Chapter 4: Children of the Sun
THE GRILLED GATE OF the tramcar rolled back and allowed me to disembark. I followed the androgyn servant in silence, hands behind my back. So vast is that baroque pile of metal and stone that it has its own tramways—like the largest legionary dreadnoughts—to ferry the servants and soldiers and members of the nobility from place to place. Intricately wrought iron bristled all around, imitating the flowering vines with which it wove. I was struck by just how much plant life there was in the palace, so that it seemed as much a garden as a castle. So much beauty and design had been lavished on the palace that it staggered the heart.
The ironwork and the ivy gave way to stone walls, and beyond an arched portal rich wooden panels drank the warm light of sconces. The round-vaulted ceiling above showed images of the sky—not the rosy color of Forum’s heavens, but jewel-blue as Earth’s was said to be, the clouds white and golden.
The homunculus stopped outside a door and knocked to announce us. The door sprang open almost at once, and I was astonished to find an attendant had opened it. No mechanism, unless one counted the tinkling of silver bells to announce the door had moved.
“Sir Hadrian Marlowe, Lord Commandant of the Red Company, Your Majesty,” the androgyn said in high, angelic tones.
“Majesty?” I echoed the word dumbly, then went to one knee at once as I understood.
The woman seated in the chair before me was perhaps the loveliest I had ever seen. Cold and terrible as a winter storm was she, but warm and rich as autumn. Her hair was red as the Emperor’s—for they were cousins—and fell in a braid thick as my arm, bound with golden cords. She might have been cast from ivory, from marble. Her gown was pale as she and slashed with crimson to match her hair, and gold was her belt and gold the bangles that dripped from ears and throat and arms. All the art that the geneticists of the High College could contrive was in her body, and the strength of empires was in her eyes.
“Your Majesty,” I said, “it is an honor. Forgive me, I was not expecting to meet you.”
The Empress Maria Agrippina raised a hand in greeting, and remembering that I should not stare, I looked down at the thick carpet that covered the floor. “Please stand,” she said. “We wished to meet you before you take our son from us.” She smiled, but the light of it did not reach her emerald eyes. She offered a hand glittering with rings.
Formal protocol would have had me approach that hand on my knees, but the Empress had commanded me to stand. It may have been a kind of test, but I despised kneeling, and so stood to take her hand and stooped to kiss it.
“Alexander will be with us shortly, but I wanted to see the Hero of Aptucca for myself. Sit, please!” She indicated a chair opposite her. “Tea?”
I did not care for the stuff, but would not refuse the Empress. “Please.”
She gestured, and another of the androgyns emerged from an arras to pour the drink into a cobalt teacup. I accepted it graciously and took a sip before setting it down, knowing that that had likely been enough to satisfy courtesy.
“Do you have children, Lord Marlowe?”
I blinked, surprised by the question, because I felt certain the Empress must have known perfectly well that I did not. “No, Majesty. My . . . paramour is Tavrosi.” I could have said more. That Valka did not want children, that Valka did not wish even to be married, that I suspected the High College would not approve of such a union anyway, pairing one of the Imperial Peerage with a foreigner.
“I had heard that,” the Empress said with the sort of interest that suggested what I said was some species of terrible scandal. “I didn’t think it was true. A Tavrosi witch? And you keep company with homunculi and other degenerates. Fascinating.”
“I’m afraid that what they say of me is more true than not, Majesty.”
“I see . . .” Her voice trailed off. “That makes you something of a rarity. Most men are smaller than the stories told about them. You should be careful. Grow too tall and someone will take an ax to you.” Warning? Or threat? Maria Agrippina leaned back in her chair, and I was struck by how perfect her posture was: every line and motion precise as a dancer’s, as some elf queen of antique fable. I think she frightened me more than the Emperor himself. “But this is interesting!” she said, and smiled another smile that did not touch her eyes. “You must be careful with my boy, sir.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
“If something were to happen to him,” she said, lifting her own teacup from its saucer, “I would be obliged to see that something happened to you. Are we clear?”
I took up my teacup again to give my hands something to do. “Perfectly,” I said. “Although where we’re going should be quite safe. It’s only search and rescue.”
Her Majesty set her cup back on its saucer. “All the same. He is a prince of the Empire. A child of the Sun, and my son, and you will look after him.”
“I will,” I agreed, and smiled despite the visions of torture and torment in the dungeons that I felt certain must lurk beneath this holy city in the sky. Nervous, I spared a glance for the androgyn servant standing now beside an antique-looking red figure vase on a stone table. It was trying its best to appear a part of the furniture, bright eyes fixed on the ground. The palace servants were all identical, or nearly so. Intelligent but not creative, they were perfectly loyal and obedient, rapier-thin and long-faced. They frightened me, but I pitied them. They had not chosen to be born as they were.
The Empress’s tea table stood beneath the apex of a glass dome overlooking part of the Cloud Gardens. Leaves so green they were almost black brushed against the glass and the ironwork.
“I cannot remember the last time a mere knight drew such a following,” she began, and I sensed she was working toward some pronouncement or point. “To have fallen so far . . . to be outcaste and to rise again . . . I mean, you’re practically patrician.” She said this last word in a tone that suggested patricians were little better than goats. I held my face still in a rare moment of near-scholiast blankness. The Empress was the product of the finest genetic tailoring in the universe: a living icon. Had I shown her image to some Achaean shepherd, he would have fallen to his knees in worship, mistaking her for Demeter. Small wonder she held those of lesser blood in contempt! What else could a goddess feel for a goat? “Nevertheless,” she continued, “you’ve found yourself quite the following. You’re a true hero.”
Was she mocking me? Like her Imperial husband she had too fine a control of her face, and nothing of her emotions that she did not expressly allow showed in her expression.
“Mother!”
The voice came from behind me, so I had to set the tea down again and turn to see the young man standing in the door of the solarium.
He looked precisely as I imagined. A boy of perhaps thirty standard years. Red-haired like his parents and green-eyed, with high cheekbones and a strong jaw. I’d expected more of the Imperial white, but the only white he wore was a collared half-cape over his left shoulder. His tunic and trousers were black as my own.
“Alexander! Come in!” The Empress rose in a swishing of skirts. “Come meet Lord Marlowe! He’s been waiting for you!”
“Not very long, I hope,” the prince said, stepping into the room, and it was only when he did so that I saw he was not alone. A woman followed him, and so like was she in form and color to the Empress that I knew she must be one of the woman’s own daughters.
I was not certain whether or not I’d seen the prince before. The Imperial princes and princesses were all of so strong an archetype that I could not have told one from another without careful study. I did not kneel, which ordinarily would have been appropriate, my being only a knight and a petty lord without holdings before two of the Imperial children. But I was also, by Imperial decree, the knight appointed to train this young prince, and so I confined my salutation to a simple nod, shifting my posture to stand at attention. I fixed my eyes on a spot on the wall and said, “Sir Hadrian Anaxander Marlowe, at your service.”
The prince smiled nervously, teeth flashing. “Yes, you are!” And to my astonishment, he bowed. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Sir Hadrian, sir.”
“Your father has requested and required that I train you,” I said formally. “With your royal mother’s permission, we plan to leave Forum at fifteen hundred standard.” Directing my question at the servant standing behind the prince, I asked, “I trust the prince’s effects are already aboard my ship?”
“The Tamerlane?” Alexander asked. “Father said we’re going to Gododdin. I’ve never been offworld. Have you? Been to Gododdin, I mean.” He looked down at his boots and seemed to chew his tongue.
I shook my head. “I’ve come in along the old core routes more often than not, returning from the Veil. This’ll be a new adventure for both of us.”
To my surprise then, the young prince took a step forward, jaw gravely set. Solemn-faced, he did something I have never seen a member of the Imperium do before. He thrust out his hand for me to shake in the peasant fashion. So surprised was I that I took it unthinking. In a voice grave as his expression, Prince Alexander said, “I have heard stories about you since I was a boy.”
What could I say to something like that? In its way, it was almost as incredible a line of conversation as my encounter with Carax in the great hall. Unable to help myself, I felt the crooked Marlowe smile bleed across my face as I said, “I hope you did not believe all of them.”
Alexander gave a short, hollow laugh and released my hand. “Oh! I should introduce you!” He stepped aside. “Sir Hadrian, this is my sister, Selene.”
The princess offered me a hand, and as she wore no ring upon her slim, white fingers, I kissed my thumb instead as I took those fingers in mine. “Highness,” I said, looking up at her. I found I had no other words.
For I had seen Selene Avent once before. In a vision given to me by the daimon Brethren in the dark waters below Vorgossos. The vision the Quiet had left with them for me to find. A vision of my future, or one of many futures. In that vision I sat on the Solar Throne with a circlet on my brow, and this princess sat at my feet in a gown of living flowers. Other visions I had seen of a life we two might share, and though we had not met, I remembered the perfume of her hair and the taste of her lips and the way she moved beneath me. Struggling with all this, I kept my eyes downcast in what I hoped was a respectful manner. I could still feel where her hand had touched mine, and thinking of Valka, I made a fist at my side. I did not like to think about that future, or any future without Valka in it.
“My brother speaks most highly of you, sir knight,” the princess said, and the sound of her voice was like a half-remembered melody playing in a distant room. “We are fortunate to have men like yourself defending us.” Her smile was like the first blast of sunlight around the limn of a planet from orbit, and again I averted my eyes.
Haltingly, I answered, “That is kind of you to say, Highness.”
“Will we be leaving now, Sir Hadrian?” Alexander asked. “Directly, I mean?”
“That is my intention.”
“Good, good.” He looked round at the solarium as if he’d never really seen it before. I knew the look well. It was a look more closely kin to fear than people really believe. A fear born of the fact that though we may come back to a place at the end of our journeys, we never really return, for we are not the same person who departed.
Watching this, I could not blame the prince, I who have survived several such transformations myself. So I smiled instead. “We’ll spend a year or two awake on the journey. See what you know, what you can do. See to your training.” The prince brightened visibly at the news, though I sensed the shadow of distaste from the Empress at my brusque tone.
“Please take care of my brother, sir,” Selene said, and clasped her hands before herself.
“I will, Highness,” I said, and I did bow then. “You may depend on it.”
“Should we go now?” the prince asked, eyes still wandering around the old solarium.
I told him we didn’t have much time to linger, and stepped aside as young Alexander said his goodbyes. He knelt before his mother and took her hand in both of his and swore he would return. I remember smiling at this gallant display, thinking that in that moment he seemed everything a prince of the Sollan Empire should be. How little I perceived the weight hanging on his shoulders, or the desire to prove himself. He was one of the latter-born, the one-hundred-seventh child of the Emperor’s impossible brood. A living spare, destined to live out his days in the Peronine Palace, studying statecraft and diplomacy to sit a throne that would be never his, that would go to Crown Prince Aurelian or to Princess Irene, the second-born. He would be denied marriage and children by the High College and his own father to keep the Imperial clan from swelling to too unmanageable a size. The Kin Wars had taught their bloody lesson and left their mark burning across a million worlds so long ago, when the days of the palatine were counted in years and not in centuries.
Alexander needed desperately to become something. To become someone. To matter. Thus it is for all men. We are nothing until we have accomplished something. Even for the young prince it was so, though his rank gave some identity. Recalling the Hadrian ignored and belittled by his lordly father, I felt a pang of sympathy for the boy.
A thought occurred to me, and I asked, “You’re traveling alone? You’re not bringing servants or guardians?”
“Is your sword not guard enough, Sir Hadrian?” the Empress asked, arching one perfect eyebrow. I felt an echo of Bourbon’s tone in her question. Surely the great Devil of Meidua can keep one little boy safe?
I matched the ice in the Empress’s eyes with flint. “You may depend on it, Majesty.”
“We will,” she said tartly, and I noted the royal style of that reply.
What was said as we departed I do not now recall. I remember the princess’s nervous smile and the Empress’s hard-eyed gaze. So similar were they in appearance and dress. So different in substance. And the boy beside me? The man? There was little of the warrior in his step, little of the commander in his bearing.
How little I guessed of what he would become.
Our shadows raced ahead of us as we descended the steps of the palace, my coat and his cape fluttering in the wind. The Martians saluted as the prince descended, and I turned my collar up to shield my face. As we passed the fountain, he stopped, and I went on for three paces alone before turning back.
The prince leaned against the rim of the fountain, one hand flat against the marble.
“Sir Hadrian, I know my father did not offer you a choice in taking me, but . . . I am grateful.” The boy would not look me in the face. “I won’t fail you.”
I crossed my arms. “Good.”
What did he see when he looked at me? The Hero of Aptucca? The man who had slain not one but two princes of the Cielcin? The man who they said could not be killed? To the boy I was like a character from a storybook—not a man at all. He looked at me as I might have looked at a dragon had one crawled off the page and curled itself around the Galath Tree.
“I want to be a knight. Like you.”
“This isn’t a field trip, you know.” I did not wait for a reply, but turned and continued onward, moving back toward the strand where my shuttle waited to carry us to orbit and the Tamerlane. I did not hear footsteps on the path behind, and after a moment I stopped, turning back. Prince Alexander still stood there, hands balled at his sides. How small he seemed! How narrow those shoulders bred to wear the mantle of empire. Strange to think of him as that young man again, after all these years, after Gododdin.
After he ordered my execution.
“Are you coming?” I called.
The prince stirred. “I . . . yes!”
“Right then,” I turned away, “let’s be off.” But I stopped short, for something just off the path had caught my eye, white as snow on the mossy stones. I knelt. It was a Galath blossom, so bright it glowed. The wind must have tugged it free of those sacred branches, for it was said that the flowers of the Galath tree never fell. I am not a superstitious man, but the sight of that pale blossom in my fingers sent a chill stealing over me, as though it were the Empire that had fallen.
Or a star.