I spun the wheel and cracked the door open. Nothing horrible happened, so I eased it open a little more and looked through the gap. It was totally dark beyond the door, and I couldn’t see anything, but I felt a soft breeze upon my face, indicating open space.
I pushed the door open far enough to allow me to slide through and gingerly stepped out of the tunnel. As I did so, an artificial sun suddenly blossomed high above, making me squint and blink as sunshine illuminated everything around me. I had stepped out onto the sandy floor of an ancient circular arena, a vast coloseum made of white stone.
Apart from the sound of my own breath and the soft brush of sand as I moved my feet, the arena was totally silent. There was no audience—the benches that extended high above my head were empty—and there was no one else in the ring. But I noted that there were many doors all around the inner wall, just like the one I had come through. A thousand doors, I would say, which made me immediately look for weapons. Clearly this was where we Princes who had made it through the waterfall and the underground river would fight each other to the death.
A nice, old-fashioned way of finding out the fittest Prince to rule.
The weapons were in the exact centre of the arena, about two hundred metres away. As soon as I saw the shine of steel, I started to run. At almost exactly the same time, a door opened on the far side of the arena and a Prince staggered out. Then off to my right, another door opened, and there was another Prince.
They were moving slowly, but both immediately looked at me, then at what I was running toward, and instantly reacted.
Another door opened to my left, though no one immediately came out. I was halfway to the pile of weapons, closer than any of the others. I tried to run faster, but I was still weak, and several times I almost fell, my slippered feet losing their grip in the sand. It was exhausting running through that stuff, too, for it was quite deep. More like a beach than just a layer of grit laid down over stone or dirt.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw a flicker of coloured light up in the stands of the arena. I turned my head to glance at it, quickly, and saw that there was someone there, after all. A single figure, sitting alone in a box that was halfway up the stands but projected out to the inner wall that surrounded the ring. I had no time to look. Gasping for air, I hurled myself forward to that central cache of weapons.
Because of my head start, I got there first, but only by a few seconds. Just time enough to take in that there were three swords, two tridents, and two nets. I immediately snatched up a trident and swung around just in time to skewer the Prince who had come up on my left. He was a fast runner, all right, but his speed didn’t serve him at the end, because he ran right onto the trident, throwing me back as the three sharp points speared right through his chest. Judging from the look of shock and surprise on his face, I guess he was too used to his augmentation, which would have allowed him to side-slip at the last second.
There was no time to think about what I’d done. Dropping that trident, I picked up the second one and the net that went with it. I’d never trained with this combination, but I figured it would not be dissimilar to using a sword and nerve-lash.
The next Prince slowed as she approached. She was taller and obviously stronger than me, and she grinned as she circled around, and I matched her movements. I flicked the net to test her, and she swayed back but then lunged in again and grabbed it, yanking it as hard as she could.
Again, she was too used to her augmentation. The net didn’t jerk out of my hand, and in that second while she was still holding it, I stepped forward and threw the trident. It struck her in the neck, and down she went, bleeding out into the sand.
But even dying, she still held the net. I let it go and raced back to pick up a sword just as a third Prince I hadn’t even seen coming did the same.
Both of us went for a shortened stab as we rose up, blades in hand, and both of us missed, each twisting aside and jumping back. I stumbled a little as I landed, and she attacked me immediately, thrusting at my thigh. I parried, stepped aside, and hesitated even as my reflexes began a riposte, which went wide with the hesitation.
It was Atalin. Like me, her ceremonial uniform was muddied and her face and hands were covered with small, bloody abrasions. Her feet were also cut, for she must have left her guest house wearing something heavier than my slippers, and she’d had to abandon them in the water. Again, Haddad had prepared me better than perhaps I deserved.
‘So here we are, brother,’ she said, and stepping forward, she cut at my head. I ducked under the swipe and slashed at her arm, but she was too quick, spinning away. Panting, we backed off and circled. I kept most of my focus on her but also tried to look around the arena. Morojal had said there were five real candidates, and I was sure we had all been helped to get to this, presumably final, round. Two Princes lay dead already, but where was the third?
Atalin saw me looking.
‘Morojal told you five real candidates?’ she asked, her focus all on me. Before I could answer, she lunged, the tip of her sword almost reaching my belly as I sucked it in, arched back on my toes, and belatedly parried.
‘Yes,’ I grunted. I opened my eyes a little, as if startled by something I could see behind her, hoping to distract her in my turn. But Atalin did not even glance aside.
‘I got the fifth as she came out her door,’ said Atalin. ‘There’s just the two of us, Khemri. Soon to be one.’
She attacked again. I dodged and parried, giving ground.
‘So . . . Morojal . . . talked to you . . . too?’ I gasped out in between another round of stabs and cuts from Atalin and parries and dodges from me.
‘I talked to her after our duel,’ said Atalin. She didn’t seem to be out of breath at all. ‘She told me you’re the favourite. I’m supposed to let you win.’
I counterattacked, driving her back a few steps so I could rake in a long, shuddering breath.
‘She told me, too,’ I said. ‘But I don’t—’
My words were cut off and my head almost went with them as Atalin spun and whipped her sword around at the full extension of her arm. I ducked beneath it, felt my knee tremble and then suddenly collapse, and I was on my back on the ground. Instantly, I rolled away as Atalin’s spin stopped as if arrested by a wire, and she drove her sword point into the sand where I’d been a split second before.
As she pulled it out, I rolled back and struck at her arm. The tip of the sword sliced down and across her forearm, drawing blood, but it was not a decisive blow. Atalin stepped back, raised her sword, and saluted me as I scuttled back and gingerly stood up, testing my knee.
‘First blood to you,’ she said. ‘Not that it makes any difference. I don’t care what the priests want. I will be Emperor, and you will be—’
She struck in midsentence, but I was ready for that. We exchanged blows. I parried a lunge and riposted, and when we both stepped back a few seconds later, Atalin had another scratch, this time across her shoulder. Unfortunately, I also had one, a cut along my ribs on the left side.
‘I’m not your sister, either,’ said Atalin conversationally as she slowly moved around, making me circle to the left, putting a strain on my weakened knee. ‘I was just made to look like you.’
‘What?’
‘An illegal bodysculpt,’ she continued. I tried not to pay too much attention to her words, even as my head was swirling, trying to figure out if she was speaking the truth and, if she was, what it meant. This, of course, was her intention. She was trying to distract me for an easier kill.
She continued, still circling, ‘I was made to look like you before I went to the Academy. House Jerrazis did it.’
‘Why?’ I asked as if I didn’t care too much. I knew she was lying, I knew deep inside, and all my real attention was on her eyes and wrist. They would tell me what she was going to do.
Not the words.
‘Who knows?’ said Atalin. ‘Perhaps you were already seen as being weak and sentimental, Khemri. There’s no pl
ace for softness in a Prince, or an Emp—’
She lunged at me, full stretch. I tried to dodge, but my knee gave way and the blade went straight through me, into my guts and out the other side. But instead of falling back, I leaned into the blow, slid up the sword, and sank my own weapon into Atalin’s chest, just above her left breast.
Atalin let go of her sword and dropped to one knee. I staggered back but somehow managed to stay on my feet.
She slowly raised one hand and gripped the blade of my sword, just for a moment, in an attempt to pull it out. But she was too weak, the blade too close to her heart. With her augmentation off, blood pumped from the wound, staining the sand at her feet.
‘I lied about the bodysculpt,’ whispered Atalin. ‘Farewell, brother.’
Her hand fell away from the blade, and she slowly crumpled to the ground.
‘No,’ I said urgently. Ignoring the white-hot pain through my middle, I staggered closer to her and knelt by her side.
‘Listen! I don’t want to be Emperor! I want you to be Emperor, so you can let me go!’
‘Go?’ asked Atalin, a fleeting smile passing across her face, which was already white. Her once-bright eyes were fading, and there was a blue dullness spreading around her lips. ‘Go where?’
‘Out of the Empire,’ I said. ‘Promise you’ll get me reborn as I wish!’
‘A Prince’s promise . . .’ muttered Atalin. She was staring at my face, but her eyes saw something else. ‘Worth no more than sand in the wind.’
‘Promise me!’ I shouted. ‘Promise me, sister!’
She mouthed something. It might have been ‘Yes’.
Or just as likely ‘No’.
But I couldn’t ask her again. She had only minutes, maybe seconds, to live, and I had only that much time to make my plan work. A very risky plan that depended on the Imperial Mind witnessing after all, even though the Emperor had said it wouldn’t. I knew from Kharalcha that I couldn’t always feel the connection. Surely the Mind wouldn’t risk losing the final five candidates in some freak accident?
It had to be witnessing.
Unless there really were more candidates than Morojal had told me. . . .
Exerting all my remaining strength, I somehow managed to stand up. The pain was excruciating, and I almost fell again as it struck me. Sobbing, I wrapped both hands on the blade of Atalin’s sword, under the hilt, and steeled myself for what must come next.
I pulled the sword out. It came free with a sickening jolt that sent another blinding wave of pain through me. This time I did fall, onto my knees and elbows. For a moment I almost fell flat on my face, and darkness spread across my eyes, threatening unconsciousness, but I fought back.
I had come so far. I could not falter now.
Atalin still breathed, her pallid face only a handsbreadth away from mine, though surely the end was near.
Up in the box in the stands, a glowing figure rose and began to float through the air toward us. I knew who it must be now. The Emperor, or perhaps a holographic avatar of the current ruler of the Imperal Mind, coming down to welcome Hier successor to the throne.
Which would be me, if I was the last Imperial candidate left alive.
Slowly, far slower than I would have liked, I pushed myself up off my elbows. Still kneeling, I reversed Atalin’s sword, digging the hilt into the deep sand ahead of me. Then I placed the so-very-sharp point of the blade at the base of my sternum, leaning on it lightly, just enough to keep it in place.
A triangle of deadly possibility. Me, the sword and my sister— all together on the sand that was stained with our cojoining blood.
I looked across at Atalin. Her chest rose once, and fell, and didn’t rise again. A soft, choking rattle came from her mouth.
In that moment of her death, I let my full weight fall forward upon the point of my sister’s sword.
26
THAT WAS MY third death.
Unlike my other deaths, this time I didn’t wake in a comfortable bed with the sensation of having been asleep for a long time. Instead, only a moment after I felt the sword run through my heart, I found my consciousness hurtling through space at an incredible velocity, heading straight toward a blue-white ball of incandescent gas while beams of multicoloured light sprayed in all directions around me.
Then, all of a sudden, I was inside the Imperial Mind, or it was inside my mind. Not just communicating with me but all too present. I felt the incredible pressure of all these other thoughts from a thousand or more former Emperors, so many that I almost lost myself and could not be sure who I was, and beyond the thousand there was an unsortable, unstoppable stream of information flowing from all the millions of Princes out in the Empire who were currently witnessing, all of it swamping into my mind.
I fought them off, refusing to accept the connections, refusing to allow them to draw me into the great mental morass of the Empire.
I will not be Emperor, I told myself. I am Khem, not Khemri. I will not direct the Mind!
:But I will. Leave him:
That thought was like a lightning bolt passing through the roiling storm of too much information. It was acted on instantly, the close identities withdrawing from me and the geysers of data from the Princes beyond cut off.
I was alone, a detached intelligence, free of my body, free from the pain of my wounds. I felt detached and light, as in that last waking moment before diving into long-awaited sleep.
But only for a brief moment. The directing thought came again, spearing into me with a jolt that was akin to that sword thrust in the guts. All of a sudden I was connected again, but the minds I had felt before were veiled, the pressure of their thoughts held back by the single presence that spoke to me.
:You were meant to be Emperor, Prince Khemri. Not I:
I felt a tremendous surge of relief, a relief that could not be hidden from this inquiring mind, though I did not articulate it.
My plan had worked. I had died at exactly the same time as Atalin, and I had managed to keep myself separate from the Mind. I was clearly not the Emperor.
:We have failed greatly with you, Khemri. You should have wanted to be Emperor more than anything, and claimed it as your right:
:Part of me still does. But it is the lesser part. The greater whole . . . me . . . I . . . I only want to be reborn into my nonaugmented body and be allowed to go where I want:
:To Kharalcha?:
I hesitated before answering, but the Emperor knew anyway, knowing everything about every Prince and priest and connected mind in the Empire—if she cared to look.
:Yes:
:Why should we allow this? No Prince has ever been permitted to leave the Empire in such a way:
:Because you promised, sister:
There was a long silence. I felt the single mind falter and the other intelligences behind it draw closer, like wolves to the kill. All the past Emperors within the Imperial Mind were not going to let me have my heart’s desire. They didn’t even allow the existence of such a thing, nor recognise any possible familial connection for a Prince.
I thought that I’d gambled and lost, before the lightning thought struck again, splintering the massed, anonymous minds of so many subsumed Emperors.
:I have decided. We shall do as I command:
There was a flash of white light, a single image burned into my mind, and I was gone.
The next thing I knew, I was taking a shuddering breath deep into my lungs. I was born into flesh again, in darkness. Unaugmented flesh, for no systems reported their status and I felt nothing inside me but the slow beat of my own heart, the pulse accelerating in sudden fear. But even as I reached out with trembling arms, I tasted salty water and felt relief as I thought I recognised where I was, something confirmed when I saw a strip of light in the distance.
Climbing slowly and wearily out of the bath, I crawled toward the light. I had made it only a few metres when the door slid open and the familiar silhouette of Elzweko filled the entrance.
‘I am not
to know who you are,’ he said, his back toward me. ‘Do not speak, do not use your Psitek, and put on this suit.’
The suit was a current, Imperial-issue Bitek vacuum suit. Elzweko threw the suit backward, touched the panel to bring light to the room, and shut the door again. I crawled to the suit, touched the front, and let it flow over me. The helmet visor was set to be silvered from the outside and had been altered so that it could not be changed.
I lay inside the suit for some time, recovering my strength. As I got up, the Imperial Mind spoke inside my head.
:A capsule has been readied for you. Elzweko will take you to it. He has been told you are an Adjuster on a particularly secret mission. The craft has been directly preprogrammed by me for Kharalcha, which will remain an Imperial protectorate, at least for the next twenty years. Upon your departure from the final Imperial wormhole, your Psitek signature will be marked for immediate pursuit and destruction if you are within the bounds of the Empire. Do not come back, Khemri:
:I won’t. But I thank you, Atalin:
There was no reply.
I opened the door and found Elzweko waiting. He did not speak, but as he had done before, what felt like so long ago, he took me through the false wormhole-drive door, past the mekbi troopers there—where I tensed for the final betrayal I still half expected to come—and into the storeroom where once again I was invited to collect all that I might need for my mission ahead.
Sensibly, I took the things I thought that I, or the Kharalchans, might need. It could well be the last chance I had to get my hands on some half-decent tek.
There was another Prince in the dock, a young woman wearing an ancient vac suit rather like my old Ekkie. She glared at me but also did not speak. It was just as well my visor was silvered, for I knew her well. I was only a little surprised to see Tyrtho, though I wondered how her plan to stay on safely at the Academy had been diverted into being recruited by Adjustment.