"Until-?"
"Until never," I said. "This struggle is a two-sided triangle now, Julien, and there can't be any transaction between Periandros and me that would mean anything any more, whatever he may think. Doppelgangers fade. Maybe they don't know that about themselves, but I know it. I don't have time for him. The poor unreal bastard. All right? Do you understand what I'm telling you?"
"He may be dead, Yakoub, but he is not yet without power."
"He will be. He'll be nothing at all, very soon. I have to save my energies for dealing with the emperors who aren't dead. I'm working for the long run, Julien. Periandros is already decaying. Whether he knows it or not."
"But while he lives-"
"He doesn't live. He's a zombie. He's a walking mulo. And I ask you to keep him out of my hair. For the sake of the great love you claim to bear for me."
"Your voice is so harsh, Yakoub. There is such enmity in it."
"Perhaps you know why that is."
"D'accord," said Julien gloomily. "I will tell Periandros you need more time for your decision."
"About eighty million years," I said. And I broke the contact.
The next moment Polarca came striding into the room, looking distraught, waving a sheaf of reports.
"They're fighting in the Gunduloni district," he announced. "A bunch of Periandros loyalists against a detachment of Naria's militia. And troops wearing Sunteil's insignia have seized a whole block of streets just south of the imperial district, and they're going from house to house, forcing people to swear allegiance to him. And over on the other side of town there's a battle going on and nobody's been able to tell who's on what side."
"Is there anything else?" I asked.
"One thing more," said Polarca. "Naria has summoned you to the palace. He wants a parley right away."
12.
IT WAS INEVITABLE, OF COURSE: THE DROPPING of the third shoe. Periandros and Sunteil had been heard from, and finally the last of the high lords was putting in his bid for my support. Or so I assumed. I was requested-and Naria's adjutant had sounded pretty damned urgent about it, according to Damiano, who had taken the call-to come at once and to bring with me not only Polarca but the phuri dai. Shrewd Naria, angling for Bibi Savina's backing as well: maybe my seat on the Rom throne might be a little wobbly, but Rom everywhere revered the phuri dai, without exception.
We held a conference on the advisability of my accepting Naria's invitation and I got a mixed response. Jacinto and Ammagante, cautious as ever, wondered if it might be some sort of trap, a ploy designed to give Naria control over the entire Rom high command in one swoop. Damiano and Thivt agreed that that was a possibility but they thought the notion was far-fetched. Polarca, plainly itching to get out of this palace in which we had hidden ourselves for what was starting to seem like weeks, didn't care: he was willing to take the risk, such as it was, rather than remaining holed up here any longer.
I looked toward Bibi Savina. "What does the phuri dai say, then?"
She looked at me and through me, into realms far, far away.
"Does the Rom baro refuse the summons of the emperor?" she asked.
"But is Naria the emperor?" Jacinto said.
"He holds the palace," said Bibi Savina. "One of the other two is dead and the third one is in hiding. If Naria is not emperor, no one is. Go to him, Yakoub. You must. And I will go to him with you."
I nodded. The phuri dai and I generally have seen things the same way over the years. To Damiano I said, "Tell him we'll be there in an hour or less."
"He's promised to send an imperial car for you."
"No," I said. "The last thing I want is to go driving around the Capital today in a car that bears the imperial crest. We'll take one of our own cars. Three cars, in fact. Nobody's going to try to get in the way of the Rom baro if they see a whole cavalcade of Rom vehicles."
Bold words. But in fact we were fired on five times during the thirty-minute ride to the imperial palace. There were no hits: our screens were good. Still, it wasn't a good sign. All this artillery action was twentieth-century stuff, and it felt out of place, a thousand years out of place and then some. I hadn't thought that a little thing like a struggle over the imperial succession could have sent the Gaje heading back down the evolutionary trail so fast. War is an obsolete concept, I had been telling Julien de Gramont only the other day-so to speak-during the tranquility of my retirement on icy Mulano. And in the short time since then I had found myself in the midst of a small war on Galgala and now in what had the look of a very large one here at the Capital. First our seat of government and then theirs.
At any rate, we got through the city in the same number of pieces with which we had set out. We never knew which side was doing the firing. Most likely all three factions were taking turns, and nobody having any idea of who it was that they were firing at, any more than we could tell who was shooting. An anonymous war: more twentieth-century stuff. If there has to be fighting, give me the medieval days, when at least you knew your enemy's name.
The city was a tremendous mess. I wouldn't have thought they could smash so much of it up so quickly. At least half a dozen of the loftiest towers had been sheared right off in mid-loftiness. Mounds of rubble strewn high as houses in the wide boulevards. A pall of black smoke staining the sky. Here and there an arm or a leg sticking out of the ruins: death, actual death, irreparable and irreversible. Whole lives cut in half as those towers had been, men and women robbed of a hundred years apiece or even more. And for what? Some petty dispute over whether the Gaje crown should go to a man of Fenix or a man of Vietoris, or perhaps to the animated image of a dead man from Sidri Akrak?
In that scene of devastation there were, nevertheless, incongruous signs of imperial splendor. Sky-banners, symbolic of the presence of the emperor at the Capital, were blazing away in the east, the south, and the north. But it was a display of banners such as never had been seen here before, for they glowed in three different sets of colors, one for Periandros, one for Naria, one for Sunteil. Wherever those warring lights met and clashed overhead, there was such turmoil in the sky that it befuddled and baffled the eye.
And farther to the north, in the city's outer ring-what were those plumes of brilliant purple light there? Why, they were the light-spikes of the Rom baro, of all things, returned at last to their proper place! Naria's doing? Sunteil's? Well, it was all useless flattery now. Did they think my allegiance could be bought with a show of light?
The palace was guarded by level upon level of fantastic defenses. A ring of deflector screens, first, casting a purple glow over the whole place. Within that, a row of gleaming tanks, all eyes and cannons. Then a phalanx of robots. An android militia. A vast host of human soldiers too-or, more likely, doppelganger-soldiers, hastily stamped out to meet the emergency. Scanners. Sky-eyes. Floating clouds of lethal antipersonnel pellets held in check by webs of magnetic force. And more, much more. State-of-the-art stuff, all of it, a wondrous and preposterous array of technological wizardry. Naria's incredible defensive deployment told me as much about Naria as it did about the current state of military preparedness in the Imperium.
It took more than an hour for us to be escorted through all the checkpoints. But at last we entered into the presence of the man who for the moment held the title of Sixteenth Emperor.
No throne-platform now, no crystalline steps. An immense cube of what looked like glass, but probably wasn't, had been set up in the enormous high-vaulted council-chamber of the palace. A warning line of blue fire rose from the stone floor on all four sides. High above, scanner beams searched constantly through the air. And deep within the cube, enthroned like a pharaoh of old in absolute inaccessibility, sat the self-proclaimed Emperor Naria, motionless as a statue, taut and slender as a whip, solemn as a god. Darkness surrounded him but he himself was illuminated by a confluence of spotlights that imparted a fierce blaze to his shoulder-length scarlet hair, his dark purple skin, his implacable yellow eyes. He wore a richly brocaded ga
rment of some stiff green fabric that rose up behind his head like a cobra's hood, and the crown imperial floated above him in holographic projection.
All very impressive. All very ludicrous.
I saw Polarca struggling with a smirk. The phuri dai was smiling seraphically; but then she often does that, in all sorts of contexts.
"We are grateful for your coming here, Rom baro," Naria declared in slow, measured, absurdly pretentious tones. His voice emerged from behind the glassy walls of that cube out of a thousand speakers at once, and went rebounding dizzyingly around the vast room.
Such ridiculous theatricality! Who did he think he was talking to? And the royal we again. For century upon century the Empire had managed to survive and even thrive without any such idiotic affectations. But suddenly these uneasy lordlings were reviving it as they made their little snotnosed forays toward the throne. I felt sorry for them. That they should need to inflate themselves that way.
Still, I gave Naria the formal gesture of submission that a Rom baro traditionally makes to the emperor. Even though he had not offered me the traditional wine. It cost me nothing and might win me a point or two with him. And it rarely pays to be discourteous to megalomaniacs when you're standing in their living room.
Then I said, gesturing at the glass cube and everything that surrounded it, "How sad that all this should be necessary, Majesty."
"A temporary measure, Yakoub. It is our expectation that peace will be restored within a matter of days, or even hours. And that there will never again be such a breach of it, once we have completed the task of imposing our authority upon the Imperium."
"Let us all hope so, Majesty," said I most piously. "This war is an agony for us all."
The solemn bastard! Saw himself as savior. Well, meet hypocrisy with hypocrisy, if you have to.
He gave me his grave-and-thoughtful-ruler look. "There is much damage in the city, is there not?"
"Too much, I'm afraid."
"The Capital is sacred. That they should dare to harm it-! Well, we will make them pay for it, every minim, every obol." He studied me in frosty silence for a time. I returned his glare, unfazed. He wasn't a likable man, this scarlet-and-purple Naria. Reptilian. Dangerous. This was the man, after all, who had taken it upon himself to ratify Shandor's unlawful appropriation of my kingship, even while the old emperor still lived. What was it about our unhappy era that had loosed these Shandors and Narias in it?
Then he said, his tone changing entirely, shifting from stiff imperial pomp and bluster to sly and almost intimate insinuation, "Do you know where Sunteil is hiding?"
That was a really unexpected shot. I'm afraid I let myself show my surprise.
"Sunteil?" I said idiotically.
"The former high lord, yes. Who is now in rebellion, as you certainly must know, against the legally constituted government of the Imperium. He's here at the Capital. I wondered whether you happen to know where."
"Not a clue, Your Majesty."
"Not even an unfounded rumor or two?"
"I've heard that he's somewhere south of the city. More than that I couldn't say."
He looked at me like a bomb that was deciding whether it wanted to go off.
"Or rather, more than that you don't choose to say."
"If the emperor thinks I'm concealing things from him-"
"You've had no dealings whatever with Sunteil, then?"
The interrogation was starting to slide into new and perilous territory. Carefully I said, "I have no idea where Sunteil may be."
Which was true. But it wasn't the answer to the question that Naria was asking.
He let my little evasion pass without comment. Reverting now to his loftier imperial voice, he said, "When Sunteil comes to you again, Yakoub, you will seize him and deliver him to us. Is that understood?" Amazing. Rolling right over me like an avalanche. "This is war, and we can allow no niceties. You will have a second chance to capture him, and this time you will take it." When he comes to you again? How much did Naria know? I heard Polarca gasp in astonishment, and Bibi Savina lost her smile. Seize and deliver him? I had expected to hear Naria beg me for an alliance, not give me orders.
I stared. For a moment I was at a loss for words. Actually speechless. Me!
Naria went on serenely, "The hand of Sunteil has been raised against his emperor, which is to say that it has been raised against every citizen of the Imperium. He is the enemy of us all. He is as much the enemy of you Rom as he is the enemy of-of-what is it that you call us?"
"Gaje, Majesty."
"Gaje. Yes."
I said, "And why does Your Majesty think that I will be visited again by Lord Sunteil?"
"Because you will arrange it." That simple. I will arrange it.
The response of Yakoub is the dropping of the jaw, the gaping of the mouth. Only metaphorically, of course. Calm on the surface, I am. Taking all this very casually. Mustn't let him see how astounded I am. What a marvel you are, Naria.
"Ah. Because I will arrange it."
Saying it very lightly. Merely repeating what should have been obvious to any moron. You will lure my rival into your clutches, Yakoub, and then you will nail him for me. Of course, Your Majesty. Of course.
He said, "There will be a meeting, at some carefully devised neutral point. By your invitation. Another part of the planet, or perhaps some other world entirely. At which you and he will discuss the prospect of an alliance between the Rom Kingdom and an Empire led by Sunteil. You will charm him, as you do so well. You will lull him off his guard. And then you will capture him and turn him over to us."
I felt almost like applauding. Bravo, Naria!
He was speaking to me, to the King of the Rom, as though I were nothing more than some minor phalangarius of his staff. That took daring. Audacity. Stupidity.
"And Periandros?" Polarca said suddenly, a wicked gleam coming into his eye. "Are we to catch him for you too, Your Majesty?"
Within his cube of glass Naria remained as motionless as before, but his eyes turned toward Polarca and there was no look of amusement in them. It seemed to me that a chill wind had begun to blow through the council-chamber.
"Periandros?" said Naria. "There is no Periandros. Not many days ago the body of Periandros lay in state in this very room."
"But his doppelganger-"
Naria waved him to silence. "There are three doppelgangers of Periandros. They cause trouble, for the moment, but they are nothing. Time will steal their life from them and turn them to the clay from which they were made. Sunteil is the enemy. You must deal with Sunteil." He skewered Polarca with a baleful glance. Polarca had the good sense not to make any more little lighthearted sallies. After a time Naria looked toward Bibi Savina, who seemed lost in dreams, or perhaps off ghosting. "You, there, old woman! You stand there saying nothing, and your mind is far away. What are you doing? Peering into the future?"
The phuri dai laughed a wondrously girlish laugh. "Into the past, Your Majesty. I was thinking of a time when I was very young, and was in a swimming race with the boys, from one shore of the river to the other."
"But you can see the future, can't you?"
Bibi Savina smiled pleasantly.
"Of course you can. Tomorrow is as clear to you as yesterday, eh, old woman? Old witch. And the day after tomorrow, and the day after that. Do you deny it? How can you? Everyone knows the powers of the Rom fortune-tellers."
"I am only an old woman, Your Majesty."
"An old woman to whom the future is an open book. Is that not so?"
"Sometimes I see a little way, perhaps. When the light is shining for me."
"And is the light shining now?" Naria asked.
Again Bibi Savina smiled. A sweet smile, a childlike smile.
"Tell us this, at least," said Naria. "Will there be peace in the Empire?"
"Oh, there can be no doubt of that," said the phuri dai easily. "When war ends, peace returns."
"And the new emperor? Will his reign be a happy one?"
/>
"The new emperor will reign in prosperity and grandeur beyond all measure, and the worlds will rejoice."
"Ah, you old Gypsy witch!" Naria said, almost affectionately. "You say things that are so full of cheer. But we are not deceived. The game's an old one, isn't it? Tell your listeners what they want to hear, and take their money and send them away happy. Your kind's been playing that game for thousands of years. Eh? Eh?"
"You are wrong, Your Majesty. The things I have told you are not necessarily the things you would want to hear."
"That there will be peace? That our reign will be a glorious one? What better prophecies could you have given me?"
The phuri dai smiled and made no reply, and once more her gaze wandered off into the distant galaxies. Naria, still staring at her, seemed for the moment to follow her there. There came the sound of more explosions outside the palace, some long and muffled like distant thunder and some, not at all far off, sharp and quick and percussive. Naria showed no sign of noticing them. After a time he turned his attention back to me.
"Well, Yakoub? Now we understand each other totally, is that not so?"
Periandros had asked me the same thing, I recalled, the day I had ascended the crystalline steps for my audience with him atop the throne-platform. Without hesitation I gave Naria the same answer I had given his predecessor.
"Perfectly, Your Majesty," I said. Though I doubted that very much. But at least I understood him, better than ever before.
"Then there is no need of further talk. You may go. When you have Sunteil, return to us."
This, said to a king!
Incredible. Utterly incredible.
"And then we will have much to discuss," he went on. "The new order of things, eh? The emperor and the Rom baro. It is our intention to make many changes, as the Imperium enters the time of prosperity and grandeur that the old phuri dai has foretold. And we will need your cooperation, eh, Yakoub? Emperor and Rom baro, working together for the good of mankind."