Diadem - Shadow of the Warmaster Part 26

Swarms of yizzies were converging on the Palace; when we came over from Base, we'd seen hordes of them, flying in from every corner of the Littorals like locusts on the move; they even sounded like locusts when I turned on the external ears and listened to them. The news of the Warmaster's end was out everywhere, that was obvious. The com net, I suppose; if I were Huvved, I'd have shut down the net till I had some sort of control in the cities. Aslan said it was survival-fear that triggered Surges; looked to me like survival-hope was doing the job just as well. Airs.h.i.+ps were drifting loose over the city, abandoned by their pilots and pa.s.sengers, loads of Hordar dropped to melt into the Surge that was forming there. As we flew over, I could see the devastation starting, like the destruction in gul Ukseme multiplied a hundredfold, a million Hordar as a single deathbeast striking down the thousands of Huvved living there, burning, trampling, bursting in doors and windows, destroying everything their hands and feet could smash or torch. The yizzies came clicking and clattering over them, airmarching with the landswarm moving in a blind fury toward the Palace.

As I finished the firing run, I saw that ma.s.s of Hordar crossing the waste land between the city and the Wall. I swore. I did not want to go down there in the middle of that mess.Pels came up from the lock and slid into the co's seat. He inspected the mob.

"Rrrr," he said.

"Yeh." I took the tug up and got ready to set her down inside the walls.

"Looks like half the Hordar on Tairanna."

"Maybe we should come back tomorrow. Or next week."

"I doubt the relatives would pay for stewmeat." I took another look at the mob. "Which is what's going to be left tomorrow. Well, let's set her down.

Faster we finish, the better shape our hides're going to be in."

I put Chicklet down in an elaborately ugly garden which was the only s.p.a.ce large enough for her fat little tail that was within a reasonable walk of the slavepen. The EYEs k.u.mari sent sniffing around told us that the techs were collected around sundown and put in the pen, the rest rounded up by midnight; that didn't include bedslaves, but they weren't targets anyway; ordinary girls however lovely were too common to be pricey; mostly their parents, husbands, lovers, whatever, couldn't afford to offer the kind of reward that would get them on ti Vnok's list. We were early; it was barely dusk, the end of a cold windy day with shreds of fog coming off the lake. On the other hand, there was the attack by the Hordar; maybe the slaves would be locked down early, if Luck happened to look our way. Pels and I, we set the barriers and the shockers to keep the locals out, rode the lift down and started at a quick trot for the pen.

I nearly b.u.mped into a guard running for the wall. The man stared at me, lifted his rifle, but changed his mind and went loping past me. Several of the guard cats were pacing about, their leashes flopping; they put their back hair up and their tails twitched when we came along. One of them charged at us, the others followed her. Pels got the leader and I stunned the others. After that we kept an eye close to scan roof edges and the shoulders of the st.u.r.dier statues, any high place a cat could perch on. We got half a dozen more cats that way.

The situation inside the walls was getting hairier by the minute; the Huvveds and Ta.s.salgans on the intact sections of the Wall were firing down at the Surge with hand-held melters and pellet rifles. They killed hundreds and yet more hundreds, but the Hordar came on, walking over the wounded and the dead (a distinction without much difference because anyone wounded badly enough to be knocked off his feet was trampled to death by the feet of his neighbors).

Tendrils of the Surge peeled away from the main ma.s.s and fought their way into the gaps Pels had knocked into the walls. Other units had ropes with grapples knotted onto them; the Hordar climbed the ropes faster than the guns could cut them down, swarming up and over, tearing the guards to bits as they pa.s.sed over them, destroying everything they got their hands on.

I was frowning as I ran, there was too much confusion inside the walls; I could understand some of it, there didn't seem to be a h.e.l.luva lot you could do to stop a Surge coming at you, but this chicken had its head cut off; talk about ineffective. Where was the Grand Sech? Was Pittipat stupid enough to execute him when the Warmaster went? Was the Sech stupid enough to let that happen? I shook my head as I pulled up before a heavy door; it was barred and locked, but there wasn't a guard in sight.

I sliced through the bar and the lockbolt and shoved the door open.

As N'Ceegh and Zaraiz Pa'ao got closer to Gilisim Gillin, the air went thick with airs.h.i.+ps and yizzies; since the cuuxtwoks hid them from eyes as well as probes, they had to stay alert and do some fancy dodging to avoid being run over. They reached the Palace close to sundown, slipped past the Wall without triggering the melters and touched down in the garden atop the Palace tower.

N'Ceegh wore armor covering his torso, arm and leg sheaths with knives of a.s.sorted lengths and purpose in them; on his back he had a battery pac attached by cable to a heavy-duty cutter that needed both hands to hold it level when it was in use. The smaller cutters that Zaraiz Pa'ao wore were keyed to his hands. All he had to do was point, then tap a thumb against the side of a crooked middle finger. He had no armor; he counted on his agilityand speed to protect him. The door from the roof garden into the palace was a bronze slab elaborately etched over all its surface. N'Ceegh melted it, jumped the runnels of congealing metal and the cooked meat of a hapless guard, went slatting as fast as his thin legs would carry him down a lacy spiral ramp.

The Palace defenses belonged to the days of the first Imperator and they were badly maintained; until recently no one, not even the professionally paranoid Grand Sech, had expected an attack on the Palace itself. During the past months there'd been some attempt to refurbish the alarms and automatic killers, but slave techs don't make all that reliable a workforce when there's a thought hanging in the air that the men in power are about to lose their footing.

Down and around they went, N'Ceegh leading, Zaraiz Pa'ao watching his sides and back, sweeping away resistance, not stopping to ask those they met what side they were on; the agile uninvolved dived for cover, the guards and slow reactors died. Down and around, going for the CommandCenter, multiply defended, ma.s.sively armored spherical chamber, buried in the earth, resting on bedrock, built to resist intense bombardment, fire, flood, whatever. Half a dozen Ta.s.salgans guarded the single entrance, a hatch with a complex wholebody lock programmed to open for two people and only two, the Imperator and the Grand Sech. The security was impressive, it looked impeccable, but no Imperator in all the long millennia of Imperacy, back on Huvedra or here on Tairanna, not one Imperator had ever ever locked himself in a room with only one exit; he always had a bolt hole known only to himself.

Before he escaped, N'Ceegh had spent nearly three years local in the Palace as one of Pittipat's favorite toys. During those years he'd built weapons and other elaborate playthings for the Imperator and used his spare time to make spy eyes and ears for himself. He planted them everywhere, collecting data for his escape and his vengeance. Among his other unlovely attributes, Pittipat was a voyeur. He liked to spy on his own people and went slipping from peephole to peephole sometimes all night long. N'Ceegh laid a bug on him and tracked him a couple of nights and after that explored the web of pa.s.sages on his own, mapping security systems and finally the area about the CommandCenter. Pittipat was on N'Ceegh's vengeance list because he'd ordered a weaponmaster from Bolodo and thus had a share of bloodguilt for the as.h.i.+ng of the Pa'ao kin. After N'Ceegh was in the palace a month, his cold determination went hot where Imperator Pettan tra Pran was concerned, the old rip had an inherited talent for creating pa.s.sionate enemies.

N'Ceegh led Zaraiz Pa'ao to the outlet of the Imperator's bolthole.

He melted it down. Two minutes later the Pa'ao and his son leaped into the CommandCenter and confronted the Imperator, the Grand Sech and the clutch of Huvved techs busy at sterile white work stations.

Looking down melter snouts at the swarming Hordar, swinging back and forth, wiping away rank after rank of the marchers, flesh running like water off bones that ran like syrup into a puddle around the feet of men women children who kept coming on and coming on.

Talking with Seches in the Fekkris of Littoral cities. The faces all saying the same thing: the cities are emptying, the Hordar are leaving. Saying to the Seches: stop them, shoot them down if you have to, don't let them leave, don't let them come here, stop them however you can. We can't send you anything right now, it's up to you, stop them.

N'Ceegh burned the head off the Grand Sech while Zaraiz Pa'ao plinked the techs. As the Imperator woke from his initial shock and started scurrying toward the main exit, N'Ceegh sent a beam from the burner sizzling past him.

Pittipat stopped and turned slowly, working on a smile as he turned. His eyes opened wide as he recognized the intruder. "Ceeghi?"

"!Hi-Vagh!" N'Ceegh muttered. Leaving Zaraiz Pa'ao to guard the exit, he stalked the Imperator, cornered him against a work station. "Down you," he growled, "on the floor, Bitvekes.h.i.+t."

The Imperator's head went up, Ms tentative smile vanished. "Nonsense," he said.N'Ceegh lifted the burner, pressed the front end of the tube against Pittipat's stomach. "Ba'okl, choose, flea."

The old man reconsidered his objection and stretched out on the floor where he lay blinking up at the Pa'ao. With visible effort he managed a smile, then broadened it into a genial grin that lit up watery blue eyes sunk in a nest of pseudo laugh-wrinkles. He was calm now, confident; despite his uncomfortable and humiliating position, he was sure he could manipulate the situation to his benefit, that he could pacify this old friend. "Come, Ceeghi, you're a good fellow. What do you want? Just tell me. There's no need for all this."

N'Ceegh knelt beside him and touched a spray to his neck. The Imperator stiffened, worked his mouth; he couldn't speak and he couldn't move his limbs.

Zaraiz left his post and stood beside the Pa'ao, watching what he was doing.

Hobbling on his knees (plushy gray fur worn thin over the bone), N'Ceegh moved down the Huvved's long spindly body, unbuckled the Imperatorial sandals, slid the long bony feet out of them. "My village is ash," he said, speaking with emotionless precision in unaccented Hordaradda. He took a thin surgical blade from a sheath on his forearm and sliced off the Imperatorial great toes; he set them aside while he applied cauterizing patches to stop the blood flow. He slit the Imperatorial trousers up past the knees. "The house of my fathers is ash," he said. He drew his knife across the hamstrings, severing them. He hobbled up a little farther. "My children are ash," he said. With a deft twist of his knife, he popped out the Imperatorial t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es and dropped them beside the severed toes. He moved on.

"My lifemates are ash," he said. He lifted the left hand, drew his knife several times across the back of it, severing the tendons. "My craft-heir is ash," he said. He removed the thumb, dropped it on the Imperatorial chest and applied a patch to the wound. "My bloodkin to the third degree are ash," he said. He dealt with the right hand in the same way, edged along until he was bending over the Imperatorial head, looking down at the old Huvved's face, ignoring the terror in it. "You are the prime cause of those things," he said.

"The bloodghosts of my kin cry for vengeance. Zaraiz, help me, keep his head steady."

While Zaraiz Pa'ao held the Imperatorial head locked against his thighs, N'Ceegh drew the blade delicately along the top of the Imperatorial eyesockets, cutting away the eyelids without touching the eyes beneath. "Never close your eyes again to the death and pain you decree," he said. Working with the same care, he cut through the skin and cartilege of the Imperatorial nose and lifted it away. "Never ignore again the consequences of your demands." He used the point as a stylus and cut into the Imperatorial brow the Pao-teely glyphs for bloodguilt. "May the world know your soul, you who command death without thought. Let him go," he said, "gently, my son, if you please."

N'Ceegh got to his feet, brushed his hands together. "The paralysis will wear off in about an hour," he told the old man. "Do what you will then." He touched Zaraiz Pa'ao on the shoulder. "Time to go."

They fought their way back to the roof against a stiffening but disordered resistance, reached the garden breathing hard from the climb with a few holes in unimportant places, a burn or two from richocheting pellets, nothing serious.

Stretching and yawning, so sleepy he didn't like thinking about the ride back to the mines, Zaraiz Pa'ao strolled to the parapet and looked across the gra.s.s at the faint lines of rose and purple at the base of the clouds in the west; the sun was down and the dark was lowering quickly. He yawned again, glanced into the gardens below. He saw the tug. "Look, N'Cey-da, isn't that the machine they were talking about at the Mines?"

N'Ceegh crossed to him. "!F-doo-ya! must be. Talk was the Outsiders come looking for disappeared who might be slaves." He frowned at Zaraiz Pa'ao. "You my son now, Zhazh-ti," he said, "my craft-heir, but you born Hordar. It is Torveynee I ask you, come with me away from Tairanna? Come with me to hunt the ghostblood?"

Zaraiz Pa'ao rubbed at his eyes. He was so tired; it wasn't fair that he hadto decide this without time to consider. He reached out a trembling hand and warm furry fingers closed around it. On the other side, there were lots of times before this when he'd chewed things over and over and sometimes he was right and sometimes he was wrong. Prophet help me, he thought. "I will come, I will hunt," he said. "Promise you'll teach me? Everything?"

"You my craft-heir, Zhazh-ti. What else? Everything, ya." N'Ceegh grinned at him, hugged the boy hard against him. "!Fi! let us go push in on that line."

The pen had small sleeping chambers arranged around an a.s.sembly hall with a horizontal lattice displayed across the ceiling, tracks for the slides of the tether chains. At night around a hundred slaves were locked onto those chains and left to negotiate their way into their a.s.signed sleeping places. Because of the Surge and the attack on the Wall, the Palace slaves had been herded into the pen early, the Huvved didn't want them getting ideas about escaping.

When I burned the latch and kicked the door in, most of them were still in the a.s.sembly chamber, gathered in cl.u.s.ters, talking, arguing, fidgeting or just sitting and staring in deep depression at stains on the walls.

I stood beside the door, looking over that very various crowd in that long narrow room. "Tom'per- ianne," I called. I waited a minute, repeated the name, yelling over the noise. "Remember a dancer name of Kante Xalloor? She asked us to have a look for you and your sisters."

A thin vital woman, vaguely pteroid, moved away from a group of the back wall, her chain clinking musically. "Xalloor, eh?" She had a deep contralto. So much voice from so frail a body. She looked to her right at two others who might have been clones instead of sisters they were so like her.

"Xalloor," Nym'perianne said (or it might have been Lam'perianne). Whoever, her voice was a liquid lovely soprano. When I learned their names, I could tell them apart by voices if not their faces and bodies.

"What cha know," Lam'perianne said (or it might have been Nym'perianne). This one had an oboe's reedy notes, less immediately enticing than her sister, but maybe more interesting as time pa.s.sed.

"Good kid," they chorused.

"You know us," Tom'perianne said. "Who're you?"

"Name's Quale," I said. "s.h.i.+p Slancy Orzo. You want a ride to Helvetia?"

"That's the dumbest question I ever heard." She laughed, flutesong.

"I a.s.sume that means yes. Pels, cut the three of them loose. Someone here called Jaunniko?"

The noise got louder. Two men struggled, one fell; the one still standing moved away from the tangle he'd created. "Here, Quale. I'm Jaunniko. The dancer ask for me?"

"Someone did. Described him too and you're not him. Jaunniko, stick your head up, will you? Or your hands, sculptor."

Behind the scowling claimant, pus.h.i.+ng impatiently at two men and a woman trying to help him up, a lanky young man got unsteadily to his feet and ran strong square hands through hair with a remnant of purple dye still clinging to it. As his biceps flexed, the lavender b.u.t.terfly tattooed on his arm seemed to flutter. He tried to speak, but a partially deflected blow in the mixup had shoved his collar against his larynx and left him temporarily mute.

I gave him a nod. "Yeh, you match. Pels?"

The Omperiannas hurried over, dancing away from hands grabbing at them.

"What now?" Tom'perianne fluted at me; Xalloor said she did most of the talking for the three of them.

"Wait by the door, hmm?"

Pus.h.i.+ng the steel collar up and rubbing at his neck, Jaunniko reached me and I waved him over to join the three musicians.

"The rest of you-" I started.

The slaves began fighting to get to me, tangling their chains, struggling,"desperate, yelling, grunting, wrestling with each other.

"Quiet," I roared at them. "Get back. Give me trouble and you can sit here androt." I waited until the noise subsided to a manageable level. "Untangle those chains, dammit, how do you expect us to cut them when they're messed up like that? All right, right. The more you help, the sooner we can get out of here.

You have any idea what's cranking up outside? This place is going to be rubble before the sun comes up. Blofody rubble. And they're not caring who does the bleeding." I turned my head. "Tom'perianne, come here." When she was at my side, I gave her my stunner. "It won't kill anyone," I said. "It'll just lay them out and we'll leave them laying." I raised my voice again and repeated that, so everyone could hear it, went on, "Use it on anyone who looks like trouble. You out there, when you're cut loose, back up against the inside wall if you want us to run shotgun for you; if you figure you can handle yourself outside, take off. Up to you, I'm no nursemaid."

I plunged into the crowd and began helping Pels sever the chains; the job got easier when the yells and screams from outside came in loud enough for them to get an earful; they calmed down fast and sorted themselves out as we cut them loose. When we were ready to go, Pels led, with the Omperiannas and Jaunniko immediately behind him. The rest of that motley crop followed, organized into squads that kept together and made good time once they were out of the pen. I followed a few strides behind so I could scan the whole and have a better chance of spotting trouble.

When they saw the tug's snout, they really put on some speed. I started hoping we'd reach Chicklet without much trouble. Pels flattened a couple of cats before they made up their minds to jump us, that was about it. The two-legged guards were too busy to bother with anything not coming at them. The attack on the walls was more intense, I could see strings of Hordar coming up and over like lines of ants, and the yizzies were thick overhead. Not over us at first.

I was hoping they'd keep away; they were circling high up, beyond the range of the guard's pellet guns, spilling fire over everything and everyone below them, even the front lines of the Surge. The yizzy riders were acting like they weren't part of them on the ground, like they were a Surge on their own.

Since most of them were street kids or divorced outcasts, I suppose they had to be a separate force, a third force striking at Huvved and Hordar alike.

We were too big a target. Half a dozen yizzies came at us dripping fire. They stayed high up, my stunner wouldn't reach them. Nothing I could do. Like an idiot I'd left the launch tube and my darts in the tug.

Another yizzy came swooping by, looked like it was carrying two, one draped over the knees of the other; the one in control rested a black tube on his pa.s.senger's back. Even that far off I could see what it was-a heavy-duty cutter. It slashed across the inklins attacking us and turned them into ash on the wind.

As the newcomer bagged himself some more twelve year olds, I ran for the tug, cursing Boiodo and Adelaar and Pittipat and Huvved snots and b.l.o.o.d.y-minded rebels and the Surge and him up there and everyone and everything that got me here and made me look at these things. Children killing. Killing children.

Made me want to vomit.

As Pels finished loading the ex-slaves, a fifth wave of fliers formed up and headed our way. I cupped my hands around my mouth and bellowed at our friend on the yizzy to come on board if that's what he wanted, we were going to get the h.e.l.l out of here.

He brought his yizzy down until he was hanging over the edge of the lift platform. "N'Ceegh Pa'ao," he said, his voice was a hoa.r.s.e roar that had trouble cutting through the noise around us. "Escaped slave asking transport offworld. My son Zaraiz Pa'ao." He patted the boy's b.u.t.tocks. "Surge got hold of him and I had to put him out. Give me a hand with him."

"Right. How you want to do this?"

"Let me get the straps off." He produced a wicked-looking scalpel from an armsheath and sliced through the braided thongs that tied the boy in place.

I got my hands around the child's waist and lifted; he was small like most Hordar children, slight, a featherweight. I held him while the Pa'ao swung from the saddle and let the yizzy drift off. "We'll go up to the bridge," Isaid. "We can talk while I'm taking Chicklet back to Base. Mind leaving that cutter in the lock?"

"Uhnh, Fiddoodah'ak." Before I could ask what that meant, his mouth split into a lipless grin. "Sure, no problem."

He stripped off the battery and dropped it and the tube near the inner hatch.

I gave him the boy and got busy; by the time I had the lift folded in and the outer lock dogged home, Pels had the drives humming.

When we reached the bridge, the Pa'ao laid the boy he'd called his son on the floor mat and dropped down to sit cross-legged beside him. He lifted the child's head and shoulders into his lap and sat with one hand resting lightly on his son's tangled black hair.

I took a last look at .the chaos around us, goosed the tug into the air. I'd had more than enough of Tairanaa, the Hordar and this whole rescue business.

Three days after the taking of the Warmaster. Karrel Goza in Ayla gul inci/mid-morning/cloudy day, gusts of gray rain.

Gul Inci was empty. Empty even of death. No bodies in the streets. No bloodstains or char marks where inklins and others had burned. In the beast courts the stock complained, udders heavy with curdled milk, feed trays and water troughs empty, pet animals whimpered, whined or howled, hungry and parched, abandoned by those who were supposed to care for them. The wind snapped wash left hanging on the line when the Surge impulse came down on gul Inci, it banged doors left unlatched, rattled and banged shutters. It blew sc.r.a.ps of paper and other debris against and around Karrel Goza who came walking south from Sirgun Bol where he'd left Windskimmer noselocked to a mooring mast.

He pa.s.sed House after House emptied by the Surge impulse. He walked slower and slower, drew his fingers across the bright tessera inlaid in the brick of the courtwalls, Family marks and signs taken from Family history. He named the Houses as he touched their signs, a slow invocation of what had been. House Falyan. House Umtivar. House Borazan. House Ish-lemmet. House Tamarta. Empty, echoing, disturbing. A kind of walking nightmare. He moved deeper into the city, walking streets he'd taken so many times before, Sirgun Bol to Goza House, Goza House to Sirgun Bol; he did not hurry, he pushed against a growing reluctance to see his own House empty like these others.

He moved past taverns and shops and other small businesses. For the first time he heard voices though he saw no one and none of the businesses were open.

He heard a steady creaking as he drew near the largest of the circles with its speaker minaret a topped-out stone tree in the middle. He remembered the last time he stood there, crowds pressing about him, Geres Duwar bringing him a paper cone of hot nuts. His grief over the loss of his cousin intensified suddenly, as if he felt it for the first time. He stood looking at the wall he and Geres Duwar had leaned against while they listened to the Stentor shout.

After a while he was aware of the creaking again. He looked up. A body was suspended from the speaker's platform. A hanged man. He moved around so he could see who it was. "Herk," he breathed. The Fehdaz's face was black and distorted and he was stripped naked, but there was no question who hung there.

Another memory came back full force-Elmas Ofka that night she found her brother dead of torture. Herk will pay, she said. It may take years, but Herk will pay.

He shrugged. This wasn't Elli's work, she was too busy organizing the world.

It didn't matter. Herk the Jerk had enemies enough to guarantee he'd end like this. Without asking himself why he was doing it, he climbed the verdigrised spiral to the platform and cut the rope. He heard Herk's body hit the stones with a loose boneless splat; the Fehdaz must have been hanging there for hours, more than a day, long enough for the death-stiffness to pa.s.s out of him. They took him when the Surge was just starting here, he thought, that's why they hung him instead of tearing him apart.

He climbed back down and stood over the body. It hadn't begun to stink yet, the weather was too cold for that. He pressed his fingers hard against hiseyes. Too many memories here, he couldn't let Herk dirty them. He dropped his hands and looked around for a place to put him.

The timbers of the Fekkri Gate were burned to stumps like rotted teeth and the pile itself was a sh.e.l.l, no more. He got Herk up and over his shoulder, carried the body into the Fekkri court and dropped it on the paving stones.

He left, brus.h.i.+ng at himself, a little nauseated. He moved more quickly now, he had a better reason than duty to visit his House. He wanted a bath.

Goza House was in the southeast section of the city, where the Little Houses were and the tenements for the poor, the warehouses, the retting sheds and other factories, down near the water's edge.

The two parts of the main gate were moving in the wind, but not enough to swing closed. Seeing them like that made him angry. The gates of the Great Houses were closed, latched, probably locked though he had not thought to try them. Here the Houses were left open to the wind and whatever thieves escaped the Surge, here where the people were poor and not important. He went through the wall-arch and into the Front Court.

The wind blew dead leaves into dust devils. A solitary spray of rain hit him in the face. The House was dead. Everyone was gone, even the Elders. He folded his arms across his chest, hugged them tight against him. It was like his grief for Geres Duwar, and somehow worse. There was no focus, only a free-floating desolation. "They make a desolation and call it peace," he said aloud.

"What's that mean?"

Karrel Goza looked around, not seeing who it was who spoke to him.

Tazmin Duwar stepped from the Duwar Court, stood leaning against a gate pillar. "What's that?" he repeated.

"Someone said it a long time ago and a long way from here. I don't know who or where. The Outsider at the Mines, the teacher, you remember, she told it to her students and one of them told it to me. It just came to mind."