"You are being frivolous, Yakoub."
"I am a frivolous man."
"You are the least frivolous man in this galaxy!" he cried, with an angry force and a vigor I hadn't heard from him in a long while. "And this is foolishness. Periandros has made himself emperor. All right: he is emperor, like it or not. The other two are rebels. The emperor has given you your freedom and offers to support you in the schism within the Rom. You can accept or reject as you please. But if you choose to reach your hand toward one of the rebels you will destroy what little stability the Imperium has managed to attain in these difficult days. And you may find that the emperor, in his effort to rebuild that stability, will choose to reach his hand toward someone else."
"You mean Shandor? Is that a threat, Julien?"
"It is the statement of a realistic man, nothing more."
"It sounds like a threat."
"I am your friend, Yakoub. You know that. How long has it been for us, since the old days on Iriarte? When you were a discoverer of planets for your wife's kumpania and I was the company dispatcher? I was there when you married Esmeralda, was I not? When they gave you the bread and the salt, who stood beside you? And when Shandor was born, who was it you asked to be the godfather? And me not even a Rom; but you wanted me, and I would have done it if her father had allowed it. Have you forgotten all that?"
"I have forgotten nothing," I told him. "Nevertheless, you have a strange loyalty to Periandros."
"Not so strange. There's mutual respect there. You underestimate that man because you find the Akraki style not to your liking."
"He recognizes you as King of France, is that it?"
Color flared in Julien's cheeks and he seemed close to bursting into f tears of rage.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"France, I think sometimes, is more important to you than any place in the universe that still exists."
He calmed himself. It took some effort. "You will never understand what France is to me. It is like your Romany Star, Yakoub: the great lost place, the only true mother. Why is that so hard for you to comprehend?"
So he knew of Romany Star? That startled me. I had never heard that name on Gaje lips before. Obviously Julien had been paying closer attention to the private words of his Rom friends than any of us suspected. It troubled me, his knowing. But I didn't feel like dealing with that question now.
In annoyance I said, "Romany Star still exists. Someday we'll return there. But your France-"
"Ah, so that is the distinction, Yakoub? Your fantasy is real and mine is not, you mean?"
"Fantasy?"
"I beg you, mon ami, let us not cloud the discussion with these side issues-"
"You think Romany Star is a myth? A fable?"
He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. "N'importe, mon cher. That does not matter. Let us put this debate aside, for the moment. For the moment, Yakoub. You say that my loyalty to Periandros is strange, that it is somehow linked to his recognizing my claim to my own ancient throne. In fact he cares nothing at all about my claim. He cares only for the Imperium. I am loyal to him, to use your word, because I think he is the proper one to rule. As I also think that you, you are the proper one to rule, eh, Yakoub? Bien. Enough of this talk, mon cher. Come out of this prison room of yours, now. The palace is yours, this house of power. We restore it to you. Shandor is gone. Take your seat upon your throne, and I will prepare one more meal for you, in celebration. And then I wish you to think of all we have said. And then I hope you will come with me to the Capital, and present yourself before our new emperor. D'accord? Eh? Eh, mon ami? Think on these things. Only think, Yakoub."
3.
THIS TIME HE OUTDID HIMSELF WITH THE BANQUET I could not begin to list all the delicacies and the worlds from which they came, or the rare wines, or the sensations that they aroused in me. Wherever Julien goes, he fills the surrounding dimensions with enough stored delights to dazzle a dozen gourmets, and this night he decanted them all for me. If I could have been persuaded by food alone, Periandros would have had my allegiance without a qualm.
But first I had to think, yes. And there was so much to think about.
The death of the old Fifteenth, for one. Any man's death diminishes me, et cetera. But this one hit me especially hard. My colleague. My contemporary, more or less. A huge chunk of the past carved away. I had worked long and well with the Fifteenth. A comforting familiar presence, my counterpart, my opposite royal self. And now gone.
In effect he'd been dead for years, of course, ever since he had begun his long slow decline into indifference and incoherence. Sunteil had been the real emperor for the last few of those years, I knew. (A lot of good that had done Sunteil, when the actual moment of succession was at hand. Obviously that wily man had made some fatal slip in his planning.) But being dead in effect is one thing and being literally dead is altogether another. Now that the loss was final I felt it suddenly and sharply.
A man of Ensalada Verde, he was. That gives you a measure of his quality right there: that he came from a nowhere world like that and still was able to climb right to the summit of the Imperium. All the other emperors have been men of the great metropolitan Gaje planets- Olympus, Copperfield, Malebolge, Ragnarok, teeming places with plenty of political clout-except for the Sixth and Ninth, who weren't men at all. But even those two, the two empresses regnant, came from major worlds. And then there was the Fifteenth, from his little unspoiled backwater planet that had maybe a billion people at most. He had actually been born a shepherd. But didn't stay a shepherd for long. Not him.
Flashes of the distant past ghost me. Myself arriving at the Capital, the hub of the galaxy, that world that has no real name and needs none. I am the newly elected king. He has been emperor six, seven, ten years. Enough time to get used to the grandeur and the silliness of it all. There are the crystalline steps, stretching up and up and up to the throne-platform. There sits the Fifteenth with his high lords beside him.
Fanfare of trumpets. The sound is sky-splitting: I expect suitcases and melons and odd pieces of furniture to come tumbling out of nearby storage dimensions. Up the steps, slowly, solemnly. Resisting the urge to take them two at a time. I have to be serious now. I am a man of mature years. (Ancient, in fact, by the standards of the olden days.) I am a king. An emperor waits for me to confirm me in my office with the touch of his wand. Another blast of trumpets. Drums, too, and maybe fifes.
"Yakoub Nirano Rom, Rom baro, Rex Romaniorum!" comes the cry from a million loudspeakers floating in a glittering cloud around the throne.
Up, up, up. The emperor sits waiting. He looks very calm. Wand of office resting lightly in his hand, like a fly-switch. About him, the three high lords preen and pose, looking terribly important. (These were the old high lords, left over from the reign of the Fourteenth, all of them now long dead. How they must have hated it when a shepherd from Ensalada Verde was jumped up over their heads onto the throne!)
Now the emperor rises to greet me. Not a tall man, not physically impressive in any way. He doesn't need to be. His mind is extraordinary: phenomenal breadth, phenomenal depth. Astonishing grasp of detail and pattern both. Some people are good at detail, some are good at pattern; only a few are masters of both. I have reason to think I am one. You know that. The Fifteenth was another. Nothing escaped his attention. When he spoke with you of starship routes he knew not only the reasons why the great routes were laid out as they were but also the name of every port of call along the way. And probably could quote population figures, too. A remarkable man.
Handing his wand of office to the lord on his left, now. Taking from the lord on his right the cup of sweet wine that by tradition the emperor always offers the king when the king comes visiting. Formally allowing me my sip. Then the touch of the wand to my shoulders, nice medieval moment.
"Yakoub Nirano Rom," he says. "Rom baro. Rex Romaniorum."
I have been king under Rom law since the moment the nine members of the great kris m
ade the sign of kingship at me. But now the Gaje have accepted me also. Only a formality; but in these matters we live by formalities.
And the emperor, having formally confirmed me as king, looks at me and smiles and winks.
A wonderful moment. A wonderful gesture, that wink. Telling me a thousand things in one quick twitch of his eye. We understand this throne business, you and I, is what that wink has said. Yes. We know what a joke it is. Yes. We also know how terribly serious it is. Yes. Yes. You are big and dark, I am small and fair. You are Rom and I am Gaje. And yet we are brothers, you and I. Brothers of the crown. Yes. We are closer to one another than I am to these peacock lords beside me. And than you are to anyone of your grand kumpania. Yes. Yes. Yes. From then on we were locked together, the Fifteenth and I, in the joint endeavor that is the governance of the worlds. It would be our shared task to keep the sky from falling: a great burden and a great joy. All that was contained in that one wink, and much more.
And so it was, for the Fifteenth and me, during the great years of our reigns. Many was the time I called upon him at the Capital and took the sweet wine from his hands, and we talked all the night through of the movements of the stars in their courses and the myriad worlds, and we made great decisions and reshaped great destinies. And at the times when custom demanded he came to me at Galgala-and even once when I was in residence at Xamur-and I threw wondrous patshivs for him, feasts of such glory that they came close to rivaling that ill-starred banquet given by Loiza la Vakako long ago on Nabomba Zom. But there were no Pulika Boshengros to spoil our feasts. In the fifty years of our collaboration we worked together serenely and effectively, the Fifteenth and I. Until he began to slip into weariness and senility, and I to put my preoccupation with Romany Star before all else. (For which I make no apologies!) It was many years since I had seen him, now. Since my departure for Mulano I had scarcely so much as thought of him. And now he was gone, and I realized that insofar as it is possible for a Rom to love a Gaje I had loved the Fifteenth Emperor. I set that down here, now, for all to know.
And one thing more. In the twentieth year of my reign I discovered a surprising thing when I was going through some documents of the reign of my predecessor Cesaro o Nano. Which was that it was the Fifteenth himself who had put into his mind the notion of naming me to follow him as king. How very strange that was, that the Gaje emperor should make such a suggestion, and how very much stranger that the Rom king should follow it. The Fifteenth had often told me how he had held me in high regard long before I became king; and now I had proof of it.
I have concealed this ever since I found it out. But why hide it any longer? Is there shame in it? The Fifteenth was right that I would be a good king. Cesaro o Nano was right to have followed his advice. What of it, that the advice came from a Gaje? From the highest Gajo of them all? Was Cesaro o Nano the less for listening to him? Was I the less for having been recommended by an emperor? During the thousands of years since our two peoples first were thrust together by fate we have feared and mistrusted the Gaje, for good reasons, and they have feared and mistrusted us, for reasons that seem to me not so good. But perhaps some of that fear and mistrust was needless, on both sides. And now it no longer seems important for me to conceal the Fifteenth's role in making me king. In truth, considering the great changes that many recent events have wrought, I think it is a good thing to let the story be told.
How odd, you may say, that the Fifteenth was so concerned about the Rom succession, and failed to provide for his own! But he chose me as king long ago when he was still in the vigor of his middle years. His own decline must have come upon him more suddenly than anyone knew, and the effect on him must have been far more calamitous than we suspected. For I knew the Fifteenth well, and I don't think he would willingly have left the imperial succession open as he did. His wits must have gone from him before he could make provision for the succession, for surely he wouldn't have wanted to depart as he did, leaving Sunteil and Naria and Periandros to battle for the throne.
Or perhaps-knowing him as well as I did-I shouldn't say that. Perhaps-considering the events that have followed his death-the Fifteenth knew exactly what he was doing, when he neglected to provide the usual decree of succession. He was a remarkable man. He saw things with extraordinary clarity. Perhaps he was looking beyond his death and the chaos that would follow it, into the deeper future, when all would be quite different. I would like to ask him what he really had in mind. Of course he is gone now. But perhaps one day I will have the chance to ask him all the same.
4.
I THOUGHT A GREAT DEAL ABOUT SHANDOR, TOO, AS I wandered like my own ghost through the halls of the royal house of power.
There were signs of struggle everywhere. Someone had made an attempt to clean up, but I saw gouges in the thick leather wallcoverings, burn-scars on the floors, even what may have been bloodstains. And yet Shandor had managed to escape. He had even, so it seemed, taken some ceremonial objects with him, ancient emblems and regalia. I saw the empty places. The invading force must have deliberately allowed him to get away, I thought. As a kindness to me. Because he was, after all, my son. Surrounded and taken by surprise as he had been, Shandor would never have been able to fight his way out. Especially when he was encumbered by the ceremonial objects. They must have winked and looked the other way, for my sake.
Oh, was I wrong about that!
I have to admit that I felt strangely tender toward Shandor, even loving, now that he was gone and I was free again. I know it sounds peculiar. Considering Shandor's unloving and unlovable nature. But after all he was my son. And his attempt to seize the kingship had failed: he was a fugitive, he was on the run. I had nothing more to fear from him, did I? So I could allow my buried love for him to surface. And my pity. If you can't make sense of this, don't try. You'll understand some day.
I found myself thinking I could reclaim Shandor somehow. Sit down with him in the traditional way, pour coffee for him, pour wine, discuss the differences that had arisen between us. Work them out, get rid of them, embrace him in a hot Romany hug of love and kinship. As though he were simply a boy of twenty who had gone a little astray, and not a reckless and evil old man who had chosen the path of wickedness all his long life. Yes, I would reclaim him! Win him back to be my true son! Take him into my government, even. So I thought. My fantasy, my folly. I was entitled. I am not required to be ruled by common sense one hundred six percent of the time. He was my son, after all. After all.
And then, Periandros-
What to do about Periandros?
Deny him? Tell Julien I could not possibly accept him as emperor, and send word to Sunteil, or maybe even Naria, that I was giving my support to him?
Why? Simply because I disliked him? Did I like Naria better? Sunteil, perhaps, I did like; but did I trust him? What were the ambitions of these quarrelsome Gaje princelings to me? Why thrust myself into their civil war? I was king again; and if I had Periandros to thank for that, so be it. I owed him nothing but thanks. Now I must restore my command of the kingdom; and then there would be time to see how the struggle among the high lords resolved itself. Meanwhile Periandros held the Capital. Therefore Periandros was emperor. If Sunteil or Naria disagreed, let him change things: that wasn't my affair. As king I needed an emperor with whom to deal. For the moment, Periandros was emperor. For the moment, then, I would take him to be the legitimate holder of the Gaje throne.
I sent for Julien.
"While I was Shandor's prisoner," I said, "he told me that he had been to the Capital and that he had received the wand of recognition. From the emperor, by the emperor's own hand. Do you know anything about that? Could he have been telling the truth?"
"Do you think he was, mon vieux?"
"He said Sunteil and Naria and Periandros were right there, but the emperor himself held the wand."
"The old emperor was lost in dreams all the time of Shandor's reign," said Julien.
"So I thought."
"It was Naria who
held the wand."
"Naria?"
"There was a great dispute among the lords. Throughout it the Lord Periandros spoke out for you, Yakoub. He regarded Shandor always as an interloper with no rightful claim. Sunteil wavered, now supporting Shandor, then you, then saying it was none of the Imperium's business who the Rom chose to be their king. Naria argued for immediate recognition of Shandor. He has always mistrusted you, do you know that? Because you were born on the same world as he, and you a slave and he a noble. He thinks you hate him for that, that in some way you blame him for your slavery."
"I am not fond of Naria," I said indifferently. "Perhaps his theory has some basis to it."
"He told the others that Shandor would be the Rom king no matter what the Imperium said; and that therefore it was good politics to give him confirmation. The Lord Periandros and eventually Sunteil would not have it. Then one day when it was Naria's turn to hold the orb of regency he simply summoned Shandor to the Capital and laid the wand upon him. Fait accompli, you see."
"And did the other two accept what Naria had done?"
Julien waved his hand at the dark scar of an imploder burn on the wall. "There you can see how impressed the Lord Periandros was with Naria's recognition of Shandor. As for Sunteil, he has kept his own counsel on the matter. As Sunteil usually does. Now that Shandor is overthrown he probably will claim he favored you all along."
"Yes," I said. "That sounds like Sunteil."
"And now, mon ami? What will you do, now that Shandor is overthrown?"
"Go to the Capital," I said. "Speak with Periandros."
"With the Sixteenth, as we must call him now."
I gave Julien a long, steady, cool look. This time he returned it, just as steady, just as cool. My ancient friend, my Gaje cousin. Who had been a part of my life longer than anyone now living, other than Polarca. Whom I had known for a hundred years. What was he trying to do now? Was it not enough that I had agreed to meet Periandros, to deal with him as though he were truly the emperor? Did Julien have to force him all the way down my throat?