holding Mansivigan's place for him until he arrived. Tinwamus. Orenatha had to laugh, and his wide, happy mouth quirked with mirth. To compare Tinwamus, a lumpy, faded drudge of a man, with the Concordat's General Vai was as unfair as comparing a clot of clay with a lightning-spear. It was a common pastime, which Orenatha never tired of, reviling Tinwamus. The man's efficiency was perhaps his only virtue; no one accused him of imagination.

The first priest finished the invocation, and stolidly left the room. It was now lawful for the aliens, alien no matter how human they looked, to enter the room. Since Vai had made it abundantly clear that the people of the Concordat could and would never stand, heads bowed, through the ritual of invocation, their banishment to the flanking galleries was a relief to all.

They filed in then, the men and women of the military and civilian services of the Concordat of Archive. Their entrance was an almost choreographed promenade, as they marched up the aisles and into their assigned seats without sign or signal of recognition for higher or lower rank.

And, before the first of them had been seated, Tinwamus left the room. Orenatha watched, grinning, eyes wide in wry humor, as the Chancellor absented himself from the crowd of the aliens he so abhorred.

All was silent. Orenatha wondered what unrecognized clue was awaited. Then, almost with a pang, he understood. General Matthew Vai, Governor-in-Occupation of the world of Tenh Sonallae, was waiting for the hour. At eight o'clock, and no earlier, would he precede with the functional part of the evening's ceremony. The world might wait, but his orders would be carried out, to the letter. The remaining few minutes ticked away in unbroken silence. The stillness was all the more noticeable for the sharp driving home, with a mallet of irony, of an intangible point.

At the hour, Vai rose, paced with military precision to the center of the raised platform that was not — his military attitude utterly denied it — an altar.

His voice was not loud, yet it carried throughout the hall.

"Enduring strength rather than delicacy; power rather than agility; mass rather than beauty; utility rather than grace; these are our hallmarks.

"We have done what was needful, and have no regrets. What we have done was done well. Now, when it is right to do so, we may relent.

"Acting under the orders of the Praesidium of the Concordat of Archive, I now step down from my post as Military Governor of the occupied planet of Tenh Sonallae. The Sonallan Government is free to resume its jurisdiction over the colony worlds that have been recognized by the Praesidium. Normal diplomatic ties may be formed with no further military intervention. I have no more to say."

Still facing the hostile ranks of the insulted nobles, Vai marched back to his seat. He took no further part in the evening's activities.

Orenatha watched, glad of the distance that hid his amusement, as ambassador Laura Murchison took to the platform, her face composed, but her mind clearly, clearly fighting for mastery over her offended emotions.

There was no way out of giving her prepared speech, however, although Orenatha could detect it when she passed over a portion of her text because it would be unsuitable. He could virtually hear her unspoken words: Thank you, General, for warming up my audience for me.

She wasn't tall, and she wasn't massive. Orenatha admired her all the more for having a strong spirit locked in the feeble body of a woman.

"Sonallan nobles. The Praesidium of Archive has sent me, with no fixed policy, and with no predetermined orders. If I am to be received as an ambassador, you must share the reliance and trust that the Praesidium has placed in me and my mission. There will be no talk of punishment or of restitution. The war is over; it is no longer an issue.

"General Vai has, as he said, stepped down. For the brief time that he will remain upon this planet he will be on unattached duty. Until today, I had been under the impression that he would be my military attaché. Last minute orders have altered that. You will join me in welcoming Navy Commodore Athalos Steldan in that capacity.

"The rest of my staff you will already have met, but I take justified pride and pleasure in officially presenting them to you tonight."

With a gesture, she bade her staff rise, and she named them and presented them to the Sonallans. Trade representatives, Third and Second Secretaries, Undersecretaries, and Consuls, all stood, bowed, and were seated again. Murchison finished her talk, and began to descend from the platform.

Then all rose, as, at twenty minutes past eight, twenty minutes into the world's renewed freedom, Mansivigan-Okemo, King of all the Sonallans, and Lirelpeset, his Queen, entered in grandeur.

Their raiment was extravagant, decorative in every aspect. Mansivigan's Lord's attire, gemmed with medallions earned by himself and by his ancestors, was dark, nearly black with a faint shimmer of deepest green. Lirelpeset was surrounded by layer upon layer of gauzy, shining material almost too delicate to be called fabric, and the several colorless tints of it were blended into one another in a dramatic haze of ivory, cream, pearl, with textures from the flattest chalk to the glossiest snow.

For a moment, and a moment only, Ambassador Murchison was at a loss for what to do, unsettled in the face of this majestic presence. Her recovery was swift, and of all the audience, possibly Orenatha alone saw her hesitation, and Steldan's subtle usurpation of the moment. For while all — or nearly all — of the audience rivetted their attention upon the radiant darkness and lightness of the King and Queen, Steldan had stood, bringing the rest of Murchison's staff into line behind him with the smoothest of commanding gestures. He had then edged aside, and, with something like the theatrical jostle, in which there is no contact between the hands of the actor and the body of the pushed party, he had sent the line forward to be presented to the King.

Some time was spent upon the introduction of each member of the diplomatic party to the paired rulers, and Mansivigan managed to speak at least a few sentences to each. The ceremony-loving Sonallans watched it all avidly and happily, and the businesslike men and women of the Concordat waited through it patiently. Steldan came last.

He and the King gazed at each other, while Murchison and Queen Lirelpeset stood slightly aside. The questing exchange of looks was very brief; each sensed a depth to the other, and more. Their situation dictated their words, and Steldan, at least, was aware that all would have been very different if either of them had been free.

"'Military Attaché,' Commodore? Has that ever meant anything other than 'spy?'"

"Seldom. But spying implies belligerence, which, I hope, is absent here."

"But were that true, the post of military attaché would be rendered unnecessary. Your rank suggests that what you say about belligerence is fallacious. Nevertheless, I will say that you are welcome here, more, at least, than your predecessor, the General."

"Thank you." Steldan nodded, and began to turn away.

"One moment." Mansivigan's voice was low; certainly only Steldan had heard a word of the exchange. This was slightly louder. "I would enjoy hearing you address me by the proper form and title."

"By law," Steldan replied, his voice expressing neutral respect, "I, as a soldier of a foreign nation, am not required to do that. This is your law," he amplified.

"Very good. I merely wanted to hear it from you. Now I know, and you know that I know, where we stand."

Steldan nodded again, and turned and walked away, his face carefully devoid of expression before the audience.

I didn't need to hear their words, thought Orenatha. Every line of their posture, as they stiffly faced one another, and their every movement as they spoke, told of their confrontation. He had thought that the King's resplendent power would have left the Concordat military men looking drab and simplistic. But the conquerers had men with depth to them; their Steldan would look well againt Mansivigan under any circumstances.

The soldiers of Archive — and all of the Sonallan people in the room correctly viewed the members of Murchison's diplomatic staff as enemy soldiers — had departed the dais. Mansivigan-Okemo, tall and straight, took the center of it, in front of fair Lirelpeset, who stepped humbly back and away from him. He stood in the Shadow of The God, and darkness momentarily enveloped him. He stepped forward into the light, and spoke.

"We have always been free.

"When their missiles dropped onto us from the gentle sky of noon, and we hid and were unable to return the fire, we were free.

"When their soldiers, encased in honorless armor, set foot upon our world, and we slew no better than one for twenty, we were free.

"When they took our world and our worlds and imagined that they owned them, we were free. Those of us who have vision have always known that there is no power short of the total power wielded by The God that can enslave the Sonallan people.

"Today, no act of generosity has taken place, no magnanimity, no bestowal of largesse. Today, an admission was made: there is no chain of mortal forging that can hold us. We are the favored ones, the ones alone to whom The God chose to reveal his eternal power. By His grace I rule; my veins are filled with the blood of the first annointed King, and it is his seal that I wear on my ring.

"They, who are so low that it is unlawful for me to name them, they who slew Mantuchtan-Okemo, who was my father and your King, they who slew with him his infant son and his wife, the Queen, they, who defile the Cathedral with their presence... They have not paid the full price. The blood of Kings is not spilled without punishment.

"The final accounting has not been settled.

"The true penalty has not been paid.

"Have I said that it is unlawful for me to name them? None of our laws are secure, for they defile the truth that our laws are founded upon.

"The God has forever damned The Concordat of Archive, and until it is expunged, its planets razed, its men slain and its women taken, not one of our laws has force.

"We are lawless. We are outlaws.

"Tinwamus, stand before me."

The sudden switch from his oratorical style to a direct, conversational tone was abrupt, and left the audience silent, each individual alone with his thoughts.

"It is unlawful, your Majesty," Tinwamus quavered. His thin voice wafted in from the gallery to Mansivigan's right.

"But that's no longer in force. I just said so." The way Mansivigan said that made the breach of tradition seem like a small thing, something petty and trifling. His voice was light, almost bantering. Tinwamus reluctantly approached him, and knelt, his back to the audience, his head bowed before his Lord. A long silence followed.

I don't understand it, Laura Murchison thought in uneasy stillness. Her face clearly showed her worry. If this is a power play, I can probably finesse it... But it's probably no more than a bluff, put out for public consumption. I'll merely be required to proceed with extreme care.

Commodore Athalos Steldan was more composed in his thoughts. I've heard of people declaring martial law, but this is the first time I've heard of the declaration of martial anarchy.

General Matthew Vai allowed himself only the briefest cynical reflection. I wish he hadn't done that. How long, I wonder, will it be until the world is mine again?

Orenatha, possibly more than anyone else in the room save Tinwamus himself, felt the hurt of the breaking of the law. He had never consciously realized how deeply he cherished every tradition, every ritual, every observance. Without the law and without custom, he doubted that the Sonallan people could survive. Mansivigan's next words reassured him, however, while raising an entirely new line of doubts.

Mansivigan laid a heavy hand onto Tinwaumus' shoulder. "Tinwamus, Chancellor, see that the Sonallan people keep the peace. See that they follow the laws' old forms, even though the laws are now nullified. See that they obey because it is beneath the dignity of the Sonallan people to cast aside obedience and moral righteousness. The courts and the armsmen will see to their duty as always.

"But until the enemy has been destroyed forever, there is no law other than the laws of The God and of myself.

"Good night."

Stepping back, taking up Lirelpeset's steady hand, he turned away from the audience and strode from the great room, followed by neither applause nor comment. The hall seemed diminished in his absence; it was difficult for a moment to truly believe he'd left.

Tinwamus stood, and turned slowly about. "You have the King's leave to depart." More slowly yet, he exited the hall.

Orenatha sat where he was, and ignored the rising murmur of the astonished audience. Not even the orderly mass departure of the men and women of the Concordat recalled him from his amused reverie, although he saw and noted the deathly silence that their leaders maintained as they left.

Later, he knew, he would be approached by Pirasnah and by Canpenou, and would have to listen to Pirasnah's spiteful, ever-angry lectures. Canpenou, when she wasn't feuding with someone, was always far more reasonable, and even she despised Pirasnah, her own brother. What, Orenatha wondered, would they have thought of the King's speech? Pirasnah would take it to be a carefully unstated sign for them to go ahead with what they'd started — or had tried to start.

Only moments before the audience had been called together for the opening invocation, Orenatha had heard the word of what had happened at the Spaceport. It had been with no joy that he'd informed Pirasnah. That angry young man had blamed him, who only bore the word.

But they'd planned it together, and so the failure belonged to none of them.

And the enemy's new secret-policeman, Commodore Steldan, who should have died, was still alive, to become their chief persecutor.

Orenatha stretched, unkinking his tension-knotted back and shoulders. It felt good, and he accepted the momentary relief. He knew he'd need it. Through the crowd, now standing, milling, shuffling toward the exits, Pirasnah approached, poor Canpenou in tow.

#

Chapter Six

The world of Archive had renounced night. Cities flung banners of light to the sky, gloriously extinguishing the stars' spying eyes. Broad avenues, designed for military parades, shot arrow-straight, a parallel set of tracks from gleaming spaceport to organ-pipe clusters of upthrust towers. The city-world was also a fortress world; the architects had not deigned to hide the deep wells and hardened turrets which were ground defense beam-weapons sites. There seemed a cold, brutal efficiency to the city that was also named Archive: an inartistic regularity to the streets, a sturdy bluntness to the pillaring skyscrapers, a common sameness to the high residential blocks. But the world, the heart of the Concordat of Archive, was arrogant in its defiance of time and space. An Emperor had once been seated here, and deposed in a shower of blood. The Concordat was stronger, surely, than a confederation or a league, but clearly was no empire reborn.

The machinery below was protected by the vigilant officers and crews aboard more than one hundred orbiting monitors, each a city in itself, each utterly dedicated to the defense of the homeworld. They, too, cast light at the stars, and they could be seen from below, small, tight constellations in interlocking orbits.

High in the Council Tower, in one hallway, Grand Admiral de la Noue sat upon a hard bench. She sat turned sideways, looking out into the floodlit night over the city. As commander-in-chief of the vast Concordat Navy, all of Archive's military might was hers to command. Her only responsibilities were to the six-member Praesidium, of which she was a member, and to the Supreme Council of Sectors, whose semi-annual meeting was in late session at this time.

She sat in silent repose, eyes focussed on infinity. Blonde and tall, with high cheekbones beneath wide hazel eyes, she looked more like a philosopher in meditation than an Admiral. Her red uniform tunic and white trousers were reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows through which she gazed.

It resembles a literary convention, she thought, not a legislative sitting. She had had enough of the disorderly committee sessions, and was tired of the many different ways that the representatives from outlying sectors were finding of expressing disrespect. The session was, in theory, hers; when the Supreme Council met in full, she would preside as chairman.

I shouldn't worry, she reminded herself. The meeting proper won't begin for two days, and then it will come together slowly, with reports from subcommittees and committees, and only later the full Council. It will be then that my work begins in earnest.

The rooms were vast and luxurious; de la Noue took fresh stock of her whereabouts, so that she could avoid any need to ask for directions. Becoming lost was more of a possibility than she had realized. The sprawling, towering complex reserved for the session housed over one hundred and seventy seven delegations with dining rooms, meeting halls, caucus lounges, and presentation rooms in abundance. The cluster of towers was nothing short of bewildering.

Each delegation comprised twenty members, on an average; the Secretariat staff and support personnel added another four thousand individuals to the city within a city.

Somehow, it made sense that the only people de la Noue had run into so far were people she'd much rather have avoided.

"Hey, Grand Admiral!" She peered over her shoulder at the man who'd assailed her. He was indisputably drunk. "Start any wars lately? Kill off any lesser Admirals?" The hallway was uncrowded, and the few people who were about gave the unpleasant scene a wide berth.

"Which delegation are you with?" she asked. Drunk or not, he would have no tales of an irritable Grand Admiral to take back to his people.

"Wouldn't you like to know," he responded with a leer.

De le Noue threw her hands up and turned her back upon the wretch. She would go only so far in pretending to be polite. Undeterred by differences in rank or prestige, the delegate reached out and pulled her around, gently, by the arm.

"We're with the delegation from Wall's Lights Sector." He seemed unaware of de la Noue's scathing glance over his disarrayed hair and clothing. "We just want you to know that, no matter what you've done, and no matter what has happened, we support you."

"Thank you," she said stiffly. How does one rebuff support, she wondered. Carefully, with a briefly murmured excuse, she spun and sped away.

Not long thereafter, on another floor, she was accosted by a more friendly voice as she strolled past a crowded lounge. "Admiral de la Noue! May I join you?"

She glanced inside, and her face lit up with relief when she saw Treasury Secretary James Wallace. He stood, made his excuses to the people with whom he'd been idling, and beelined for de la Noue in the hallway. He was a welcome sight; as a Praesidium member, and a genuinely friendly one, he was probably the closest person to being de la Noue's equal that the session would turn up.

They strolled along the wide, golden-carpeted hallways, exchanging views and pleasantries, until Wallace found an unoccupied lecture hall, into which the two slipped for the meeting's rarest commodity: privacy.

He took an aisle seat in the middle of the hall, and hooked his legs boyishly over the armrest. De la Noue smiled, and seated herself in the chair directly behind his.

Wallace's short black hair and heavy black brows lent light to his expressive, happy eyes. His chin was big and blunt, and his snub nose was short and upturned. He wore his Treasury-violet tunic tight about his neck, and he kicked his white-trousered legs idly as he sat.

"You weren't on any errand, were you?" he asked. "Is this a good time to talk?"

De la Noue had to laugh at that. "Until the meetings start the day after tomorrow, I have nothing useful to do at all."

"Aren't you in watching the vids?"

"The propaganda films? The departmental home movies? 'How we spent your money this summer?' No, thanks."

"Gosh, for myself, I couldn't resist. I sat through the one on my department three times."

"How was it?"

He grinned. "Stock footage of myself, all upstaged by some toothy baritone waving packets of stage-money. As a propaganda film-making venture, the Treasury Branch is a bust."

"All the good propagandists are in the Foreign Service, under Secretary Vissenne."

"Truth. Have you seen him yet?"

"No. Nor do I wish to."

"Well, I can sympathize with that. Um... Have you been told about the Praesidium meeting later tonight?"

De la Noue gazed at the ceiling. "No, naturally I haven't. I think — "

"No, no. I know what you were about to say. But they can't hold it without you. Secretary Redmond won't be here for several weeks, if then."

"In which case they'd blame my absence on disrespect, and I'd be chastized."

"No one claimed that our business is pretty." He looked at her as if seeing her afresh. "You weren't notified, you say?"

"No."

"Hm. Have you been here long?"

"Three days. But I haven't been circulating very much, if that's what you mean."

"It is. If you hole up with your staff, it just makes it look as if the jokes are true about Navy isolation. But it's only now occurring to me that..."

"That what, Secretary?"

Wallace spoke slowly. "You've been military all your life. Straight into the academy, universal service on a ship... You've been insulated from this kind of dirt, haven't you?"

"I've been exposed to infighting. I'm not unblooded."

Wallace smiled. "The Navy has a much more strictly defined system of ranks, and a more sensible moral code. Well, just for example, it's bad form — so I'm told — for an officer to go over the head of his superior, to his superior's superior, to settle a grievance. But it's not like that, here, outside the military. I know that you're aware of this, but you haven't had your nose rubbed in it."

"Is this a warning?"

He hesitated. "Well, yes, I guess it is. Secretary Vissenne has been active... But it's more than that. There was ill-will here before he started..."

He took a deep breath, and continued. "The other members of the Praesidium voted to accept your membership just under two years ago. And I'm sure you know I voted for you. But that needs to be approved by a Supreme Council vote... But at the last session, the subject was not allowed to come up.

"That's reason for hostility number one. Now, this session, you are to preside. It's purely by chance, done by rotation. I had it last time; the Justicar will have it next time — and none of us is looking forward to him being in charge, believe me!

"But think of it. There they'll be, debating whether or not to ratify your elevation to the Praesidium, and you're chairing the session. It's a slap in their face. It makes them look like the rubber-stamp that popular myth makes them out to be. That's reason for hostility number two."

De la Noue interrupted him. "Reason number three would be my action during and after the revolt in the Philomela Sector?"

Wallace wouldn't meet her gaze. "Yes. When you were forced to discipline certain of your subordinates — "

"When I executed one very popular fleet Admiral, do you mean?"

Wallace looked up, looked away. "As you said: reason number three."

"Do you still have any doubts about the need for my actions?"

Wallace rubbed at his neck, unhappy with the tension that this conversation was generating. "I voted for your exoneration. I'm on your side, in as much as there are sides at all. But your Admiral brought the Philomela Sector back from its revolution — "

"And then I signed his death order. Haven't you read the reports? Can't you understand that I did only what I had to?"

Wallace met her gaze. "I never said that it was a crime. It was worse than a crime. It was a blunder."

De la Noue spread her hands helplessly. "Perhaps it gave my enemies a tool, a weapon to use against me. Surely, though, they'd have found something else."

"Yes. In time, they would have. It probably wouldn't have been as good, however, or as direct. You were officially exonerated, but the subject is not yet forgotten." He moved his hand in a blunt dismissal of the subject. For other reasons, his future had become tied with the future of this meteoritic young Grand Admiral; discussions that led to distinctions of their differences could only divide them. Even in eclipse, James Wallace was a politician. The mutual need that he and de la Noue shared, depending upon each other for support, was a thing he'd allow her to see in her own way, at her own time.

He asked, instead, "What shape is the Philomela Sector currently in?"

"Strong, and recovering even more strength. For a time, they had reverted to near-anarchy. Thousands of individuals became fantastically enriched, at the expense of millions of others who were bankrupted. And away goes the whole economic underpinning of the entire region, whipsawing and gyrating, completely unregulated. The newly-rich seized power, and it's been incredibly difficult to restore sane economic order. Now that we're evening out the inequalities, solid planned growth is back on schedule."

"You're beginning to sound like Secretary Redmond," Wallace said, smiling. "'Money is like water, and if unchecked will run downhill to gather in the lowest places.'"

De la Noue laughed, probably her first healthy relief in days. "I hadn't heard that one, but it fits in with his 'economics as a sewer' philosophy. I look forward to seeing him, later in the session."

Wallace grew slightly more serious, while yet retaining his good-natured smile. "For the time being, he's off inspecting the sewers. He'll be out in the Philomela Sector for another month, plunger and mop in hand."

"Good enough. The Sector will be well taken care of for as long as he's there, at least." Her own smile faded. "That Sector is in no way ready for readmission. Without direct military control, it will just slip away into rebellion again."

"That's certain?"

"Yes. Do you want to collect taxes there, or do you want me constantly sending in the fleet?"

Wallace was now all seriousness. "We — the other members of the Praesidium — had expected you to propose the Philomela Sector for readmission at this session."

"Secretary Redmond certainly didn't share in that false expectation," de la Noue countered.

"I haven't spoken with him for several months," Wallace apologized tiredly. "I miss his cool enthusiasm." He glanced aside at de la Noue, mirth in his eyes. "He's really the most personable of us all, wouldn't you say?"

"Without hesitation."

"For now, however," Wallace said, cutting the conversation short, "I've got to go. This wasn't what we expected, and I've got some groundwork to lay. I'll see you at the Praesidium meeting, ten o'clock at the Plenary Chamber." He rose, and swiftly took his leave. With him gone, Grand Admiral de la Noue felt much more alone in the large and echoing room.

#

Chapter Seven

Ten o'clock found a small crowd seated around the periphery of the circular room. Low-vaulted and wood-panelled, the Plenary Chamber was the center of the entire complex of buildings. One hundred and seventy seven members of the Supreme Council would meet in another, larger hall in a different tower of the high-built center. This room, although of a respectable size, was more comfortably private, and more dignified. In its center, a massive circular table of finely polished dark wood sat ringed with six widely-spaced chairs. Two were, at present, unoccupied. Handy to the person in each chair was a backup post, with a desk and chair occupied by a highly-skilled aide. Beyond this open and spacious central arena, behind a low railing of the same dark wood, seating was available for those privileged to watch: recorders, clerks, bailiffs, and perhaps some select observers from the Supreme Council. Surrounding tiers of seats rose up, until at the edges of the room they met the gently domed ceiling overhead.

The Praesidium of Archive was officially convened, with two members absent, and a third represented only by a duly-sworn proxy.

First Secretary Raymond Parke, graced with two votes as director of the Secretariat, leaned back into his deep chair, a deceptive look of dull inattention upon his puffy face. His two votes were not wasted upon him, and his tie-breaking and deciding influence was not limited to those votes.

Justicar Leonard Solme sat stiffly, straight as a needle and almost as thin, his leathery cheeks and high-domed forehead totally unexpressive of normal human joy or forgiveness. He was the final aribter of legal questions, and oversaw his Court of the Supreme Judiciary as if it were responsible to him alone.

Grand Admiral Jennifer de la Noue sat to his right, just as Solme was to the right of Parke. Although each was in theory equal, their arrangement was in a precise order of precedence. As military leader of the Concordat, de la Noue was third in this hierarchy, after those two men whose motives were inaccessible to her.

James Wallace, who would have been next, was absent, and his seat empty. Behind it, an aide appointed by the Secretariat's Office sat at the recording station, contributing nothing to the discussions.

Foreign Secretary Antonin Vissenne entered at that moment, after convention had officially been noted, but before any business had been called up. He was a dark-haired man, straight within his green-and-black tunic, a shut portfolio clutched beneath his arm. He had an almost military bearing, peculiar in one who had set himself against the policies of the Concordat Navy. Offering no apology for his tardiness, he stalked around the table and seated himself heavily. From his portfolio he withdrew several sheaves of documents, and it was to them and not to the meeting that he bent his attention.

Commerce Secretary Adrian Redmond was also absent, and his absence was excused. In his place he had sent a proxy, to carry his vote and to speak in his place. De la Noue had had no opportunity to speak to the woman, a lapse that she mulled over, holding her misgivings private. For Redmond's proxy was Captain Alexys Lowe, an officer in the Logistics Branch of de la Noue's Navy.

Lowe was a serious, capable officer, pink-faced, red-haired, her arms held tensely at her sides. She seemed gravely unsure of her status here. How could an officer of one Branch be chosen as a temporary substitute for the head of another? But Lowe's specialty — Naval Logistics — gave her exactly the expertise that Redmond would have needed if he were present. He had known that the subject of the pacified Philomela Sector would arise, and he had chosen a proxy that he knew was capable and conscientious, as well as loyal and supportive of de la Noue.

Every one of them wore a uniform of some type. De la Noue was thankful for this, for, to a slight degree, it called attention away from the dangerous fact that Captain Lowe was her subordinate in ranks. It was obviously a suspicion in the minds of many here that Lowe's votes were de la Noue's to command.

Lowe felt the conflict of interest more strongly yet: she wasn't a Praesidium member, would never be a Praesidium member, and was now catapulted by virtue of her competence into a congregation of Praesidium members, most of whom were hostile to her. She sat forward the straighter for it, crossing her hands upon the dark wooden table.

"We're here, then," Parke murmurred, having given Vissenne time enough to give any apology for his lateness. Vissenne gave no heed, and certainly no apology was forthcoming.

"Secretary Vissenne will be logged in as late," Solme intoned, his low voice resonant in the silent room.

"Certainly," Parke agreed, blowing out his cheeks. "I'm sure that was handled by the recording clerk. Do we have any preliminary items to clear out of the way before we... Yes, Secretary Vissenne?"

Vissenne spoke without looking up from his papers. "Since when does the Navy have two representatives here? I'd like to move a challenge to the appearance of Secretary Redmond's proxy on the grounds of conflict of interest." Lowe, sixty degrees away to his right, flushed slightly with the beginnings of an inwardly-burning anger.

"Does anyone want to — " Parke began; Solme interrupted him, uttering formally, "I second the motion."

Parke let a few seconds of silence slide by. "I was hoping... Captain Lowe, I'll let you speak first, since you're the one in the hot seat. I beg your forebearance. This isn't aimed at you personally..." Forestalling an anticipated objection from Solme, he quickly went on. "You'll also speak last, giving you the chance to rebut the arguments that will be presented."

"Thank you." Captain Lowe's voice was stiff, her bearing erect. What, she wondered, could she say? She struggled to contain her anger. There really was a conflict of interest here, although it was largely moot. Certainly she was a Navy officer, which meant that she was subject to de la Noue's orders. But that in no way lessened her ability to serve Secretary Redmond's wishes, since he had told her clearly that she was to support de la Noue, just as he would have if he could have been present. She knew better than to admit this here.

"Secretary Vissenne's point is well taken, in theory. In practice, I think that you wouldn't be giving me enough credit for my integrity, should you choose to vote against me. Secretary Redmond saw this problem, certainly, when he named me as the carrier of his proxy vote. He knew there would be uncertainty, possibly resentment, because of my service. But he chose me, not for my Naval affiliations, but for my expertise in the economic theory that will underlie today's business."

Her gaze met that of First Secretary Parke, and she nodded to indicate to him that she was finished with her speech.

"Grand Admiral?" Parke said, recognizing her to speak next. He was cool, collected, in control. Captain Lowe revised her mental assesment of how the vote would go, and found it difficult not to frown in consternation.

"Just to clear up any odd notions anyone might have about Captain Lowe's possible division of loyalty, I'd like to say the following." De la Noue turned to Lowe, her expression serious, but not unfriendly. "For the duration of this meeting, you are relieved of all duty and rank. Consider yourself officially part of the Commerce Branch, no longer a Naval officer on detached duty there."

Turning back to the other Praesidium members, she went on, ice in her voice. "That was official, and will be noted into Captain Lowe's service record. I resent your having made it necessary, and I wouldn't blame Ms. Lowe, a civilian for the next few hours, if she resented it also."

"Thank you." Parke displayed no reaction to this, but merely glanced about alertly to see who wanted to speak next. "Secretary Vissenne? Does that take care of your objection?"

Vissenne, seated where he could see the door, looked up in time to see the entrance of Secretary Wallace, back from his mission among the more numerous members of the Supreme Council that would be meeting later in the week.

"Yes. I believe that I'm satisfied at this point. I beg leave to withdraw the motion."

Solme closed his eyes, looking for a long moment like a death-mask of himself. "And I withdraw the second."

Lowe began to see the complexities that she'd overlooked, the depths and involutions possible between six persons with seven votes. For Vissenne's attack upon her position, delivered with all the effrontery that he could offer her, had actually been a probe of Parke's position. Once again re-evaluating the line-up of possible votes, Lowe saw that Wallace's arrival had spared Parke from the burden he would have been under to make the deciding vote.

Wallace strolled around the table and seated himself comfortably. Lowe shot him a glance, then smiled with self-aware embarrassment. None of this had been his fault, had it? She gave no thought whatever to her dismissal from Naval rank. The blot upon her record would, with an appended note from de la Noue describing the circumstances, become an asset, not a hindrance.

"I'll just log you in as here, Secretary Wallace," Parke muttered. To all appearances he was more concerned with saying that before Solme could demand it than he had been with Vissenne's indirect attack upon his carefully-crafted neutrality. Lowe resolved to watch him, simply because anyone was worth watching who could so easily demonstrate unconcern while under attack.

"My apologies to the person of the Praesidium. I was out politicking, and lost track of time."

"You aren't really very late," Parke said affably. "As far as that goes, you haven't even missed a vote." Was it really ignorance shining upon Parke's tranquil face? Vissenne, upon noting Wallace's return and withdrawing his motion, had again turned his face downward to the papers before him, initialing them as if, impossibly, they were more important than a meeting of the Praesidium. Solme watched the other members, his eyes slowly moving in his deep-etched face as he looked and saw. De la Noue waited with the patience that the subtle and devious group of individuals had forced her to learn. Wallace gave the meeting his full attention, looking on as if from the audience and not upon the stage.

"Then if we can devote ourselves to business..." Parke's hope was not unfounded; no further delays kept them from their agenda.

Two hours passed, as did a third, in which decisions were made, contested, voted upon after debate. The lives of billions were affected in ways that were subtle and in ways that were not.

Captain Lowe had the undercurrent of antagonism more clearly outlined for her as vote after vote divided the members of the Praesidium in ways that were often surprising to her. On several occasions, she found herself voting for resolutions that de la Noue voted against. Each had the opportunity to wonder what the other saw that she herself did not.

But what Captain Lowe detected most strongly and most recurrently was the opposition to de la Noue expressed by Vissenne and by Solme. It seemed that they hated her for herself, and that there was no issue upon which they could agree.

"The world of Fadiman, in the Nereid Sector, is requesting permission to build fifteen nuclear demolition devices — " Parke began.

"Warheads," Vissenne interjected without looking up.

"Well, they're asking to use them for demolition purposes, to alter the course of two rivers...into a confluence...all the paperwork is on file..." Parke looked around. "What do you think, Admiral?"

"I approved that one months ago, or so I thought."

"Administrative review," Vissenne said, not loudly.

"So, since we're overtime already..." Parke tried to speak.

"Are we in a hurry?" Solme asked remorselessly.

Parke closed his eyes. "No. Of course not. Admiral?"

De la Noue breathed deeply. "I've been through their request. This isn't a ploy to build weapons; I can't even imagine what use they'd have for deliverable warheads. I approved it. If Secretary Vissenne wants it reviewed, that's fine. It only takes up time."

"Secretary Vissenne?"

"You know my stand on building spare warheads. If Admiral de la Noue can't imagine what use a planet might have for weapons, be sure that I can. Will you call the vote?"

"Certainly, certainly. All in favor — "

"State the substance of the motion before calling for the vote," Solme demanded, enforcing the letter of the rules to the finest particular.

"Certainly, Justicar Solme." Parke looked around at the members. "All in favor of submitting the Fadiman bomb thing to administrative review, raise one hand...thank you...those against...thank you...that's three in favor to four against, so you can give them the go-ahead. I hope that during the several months of delay, their drought hasn't worsened significantly. It seems to me...yes, Justicar Solme?"

"Were you about to express an opinion?"

"I guess not, if you object."

Solme said nothing.

Vissenne lifted his head and threw de la Noue a glance of the purest venom.

#

Chapter Eight

Queen Lirelpeset wearily returned to the apartments that she occupied high in the palace tower. She had departed the cathedral during the flurry and rush following the King's pronouncement. Her excuse, that her chronic and recurring headache was too much to bear, was not feigned. She had no words, however, to convey to Mansivigan how totally debilitating the pain was to her, and how it was not strictly confined to her head. The pain travelled in dire waves upon and down her torso; cramps assailed her as she ascended the long, narrow stairways.

As she had left, she had seen the faces of some of the nobles at Mansivigan's informal reception. Amid great beakers of weak pine beer or daintily raised thimbles of stronger spirits, the partyers rollicked and chanted, whooping and guffawing. She could not have borne it a moment longer. But they had seen her departure, and their feelings toward her showed on their faces. Some of them held unkind feelings for her, and imagined, in their lurid nests of minds, that her headaches were a pretense, that her marriage was unconsummated, and that her childlessness was her own fault.

Most of those who had bade her good-night had done so with understanding, most especially the individuals of the Concordat. With them, the weakness of a woman was not a point of mirth. To her, this was yet another puzzling alien way of thought. She paused and gritted her teeth both in pain and anguish. As she had left the banquet hall, she had been followed by the unmistakable sound of roaring Sonallan laughter.

She climbed the stairs slowly, unwilling to use the elevator because of its abrupt motion that was so unsettling to her weak stomach. Chancellor Tinwamus had no such disadvantage, and thus stood before her door when she arrived.

"Lord Chancellor," she said automatically, shortening her pace and standing more carefully erect.

"Your Majesty. I need to speak to you."

"Come in, then. Please don't stay overlong."

"I would not, and indeed I may not. I will be needed back at the reception before long."

And just think of the gossip you're missing, being away as long as you already have been. Lirelpeset hoped that her face showed none of her momentary thought. Tinwamus was her closest advisor, her staunchest ally, and, as loyal as her husband, her closest friend.

"Come inside, then." She pushed open the heavy-beamed wooden door. "And sit here while I remove my hobble, which is biting into my leg." She was amused by Tinwamus' nearly comic look of pained embarrassment at her gaucherie. Even here in private, she should not speak so brazenly about her fittings. She vanished with exaggerated demureness behind a dressing-screen.

"I must come straight to the point," Tinwamus began, by no means doing so. Despite his permission to seat himself, he stood, his fingers folding and unfolding the end of his long belt. His eyes were away from the screen, his attitude dutifully protective of the Queen's modesty. "Tonight's declaration was certainly an historic one, and his Majesty did honor to his lineage in his handling of the onerous duty. He has done a great thing, and he stands unaided before the enemy."

Lirelpeset had long ago given over trying to suggest that Tinwamus speak directly to her. Since he would or could not, she had developed the habit of listening to him with half her attention, and sorting out later what he had said. "Unaided? I hardly think so. He is well advised by yourself."

Tinwamus made no response. Lirelpeset came from behind the silvered panels of the screen, a dressing-gown loose about her. Tinwamus steadfastly directed his gaze elsewhere.

Silence does not give assent. Tinwamus was a master of the silent statement, and for him not to answer a question was all the answer that Queen Lirelpeset needed.

"He did this without conferring with you?" she asked, her hands thrust deep within the soft pockets of her gown.

"He relies upon the divine wisdom that a King is ever granted."

"He's not a scholar. If he has set aside the laws by his personal decree..."

Tinwamus turned to her, although his eyes were tight closed. Worry and pain were desperately clear upon his face. "I need to know what he has planned, and what he thinks to do next. He chose not to warn me, which has always been his way with unimportant decisions, but never before now has he failed to ask me what I thought about a matter of law." Plainly he wished he dared to meet Lirelpeset's gaze, to see the mirror of his anguish and to find comfort there; he would not profane the Queen's modesty.

"You know that I know nothing about the law. How could I be of any help here?" Her head throbbed with the intensity of the moment. Clenching her hands tightly, pushing her small fists against her hips, she sought relief.

"His Majesty has one advisor closer than myself. His Majesty surely has...has... I need to know what he may have spoken of, when I have not been with you."

"Nothing. He's told me none of what he means to do. Do you think that I was less shocked than you were?"

"Maybe he has hinted to you, or given you an indication — "

Lirelpeset's control evaporated. "I don't know! He tells me nothing of his statecraft. Or do you forget that I'm not welcome in your high councils? No one has ever told me anything. 'Hide, Princess Lirelpeset, they bomb the planet.' Where was my husband then? 'Come, Queen Lirelpeset, stand straight,' as I surrender the planet, only then learning that my parents are dead, and for all I knew, my husband too. I never said a word then; I uttered only formal greetings when my Lord Mansivigan returned, and he only barely restrained himself from cuffing me for having surrendered. I love him! Has he no use for me at all? He loves me, and who denies it is a liar. But still I am only a wife to him, and a friend. I am not his confidante, nor his partner in plotting his strategies. I don't know what he intends, because he would tell me last of all people. I am only the Queen!"

Through this, Tinwamus stood unmoving, his eyes now open — for him to seem to ignore her now would be too cruel — but his gaze was downcast. He crumpled the end of his belt in his moist fist. He was helpless, but he knew Lirelpeset's stormy crisis to be of the shortlived variety.

Seeing him hearing her misery with such calm, she ground her bare heel into the carpet, spun, and darted away, deeper into the small suite of rooms, knowing that Tinwamus would never follow. No final shriek escaped her, nor flurry of sobbing. The formal old Chamberlain watched her slam the inner door closed, as satin drapes billowed in the gust of displaced air. He stood a moment longer, motionless, wondering that he was not more used to her temperament. Drawing a deep breath, he turned and walked heavily to the door back out into the cold hallways. The Queen could not tell him what she needed, and time would pass before he would be able to help her.

And all of his duty and love compelled him to save her. She was in trouble, and his devotion would not permit him to ignore this. She must be helped, no matter what the cost. No crime — his mind shied away from the thought of insolence — no disobedience would be too great, if the Queen could be saved by it. He already carried within him the guilt of having acted contrary to Mansivigan's wishes. He had already committed crimes.

That the laws had been set aside gave him no comfort at all. The laws were establishments that would endure beyond Mansivigan's lofty pronouncement. Tinwamus wondered, again, about Mansivigan's deed. As he descended the stairs, slowly, one step at a time, his hand brushing the dressed stone wall, his worries and fears circled about him dizzyingly. Could the King proclaim that the mountains and seas be levelled and filled? Naturally not; the King was still the servant of The God. It was The God who had formed the laws, with the same care that had gone into the shaping of the world, the sun, and the stars.

And Tinwamus was seriously contemplating breaking those laws. To help the Queen, he would go even to the enemy, even to the villainous men of Archive. To relieve the Queen's suffering — he straightened at the thought — he would willingly sell his soul to the shadows.

Tomorrow he would meet with the Concordat's ambassador, Laura Murchison. And, despite his fear and his shame, he would ask her for aid.

He stopped in the middle of the stairwell and closed his eyes. Bending his head, placing his hands over his heart, he prayed. He asked The God for courage, and for forgiveness, both for himself and for Mansivigan. The laws were not to be broken lightly.

Unhappily, as always, following what he saw as his duty, as always, Tinwamus returned to the warmth and the sound of the diplomatic reception.

#

Lirelpeset crossed her bedroom and flung herself onto the huge bed. The balcony window had been left open; from far, far below, the sound of the ocean breakers battering at the cliff's base sounded as muted thunder. The room was cold, too cold, but the chill fresh air seemed to remedy her headache. She sniffed deeply, and her head cleared. She rose again, and padded about the room. Mansivigan had been conceived here; the room had been the most private bedchamber of Kings and Queens since time immemorial.

The weight of history seemed too crushingly painful to bear. She had seen her city shattered under the Concordat's heavy orbital barrage. She had surrendered her world to General Vai, when no one else in a position of authority could...or would. She had become, unwitting and unwilling, a fulcrum of history's balance.

She clutched her gown more tightly about her, and strode back out into the antechamber. Tinwamus had left. She moved around, and came to one of the three concealed doors in the room's walls. Smiling thinly, she passed it by and opened another instead. Through it stood no more than a tiny alcove, with a narrow stair, almost a ladder, jutting up into darkness. She gathered her skirts up in her hand and climbed.

At the top, she let herself out onto a circular balcony surrounding the topmost spire of the palace. It was difficult to see out over the palace grounds because of the powerful floodlamps that washed the palace with light on this festive evening. She knew that she could not be seen from below, however, because of the shadow of the thick parapet. She peered through narrow notches, and felt the hard stone cold against her cheek.

So high. The palace swooped down beneath her like an icefall, like an avalanche of beautifully shaped stone. She saw rank upon rank of bastions and keeps; she saw the terraced gardens veined with footpaths and with watercourses; she saw the outer curtain wall and its mighty gatehouses. To left and right was the ink-dark sea; she could glimpse a vague, ghostlike phosphorescence where the breakers struck the shore. She closed her eyes, and smelled the sea, salty and ripe with the rich stench of the tides. Above her, the enemy's stars were hidden by light and by high mists.

She gazed out over vast Sebascodegan city, capital of a world. Some parts of it were hidden by the hills that paralleled the shore, but she could still see much of it. It rolled away to the most distant horizon, built up avenues and boulevards, and hundreds of millions of lights. She saw points of pale yellow, and bands of whites and of pastel blues. The night was deathly still; Lirelpeset imagined that she could hear the noises of the reception so far below, but when she strained herself to listen she heard none.

Soon, however, small sounds began to assail her, sharp distant popping noises. The night suddenly seemed less friendly. She shaded her eyes with her hand, and gazed keenly over the city.

There. A tiny flash of light. It was only by chance that she had been looking in the right direction. After many long seconds, the sound arrived: a crash, sounding very much like a dropped plate, only fainter. Lirelpeset listened for more of the sounds, and heard them increase in frequency. Each seemed to arrive some twenty to thirty seconds after a small flash of light. Faint series of popping noises arose again, and these did not seem to be associated with the tiny flashes.

Sick with horror, she retreated until her back was against the solid central pillar of the balcony. She had stood by, deep below the palace in the safety of the basements, listening to such noises and seeing such sights by transmission, when the Concordat had fought its way onto her world. Now, with the breeze tossing her hair about, with the cold stone against her back and under her bare feet, she saw it and heard it again.

As she watched, unable and unwilling to tear herself away, small distant fires began to flare up. The flames were smaller and sharper than candleflames, so insignificantly tiny. The night's stillness was absolute; it was as if she alone had seen and heard. If alarms were sounded and emergency crews dispatched, she knew nothing of it. She heard only the maddening pop of distant guns.

The fires continued to spread, but there were no more flashes of light to mark explosions. After a short time, she descended the ladder and put herself to bed.

#

Chapter Nine

The clamoring voices of dozens of people swept, tide-like, around and around the curtain-hung and gem-sparkling space of the reception hall within the Palace. From the oddly sloping ceiling, thrice the height of a tall man at the west end of the elongated, octagonal room and twice as high as that at the east end, electric candelabras hung in a westward diminishing row. At the head of the room stood a darkened niche, a shadowy representation of the Sonallan's dark, unseen God. Flanking this were twin totemic icons, finely carved pillars of dark wood. The carpet was flat, but deeply cushioned, adding to the difficulty of walking through the strangely perspectived and noisily crowded room. At the eastern end of the hall, tall doors let out into the darkened gardens, now lit only by the glare that spilled forth from the interior. Around the room, in each of the other seven walls, an arch stood inset, its curtains pulled back, leading to smaller, tighter, more private rooms. Only in these latter lounges could there be found respite from the din.

"They party harder than we do, don't they?" Steldan remarked to Captain Schauband, in the refuge of the south-west lounge.

"They have to. Imagine the psychological pressures those young nobles have been under for the past several years." Schauband turned her head every now and then to look out at the main mass of the reception; Steldan was convinced that she saw dynamics, interrelations, forces, that he would be oblivious to. Humankind in the mass was the strength of Schauband's training; Steldan had been carefully schooled to see the individual. He wondered if Schauband would see the difference between Sociologist and Psychologist in the same way.

"But you're right," she said after a time. "They don't go about their celebrations in the same way we do. The music, for instance: listen to the heavy periodic drumming, with an upbeat and then a downbeat, over and over. Lament, rejoice, lament, rejoice..."

"It's somewhat removed from string quartet music, isn't it?" Steldan smiled.

Schauband was in too serious a mood for his jest. "How loudly they talk. It's as if they shout in each other's faces, just for an excuse to back away and drink another beaker of beer."

And worse beer I could never hope to suffer through, Steldan thought, but held his peace. Schauband was too deep in her analysis to enjoy his comments about the weak, aromatic, bitter, and tarry-tasting evergreen-needle beer. He sighed silently to himself and leaned forward, to join her in her observations.

"They seem happy enough," he said after a time. "I can't blame them. For the first time in four years their planet is theirs again."

Schauband glanced at him oddly. "Do you see them as happy? I see more tension out there than anything else. I called them young nobles with a point. Look at them. The average age out there is twenty-four or so, and a good many of them are around twenty-two. They're the new ruling class, and they don't know how to begin."

Steldan looked again, trying to feel instinctively the behavior patterns that Schauband saw through her training. "They're drinking heavily, and yes, they are young. Their parents — their fathers at least — are all dead from Binary."

"And their mothers don't know a single thing about statecraft, nor would they be listened to if they did." Schauband was more philosophical about the different roles of the Sonallan sexes than Murchison had been, earlier. She was more accepting of it than Steldan was, as well. As a Sociologist, she'd seen cultural adaptations far more alien than anything the Sonallans were likely to dredge up.

"By their laws, the widows don't inherit the noble titles," Steldan observed, "at least not when there is a surviving male offspring of legal age."

"Or an offspring younger than legal age. With the death of a baron, his infant son would be the new baron, and the widowed mother merely the regent. And the real power would go to an uncle or a cousin until the child came of age at fifteen." Schauband paused. "I still don't see what Mansivigan hoped to gain by setting that law aside."

Steldan was startled by the notion. "Do you think that's what his motivation was?"

"What else? Oh, but you're right, it wouldn't be. He wants these younger nobles left in charge. They're more malleable, more responsive to his charismatic leadership. Why, then, did he set aside the laws?"

"I don't know." Steldan looked again out at the reception hall, hearing the jarring thud of the heavy, repetitious music. "Ambassador Murchison has been too busy circulating, memorizing new names, for me to get a word in with her. I'm not sure that she knows either."

"I'll do some research, tomorrow, down in their library here. It's a huge place, in a sheltered basement below the Palace. I'll be allowed in; I was given a safe-conduct by one of the Chamberlains. Maybe I can find what his purpose was."

"While you're there," Steldan suggested, "find out how their laws differ from our occupation edicts. Compare the two, and maybe run a computer correlation check. There may be a point that Mansivigan sees as vital, but which we've all overlooked."

"Certainly. It must be subtle, though, for none of us to have seen it."

She let her voice trail off into silence. Not long afterwards, Ambassador Murchison strayed into their field of vision through the arched doorway. She seemed to be looking for someone, and in any case Steldan felt it to be time he made another sally into the din.

Murchison spotted him as he emerged, squinting, into the harsher light. "Commodore?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Come along, and be visible. Everyone here assumes you to be General Vai's lackey, and they want to meet you so they can feel morally superior." The people nearest her in the swirling crowd heard the offhand pronouncement, and some of the Sonallans among them chose to bare their teeth in harsh, blunt laughter. Steldan understood, without knowing why, that Murchison was once again angry with him.

They made a long, slow circuit of the room, strolling in among the nobles in closely linked parallel paths. Murchison was always just near enough to Steldan to be associated with him, while engaging in separate conversations. Steldan decided that Murchison was more tactful and diplomatically skillful when dealing with her enemies than with her allies. This reassured him, and made bearable the scarcely discernable fact that she was monitoring his conversations with an eye to repairing any damage he might do with an ill-chosen word or phrase.

Of King Mansivigan there was no sign, and Steldan was just as happy. There was no doubt but that the man had a sharper conversational rapier than Steldan's.

He encountered the vast dignity of Chancellor Tinwamus, and exchanged a few pleasantries. When an eddy in the currents and tides of the reception spun them apart, Steldan was left with an impression of the man as bland, dull, and hopelessly gossipy. Steldan resolved to keep an eye on him, for he seemed certain to be the type who would have an ear at every door.

Murchison wheeled in from an excursion to an outer orbit, in the tow of a thick, dark, jovial-appearing Sonallan whose long, deep-black hair hung divided into twin braids that lay in front of his shoulders and down his chest. The man's deep-set eyes, his thin pinched nose and lips, his high forehead and wide, nutcracker grin all bore the mark of a man whose dealings are fundamentally based on good-natured insincerity. Steldan recognized the man as belonging to the 'cheerful boor' class of individual, the kind of man that Steldan had once heard characterized as a 'black hole of conversation.' Once you fell into the grip of his longwindedness, there was no escape.

The man, evidently a noble and very plainly well-to-do, thrust a huge hand forward to engulf Steldan's own. Since no Sonallan man would be introduced to another man by a woman of whatever rank, he introduced himself, elbowing Ambassador Murchison away without a second thought. Steldan looked at her with a brief helplessness showing in his face, but she had already gone on.

"I'm Fanesivus, Duke of Owlenj. Bah! Shake hands with me, don't just...and you're a policeman! I won't ask you what you think of our planet, because it's not what it was before you bombed it." His voice dropping almost to a whisper, he went on without pausing, "I heard about what happened out at the spaceport this afternoon. Not usual. I don't want you to think that I approve." Boomingly: "Taller than I am! I was told that you men of Archive were minuscule."

"On the average — " Steldan began.

"Ha!" Fanesivus thundered. "The sort of answer I'd expect from a bureaucrat, not from a sailor. 'Steldan' is it? And a Commodore? I won't have it. 'On the average,' my leg." He then proceeded to upset Steldan's judgement of him, by reducing his voice to a normal speaking tone, and by addressing him sensibly.

"I will ask you. I will. What do you think of our world?"

"I like it," Steldan answered honestly. "I've never visited a world whose climate is so much like home."

Fanesivus nodded. "I've heard the same from others. You can eat our food, and we can eat yours. Air, water, I don't know what all else. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

"Many things. It means that we're in competition for the same worlds that lie between us, for purposes of colonization. More importantly, though, our similar worlds have made us similar, perhaps too much so."

Fanesivus heard him out. "Too much alike. That's part of it, maybe the heart. I'm told that men and women between our races cannot have children — " he leaned forward and breathed in Steldan's ear " — although they know how to try, eh?" Straightening, he laughed boomingly. Steldan was glad for the echoing background music, which at the moment sounded like a drum soloist's berserk fantasy; no one had given Fanesivus' outburst the slightest attention.

"Oh, what a thought," Fanesivus said at last, wiping tears of laughter from his cheeks. "Ah, but I've gone and offended you now, eh? Well, one way to make amends..." He moved off, cutting a path through the party that ebbed and flowed around them; Steldan, although reluctant, made to follow. In a moment they fetched up hard against a small table that bore pastries, sweet-meats, and several dozen beakers of weak solvent-tasting beer. Fanesivus grabbed up two, handed one to Steldan, and then dropped his fist back to the table to scoop up an immense handful of sweets. Around them, multicolored hues of nobles in decorative costumes wove in a dance-like pattern, from the low end of the room to the high, and back.

"You probably don't see what I'm getting at. We have similar needs, your people and mine. We have things you need, and you have things we need. Before the war — " he spoke the last word with a low, guilty-sounding voice " — we had trade going, and other exchanges." With the mention of the war his manner stiffened, a sudden reticence coming over him.

"The war is over," Steldan said gently. "And there will be an attaché named to look into trade." Fanesivus brightened, looking once again almost cheerful. Steldan continued, carefully. "In fact, the only things we cannot import from you are your politics and your religion." He watched carefully as Fanesivus frowned, waving his hand as if setting aside the topic of religion, yet in no way dismissing it.

"We will have an ambassador recognized on your home-world of Archive?"

"If Mansivigan chooses to send one, I'd imagine he would be received and recognized."

"So," Fanesivus said gustily, his braids moving as he worked his shoulders back and forth, stretching like a cat, "we'll be able to send commercial attachés of our own, and then, in a few years, maybe something comfortable will have been started."

"Again, depending on Mansivigan's final decree. This suspension of the laws, frankly, has me worried."

"Ho! Just the opposite, I'd say. You should be relieved, just as I am. It means freedom, of a sort. You ought to understand. But I'm leaving now. I have people to talk to, and dinner to eat." He stalked off, moving through the still-vibrant crowd of nobles that stepped aside to leave a path for him. Rank has its privileges, nobility has more, and his blustering manner and his girth brought him more yet.

Freedom? Steldan thought. Very handy to a merchantly entrepreneur, as Fanesivus would seem to be. But that still wasn't the solution; the Sonallan worlds had never developed laws against merchant princes, the way the Concordat had. Mansivigan's planning still escaped him.

With Fanesivus gone, Murchison deigned to return. Steldan had to admit to himself that in this crowded, confused gathering her guidance was very helpful.

"Come along, Commodore. You've met nearly everyone of importance. Give me a few more minutes of your time, and then you can go back and be insular with your Navy friends." Her bright smile took the sting out of the remark. It was evident that she was in her element. Not even the pointed snubs that her sex had earned her could take away her gregarious enjoyment of a lively reception and spirited conversation.

"Whom have I overlooked?"

"Those three. They're holding somewhat apart. Pirasnah, his sister Canpenou, and the yellow-haired one whose name escapes me."

With only scant diversion along the path, they soon arrived at where the three stood.

"Greetings again," Murchison said, somewhat coolly. "I've brought you the man who will be enforcing order, now that General Vai has stepped down." Steldan had had more propitious introductions.

"One uniform exchanged for another," Pirasnah suggested, poison in his voice. "The clothing changes, but the man within is the same."

"This man in uniform is Commodore Athalos Steldan," Murchison said, a light irony in her voice. "You won't like him."

"Be off with you," Pirasnah said pointedly to Murchison. "You, stay." Steldan, feeling much like a shuttlecock, stayed, while Murchison departed airily.

"Do you speak, or are you foam-filled and plastic-covered the way your nose-in-the-air General was?"

"I've been known to speak, and even to hold opinions. You don't impress me as being very friendly."

"I'm only friendly to people who are worth-while."

Steldan would have taken this as an excuse to leave, and perhaps follow Murchison. He hadn't met the other two here, however, and their faces seemed slightly — only slightly — more open.

"You must be Canpenou," Steldan began, putting a brave face on what he expected would be a spurned advance.

"Sir," she replied, straightforwardly neutral. It was an improvement, anyway.

"And you, sir?"

"This is Orenatha," put in Canpenou.

"Do you, also, speak?" Steldan asked.

At that, Orenatha's grin overmastered him, and flashed over his face openly, happily. The correct, if icy, civility that Steldan showed them, when they had tried to have him killed, was too perfectly ironic. He found himself secretly glad that Steldan had lived.

"We heard about the landing difficulties you had at the spaceport," he said, still grinning. "Is that your usual manner of setting down?"

Pirasnah looked away; Canpenou touched Orenatha's sleeve in silent warning. Orenatha watched Steldan's face, waiting for his reaction.

Steldan, who had seen more in their reactions than he let on, said simply, "Concordat landing shuttles are well-designed. Considering the timing of the accidental power outage, I'd say we were not miraculously lucky." The innacuracies slid into his simple statement almost of their own accord; he'd been an interrogator for so long that telling a straight story would have required a conscious effort.

Pirasnah turned back, a haughty expression hiding his inward unease. "I would have said that I wish you had died, but I've reconsidered. Another would have been sent, and General Vai would have run things in the meantime. So I guess I'm glad that you lived."

Canpenou tried to mend the rift that Pirasnah was broadening. "I'm very glad that none of the passengers died in that crash. The God saved you, His mercy being immeasurable."

Steldan's gaze never left her face, but he was able to see the guilty expressions that her two companions struggled to overcome. "The pilot died in the landing," he said, as gently as he could.

"His due for not believing in The God." Pirasnah's barb was double-edged, for while Orenatha smiled maddeningly, Canpenou looked up into Steldan's eyes, searching for the truth there.

"Is that true? That no one in your Concordat believes?" It seemed an idea too senseless to be true. "Everyone, everywhere, has to believe, or it all means nothing."

Steldan met her gaze helplessly. What answer could he give her? Archive had once had its own gods, which had been demoted, one by one, reduced to empty myth by the grim doctrinal revolutions of seven centuries past. Canpenou's face slowly hardened, her expression shifting from curiosity to mild shock to resentful disdain.

Orenatha tossed in a quip, banter that held a point. "Ask him if he has a soul."

"Do you?"

Again, Steldan was at a loss. Gamely, he tried to discuss the matter rationally. "I don't know. No one has ever explained to me how I should go about looking for it."

"Clever animals," Pirasnah smirked. "Animals without souls." Languidly, with cool malevolence, he concluded. "That explains a great deal, wouldn't you confess?"

There was nothing to be gained here. Steldan bowed briskly, and took his leave. Seldom had he felt quite so helpless, reduced to a wordless, if composed, object of ridicule by three angry youths nearly half his age. No responses would have served him, however; the word-fighter in him had been left impotent by the delicacy of the circumstances.

#

Chapter Ten

In the gardens, where the sounds of the reception were no more than a soft background chiming, and where comfortable darkness provided a secure retreat, Mansivigan-Okemo, King of the Sonallans, sat, drooped, with his legs crossed. About him hung trailers from overarching vines, their green nearly black in the darkness. He slumped upon a low stone wall, almost hidden by the greenery. His ceremonial uniform had begun to chafe him already, and he grew more and more tired as the time passed. Certainly he should be inside, performing his duty. It could hardly be called a reception if he failed to appear to receive them.

Thinking about it only wearied him the further. He could stand, and make a grand entrance; all eyes would swing to the door through which he strolled. And then the long line would form, that line of idiot faces, to each one of which he must attach a name. The reception line always looked the longer in the false perspective of that slant-ceilinged room. He wondered for a moment if the architect had been deliberately malevolent, or merely stupid.

He had no choice. He could leave, run to his apartments as Lirelpeset had earlier, the way he himself had, ducking out into these gardens for a moment of fresh air, and then letting that moment stretch into thirty long, lazy minutes. But he had no choice.

He rose to his feet, his calves protesting within his too-tight boots. I've let pain help me look Kingly too damned many times, he thought. Lengthening his stride, he came along the garden paths, grimly toward his duty.

Those nobles lounging just outside the doorway were the first to see him, the first to bow. One darted inside to speak a few quiet words; by the time Mansivigan arrived at the doorway-arch, all eyes were prepared for him.

He granted the people a tight smile. All present smiled back. And there, against the walls, the line was indeed forming. Is it required that it be this tedious? Did my father hate it as much as I've come to?

One thing immediately surfaced to amuse him: no one had quite the notion of where in the line Ambassador Murchison should stand. Between the Sonallan subjects, the natural order of the nobles' titles afforded them instant recognition of one another's status. The ambassador, he noted, was among the first to recognize that the difficulty existed; Fanesivus was equally astute, and moved backward half a step to leave her space preceding him. She was, of course, the only woman in the leading half of the line.

It went well, Mansivigan had to admit. He had put on his public face, giving each noble in turn the proper responses to the formal utterings of congratulations. Any earlier doubts they may have had about the question of the laws were now dispelled by the warmth and assurance that he, their King, radiated. One by one they came to him, and one by one they wandered away confident, their hope renewed.

Laura Murchison arrived, bowed slightly. "Your Majesty. Congratulations."

"Thank you, Ambassador. I assume you've spoken with my Chancellor Tinwamus?"

"Yes, I have." Murchison smiled. "But only briefly."

"He will be the man with whom you will have most of your dealings. He carries my signet. Naturally, we'll talk privately, you and I, at some length I should hope, before anything final gets thrown together." His smile was disarming.

Murchison started to move along. "One moment," he said, bringing her up short.

"Yes? Your Majesty?"

"How is it that one of you has finally learned how to address me?"

Murchison's face was guilelessly blank. "It is now your planet. Since we no longer have Concordat rules that are directly applicable, I'm free to follow tradition. Your tradition, your Majesty."

Mansivigan nodded very slightly, and let her pass. He shook his head, marvelling to himself at the woman's depth, then recalled himself. Next in line was Fanesivus. The hefty handshake they exchanged was heartfelt, and Mansivigan was with a true friend for the first time in the long, long evening.

"Well, it seems I have a King again," Fanesivus harrumphed. Then his face relaxed into an honest expression of warmth. "Some of us feel that we were never without one."

"For a few weeks, remember, you had a Queen. Lirelpeset's name must be recorded as the interim ruler of all the Sonallans."

"I'm glad you returned alive, your Majesty."

"I, also," Mansivigan answered drily.

"And did you mean it about suspending all the laws?"

"I did, Fanesivus."

"Ha! That means I'm free to do something that I've wanted to do for years." He put his fist into his palm significantly, grinning wickedly at his King.

"And what might that be?" Mansivigan made no move to cover himself.

"Invest! You've set aside the laws that would impede off-planet trade. And that was a good market once, so it won't take long for me to build it up again."

Mansivigan nodded slowly. "That is one of the effects of my decree. I wish you the best of luck. I doubt that the static, over-regulated Concordat markets can withstand you."

"Thank you, your Majesty." Fanesivus passed his King, making directly for the portion of the room where the party was reassembling itself, individual by individual.

The long line was far, far from exhausted; the eager nobles supplanted one another before him like long days upon the calendar, long seasonal cycles over the globe.

Beyond them came the individuals of the Concordat, some haughty, some merely neutral. Each of them regarded him as if he were only a man; none seemed willing to see that he was a King, and beyond men. They stumbled over themselves to get past him without a desperate faux pas, and by and large they succeeded.

One face was missing, and it was a mild surprise to him to realize that it was of a man he'd have liked to have met. "Where is Commodore Steldan?" he asked softly, bending to question a runner.

"He was called away, Sire. He promised that he would return swiftly."

Mansivigan nodded. He turned toward a table where refreshments stood, but was recalled. He looked up, craning his long neck for a better view. Steldan, stiff in his harsh tunic, burst through the door in the company of four Concordat Marines. A swiftly-resolved tangle of formalities stalled him at the door. An altercation was avoided by mutual restraint, yet Steldan's worry and haste could not be mistaken.

Mansivigan watched, as Steldan, oblivious to the King's injured dignity, spoke hurriedly to Ambassador Murchison, then to his aide, Captain Schauband.

Eventually, the entreaties of the runners and the hall-wards could be heeded; Steldan, his face set in an unreadable mask, belatedly approached Mansivigan.

Mansivigan waited.

"Sir," Steldan spoke, his voice tight, his form of address more military than diplomatic. "In the section of the city where we have our offices and headquarters, there have been shootings and fire-bombings." His gaze squarely met Mansivigan's as he reported. "There was sniping; there are casualties. I have eight dead Marines. You have twenty-two dead citizens, shot while performing acts of war in civilian costume."

Mansivigan held his face perfectly straight as he responded. "Is it of any issue what they wore when they fought you?"

"It is a term of the rules of war that combatants be identified by military uniform." Steldan's eyes widened momentarily as he anticipated Mansivigan's next words.

"On my world, at this time, there are no laws." He said this with a cool, wooden neutrality.

Steldan shook his head. "We have established a safe perimeter, and sounded a recall. We've extinguished the fires in our zone. Patrols are out, with orders to capture, to kill only if necessary in self-defense."

"Have you taken prisoners, Commodore?"

"A few."

Mansivigan lifted his head, looked over the now-silent crowd, and beckoned to Murchison. She drove through the press with an undignified hurry.

"Yes, your Majesty?"

"You will begin tomorrow, negotiating with Tinwamus for the release of my citizens who became — ahem — overly boisterous in the celebration of our planet's newly-regained independence." He smiled then, a thin, weak smile, but an honest attempt to lighten the mood.

Steldan glanced at Murchison, and nodded his agreement at the unspoken message she telegraphed to him. Now was not the time to suggest anything to contradict the King's interpretation of the evening's events.

"I must depart," Steldan said evenly. "It is in the interest of peace that I personally oversee affairs out there."

Mansivigan waved his hand languidly, dismissing Steldan.

For the next few hours the King struggled to keep his expression even, his brow unclouded. Bit by bit, as the evening passed, he learned of the extent of the action. It was substantial.

"Fires are still burning in Oconda district," a runner informed him, speaking in a low, careful voice. "Surrounding districts are without power or water. The Concordat's reserved areas and facilities were hardest hit, and damage is substantial."

"See that they are given new quarters," Mansivigan instructed. "Assist them in any organizational way you can." There seemed to be an emphasis on the word "organizational."

"Yes, Sire." The runner fled, darted through the door-arch into the Palace, and was gone. Another took his place.

"Sporadic shooting continues in Oconda district," he took up without a pause.

Mansivigan waved him to silence. The reception had nearly faded away, with only the most tireless Sonallan nobles and Concordat representatives still maintaining a quiet presence. The room reeked of spilled beer and of crowded humanity.

"No more messages tonight," he said at last. "Nobles, guests, I bid each of you good night." He returned the salutes and the good-wishes with polite aplomb, and departed through the garden arch, the way he had arrived earlier in the evening. His day, alas, was not yet done.

#

Steldan surveyed the wreckage-littered streets surrounding the partially-gutted four-story building that had been the Concordat's Embassy and administrative office building. The streets were piled with chill foam; already frost began to form, and tiny icicles grew downward, only to melt in the warmth of the night. Emergency vehicles, all identified with a white totemistic emblem, swooped or hovered. Concordat Marines in full battle armor patrolled in fire-team strength, maintaining an unnecessary cordon. The Sonallan men who had risen with guns in their hands had been driven back, and had promptly scattered.

The building was a complete loss, as were all of the records kept there. Steldan, as a files officer, stood saddened at their destruction.

He looked up with a start at the sound of distant gunfire, punctuated with the occasional flat burst of free flight missiles and hand-explosives. General Vai was out there somewhere, overseeing this new phase of the unexpected resistance.

Steldan shook his head, and bent to his duty. A nearby house was seized, its occupants evicted, and the rooms made into a makeshift field first-aid station until medical evacuation teams could remove the wounded to the city's hospitals. Steldan saw to it that Sonallan wounded were given high priority for medical attention.

One medic, hearing this order for the first time, balked, but was persuaded to obey after receiving one of Steldan's sternest glares. "Diplomatic priority," he said, making it clear that it wasn't what he'd have ordered if left to his own policies.

"Righty-ho, sir," the man retorted, with the freedom that only battlefield medics enjoy. "More people to quiz on the morrow, I guess."

Steldan prodded him back to work. "Just save lives, why don't you?" But he managed to keep his tone light.

"Yes, sir." The medic couldn't resist the last word, however. "Don't put the casualties to torture for a couple of days, okay?"

Spreading his hands in mock-helplessness, Steldan went back out onto the streets. He had been thoroughly powerless for the entire evening. For the duration of the party and the reception he had been led, reviled, and outmaneuvered. The riots, which he should have predicted, had taken him by surprise. As an intelligence operative, he had proven himself unworthy, he scolded himself with cruel honesty.

Only one thing, one small thing, had surfaced to make the evening worthwhile: he now knew to watch — and watch closely — the three young nobles led by the saturnine Pirasnah.

#

The reception was over, and the hall and anterooms stood empty and dark. A grey light crept slowly over the gardens, touching to silver the quivering leaves of the well-tended plantings. Mansivigan felt that he should be utterly drained, and yet he had more vitality now than at any time in the past several days. A slight grainy sensation behind his eyes served to remind him of his hours of effort, and within his boots, his legs were clammy, disposed to cramp. He watched the morning-light slowly growing; he was surely alone.

But there, striding the garden paths as if unaware of his King's presence, Mataconet prowled, bent forward with his hands clasped behind his back.

Mansivigan had no choice, although he toyed for a moment with the thought of simply ignoring the young Duke. But he could hardly afford to refuse him now. He lowered his brows, and, very solemnly, beckoned. Mataconent smiled, a thin, tolerant smile.

"Your Majesty?" Mataconet's bean-pole slenderness was even more pronounced than the King's. His round head and round face seemed heavy, out of proportion to what his tiny neck could support. A bland, almost bored expression covered his face; short brown hair and a thin fringe beard ringed his flat, pleasant features.

"Mataconet, I think you should know something."

Mataconet squinted, wondering if his King would dare to reprimand him, even in private. "Yes, sire?"

"Sit down." Mansivigan's word was still law. Mataconet sat upon a chill marble bench, and Mansivigan sat beside him.

"My legs are killing me," he said off-handedly to the prim Duke, Lord Portmaster of the world. "If I'd had to stand even a minute longer, I might not have been able to bear the pain."

"Yes, sire." Mataconet spoke mildly.

"And there you were," Mansivigan continued, "with your legs like limber stilts. Was I supposed to wait for you to sit, while you were waiting for me to sit? This 'regal dignity' guff can go rot."

"Yes, sire."

"Mataconet, you stuffed muffin," the King scolded his subject good-naturedly. "You've known me now for — what? — eleven years? Have you nothing to say to me but 'Yes, sire?' Show me some companionable warmth."

"That was all burned out of me, sire," Mataconet said softly, his face wooden, "when the alien enemy tried to incinerate us."

Mansivigan took a deep breath. "Very well. If you don't want to speak to me as a friend ought to, then I'll accept you as a subject." He looked sidelong at the younger man. "Did you arrange the shooting and burning that started tonight?"

Mataconet refused to meet his gaze. "There are many men other than myself with reason to hate the invading enemy."

"Their invasion is over," Mansivigan said softly. "Our world is our own again."

"Is it?"

The King was unable to respond immediately. What could he say?

Mataconet spoke on, in a voice low and only barely under control. "They have not paid for their crimes. They slew the King, your father. They did to my own father — well, you know what happened to him. And our planet...our racial homeworld, our wellspring, our spiritual soul..." His voice had been rising; he clamped an iron control over his emotions.

A brief time passed in silence. "Have you been taking actions against them?" Mansivigan asked.

"Yes."

"Will you stop?"

"Will you command me?"

"That would require the convention of a court of chivalry, which I am not prepared to call." Mansivigan breathed deeply, and spoke with earnest appeal. "Won't you give in? Setting fires, shooting soldiers, wrecking shuttles — "

"Don't accuse me of that," Mataconet said dangerously.

"Very well. None of those actions gains our side anything at all. And there are some delicate negotiations yet to be finalized."

"Indeed?" Mataconet threw Mansivigan a look of keen interest. "Name them."

"I cannot."

Mataconent stood, and regarded his King through slitted eyes. "Your duty is your own. I, too, am responsible to a higher calling."

"Mataconet! I am your King!"

"Perhaps you are." Mataconet looked at Mansivigan for a long while. Finally Mansivigan looked away. Mataconet smiled, and strolled away through the damp paths and high, glittering hedges of the morning-struck garden.

Alone, forlorn, Mansivigan-Okemo, King of the Sonallans, sat on the cold bench, exhausted, undone at last by the emotion of the evening and the pressure of the night. Overhead, the clouds shifted, imperceptibly, turning from blue and silver into striated puffs of red and golden glory. Here, below, in the mortal garden, Mansivigan pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, and rotated his shoulders for the crackling pain of it, keeping him awake. He was more weary than he'd imagined.

And what now? he sighed. If I've overlooked the way that Duke Mataconet would react, what else have I failed to prepare for? My plan, my very simple plan; has it gone awry already?

He walked off, the end of the long, hellish day and night now in sight. His steps were tired, but even now his pride showed in his erect bearing, and his head was held high.

#

Chapter Eleven

Captain Schauband dashed forward into the night, ducking low, her bulky, broad-muzzled gun held at arm's length for balance. Three Marines paced her, one ahead in the lead, two following at a supporting distance. Separated always by a few meters of safe space, they nevertheless dropped into cover at the same instant she did. The street extended away before her in darkness; the distant sound of gunshots echoed from all directions, compassing her about. As she paused, crouched low behind the overturned wreck of an air-car, her eyes and mind sketched in the fluid details of the fighting. She squinted, and peered up the street, and once raised her gun at a tiny, half-seen motion. A second fire-team passed by then, rushing pell-mell, darting and dodging, yet moving together in trained unison.

A brief drone in rising pitch gave her only enough time to duck before a free-flight-missile blasted overhead. Detritus rained down slowly: broken glass, a small shard of casing: a smouldering tag-end of heavy insulating fabric. Schauband waited for a moment, then jumped out into the street to keep up her command team's part of the leapfrog advance.

There would likely be no contact with the enemy, she knew. The hit-and-run Sonallan strikers had too much respect — fear — for the Concordat Marines and their heavy weapons. The battles that had continued all night were shadow games, where the movements were controlled by the Concordat, but the results were not.

Schauband found it all maddening. She and her forces would dash forward, to rout a group of gunmen. Scattering, the foe would dissolve, dropping into the tall brick-and-stone houses lining the streets here. House-to-house searches could never turn up anyone suspicious enough to warrant arrest. Everyone had his alibi, and the householders willingly covered for the raiders in their midst. Scant love for the Concordat could be found on a night when gunfire resounded.

And later, as the Marines retreated back to their stable perimeters, they would be shadowed by gun-wielding men, extremists all, whose expertise was lacking but whose courage knew no bounds. Schauband gritted her teeth, and maintained the advance. There was still a chance — there was always a chance — that some incautious Sonallan raiding-man would tarry a moment too long.

"Let's go," she muttered to herself, dropping into an alleymouth, the next spot of cover. Her team ranged ahead and behind. "This is getting dangerous," she snarled in a low, frustrated voice. "We can't let ourselves be trapped into a routine, or they'll be on to us."

Her command team relayman was Kelly 'Mag' Liddell, a brash young woman who wielded a huge Magnetic Accelerator Rifle. She caught up with Schauband, in time to overhear her remarks. Responding without ceasing her careful lookout, Mag commented sourly. "They're already on to us. During the war we could use orbital tactical spotting."

Shauband raised her forehead over the level of a low concrete wall and peered about alertly. The darkness shrouding the battleground was relieved by the background glow of the city's lights. "We'll do this the old-fashioned way," she said softly. Ignoring Mag's feral grin, she reached up and pressed a switch on her helmet-radio.

"Schauband to all." Microphones on every soldier's helmet carried her words. "Diverge. Command Team, follow me down the alley. Team B, keep going." Confirmations came in one by one.

She led off, dashing along the length of the alley. Her heavy boots clattered over unseen debris fouling the rough floor. A rise of two steps at the alley's midway turning nearly tripped her, and she heard her team stumbling over it in her path. No momentum was lost; the team burst out from the far end into another high-built street and fanned out for action.

The hastily-conceived maneuver paid off; a body of eight or nine Sonallan irregulars had only just emerged from cover, preparing to test the Concordat's defenses down this parallel street.

"Surrender!" Schauband shouted, and opened fire at the same instant, feeling obscurely guilty for not being able to wait for a response. The rules of war were being forged anew here, and the forging flame was dangerously hot. The clattering chop of rapid-fire weaponry sounded from various points, along with the nerve-straining whine of free-flight-missiles.

Behind her, her team opened fire with as many weapons as there were team-members. Mag, the young relay officer who always tended to stay nearby Schauband, knelt and leaned into the brutal recoil of the Magnetic Accelerator Rifle, firing not often, but with shots that utterly destroyed whatever they hit. Lowell Curtis, a gawky, skinny-limbed kid who always bent his head wherever he walked, as if the ceiling was oppressively low, pulled a cluster of free-flight-missiles from his belt and flipped them out underhanded. They jetted across the street and ploughed into a knot of men who had moved too slowly away from one another. Pamela 'Bravo' Shelby, Schauband's partner, a woman who could not be dissuaded from swearing blasphemously whenever she spoke, let fly with her cone rifle, doing no harm to the enemy that anyone could see, but certainly denying them time to organize a retreat or a rush. And Schauband herself, team leader, hefted her S.L.A.P. Gun and blew round after round of armor-piercing fragments into those enemies she could see. The enemy — only silhouettes in the murk — scattered or fell.

The engagement lasted only a few moments, although it seemed to take up several long minutes. Schauband was aware of the way time stretched when in battle, but she knew it would fool her again and again, and that she would never get used to it. Small explosions burst overhead and all around her; one even crashed off behind her, and staggered her a step or two farther into the street. The varietal flavors of gunfire merged into a maddening random music, which she could only compare to anvil-heavy windchimes on a hurricane-blustery day.

Free flight missiles droned, a quick-rising atonal pitch; the cone rifles of Bravo and of the Sonallan renegades coughed and sputtered. Her own S.L.A.P. gun exploded again and again with a flat clapping bang, its recoil bruising her shoulder with a long-familiar jar. And the Magnetic Accelerator Rifle cracked, not often, but very, very loudly. Its projectile could cut through a meter of brick or half that thickness of metal, and Mag was using it to deny cover to the enemy.

Schauband saw a figure dart for concealment, and shot at it. Sharp bursts of red glaring light strobe-lit the killing ground, and the darkness between seemed the blacker for it. Ringed in by gouts of flying dust kicked up by the armor-piercing fragments, the figure toppled heavily. She moved slowly forward into the street, endangering herself by scorning shelter, and accounting for more of the enemy. At one point she realized that her team was down to three, and then to two. With the realization came action; she bellowed into her helmet-microphone for support.

She hadn't finished speaking when silence descended. The Sonallans had melted away into their alleys, gates, and houses. She and Mag gathered up the other two, unable to tell, at the moment, how badly injured they were. They half-pulled, half-carried them out of the street, back to the alleymouth for safety.

"Hot," Mag muttered.

"Yes."

"Bravo's hit. Not going to live."

"She'll live," Schauband muttered.

"Nope. Betcha." Mag's voice was soft, matter-of-fact. She was crouching low, her eyes squinted, scanning the street. "I saw her hit. Hit bad."

Schauband snorted. "Did you see the wound?"

"No," Mag admitted. "But I didn't have to. People don't just topple unless they're hit bad."

"She'll live."

Mag shrugged. She knew better than to twice contradict an officer.

Booted feet clattered up the street from both ends, and a gravitic lifter swooped down from above. Suddenly the dim street was floodlit, the stark house-faces etched in sharp line and shadow. Uniforms were everywhere: Concordat Marine medics. An efficient non-com coordinated the rescue: Schauband could hear his bellowed orders, and, in counterpoint, Bravo's unending stream of vulgarities. Willing hands helped Bravo and Lowell up into the lifter, which jerked up again into the sky as if yanked away by wires.

It took Schauband a moment to realize that this was her doing, and that this highly organized troupe of experts was waiting for her further orders. Helplessly, she waved an arm. "Reform. Continue the sweep."

Away off beyond the buildings another firefight could be heard, sounding remote and unimportant in the distant darkness. That was another officer's sector, and until a radio relay came in asking for support it was no business of hers.

I don't like being shot at, she thought grimly, rediscovering this fundamental fact for perhaps the eighth time in her life.

"Up. Out." A reconstituted combat team fell into step behind her.

#

Pirasnah arrived at the scene of the shooting late, to the scorn of his fellows. But the news he bore of the King's decree and his freshness and energy in the organization of the raiding, soon revived their opinion of him.

"What we're doing is legal?" Toromoag asked of him, nearly beside himself with eager joy.

"'Legal,' Toromoag?" Pirasnah asked in his soft voice, dripping with melodramatic evil. "The word simply has no meaningful context, do you see?" He looked about him at the ring of faces, all young men, young nobles, watching him raptly. Although they crouched in a hidden belowground bunker, waiting until the Concordat's patrol had passed by the secret entrance, they bore themselves with the grace and poise of conquerors.

Wolfish grins and sly expressions were exchanged. Pirasnah's news was welcome indeed. "We're disobeying no laws, lads," Toromoag exulted, but his shouts subsided quickly when he was hushed by his friends.

"Not too much sound, eh?" Sivistaw muttered. "They're up there, searching for us, and..."

Pirasnah laughed aloud. "Well, there's no law against that, either!"

The roomful of exuberant nobles joined him in mirth. A bottle of sparkling liquor was unsealed and passed about. The hide-away soon resembled quite a jolly party.

"To the health of our most illustrious and noble King," someone cried, and the toast was repeated by all: "To the King!" Before long, hands began to grope for weapons, and the happy grins grew feral.

"Command us," Toromoag begged Pirasnah.

"No, my friend. I have another duty." He looked about the group. "Others need to hear the word of the King, and it is most fitting that I should be the bearer of the decree. But afterward, when dawn drives us to cover, bring a few of your fellows to my home, and we'll plot our course in care."

Toromoag nodded, and the nobles smiled and pulled their weapons closer to them, ascending the ladder in silent order. Pirasnah hadn't gone more than a block away into the thick gloom of the night before the sound of gunfire echoed behind him.

#

Chapter Twelve

Canpenou and Orenatha lightly strode the streets of the nobles' quarter, where the darkness was at last beginning to give way before the purple light of dawn. About them, low walls enclosed vast gardens, where tree-tops stood tall like forests entrapped. A very few people were visible, some walking, some driving slow-moving ground-cars. The people of the Concordat had long ago flown to their hotels and their barracks, in swift air-cars that silently sped low over the surface of the ground. Orenatha knew that few of them would have slept, however.

"Pirasnah is a sour, sullen man," Orenatha muttered, airing his gripe from the evening past. Despite his unhappy words, he bore a wide, happy smile.

"I don't care how surly he might be," Canpenou grumbled. "Why must he scold us, as if we were to blame for events?"

"He has only two moods," Orenatha continued. "Jolly and aloof, or moody and angry. I wonder sometimes if he might not be possessed by a spirit."

"Is that possible?"

Orenatha shrugged. "Your father and his died in battle, and was never buried on home soil. If that happened to me, I'd certainly try to sway my eldest son to remedy the injustice."

"Oh, don't speak of the battle, or of space." Canpenou urged him. "It is all too cold." She shook herself. "Pirasnah is too strong to be possessed by any spirit other than the spirit of hatred that has held him in its sway all his life."

Orenatha smiled, but the smile, as ever, came out lopsided, a sick, amused grin. Canpenou didn't see it, and Orenatha was thankful.

Two kilometers away from his estate, walking in silence, he was startled from his groggy half-asleep musings by the nearly noiseless approach of a ground car. He and Canpenou looked up to see the large, gleaming-metal form of Mataconet's vehicle, slowing as it neared them.

Mataconet. Orenatha's smile nearly left him. Mataconet would want them to go with him, and attend one of his interminable Orphans' meetings, where plans, strategems, and rank treason would rise, like mist from a marsh, poisoning the conversation.

The ground car slowed, stopped, silent and huge. Mataconet vaulted out, his rail-thin form an athletic tribute to church-coordinated gymnastics. His round face bore a calm, knowing smile that could, without a moment's notice, curl into a sneer for devastating effect.

"I'll bet you thought you were going home to bed," he said placidly, glancing back and forth between Orenatha and Canpenou without ever quite making a point of their accompanying one another.

"We're exhausted," Orenatha protested. "Where were you, last night? We'd hoped you'd attend the King's proclamation."

"Why should I have attended? I watched it, of course. Even you don't know all of the galleries overlooking the nave of the cathedral."

"So you were there?"

"When I wish to be unseen," Mataconet said softly, "no one — no one — sees me." He smiled slowly. "The ceremony was...interesting. But it was all mere form. Mansivigan-Okemo knows that. I'm sure the implications of his speech weren't lost on you."

"Nor was the news, arriving late, of street-fighting in the Oconda district."

"Good," Mataconet beamed. "You've been keeping abreast. But much more remains to be done."

"Where are we meeting this time?" Orenatha asked helplessly.

"Did I mention a meeting? Maybe I did. In any case, I've hit Toromoag for his estate. He has no family remaining, and of course all his household are off because of tomorrow's — today's! — holiday. We'll be quite alone, and able to talk in privacy."

Orenatha gave in without further struggle, and clambered awkwardly into the car. It never occurred to him to ask Canpenou's opinion, although partway along the brief drive to Toromoag's distant estate he wondered, suddenly, whether he should have had her remain behind. He stole a glance at her as she sat sunk deeply into the soft leather upholstery of the passenger couch. She had been lulled by the smooth silence of the ride; her eyes were closed in slumber. Orenatha gently pulled her close to him, and rested her head on his shoulder. For himself, he felt only a sharp-edged awareness, as one will feel when startled awake while on night-watch.

If Mataconet hates the Concordat invaders so much — if the destruction of their forces is so excruciatingly vital — why is he always so calm? So manipulative? It's as if he's only doing it for the sport. He'd seen Mataconet, long ago in their lost and innocent youth, riding to the hunt alongside then-Prince Mansivigan. He had borne the same half-wearied little smile, as if to remind everyone that hunting wild-kittens let loose from cages is a far cry from a true hunt. Did he see his leadership of a secret rebellion as similarly contrived and effete?

Men are dying, and he is giving directions. Is that not real enough? Orenatha's smile dwindled, leaving his face thoughtful and sad.

Not long thereafter, they arrived at the hilltop estate that had belonged to Toromoag's parents, and which was now solely the young noble's own. The hour was nearing ten, and from the hill's park-like top, the nearly-level rays of the sun glinted from the windows of the small mansion, or turned to gold the quivering cone-trees. To the west, the nobles' vale sloped away, still in shadow, where tall trees hid half-seen walls, towers, and terraced mansions. To the east, tainted red as one gazed into the throbbing, oblong sun, the north district of mighty Sebascodegan city lay in the sheltered coastal valley. It had been protected there from the storms blowing out of the sea, but not from the ones from the sky. Fourteen kilometers from where the three young nobles stood, at an altitude of four kilometers, one of the Concordat's warheads had burst, having penetrated the Spaceport's anti-missile defenses.

Only a few thousands had died, most sensible citizens having evacuated themselves to the emergency bases in the wilds, or taken shelter in the great underground strongholds. When they emerged, however, their city, their home, was charred away, so utterly consumed that not even fires burned to light their first long night.

From the hilltop vantage, three years of regrowth showed plainly; the Concordat occupation forces, gracious in victory, had given much in terms of real aid. Now, low parklands and squat, functional buildings sat, stunted, where once the tallest trees had been dwarfed by the airy towers and by arches that stretched into the sky. Scars of the blast still showed wherever one might look: tears and rips in the fabric of the valley.

The three on the hilltop turned from the sight that was so familiar, so alien, so hated. Mataconet noticed afresh how Toromoag's home was faded, blistered on the side facing the blast.

In four years he still hasn't repainted it. It's that kind of laxness that let the enemy's Commodore Steldan live when he should have died. He knew that he would never again trust Toromoag with any task that required attention to detail. I'll soothe his feelings, of course, as I give him the write-off. 'The foulest things, done in the fairest way, will take a man the farthest length.'

Orenatha, in the lead, tried the door. "It's locked, and no one is here."

"Shall we wait?" Mataconet asked, and bent his long legs, taking a seat upon a low section of a decorative stone wall.

"Must we wait in sight of...of that?" Canpenou's plaintive voice caused Mataconet to blink, as if he were surprised by her womanly weakness. She stretched her shaking arm toward the scarred land, the ruined city.

"I think," he said at last, "that it's best if we continually remind ourselves of what we're fighting for." He looked out over the city. "Behold it. See it as if for the first time. Remember that first dawn, when we were captives upon our own world, and first knew it." He stood between Orenatha and Canpenou, and gripped each by the shoulder. "Feel the hatred again. Feel the pain." He turned away. "This is why we fight."

Canpenou bent her head, and would not look. Orenatha looked, and his smile grew crooked.

As they waited, Orenatha and Canpenou growing drowsy and restless by turns, a swift air-car dashed overhead from behind the tall house, banked recklessly, and set down with a rush and a thump on the wide, ragged lawn. From it tumbled Toromoag, with two of his friends, Sivistaw and Neheluth. The three were as alike as puppies of one litter, and for now at least, as boisterous. As Mataconet watched, however, their innate natures manifested themselves. Sivistaw, nervous and imagining that he was successful in hiding it. Neheluth, excited, exuberant. And Toromoag himself, giving a true impersonation of the phrase 'drunk as a lord.' Doubtless he'd been driving, and if so, it was fortunate that the Concordat insisted on installing safeguard flight-governors on their imported air-cars.

Mataconet beckoned to Orenatha, who glanced sidelong at the approaching trio, and ambled across. "Yes?"

"Does that air-car belong to any of them?"

"No. It must be stolen."

"I'm glad. I wouldn't want to think that any of them would purchase from the enemy. Go hide it, would you?"

Orenatha grinned, and went around the new arrivals toward the car. Neheluth growled at him, but the other two laughed and drew toward Mataconet and Canpenou.

"Guess what we've done," Toromoag demanded. "Guess!"

Mataconet gazed at them, unmoved, his expression neutral. "You've been away, drinking."

Sivistaw widened his eyes, and Neheluth tightened his hands into ready fists, while Toromoag, amused, admitted it. "Drinking indeed! And we've earned it. We killed over twenty of the damned invading vermin."

"And sometime during the night you stole one of their air-cars," Mataconet acknowledged quietly. "Very good. Now come, and — "

"There's more."

"Indeed?"

"Ha! Best of all. You'll never guess."

Mataconet's stony silence indicated clearly that he wasn't about to indulge Toromoag in any guessing games at this time.

"Well," the drunken noble boasted, after a moment, "we took apart their car pool. We broke into their files-station — and we left it a mess, eh boys? We swiped a master key to their air-cars. We wrecked more than a dozen of them, ran them into fountains, dove them into trees... One of 'em, they'll never get, because it's flying in tight circles around the pole it's tethered to..." His voice broke, and he and his friends doubled over with drunken laughter. Mataconet watched, his face immobile, his mind working swiftly.

"We..." Toromoag continued, scarcely able to speak, "...we crashed one through the window...of their embassy staff room...up in their building...and then I had to jump, and Neheluth damned near didn't catch me...and I damned near fell the whole five floors..." He and Neheluth pounded one another with their uncontrollable mirth. Mataconet watched.

Orenatha returned, having hidden the stolen air-car. Sivistaw spun, then relaxed, as he approached. He took in the scene in an instant, seeing the three newcomers convulsed with their guilty jollity, while Canpenou and Mataconet watched, strong disapproval frank upon their faces.

"Come along indoors, you lot," he said, letting his perpetual grin work to his advantage for once. "It's going to be roasting out here not long from now. Indoors, and we'll put together something cool to drink."

Mataconet but nodded, and the three troublemakers piled all atop themselves to reach the door first. Neheluth won, showing himself to be, as always, faster and stronger, the perfect example of The God's ideal gone horribly wrong: all physique and very little intellect.

They passed through the magnificent hallway, hung with family decorations against the dark wood walls. The crests and fields represented a dim and dusty reminder of the centuries-old Sonallan grandeur. Only a careful reading of Toromoag's familial heraldry would reveal the pretentiousness of what was actually an inferior and recent lineage.

The troop skirted the main hall, and a high, well-lit chapel with many-paned windows glittering overhead. Dark furnishings were chased in gold and red with the slowly waxing and waning sunlight glancing in. Through another doorway they filed, each silent now with the memories of their own homes, which would seem equally deserted now that so many elder nobles were known never to return. They came into the kitchen, bright lit with fluorescents, the sheen of metal and of shining plastic, all glistening like the surface of moving water. Toromoag bent to a chiller, and withdrew half-a-dozen jars of dark liquid, passing them around while reserving the fifth and sixth for himself. He unsealed one of his jars and inhaled deeply of the tarry aroma of the pine beer. He knew well enough not to insult Mataconet by offering him even the mildest intoxicant, but for himself, drunk as he was, he wanted only to become drunker.

"You haven't congratulated us on our daring," he said eventually, his leader's silence having irritated him.

Mataconet gazed at him with an aloof, chill regard. "How did you neutralize the Concordat Marines who guarded the buildings you raided."

Toromoag grinned. "Now how do you think?" He made an elaborate death's-head face, and gestured broadly with his thumbs at his throat. "We killed them," he whispered in a grandiose and theatrical tone.

"And I assume you left no clues to your identity — " Mataconet began.

"None!" Sivistaw said quickly, a moment's fear thrilling through him.

"Well, then..." Mataconet smiled, although Orenatha could see the effort of the expression. "Well, then, congratulations. That should shake them up."

"Shake them up?" Toromoag blurted, incredulous. "We've hurt them! We've taken the guts out of their base. We killed five of their damned green-tunic thugs in that one raid alone!"

"They are strong, Toromoag!" Mataconet snapped. "You've hurt them in a small way. We still have a need to hurt them in a great way."

"You're the one who failed to crash the landing shuttle yesterday." Toromoag's voice and stance were a challenge hurled at his leader.

Mataconet met the challenge properly, remembering always the good of the group. "True," he murmurred. "You have succeeded, and I have failed. Your actions were well-timed and executed. What do you intend to do next?"

None spoke, all but Toromoag acknowledging Mataconet's superior ability to plan their strategy. Toromoag made as if to speak, subsiding only at the last moment, as he noticed his friends' silence.

Mataconet smiled, a calm, patronizing smile that promised each member of these militant orphans the action they craved. "As it happens, I've some ideas. We still need to destroy one of their leaders, and I think I know who."

"Steldan, of course," snorted Neheluth. "We can't let him imagine that he's proof against our attacks, can we?"

"No. Not Steldan." Mataconet looked about the group, seeing them all and judging them. Toromoag, drunk and reeking, yet stalwart in the pinch. Neheluth and Sivistaw, active and athletic, and too unimaginative to be betrayers. Orenatha and Canpenou, too wrapped up in their misguided love for each other to ever be more than peripheral members of the group. And himself: Mataconet examined himself, bluntly, realistically, aware of his flaws, but also knowing his strengths. It was no vanity to assess himself as courageous and intelligent, ideal for the leadership here.

"We are going to kill their General Matthew Vai."

"Oh!" Canpenou gasped, as he had known she would. "Why him?"

The others grinned with evil delight at the thought of assassinating the military commander of the hated and feared occupation force. "Because," Mataconet said softly, "he is a cornerstone of the foeman, and with him dead, they will be fragmented and easier to kill."

Sivistaw yawned abruptly, and each of them was suddenly aware of having been awake for the past thirty-six hours or more. Mataconet was no less tired, but had a greater stamina to rely upon. He glanced at Canpenou and Orenatha, indicating that he was now ready to take them to their homes. The three rowdies, their next task waiting for them, ambled away to find soft places to drop.

"Terror, men," Mataconet called to them in place of a farewell. "There will be deaths tomorrow. Sleep well."

Not long after, when Canpenou and Orenatha had each been delivered — and Mataconet did not miss their mutual look of warm sadness when they parted — the leader of the Orphans of the Hecatomb came to his own house, where his own father waited for him. The withered man, bent with pain, horribly belied Mataconet's claim to be the leader of the Orphans.

"Son?" called the tired man, whose face was always averted from the sky.

"It's only me," Mataconet answered shortly. "Good morning."

"What is wrong, that they never call me to come in to the Spaceport? Do they forget that I'm — I'm — " He looked down at his hands, as if surprised to see himself. "I'm the Lord Portmaster, am I not? But that can't be, for — "

Mataconet cut him off, before the pathetic thing could remember ahead to the bombardment of the planet. Some people were left orphans in that bombardment, he thought. But this thing that is my father was left alive. The other Orphans have inherited their father's titles. I inherited only the job. Mine is the responsibility, but none of the reward.

"Here, Father, look at your garden. Your garden. Aren't the morning-blossoms ready to fade? They'll be dropping soon..."

He went on for some time, softly, soothing, taking the time to reassure the mentally damaged man. He wasn't sure why he bothered. He wasn't sure why he let the man stay here in his home. He looked up at the approach of the woman whose duty it was to tend the old once-Lord Portmaster. With a deep breath and an almost warm exchange of glances, he gave him into her charge.

Surely, I have the greater grievance against the men of the alien Concordat. Death was kinder than the creeping horror that had come over his father's mind. The man had fought the invasion that ghastly night four years ago: he had wielded the great weapons and engines of Sebascodegan Spaceport. He had flung missiles into the sky, and lanceted the air with radiation beams.

But his resistance had been useless: he had watched, and his eyes were burned out, while the city around him boiled to the soft touch of the aerial fireball. He continued to watch, blinded, his face flash-burned, knowing that his wife — Mataconet's mother — had been below, and that she could not be alive.

Eyes can be regrown; skin can be salved. But his mind? I don't think anyone will ever be able to help him. For the rest of his life he will live in a world where all is peaceful, and where his garden matters most of all. But the horrors are buried only a little way below the surface. And I don't want to know what it is he dreams of.

Mataconet went into the house that should have been his, and threw himself into a deep and dreamless sleep.

#

Chapter Thirteen

The sparse daylight of Archive shone over the complex of towers housing the meeting halls of the Supreme Council of Sectors. Inside, under the high ceiling of the vast Council Chamber, the sunlight was screened away. Artificial lights, arranged to shine from all directions and be visible from none, coolly illumined the hall. Grander, taller, and more lavish than the Plenary Chamber where the Praesidium had held its earlier meeting, the Council Chamber sloped up in three great sweeps, an amphitheater under a high, angled ceiling. Toward the front, beneath the descending banks of seats, a lectern stood alone on a small stage. Batteries of floodlights fixed the speaker, bathing her in a red-gold glow.

Grand Admiral de la Noue stood just to one side of the lectern, a small figure, her red uniform jacket stiff and straight. Her white pants were tinged with a slight rose blush; her blonde hair was tinged with a faint copper sheen.

In the audience, slumped in a plush seat, delegate Andrew North watched with impatience and interest. He was a trim, spare man with a careful, observant attitude. So this, then, was the Grand Admiral, whose orders had sent out the task force that had battered his native Philomela Sector back into the circle of the Concordat's power. She was no ogre, he had to admit. He understood that it was she who was currently blocking the Sector's full readmission to Concordat membership, a decision that he could sympathize with even though it left him without a role at this meeting.

Convention was three minutes past due, and the room was less than half full.

North looked again, as two delegates rose from their seats and stepped up to the lectern. De la Noue received them, and a brief discussion ensued, out of hearing of the audience.

North compared it to the previous day's opening session: every delegate had been present and seated, to receive the full Praesidium with applause and acclaim. Delegates had risen, and, by Complex of Sectors, given welcoming and introductory speeches. The five-hour session had been a statistician's delight, with economic news predominating. But even then, a careful listener could hear the elements of dissatisfaction.

Today, the discontent was overt. Delegates were boycotting the meeting, and North found himself disturbed by this, more than he knew he ought to be.

He stood, stretched, and made his way leisurely out of the hall, seeking the places where the missing delegates were likely to be congregating.

Outside, in the wide hallways, he found people milling about in clumps, earnestly discussing their perceptions of the problems facing the meeting. He approached one group and merged into it.

"Good morning," spoke the delegate nearest him. "Has anything gotten underway?"

"Not even a quorum," North said. The group was currently involved in several cross-conversations, and North was able to give most of his attention to the lively debate.

"With de la Noue in the chair..." someone began.

"What are the legalities? Does anyone know?" Others echoed this complaint.

The delegate standing by North spoke again. "I'm not sure whether I envy her or pity her. Why are we marking time out here?"

North looked more closely at the man. "You're Grand Admiral Telford, aren't you?"

Telford smiled. "No longer. Today, I'm just the delegate from the Line Worlds." He seemed amiable and pleasant: a man whom success had diminished and whom disgrace had magnified. Balding and haggard, he stood with immense dignity, but the dignity was moderated by his good cheer and by his open wit.

"Then you're here representing the spaceports on Jewell."

"And forty billion citizens." Telford's gaze began to grow watchful, and North was quick to apologize.

"I'm Andrew North, from the Philomela Sector. After our recent drubbing, we tend to think of things in blunt terms."

"You're the provisional delegate?" Telford asked, showing more interest than North would have expected.

"Yes."

"How do you feel about readmission?" Telford had turned quite serious, and one or two others in the small cluster of delegates had also turned to listen.

"We're ready," North admitted carefully, "but we're still so dislocated from our...misadventure...that we'll need some economic protection. We'll never build ourselves up without it."

"Of course, that was the reason for the 'misadventure' in the first place, wasn't it? You felt the need for protected markets?" Telford meant the question earnestly, and was not merely poking fun at North's discomfort.

"Yes. We wanted freedom, and took our own measures to gain it. We made our bid for true independence, and were denied."

"You must have known... Yes, of course you did. The Concordat is very straightforward in its refusal to accept such measures."

"We learned," North admitted.

"How much resentment is there in your delegation at the fact that the situation was settled by military means?"

"Surprisingly little. We were defeated fairly. And the terms of the peace settlement were embarrassingly fair." Almost shyly, he added: "I was the rebellion's chief strategist."

That got him a raised eyebrow from Telford. "That's one way of minimizing resentment: put the defeated enemies in control. At least we can be sure you're competent." Whatever else he had been about to say was interrupted by the approach of an agitated group of delegates from another Complex of Sectors. North couldn't place them, but Telford obviously could.

"Watch out," he muttered, his voice conspiratorially low. "These people, whatever else they may be, are no friends of yours." His voice sank to a soft whisper. "Or of mine."

"What...?"

"They supplied the conscription to defeat your bid for independence." Telford smiled. "Members from The District. Peaceful, rich, conservative, and uppity."

North would have asked Telford whether he was referring to the delegates or to their worlds, but didn't have time. The leader of the newcomers ploughed into the midst of the group, and started speaking harshly to Telford.

"Ah, Admiral! The rumors were true! They were true, and you dismissed them yesterday." He turned to North, perhaps mistaking him for a page. "Go up to the council lounge, eighty-fourth floor, and — "

North didn't move, stunned into silence by the man's bluntness.

"Did you hear me? Go — "

"Wait, Wilson," Telford said softly. "He's a delegate, not a runner."

The newcomer stopped in the midst of an arm-waving gesture, and gave North a hard look. "Oh. Sorry." He held out a large hand, which North took. "I'm W. Frank Wilson, from The District. And you...?"

Telford introduced his companion. "This is Andrew North, from the Philomela Sector. That makes you practically neighbors."

Wilson snatched his hand back and threw North a scathing look. Telford stood nearby, however, and Wilson didn't seem willing to express his animosity any further.

"What rumor is it," Telford asked softly, "that's 'true?'"

"Big news, Telford. Vast news! Something that gives us the leverage we need to cut into the Navy's tyranny. In fact — "

"Just tell us, Wilson."

Wilson straightened, and spoke stiffly. "Former Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne is alive, a prisoner on the world of Tenh Sonallae. The scheduled confirmation today of de la Noue would be illegal."

North blinked, once, and the yellow carpeting took on a brighter tone. It felt a little like waking up. Sienne? Alive?

Wilson had control of himself now, and swiftly went on to accuse Telford. "You knew he was alive, and you knew what it means to this session. How are we supposed to ratify Admiral de la Noue's appointment to the Praesidium, if Sienne is the rightful Navy Secretary?"

"It's just a rumor, Frank," Telford said gently.

"No, it is not," Wilson said positively. "You should hear the discussion up in the council lounge. There was a definite leak from the Sonallan homeworld itself."

"A leak? You can't call a leak a responsible source of news."

"Hell I can't," Wilson stated, throwing his arms wide. "Sure, if it was an OIS leak, well, we'd discount it. But the OIS hasn't got ahold of this yet." He looked about slyly, and spoke more softly. "You just wait until they do."

Telford's own group of delegates and assistants had drifted closer, moving through the crowd that grew thicker about the two. North found himself at the center of a tightly packed cluster of delegates, all of whom were listening, while all speaking to one another. The chaotic noise was deafening; he fought to hear Telford and Wilson.

"Even if Sienne was alive, there's no reason for putting him in charge of the Navy. He's been out of touch for so long. He'd have been in a cell for nearly three years."

The delegate stepped forward, until he stood nearly breast to breast with Telford. "There's no 'putting him in charge.' He is in charge already. He can't be removed except by a unanimous vote of the other Praesidium members. Any bets on that happening?"

"Grand Admiral de la Noue was appointed to the Praesidium by a special commission — "

"And has yet to be approved. I'm not sure we should."

Telford straightened. "You don't think we should? Perhaps you see this as an easy means of gaining power for the Council at the expense of the Praesidium." He looked about him, without appearing to lift his gaze from the delegate. The mood of the watching crowd was slightly against him; he knew that better results could be obtained by subtlety than by a direct argument.

"Very well, then, sir," he continued, leaving his opponent no time to respond. "Tell me exactly what you propose. Sienne is alive. We'll accept that, for the moment. What do you do now?"

"We mustn't ratify de la Noue in office, to start with." The delegate was uneasy, being suddenly required to provide real goals and real options. "We can constitute a committee to find Sienne, and to have him rescued — "

"If the information about him has trickled as far as you, sir," Telford stated drily, "then someone will have thought of that already. What do we do?"

"We don't take it, as if we're merely a rubber-stamp body. I'm tired of the jokes on that subject." The delegate, under pressure, fell back on rhetoric. "Isn't it too much for us to bear, approving or not approving her appointment while she chairs the meeting? There's an obvious conflict of interest."

"'Said meetings — ' of the Supreme Council, that is ' — are to be chaired by a member of the Praesidium — '" Telford quoted from the First High Charter.

"'Chosen by rotation,'" the delegate finished for him. "I don't see where that means we have to do what she wishes. I say we should hand her her head, or her job, at least."

Telford's face grew grim. "You're welcome to try. In the meantime, you know how I feel about seditious language. De la Noue is a powerful and capable Admiral, and has done more good in her year in office than Sienne did in his eight."

"She's too haughty. She needs to be taken down a peg."

"Then hire an assassin and have her murdered," Telford said grandly. "Rebellion by the bullet or rebellion by the vote makes no difference at all to the history books." Turning about, Telford gripped North's forearm with some rough familiarity. They pushed their way through the milling crowd. The surrounding knot of people broke up into smaller clumps, and discussions erupted about the debate just concluded.

"Sorry about that," Telford murmurred to North, as they slowed to a stroll. They had found a comparably open area, farther away from the main Supreme Council Chamber. By a window overlooking the windswept and sunsplashed city of Archive, Telford sank wearily onto a padded bench. North joined him.

"Sorry," Telford said again, and obviously meant it. "I had to get that conversation cut off at that point, so that anything he'd say later would be tainted by the doubt I'd cast upon his loyalty." He smiled. "A dirty trick often works best."

"So you support de la Noue?"

Telford eyed him in surprise. "Of course. She's the Navy's only hope. In a lot of ways, she's better than I was."

"But when you left..."

"Under a cloud." Telford admitted it readily. "She replaced me, just as I replaced Sienne. Sienne!" He snorted. "That bumbling clod! That's just one reason among many why I support de la Noue: Sienne was a hopeless loss as an administrator."

"As a leader, he had quite some popularity," North persisted.

"Yes, he had that."

"But considering the circumstances of his loss..."

Telford cut him off with a warning expression that said, more clearly than words, "Sir, you presume." He'd obviously had more than enough of the talk about Sienne's disappearance in battle being somehow connected with him.

North backed away from the subject, although Telford's expression turned so swiftly from sternness to smiling warmth that North felt relieved of the need to apologize.

"Try not to forget that I named Admiral de la Noue my successor. I must have had some faith in her. I still do. And Sienne is a dangerous fool." A faraway look came into his eyes. "But if he is still Grand Admiral, by whatever legal quirk or loophole, then I'm being seditious..." He recalled himself.

"It is in the direct interest of the Concordat that Admiral de la Noue be ratified in her Praesidium post. You, Mr. North, are in an interestingly unique position to help her. It was she that sent the fleet in to reconquer your Philomela Outreach. If it's true that you harbor no resentment..."

"Quite true. Our economy is being restructured by the Navy, with the Commerce Secretary's direct supervision."

"Spread the word. Support her. You may think that your provisional status, with no voting rights in the Council, is a handicap. Make it an asset. The other delegates will trust you, knowing that you're not trying to bargain your vote for theirs."

"All right. I'll start with my neighboring Sector delegates, most of whom share the Outreach's loyalties, and let the idea spread."

"Don't just talk to them," Telford said, baring his teeth in mock viciousness. "Pester the hell out of them."

North smiled. "Will do." A thought came to him. "Do you suppose the session has begun yet?"

"No. Not yet. Wilson is still holding court among the boycotters. Give it some time."

"Don't you think that the absence of a quorum will be construed as a subtle dig at de la Noue's legitimacy?"

"Of course. And it isn't subtle in the least. It's painfully overt. But think how much worse it would be if she sent out bailiffs to compel attendance. No, let things go as they are, and push vigorously for the things where you can actually make a difference."

"I'll go cause some trouble, then," North said, and was off. Telford watched him thread through the streaming, strolling, talkative delegates.

#

The situation inside the Supreme Council Chamber resembled the halls outside more than any legislative sitting. There were more delegates on their feet, standing in talkative groups in the aisles, than there were in the comfortable, lecture-style seats. At the front, de la Noue had given up on waiting for things to become orderly, and instead spoke privately with the recording secretary. She looked up, however, when North entered at the head of some twenty delegates. Soon thereafter, Telford arrived with some thirty of his own. These groups fanned out and took seats in silent seriousness. De la Noue didn't need to take a head-count; a quorum had been constituted. She strode decisively to the lectern and stood her post with military dignity.

Sensing which way the wind blew, the delegates sorted themselves out, ambling by twos and by tens to their assigned seats. North was surprised, a little, to see how few people there actually were, even when the Council was assembled. One hundred and forty delegates, out of the one hundred and seventy seven total, and that was it, although standing and talking, they had seemed like an army.

De la Noue convened the session, well over an hour late.

#

Chapter Fourteen

Near-darkness. What scant light there was came from small globes half set into the ceiling of the one room. A vast gilded tapestry covered one wall, leaving the others only bare, raw stone. The stone floor was partly covered by a scuffed carpet of rich weave. A bed, a chair, a trunk, and a washstand and chamberpot stood neatly against the walls. There was only one door, and it was locked. In the canopied bed, with the curtains drawn shut, an old man slept.

Thin and gaunt and pale, he thrashed about, sleeping uneasily. After a time, moving to the urging of his internal clock, he rolled over, swung his legs over the edge of the bed, and stood. He was naked: skinny, bony, knock-kneed, and naked.

He yawned hugely, scratched himself all over, and began to stretch. His eyes, surprisingly bright golden eyes, finally opened fully; he looked about the room with weary familiarity. From the trunk he pulled a tunic and a pair of pants, some linens and two soft shoes. He was dressed in only instants.

He padded across to the chair and sat.

The floor beneath him was of one solid mass of stone, carved from the living monolith of the cliff. Although it appeared to be of closely-joined paving blocks, he had peered closely at them over the years, and had at last concluded that the cracks between them were only carven grooves. The walls were more rough-hewn, and adze-marks and pick-scrapes still showed. His eye wandered across these, and he was able to pick out details from memory, just as he had once been able to decipher the readouts of a shipboard battle display.

He sighed, stood, and began a morning series of calisthenics. His body was still good for a few more years, he decided, and he pushed himself to excercise for a few more minutes than was usual.

At last, at the very moment he expected it, there was a brief tap at the door.

"Come in," he called. His voice was clear, somewhat high, but with deep overtones that spoke of strong lungs. He ran his hand quickly through his thick white hair.

The door eased open. A bluff, blunt man in the King's livery bustled in bearing a tray of food. At his hip was a devastatingly sharp blade, nearly as big as a machete. "Breakfast, sir," he said jovially, and puttered about, laying out the service.

"I see a glass of wine," the old man said, peering over the blunt man's shoulder.

"Lor' yes, sir, that you do. On account of the celebration bein' held today."

"I was informed of no celebration."

"Hm? No, I guess you wasn't, sir."

"It isn't the Lady-day; that was five weeks ago. And unless my memory plays me quite false, the Sea-feast is two weeks into the future."

Oh, right you are sir. In fact — "

"But it couldn't have been the Sea-feast in any case," the old man said smilingly, pointing to the meal of eggs in their shells, frybreads, broadbean soup, and melon wedges. "No fish; no sea-cabbage."

"No, sir. Not for two weeks, as you said, sir." Although they spoke with genuine warmth, the relationship between the two men could not be mistaken: they were prisoner and warder.

"In which case," the old man said, sitting down to eat while the blunt man stepped back to watch, "the celebration must be either unique or unseasonal."

"Right, sir. I'll tell you, sir, it's — "

"Don't tell me. I'm keen to guess."

The warder looked across at the prisoner with an apologetic smile on his broad face. "Well, sir, I was merely goin' to say that I'm no-wise permitted to tell you, sir, indeed."

The old man set down his utensils and regarded the blunt man. "I'm not to know?"

"That's so, sir."

The old man smiled thinly. "Then it doesn't matter much if I do guess, now does it?"

The warder fidgeted. "I guess not, sir."

"It can't be a civil ceremony," the old man said quietly, pondering the conundrum while his food grew cold. "If the King had had a child, or if a Duke had died, or anything of that nature, it wouldn't be considered secret."

"Yes, sir."

"And it can't be military. For — " he held up a hand, pointing a forefinger at the ceiling like a lecturer " — if it were a military victory of your side over my side, you wouldn't be so insensitive as to offer me a glass of wine to drink in celebration. And if my side had defeated your side, no one on the planet would drink wine in celebration of it at all."

"Yes, sir."

"So it must be political. A cessation of hostilities, perhaps. Is that right?"

"Yes, sir," the blunt man stolidly admitted.

"Indeed." The old man bent forward, rested his elbows on the table, and knitted his hands before him as he gazed ahead. "It has been two years, eleven months, and fourteen days since the Battle of Binary." He looked up at his jailer, a look of sardonic mirth upon his face. "I didn't do terribly well at that battle, now did I?"

"No, sir." The blunt jailer managed an expression that was attentive and alert, but uncommunicative. He had rounds to make this day, and knew with what ease the old man tended to fall into old reminiscences. And yet his tales were interesting, and the jailer craved an opportunity to listen.

"Military operations in space have a definite negative momentum added to sufficiently gathered strength: small fleets can't do anything decisive, but big ones trip all over themselves just getting started on a voyage." He smiled happily, and shook his head, remembering the difficulties he'd had in working with such strategic complexities.

"I don't know anything about that, sir."

"Oh, you may take my word for it." The old man grinned, and there was a sharp glint of wit in his eye.

"Yes, sir."

"This being so, I can assure you that neither of our respective militaries can possibly have been successful in routing the other. I predicted a stalemate at the beginning, and that's how it ended up."

"Yes, sir." The warder succeeded in keeping his thoughts hidden. It was completely against his orders to permit his prisoner to learn the truth.

"Oh, the borders might have shifted a bit; we can afford to lose a few stars, and you can also. That part scarcely matters at all. Out there — " he waved his hands grandly, " — where our nations keep their uneasy frontier, the battles are at last over. Peace conferences are beginning to form." He waggled a finger at his jailer. "Oh, those peace negotiations can drag on for ages, don't you doubt it. You and I will be here for months more, although I can hope that years will not need to pass."

"I'm with you on that, sir," the blunt man said with feeling.

"It's difficult being a jailer, isn't it?"

"Oh, it's not too bad, sir."

"I see. Well, well: mustn't keep the toast waiting, eh? Let me think..." He gazed at the ceiling, then brightened. "To both of our nations, and peace." He held the glass aloft, and the blunt jailer nodded his agreement to the toast. The old man drank the wine carefully, savoring the fruity taste. He ate his breakfast in silence, and permitted the warder to bear the dishes away.

Rising, pacing for a time, the old man displayed a healthy degree of good cheer. But his jailer had done his job correctly; never in his nearly three years in this dungeon had the old man dreamed that his captivity was a secret unknown to his own side.

#

Commodore Steldan inspected the scene of last night's fighting in the relative safety and peace of daytime. The streets were spread with the rubble and litter of battle; buildings stood with blank holes where windows had been blown in; scouts patrolled the rooftops, and combat engineers strolled about taking measurements. One storefront had been shorn away, leaving the interior gaping wide. Another house had been comandeered to provide space for a field hospital. Marines were everywhere, walking in pairs, trying to do the bidding of their own officers and also to attend to Steldan's orders and dispatches.

Shaking his head in dismay, Steldan walked the short distance to the tall building that had been intended to serve as an embassy. Schauband greeted him.

"Hello, Commodore. What do you think?"

Steldan looked about him in disbelief. "A warhead would have left less of a mess. Who's our decorator?"

"Ordinarily, I'd have dismissed the notion of such thorough destruction being perpetrated by irregulars," Schauband murmurred. "I'm astonished at how much damage they've done in one night."

"They are driven by their hates."

"Hate counts for a lot," Schauband said; Steldan could hear the fatigue in her voice.

"It's your feeling that training should count for more?"

"It's my feeling, Commodore, that my Marines should have been good for a better defense than they showed."

Steldan's response was cut off by a hail from General Vai. The conquering hero approached the two officers with a weary tread.

Silently, the three passed through the sentry-post at the door and climbed three flights of steps to the computer level. The wreckage was complete. The window, open to the hot midmorning air, had been picked clean of broken shards of glass, and the crashed aircar had been wedged loose. Beyond that, clean-up operations had not progressed very far at all. Anything that could have been overturned had been tip-tilted by the energetic intruders, and everything that, could have been broken had been shattered. And the main machine memory...

"What is it that the Sonallans have against computers, anyway?" Steldan asked, resignedly aware that no data would ever again be retrieved from the mainframe leaning against the buckled wall. The cabinet was bent, and the metal of it was dimpled where some low-velocity projectile had slammed into it. More telling was the scattering of plastic fragments that swept across the carpet.

"Well, that's shot," Steldan said softly. "I'll need a replacement from the support fleet in orbit."

"One arrived last night."

Steldan stared at him. Marvelling, he shook his head. "The Navy surpasses itself in efficiency," he said proudly.

"When given directions by its Marines," Vai boasted. "We installed it on the floor above. It ought to be operational quite soon now."

"Thank you, General." Steldan's appreciation was sincere.

"Commodore." Vai's voice husked low. Steldan looked at him. "Don't make a point of this."

Steldan spread his hands. Schauband, picking through the rubble, appeared not to be listening, but Steldan admired her too much to believe it of her. "I have to, General. The material damage isn't as important as the loss of lives, obviously. But we can't afford to accept their small crimes any more than the large ones."

Vai nodded. "I can see it. However, I recommend a moderate response. Let Ambassador Murchison have freedom to take care of this through diplomatic channels."

Steldan gestured around him, while holding his gaze upon Vai's face. "Diplomatic channels?" He caught a glimpse of himself in a fragment of broken mirror; the stark neutrality of his face shocked him more than would have any expression of raw rage.

"General," he said, coldly reasonable, "are you reacting to the shooting of your Marines solely through diplomatic channels?"

"Other than a basic self-defense posture, yes."

"Moderation, then," Steldan sighed. Vai looked away.

Another thought occurred to Steldan. "General, does your military police force have an investigative department?"

Vai looked up, his eyes narrowed. "Yes."

"May I attach them?"

"They're yours."

"In that case, Ambassador Murchison has a free hand."

"Yes, sir." Vai turned about and wandered away, leaving Steldan behind him, his confidence shattered by Vai's easy deference.

Then Steldan, too, left, leaving Schauband to search through the destruction and to await the investigative team. He climbed one more floor, where an aide to Murchison received him.

"You've heard about the mess downstairs?" he opened amiably.

"Yes, sir. The Ambassador has informed the King's Armsmen."

Diplomatic channels? Steldan wondered. "Is the computer running yet?"

"Yes."

"May I be allowed some time on it?" he asked with elaborate servility.

The aide smiled at Steldan's exaggeration. "Certainly, Commodore."

"Thank you." Steldan was quickly provided with a quiet niche in the Embassy's library, where a terminal and keypad was nestled between stacks of books. The intruders, efficient as they had been, hadn't hit this floor, Steldan realized.

This world is — I haven't the words — baroque, gaudy, massively over-ritualized, and in ways that I never would have expected. We receive a cool, but correct, reception from their King, and violent disorder from the populace. I've been here for less than twenty hours; how do they cram so much action into one day?

I've got a Grand Admiral to look for, in the interests of protecting another. I have very little time, and the job is huge. And I don't know where to begin.

He put a diagram of Sebascodegan city and its surrounding area onto the computer screen. With quick strokes upon the keyboard, he sketched in demographics, population contours, and regions by social level. The segregation was astonishing to him. He could all but feel the way the castes lived from the simple way the city was divided into cantons. The vertical stratification of social class that the Sonallan system had evolved was more detailed than he would have imagined. On the one hand he was offended by the cultural atavism; on the other hand, it afforded him advantages in his search. Social separation meant social tension, no matter how well-adapted the lower classes had become over time.

Usually, when delving into a city's demographics on any Concordat-controlled world, Steldan would feel some slight pangs of guilt, knowing that disruptions necessarily followed official scrutiny. Here, upon the homeworld of the alien humanoids who had worked so much woe upon his people, Steldan felt a subdued optimism, although certainly no glee, as his work progressed.

Once all the facts had been digested by the computer, he set the analysis programs to studying the city, or rather the internal data-structure model of the city. Soon, a system of probability contours glowed upon his screen. The day wore on, and the building's air-conditioning strove more briskly to cool the offices. Steldan's researches could not give him definite answers; all they could do — and this they did well — was to limit the area of his search. Within six hours, the target zone was limited enough, both in size and in probability density, for him to begin sending out crews on reconnaisance missions.

For all that life is incredibly abstract, he thought happily to himself, it follows some very simple rules. All of chemistry reduces to interactions between a scant hundred common elements. All of physics relates to two fundamental forces. And all of sociology, psychology, and history can be reduced to the study of a few common motivations. For a moment he became bluntly cynical, viewing the human race as if from a godlike height. The foremost motivation, of course, is greed.

He shook his head, and smiled. The armed rebellion against the Concordat was being fueled by insurgents from the rich neighborhoods that ringed the King's palace at a distance, leaving an innermost core relatively free. Since proximity to the palace was directly related to wealth and status, the conclusion was clear: the most obvious disruptions were caused by the ones who had yet one more rung on the social ladder to climb. They were the ones who had the most to gain.

Grand Admiral Sienne, the captive of the Sonallans, was almost certainly held somewhere within the central core of stable wealth. That, too made sense: he was being held quietly, perhaps fearfully, by those who had the most to lose. Steldan glanced idly over the copy of the note that had begun his quest. It was handwritten, literate, even suave, holding a vaguely apologetic tone. Steldan looked at it for perhaps the hundredth time: the note claimed that Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne was definitely alive and on the planet, held in captivity for obvious reasons of military advantage. The note concluded with a bit of understatement that had not yet ceased to amuse Steldan.

"Our holding of your Grand Admiral," the note read, "is a matter best resolved with a proper regard for the situation's delicacy."

Earlier in the afternoon, Steldan had begun to wonder if he was merely wasting time and electricity in his pursuit of Sienne. Seeking the tangible through the legerdemain of computer-assisted statistical analysis seemed pathetically abstract. Now, he knew better. Suspending his disbelief in the nearly magical shrewdness of the computers — computers using programs that he'd helped write — he began drafting the part of the search mission tht required human attention.

If Rothar Sienne is alive, I will find him.

His thoughts returned to the reception of last night. He saw the faces of three young nobles: Pirasnah, sour and sarcastic; Canpenou, friendliness underlying her hatred that was only half-feigned; Orenatha, a smiling face with a scheming mind behind it. Steldan smiled too, remembering Orenatha's cheerfulness, and his biting wit.

I have police powers, and the world has no laws, he thought. Let's take a bit of advantage. He keyed a telephone and spoke briefly to Schauband.

"Captain?"

"Yes, Commodore?"

"Has Vai given you access to the military police yet?"

"We just completed the transfer. I'm with the General now, if you need him."

"No," Steldan demurred. "I'd like you to put out an arrest order for Orenatha. He was one of the nobles at the party last night."

"Right away, sir. Anything else?"

"Not for now. Thank you, Captain."

Steldan leaned back in his seat. A long and earnest discussion with Orenatha would be productive, certainly.

The job that he was beginning, he was beginning well.

#

Chapter Fifteen

Ambassador Murchison joined Chancellor Tinwamus for an informal luncheon. They faced one another across a tiny table laden with delicacies. A fluttering sea-breeze moved in sporadic gusts, whistling through the carven wood railing that walled in the balcony. Over the edge, the sheer cliff-face fell away to the slow-moving sea. Superheated morning air rushed and whispered between the two, moving Murchison's hair and burning Tinwamus' face to pinkness.

The Chancellor had no appetite, either for his food or for the conversation.

"Normalcy," Murchison said in her most businesslike way, "will be difficult to attain." She waited for Tinwamus' response.

"But it will be attained, eventually," he finally said, his voice soft and noncommittal.

"And further obstacles to a full and lasting peace are unwelcomed by both of us."

"Yes."

Murchison refrained from sighing in frustration. "I think you know what I'm speaking of."

"Last night's vandalism."

"Vandalism?" Murchison wrinkled her nose. "Our people were being murdered by night in the streets."

"Ours were too."

Gamely, Murchison went on. "Your King has put us in a uniquely disadvantageous position. He has abolished the laws; to whom do we make our complaint?"

Petulantly, Tinwamus muttered, "You have the solidery. Make use of them for your revenge."

Murchison would have nothing of that. "We don't particularly want revenge. That's the element that has been consistently overlooked. We want normalcy."

"The vandalism will stop."

While she nodded politely, Murchison wondered, and thought quickly. Was this a promise of peace? And was it a promise that was in Tinwamus' power to deliver upon? "Anything the King can do to keep it from continuing will be appreciated. I don't want to have to approach him with a formal petition for action, you see. I'd prefer to let you do what you can." She paused for a moment. "But if I must speak to the King, I will."

"Mistress Ambassador," Tinwamus began, unhappy at the strangeness of the phrase, "we have so many major problems to attend to that the minor ones should be wholly forgotten. If that cannot be, very well; either I will attend to your complaint or the King will. And yet your warships cross our sky at night; your Marines patrol our streets. You've given us our world back, in name, if not yet in fact. I don't believe that street violence can end until you have removed your armed presence."

"Or until King Mansivigan restores the laws."

They turned and gazed out to sea, watching the surge of the long swells under the furnace of the sun. Moment by moment the sun blazed higher and hotter in the sky, until it became a blunt, varicolored oval in the sky. Neither knew what Mansivigan had intended when he had set aside the laws.

"Don't crush our planet," Tinwamus finally beseeched. "Don't smother our society. I think that we are at war with ourselves now, because we failed to defeat you."

Murchison heard the anguish in his voice, and responded gently. "We don't want to destroy your beliefs. You know how hateful some of your beliefs are to us, just as ours are to you. You know that we feel threatened by your culture. But as much as I may, I will defend it."

"What is it that you have brought to us? The concept you call 'cultural warfare?' How are we to withstand it?"

A pang went through Murchison. Cultural warfare was an abomination nearly as baleful as genocide. But to the degree that it was to be used here, it was necessary.

"We're seeking to show you how culture can be influenced by technology and by economics. Economic determinism" — in which I do not fully believe — "can show you how to divert the tensions..."

"Tensions that keep us alive," Tinwamus muttered. He moved his food around on his plate with a one-tined dining-stick, but he did not eat.

Murchison lost herself in a fascinated study of the infinite horizon. Eventually, as the sun began slowly to narrow again, she looked back at the stolid Chancellor. "Will Mansivigan call a council to re-write the laws?"

Tinwamus regarded her mistrustfully. "He has not told me to convene any such council."

"How can we operate in a vacuum?" Murchison flared. "We have no sure footing. I don't know how to do my work in a damned shadow-play!"

Tinwamus broke his eating stick in two and lay it swiftly across his plate. Rising, he prepared to leave.

Murchison reached across and held his wrist. "Please stay."

"I beg your pardon, but..."

"Stay. Neither of us may leave this terrace until we — you and I — have come to an agreement."

"You dare to dictate terms..." Tinwamus began, and then let his face relax. "Perhaps you are right," he concluded unhappily.

"No walkouts. No postponements. No withdrawals. You and I have the duty of making peace between our nations. If you won't talk to me, we haven't any chance left."

Tinwamus, eyeing her carefully, relaxed in his seat. His collars flapped in the sea-breeze, although the day had gone quite hot.

"It is our duty," he agreed at last.

"You're the Chancellor. I'm the Ambassador. Do you realize that we're the only non-soldiers who can speak to each other at all?"

Blinking, Tinwamus thought about that.

Murchison pressed her advantage. "The military people all have their little codes. General Vai acted as the Governor of the Occupation, using the rules of Martial Law. Commodore Steldan is frankly no better than a spy, and thus is bound by all the unwritten laws of spying. But you and I — "

"A moment. The Commodore is a spy?"

Shaking her head, Murchison made light of it. "All military attachés are spies, aren't they? One term is an euphemism for the other. That's no secret. And even if Steldan were spying in earnest, he's free to do so now that Mansivigan has repealed the laws. What I'm trying to say to you is that the written laws may have been set aside, but the unwritten laws, the laws of custom and of tradition, are still very much in force."

Tinwamus tilted his head and listened carefully. When Murchison had finished speaking, he thought in silence.

"Vai is a soldier," he said at last. "Steldan is a spy. Mansivigan is a King. Fanesivus is a speculator. But you and I have roles that are generalized enough..."

"We're the ones who can talk."

"We must talk, then. I agree. Agreement may be impossible, however; yet we must try. I must ask one question, first."

"What's that?"

"What does Steldan hope to find here? What secrets do we have to be sought out by spying?"

Holding on to her temper, Murchison explained once again. "I used him only as an example. The man is a Commodore in the Intelligence Branch of our Navy; that means only that he has his eyes open. Don't go imagining any deep or mysterious mission. His duty is to find out exactly how Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne died, at the First Battle of Binary, and he's restricting himself to public records. Will you stay to the main point? As non-military personnel — "

Tinwamus held up a hand. "I understand. I thought that more was at stake than you made clear. Yes. We shall talk. I will confess, more readily than I should, that I do not fully approve of Mansivigan's action in putting aside the law. It freezes us all into roles of tradition, as you imply."

"Exactly. If it had been a move to gather power to himself, leaving him, for instance, as the only one with the power to arbitrate disputes, it would have been an action with a very clear motive. But it doesn't do that for him at all."

"I think," Tinwamus said slowly, "that you were right earlier. He did it to put your people in a dilemma. Your traditions do not give you the automatic protections that we enjoy."

Against her will, Murchison became didactic. "Law may never be dependent upon any individual. What rights one may grant, another may take away."

"All rights descend from the Shadow of The God," Tinwamus asserted piously.

Murchison felt only the slightest temptation to give that the answer she felt it deserved. To her side, over the railing, the sea rolled; she would have been as wise in ordering it to cease its motion as she would be in disputing theology with Tinwamus. Their conversation soon grew detailed, highly technical, and efficiently productive. Many important points were touched upon, or were skirted delicately.

As the hour wore on toward noon, Tinwamus opened up to Murchison. It seemed to her that he had completely accepted her invitation to mutual trust. Indeed, the elderly Chancellor actually began to display some human warmth, smiling now and again through his thin, pale lips. At times he would peer about him, then lean forward slyly and share a bit of palace gossip with her, although immediately afterward he would lean back again and fall mostly silent. There was a slight haunted look in the corners of his eyes, and Murchison noted that he never had managed to eat at all.

The conversation proceded in fits and starts. Progress would be made, significant progress, with each of them agreeing to acutely painful or embarrassing concessions, and arriving at a sensible compromise. Yet suddenly the gulf of their cultural differences would open up, unbridgeable, almost, as the dark gap between the far stars. When that happened, on the topic of religion, or of economics, or merely of tastes and habits, their work would stop, and the two would stare in puzzlement or hurt at one another.

At one point, when the broad, hot sun hovered nearly overhead casting red light and blue shadows, Tinwamus became utterly and adamantly close-mouthed, seemingly without reason. Murchison looked at him quizzically. The topic had been innocuous: the arrangement of living quarters in the palace. Wondering if she had somehow trodden upon yet another obscure taboo, she held her peace and rested her hands before her.

"Problems," Tinwamus muttered. He was unwilling to say more, despite Murchison's polite inquiries. Yet it was clear — she saw it in a flash — that he not only wanted to discuss this 'problem' with her, but that he needed to. Time and patience would draw it out of him, just as they would draw a secret from a child.

"Problems with the succession," he said at last. "The King..." He fell silent again.

"The succession," Murchison asked of him, "is unclear?"

"Yes."

"How could it be unclear? Mansivigan has a Queen. Ruling Queens are not unknown, are they?"

"Not unknown, but not strictly countenanced, either. The God is unquestionably male." Tinwamus' reserve had fallen away, and he spoke rapidly and volubly.

Even his blunt statement failed to draw Murchison's ire. Her self-control was iron, although now and again her hands would ache with the desire to be clenched into sharp fists.

"Theology aside," she said, somewhat too coolly, "how are crises of succession handled here?"

"The King is not a King until he has a son." Tinwamus' face was averted as he quoted that edict; from his mouth it sounded like a regulation drawn from some book of legal codes. This was obviously the central point, and it clearly caused him substantial anxiety.

"Mansivigan isn't King?" Murchison laughed politely. "He seems very like one to me."

"Without a son," Tinwamus intoned solemnly, "he is only a Regent, King though he may be named."

Murchison leaned foward and rested her elbows on the table. Her shadow was very small and sharp; the sun, above, had shrunk to a round redness. "Offspring are the most natural result of marriages among your people." This light, ironic statement of the obvious should have relieved Tinwamus' anxiety, but his face only drew up in a tighter grimmace.

"I know. Too well I know. Queen Lirelpeset has never managed to conceive. Her barrenness scorns the Kingdom...the whole world."

"It might not be her barrenness," Murchison snapped. "Has the couples' sterility been medically certified?"

Tinwamus stared at her in shock. "Has...?" he blurted, and continued to gape.

"Have the royal couple been medically examined," Murchison began with a bit more dignity, "with regard to remedying their childlessness? Childlessness has a score of causes, and most of them can be reversed by treatment."

"Your medicine has made a science of fertility and childbearing?" Tinwamus stuttered. Clearly the notion was astonishing to him, and more than a little blasphemous.

"Yes. Yours has not?"

"Never!"

"Our species are astonishingly alike. Perhaps Mansivigan and Lirelpeset would consent to treatment from one of our doctors?"

Although reluctant at first, Tinwamus grudgingly heard more of her arguments on the subject, until at last he felt he had no chance but to agree.

"But it must be in secret," he said at last, "that Lirelpeset may be examined."

"But it might not be her," Murchison exploded.

"Oh, yes; it must be. Only women can lack the perfection The God shares with the male form."

Murchison said nothing for a moment, while eyeing Tinwamus' pale gauntness. If he, in his knock-kneed and bony sorrow, was an example of The God's ideal, then she was missing nothing by being a woman.

"And she is in pain," Tinwamus went on, an admission that mollified Murchison's anger.

"Do you want my help in this matter?"

"I don't know..." Tinwamus shook his head. "Things would be so much better for my people..."

"Could any harm come of it?"

"Only if it became known that an outsider hade been intimate with the Queen," Tinwamus said, his face agonizingly embarrassed.

"'Intimate?' The examination involves no improper contact. It involves no contact at all, if our doctors would be permitted to bring in their scanning machines."

"Is this so? In that case..."

"Very well. It's settled. As a gesture of my own personal good will, I offer to send a physician, in secret, to examine Queen Lirelpeset. There will be a diagnosis made of the royal couples' childlessness, and a suggested possible cure. No notice will be taken, and no one need ever know."

"Your science is definitely advanced..." Tinwamus muttered.

"Remarkably so."

"It is agreed." Tinwamus bore the expression of a man who has just slipped the keys to the castle to a sergeant of the besieging army. For her part, Murchison would have been just as glad to have never made the offer, if not for two secret motives of her own. If the Queen were to be comforted and her fertility assured, then the Royalty and Peerage of this world would owe the Concordat a debt. Murchison knew how to draw repayment of that debt from Tinwamus. More importantly, however, Murchison had already seen the Queen, and understood a little of her pain. Here was one who was suffering needlessly, surrounded by men who could not understand. Murchison felt a duty to help.

"I will select a Doctor, and we'll schedule this thing tonight.

"Yes." Tinwamus stood from the table. "Yes. For now, I must go. Please..." He spoke low, hurriedly. "Please, say nothing. Speak to no one. If I have overstepped my duties, it is best if no one learns. May I have your word?"

"My word, Tinwamus? Would you accept the oath of a citizen of the Concordat? Hasn't it been decided that we are soulless, and without honor?"

In an utter agony of indecision, Tinwamus shuffled side-to-side, his eyes haunted. "Yes. But please give me your word on this anyway."

Oddly touched by his need to trust her, Murchison smiled. "I give you my word."

And my word is not without some weight, Murchison thought, frowning. None of us fully understands the way the Sonallans adhere to their strenuous system of honor. Honor is no more than an elaborate codification of disadvantage. It is dishonorable to strike an unprepared foe, and yet that restriction works only to that foe's advantage. The Sonallans accuse us of being without honor because we don't submit to disadvantage readily.

And yet my word is a bond I won't readily foreswear.

Murchison needed to talk to the Queen, and to earn her confidence. Mansivigan's wife would be certain to know more of the King's intentions, and knowledge now was more precious than honor. Murchison admitted frankly to herself that she needed palace information, and that the doctor she brought with her would necessarily be trained at discovering it.

There was only one doctor who could be relied upon for such discretion. She wondered what Tinwamus' reaction would be when she told him that the Doctor attending Lirelpeset would be Commodore Steldan, the villainous spy. Her inward mirth at his discomfiture was offset by her knowledge of her duty. Steldan was the most qualified, and would be willing to help her in her discoveries.

And the well-being of the Queen would be important to him, also.

#

Tinwamus departed from that productive luncheon in profound anguish. He walked as a blind man walks, his sandaled feet sliding over the smooth floors of the palace, his hands groping. The enemy Commodore named Steldan was a spy. Tinwamus knew, then, that his actions so many weeks ago had been no more than blundering idiocy. He had hoped to find subtlety and restraint in the people of the Concordat, and instead found only blunt aggressiveness. Steldan was here — Tinwamus swallowed in sudden fear — to trap King Mansivigan.

All of this because of the trembling old man held in the basement dungeon. Tinwamus shook his head. He'd told Mansivigan, time and again, to get rid of the prisoner, to set him free on some distant world and let him find his own way home.

Or to kill him.

Mansivigan could never see the danger. Tinwamus, therefore, had acted upon his Lord's behalf. He had delivered a small, private note to the Concordat's envoy, explaining where and how Sienne was being held.

And his appeal for a delicate resolution of the crisis had been roughly spurned. They had sent in a spy! An brutal and slovenly assassin, prepared to perform who knew what atrocities, solely to discredit the King.

His duty was clear: Mansivigan must be protected, and thus the prisoner must be removed. Who was best qualified to spirit the captive away?

Tinwamus smiled. Why, none other than the men who sought to defend Mansivigan already, men who lay down their lives in his service. The freedom fighters, battling the foe in the night-darkened streets were clearly the King's secret allies. A message must be sent, and quickly. He found a telephone, and blanked the video.

#

The sun wobbled crookedly across the sky, brightening and dimming, flipping end-over-end like an egg rolled roughly across a lawn. The heat was considerable, sometimes merely oppressive and sometimes almost intolerable. During the bright phase, Sonallan activity moved indoors, and it was the hour for cleaning and straightening. Nobles sat to their large carven tables and wrote letters; commoners spread their wares beneath colored awnings in market squares, awaiting the late afternoon custom; servants, slaves, and auxilliaries saw to the thousands of minuscule tasks of filing, patching, storing, mending, sorting, washing, and sweeping. The soldiers of the Concordat, heads covered, arms bare, patrolled and were watchful.

Dour Mataconet listened in attentive silence to the thin voice on the other end of the phone line. The information he heard was most interesting to him, and the mention of a man's name, once a commonplace, took on new import.

"Sienne? Rothar Sienne?" He frowned, and drew his eyebrows down in uneasiness. "Can't you tell me more?"

But the voice on the phone had been stilled. Mataconet set the device aside, and rose from his settee. He stretched, yawned elaborately, and fanned his face with his hand. The room where he had sat, nearly dozing, was white-walled, set about with bookshelves and tables of dark wood. A large mirror in a heavy frame doubled the light of the room, casting tiny rainbows from the beveled glass at its edges.

"So," Mataconet spoke softly, alone in the room. "The Grand Admiral of the enemy, Rothar Sienne, is alive and in captivity." His satisfaction was marred by his uncertainty.

"'In every complication, an opportunity,' quotha the Sage," he muttered, and paced slowly about. His quick and agile mind turned the information over and over. Before long, resolution came to him. He whipped up the phone again and left brief messages for both Pirasnah and Orenatha: "Keep tomorrow night free; we dine with the King."

Smiling, he crossed to a desk, sat, and drew forth a sheet of rich cream paper. "Majesty," he wrote: "We seek to attend upon you at a dinner in informal ease, tomorrow evening. The setting shall be for fifteen. Your indulgence in receiving us shall be rewarded by the warmth of the evening shared with those who account themselves your firmest supporters and your fondest admirers."

Although he was tempted to sign it with the name of the Orphans of the Hecatomb, he refrained, and merely scribbled his name, followed by the inscription, "First Lord Portmaster," and the qualification that he found so hateful, "Appointment Witholding."

Satisfied with the phrasing, which was presumptuous and ironic, and which Mansivigan would be hard-put to reject, Mataconet signed the letter, waited a moment for the ink to congeal, and smeared the lettering artistically with a buffer, blurring it into a formal and quite legible stylishness. He folded it, and rang for a messenger.

"No," he said, still speaking to himself, still rehearsing his plans, "the King will not refuse me. Now: can Toromoag round up eight trustworthy toughs by tomorrow evening?" He relaxed. "Assuredly, he can."

It was a noble's duty to relieve the King of an unwanted guest, and Mataconet was not prepared to be remiss in his duty.

#

Chapter Sixteen

In the bright sunlight of midafternoon, diabolatries were hatched.

Among the people standing informal siege in the Concordat enclave, gossip and rumors moved with telegraphic swiftness. Most of the messages were of little consequence, born of frustration and tension. Would there be fighting tonight, many wondered, and many had answers in which guesswork played various parts. Several pieces of information came to Commodore Steldan, who received the news as he received all news: thirstily. He strode about, speaking quietly to various of his aides and assistants, then ensconced himself in the medical library. Rumors burgeoned immediately, an effect Steldan did not seek to stop.

Captain Schauband strolled with General Vai about the uncertain perimeter her troops patrolled. The sun's heat blazed onto her forearms, and reflected up from the pavement into her eyes; the heat made the street and buildings into a rippling impressionist canvas. Every shadow was blurred at its edges; every shiny surface glinted with a hot spectrum of reds and yellows.

The heat was enervating, and peaceful. Schauband found herself enjoying the slow and steady way that Vai walked and spoke.

"The people here have a heritage," he said softly. His orange hair clung to his forehead, yet he paid no attention to the heat. His tread was firm, and his eyes were at ease. "I conclude that the old Empire simply left them alone during the time that it held total sway over this region of space."

Schauband breathed deeply of the furnace air, and found comfort in the historical riddles Vai propounded. "The Empire? Allowing a world privacy? Is that really believable?"

"The Sonallans would have been no more than primitives to the star-devouring Empire. The Imperials would have ignored them, for the same reason we ignore the nine or so primitive societies inhabiting worlds in our midst. There's a shortage of inhabitable worlds, but a greater shortage of — "

"Of what, General?"

"Of ethical propriety." He would have said more, developing the theme of non-intervention that was so important to him. A loud-heard snap and roar from the right stopped him.

Schauband heard the noise and reacted with unconscious swiftness: she flung herself to the burning pavement and lay very low and flat. Vai also dropped, but was staggered and spun about by a sharp impact and explosion. He fell onto his back across Schauband's prone form, his right arm and shoulder torn away.

For a long moment no one moved. Then, one by one, Marines raised themselves slowly from the scorching pavement and began cautiously to fan out. Non-military personnel scurried for cover, having, by-and-large, kept their footing during the attack but aware that the danger was not over. Schauband rolled over and sat up, propping Vai's gasping body on her lap. In the street, fragments of the casing of the spent free-flight-missile smoked amid blasted plastic shards and twisted metal cables.

"Sir?" Schauband asked, inanely, of Vai. Vai, drenched in blood, waved his left arm and made grotesque whooping noises as he fought for breath.

"Medic!" bellowed Schauband; a team materialized, running flat-out across the street toward the fallen officers. It amazed her with what roughness the gentle hands lifted her up and away; two Marines swept her out of the street and under a cool store-front awning with irresistable strength. Others of the team took more time with Vai, stopping his bleeding and shocking his lungs with a hyperoxygenated inhalant before they lifted him across to join Schauband.

"Is he...?" Schauband asked, shaking herself loose from the corpsman who tended her.

"He'll live," the medical team-leader said grimly. Wiping his bloody hands on a towelette, he edged Schauband aside and began to cut Vai's uniform away.

She watched as he worked, and tried to stand so she wouldn't be in his way. The wreck of Vai's arm was appalling. The attachments where the plastic and metal prosthesis had been grafted onto the ruin of his shoulder were shattered and fused. Had the missile struck him in his living arm, he could never conceivably had survived.

"One more for the Tin Soldier," the corpsman muttered, doling out instruments and tiny vials of fluids. "After this, no one is ever going to doubt that he's indestructible."

"Indestructible..." Schauband said, and leaped to her feet. She would have dashed out, but the corpsman dropped his satchel and held her back.

"You oughtn't to be running about. You're wounded."

"I am not!" Schauband haughtily responded. The corpsman smiled wryly and pointed to her arm. A long, gaping gash ran from wrist to elbow, along the outside of her arm. The wound bled, but it was a seepage rather than a flow; Schauband waved the man back, meeting his smile with a feral grin. "I've had worse."

"Be my guest, then," he said, and leaned back to let her go. She dashed out into the middle of the street, stared about for a moment, then hurried on across. A moment's search brought her to the point from which the missile had been launched: a tiny covered space in an alleymouth, disguised as a part of the foundation of one of the buildings on the street.

The thin panelling had been kicked away, and the assailant had made his escape. For good? Schauband raced down the alley, hoping to catch up with the troops who were undoubtedly on the assassin's trail.

The alley kinked twice, bending more and more to the right; the hard brick pavement showed no sign of anyone's recent passage. Schauband ran along, here eyes taking in the dingy back windows and heavy doors of various shops and homes. Every door and window had a small sloping fixture to one side, a tiny ledge of thin wood. Above these were totemic icons, barbaric images rough-carven in weathered wood. The fixed planes beneath them, she suddenly realized, were shrines, holding a small space of shadow. The Shadow of The God. She shivered, and ran on.

The alley let out into another street; she knew where she was, and sprinted out. Ahead of her, nearly hidden by distance, two Marines ran heavily. Schauband could see by the way they looked about them, craning their necks as they ran, that they had not yet sighted their prey. She would have hastened in pursuit, but a small motion caught the corner of her eye. She whirled, changed direction, and dashed toward the lone Sonallan man she had surprised.

"Stop!" she bellowed, waving her sidearm. He looked at her in utter astonishment, and began to run.

Your choice, fellow, Schauband thought, and halted abruptly and fired. The bullet flew wide of the mark, but the fugitive stopped anyway. Still facing away, he slowly raised his hands. Schauband radioed for a backup, and covered the man with her pistol. Help arrived in only moments; the assassin was quickly taken into custody.

"Good work, Captain," a Sergeant said, as he bundled the captive away.

"Thanks," Schauband replied, and breathed deeply of the superheated air.

#

"My name is Orenatha," the would-be killer said, smiling his unceasing smile. "I am the Seaholder of Sebascodegan." He faced his captors unflinching; even in restraints he displayed an unquenchable mirth. "We met at the reception last night."

Commodore Steldan and Captain Schauband regarded him across a small bare desk. Two Marines guarded the door and windows, assuring Orenatha's good behavior.

"What is a Seaholder's duty?" Steldan asked quietly, favoring Orenatha with no sign of familiarity. He had conferred with Schauband, seen to the treatment of her injured arm, and agreed upon a strategy of interrogation. She stood silently by, her weapon obvious at her hip, while Steldan sat at ease and let his questions ramble. Yet his tightly formal uniform contrasted with the hot-weather gear that Schauband wore, which was still dirty and torn from the assassination attempt.

"The function is purely ceremonial, I assure you. My demesne is the long beach and the inland waterway, and I control it absolutely...which is to say that I don't do anything at all."

"Nothing?"

Orenatha wagged his finger playfully. "Not to do with the waterways. I have a nice villa overlooking the sea, I'm required to swim a couple of laps every year at the Sea Festival, and I collect a bit of money from anyone who has anything to do with the water."

"How much money?"

"You would think it to be quite a lot, but then a young noble has quite a high standard of living he's expected to maintain. I do well enough, all things considered."

Steldan smiled, a friendly little smile of his own that nevertheless seemed somewhat tight. "How much money?" he repeated. Schauband shifted position, her face stiff and unemotional.

"Sixty bars of silver in a year," Orenatha admitted, "although of course it isn't actually given to me in that form. And there are intangible benefits — gifts, emoluments, and honoraria. The earning of these takes up most of my free time."

Steldan leaned back in his chair. "Did you fire the missile that killed General Matthew Vai?"

"Did he die?"

"Yes," Steldan lied. Schauband narrowed her eyes, and the Marine bodyguards clenched their fists.

"My mother taught me many items of great wisdom," Orenatha said, his smile unfading. "Among them was the dictum, 'Nothing is as despicable as a useless lie.'"

Steldan leaned back in his chair. "Did you fire the missile that killed General Matthew Vai?"

"Oh, yes. You caught me, didn't you?"

"Yes," Steldan drawled. "We caught you. Captain?"

Schauband straightened. Steldan admired the way she was playing the game, until he realized that it might not be a game for her.

"What did you find on his person?" he asked in a businesslike tone.

"One sidearm and two free-flight-missiles. A claspknife, a photograph, a sack of sweets, and a money-pouch."

"This photograph?" Steldan asked, holding up a thick paper square.

Schauband flicked her eyes over it. "Yes, sir."

"It's a picture of Canpenou, a noblewoman of whom I am rather fond."

"Should she be informed of your crime and your capture?"

"Since I assume you will, in due course, notify the King's Chancellor, you can leave that matter to his care."

"Very well. Where is Mataconet?"

Orenatha's smile became sad. "There are some questions that it is better that I do not answer."

"We have truth drugs," Steldan said, sitting upright and assuming an expression of impersonal cruelty, "and they have not all been calibrated for use on members of your species. Where is Mataconet?"

Sighing deeply, Orenatha answered. "I last saw him at Toromoag's hilltop estate. But I have spoken with him since then."

"On what subject did you speak?"

Orenatha's smile faded. "On a subject of extreme delicacy regarding relations between our two states."

"On what subject did you speak?"

Folding his arms across his chest, Orenatha forced himself to a calmness he did not feel. "Are truth drugs interesting to experience?"

Schauband took one step forward, fists knotted in anger. "Captain?" Steldan said softly.

"Yes, sir?"

"I'll need the lights dimmed in here." From one of the desk drawers he pulled a syringe kit.

"It was a mistake for me to allow myself to be captured," Orenatha said, and swallowed. Then his eternal smile resurfaced. "Commodore, you've done very well today in capturing me. For, you see, I know everything."

"Do you know about the prisoners in Mansivigan's dungeons?"

Orenatha sniffed. "About one of them, at least. You've done well today indeed. And I think that I would like to be permitted to write a brief letter to Canpenou before we begin."

"Request granted," Steldan said, and offered Orenatha paper and stylus.

Shortly thereafter, Steldan began the deeper interrogation, using psychochemicals that suppressed the ability and the desire of a subject to lie. Since Orenatha was cooperating voluntarily, he allowed him to take the doses orally, mixed with fruit juices, instead of the more usual hypodermic injections. Orenatha handled the stress well, and his comments were extraordinarily helpful.

#

Chapter Seventeen

Murchison and Steldan arrived at the palace by a back way. The sky was ablaze with a thousand pastel colors of sunset, the elongated sun sinking endwise into the sea. "We've won," Steldan said, and Murchison nodded.

"You've succeeded in your task, then. Now help me with mine."

Tinwamus himself greeted them at a small postern gate, scarcely more than a niche in the side of the vast palace wall. In ages past, Steldan assumed, it had been intended for use as a sally port.

Tinwamus spoke softly to Murchison, then halted and gazed at Steldan in shock. "No!" he breathed, not daring to speak loudly and risk capture. "Not you. You're the spy!"

A fleeting annoyance crossed Steldan's face and mind; then he composed himself. "Spy, medic, and officer in the service of the Praesidium, your excellency."

Tinwamus upbraided Murchison in heated whispers. "You warned me against him, and yet it is he you bring here? How can this be?"

"There's no one better for the task," she answered simply.

"I cannot permit it."

She shrugged. "Then we will leave, and your Queen will continue to suffer."

Tinwamus was deft enough to recognize a bluff when he saw one. Murchison did care what happened to the Queen; she cared deeply. And, Tinwamus discovered, examining her, she cared as a person as well as in her role as a diplomat. She honestly disliked to see human suffering.

"How can I trust him? How can I allow this?"

"Trust," Murchison said in a low voice, "is something you either can, or can not give us. You trusted me this morning on the balcony, and you told me things you wouldn't want the world to hear. I will not betray you."

Tinwamus' anger might have won out, but his fear was greater. His love for his Queen made his decision inevitable. "Come with me."

He led them up steep and narrow stairs, and through constricted ways hidden within the thickness of walls. After a time they came to a section of wall that looked no different than any other. Tinwamus beckoned them close.

"You must make no unnecessary sounds," he implored them.

Steldan was surprised to see how frightened the pathetic old man was. "No sounds," he whispered.

"Good. Good." Tinwamus reached up and tweaked a hidden lever; the section of wall popped loose, and a thin line of light shone from the room beyond. Pushing the door cautiously open, Tinwamus went through, gesturing nervously for silence. The glances he threw at Steldan were still darkly suspicious.

Invading a Queen's bedchamber in the eventide is an escapade I'd never dreamed I'd undertake, Steldan thought in silent amusement. He hefted the bag of medical and surgical instruments that gave his quest legitimacy.

One by one, Tinwamus in the lead and Murchison following, they stole into the brightly-lit room. Steldan, in the rear, had to fend off a hanging gauze curtain with an uplifted forearm. He straightened and looked about.

Amid luxury on a glittering and opulent scale that he had never yet experienced, Queen Lirelpeset sat on the edge of her bed, having risen neither for her Chancellor nor for her guests.

She was dressed in a long, complicated gown more suitable for a ballroom than for a medical examination. Steldan, at a loss for words, bowed deeply, and straightened. He could see the terror hidden behind Lirelpeset's face; he began to understand the extremity that her pain had forced her to.

"Is this Ambassador Murchison?" Lirelpeset asked in a soft, frightened voice.

"I am." Murchison knelt before the Queen, rather to Steldan's astonishment. "I've come to help you. Won't you trust me?"

"Oh, yes," the Queen said, just as a child would. Murchison darted Steldan a glance that spoke volumes. Success in treating the Queen would do more, perhaps, for relations between the two nations than anything else that anyone could ever do or say.

"I will need..." Steldan paused. He shrugged, and pressed on. "I will need the Queen to bare her abdomen."

Murchison smiled her warmest encouragement to the frightened Queen, and Tinwamus stood by, lending her all of his feeble strength. Lirelpeset nodded and, in an agony of embarrassment, began the complicated task of unfastening her gown at the shoulder. It took some time for her to loose the straps of all the layered undergarments. Slowly folding them down, she uncovered her pale breasts and slender torso. Her skin was as fair and white as cream. Steldan knelt forward with as much deferential care as he could muster, and slowly pulled a sonic scanner from his bag.

The examination proceded slowly, with Steldan taking extravagant pains to avoid startling or discomforting the Queen. Murchison, throughout it, spoke softly to her, as if the two were alone at tea. Her low voice was a source of courage for the Queen; she soon had nearly forgotten Steldan's presence, and leaned aside to share stories with the Ambassador.

Although only half an hour passed, it would always seem to Steldan to have been a dreamlike moment without time. The childishness of the Queen, and the way that Murchison humored it, lent the tableau a sad, sorry tone, as if they were visiting a hospital ward for the mentally deficient. Tinwamus' trembling fear added another texture to the emotional fabric of the visit. And the riches, the tapestries, the gems and the gold, formed a backdrop of utter fairytale unrealism. He held his scanner in his hands, and clung to it as the one familiar thing in the terribly poignant arrangement.

At last he backed away and stood. All eyes were instantly upon him.

"The Queen is suffering from an abdominal constriction," he said at last, uncertain of how much detail to add. He had discovered the scars of an earlier ectopic pregnancy which had, fortunately, been relieved in the course of nature. This seemed to have been a recurring problem, based on some minor abnormalities in her uterus. Lirelpeset's health was in no danger, but for her to be able to achieve a normal pregnancy and birth, some minor abdominal surgery would be necessary. He calculated rapidly, and spoke slowly.

"I will have to perform a surgical operation of a somewhat common type. The Queen will not require a total anaesthesia, but I will need to numb an area of her abdomen."

He was beyond further shock, or he would have been astonished at how docilely Lirelpeset accepted this. Any woman of the Concordat would have asked for clarification; no one should accept surgery without a full knowledge of the problem and procedure. Lirelpeset merely smiled a frightened little smile at Ambassador Murchison, and held out her hand for Murchison to take and hold.

She's been submitting to the instructions of others all her life, Steldan realized. And she's too scared to rebel. He bent to his bag and dissolved a tranquilizing sedative into a cup of water. "If the Queen would be willing to drink this?" he asked aloud, and held the cup forward for Tinwamus to receive. Tinwamus conveyed it to the Queen, who drank it in tiny sips.

I feel as if I'm treating a frightened animal, Steldan thought, and not a rational adult with an intelligent and clever mind. I had thought there was only one captive held in this palace, but I see now that there is another.

"I am only a little afraid," Lirelpeset said, untruthfully but with an admirable attempt at courage. "I've never done anything like this before, you see."

Murchison murmurred to the Lirelpeset, calming her, while Steldan prepared and anaesthetized the Queen's abdomen. Tinwamus looked away when Steldan made the tiniest of incisions and inserted his surgical probe. The separation and removal of a segment of oviduct took only a few moments. The reconstruction of the constricted uterus took him only slightly longer. Clean-up and peritoneal patching was the work of a long and careful ten minutes, and the application of a scarless skinpatch was the merest formality afterward. Lirelpeset had wisely kept her eyes away from the procedure, and was blissfully ignorant of the complexity of the surgery. It was possible that the condition was heritable, but that would be a problem for another doctor, in a happier future.

"It is finished," he said at last, "and all is well. The Queen is not to exert herself in any strenuous fashion for the next two days, and intimate visits from her husband, the King, must not be permitted for a day, at least. This liquid — " he produced another cup of sedative in water " — will permit the Queen to sleep in peace that is conducive to restful healing." The formality of the phrasing came to him naturally, although his mind was far, far away from this purely human problem.

Murchison helped Lirelpeset drink the water, and spoke to her for some time. Eventually it was clear that the Queen was only making meaningless noises in response; a moment later she was asleep.

She and Steldan stood, and turned to face Tinwamus. "We can go now," Steldan said. "The Queen is well."

Tinwamus said nothing, and led them through the concealed doorway.

#

A lone figure awaited them in the narrow corridor outside. Tinwamus halted and gasped, blanching in startled terror. Ambassador Murchison straightened. Steldan's eyebrows lifted in surprise.

"There is something fundamentally offensive," intoned Mansivigan-Okemo, King of the Sonallans, "about people who sneak into other people's homes."

"My Lord!" Tinwamus piped, and fell to his knees, his face writhing in shame.

"Your Majesty," Murchison said, very formally.

Mansivigan looked from her to Steldan, who said nothing. Stepping forward, the King stretched out a long arm and grasped Steldan firmly by the collar. "What did you do in there? What have you done to my wife?"

Steldan's arms hung by his sides; he maintained his silence.

"We came to relieve Lirelpeset's pain," Murchison said at last. "Surgery was necessary."

"I watched you," Mansivigan said, still holding Steldan by the collar, yet addressing Murchison. "I watched the whole time, from hiding, and I dared not interfere." He turned back to Steldan. "Explain your surgery, then: what have you done? Don't spare the technical details, and don't trouble me with excuses."

"Your wife has had, at different times, two abnormal pregnancies," Steldan began, plunging matter-of-factly into the specific surgical problem and into the nature of his treatment. "They both ended in spontaneous abortions, before they could develop to a stage where the Queen's life could be threatened. Minor corrective surgery was necessary. Without that, a future complication might have occurred; there is a tendency in that direction." Mansivigan heard him through without comment.

"Oh, my Lord, my Lord," Tinwamus began to whimper. Mansivigan looked at him, and released Steldan. Steldan smoothed his jacket-front and stood back a step.

"Tinwamus, stand," Mansivigan commanded.

"Yes, Lord."

"You have never kept secrets from me before."

Tinwamus remained silent, guilt shadowing his face.

Mansivigan's face darkened. "Very well. I will forgive you, because I need you." He rounded on Murchison and Steldan. "You two are dismissed. I will allow you to find your own way out. Ambassador, you will be summoned hence tomorrow, where we may discuss this in the light of the morrow's return to reason. Commodore, you have five days to absent yourself from my planet, and I would be appreciative if I never laid eyes upon your face again."

He looked back and forth between them. "You are, I believe, a people utterly without honor. Until now, I didn't realize that such a thing was possible. Begone." Without another word, he departed, marching from their presence with a stiff stride.

Steldan dared not meet Murchison's gaze; the two made as hasty an exit as they could from the palace. Due to Mansivigan's attention to privacy, no guards intercepted them.

"Commodore," Murchison said at last, as they stood in the darkened streets beyond the palace wall, "I think that our cause has suffered a bit of a setback." A faint ghostly hint of her normal humor could be heard in her voice; she was recovering quickly from the shock and shame.

"Human," Steldan said. "They're human."

"They certainly are." Murchison took a few steps, then turned around. "We have a bit of a walk, Commodore. Are you coming?"

"No. I mean yes, of course." Steldan caught up with her and walked steadily at her side. "Biologically, I mean to say, the Sonallans are human."

"That's impossible, of course."

"So we had concluded. But I'm not willing to accept 'parallel evolution' to the degree that would be necessary for what I've seen tonight."

"What degree of similarity did you observe?"

"Identity. They're human."

"I'll enjoy hearing you defend this hypothesis. Especially since we know there are no common ancestors, and our homeworlds are no less than six hundred light-years apart."

"Yes," Steldan admitted, "the scientific debate should be a bit of fun."

"Your return home to Archive will doubtless bring you in contact with people to whom you can present your conclusions."

For a time, Steldan said nothing. The two walked on under the light of the glittering stars of the heavens.

"I won't be going home right away," he said at last. "My job here is still undone."

"You can't still hope to rescue Sienne?"

"Tonight's adventure has given me more hope, not less."

"You astonish me, Commodore."

"That," Steldan said humbly, "is my job."

#

Mansivigan regarded the sleeping form of his wife. She lay in careless repose, stretched diagonally across the great bed. He saw her face, dreamless but always dreamy; he saw her body, which none other than he should ever have seen. And he remembered her weakness and her pain, and wondered if it were truly relieved now.

I love her, he realized at last. I always have, I think. The fault was mine, for not seeking help for her myself...yes, even if it had meant asking those Concordat swine. He smiled in appreciation of the irony. Even if it had meant asking Commodore Steldan to come and help her.

He knelt, and straightened the Queen's limbs, and covered her with the bedclothing. Very tenderly, he bent and kissed her lips.

Has this, then, been the one success I will enjoy out of a campaign of failure? My Queen is healed, but my crown will fall?

I've sought to win by subtlety, not by force. I strove to show the world — all of my worlds — that the Concordat's invasion was not only wrong, it was alien and unclean. They had thrown things into chaos, but the people and the nobles continued with their lives as if nothing had ever changed.

They wouldn't see the chaos, so I made it universal, by my decree. There can be no laws when aliens with guns walk our streets.

He moved quietly away from his sleeping Queen, and silently closed the door behind him. In the hallway, he paused.

I tried to manipulate events in such a way as to magnify my own advantage. With the laws gone, the people should have looked to me.

I never expected them to take up guns of their own.

#

Chapter Eighteen

The hospital room was small, and would have been cramped even without the long bed stretched against one wall. Steldan would have liked to be pacing, instead of sitting in anxious idleness in a narrow visitor's chair. Beside him, Schauband stood, her back to the closed door. Sunk deep within the bed, riding on the cushion of compressed semifluids, General Vai watched them both with weary eyes.

"Tonight," Steldan said, forcing the word out into the tense silence. Immediately he felt the need to stand, to pace, yet he dared not indulge it. He kneaded his hands together brutally.

"Later tonight," Vai said, his voice weak. "And I don't think you should go."

"I have to go, General," Steldan responded instantly.

Vai smiled. "That's untrue. Your passion is speaking in place of your reason."

"General — "

"Commodore." Vai lifted his good hand from the bed and gripped an excercise rail. Even after the attack and the surgery that patched his twice-injured side, he retained a surprising strength of grip. "Rank has many privileges, but among them are some rather important duties. I don't want you to go on this mission."

Schauband, so far, had watched the two, biding her time without expression. Now her interest was aroused. She leaned forward and listened more carefully.

"General — " Steldan began again.

"Nope." Vai's hand relaxed and slipped beneath the foamy green surface of the warm sludge that held him suspended. "You oughtn't to go. There are some very good reasons for this, and I don't want you to suspect that I don't know them all."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Very well; I'll tell you. Your job is to make policy, not to enforce it. Your job is to submit your plans to your superiors, so that they can best act on your advice. Your job is to support those above you, not to act on their behalf." And he gazed at Steldan with cold, piercing eyes.

"You're obviously right, General," Steldan said smoothly, hiding his tremor of agitation, "but I'll be going anyway."

"You outrank me, Commodore." Vai looked away. "And I can't blame you. Were I healthy enough to go along, I'd be mightily tempted, myself. I have only one last word: be careful, and don't think too much. That could be dangerous."

"Sir," Schauband said, after a time, leaving it unclear whom she addressed, "what kind of team do we have?"

Vai tried to shrug, but his shoulder had been immobilized. "I've left word for your command fire team to be placed on alert. They know the way you like to work, and they'll volunteer, when asked."

"Thank you, sir." Schauband leaned back against the door, wondering what the earlier discussion had meant. It sounded obscurely ominous, and yet she knew that the two men were friends. More importantly, they were allies.

"We know that Mataconet and his thugs are inside the palace," Steldan said. His breath was tight within his chest. "What if they change their schedule?"

"Do you believe that Orenatha could have lied to you?" Vai asked, very gently.

"No. I believe that to be impossible."

"And they weren't expecting him back, so his absence shouldn't alarm them."

"No, sir."

"Well, then." Vai didn't feel the need to say more.

Time passed, much too slowly for Steldan's comfort. Again he broke the stillness of the watch. "If we cut the timing too closely..."

"Yes, Commodore?"

"Never mind," Steldan said, and swallowed. After a while, he spoke again. "We can wait outside, if you want."

"No. Stay here with me. Although I may not be the most enlivening of company, I'll feel better with you here."

"Yes, sir." He waited out the rest of the stay in silence.

The lonely hours fled away. The cold evening faded to an icy midnight. The hospital bed hummed, circulating the thick healing fluids around Vai's body. Once or twice, he slept. Steldan's mind desperately sought for activity, and only by the harshest mental discipline was he able to prevent himself from fidgeting. Schauband stood against the doorway like a guard at her post.

One in the morning, and then two. Vai looked up at Steldan. "Time for you two to be going."

"Yes, sir," Steldan said. "Thank you, sir." He knew that he outranked the General, but he also knew that the General commanded more personal force than he did. If Vai had spoken forcefully, specifically forbidding Steldan's attendance in the secret night mission, Steldan would have been hard put to assert his right to disregard the commmand.

He stood, collected his thoughts, and passed quickly through the door that Schauband held open for him. Then the two were gone, out into the tight hospital corridors, and Vai was left alone.

#

Once out of the sickroom, and in action, Steldan's spirits buoyed. He stalked down the hallways at something like top speed, with Schauband in tow. A fast, low-flying air-car ferried them to the barracks where Lowell, Bravo, and Mag were waiting. Schauband, under Steldan's supervision, filled them in. As Vai had predicted, they volunteered without hesitation.

"Bravo hasn't got anything to lose, ma'am," Mag laughed sarcastically. "She should've died on patrol last night, I say. She can volunteer for any number of hard luck missions now, without fear."

"Shut your mouth," Bravo swore, and filled in all of Mag's personal history with the foulest string of curses that a Marines Guards Division senior non-com on garrison duty could ever have employed.

Lowell stood by, quietly holding his cone-rifle in readiness, uncertain, as always, of what to do when his comrades bickered. "I'm ready, ma'am." His stoop-shouldered stance hinted at his basic shyness, but was no indication of any weakness. As a Marine, he was as good as they came. As a person, however, he lacked all of Mag's and Bravo's blatant cocksurety.

Schauband nodded briefly to him, and called the other two to order.

"Night infiltration. Silent order. Guns carried empty, and radios disconnected. The idea is not to get caught. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," the three assented, unanimously willing to follow Schauband in whatever her mission might be.

Schauband was still not ready. "Bravo. You were hit last night. We saw you hit, saw you knocked flying. Are you good for this?"

"Yes, ma'am. The round bounced off of the pavement, and exploded in front of my nose. Knocked me flat on my — my behind, ma'am. It probably looked bad from where you were standing."

"It did. Let's move out."

Mag got the last word, as she so often did. "Bullets bounce off you. Talk about bad luck."

Bravo couldn't help herself, and swore in an angry undertone for the next few minutes.

"And you, Lowell?"

"Me, ma'am?"

"You were hit too, last night."

"Oh, no ma'am."

"No?" Schauband looked carefully at him.

"Well, yes, I was hit, but it was nothing. A flying chunk of shrapnel knocked me out. But I'm fine. It didn't even leave a scar."

"So you want to come along tonight?"

"Yes, ma'am. Please, ma'am."

Mag nudged Bravo in the ribs. "Bloody fool, I say." Bravo eyed her with disgust.

Steldan, observing the interplay, couldn't restrain a smile. He liked their spirit. For now, he himself was fully alive and awake, his earlier nervous tension expressed in a brisk step and in an optimistic sense of readiness. He led the cheerful band back to the air-car.

They landed in a cleared section of the city, where the Marines maintained armed watch over their vehicles. Steldan's preparatory work for the raid had all been cleared. A large orbit-to-ground assault landing craft waited for him, and a pilot had been assigned. The craft, built to slam to a planet's surface and unload a battalion in mere seconds, seemed ridiculous when carrying only five. The soldiers buckled into comfortable aisle seats, and grinned happily at each other at their luck.

Steldan gave the signal: the craft lurched into the air and sped out over the ocean. Its path seemed to take it in the direction of one of the lesser cities across the great sea.

Five hundred miles out, it slowed, stopped, and settled to the ocean's surface. Waves splashed about it, and steam rose from the heated metal beneath. Then, in a swirling chaos of foam, it sank, dropped to a depth of eighty meters, and cruised slowly back toward Sebascodegan city. Its course would eventually take it close in, under the great rock outcrop supporting Mansivigan's high and vast palace.

Instruments in orbit noted the unscheduled change of course. The instruments in orbit, however, all belonged to the Concordat Navy, and no signals were broadcast. The craft's course remained secret.

The undersea trip was nearly as rough as the flight had been. The heavy craft's engines were built for straight-out, hard-hitting power. Marines were expected to be able to handle a bit of shaking, but Steldan, rattling around against his seat-belts, began to wonder if he might be susceptible to sea-sickness. He leaned back, and tried to relax.

What will happen if I do rescue Sienne, after all? It was the first time he'd had enough time to wonder about this. The thought startled him.

Do I want him rescued? Suppose he wants his old job back? He is in legal command of the Navy; he is the Grand Admiral. By legal standards, de la Noue is only an usurper, a come-lately. The Praesidium accepted her as Sienne's replacement. Would they reverse that if Sienne returned alive?

For a time, as the craft rumbled along beneath the waves, Steldan's thoughts were as turbulent as the passage. I owe my complete loyalty to de la Noue. I put her in office; I don't want to be the one to remove her.

Would it be best if Sienne didn't return?

That thought startled him more than the first one had. What could he do about it? Sienne must be rescued, mustn't he? Although it would obviously simplify things if he weren't. If, during the rescue raid, a shot somehow went astray...

Steldan remembered Vai's caution, and went deathly pale. Vai had foreseen this dilemma, and had sought to spare him the necessity of facing it. More: Vai had doubted what Steldan's conclusion would be.

And with good reason, Steldan realized. I myself do not know what to do. What action is in the best interests of the Concordat of Archive? That one overriding concern helped focus his thoughts, and he arrived at a difficult resolve.

The Concordat must be served.

#

The craft surfaced with a large unexpected belch of water and trapped air. The assault ramp was then lowered, making so loud a rasping noise that Steldan feared that his attempt at stealth must surely fail. There was nothing to do but proceed; Schauband and Mag pushed a small inflatable raft out into the choppy waters. Tethered to the craft, it hovered and bobbed, barely visible in the darkness. Steldan was the last into the raft, timing his leap as best he could against the small boat's pitching motions. He landed clumsily and nearly flopped foward onto his face. Bravo and Mag caught him and lowered him gently to his seat.

Schauband and Lowell rowed, bringing the boat expertly around toward the blunt, craggy cliffs. Above them, the palace glowed, still floodlit despite the hour. Minarets and spires, gables and houses, turrets and tall revetments all stood piled higher and higher into the sky. Steldan's head tilted back as his gaze travelled up the gloriously decorated vastness of the keep.

The water still held some of the warmth of the day; the boat moved swiftly over the swelling waves, uncoiling its tether. It was the work of only a moment to pull it up to the wet face of the rock cliffs. Schauband fended them off with an oar while Mag drove a piton into a crack in the smooth stone. A winch back in the assault craft reeled the boat back in. They watched it go, and then they climbed.

Again and again during that long climb Steldan wished he had taken Vai's advice. His boots tended to slip just when he would put his weight against a piton; his hands were chafed by the craggy rocks. Where the water had worn it away, the cliff was smooth and slick, but above the line of the highest tides the stone was harsh and sharp. The mission seemed like the veriest fool's errand. After a time even the darkness seemed insufficient: reflected city-light lent the sky a hollow orange glow that could reveal the team to an alert observer.

Still they climbed, and Steldan's heart and nerves regained their accustomed resolve. At least, he reminded himself with good humor, he was at the bottom of the order of ascent, and would endanger no one if he were to fall.

The lowest foundations of the palace were blended so smoothly into the cliff-face that it was difficult to say exactly where natural stone stopped and carven stone began. The cliff grew flatter, until it was obvious that it was a wall they climbed, not a crag. Bravo had switched over to piton duty, driving the expanding-core spikes into microscopic cracks with never more than five sure blows from her mallet. A loop of line descended, clamped securely to the pitons. It was Steldan's task to unfix the clamp and allow the line to be drawn up. The sharp clamps dug harshly into his fingers, and he found himself measuring time by the passage and return of the line's knotted ends.

Surf below them, and guards above: the threats were obvious. They swung out of their way a little to avoid an unlighted window, the lowest they had seen. Then their diagonal path bent around a corner, into deeper shadow. Bravo found another corner, concave and sharp, and they followed this up. Although it was unrealistic, they felt safer with walls on two sides of them.

At last they clambered over a parapet and down onto a long low terrace. One direction seemed as good as another. Schauband pointed to the left, and Mag led off, scouting the way. She left her huge Magnetic Accelerator Rifle strapped to her back, and its ammunition in clips at her belt. Schauband, Lowell, and Bravo each carried a standard cone rifle — also unloaded — and a brace of free flight missiles. Steldan bore a snub-nosed pistol, but other than that sidearm, near useless in a heavy firefight, he was unarmed.

The terrace followed the edge of the drop for some way, then moved up in a series of ascending staircases. At each level stood a thick wooden door, shadowy in the near-darkness. Following some obscure instinct, Mag led them past the first four of these, only to stop at the fifth. Gesturing the group back, she twisted the great wrought-iron latch. It was locked tightly.

Now that a particular task was clear — to break through that door — the team fell into a practiced and workmanlike drill. Mag dug into her pack and brought forth a stout pry-bar. Lowell and Schauband stood to either side, keeping watch, while Mag and Bravo, the bulkiest and strongest of the team, levered themselves against the bar. After two quick heaves against the door they had pried it away from the jamb. Mag pushed it open and stepped through into the deeper darkness of the palace's interior. They were within.

It was here that Orenatha's information would be the most vital, and duplicity on his part would be the most dangerous. Their task was to explore, almost at random, until they found one of several chambers fitting the descriptions he'd given. From there, secret passageways could be accessed, and the dungeons were only a short climb down.

How willingly he'd given the information; how thoroughly he'd betrayed the palace. Steldan still felt substantially certain that Orenatha had not lied, but here, in the deep darkness, it was hard to feel assured. Yet Orenatha had been dosed with the truth-drug, and, if he were indeed as human as he seemed, he could not possibly have lied. But he had joked. Steldan felt a chill, now, remembering Orenatha's words. It would be easier getting into the dungeons below the palace than it would be getting out...

The room had a pleasant scent, almost a bouquet. Schauband, now in the lead, turned on her handflash, and swept it swiftly around before turning it off again. Steldan caught a glimpse of a sitting room, appointed in gracious yellows and russets. The ceiling was low — very low indeed — and braced up with thick wooden beams. It was a sunset room, with shuttered windows that would, when open, overlook the sea. Low windowseats were set into the walls, and a chest of drawers was pushed against one wall. Ahead, in the darkness, Schauband opened the door and led the team out into an equally dark hallway.

It was well that they walked slowly, taking care where they stepped. The corridor took a sudden left turn and ran up a half level on three narrow steps in a twisting staircase. Schauband dared a quick flick of her flash, showing them all a longer hallway, narrow, and lined on both sides with low bookshelves. Steldan could smell the characteristic odor of bookbinding, as well as the clean smell of the palace itself, stuffy yet pleasant, like a museum.

Little by little, slowly, they explored the vast palace's lower levels. They passed through libraries, drawing rooms, music rooms — Steldan was awestruck at the size and beauty of one giant thousand-stringed harp — through galleries, over bridges, and up and down staircases of all lengths. They found a shrine, the only lighted area they had seen so far. In it, a tiny flame burned in a wall-mount, and a triangular gnomon cast a fluttering shadow across the room. It was the shadow of The God, Steldan knew, and despite the security of his unbelief, he shuddered.

Through the unending darkness they moved, in near silence. Steldan was moved by the beauty of the architecture and by the vastness of the scale. Schauband was merely anxious to be about the task. Mag, Lowell, and Bravo were alert and unhappy, waiting for the real action that they knew was inevitable.

At last they arrived at one of the several rooms that Orenatha had described: a ballroom, vast and untenanted. Its floor shone slick as glass under Schauband's handflash; its walls were mirrored, reflecting the flash away to infinity. Yet the ceiling was low, buttressed to support the tons of palace still above. Steldan led them all quickly across the floor, trying to ignore the clattering of their footsteps. So far, they had remained undiscovered. At the far wall Steldan found a separate section of mirror, exactly where Orenatha had said it would be. Pressure on the metal clamps holding it to the wall caused it to swing away. Behind it, a tiny passageway gaped, barely big enough to pass Mag and her long rifle. She stepped in gamely, however, her own flash in her hand, and started down the dizzyingly steep stair within the thick wall.

This passageway, Orenatha had promised, led straight to the dungeon without turning or branching.

#

Earlier in the evening, arriving with the invitation he'd cadged from Mansivigan, Mataconet had dined with the King along with eight of his chosen men. In the upper reaches of the palace, far above the regions where Steldan would be trespassing, they sat to the King's table. The King's hospitality was formal, for it had been forced out of him, but it was sincere, for he liked Mataconet. The hours had passed by merrily, with a tremendous dinner and with music and games afterward.

Finally, late, late into the night, they sat and talked. Their speech was rough and personal, gamey and free. Much beer was drunk, and some stronger spirits. Boasts were boasted; gossip and slander were spread; dreams were shared.

And at two in the morning, Mataconet was correct in pursuing his host's hospitality yet further in requesting rooms for himself and his cronies, and the King was obliged to grant the request. It was a canon law that a host may not evict a guest after two o'clock, and Mansivigan was unwilling to gainsay such laws, even if, by his decree, no laws had any bite of enforcement. Custom prevailed. Rooms were found, and Mataconent and his crew were housed.

They did not sleep. Soon, half an hour after their host had departed, they were up and together, filing nonchalantly down a stairwell toward the bottommost basements. As they descended, Mataconet distributed laser pistols from his carry-pack.

#

Chapter Nineteen

Lowell led the way down the staircase. The pitch was so steep and the confining walls so narrow that the way was virtually a ladder within a chimney. The steps were narrow and treacherous. Mag, then Bravo followed, then Schauband and Steldan. Lowell's flash showed the tunnel falling away below, seemingly without end. Steldan tried to estimate the distance they had descended, but soon became confused and uncertain. How far down could this way drop?

He reviewed Orenatha's instructions, which had guided them safely so far. This stair would take them to a deep basement where they would find a series of holding cells. Orenatha had spoken of playing down here as a youth, and Steldan had to admit that the dark, secret ways would be irresistible to any imaginative child. Indeed, Steldan thought with a bit of wry amusement, the tunnels and crypts could very well have been designed by a child, or by an adult with his childish sense of whimsy intact. Should they be on the look-out for deadfalls, breakaway floors, or other pitfalls? Orenatha had assured him that the passage was safe, and Steldan still couldn't bring himself to doubt his word. If his hypothesis about the Sonallan species' humanity was true, and if his calculation of the dosage of the truth drug had been correct, he should have left Orenatha utterly unable to lie. And if he'd erred... He shook his head and stepped carefully down the stair, his knees roughly at a level with Schauband's head before him.

The wavering circle of Lowell's flash picked out a metal door at the foot of the stair, where the last step let down onto a tiny landing. There was only enough room for him, although Mag was able to bend low and lean over his shoulder for a view.

With a shrug, Lowell twisted the door-handle and pushed the metal door wide. Light poured into the cramped stairway from the corridor just outside. Lowell gingerly stepped out and looked both ways. He shook his head and gestured for the team to follow.

"Which way, sir?" Schauband asked in a whisper.

Steldan had to think for a bit in order to visualize the basement layout. "Left." He fell in behind Lowell and Schauband, while the other two Marines dropped behind to form a rearguard. The corridor was clean and dry, and comfortably wide. A brick-work pattern was inlaid in the floor, while the walls were formed of stacked stone blocks. Steldan, curious, ran his hand along the wall, then slowed and examined it more closely.

"Sir?" Schauband was clearly anxious to move on.

"Nothing. It's nothing." Steldan hurried to rejoin her. But he had seen that the walls were carven from solid living rock, and the pattern of blocks was merely an artifice. They were deep within the solid stone of the sea-cliff.

The light came from electric filaments, flickering in metal cressets bolted high upon the walls. The illusion was of flames burning in open lanterns. Once again, Steldan was forced to admire the neverfailing Sonallan craftsmanship: although the place looked like the dungeon keep of an ancient feudal lord, the materials were modern.

They trooped along the twisting corridor for a surprisingly long time, as it took them deeper into the cliff. Sometimes it seemed to slope downwards, and at other times the drop was unmistakable, as they plunged down steep ramps. Although the corridor curved back and forth chaotically, Steldan was convinced that the overall pattern was a descending spiral. Orenatha had described this all to him, but he had left out many, many details, either from carelessness or — Steldan still fought to deny it to himself — from a hope of misleading him.

His reverie was interrupted sharply when Lowell, alert in the lead, halted and drew back a step. The unit flattened against one wall; Steldan, trying to hurry and keep silent at the same time, joined them.

They had been seen. From down the corridor, a series of shouts preceded the sound of running feet. Steldan estimated that they had encountered a group of perhaps a dozen. Schauband, her face blank for a moment as she concentrated, confirmed his opinion: "Ten. They've broken into two parties..."

After that, things happened with uncanny swiftness. Schauband pulled her cone rifle over her shoulder and slammed a clip of rounds into it. Lowell and Bravo did likewise, while Mag, smiling sardonically, unslung her heavy Magnetic Accelerator Rifle and shot the loading bolt.

"Don't be the first to fire," Schauband said softly, and slapped her crewmembers roughly on their shoulders to send them off. She followed with scarcely an instant's pause, and Steldan, at a loss, followed somewhat more tardily.

The corridor, already lit as if by flaming torches, suddenly took on a spiderwebbed texture, as if the scene were reflected in a mirror that had cracked. Ahead of him, Steldan saw four Sonallan men, crouching low and wielding laser pistols.

The Marines were all down, hugging the floor. Their weapons all discharged at once, flinging a tremendous volley of sound and shrapnel down the corridor. By the time that Steldan had drawn his sidearm, the action was over. The four Sonallans were wrecks, little more than shattered carcasses, sprayed across the patterned floor.

Mag had taken a bad injury to her shoulder; her burned and raw flesh glistened where a laser shot had seared it.

Bravo would never rise again. She had died without an opportunity for a final curse.

Steldan felt momentarily weak. When Schauband and the others sprinted off, however, he understood that he had no choice but to follow. He took a deep breath, then charged through the site of the carnage and on to the clear corridor beyond.

#

Mataconet's scheme had seemed so straightforwardly simple.

He and his band of hand-picked knaves, in the palace under the pretence of being the King's guests, would come into the basement quietly, and abscond with the captive. He had never considered that those devils of Archive could have gotten here as well. He wondered how they had managed it. Had they invited themselves to the King's table, as he had? Had they tunnelled up from the depths of the underworld?

Moving swiftly, in the middle of his surviving team, Mataconet fumed, his anger now visible upon his normally placid face.

"Whoa on, men," he shouted suddenly. "We can't run forever. We outnumber them!"

"Oh, yes, we do," whined Toromoag, nearby him. "We have the numbers...but they have the guns!"

"You don't like these?" Mataconet swore, shoving his laser pistol close under Toromoag's nose. "You're not impressed with our firepower?"

Toromoag said nothing. Mataconet quickly spread his team out across the corridor, and backed them slightly apart from one another to minimize the enemy's firing accuracy.

"We have The God on our side; we have the numbers. They are wraiths, forlorn of righteousness." Mataconet's words were for the craven among his men; the stalwart needed no encouragement. But whether hatred, or fear, or simple rational judgement drove a man, his fire would be more direct if his head were clear.

"Stay down...and let them die for us!" he bellowed. The next moment, the accursed Concordat blackguards burst around an upslope corner and charged at the ambush. The noise of the firefight was hellish; Mataconet's ears rang, and his eyes squinted shut. He knew his fire was hitting no one. Deep in his heart, he knew that it had been a mistake to stop to face the foe here where only firepower could decide things.

He had already lost his nerve, and knew that a retreat would be necessary, when a bullet took him high in the shoulder. The wound wasn't a crippling one, but it sent him spinning. He landed up against a wall, and lay in panting terror for a moment. Directly before him lay Toromoag's corpse, the hideous exit wound from an enemy shot horribly visible.

He yelled weakly for a retreat, and was surprised to find himself obeyed. His men fell back, in good order, and dropped to safety around a far corner. The retreat had not been a rout; his men were sturdy enough to avoid stampeding.

#

From that point, the battle was a running fight. The Sonallans understood the loss of their rearguard, and Schauband's pursuit denied them any opportunity to stand in ambush. But their advance was a cautious one; Steldan soon caught up with his troops, and added his strength to theirs. His pistol was heavy in his hand, and once or twice he had an opportunity to fire it, aiming at Sonallan adversaries he couldn't even see.

"We're getting close," he muttered, during one quick rest stop. The corridor had made a sharp right turn, and shortly beyond it made another. The Sonallans could be heard massing just past the second bend, prepared to use their superior strength to hold Steldan and his Marines at bay.

Schauband muttered her low instructions to Mag, who wrinkled her nose. Lowell nodded in grim concentration; he had grown quiet and sullen since Bravo fell, and it was clear that he yearned to avenge her.

"Go," Schauband whispered, and darted around the first corner in the midst of her two troopers. Steldan was not far behind. Instead of charging all the way to the second bend, however, where they would be in the middle of an unobstructed killing space, they clattered to a halt against the wall only partway down the middle section of hallway. Schauband and Lowell laid down a heavy suppressing fire, pinning the Sonallans in the shadow of the angle. Mag, grinning a happy, laughing killer's grin, hefted her massive rifle, ignoring the pain of her shoulder. She took aim and fired, placing her shots with extravagant care directly against the sharp angle of stone at the inside corner of the bend. The powerful penetrating rounds blasted away the stone, knocking loose fist-sized shards and flinging a hail of gravel and rock fragments.

Schauband and Lowell charged, running low, while Mag continued to fire, shifting her aim only a little higher. Under the unexpected shower of rock-splinter shrapnel, the Sonallans hesitated, gave ground, and were soon routed. Schauband, Lowell, and Mag gave chase, until the Sonallans took refuge around yet another double set of corners.

But this time it didn't matter: the Concordat troops had captured the vital segment of corridor. A thick, iron-barred door stood inset into the inner wall. Steldan informed Schauband.

"We're here." When she looked back at him, he gestured at the door. "We've arrived at our Admiral's cell."

"Can you get him out?"

"I will, one way or another." Steldan tried the door, but was not surprised to find it secure. Standing carefully away, he aimed his pistol at the lock mechanism and fired four careful shots. The metal dented, bent inward, and shattered. Three more shots wrecked the levers and bars within. After a moment of careful fiddling with it, Steldan was able to pull the door wide.

"You can't come in," said a short, blunt man. Steldan was taken momentarily aback. This certainly wasn't Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne. The man he faced was a jailer, thick and muscular and pale for a Sonallan, suggesting that he spent all of his time indoors. For a moment Steldan feared that he'd broken open the wrong cell, until the brown-eyed, brown-haired jailer brought forth a long, ghastly-edged knife, a cross between a machete and scimitar. Steldan retreated a step and raised his pistol.

The jailer merely reached out and pushed closed the door. Although Steldan feared a slash from the man's deadly blade, his duty was clear. Amid the sound of shooting, as Schauband and her two held off a probe from the enemy, Steldan booted the door wide.

"You may not come in," the jailer repeated. For someone in such an extremity his voice was surprisingly mild.

"Then send the prisoner out."

"I can't do that." The jailer looked at him with a pained expression. "You can't be ignorant of the duty of a King's Warden."

Steldan could, but said nothing. It was ludicrous, and he knew it, that he should be so stymied. His own duty was clear, and still he hesitated. It seemed so wrong to shoot down a helpless man. Even after seeing Bravo's torn body, the laser burns piercing it horribly, and even with the Grand Admiral of the Concordat Navy being held in that cell, Steldan couldn't force himself to fire.

The jailer, however, moved first, and Steldan cursed himself for having thought the man helpless. In a slow-motion instant that Steldan perceived with nightmarish clarity, the jailer drew down his great knife and began to bring it up again for a deadly throw. Steldan's right hand squeezed the trigger of his gun with involuntary haste, while his whole body slewed crazily to one side.

His shot echoed for a long time, longer than it could possibly have sounded it reality. Steldan shook his head, and watched the jailer sag slowly to the floor. He started forward, then halted, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side. He looked down, and almost smiled to see the jailer's knife impaling his upper arm.

Corpsman! his mind bawled, shying away from the wound. The part of his mind that was trained, that was a Doctor and proud of it, diagnosed the shock first, then the wound's severity. A nice, brutal, gashing wound, and it would bleed like a rivercourse in full race, but the great arteries had been spared, and the patient — the victim — the stunned mind to whom the arm belonged — would live. He dragged the knife away, gritting his teeth at the unexpected cold pain of it. The blood poured out; he almost felt vindicated at the sight of it all.

Idiotically, he fumbled for something sharp with which to cut away his sleeve for bandaging. Then he saw the knife, still gripped loosely in his hand. Ahead of him, Schauband and her two Marines continued firing, holding away an assault which Steldan could only dimly comprehend. Reversing the knife, he sawed at his sleeve, then hacked it into strips for padding and a tourniquet.

Pale, trembling, he bent and picked up the gun he'd dropped. Stepping across the corpse of the jailer, he entered the cell.

Facing him, eyes narrowed in nervous fear, stood an old man, gaunt, pale, with a thin, wobbling throat, a sharp bony chin, and thick white hair. He was dressed in a loose robe, with trousers on beneath it, and he wore slippers upon his long, thin feet. Steldan wondered, for a moment, whether this was the Grand Admiral or his ghost.

"Rothar Sienne?"

"Yes? Who are you?"

"I am Archive. I have come for you."

The old man nodded, and came forward with small steps, stopping to gaze into Steldan's face.

#

Chapter Twenty

Within the Council Chamber, the delegates slowly came to order. Grand Admiral de la Noue stood before them, regarding them from behind her podium. She stood in silence for a short time after the room was completely quiet. He stance was informal, with her hands lightly gripping the lectern.

"Welcome to the second day of this meeting of the Supreme Council of Sectors," she said at last. "This is the seven hundred and twenty seventh meeting, commemorating the seven hundred and sixty ninth year since the signing of the Concordat.

"As the Secretary of the Navy, appointment pending, it is my duty and my pleasure to chair this meeting."

Her style of speech was brisk and clear. She wasted no further time on opening remarks or discussion.

"We have a series of eight items of business allotted to us today. These include the approval of the Long Range Program and of the eight-year budget, the passage of the yearly review, and..." She looked up into the sea of faces and saw several upraised hands. She recognized the challenge and met it courageously. She pointed to a delegate she knew. Frank Wilson. "The delegate from The District: to what purpose do you rise?"

"I move to abbreviate the agenda. I suggest that the matter of your consideration for Praesidium status takes precedence."

Several of the delegates turned about in their seats to eye the man who had chosen to make this historical objection. A buzz of conversation filled the room, but only for a moment.

De la Noue walked out from behind the lectern and faced the assembly. "Men and Women or Archive," she said firmly. "I am not unaware of your feelings in this matter. It is believed by some that I hold my office illegally. I want everyone here to understand something: I will never break the law. There is nothing that can ever force me to do so. I'm willing to listen to your comments."

The small stage upon which she stood was raised no more than half a meter above the level of the floor; the rising banks of seats loomed over her like the seats over an arena. She seemed so small a figure to stand in opposition to the will of this hostile crowd.

You have allies here, Andrew North thought. He looked back a couple of rows, and caught the eye of former Grand Admiral Telford. They were in agreement: de la Noue would be ratified today.

Wilson stood and leaned forward, overshadowing the delegate seated before him. "We know that Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne is alive, and that you cannot be the Grand Admiral in his stead. We know that you have mismanaged fleet operations in the Philomela Sector. We know that countless lives have been lost due to your inexperience. We know that you must be refused the formal right to the post you now temporarily hold." Wilson mopped at his forehead, and straightened.

North sat, stunned, having been unprepared for a frontal assault. He suddenly saw what a gamble Wilson was taking. For him to have challenged de la Noue's legitimacy by subtle, passive means would have been relatively safe. For him to openly declare him her foe showed a daring that was virtually without precedent. He was defying the Praesidium; he was, in a quiet way, performing an act of rebellion as blatantly as if he had declared his planets to be independent of Concordat sovereignty.

He wouldn't do this unless he'd counted the votes, North thought in a sudden panic. He has, in effect, moved his army up against hers, and begun the firing. He must be certain of victory, for a loss would be devastating.

Wilson, standing upright now, spoke in a clear voice. "You addressed us as men and women of Archive. And that is something that we all are. But we are also representatives of our own worlds, acting in accord with our own local needs. When you crush a rebellion in one region, you do so with troops dragooned from its neighbors. We are suffering in inequity because of your unreadiness. Now we are expected to support you in an office that another occupies, and which another exercised with more skill.

"Sienne gave us eight years of peace. Between you and Telford, we've had three years of nothing but war.

"We cannot confirm you in office."

With that, Wilson sat, trembling a little. He'd said what he'd come to say; now he could rest a moment before the real shouting began.

While North sat and tried to guess what would be best to do, Telford stood. Without waiting for formal recognition, he began to speak.

"They're already calling it 'de la Noue's war,'" he said, loudly enough. At the front, de la Noue cleared her throat, and gestured as if to silence him.

"Ahem. The delegate is — "

Telford smiled, and raised his voice very slightly. "They're already blaming the loss of over ten thousand lives and of over sixty ships on her. On her alone. They're already blaming her for the execution of the officers involved. She is being blamed for policy; she is being blamed for procedure." He paused for a carefully timed moment.

"She is being blamed, fellow delegates, for war itself."

Silence greeted this last statement. It was too obviously true. Telford's crescendo of ironic charges carried a powerful point. He expanded upon it, drove it home.

"We don't blame warriors for war, any more than we blame diplomats for peace." He spread his hands. "In fact, it might be more fair to reverse the accusations, and charge diplomats with war, while thanking warriors for peace." No laughter followed the joke, but Telford hadn't intended any to. He stood straighter, a man who had held the power of war in his hands and who had had it taken from him by circumstances of his own making. The roomful of delegates hung upon his words.

"Grand Admiral de la Noue has suppressed a violent secession. In crushing rebellion, lives were lost. But in fighting a revolution there is no other coin to be spent. Lives are the sad cost of doing business in a cosmos where rebellions can occur.

"And she executed a criminal. A popular criminal; a criminal who was well-liked. Executions, then, are likewise the cost of doing business in a universe where there is crime.

"De la Noue is being scorned for her error in merely doing her job. What cost does this reflect? Is scorn the sad cost of doing business in a world where corruption has been commonplace?"

A ripple of applause followed this, soft at first but growing stronger. Soon, acclaim for his sentiments echoed throughout the vast hall.

He would have said more; de la Noue stopped him. "The delegate is out of order." Silence descended instantly.

She stood alone upon the platform, heroic in her red and white uniform, her stance defiant yet.

"Hear me, delegates. If Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne is alive, then he is the Grand Admiral, and I am not. If he returns, then I will resign my Praesidium post in his favor, and will accept whatever military duty or post he shall see fit to assign me to."

More hands rose; de la Noue indicated Wilson again. "To what purpose do you rise?"

"We have only your word on this, is that not so?"

De la Noue stepped forward. "Amend the terms of the vote for my approval," she said softly. The hands that were in the air fell, falteringly, back into the crowd. "My post can be made conditional. Sienne's reappearance and claim will invalidate me. I am not one to break my oath."

"That amendment is so moved," Wilson muttered. The favorable reaction to Telford's speech had obviously caused him to rethink his determination to oust de la Noue.

The motion to abbreviate the agenda passed. The motion to amend de la Noue's nomination passed. And de la Noue's appointment passed. The margin of passage of the three votes was more and more narrow; she was approved in office by the slimmest possible consensus.

The rest of the morning passed in a more harmonious fashion. Business proceeded in an orderly and sensible way. But an undercurrent of tension cut across the hall, and the buzzings of private conversations were never absent.

North, at one point during a brief recess, stood and strode back to the row of seats where Telford sat. Easing along the row, he tried to look inconspicuous as he sought out the former Grand Admiral. "Sir?"

Telford looked up at North. "Yes?"

"We won, didn't we?"

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, sir. Why have you been looking so sour for the past half hour?"

Telford looked up at North with tired eyes. He looked away, and sighed. "She had it. It was hers. And she threw it away."

"But sir," North protested, trying to keep his voice low. "We won. She's in."

"No." Telford started to explain, but the meeting was called back to order. De la Noue stood before the assembly, holding a folded piece of yellow paper in her hand.

"I've just been handed a message," she said, her voice low. The vast audience waited, staring at her with an aura of anticipation that could tip over into hostility at a word or a gesture.

"Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne has been rescued, and will be returning here directly. I will maintain my Praesidium post no longer than is necessary to receive him here and formally return the office to him."

North turned to look at Telford, but the latter would not meet his gaze.

"I am not one to break my oath," de la Noue said, very stiffly and formally. Then she smiled, a happy smile of relief. The tension in the room was dispelled instantly. "We have several days still before he can arrive here. With your permission, I think we can still get the Program and the Budget passed today." Before that would be possible, de la Noue had to wait out a thunderous storm of applause, applause that she scarcely felt she deserved. She had done no more than her duty.

#

Chapter Twenty One

Within the cell that had been his only home for nearly three years, Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne stood with puzzled dignity, regarding Steldan. The jailer, the bluff, stalwart, unimaginative man who had been his only companion for those years, now lay dead upon the floor. And the door, now thrown unaccustomedly wide, admitted the flat sound of gunfire, including the never-to-be forgotten shock of a Magnetic Accelerator Rifle.

"What do you want?" he asked, groping to understand the situation.

Steldan smiled. "Commodore Athalos Steldan, reporting for duty, sir." He drew a hurried breath. "We've got to get out of here. Your rescue party is dwindling."

"Then let us go," Sienne said quietly, and stepped back to let Steldan precede him.

"Very well, but hurry," Steldan implored him. He darted out into the corridor and signalled to Schauband. Then he grabbed Sienne's arm brusquely and hastened the old man out into the light. "Hurry, blast it!" A tinge of panic surged across him, and his chest felt tight and breathless.

"Yes, yes. Of course." Sienne tottered forth, and together with Steldan began to run up the inclined course of the hallway.

#

The Sonallan band led by Mataconet had failed disastrously in the attempt to snatch Sienne. The devils of Archive had come upon them unexpectedly, and had overcome their rearguard. The whole of the chase had been beyond his control. Now, due to his inefficiency, the enemy had freed their prisoner, and were nearly about to escape.

"They'll get away," he snarled to his remaining men, "unless we stop them!"

"How? Their women can outfight us. We are unmanned. The God has forsaken us."

"Not yet," Mataconet shouted. "Oh, by The God, not yet! Come with me, or I'll go alone."

Heartened, his men joined him in a hurtling charge.

#

Behind Steldan and Sienne, the Sonallans whooped and surged, and the hissing noise of their laser weapons' discharge sounded like a wind in a forest. Schauband, Lowell, and Mag sought to stem that wind, and, when that attempt failed, turned and fled at top speed. Steldan, hearing this, exhorted Sienne on to greater haste; the two verily flew up the way, taking the turnings at a reckless pace.

"Sir!" Sienne gasped. Steldan slowed, allowing him to regain his breath. They had outdistanced the pursuit, for a time at least. He guessed that Schauband had turned again behind some corner or turning of the hall, and had made yet another stand. He could only pause and breathe heavily, thanking her for the extra time.

But he could just as easily curse her, for in the breakneck uphill flight he had lacked time to think, and now he must. He looked sidelong at the man now gulping for air: he looked at Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne, and tried to decide how to judge him.

Gunshots behind echoed in the middle distance, the reports rumbling along the stonework. The distance ahead seemed unguessable, as if he was still near the bottom of the nightmarish catacomb. And in his hand was his pistol, still clenched in the same tight grip he had held it with when he killed the jailer. It was the same hand: a murderer's hand. Had he known then, unconsciously, that he might need to kill Sienne?

How damnably easy it would be. The old man leaned against a wall in a posture of near-collapse. The sound of another shot would never be noticed. All he needed to do was to delay until the pursuit neared, and be certain of his timing. The old man, so correctly formal when desperate action had been necessary, could hardly be expected to keep up the pace needed for escape. Was he fit to be the Grand Admiral of the Concordat Navy?

It came down to a very simple little equation of balance: Sienne's death would buy de la Noue's security. And Grand Admiral de la Noue was the best hope — perhaps the only hope — the Concordat of Archive had for its military and political survival.

Schauband and the battle were nearing; the time was slipping away. Steldan's decision was made only slightly more difficult by the awareness that his mad, treacherous scheming mandated her death as well, and the death of her squad. Bravo had already paid the price.

And I too, would need to die in the firefight. The thought neither frightened nor relieved him. Five deaths in a secret tunnel beneath the palace of the enemy could buy hundreds of years of peace for billions of people, and that was the trade-off for which the military existed.

Sienne was oblivious to this all, just as he had been oblivious to corruption in his Navy, and had managed to overlook a nearly unprecedented deterioration in fighting readiness. Leaning against the wall, letting it support him, he seemed the veriest picture of weakness. Steldan envisioned de la Noue there, and knew that she, even if equally out of breath, would be alert and aware. She would have had the strength to lead her own rescue from the instant it materialized.

Steldan's pistol slowly raised. It was as if it moved on its own, and by no volition of his wrist. He smiled, a sad, sardonic smile of infinite irony. De la Noue, more than anyone else, would disapprove of this action. That was why it was necessary.

Schauband and Mag rushed around the corner, fleeing from the angry pursuit. Of Lowell there was no sign. When they saw the two Naval officers still so close by, they halted abruptly. Mag whirled, almost instinctively, and knelt against the corner, leaning out and opening fire. The heavy, beating shock of her long, black rifle hammered the air. The harrying pack paused, and once more took to cover.

At their arrival Steldan had whirled, his pistol veering toward them, and then he had lowered it. Schauband stared at him curiously for a long moment. He wondered how much she had seen, how much she had guessed. But she turned, dutifully, and joined Mag in throwing down a curtain of covering fire.

"No good," she shouted. "They're coming!" Soft-shod feet charged up the way, determined to close to melee. Most of the Sonallan band still lived, despite the nearly constant barrage of gunfire in the narrow corridor.

So, Steldan thought sadly. At last. Sienne had struggled up, and now staggered back and forth, uncertain which way to run. He had gone to sleep yesterday evening with rescue perhaps the farthest thought from his mind, and had been roughly awakened in the middle of the night by gunfire and by murder. Now he came to Steldan and clutched at his sleeve, pointing tremulously upward. Steldan raised his pistol, but could not fire.

Damn! De la Noue has taught me some virtue after all. He could not murder this old man who, like a child, looked to him for leadership. And then the Sonallans were upon them.

"Get down, you idiot," he roared, and leaped, bearing Sienne down beneath him to the smooth, hard stone. A distant part of his mind, always observing, always laughing in derisive mockery, noted that the end might be the same this way as the other: Sienne dead, the others killed, and himself, too. But he would die shielding Sienne with his body; he would die loyal to the laws and the ethics he had sworn to defend.

Mataconet and five other Sonallan men swarmed round the corner, and a great cry escaped their lips as they leaped upon Schauband and Mag. Mag's rifle exploded almost in the face of one, and he died instantly in a horrid ruin of shattered flesh. Schauband too had fired her rifle at the last moment, and another Sonallan had died in the charge. Then the two women were swept under by the remaining four.

Steldan was able to dispatch one with his pistol; the shot knocked the man away just before he could open Schauband with his drawn knife. Beyond that, no targets were clear, and he hesitated to fire into melee. Mag struggled with two heaving Sonallan men, while Schauband rolled under Mataconet's desperate punches.

Every one of the grappling men and women in the corridor was near exhaustion. The charge had been a thing of desperation, and the tactics now showed humanity at its brutal and unlovely worst. Mag fought like a wildcat, slashing out with feet and hands, her face feral with blinding rage. She and her two assailants rolled back and forth across the floor. Schauband and her opponent struggled for possession of a Sonallan laser pistol.

Sienne, at that moment, chose to assert himself. Gripping Steldan's bandaged arm in a wiry grip, he spoke imperiously. "Let me up, you fool. Release me!"

Steldan shifted his body to give him more cover, and let the aim of his pistol waver. He looked down at Sienne, and disgust passed over him, and shame. "You pathetic idiot, I'm trying to save you. You're a helpless, feeble old man, useless even to yourself. Lie still and stay silent." His voice was harsh and angry, and even as he spoke he knew he would later regret his words. He looked up, in time to see Mag twist aside, concentrating on one of her two hurtling foes. Steldan reacted without thought, and fired at the other, the shot taking the man in the elbow. The wound wouldn't be mortal, but the shock and agony of it knocked the man away.

In only seconds, the combat was over. Mataconet backed away from Schauband and fled, leaving her holding his laser weapon. His battle was lost, and his dream was dead. Bitterly, he staggered into the depths, reviling his loss. Mag's opponent, no longer willing to grapple with the madwoman, rolled across the floor to free himself of her, and followed Mataconet deeper into the tunnels. It was finished.

No one moved for a few seconds. Mag climbed slowly to her feet, and staggered a few steps down the corridor in pursuit before her reason returned to her. She regarded the others with a foolish grin spread across her face.

"Hey. We won." Blood flowed in torrents from a deep gash that had opened her tunic and tabard, and her cheek has been laid open by a knife-slash, but she was blissfully unaware of her injuries. "Damn, that was a good fight," she sighed. A cough brought flecks of blood to her lips, and only then she began to feel the pain and weakness.

Slowly, as Steldan and Schauband watched, her legs buckled, and she half-rolled, half-fell to the floor. Schauband was at her side in an instant.

A few moments later, after a battlefield examination, Schauband reported. "She'll live, but she's in bad shape right now."

She stood and peered down the corridor, then surveyed the three strewn bodies of the enemy. Two still lived, although one was not likely to make it through. One was far beyond any hope of recall. She looked to Steldan. "Suggestions, sir?"

"Let's try to get out of the palace, Captain." Steldan rolled heavily off of Sienne, and tried to help him to his feet. The old man resisted, remaining curled on the floor, his eyes tightly closed.

Schauband and Steldan exchanged glances, then bent to straighten and examine their charge. Sienne made no resistance. "He isn't injured," Schauband said, and backed away.

Steldan looked up at her. "Yes, he is. Shell-shock is an injury. He'll be okay, given time and treatment. Are you all right?"

"Me? I'm fine. Let's get moving." She bent, and began to carry Sienne up the sloping corridor. The elderly Admiral was a light burden: he trembled but did not struggle. Schauband held his shoulders and dragged him along as much as carried him. Steldan hoisted Mag in an over-the-shoulder carry, smearing his uniform further with blood. At the entrance to the steep secret stair, they reversed order, and Steldan led. He toiled slowly up the darkened ladder, feeling his way carefully up, step by step. Schauband followed, bearing her charge as best she could. Sienne, locked in private misery, writhed a little, but he was so frail, so shrunken, and so forlorn that his mild efforts gave her no difficulty.

At the top, they found the mirrored ballroom blazingly lit, and occupied by Mansivigan-Okemo and a force of palace guardsmen.

#

The sound of the shots in the tunnels below had wakened a sentry in the service of the King; it had taken him little time to rouse the Captain of the Guard. The assembling of the Guard Squadron had taken more time, and before they were permitted to act the King and the Chamberlain had to be summoned. Fanesivus, one of the King's guests of the evening, had arrived to report that the other guests were missing from their rooms.

"Are all foreign invaders, and every home-grown renegade subject, to be given the freedom of my basements?" Mansivigan demanded. He ordered the guard assembled in the lower ballroom, whence a sortie into the dungeon could be organized.

"Majesty," Fanesivus said, his face enlivened with wry humor. "Have I ever complained that your hospitality is uneventful?" He gripped a short-barrelled laser rifle with unsteady hands.

Mansivigan was taken aback, and struggled for composure. "No, Fanesivus, I don't believe I've ever heard you say that."

"I had thought it," Fanesivus bluntly averred, "but no more!"

The squad had only just begun counting off by twos in preparation for descending the narrow stair, when the doorway popped open. Commodore Steldan eased out, bearing a limp figure; Captain Schauband soon followed, lifting her own burden up into the room. Both stopped, and faced the massed guard with weary, expressionless faces.

"Your Majesty," Steldan greeted the King. "There are injured here and below who need care."

Mansivigan, stunned, looked blankly at him. "You've come uninvited into my home for a second time," he said at last. "I ought to congratulate you for your daring, at very least."

"Your Majesty..." Steldan began. "Sir. The game is played out. We have won. We've won, and nothing can change that now."

Mansivigan stepped a pace forward, then paused. His shoulders began to slump.

"Yes. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps..."

Fanesivus came forward to join him. His great bulk and tireless mirth rallied the King's spirits in a way that few things in this life could.

In the background, Tinwamus silently and hurriedly left, knowing that his part had been played, and that his reward might well be death. Steldan saw him go, and said nothing. He understood a little of Tinwamus' fears now, and his drives. There had been a third captive in the palace: Tinwamus, chained by his distorted sense of duty. It surprised Steldan to realize how much like the Chancellor he himself really was. Steldan had been willing to die, only minutes ago in the basements, in order to secure the position of his superior officer. So Tinwamus had sent the original note to the Concordat informing them of Sienne's location, solely to help his liege Lord. Inwardly, Steldan smiled. Is disobedience in the course of duty a failing or a strength?

The guards stood by, puzzled and a little angry. Now they stepped forward, weapons raised.

"Wait a minute," Fanesivus boomed. "The second time he's come here in the night?" He rounded on Mansivigan. "As good a tale as that, and you never told me?"

"I haven't told you everything, Fanesivus," Mansivigan said, grinning at his old friend. "And there's so much — so very much — to tell."

"Then let's find ourselves a place with an open window and some drinking stuff," Fanesivus said, eyes curious, "and tell each other tales." He indicated Steldan and Schauband. "Them too."

"There are injured below," Schauband repeated. The King gestured to one of his guardsmen, and a detachment drew aside and began to file through the hidden doorway. Two medics took Mag's body away from Steldan and bore her away with unexpected gentleness.

"And this one," Mansivigan asked, indicating Sienne. "Is he injured also?"

"No," Schauband answered; "Yes," Steldan said at the same time.

Mansivigan nodded. "Let me have him. He'll be cared for." It was not defeat, but relief that Steldan read in his words and stance.

"For only a few more hours, your Majesty."

"For only a few more hours," Mansivigan said quietly. Steldan and Schauband permitted a second crew of medics to approach Admiral Sienne.

Sienne, however, thrashed and cried out when he saw the Sonallan men draw near him. "No! I won't go back again! Not for another three years!" He would have leaped to Steldan's side, had not a pair of medics caught him and held him.

"Don't leave me..." he growled in helpless rage. "You said you'd come to free me."

"I have." Steldan looked at the man, and his heart shriveled within him. "Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne, you are free."

A trace of courage returned to Sienne. He straightened in the grasp of the medics. "I am." He shook his arms free from the two men. "Even when I was in chains, I was free. A free mind can never be imprisoned."

Steldan looked at Mansivigan, and nodded slowly. "That is true."

The medics slowly and respectfully led Admiral Sienne away.

"Now, about Lord Fanesivus' suggestion of a quiet place to talk," Mansivigan said softly. "I think that the sun will be well into the sky before we have finished saying what needs to be said. Will you join me?"

"Only," Steldan said, a vague smile beginning to thaw his stiff face, "if you can give me the answer to two questions."

Mansivigan looked at him with formal stiffness. "What are those."

"Why did you decree that the laws of your civilization were no longer valid?"

Before answering, Mansivigan paused for a long time, and would not meet Steldan's gaze. At last, quietly, he explained. "I used to like to pride myself on my quickness of thought. Perhaps I've learned that I was wrong to do so. My plan — and a very simple plan it was — was to keep everyone else so shaken up that I would be the one point of stability in an ocean of turmoil. If no one knew what the rules were, you see, then the rules automatically favored me. Or so I thought then."

He raised his gaze to meet Steldan's. "I didn't foresee the deaths. I don't think the way Mataconet did."

Steldan accepted this without comment. It was, he had to admit, a strategem he might have used himself. Perhaps some day he would.

"You had a second question," Mansivigan reminded him.

"Do you have anything to offer us to drink more palatable than that awful pine beer?"

Mansivigan thought for a moment. "Fruit cider? Vineyard wine? Root tea?"

"A place to begin," Steldan agreed.

#

Chapter Twenty Two

Steldan remained on the planet five days, long enough to witness Mansivigan's reinstatement of the laws. Then, in ironic accordance with the King's prior decree, he left the planet. His shuttle flew up from the field of Tolam Spaceport early in the morning, propelled upward by the gravitic harness of the boost-grid. From a rising vantage, Steldan could see the outflung expanse of Sebascodegan city, and he could make out the cratered regions where the war's bombardment had hurt it, not very many years ago. In the seat next to him reposed Grand Admiral Sienne, eyes closed in utter relaxation.

Soon, the shuttle was taken aboard by the Light Cruiser Velocis. After that, watched by orbiting warships of immensely greater mass and power, the Light Cruiser began to accelerate away from the hurtling oblong sun.

#

Mansivigan and Murchison took note of the hour, as they leaned lazily upon a grim palace battlement. The spaceport was too distant for them to watch the shuttle's ascent, but they looked up anyway. Behind them, Tinwamus paced slowly, nervous as ever, trying to judge his Lord's mood.

"There departs a knave," Mansivigan said bluntly.

"I'm not denying it," Murchison agreed archly.

"He did some good here," Mansivigan said, as if asking for an argument.

"He healed the Queen."

"But he was a knave nevertheless."

"Relationships between our nations are beginning to normalize." Murchison looked out over the city, enjoying even the furnace heat of the day-breeze. "He helped remove several obstacles to peace."

"He applied direct means — unsubtle means — to a delicate situation. Should he thank his idiot luck, or the favor of The God, for his success?" Mansivigan straightened. "The damage I have done has been repaired; the laws have been restored. Perhaps it was only showmanship on my part to revoke them. Perhaps that only spurred Mataconet and his followers to excess. They're as docile as housepets now; they've accepted my leadership."

"They've accepted your overlordship. They know you will have an heir."

Mansivigan coughed in embarrassed dignity. "Yes. An heir."

"A son." Murchison enjoyed teasing the King, keeping her prodding good-natured and private. "In less than a year, you'll be a father. Have you given thought to a name?"

"Ahem. May we move on to other matters?"

"Certainly, your Majesty." Murchison's voice held a hint of smiling laughter. "There are still some few arrangements for us to discuss."

"Some few billion details," he corrected her. "Nations must relate to one another as people do. And people must convey national ideals. We have warred; now we start to sort it out into peace again."

"Yes, your Majesty."

It was Mansivigan's turn to tease Murchison. "Peace," he said, "even if you are a nation of knaves."

Murchison, eyeing the sky, said nothing. Perhaps her silence gave assent.

#

Elsewhere on the planet, General Matthew Vai looked in on his two prisoners, Mataconet and Pirasnah. Mataconet was putting on no airs, and he claimed no special invulnerability as Port Lord. Later, Vai would talk to Orenatha and Canpenou, and wish them well. Allies and enemies, he knew, depended a lot on circumstance. Orenatha had tried to kill Vai, but that was an easy thing to forgive.

#

"Sir?"

"Yes, Commodore?"

In a quiet cabin aboard the Velocis, Steldan spoke to Sienne. Their voyage was nearing its destination, and the weary spaceborne months had seen the two often together.

"I've come for your decision."

Sienne nodded wearily, and ran his hand through his white hair. He stood, crossed the small cabin, and lifted his stark red uniform tunic from a peg. The white stripes and rank-chip of the Grand Admiral adorned it. He looked at it longingly, and hung it back up again.

"You've helped me see things in ways I wouldn't have understood, Commodore," he said at last. "But perhaps I understand more than you've intended to tell me."

Steldan seated himself in a small chair and crossed his legs. "Very well. Tell me what you think."

Sienne sat obediently, and closed his eyes. "I think that you're very loyal to Admiral de la Noue, and that you would like me to retire in her favor."

Steldan said nothing, and his silence encouraged Sienne to continue.

"I can't blame you, of course. From what you say — and it seems to be nothing but the truth — the Concordat has fallen under some rather vicious times." He opened his eyes, saw Steldan watching him carefully, and closed his eyes again. "I suspected your loyalty the moment you explained who had succeeded me — Telford — and who had succeeded him. De la Noue. Do you know, she was merely another one of the throng, just another of the bright kids, when I was Grand Admiral?"

He smiled, remembering. "I always kept an eye on Telford, but de la Noue was just a face in the crowd. Oh, she was promising, but..."

"Your decision, Admiral," Steldan said softly.

"Well, it's good to know that someone capable has been handling the day-to-day business of running the Navy." Sienne paused, then continued with his reminiscences. His eyes were still closed. "So much has happened while I was in that confinement. So dratted much. The world pretty much ended for me when I was captured. And it ended again when I was rescued. It all seems so vague...almost dreamlike..."

"Admiral?"

Sienne opened his eyes, and met Steldan's gaze. "I've made my decision. Your suggestions, Commodore, have been noted." He stubbornly refused to say more. Steldan gazed at him mildly, enjoying this sign of strength in the man. He felt certain of what that decision would be.

#

A hush fell over the delegates at the meeting of the Supreme Council of Sectors. De la Noue stood before them on the small stage, and, turning, welcomed Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne, who entered from one of the wings.

Telford stared in distress at his old enemy; the anonymity of the crowd preserved him from Sienne's gaze.

"Men and women," Sienne said crisply, "I have returned from a distant imprisonment. I have come back through fire and blood.

"But it is not my destiny to return to you as I once was. I will resign my post, and I nominate Admiral Jennifer de la Noue to succeed me.

"Thank you."

The audience remained silent. Some suspected collusion; others felt a sense of betrayal. Many knew only a kind of numb, comforting relief.

Sienne strode away, stiff and straight, his hair shining in the floodlit air. In the wings, waiting for him, Commodore Steldan saluted him.

"Are you happy with that, Commodore?" Sienne said, venting his last regrets in a burst of heavy sarcasm.

"Yes, sir," Steldan said, his voice strictly neutral.

In the audience, a few partisans attempted to set up an objection. Delegate Wilson, from The District, started to work to have the nomination overturned, but found support only among the die-hards. Telford, equally diligent, sought to organize support for de la Noue, although in this, he, too, was successful only among those who already were in full agreement.

Delegate North, from the Philomela Sector, laughed until he could laugh no longer, and joined with the other delegates in gossip, deal-making, infighting, and a carefree partying attitude that lasted well into the evening.

#

The next day, in a far more grim and somber mood, the Praesidium of Archive met in a high tower suite, to greet Grand Admiral Rothar Sienne and his rescuer. An open window let air in across a wide balcony. Steldan breathed deeply of the fresh air of home. Scents were the sweetest here, and colors the brightest. It was best to be alive, and alive on Archive. Through the window, he could see the inland horizon, with the mountains edging skyward and the city stretching away to meet them. He felt that he could be happy, here, merely relaxing and enjoying the ideal weather of an Archive midsummer.

The Praesidium wrangled, as they always did, and their voices were loud and wrathful. Several members sat, while others stood. The center of the room was empty, and the members argued into it. Steldan regarded them, and smiled inwardly at the shadow-play of power.

Treasury Secretary Wallace and the fiery proxy, Commerce Secretary Lowe, flanked Foreign Secretary Vissenne, and gave him shout for shout, gesture for gesture. "Illegality of procedure," he said now, in his greatest voice, "is not something that we can ever allow ourselves to tolerate." He swept his hand to the other side of the room, where Admirals de la Noue and Sienne sat, side by side, their differences forgotten in their Navy unity against this overloud diplomat.

"All the forms and protocols are in perfect order," Wallace snapped. "What in the name of the dead gods are you complaining about?"

"Are you suggesting that the man has been brainwashed? Is that what you're getting at?" Lowe, also in Naval uniform, hammered away at Vissenne's composure.

Seated together, watching this show, Justicar Solme and First Secretary Parke kept their peace, for very different reasons. Solme's attitude was of great disgust at the unpleasant sight of his ally making a fool of himself yet again. Parke seemed lost in thought, his eyes slightly unfocussed; he didn't seem to be aware of the heat of the discussion.

"He spends the entire trip from Tenh Sonallae back home in the care of de la Noue's hand-chosen toady," Vissenne snarled, "and then they wonder why I suspect his decision might not be his own."

"Ask him!" Wallace shouted. "Ask him if there was any undue influence."

Lowe, from the other side, chimed in, "We have his signature on the documents of nomination. We have him here in the bloody room with us. Where's the collusion?"

Vissenne threw a glance of appeal to Solme; Solme stared back stolidly. Heaving a great sigh into the air, Vissenne backed away a step. "I vote against de la Noue's confirmation, damn it." And he turned his back.

Parke returned his attention to the informal meeting. "Is there any other discussion?" he asked brightly.

There was none.

"Then we'll move to the vote. All in favor of de la Noue's confirmation to the post of Navy Secretary?"

Wallace and Lowe raised their hands with solemn dignity. Slowly, as if against his will, Solme did also. And Parke raised his hand as well.

"Those opposed?" he asked, as innocently as if he had been unaware of the earlier shouting.

Vissenne, his back still to the assembly, nodded once.

"And Sienne's vote is automatic," Parke went on, "although out of courtesy, I will ask him for a comment."

"Thank you, Mister Secretary." Sienne looked about him at the friendly and unfriendly members of the Praesidium. "I most certainly vote in favor of the confirmation of my young protégé here. Grand Admiral de la Noue, I have the honor of presenting you with a job you have already been executing with skill and aplomb." It was obvious how much pleasure he took from this formal defeating of Secretary Vissenne.

"Well, that's history, then," Parke said cheerfully. "I guess we can adjourn until our next meeting." He stood and left. Solme followed closely thereafter.

While Wallace and Lowe stayed to congratulate Sienne and de la Noue, Vissenne found Steldan and approached him closely. "Commodore Steldan?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

"I am he."

"Come with me." He stepped outside onto the balcony.

Steldan rose from his seat and followed. Outside, in the open daylight, Vissenne regarded the engineer of this most recent defeat.

"You have erred, Commodore, in letting me become aware of your existence."

Steldan met his angry stare with equanimity. "I'm sorry that the Foreign Service and the Navy are currently at odds over policy."

"How much influence did you have over Sienne's decision?"

Steldan answered without pausing. "I advised him, and I helped him understand his options."

Vissenne waited for a long moment. He saw something of himself in Steldan, and, although he hated what he saw, he also had to admire it. "We are enemies, sir."

"Yes, sir."

"I see you understand." Vissenne swept back through the room and made his departure without a word to the others.

#

Several days later, de la Noue and Steldan were able to meet privately, to compare notes. They met in the same high tower suite, overlooking the broad avenues of Archive. Beneath them, the streets echoed to a military parade, a triumph held in celebration of victories past, victories future. The parade was also in honor of Grand Admiral (retired) Rothar Sienne, as well as celebrating the confirmation of Grand Admiral Jennifer de la Noue.

"Victory or loss, wind or rain, Commodore," de la Noue said softly, "we will endure."

"But it is good to have won."

"Yes. I'm glad that things have worked out for the best." She sighed. "I wish that more could await Sienne than merely a parade and a pension. I offered him a post as a top advisor, but he seemed unwilling."

"He fulfilled his duty. Even while languishing in a distant prison, he did what he had to do." Steldan seemed reserved, and de la Noue sensed this.

"Commodore?" She turned to face him. "How much influence did you have on his decision?"

Steldan looked out into the distance of sky and city. How much? Rothar Sienne was a strong man, but his strength was brittle. His confinement had weakened him. The firefight hurt him. And I...I may have broken him. I talked to him, and he chose to listen. I took him apart, and I put him back together again. Psychologically, he's little better than a basket case...and he doesn't know it. That, at least, is a mercy.

"His decision was his alone," he said finally. But he knew he was lying.

Things are going to be worse before they are better, he thought solemnly, his smile fading. The sights, sounds, and scents from the open air filled him with peace, but he knew that it was a fatalitic peace. Soon he would go out again, into the stars of war, and he would win yet another battle, by one means or another. His duty was always clear, to him at least.

De la Noue's words consoled him.

"We shall endure."

The End

Praise for the Books of Jefferson P. Swycaffer

Web of Futures:

"All of Swycaffer's books are great, some are classic pursuit novels like Universal Prey, Warsprite, etc. This, like some of his others, is one of a kind. You'll never forget it. I told people that at one point, 3/4ths of the way through this book, I had to hold it up in front of my face, as I read it at lunch at a fast food place, to hide the tears coming out of my eyes. They said "Sounds like a sad, depressing book; won't try it." That's NOT why I was crying. I was moved, rewarded, what else can I say? It was NOT a depressing book. Haven't you ever cried from the heart, or because of delight, etc.?"

— George H. Wells, on Amazon

At the Sign of the Brass Breast and Other Stories:

"The best parts of the stories for me were the characters of Daran and Caroline, a witty pair of rogues I wouldn't mind spending some time with — as long as my money was carefully locked away, that is — and Swycaffer's writing style. He plays with the language like a cat with a toy mouse: never content to simply describe what's going on, he adds a lyrical, polished touch to every sentence that makes all of these stories a joy to read. Each story is self-contained but builds a bit from the one before it. If you enjoy well-written, whimsical fantasy with a twist, check this out. You're in for a treat!

— Winterhawk, on Amazon

Voyage of the Planetslayer:

"This is a very solid sci-fi adventure with some original themes. A spaceship crew of independent operators (think Han Solo and Chewie) is drafted through bureaucratic nonsense into a secret government mission — sterilize an entire world, full of lush but toxic life, in preparation for human colonization. It's more cerebral than action-oriented — much of the book is discussions between the characters about the morality and practicality of their mission. The most interesting character is the alien crewmember — the author does a fine job of creating a unique alien race that truly thinks differently than we do. It's not just 'humans in a funny suit'- this is a creature with a completely different mindset. This reads smoothly and quickly, with some nice surprises, such as a courtroom drama and secret-agent style intrigue. Recommended."

— A. C. F. Crawford, author of Sailor of the Skysea, on Amazon

Other Books by Jefferson P. Swycaffer

The Tales of the Concordat of Archive novels,

first series, "Spaceships and Empires":

Become the Hunted

Not in Our Stars

The Captive's Rank

The Universal Prey

The Praesidium of Archive

The Concordat of Archive novels,

second series, "The Marterly Trilogy":

The Empire's Legacy

Voyage of the Planetslayer

Revolt and Rebirth

The Halcyon Novels (Urban Fantasy):

Warsprite

Web of Futures

The Demon Constellation Novels (Urban Fantasy)

The Shadowy Road

Story Collections:

At The Sign of the Brass Breast and Other Stories

The Capitulation of the Carnivores and Other Stories

Other Novels

Eye of the Staricane

The Chain Forge