"Damiano came to me right after you and told me that Shandor had made himself king. It wasn't ever my intention to clear a path to the throne for Shandor, of all people. So I came back." I could hear a fresh round of gunfire, seemingly not far away. Julien seemed untroubled by it. "Where is Shandor now?" I asked.
"He has fled with his bodyguard to another part of the Aureus Highlands. We took him utterly by surprise when we struck. Very gradually did we move our troops into position surrounding the royal compound and he was not in any way prepared."
"Akrakikan troops only?"
"Yes," said Julien quietly. "We could take no chances."
"No thought was given to having Rom in the rescue party?"
"This was an imperial mission, cher ami. And I know that you have an aversion to the spilling of Rom blood by Rom hands. The invading troops were entirely Akrakikan, of Lord Periandros' personal force."
"And Rom blood was spilled, then?"
Julien studied me a moment. "Evidently there are Rom who are loyal to your son, Yakoub. God knows why that should be, but it was the case. In any event one usually does not invade a royal palace without encountering staunch defense. Please understand that we held the casualties to a minimum."
A minimum, yes. But that meant some. Bleak news. I sighed.
"Those who guarded your son were informed that the new emperor did not recognize him as king. They were offered a chance to lay down their weapons peacefully. Many of them did."
"Some did not."
"Some did not," Julien said.
"Well, so be it," I said after a time. "They were serving the wrong man. Who
does
Periandros recognize as king? Me?"
"He will. You will be taken to the Capital and there will be a ceremony of reconsecration. I think it will be necessary for you to have the decree of the great kris also, will it not? But that can be managed. I have spoken with Damiano and with Polarca. You will be king again, Yakoub. I ask only this, that this time you do not amuse yourself with another abdication."
"The abdication was a carefully considered gesture," I said. "It's not one I'll need to make a second time." I was still for a moment, considering the things Julien had told me. Something seemed off key, but in the rush and flow of our conversation I had not noticed it at first. Now it returned to trouble me. "Wait a moment," I said. "You told me that the rescue mission was an imperial enterprise, Julien. But you also said that Periandros had decided on it while the old emperor was still alive. And that he had sent his own soldiers to carry out the job. The whole thing sounds more like a private project of Periandros' than any sort of governmental action. Which was it? He wasn't emperor yet when you came here, was he?"
"No," said Julien.
"Why rescue me, then? So that in my gratitude I'd support his claim to the throne?"
"Oh, Yakoub, Yakoub-"
"That's it, isn't it? But what if I didn't
want
to be rescued? Did Polarca happen to tell you that I put myself into Shandor's hands voluntarily? That I had political objectives of my own to gain by letting him imprison me? And I told you when you came to Mulano that I wasn't going to take any public position favoring Periandros' claim to the throne."
"The Lord Periandros is emperor now, Yakoub."
"So the Fifteenth did manage to name a successor after all?"
Julien shook his head. "No."
"Then how did Periandros become emperor? What happened to Sunteil? To Naria?"
Julien looked uncomfortable. He was too much the diplomat to let himself be seen squirming, but he must have been squirming desperately within.
"At the time of the Fifteenth's death," Julien said in a strangely remote way, "the Lord Sunteil had gone to the Haj Qaldun system to investigate certain disturbances on Fenix and, I think, Shaitan. As for the Lord Naria, he also was occupied at that time by matters of pressing importance on his own native world, which as you know is Vietoris."
I felt very somber now. My dear old friend Julien, who had sold himself long ago to Periandros, was here to try to buy me too. Quid pro quo, Periandros sets me free and I give my allegiance to him and he recognizes me as undisputed king. One quid, two quos, and none of them any good.
"It was a coup d'etat, then?" I asked. "The other two were away, and Periandros simply grabbed the throne?"
"The peers of the Imperium have confirmed his election."
"The same way the great kris of Galgala confirmed the election of Shandor as king?"
"Yakoub, mon cher, mon ami, I beg you-"
"Go on," I said, as he fell silent. "You beg me what?"
"We spoke of these matters on-what is that world's name, the icy one?-on Mulano. When there is a vacuum in the body politic, disruptive forces are set loose. Your own absence from the Rom throne and the apparent usurpation of Shandor, followed by your sudden return from retirement and your imprisonment here, had already loosed one set of disruptions in the Imperium. The death of the Fifteenth threatened to make matters catastrophically worse. In the judgment of the Lord Periandros the stability of the Imperium would have been in jeopardy had he not acted swiftly and decisively."
"And Sunteil? Naria? They've both acquiesced in Periandros' swift and decisive act?"
For a moment, only for a moment, Julien's eyes were no longer meeting mine. That momentary flicker of weakness was the most damning revelation of all.
"Not precisely," he said.
"Not precisely?"
"In fact, not at all."
"Neither of them?"
"Neither one."
"They both claim the throne?"
Julien nodded. I thought he would burst into tears.
"So we have not only a Sixteenth, but a Seventeenth and an Eighteenth as well? All at the same time?"
"No, mon ami. There is only a Sixteenth."
"But we don't know which one of the three he is?"
"The emperor is the former Lord Periandros, Yakoub."
"So you say. Because you've been on retainer from Periandros since the year six. But is his claim any better than Naria's or Sunteil's?"
"He is in possession of the Capital."
"Nine tenths of the law, eh? Well, Shandor was in possession of
our
capital until you threw him out. What if Sunteil invades the Capital the same way?"
Julien was squirming now. A little muscle was flickering in his elegant Gallic cheek.
"Or both of them?" I suggested. "Striking a deal. Flipping a coin, heads I'm emperor, tails it's you, let's both throw Periandros out. What then?"
"These are terrible times, Yakoub."
"Indeed they are."
"The emperor wishes to help you because he knows that you can help him, yes. We are entering a season of chaos and flame. You and the emperor, standing together, could prevent the worst of it from happening."
"So we could, perhaps. But it would be the same if I allied myself with Sunteil or Naria."
"They did not rescue you, Yakoub. And they are not at the Capital now. Believe me, Yakoub: the Lord Periandros is emperor. However it was accomplished, it is the reality. Sunteil and Naria are insurgents. They mean to lead insurrections against the reigning emperor. If you throw in your lot with one or the other of them, Yakoub, you are not preventing chaos, you are in fact increasing it."
"And if I prefer Sunteil? Or Naria?"
"Why should you? You dislike them both. I know that."
"I have nothing good to say about Naria, true. Sunteil is a different matter."
"You can find something good to say about that Fenixi?"
"He's tricky and dangerous, yes. But he has charm. Periandros is absolutely devoid of charm, Julien. You must know that yourself."
"Charm is not the primary quality we seek in an emperor."
"But as king I'll have to deal with the emperor all the time. Do I want to deal with someone stiff and dull and humorless and heavy-handed when I could be crossing swords with the playful Sunteil?"
"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.