"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."
"As always, Your Majesty," said I obligingly.
"Good. Your first task is to bring us Sunteil. Nothing else matters until that is done. Go, then. Go now."
Grandly-yes, imperiously-he waved us from the room.
* * *
"Can you imagine it?" Polarca exclaimed. We were making our way warily through the shattered city. Sirens sounding, blurts of gunfire breaking out randomly here and there. "He tells you what to do, and then he tells you that you can go. A little wave of his imperial finger. Dismissing a king the way you would a stablehand."
There were implosion craters everywhere. Now and then a screening bomb went off, blanketing a whole zone of the city with dark clouds of communications-muffling murk. Or an explosion far overhead would send down showers of brilliant golden metallic threads, as though this were not a war but some sort of grand merry pyrotechnikon.
I said, "King, stablehand-it makes little difference to me, Polarca."
"
Less
than a stablehand! You wouldn't even talk to a stablehand that way!"
"No, I wouldn't," I said. "But I am not Naria."
The threads were clusters of picosensors: espionage devices, gobbling up data in mid-air as they floated. Sunteil's little spies? Naria's? Who could tell? Perhaps the doppelganger generals of the doppelganger emperor Periandros were the ones who had ordered them to be dropped.
And still the sky-banners of the three emperors rippled like auroras above us. And on the horizon, too, the brilliant purple light-spike that was the mark of the Rom baro, telling all the world that that great personage was in residence at the Capital in this very hour. Which I was beginning profoundly to wish was not the case.
Polarca was still furious. He couldn't let go of it.
"You aren't angry at being treated like that, Yakoub?"
"Angry? What good is being angry? Will it make him more courteous? Naria does as Naria must."
"The bastard. The pig."
"If I allow myself to become angry," I said, "I lose sight of what a formidable adversary he is."
"You think he is?"
"Can you doubt it?"
"Just an arrogant boy, puffed up with his own importance. How old is he? Fifty? Sixty? Not even. Sitting there in that glass box on display like the wonder of the galaxies. Calling himself 'we,' and handing out orders to kings. Going out of his way to let us know what a big deal he is. Playing games with you, leading you around by your nose. I'm surprised you put up with it like that, Yakoub."
"He is emperor," I said.
"That pimp? That fop? You call that an emperor?"
"He has the palace and the army," I reminded him. "And is very quickly going about the business of consolidating his power. Periandros is dead and Sunteil, who everyone thought would reach out and take the throne like a ripe fruit the moment the Fifteenth departed his body, runs and hides. And Naria knows how many doppelgangers there are of Periandros; he knows that Sunteil came visiting us in secret this morning. I think we need to deal with him as though he is truly the emperor, Polarca."
"What do you mean to do, then? Will you recognize him? What about Sunteil?"
"What about Sunteil?" I asked.
"He, at least, pretends to treat us as equals. Naria treats us like dogs."
"You prefer the pretense?"
"We live by pretense," said Polarca. "And what we pretend is that the Gaje respect us, when we know that they merely fear us, because they need us, because they depend on us. But the pretense of respect feels better than the reality of contempt. I like Sunteil's style better than I do Naria's."
"So do I," I said. "We may have no choice, though."
"Will you give Sunteil to Naria as he asks?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, Polarca. It's not a notion that pleases me a great deal."
Our cavalcade of cars came to a halt. We were at the palace of the Rom king, in the Plaza of the Three Nebulas. Suddenly I had a profound wish to be alone. For an instant I almost wished I was back on white glittering Mulano, squatting by the Gombo glacier and trawling for turquoise spice-fish with a vibration net. Far from all this, far from everyone, the wagging tongues, the clamorous ambitions, the murderous schemes, the noise, the blood, the idiocy.
Chorian came running out to greet me. He was agitated: an implosion bomb had gone off next door to the palace half an hour ago. He pointed to the palace walls: great ugly cracks ran from floor to ceiling. These lunatics would not be satisfied, I thought, until they had destroyed their entire absurd Capital. Well, so be it. So be it. The cities of mankind are temporary things. Let it all come down, I thought. Let the Gaje ruin all the worlds. And then we will lift ourselves from their midst and return to Romany Star to live in peace. As soon as we receive the call.
As soon as we receive the call.
Chorian tried to tell me that I should leave the Capital at once, while starships were still running; that I should take myself back to Galgala and await the resolution of the imperial civil war in relative safety.
"There is no safety anywhere," I told him. "I will stay here."
They all surrounded me, bubbling with conflicting advice. I sent them all away and went to my private suite, to my only refuge in this hubbub. I needed to rest, to think, to weigh alternatives.
But even there I could not be alone.
Hardly had I settled down but the familiar figure of Valerian's ghost came drifting through the walls. He was wearing magnificent robes of red fur trimmed with ermine, and he was buzzing and crackling with enough electrical intensity to light up half a planet. In the true Valerian manner he hovered erratically in mid-air, skittering this way and that.
I felt no joy in seeing him. "You? Here?" was the best I could manage by way of greeting.
"I had to come. Even if you didn't want me. You need to get out of here right away, Yakoub. This planet isn't safe."
"You're telling me that?"
"For God's sake, a war is about to break out here, Yakoub. Do you want to be killed? The crazy Gaje bastards are going to bomb each other into oblivion."
"You're out of phase, Valerian. The war has already begun. Look, can't you see the cracks in the wall, here? An implosion bomb across the street, half an hour ago."
"It'll get much worse. I'm trying to warn you."
"All right. What's going to happen?"
"Everyone's going to die, Yakoub. Get out while you can. Get everyone out with you. Listen, I'm only two weeks ahead of you in the timeline. That's all it is, two weeks, and in those two weeks all hell breaks loose at the Capital. I'm not even sure what happens. I came right away, as soon as I heard what was going on here. You've got to go. Now."